The Mozilla IoT Team Announces Mozilla WebThings, LibreOffice 6.2.3 Released, LabPlot 2.6 Now Available, OpenJDK 11 Is Now the Default in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 19.04, and Zend Framework Heads to The Linux Foundation as the Laminas Project
News briefs for April 19, 2019.
The Mozilla IoT team announces that its Project Things is moving on from its experimental phase and now will be known as Mozilla WebThings. The team's mission is to create a "Web of Things" implementation that helps "drive IoT standards for security, privacy and interoperability". Mozilla WebThings is "an open platform for monitoring and controlling devices over the web" and includes WebThings Gateway ("a software distribution for smart home gateways focused on privacy, security and interoperability") and WebThings Framework ("a collection of reusable software components to help developers build their own web things").
LibreOffice 6.2.3 was released yesterday. This version is the third bug- and regression-fix release of the 6.2 series, "targeted at tech-savvy individuals: early adopters, technology enthusiasts and power users". LibreOffice 6.2.3 includes more then 90 bug and regression fixes. See the changelog pages for RC1 and RC2 for all the details. You can download it from here.
LabPlot 2.6 was released today. This new version builds on the ability to create 2D Cartesian plots with other plot types and visualization techniques, such as the histogram. Another new feature is support for the MQTT protocol. See the Changelog for the full list of changes.
OpenJDK 11 is now the default Java package in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and also will be the default for Ubuntu 19.04. This version is newest LTS version of the open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), and "it incorporates key security improvements, including an update to the latest Transport Layer Security (TLS) version, TLS 1.3, and the implementation of ChaCha20-Poly1305 cryptographic algorithms, a new stream cipher that can replace the less secure RC4."
Zend Framework is heading to The Linux Foundation and will be called the Laminas Project. Enterprise Apps Today reports that the move is "to help grow the base of contributors and adopters. Zend Framework was led by Zend and it didn't easily allow others to easily contribute. It's a situation that led to multiple other PHP efforts to emerge, like Symfony among others, which have arguable eclipsed Zend Framework in usage and importance over the past decade". The article quotes the Laminas project page: "Laminas is the plural of lamina, meaning a thin layer. We feel it succinctly summarizes the goals of the project in many ways: Components you can compose or layer into any application; Middleware architectures are often termed layered."
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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