FOSS Force

Cover art by Etienne Suvasa; cover design by Matt Lee., GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons Proving there are some aspects of Free Software that not only last forever, but are constantly being made new again, GNU Emacs is out with version 31.1. This is the first new release in about a year for Emacs, which is, of course, every developer’s favorite text editor (unless they favor vi or vim, that is) and the first in the 31.x series.

Source: The Document Foundation It has become a commonplace to describe the Microsoft 365 ribbon as the finest office interface available — the most polished to look at and the most ergonomic to use. The claim is repeated so often that it tends to pass unexamined. It deserves examining, because hidden inside it is an assumption that quietly does most of the work: the idea that there exists a single best interface at all.

OpenAltFinder Connects Users With FOSS Alternatives to Nonfree Apps: The website pairs proprietary programs with free and open-source replacements, then provides useful details to help users compare their options. Alpha-Stage NeoSearch Brings Openness to Search: The Apache-licensed project seeks to elevate independent sources, demote SEO spam, and ultimately loosen Big Tech’s grip on web search.

Orion browser’s built-in ad-blocker. | Source: Kagi Orion is yet another new browser on its way to Linux. These days, with the spate of agentic AI browsers springing up that’s not necessarily news. The difference here is that this one just wants to be a browser — not an AI agent that wants to run your computer and your life.

Source: Modular Last week, the Mojo programming language released version 1.0, which is generally considered the “we’re confidently ready for prime time” release. Yesterday, the project announced that it’s now fully open source, released under Apache 2.0 with LLVM exceptions. The latter means that programs written and compiled in the language won’t have to be released under Apache or any other open source license.

7 7 people viewed this event. The topic is wildly interesting and sure to educate and entertain — “Fine-Tune Your First Open Source Model in 30 Minutes: A Live Walkthrough”. Also, we plan to add a second speaker soon — be on the lookout. This is the final meetup before All Things Open 2026. We want it to be special and deliver a ton of value. Doors open at 6:00 pm for networking, food and beverages, and tons of (free) swag. Live programming begins at 6:30 sharp.

When governments and organisations talk about “digital sovereignty,” they usually mean one thing in practice: the ability to choose, control, and if necessary replace the software they depend on — without asking permission from a vendor. It sounds simple. It rarely is. Document software sits at the center of almost every organisation’s operations. Contracts, reports, budgets, policy documents, public communications: they all live in files.

How many times have you needed to do something on a computer, but the only tool you know about for accomplishing the task is proprietary? Proprietary solutions are usually not the best way to go. When they have a free (as in beer) version, it’s often purposefully crippled, with a fee required to unlock the most useful features. Even after ponying up and paying too much, the software still belongs to the vendor.

Searching for ‘source available’ using NeoSearch. There’s a new budding search engine you can try called NeoSearch. It’s open source, licensed under Apache 2.0, with the full code available on GitHub. “Anyone can read it, fork it, and run their own search engine with it,” Bart Jellema, the person behind the project, posted in a blog on the projects website. You might want to wait before doing any serious forking or anything like that, however.

Source: Open Invention Network Open Invention Network announced earlier this week that ByteDance is on board to support OIN 2.0, the organization’s new patent non-aggression program to protect open source projects from patent trolls, which was announced in January. This will probably prove to be a great example of one hand washing the other, with at least one benefit for the China-based company that might not be readily apparent. For OIN, the advantages are obvious.