Kodi Illegal, Open Source Now a Word
Seems the top story today was the arrest of five individuals for selling devices loaded up with Open Source Kodi. Apparently the kits came with add-ons that allowed users to stream pirated content. In other news, Merriam-Webster has added the word "Open Source" to its database of official words, along with 1000 others. Jonathan Terrasi described his Linux awakening and blogger Dedoimedo said the GNOME version of openSUSE 42.2 is better than Plasma, but it still doesn't redeem the mediocre release.
Torrentfreak.com summed the situation up fairly well today when it reported on the arrest of five suspects in England February 8 for selling set-top boxes with Kodi multimedia software installed. Apparently, it wasn't actually the Kodi software as much as it was the add-ons that allowed streaming pirated movies from upload sites. It seems it is this bundling that has pushed it over the line of legality. As TF said, "The people behind Kodi don’t like it. The addon makers don’t like it and streaming sites don’t like it. Most importantly, copyright holders, broadcasters, and the police don’t like it!" So, several agencies got together and arrested the suspects on "behalf of The Premier League, Sky, BT Sport and Virgin Media." A spokesman for the "task-force" said their actions should send a clear signal to those selling set-top boxes. Tuxmachines has a whole list of stories related to this for those wishing more details.
Arstechnica's Sam Machkovech yesterday reported that the Merriam-Webster dictionary now contains the word Open Source, although it appears to be hyphenated. Are you going to start hyphenating it now? Nevertheless, they have it defined in two parts:
1. of software : having the source code freely available for possible modification and redistribution <an open-source operating system>
2. : of, relating to, or promoting open-source software <the open-source movement/community>
Other new words this year included net neutrality, abandonware, and botnet. Machkovech added, "A topical technical term that did not make the cut, on the other hand, is "Internet of things," though maybe that's just Merriam-Webster throwing shade on the burgeoning industry."
In some quick takes this evening, Arch Linux has joined the list of modern distributions who've decided to phase out the 32-bit architecture due to "decreasing popularity." Dedoimedo test drove openSUSE 42.2 GNOME and said while GNOME is more stable and functional than Plasma, it wasn't enough to redeem an "average" release. TechRadar ran an article from May 2015 on the best lightweight distributions and Linuxandubuntu.com addressed the best distributions for programmers. And finally, new Linux user Jonathan Terrasi shared his Open Source epiphany and migration.