Non-Commercial announcements
The Free Software Foundation Europe has sent an open letter to
an EU official concerning the effect of software patents on
European cities.
"
This will become a significant cost factor for three main reasons:
Both software developers and users can be asked for almost any amount
of money the software patent holder chooses. Many developers and
companies will not be able to pay such demands and thus go out of
business, turning tax-payers into people in need of social welfare.
Finally, the price of the remaining software companies products will
increase because of the need to refinance their software patent expenses
and also because of reduced competition in the market."
Full Story (comments: none)
FFII has sent out a lengthy release containing a letter from Jonas Maebe on
how the European Council reached its decision on the patent directive, and
what the implications are for Europe and the proposed EU constitution.
"
There was simply no
qualified majority (possibly not even a simple majority) in the
Council for this text. It was purely due to diplomatic inertia and
fear of doing something against whatever is customary that it slipped
through. Unless the Constitution says somewhere 'the written rules
always have precedence over diplomatic customs and fears', it won't
change this."
Full Story (comments: 15)
Commercial announcements
eEye Digital Security has
announced version 5.2 of its Retina Network Security Scanner.
"
Retina 5.2 is one of the first in the industry to provide
security and IT professionals with a more in-depth view of the Linux,
UNIX and other non-Windows(R) devices on their network."
Comments (none posted)
Empower Technologies has
announced that it will be demonstrating its Linux-based
LDK5910 platform at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco
on March 6-10, 2005.
"
The LDK5910 combines LEOs, the OMAP5910 dual processor and an evaluation
module (EVM) to afford a new level of cost and production efficiency to
application development."
Comments (none posted)
Etnus has
announced the availability of their TotalView debugger for the
IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer.
"
TotalView is an advanced 32- and 64-bit graphical debugger
providing software engineers with complete control over parallel and
threaded applications written in C, C++ or Fortran. Not your average
debugger, TotalView also provides unique, proprietary memory debugging
technology that neither instruments code nor alters libraries."
Comments (none posted)
Mandrakesoft has announced the signing of a distribution agreement
with the French Ministry of Education and Research.
"
Mandrakesoft today announced an agreement with the French Ministry of
Education and Research which allows the distribution of its line of
products and services to Higher Education institutions, including
universities and research laboratories, throughout France."
Full Story (comments: none)
Micro Focus International Ltd. has announced at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco general availability of Server Express(TM) for 64-bit Linux applications running on Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processor-based platforms.
Full Story (comments: none)
PalmSource, Inc. has
announced
it has joined the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) as an Associate
member. "
"We are pleased to join the Consumer Electronics Linux
Forum and collaborate with other industry-leading companies and the open
source community to advance the development of Linux-based products," said
John Ostrem, lead scientist of PalmSource. "With PalmSource's recent
acquisition of China MobileSoft and the Company's Linux expertise, we
believe PalmSource is poised to make significant contributions to the CELF
as it develops Linux-based phone software products.""
Comments (none posted)
Plextor Corp. has announced the availability of a free Linux Software
Developers Kit (SDK) for ConvertX video capture devices. "
Licensed
under the GNU General Public License, the Linux SDK supports the popular
Video for Linux 2 (V4L2) and Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA)
specifications. It also supports deprecated Open Sound System (OSS)
applications via the OSS compatibility layer provided by ALSA. The new
driver, which requires the Linux 2.6 kernel, includes sample code that can
be reused in open source or proprietary applications to help developers get
started quickly."
Full Story (comments: none)
Terra Soft Solutions has announced that it is shipping iPods which are
configured to boot Yellow Dog Linux. Note that Linux does not run on the
iPod itself (though
that is
possible); instead, the iPod serves as a boot drive for Apple G4/G5
systems. Click below for the details.
Full Story (comments: none)
The OASIS standards consortium has
approved the XACML 2.0 Access Control Markup Language as a standard.
"
To meet the needs of a wide range of users across many different
environments, XACML 2.0 incorporates new profiles for Role Based
Access Control (RBAC), Privacy, and Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP). XACML 2.0 profiles also provide integration and
hierarchical resources for the Security Assertion Markup Language
(SAML) OASIS Standard."
Comments (none posted)
New Books
Looking to set up your own VOIP private branch exchange? Signate
is offering a book and CD set which includes a Linux distribution and the
Asterisk PBX system.
Comments (none posted)
Syngress has published the book
Black Hat Physical Device Security by
Drew Miller.
Full Story (comments: none)
Syngress has published the book
Intrusion Prevention and
Active Response by Michael Rash and Angela Orebaugh.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has published the book
Jakarta Struts Cookbook
by Bill Siggelkow.
Full Story (comments: none)
Resources
Electric Cloud has
announced the release of their GNU Make Standard
Library (GMSL) under the GPL.
"
Until now, when developers wished to create a complex Makefile
they were often forced to code, from scratch, common functions, or
search the Internet for snippets of GNU Make code that could assist
them. Now, with the GMSL, GNU Make developers have a single free
collection of functions implemented using native GNU Make
functionality. The GMSL includes list and string manipulation, integer
arithmetic, associative arrays, stacks, debugging facilities and more."
Comments (20 posted)
The March 6, 2005 edition of the FSF Europe Newsletter
is online with the latest FSFE news.
Full Story (comments: none)
The March issue of
Linux
Gazette is out. Articles in this issue include
Running XBoard in
Irssi, by Jason Creighton,
RSA 2005 Conference and Expo, San
Francisco - Special Report, by Howard Dyckoff,
Free as in Freedom:
Part Three: Open Source to the Corporate Bazaar, by Adam Engel,
Experiments with the Linux Kernel: Process Segments, by
R. Krishnakumar, and more.
Comments (none posted)
The March 9, 2005 edition of the Linux Documentation Project Weekly News
is online with the latest documentation additions.
Full Story (comments: none)
The January 2005 edition of the LPI Newsletter is online with
the latest Linux Professional Institute news.
Full Story (comments: none)
David Wheeler has
recently updated his
article on
Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS,
or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers!. (Found on
LinuxMedNews)
Comments (none posted)
Contests and Awards
GnomeDesktop
has announced
the closure of the GNOME 2.10 splash screen contest, the
winning selection
has been chosen.
Comments (none posted)
Upcoming Events
The Debian-Edu developer meeting will be held in in Nafplion, Greece
on April 15-17, 2005.
Full Story (comments: none)
A Call for Contributions has been posted for the
Libre Software Meeting 2005. The event will be held on
July 5-9, 2005 in Dijon, France.
Full Story (comments: none)
A Linux Server Virtualization event will be held in Herndon, VA
on March 22, 2005.
Full Story (comments: none)
LugRadio Live 2005 is the
expo for people who like some fun with their Linux. It will be held June
25, 2005 at the Terrace Bar, Molyneux Stadium, Wolverhampton, UK.
Comments (none posted)
The second annual
Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) will be held
in San Francisco, CA on April 5 and 6, 2005.
Comments (none posted)
| Date | Event | Location |
| March 10 - 16, 2005 | CeBIT
2005 | Hannover, Germany |
| March 12, 2005 | Gentoo UK
2005 | (University of Salford)Manchester, UK |
| March 12, 2005 | Third Hungarian PHP
Conference | Budapest, Hungary |
| March 14 - 17, 2005 | Emerging
Technology Conference(ETech) | (Westin Horton Plaza)San Diego,
CA |
| March 20 - 25, 2005 | Novell BrainShare
2005 | Salt Lake City, Utah |
| March 21 - 24, 2005 | Bellua Cyber Security
Asia 2005 | (Hotel Borobudur)Jakarta, Indonesia |
| March 21 - 24, 2005 | Open
Source Modeling and IDEs Workshop | (Caribe Royale All Suites Resort & Convention
Center)Orlando, FL |
| March 23 - 25, 2005 | PyCon DC
2005 | (GWU Cafritz Conference Center)Washington, DC |
| March 26 - 27, 2005 | YAPC::Taipei
2005 | Taipei |
| March 30 - April 1, 2005 | PHP
Quebec | (Crowne Plaza Hotel)Montreal, Canada |
| March 31 - April 1, 2005 | Black Hat Briefings Europe
2005 | Amsterdam, the Netherlands |
| April 1 - 3, 2005 | Twisted
Sprint | Hobart, Tasmania |
| April 5 - 6, 2005 | Open Source Business
Conference(OSBC) | (Westin St. Francis)San Francisco, CA |
| April 7 - 8, 2005 | Black
Hat Briefings Asia 2005 | Singapore |
| April 10 - 15, 2005 | 2005 USENIX Annual
Technical Conference | Anaheim, California, USA |
| April 12 - 15, 2005 | Computers, Freedom and
Privacy Conference 2005 | (Westin Hotel)Seattle, WA |
| April 15 - 17, 2005 | Debian Edu/Skolelinux
workshop | (Nafplion)Athens, Greece |
| April 18 - 23, 2005 | linux.conf.au
2005 | (Australian National University)Canberra, Australia |
| April 18 - 21, 2005 | MySQL Users Conference and Expo
2005 | (Santa Clara Convention Center)Santa Clara, CA |
| April 18 - 20, 2005 | LinuxWorld Conference
and Expo 2005 | (Metro Toronto Convention Centre)Toronto,
ON |
| April 18 - 19, 2005 | Debian Miniconf
4 | Canberra, Australia |
| April 19 - 20, 2005 | San
Francisco techCongress | (Rickey's Hyatt)Palo Alto, CA |
| April 20 - 23, 2005 | ACCU Conference
2005 | (Randolph Hotel)Oxford, England |
| April 21 - 24, 2005 | 3rd International Linux
Audio Conference(LAC2005) | (Center for Art and Media (ZKM))Karlsruhe,
Germany |
| April 23 - 24, 2005 | LayerOne Technology
Conference | (Pasadena Hilton)Pasadena, CA |
| April 25 - 30, 2005 | UbuntuDownUnder | Sydney,
Australia |
| May 2 - 7, 2005 | DallasCon
2005 | (Richardson Hotel)Dallas, TX |
| May 2 - 4, 2005 | Samba eXPerience
2005 | (Hotel Freizeit)Göttingen - Germany |
| May 4 - 6, 2005 | CanSecWest/core05 | Vancouver,
B.C. |
Comments (none posted)
Web sites
KDE.News
has announced
the movement of the
KDE Wiki Home page.
"
I'm pleased to announce that the KDE Wiki has been moved to a new hosting solution sponsored by our very own Jason Bainbridge of the the KDE Web Team. As you might have noticed, we had outgrown the previous server which had been hosting both the Dot and the Wiki. After extended downtime and performance issues often related to having both services on the same machine as well as limited administration resources, Navindra Umanee and I decided to search for an alternate host for the Wiki."
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
Ed Felten
comments on the latest version of a proposed California law which would require that all peer-to-peer software have built-in copyright and porn filters. "
Fourth, it's not clear what the bill says about situations where there is no workable filtering software, or where the only available filtering software is seriously flawed. Is there an obligation to install some filtering software, even if doesn't work very well, and even if it makes the P2P software unusable in practice? The bill's language seems to assume that there is available filtering software that is known to work well, which is not necessarily the case."
Comments (8 posted)
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