Non-Commercial announcements
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced that Ed Felten has joined
its board of directors. "
My research
and EFF's work have often intersected over the years, and
I'm very pleased to take the next step and join the board
as we strive to keep the digital world innovative, free,
and secure."
Full Story (comments: none)
The Free Standards Group has
announced that it will be maintaining an accessibility interface donated by IBM. "
The standardized interfaces, IAccessible2, make it far easier for application developers to provide accessible applications to computer users with disabilities, regardless of their OS platform. IAccessible2 will become a crucial part of the FSG AccessibilityWorkgroup and is available immediately."
Comments (none posted)
The preliminary results for the GNOME Foundation board election are now
available. It looks like the winners are Quim Gil,
Dave Neary,
Jeff Waugh,
Glynn Foster,
Vincent Untz,
Anne Østergaard, and
Behdad Esfahbod.
Full Story (comments: none)
IBM and seven U.S. universities have announced several new open software
research projects under a program designed in conformance with the Open
Collaboration Research Principles, a set of guidelines announced previously
to help promote an open approach to overcome university-industry
intellectual property challenges.
Full Story (comments: none)
A Call for Nominations has gone out for the Python Software Foundation
board of directors.
"
The Board of Directors of the Python Software Foundation is issuing
this call for nominations of new Directors. Self-nominations are the
norm, so don't wait for somebody else to nominate you. If you are
interested in serving as a Director, please write to psf@python.org.
Directors need not be PSF members."
Full Story (comments: none)
Eridani Star System has sent an announcement to users of the
ORDB.org Open Relay Database
that the site is shutting down.
"
We recommend that, if you have an /etc/mailstripper/badips
entry that reads DNS:relays.ordb.org. that it be removed.
Although not an open relay database, we've found DNS:zen.spamhaus.org.
to be pretty good."
Full Story (comments: none)
The Software Freedom Law Center has sent out a press release describing a
brief it has just filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. The relevant case is
Microsoft v. AT&T, which may decide whether U.S. patents can be applied
overseas. "
In its brief, SFLC argues that software copied and distributed outside
the United States cannot infringe U.S. patents. The brief also argues
that the Federal Circuit's decisions declaring software to be
patentable subject matter conflict with Supreme Court precedent and,
as such, should be overruled."
Full Story (comments: 15)
Commercial announcements
db4o version 6.0 has been announced.
"
db4object, creator of the open source object database, announced
the production-ready release of db4o Version6.0 which is up to 10x
faster and 90% leaner (less memory consumption) than Version 5.
Version 6 also supports a new server side cursor technology for
deterministic response times when querying in C/S multi-user
environments, which allows even more Java and .NET developers to now
take advantage of db4os ultra-easy object storage capabilities."
Full Story (comments: none)
Mandriva has sent out a press release stating its intent to go after the
Mexican software market in a partnership with Datacomms-Genesys. "
Recent studies show that about 34% of servers in Mexico will be
Linux-based in 2009 and annual usage growth is estimated to be over
10% for upcoming years."
Full Story (comments: none)
Novell, Inc. has
announced the appointment of Volker Smid as president of Novell EMEA.
"
With a long career
in the software industry, including serving as general manager for Central
Europe for Novell since May 2005, Smid brings to the new role strong
experience in enterprise software sales. Smid will oversee the full range
of Novell's sales and consulting business across Europe, the Middle East
and Africa, a key region for Novell. He succeeds Tom Francese, who was
promoted to executive vice president of worldwide sales for Novell in
October 2006."
Comments (none posted)
Devilish Games has released Nuts & Scrap for Linux.
"
It's a commercial/arcade game aimed at casual gamers."
Full Story (comments: 1)
Sillysoft Games has announced
the release of the cross-platform game Ancient Empires Lux.
"
The game lets players take control of
the greatest early civilizations of mankind, including Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Ancient Empires Lux is a strategy game, but also fits into the "casual games" segment of PC games.
It's distributed exclusively online, with a small download size, no load times, and a $20 price."
Full Story (comments: none)
Universal Electronics has announced
their SimpleCenter media management system.
"
Universal Electronics (UEI) is at the forefront helping developers
provide the best possible experience for seamlessly accessing, managing
and enjoying all digital media assets from anywhere with its recently
unveiled SimpleCenter -- the open alternative to proprietary media
management applications.
SimpleCenter was designed to help developers deliver the future of
digital media management for acquiring, organizing, experiencing,
distributing, and sharing music, photos, movies, podcasts, and more.
SimpleCenter combines complete multimedia management and wireless device
connectivity in a single software program to help developers deliver
digital media solutions for automotive, home, and mobile electronics
markets."
Full Story (comments: none)
Solera Networks, Inc. has
announced the release of DataEcho, a web session reconstruction
application, under the GNU GPL.
"
DataEcho reconstructs historical web browsing and email traffic from
captured network packets, for monitoring insider security threats and
policy compliance. It is a useful adjunct to network protocol analyzers
such as Sniffer(TM) or WireShark."
Comments (none posted)
Turbolinux has
announced the upcoming availability (in Japan) of the "wizpy," which appears to be a digital audio player with a USB plug which can be used as a bootable Linux system. "
The idea behind this product is that everyone thinks that the operating system has to come with computers. On the other hand, Turbolinux separated the operating system and computers, and created OS portability. By connecting this 60g small device to any computer, wherever you want, you can use 'your own' operating system and 'your own' desktop."
Comments (2 posted)
New Books
Syngress has published the book
Essential Computer Security
by Tony Bradley.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has published the book
Java & XML, Third Edition
by Brett D. McLaughlin and Justin Edelson.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has published the book
Linux Kernel in a Nutshell
by Greg Kroah-Hartman.
Full Story (comments: none)
Sams has published the book
Red Hat Fedora Core 6 Unleashed by Andrew Hudson and Paul Hudson.
Full Story (comments: none)
Resources
The Free Software Foundation has launched BadVista.org, a campaign with a
twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the
new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that
respect users' security and privacy rights.
Full Story (comments: 59)
PostgreSQL hacker Bruce Momjian has posted
an
article on how companies can better work with the free software
community. "
Employees usually circulate their proposal inside
their companies first before sharing it with the community. Unfortunately,
many employees never take the additional step of sharing the proposal with
the community. This means the employee is not benefiting from community
oversight and suggestions, often leading to a major rewrite when a patch is
submitted to the community."
Comments (none posted)
Contests and Awards
VMware, Inc. has
announced the winning of an eWEEK Labs top
products of 2006 award.
"
"It's tough to find much to dislike about VMware's server
virtualization product: VMware Server 1.0 makes it very easy to turn a
single physical machine into several virtual ones-each capable of running
pretty much any x86-based operating system out there," said Jason Brooks of
eWEEK Labs. "VMware Server also is a great example of how a piece of
software can run very well on both Linux and Windows hosts. What's more,
the product is available with optional support from VMware, and it boasts a
graceful path for scaling upward -- to VMware ESX Server -- or downward --
to VMware Player. Oh, and it's free.""
Comments (none posted)
Education and Certification
A Python training class
will be held in Colorado.
"
Python author and trainer Mark Lutz will be teaching another
3-day Python class at a conference center in Longmont, Colorado,
on January 23-25, 2007.
This is a public training session open to individual enrollments,
and covers the same topics as the 3-day onsite sessions that Mark
teaches, with hands-on lab work."
Comments (none posted)
Calls for Presentations
A
call for papers
has gone out for the 8th International Free Software Forum (FISL).
The event will take place in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
on April 12-14, 2007, submissions are due by December 31.
Comments (none posted)
The
call for
papers for the upcoming Hack in The Box Security Conference 2007 -
Dubai is now open.
HITBSecConf2007 -
Dubai will take place at The Sheraton Creek hotel and will run from the
2nd till the 5th of April 2007. The call for papers is open until February
1, 2007.
Full Story (comments: none)
A call for papers has gone out for the sixth international SAMBA conference,
sambaXP 2007. The event will take place in Goettingen, Germany on
April 23-25, 2007, submissions are due by February 5.
Full Story (comments: none)
A call for participation has gone out for the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference.
The event will be held at the
Fairmont in San Jose, California on May 29-30, 2007.
Proposals are due by January 5.
"
The O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference brings together the
people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations
and creating value in the location industry. The Where 2.0 call for
participation is now open and the program committee is seeking speakers to
debate and discuss what's viable in the location space now, and what's
lurking just below the radar."
Full Story (comments: none)
Upcoming Events
Events: December 28, 2006 to February 26, 2007
The following event listing is taken from the
LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
December 27 December 30 |
23rd Chaos Communication Congress 2006 |
Berlin, Germany, |
January 11 January 12 |
Foundations of Open Media Software |
Sydney, Australia |
January 15 January 20 |
linux.conf.au 2007 |
Sydney, Australia, |
January 20 January 26 |
Cell Hack-a-thon |
Loveland, CO, USA |
January 23 January 26 |
Open Source Meets Business |
Nürnberg, Germany |
| January 24 |
European Patent Conference |
Brussels, Belgium |
January 30 February 1 |
Solutions Linux Expo |
Paris, France |
February 1 February 2 |
LinuxDays Luxembourg |
Luxembourg, Luxembourg |
| February 2 |
FUDCon Boston 2007 |
Boston, MA, USA |
February 7 February 9 |
Free Software World Conference 3.0 |
Badajoz, Spain |
February 7 February 9 |
Xorg Developer's Conference |
Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| February 9 |
Women In Open Source |
Los Angeles, USA |
| February 9 |
Open Source Health Care Summit |
Los Angeles, USA |
February 10 February 11 |
2007 Southern California Linux Expo |
Los Angeles, USA |
February 12 February 13 |
Vancouver PHP Conference |
Vancouver, BC, Canada |
February 12 February 13 |
Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop |
San Jose, CA, USA |
February 12 February 16 |
Ruby on Rails Bootcamp Training |
Atlanta, USA |
February 12 February 15 |
3GSM World Congress 2007 |
Barcelona, Spain |
February 14 February 15 |
LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit |
New York, NY, USA |
| February 15 |
TiE Open Source Summit |
Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
| February 16 |
The Ubucon New York |
New York, NY, USA |
February 19 February 23 |
DebianEDU DevCamp |
Soissons, France |
| February 22 |
PyCon Tutorial Day |
Addison, Texas, |
| February 22 |
CELF Japan Linux Technical Jamboree #13 |
Tokyo, Japan |
February 22 February 24 |
OpenMind 2007 |
San Giorgio a Cremano, Naples, Italy |
February 23 February 25 |
PyCon 2007 |
Addison, Texas, |
| February 23 |
PHP Conference UK 2007 |
London, England |
February 24 February 25 |
Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting |
Brussels, Belgium |
February 24 February 25 |
Java/DevJam/2007/Fosdem |
Brussels, Belgium |
If your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Audio and Video programs
KDE.News
mentions
the availability of a
video interview with Lars Knoll and George Staikos.
"
Yahoo! user interface blog hosts an interview video with Lars Knoll and
George Staikos on KHTML and WebKit. The video features the history of
Konqueror (first 10 minutes) as well as the current development situation
(next 10 minutes), an outlook about the possible future and of course a short
demo presenting Qt4-WebKit accessing the Yahoo! page and rendering it nicely
(last 10 minutes). You need Flash to view the page".
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook