GNU Planet!

The title of this article, “Migrar, migrant, migràrem“, comes from a beautiful poem written by Laia Porcar[1], that inspired the strikingly profound painting by Sara Belles [2] “Jo per tu, fill meu“. The artists reflect the migrants ordeal to provide a better life to their children and families, even at the cost of losing their own lives.

GNU Health[3] is a Social project with some technology behind and the mission at Sea-Eye is one of the best examples. After all, GNU Solidario[4] is a NGO that focuses in the advancement of Social Medicine.

We live a world of injustice. Concentration of power, social gradient and poverty rates keep on the rise. Artificial intelligence is on the hands of mega private corporations, targeting our privacy and feeding the macabre business of war. The fight for scarce natural resources such as lithium or coltan creates coups in impoverished countries. Nature and non-human animals are used and abused as mere commodities. Our world turns a blind eye to the systematic crushing and eradication of civilian population by powerful armies. As a result, we live in a world where migration is not a choice, but the only way out for millions of human beings, even at the risk of becoming anonymous victims in the Atlantic ocean or Mediterranean sea mass graveyards.

But there is hope. The Sea-Eye mission is the end result of a network of solidarity, cooperation and empathy. The Free Software movement started by Richard Stallman[5]; Julian Sassencheidt message in Mastodon and his presentation at GNU Health Con 2023[6] ; The work of our representative in Germany, Gerald Wiese; the Chaos Computer Club[7]; the team from L’Aurora[8] providing logistic support to the Search and Rescue vessels; the phenomenal Sea-Eye family who made me feel at home: The cook, crew on deck, the logistics and medical team who stood stoically intensive hours of GNU Health training. Of course, Selene, the heart of GNU Solidario and the one that looks after the human and non-human family members while I’m away.

You will hardly see these people in the news, because most corporate-backed media neglect them and their organizations. Unlike some billionaire “philanthropists” that take the media spotlight, these anonymous heroes stand on the right side of history, making a difference on the present and future of those who need it most, with very limited resources.

We’re very happy and proud to see that GNU Health can be of help to Sea-Eye in tasks such as guests registration, health evaluations, reporting, statistics and stock management. This is just the beginning and we will be optimizing and adding functionality on successive missions. That said, GNU Health will always play a secondary role compared to picking up somebody from the water and giving them a welcoming hug. Again, we’re a social project with a bit of technology behind.

I’d like to finish with a reflection on the picture I took to some of the drawings done by children during their stay at the Sea-Eye. The drawings exist because the Sea-eye crew rescued those kids. Otherwise, their corpses would be at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea, along with thousands who tragically perished trying to find dignity in this world. Thank you, Sea-eye. You are priceless.

A final note: shame on those countries and governments that detain and punish Search and Rescue vessels. Saving lives is not a crime.

Love, freedom and happy hacking

You can obtain Sara Belles painting and Laia Porcar poem from L’Aurora solidarity shop[8]

1. Laia Porcar : https://laravalerateatre.com/qui-som/
2. Sara Belles . https://sarabelles.es/
3. The GNU Health project. https://www.gnuhealth.org
4. GNU Solidario. Advancing Social Medicine https://www.gnusolidario.org
5. The GNU Operating System. https://www.gnu.org
6. Search and rescue on the central Mediterranean migratory route . https://https://www.gnuhealthcon.org/2023/presentations/GHCon2023-Friday-07-Julian_Sassenscheidt-Search_and_rescue_on_the_central_Mediterranean_migratory_route.pdf
7. The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) . https://www.ccc.de/en/
8. L’Aurora suport. https://aurorasuport.org/

 So... recently I was working for a bit (sweat equity or so I thought) for a company by the name of ImmortalData.  The company is headed by a man by the name of Dale Amon.  I have worked, on and off, for them for about 2-3 years.   They are developing a piece of software that is used to extract data from their proprietary black box systems.  This piece of software uses GNUstep.   They were born from a previous company known as XCOR which was developing a space plane at the Mojave space port.   That company is now defunct.

Okay, so with that bit of history, I worked for a while for XCOR and then, because ImmortalData inherited the software, for them as well.  When I worked for XCOR it was as a contractor.  There have been issues with the software (some GNUstep bugs and some bugs due to problems introduced by Dale) that I have been asked to address.

At the end of a meeting a few weeks ago Dale made a comment like "Well, this issue seems like a GNUstep bug, so there is no reason we should have to pay for any of this" which hit an EXTREMELY sour note with me.

Later on that week I tried to clarify it with Dale, and it seems as though he was under the impression that since I was working on Free Software any changes or fixes TO that software should not be billable.   This is NOT true.  Additionally, the issue that they are experiencing is because of something THEY did, and it is not a GNUstep bug. 

I mentioned this in the previous post, but I feel strongly that this needs to be called out explicitly.   Free Software is free as in FREEDOM.  This means you are free to look at, examine, and modify the software as you see fit.   It does NOT mean services performed on that software on your behalf by someone other than you are free.

This development was VERY upsetting to me and I feel the need to make the above VERY clear.

GNU Parallel 20240622 ('34 counts') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

  The most glorious 15,000 lines of Perl ever written.
    -- @nibblrrr7124@YouTube
 
New in this release:

• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• Howto - Parallel: lanciare comandi in simultanea https://github.com/linuxhubit/linuxhub.it/blob/main/_posts/2024-06-14-howto-parallel-per-lanciare-comandi-in-simultanea.md
• Implementing Concurrency in Shell Scripts https://dev.to/siddhantkcode/implementing-concurrency-in-shell-scripts-521o

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep 883c667e01eed62f975ad28b6d50e22a
    12345678 883c667e 01eed62f 975ad28b 6d50e22a
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep cc21b4c943fd03e93ae1ae49e28573c0
    cc21b4c9 43fd03e9 3ae1ae49 e28573c0
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep ec113b49a54e705f86d51e784ebced224fdff3f52
    79945d9d 250b42a4 2067bb00 99da012e c113b49a 54e705f8 6d51e784 ebced224
    fdff3f52 ca588d64 e75f6033 61bd543f d631f592 2f87ceb2 ab034149 6df84a35
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

We are pleased to finally announce the release of GNU Guile 3.0.10! This release is mainly a bug-fix release, though it does include a number of new features:

• Better ability to define new port types in Scheme (R6RS custom textual ports, a new soft port interface, low-level custom ports).
• Support for local define definitions in all forms with bodies: when and unless, cond and case clauses, and so on.
• An experimental opt-in surface syntax, WISP.

For full details, see the release announcement, and check out the download page.

Happy Guile hacking!

automake 1.16.92 pretest release candidate released. Please test if you can, so 1.17 will be as reliable as we can make it. Announcement:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autotools-announce/2024-06/msg00001.html

Dear all

I am happy to announce the release of MyGNUHealth 2.2.0!

The new series of the GNU Health Personal Health record comes with many improvements and bug fixes. Some highlights of this new version:

• Support for Kivy 2.3.0
• Localization. MyGNUHealth now has support for different languages. English, Spanish and Chinese are available to use, and French, German, Italian are ready to be translated. There will be a translation component for MyGNUHealth at Codeberg's Weblate instance.
• Bluetooth functionality: Starting with MyGH series 2.2 we provide bluetooth integration for open compatible devices and health trackers. We include the link with the Pinetime Smartwatch (experimental) and the possibility to link to any open hardware device (glucometer, scales, blood pressure monitors,  .. ). We need to get a list of available medical devices that respect our privacy and freedom, so let us know of any!
• Charts now allow to select date ranges with calendar widgets
• The Book of Life have a revised format for the pages.
• The charts have been improved in the format and include x axis labels.

Thanks to Kivy, Mygnuhealth codebase can be ported to other architectures and operating systems such as Android AOSP (Pierre Michel is working on this) and GNU/Linux phones.

In addition to Savannah, we have incorporated Codeberg to the GNU Health development environment. Mailing lists, news and file downloads are at GNU, while the development repositories are at Codeberg (https://codeberg.org/gnuhealth)

You can download the latest MyGNUhealth sourcecode from GNU ftp site, pypi (using pip) or from your operating system package (like openSUSE).

Upgrading should be straightforward, and all the health history will remain in the MyGH database. In any case, please make sure you make a backup before upgrading (and daily ;) ).

Thank you to all the contributors that have possible this milestone!

Happy hacking
Luis