Announcements

Non-Commercial announcements

EFF Fights to Unmuzzle Citizen Journalists

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced an effort to support free speech by citizen journalists. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told a judge Wednesday to remove the legal muzzle on citizen journalists caught up in a court battle over documents relating to the controversial prescription drug Zyprexa. EFF argues that the injunction against publication of the documents online is prior restraint on their free speech and a violation of First Amendment rights. EFF's client posted links on a "wiki" to electronic copies of damaging internal Eli Lilly documents about Zyprexa."

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FSFE Newsletter

The February 13, 2007 edition of the FSFE Newsletter is online with the latest Free Software Foundation Europe news. Topics include: FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project, Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement, Windows Vista released - FSFE recommends switching to GNU/Linux and Get Active: Join the Revolution!

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Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

A committee within the OpenSolaris community has been having a long discussion on whether Sun should dual-license the Solaris code, allowing it to be distributed under the terms of either the CDDL or version 3 of the GPL. That committee has now posted its recommendations: no move to GPLv3 anytime in the near future. "GPL* licensing OpenSolaris would be yielding to a small vocal minority of FOSS developers who use the lack of GPL licensing, purely as a means of fostering FUD towards OpenSolaris and who will, in all likelyhood, find some other workable mechanism to continue to foster FUD towards the project."

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OpenMoko update

The OpenMoko team has sent out an update on the status of its completely open GSM phone. It seems there have been a number of setbacks which are delaying the project, but they are still pushing forward. The phone's software will be opened up on schedule, despite its rougher than desired condition. General availability of the phone now appears to be September.

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The Open Solutions Alliance uncloaks

The Open Solutions Alliance has announced its existence. "Initially, the OSA will focus its efforts on defining and promoting tools, frameworks and best practices that facilitate easy deployment and interoperability between applications. It will also build 'meta-communities' by partnering on projects that involve a variety of companies, communities and individuals to drive innovation and collaboration. Finally, the OSA will coordinate joint marketing campaigns to raise the awareness of business-hardened, open source applications and solution suites."

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OpenSSL secures new FIPS validation

The OpenSSL cryptographic module is now certified for use by the US government. "The Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) announced today the FIPS 140-2 validation of the OpenSSL FIPS Object Module, a cryptographic library based on the widely used OpenSSL product. The official validation certificate (#733) is now posted at the NIST FIPS 140-1 and 140-2 Cryptographic Modules Validation List".

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Commercial announcements

ACCESS at 3GSM World Congress

ACCESS CO., LTD. has made several announcements at the 3GSM World Congress where the company is demonstrating its Linux platform running on Texas Instruments' OMAP platform and on Marvell's consumer electronic devices including feature handsets, smartphones, GPS navigation systems, and wireless handhelds. The company has also announced a Product Development Kit and a pre-release version of its Software Development Suite and a Global Partner Program to expand the mobile Linux market.

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50,000 Linux desktops deployed in Brazil

Here is a press release from BitWay Computadores, EnabledPeople, and IMTECH Brazil proclaiming the deployment of 50,000 Linux desktops under the Brazilian government's "Computers For All" program. Another 10,000 systems are yet to be deployed. The companies appear to have developed their own distribution: "Linux XP Desktop is a user-friendly desktop operating system for home and office users. With a preinstalled version, a user gets an applications set including OpenOffice package (supports .DOC, .XLS, .PPT formats), corporate class Evolution e-mail client, Firefox web browser, multi-protocol GAIM instant messenger and other software. Linux XP Desktop is RedHat-compatible OS and therefore has a maximum of other software available." (Thanks to Gary Smith).

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Canonical and SpikeSource announce partnership

SpikeSource has announced a partnership agreement. "Under this agreement, SpikeSource will certify its applications and stacks on Ubuntu, and will eventually deliver the entire SpikeSource application suite on Ubuntu. Users of Ubuntu will benefit from SpikeSource certified applications and integration as part of a wider Open Source IT infrastructure."

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Half of Top Enterprise Open Source Projects Don't Offer Enterprise Grade Support

OpenLogic, Inc. has sent out a press release concerning a survey they conducted on the use of open-source software in business. "Key findings: 58% of all respondents have an open source policy, are currently developing one or have a plan to create one. 83% of organizations using more than 25 projects have an open source policy, are currently developing one or have a plan to create one."

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Microsoft and Novell Announce Technical Collaboration for Customers

Novell and Microsoft have unveiled more details about their joint technical roadmap and the benefits customers can expect from the collaboration. ""With this first installment of the Microsoft-Novell development roadmap, we see that both companies are building on this relationship to develop real, product-specific solutions to deliver on the promises made to customers," said Al Gillen, research vice president, System Software, for IDC. "The great potential of the November announcement between Microsoft and Novell could have been disappointing without a product-specific roadmap to execute against. With the roadmap, the technology benefits customers can expect will be tangible and delivered on a predictable basis.""

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Novell and Intel to Provide Devices for Unmodified, Virtual Windows to Run on Linux

Novell and Intel Corporation have announced the availability of paravirtualized network and block device drivers that will allow Microsoft* Windows* Server 2000/2003/XP to run unmodified in Xen* virtual environments on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell.

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OpenMoko.org goes public

OpenMoko, the company working toward the creation of a completely-open GSM phone, has announced the opening of a number of resources, including its source code repositories and bug tracker, a public wiki, and more. All can be reached from the openmoko.org pages.

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Oracle announces Linux support for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management

Oracle Corporation has announced a Linux version of its Oracle(R) Communications Billing and Revenue Management enterprise revenue management application. "The announcement furthers Oracle's commitment to deliver world-class application functionality on Linux."

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rPath launches rBuilder 3.0 and the rPath Appliance Platform

rPath has announced the availability of rBuilder 3.0 and the rPath Appliance Platform. "rPath now provides software vendors complete appliance lifecycle management -- from creation to deployment to configuration to maintenance. Together, rBuilder and the rPath Appliance Platform give software vendors a solution that simplifies software and drives revenue growth."

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Userful announces Open Source Pre-Book

Userful Corporation has announced the open-source release of its PreBook PC reservation and usage management system. "PreBook allows libraries, Internet cafes, and universities to manage and track usage on both Windows and Linux client PCs, efficiently controlling time and usage on their computers. Customers use PreBook to manage all their computers through a single web-based interface, saving hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars over competing products."

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Visual Integrity upgrades FLY Batch

Visual Integrity has released FLY Batch 6.5, a developer component for automating volume PDF and PostScript file conversion into web, print and archive formats. "The company also cut prices up to 50% on all Linux versions of software to match Microsoft Windows version pricing. FLY Batch converts any PDF, PostScript or EPS file into a variety of formats needed for print and web publishing, to meet compliancy requirements and for archival projects. Scalable vector output formats include WMF, EMF, SVG, DXF, CGM, HPGL, EPS, and MIF. High-fidelity TIFF, GIF, PNG, JPEG and BMP image formats are supported and plain formatted ASCII can be extracted."

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Vocalscape participates in the Ekiga Softphone project

Vocalscape Networks, Inc. has announced their participation in the Ekiga softphone project. ""Joining the open source community working on the Ekiga softphone allows Vocalscape to share our experience with VoIP technology and provides our customers and end-users with added functionality more quickly," said Ron McIntyre, President of Vocalscape. "Soon, in addition to our Eyefon softphone for Windows, end-users running Linux operating systems will be able to make calls on the Vocalscape network. Additionally, the Ekiga softphone will give users some added functionality such as video calling and text messaging.""

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Xandros BridgeWays announced

Xandros has sent out a press release for its "BridgeWays" product: "...a new suite of next generation, cross-platform and cross-service, workflow-driven and rules-based, management products and integration frameworks." The buzzword storm does not relent anywhere through the release - it is a masterpiece of the art. But we not really been able to figure out what the product does...

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New Books

Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications - New from SitePoint

SitePoint has published the book Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications by Patrick Lenz.

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Rails for Java Developers - New from the Pragmatic Programmers

Pragmatic Programmers has published the book Rails for Java Developers by Stuart Halloway and Justin Gehtland.

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Education and Certification

LPI Offers Discounted Certification Exams at FOSDEM 2007

The Linux Professional Institute will offer discounted certification exams to attendees of the FOSDEM 2007 conference in Brussels, Belgium on February 24 and 25. "Exams will be in the English language and include all LPIC-1 (101 and 102), LPIC-2 (201 and 202), LPIC-3 (301, 302) and MySQL certification exams. This will be the first time in the world that paper versions of LPI's new LPIC-3 exams will be offered."

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Calls for Presentations

GUADEC 2007 Call For Papers (GnomeDesktop)

A Call For Papers has gone out for GUADEC 2007. "The GNOME Users and Developers European Conference (GUADEC) invite you to participate in the 8th annual conference on the 15-21st July 2007 in Birmingham, England. The deadline for proposals is Monday 12th March."

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Call for Papers: IT-Incident Management and IT-Forensics 2007

A call for papers has gone out for IT-Incident Management and IT-Forensics 2007. The event will take place in Stuttgart, Germany on September 11-12, 2007.

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PAKCON III: Call for Papers

A Call for Papers has gone out for PAKCON III. The event will take place in Karachi, Pakistan on May 26, 2007, submissions are due by April 5.

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Upcoming Events

Akademy 2007 Call for Sponsorship (KDE.News)

KDE.News has announced a Call for Sponsorship for Akademy 2007. "aKademy is the KDE World Summit, this year taking place in Glasgow at the end of June. Sponsorship is an opportunity to promote your company or product to the developers, users, deployers and consultants who will attend the conference. It will also provide a marketing avenue for your company to the thousands who read our website and publications. Most importantly, it gives vital support which ensures that hundreds of KDE contributors can meet together to plan the future of the free desktop."

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Libre Graphics Meeting 2007

The Libre Graphics Meeting 2007 will take place in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on May 6, 2007. "This year's LGM provides a venue where FLOSS graphics application developers, users and professional artists from all over the world meet to discuss collaboration, outline the future of the projects together, with the goal of increasing interaction between developers, professional graphics artists and print professionals to improve the steadily expanding FLOSS graphics' application ecosystem."

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Linux Installfest workshop in Davis, CA

The Linux Users' Group of Davis has announced the next Linux Installfest workshop. The event takes place in Davis, California on February 18, 2007.

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Network and Distributed Systems Security

The Network and Distributed Systems Security conference will take place from February 28 to March 2, 2007 in San Diego, CA. "NDSS is a traditional scholarly academic security conference with a peer reviewed track of papers. However, this year we have made a special effort to make NDSS more relevant to security practitioners by adding an invited talks track focused on security threats by some leading practitioners."

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RailsConf Europe 2007: Call for Participation is Open

A Call for Participation has gone out for RailsConf Europe 2007. "To meet the increasing demand for skill building, and to spread the joy of Rails, Ruby Central and O'Reilly Media are teaming up to produce RailsConf Europe 2007, an entire conference dedicated to Ruby on Rails. Happening September 17-19 in Berlin, Germany, RailsConf Europe will offer keynotes, sessions, and tutorials from the most innovative and successful Rails experts and organizations."

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Events: February 22, 2007 to April 23, 2007

The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.

Date(s)	Event	Location
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
February 26 March 1	PyCon Sprints	Addison, Texas,
February 26 March 2	PHP5 Bootcamp Training at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
February 27 March 1	O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference	San Francisco, CA,
February 27 March 2	EUSecWest Applied Security Conference	London, UK
February 28 March 2	Network and Distributed System Security Symposium	San Diego, CA, USA
March 2 March 3	LinuxForum 2007	Copenhagen, Denmark
March 3 March 8	O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference	San Diego, CA, USA
March 5 March 8	EclipseCon 2007	Santa Clara, CA, USA
March 5 March 6	Karlsruhe Workshop on Software Radios	Karlsruhe, Germany
March 8 March 10	2007 Open Source Think Tank	Napa, CA, USA
March 10 March 13	Camp 5 Advanced Zope3 Training	Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
March 12 March 16	QCon	London, England
March 12 March 16	Third Annual Security Enhanced Linux Symposium	Baltimore, US
March 12 March 14	BOSSA Conference	Porto de Galinhas, Brazil
March 13 March 14	The Linux Foundation Japan Symposium	Tokyo, Japan
March 14 March 16	PHP Quebec Conference	Montreal, Canada
March 14 March 17	Barbeque Sprint for Plone3	Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
March 15 March 21	CeBIT computer fair	Hannover, Germany
March 16 March 17	MountainWest RubyConf	Salt Lake City, USA
March 18 March 23	Novell BrainShare 2007	Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
March 19 March 21	UKUUG LISA/Spring Conference 2007	Manchester, UK
March 22 March 25	Linux Audio Conference	Berlin, Germany
March 23 March 25	ShmooCon	Washington DC, USA
March 23 March 25	Guademy	Coruña, Spain
March 24	FSF Associate Membership Meeting	Cambridge, MA, USA
March 26 March 29	Emerging Technology Conference	San Diego, CA, USA
April 1 April 4	International Lisp Conference 2007	Cambridge, England
April 1 April 5	Embedded Systems Conference	San Jose, CA, USA
April 1	GPLv3: Improving a Great Licence (discussion draft 3)	Brussels, Belgium
April 2 April 6	DJango Bootcamp	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
April 2 April 5	Hack in The Box Security Conference 2007	Dubai, United Arab Emirates
April 3 April 8	Make Art 2007	Poitiers, France
April 12 April 14	International Free Software Forum (Forum Internacional Software Livre)	Porto Alegre, Brazil,
April 14 April 15	Ruby and Python Conference 2007	Poznan, Poland
April 15 April 18	Gelato ICE: Itanium® Conference & Expo	San Jose, California, USA
April 17 April 19	Embedded Linux Conference	San Jose, USA
April 18 April 20	CanSecWest Applied Security Conference 2007	Vancouver, Canada
April 19	Linux 2007	Lisbon, Portugal
April 19	Power Architecture Software Summit	Austin, TX, USA
April 20 April 22	International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security	Vienna, Austria,
April 20 April 22	Penguicon 5.0 Open Source Software & Science Fiction Convention	Troy, Michigan, USA
April 21	Romanian Open Source Development Meeting	Bucharest, Romania

If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.

Audio and Video programs

How to Win Friends and Influence People in Washington (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly presents a podcast from the Web 2.0 Summit. "Web 2.0 Summit program chair John Battelle moderated a public policy discussion with Art Brodsky, the communications director of Public Knowledge, Ebay's Tod Cohen and Amazon.com's Paul Misener."

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Page editor: Forrest Cook