September 2026 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Switzerland's Federal Government Tests Open-Source Alternatives to Microsoft on 3,000 Computers
by Peter Reutemann 09 Sep '26

09 Sep '26

'Switzerland has a population of 9,154,242. And its federal government just launched a pilot program to test open source alternatives to Microsoft 365 on 3,000 workstations, reports the blog It's FOSS. "That's about 7% of the federal workforce." The target is to complete the migration by end of 2027... On September 3, 2026, the Federal Council published results of "PoC BOSS", a feasibility proof-of-concept involving 172 federal employees who tested the openDesk suite, a German open-source collaboration platform. During the proof-of-concept phase, core office tasks like document processing and email received positive assessments, while large-scale video conferencing still showed technical limitations. Based on the 'success' of the PoC phase with 172 employees, the pilot is now launched for 3,000 employees... According to Matthias Stürmer, professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, Microsoft's supremacy in public institutions poses three problems that are driving this migration. First is the risk of foreign access. US cloud legislation could expose Swiss government data to foreign authorities. Second is the risk to service continuity, as dependency on a single foreign vendor creates operational risk. The third risk is the escalating costs as proprietary licensing fees are rising with no Swiss leverage. Switzerland's military cybersecurity unit, Cyber Command, is not waiting for the civilian pilot. It is already poised to replace Microsoft 365 entirely with openDesk by October 2026. It is pretty much the same reason. Military doesn't want foreign governments accessing sensitive Swiss data. The article notes that during the pilot phase, the new system runs in parallel with Microsoft 365 rather than replacing it. But the article's author speculates that "If the pilot is successful, we might expect the migration to continue on all the 54,000 workstations owned by the federal administrations."' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/07/0128205 Cheers, Peter

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Audacity 4 Rebuilds the Open Source Audio Editor But Leaves Some Features Behind
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '26

04 Sep '26

'BrianFagioli writes: Audacity 4.0 has been released with a rebuilt Qt interface, a new clip-editing model, customizable workspaces, native high-DPI rendering, and a new AUP4 project format. The open source audio editor also adds ASIO playback and recording support to official Windows builds, while bringing major changes to recording, playback, plugins, and project handling. The overhaul comes with some tradeoffs. Audacity 4.0 currently lacks several features found in Audacity 3, including Time Tracks, Note and MIDI tracks, Mixer, Macro Manager and scripting pipe, VAMP and LADSPA plugin hosting, and play-at-speed. The developers say they plan to bring the missing functionality back in future releases.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/03/163216/audacity-4-rebuilds-the-ope… Cheers, Peter

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How Apple’s OS X/macOS Became “UNIX”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Sep '26

03 Sep '26

When Apple introduced the first shipping version of OS X, in the form of its OS X Server product (back in March 1999, according to Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0>), it did a naughty thing. It advertised it as a “UNIX” product. But “UNIX” is a trademark belonging to The Open Group, and can only be used with permission. Apple didn’t have that permission. The trademark owners responded by filing a lawsuit for US$200 million. Apple could have responded in one of two ways: * License the “UNIX” trademark. This would require a lot of fixes to the OS X code in order to pass the compliance tests. * Acquire The Open Group, and thereby gain the rights to use the “UNIX” trademark however they wished. The company decided to go for the first option. Here <https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix-compliant-cert…> is a first-hand account from Terry Lambert, the technical lead charged with making OS X fit to be called “UNIX”. The project required a lot of fixes, not just to Apple’s code, but to a bunch of code from the various open-source projects that Apple had copied. I don’t think anything Apple has done since then has contributed so much back to the open-source world. And then there is this article from early last year <https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-certification-is-a-li…>, provocatively entitled “Apple’s macOS UNIX certification is a lie”. Because it seems The Open Group’s criteria for granting a “UNIX” trademark licence are, shall we say, somewhat lax. First of all, they don’t require that you certify against the latest version of the spec; an old version, last updated over 20 years ago, like the one Apple used, is just fine. And then, they allow you to handwave away failures of particular tests if you offer suitable excuses -- something Apple has done quite liberally. Does the “UNIX” trademark still mean anything any more? My feeling is that Linux compatibility matters more than any legalistic “UNIX” conformance, and the actions of both Apple and Microsoft nowadays indicate that they understand that quite well.

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