KDE e.V Receives Generous Handshake Donation, Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 Is Out, Geoclue 2.5 Now Available and Asking for Help, New Code of Conduct Proposal and Internet Freedom Festival

News briefs for October 15, 2018.

KDE e.V. announces it received a $300,000 USD donation from the Handshake Foundation. According to the KDE blog post, it plans to use $100,000 USD of the donation specifically toward development of the Calligra office suite. Also, KDE celebrated its 22nd anniversary yesterday—Happy Birthday KDE!

UBports announces Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 is out. This over the air update of version 16.04 includes a more stable experience and new features, such as the Morph QtWeb Engine browser, Qt automatic scaling, Kirigami 2 and community art used for wallpapers, notification tones and ringtones.

Geoclue 2.5 is now available, and coder Zeeshan Ali is asking for help. Geoclue uses the Mozilla Location Service (MLS), which was launched in 2013 in connection with its Firefox OS project that has since been abandoned. The service is still running, and users can contribute data, but it isn't being maintained or developed any longer. Zeeshan Ali writes, "If your company relies on MLS (directly or through Geoclue) and you'd want to secure the future of Open Source geolocation, please do get in touch and we can discuss how we could possibly achieve that."

Red Hat developer Ivan Chavero yesterday submitted a new patch for the Linux Code of Conduct. Phoronix reports that the proposal "drops the mention of 'a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body-size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality,personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.' In place Ivan proposes, 'our community an effective and enriching experience to any sentient being in the Universe.'"

The Internet Freedom Festival—"5 Years Joining Forces to Fight Censorship and Surveillance"—is being held in Valencia, Spain, April 1–5, 2019. The call for proposals is open until November 9, 2018. See the IFF website for more details, as well as news and updates from the community.

Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.

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