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AnnouncementsNon-Commercial announcements The Council of the EU does not support Linux It seems that the Council of the European Union has a streaming service so that people can watch the meetings. That's a great idea, but they are using a proprietary format for the feed so that it can only be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. From the FAQ:
On which platforms can I view the live streaming media service of the
Council of the European Union?
A petition
has been created by Stefan Esterer, asking the council to make the feed
available to all by using a free codec. So if you are in the European
Union and would like to watch the council meetings you should consider
signing the petition.
The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux
The Free Ryzom campaign is unsuccessful The Free Ryzom Campaign has announced that its bid to buy the Ryzom game from its bankrupt creator was turned down by the court. "At the end, there were three offers presented, and the other two were bigger than our's. They are keeping more employees than we do, and offer more money." The project is now discussing how it could continue and achieve its goal of creating a free multi-player online game. With the energy and resources they have pulled together, they could yet do interesting things. (Thanks to Dafydd Walters).
Nouveau driver pledge The nouveau driver project is working on an open source 3D acceleration driver for nVidia cards. To help out the project David Nielsen has started a pledge drive. He's looking for 1000 people to each pledge $10 USD by February 8, 2007.
OLPC announces its user interface The One Laptop Per Child project has sent out a press release proclaiming the virtues of the user interface it has developed. "The Sugar UI, jointly developed with Red Hat and Pentagram, is the first to have been purpose-built as an educational environment for children using laptops. It is designed to support the learning experiences of elementary- and secondary-school children in poor, often rural communities by providing them with opportunities to freely explore, experiment and express themselves."
Rwanda to deploy OLPC systems The One Laptop Per Child project has announced that Rwanda will be rolling out OLPC systems. "In recognition of children being Rwanda's most precious natural resource, the government of Rwanda has committed to provide one laptop per child to all primary school children within five years."
Commercial announcements Digium launches AsteriskNOW Digium has announced the availability of "AsteriskNOW," a version of Asterisk bundled with an (unspecified) Linux distribution. It is claimed that, with AsteriskNOW, a functioning Asterisk phone system can be up and running within 30 minutes.All the software is GPL, but registration is required to download it. Worse, registration requires agreeing to terms of use including this gem: "Digium hereby authorizes you to copy materials published by Digium on the Website solely for non-commercial use by you or internally within your organization (or if you are a Digium Distributor or Partner, your customer's organization) solely in support of Digium products. No other use of the information is authorized." Update: the problem with the terms of use has been fixed.
eyeon Software Ships Fusion for Linux eyeon Software has announced the availability of Fusion for Linux. Fusion is a visual effects software system. "Based on the recent December release of version 5.1, Fusion on Linux is the company’s next universal platform initiative. “We have been working hard on Fusion Linux, discovering along the way the necessary changes required to provide a product equal to the task of both the Fusion and Linux communities. And we’re really proud to deliver this in time for the holidays… I need some sleep and a beer.”"
OpenRPT 2.0 open-source report writer announced OpenMFG has announced version 2.0 of OpenRPT, a dual-licensed report writer. "OpenRPT 2.0 was retooled from the ground up to take full advantage of the underlying Qt 4 framework. Qt is an open source, comprehensive development framework that includes an extensive array of features, capabilities and tools that enable development of high-performance, cross-platform rich-client and server-side applications. Among the new OpenRPT features enabled by updating from Qt 3 to Qt 4 is the ability to export to Adobe PDF natively for both the OpenRPT API and the rendering application."
Open Source Virtualization for Sun UltraSPARC T1 The OpenVZ project now runs on the Sun UltraSPARC T1 processor. "The OpenVZ project today announced its open source virtualization software is available for servers using Sun's breakthrough UltraSPARC(r) T1 CoolThreads(TM) processor. The operating system-level server virtualization software technology helps increase server utilization rates."
Red Hat Reports Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2007 Results Red Hat has announced their third quarter FY2007 financial results. " Total revenue for the quarter was $105.8 million, an increase of 45% from the year-ago quarter and 6% from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $88.9 million, up 48% year-over-year and 5% sequentially. Net income for the quarter was $14.6 million or $0.07 per diluted share compared with $11.0 million or $0.05 per diluted share for the prior quarter. Non-GAAP adjusted net income for the quarter was $29.6 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, after adjusting for stock compensation and tax expense as detailed in the tables below. This compares to non-GAAP adjusted net income of $22.7 million, or $0.11 per diluted share in the third quarter of last fiscal year."
Resources “Commercial” is not the opposite of Free-Libre / Open Source Software David A. Wheeler presents an essay that looks at how commercial and open-source software are not mutually exclusive entities. "When I talk with with other people about Free-Libre / Open Source Software (FLOSS), I still hear a lot of people mistakenly use the term “commercial software” as if it had the opposite meaning of FLOSS (aka open source software, Free-Libre Software, or OSS/FS). That’s in spite of the rise in commercial development and support for FLOSS, most FLOSS projects’ goal to incorporate improvements, which are actually a form of financial gain, official definitions of “commercial item” that include FLOSS, and FLOSS licenses and projects that clearly approve of commercial support. Terms like “closed source” or “proprietary software” are plausible antonyms of FLOSS, but “commercial” is absurd as an antonym."
Contests and Awards Voting Has Opened for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards LinuxQuestions.org has announced that voting for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is now open. The Members Choice Awards allow the Linux community to select their favorite products in a variety of categories. Awards will be given out in 21 categories this year, including Distribution of the Year, Browser of the Year, Office Suite of the Year, Desktop Environment of the Year and Database of the Year. The polls will close on February 18th and the winners will be announced shortly after.
Surveys BasKet Note Pads Usability Survey (KDE.News) KDE.News has announced a new survey for BasKet Note Pads. "The aim of the BasKet Usability Project is to improve the usability of the BasKet Note Pads tool. Usability, as I (the project maintainer) see it, not only depends on the user interface, but also on the underlying assumptions that are made about the users and their context of use. So, knowledge of users, their contexts and claims are of vital importance for improving usability."
Education and Certification Test Your Knowledge of Samba Topics (Sys Admin) Sys Admin has published a free Samba quiz. "Samba is one of those technologies that you must know if you are working with integration today. Its importance is such that it is a focal point of the newly announced LPIC-3 certification from the Linux Professional Institute. Following are fifty questions on general aspects of Samba that anyone working with it at an advanced level should know. Good luck (answers are at the end of the article)!"
Calls for Presentations ICMC 2007 call for participation A call for participation has gone out for ICMC 2007, the International Computer Music Conference. "We are pleased to announce the general call for submission to the International Computer Music Conference 2007, which will take place at Holmen Island in Copenhagen starting Monday, August 27 and ending Saturday, September 1st, 2007. We invite original contributions in all areas of the computer music field in a number of formats. We are also open to any proposal, and encourage all submissions, including those that do not fit the categories below." The submission deadline is April 30.
SambaXP 2007 Call For Papers A call for papers has gone out for SambaXP 2007. "From April 23th to 25th 2007 developers and users will meet again in Goettingen, Germany at the sixth international SAMBA conference, the "samba eXPerience 2007"." Papers are due by February 5.
ShmooCon, Washington DC call for papers The next ShmooCon will take place in Washington DC on March 23-25, 2007. Papers are due by mid January.
The O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference O'Reilly has announced the 2007 Tools of Change for Publishing Conference along with a call for proposals. "To raise the level of technology knowledge in the publishing industry and to provide a meeting ground for those leading the charge into the future of publishing, O'Reilly Media is launching the first Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) Conference. The TOC Conference will take place June 18-20, 2007 in San Jose, California. The call for participation is now open; proposals are due no later than January 22, 2007."
Upcoming Events European Patent Conference, Brussels The European Patent Conference will take place in Brussels, Belgium on January 24, 2007. "EUPACO-1 is the second in a series of events aimed at constructing a new European patent system through dialogue and collaboration based on research and data."
Call for Location OOoCon 2007 - Deadline Extended A call for location has gone out for the 2007 OpenOffice.org Conference. "The annual OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon) continues to go from strength to strength, with this year's glittering event in Lyon, France attracting over 600 registrations and enjoying a civic reception laid on by the Mayor of Lyon in the historic town hall. Can your team do even better next year?" The deadline for choosing the location has been extended to January 31, 2007.
Events: January 11, 2007 to March 12, 2007 The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it. Web sites GNU Herds - Free Software Association The GNU Herds site has been launched. "GNU Herds is a not-for-profit and true-democratic association which aims to encourage the professional development of Free Software contributors."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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