Announcements

Non-Commercial announcements

EFF Kills Clear Channel Patent

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release on its role in successfully challenging a patent being asserted by Clear Channel. "The patent covered a system and method of creating digital recordings of live performances. Clear Channel claimed the bogus patent created a monopoly on all-in-one technologies that produce post-concert digital recordings and threatened to sue those who made such recordings. This locked musical acts into using Clear Channel technology and blocked innovations by others."

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EFF: Who controls your television?

The EFF has published a report on the workings of the Digital Video Broadcasting project, which is creating television standards for much of the world outside of the Americas. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of DRM involved. "Consumers would never choose this future, so Hollywood will try to force it on them by regulatory fiat. DVB's imprimatur may put restrictive standards on the fast-track to becoming legally-enforced mandates, and existing laws already limit evasion of DRM even for lawful purposes. In effect, private DRM standards will trump national laws that have traditionally protected the public's interests and carefully circumscribed copyright holders' rights."

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OLPC systems available for developers

We have received a note from the One Laptop Per Child project saying that the current build of beta-test systems is going well - well enough that they have some systems available to expand their developer program. If you have a project which you think might help out the OLPC folks and would like a cute green laptop to run it on, have a look at the OLPC Developers Program page and let them know what you are thinking.

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OpenOffice.org sends Dell a letter

The OpenOffice.org project has sent an open letter to Dell in support of installing their software on Dell's systems. "Let's have a conversation about how we could build an 'OpenOffice.org supplied by Dell' product to give your customers what they are asking for. We'd also be happy to accept any financial contribution that Dell might offer to help ensure that OpenOffice.org continues to evolve in the future."

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Commercial announcements

Centric releases Centric CRM 4.1

Centric CRM has announced the release of Centric CRM 4.1, a Customer Relationship Management system. "Centric CRM 4.1 introduces Action Plans, a new tool that allows a company to quickly establish workflow best practices, as well as expanded support for a total of eleven leading database systems".

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Announcing CrossOver 6.0.1, a bug fix release

Version 6.0.1 of CrossOver has been announced. "This version is entirely a bug fix release. Notably, it contains a fix so that time sensitive applications will continue to work correctly after the new Daylight Savings Time switch. It also contains a few bug fixes for Outlook and handling multiple CD installers, as well as a range of other minor issues."

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Funambol and db4objects enable complex data for mobile devices

Funambol and db4objects have announced Funambol Connector for db4o. "The Funambol Connector for db4o makes it easy for software developers to store and manage complex information in an embedded database on mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones and PDAs. The combination of Funambol and db4o eliminates the need to write extensive code to manage and extract data from complicated data structures and gives users a wide range of mobile devices to access complex data while on the go."

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NetBeans Community announces support for Ruby and JRuby

Sun Microsystems, Inc. and the NetBeans(TM) Community have announced an early release of the NetBeans Ruby Pack. "The NetBeans plug-in offers developers added support for dynamic and scripting languages and includes editing features for both Ruby and JRuby -- a 100% pure-Java(TM) implementation of the Ruby programming language that runs on the Java(TM) Virtual Machine. The NetBeans Ruby Pack goes beyond basic editing, syntax highlighting, navigation outline, project support and unit test execution to provide developers with a rich set of features to enhance productivity."

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NetXen announces Linux Sockets Acceleration

NetXen, Inc. has announced the availability of their Linux Sockets Acceleration product. NetXen "... introduced Linux Sockets Acceleration(tm) (LSA), a solution that delivers far higher network performance while greatly reducing host CPU overhead. It is the first network acceleration solution for Linux that requires no modifications to the kernel, host TCP stack or applications, and can offload both user- and kernel-mode applications. NetXen's LSA is also the first solution to support NIC and offload modes simultaneously."

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OpenVZ software for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

The OpenVZ project has announced the availability of its operating system server virtualization software for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. ""This provides a great base with solid device support and code stability, which we will use as the basis for future OpenVZ software," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We continue to keep in step with the latest Linux releases to serve users in the open source community.""

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Open-Xchange to build next generation open-source collaboration suite

Open-Xchange Inc. has announced the Open-Xchange Community project. "Open-Xchange and the world's leading web-hosting company, 1&1 Internet, recently announced the availability of MailXchange, 1&1's hosted email and collaboration solution based upon Open-Xchange Inc.'s award winning Smart Collaboration(TM) technology. Open-Xchange today is releasing the source code of 1&1 MailXchange server components under General Public License (GPL) and the AJAX-based user interface under Creative Commons License "Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5"."

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Oracle becomes an Eclipse Foundation board member

Oracle Corporation has announced its joining of the Eclipse Foundation board of directors. "Oracle today announced it will extend its participation in the Eclipse Foundation by becoming a Board Member and Strategic Developer. An Eclipse member since its inception, Oracle's increased role further demonstrates the company's efforts to help drive open source innovations and furthers its commitment to the developer community. Oracle's increased role in the Eclipse community also includes a new proposal to open source its Oracle(R) TopLink technology, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, through the Eclipse Foundation."

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Oracle Proposes Open Source Persistence Project at Eclipse Foundation

Oracle Corporation has announced its plans to release Oracle TopLink as open-source software. "Today, at the EclipseCon Conference, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), a newly appointed Eclipse Board Member and Strategic Developer, announced it will donate its award winning Java persistence framework, Oracle(R) TopLink, to the open source community. In addition, Oracle announced the proposal of a new Eclipse project to deliver a comprehensive persistence platform based on the contribution of Oracle TopLink, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, source code and test cases."

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Palamida adds Python support to compliance library

Palamida has announced the addition of Python language support to its compliance library. "Palamida(TM), the leader in software intellectual property management solutions and audit services, today announced that it has expanded its extensive compliance library to include over 6,200 new open source projects while adding support for the popular Python programming language."

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Paradigma Software announces Valentina Server Beta 1

Paradigma Software has announced the release of a free beta version of Valentina Server for Linux. "Valentina is a pioneering database system that, built on a unique object-relational model, outperforms almost all commercially available database servers – disk based or RAM based. Recent customer provided data compares equivalent search operations with mySQL server at five minutes to complete, down to five seconds with Valentina Server."

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SLES with Xen available for SAP NetWeaver and mySAP Business Suite

Novell, Inc. has announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with integrated Xen* virtualization technology for the SAP NetWeaver and mySAP Business Suite.

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STMicroelectronics unveils two new System-on-Chip ICs

STMicroelectronics has announced two new SPEAr family configurable System-on-Chip ICs. "The dual-core SPEAr Plus600, complemented with a single-core variant, SPEAr Head600, represents a market-unique solution that enables printer, fax, point-of-sale (POS) and other equipment manufacturers to develop complex yet flexible digital engines at a fraction of the time and cost required by a full-custom design approach. Additionally, the possibility to choose between a single- and a dual-processor device with the same footprint and architecture will enable manufacturers to address different market segments for the same application."

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Sun Microsystems announces open source of online game technology

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced plans to release the online game server platform Project Darkstar as open-source code. "Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced plans today at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to open source Project Darkstar, a ground-breaking online game server platform written entirely in Java(TM) technology, at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The company also announced the opening of registration for the Darkstar Playground, which will enable developers to create a wide variety of games that can be provisioned through a single server platform."

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New Books

Ajax on Java - New from O'Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book Ajax on Java by Steven Douglas Olson.

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Resources

FSFE Newsletter

The March 13, 2007 edition of the FSFE Newsletter is online with the latest Free Software Foundation Europe news. Topics include: Fiduicary License Agreement released under GFDL/CC-by-sa, FSFE announces big raffle among all Fellows, FSFE at FOSDEM in Brussels (Belgium), Ciará¡n O'Riordan at SkyCon in Limerick (Ireland), End of internship of Maria Luisa Carli, System administration murphy weeks and Get Active: Join the SELF project!

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Summer of Code Mentoring HOWTO

Federico Mena-Quintero has published a Summer of Code Mentoring HOWTO document. "The Summer of Code, initiated by Google, is a wonderful opportunity for students to learn how to contribute to free software in a short time, while making a nice chunk of money in the process. Each participating student gets a mentor, who is normally a member of an existing free software project. This document intends to give some advice to mentors, so that they'll be able to help their students to complete their projects successfully."

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Contests and Awards

EFF announces Pioneer Awards

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2007 Pioneer Awards: Yochai Benkler, Cory Doctorow, and Bruce Schneier.

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Second Annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration Announced

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has announced that nominations are open for the 2007 Mellon Awards. "The Mellon Awards, in values of $50,000 and $100,000, honor not-for-profit organizations for leadership in the collaborative development of open source software tools with particular application to higher education and not-for-profit activities. More information on the awards, including a listing of last year's winners and the 2007 online nomination form, is available at http://matc.mellon.org."

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PyWeek #4 in April

The fourth PyWeek Challenge has been announced, it will take place from April 1-4, 2007. "The PyWeek challenge: 1. Invites entrants to write a game in one week from scratch either as an individual or in a team, 2. Is intended to be challenging and fun, 3. Will hopefully increase the public body of game tools, code and expertise, 4. Will let a lot of people actually finish a game, and 5. May inspire new projects (with ready made teams!)"

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Mainsoft, Novell, IBM and DevX announce 'Race to Linux 2.0'

Mainsoft Corporation has announced the Race to Linux 2.0 challenges, to be held in March and April, 2007. "The 3-series Race to Linux 2.0 challenges Visual Studio developers to experiment with .NET 2.0-to-Linux porting options. DevX will announce the target applications at the beginning of each race. More than 100 developers have registered to date. The first developer to deliver the application running successfully under SUSE Linux on an IBM System x will win a Nintendo Wii and games package."

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XMMS2 Logo competition 2007

An XMMS2 logo contest has been launched. "XMMS2 Team officially announced it's graphic competition today. The competition goal is for the popular media player to gain a new look and to increase awareness of the project. The competition will be split up in two parts: the first will be for a new logotype. The second part, which will be launched after the conclusion of the first, will aim for a new look for the wiki with reusable elements for client authors to use. First prize in both competitions is an Amazon.com gift certificate valid for $400."

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Surveys

Dell: what sort of Linux systems would you like?

Dell has decided to follow up on requests for Linux-installed systems by running a survey on just what people would like. Questions cover the types of systems, which distributions, etc. There is, however, no question on whether customers want systems with 100% free software. The survey is open through March 23.

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Education and Certification

LPI offers discounted certification exams at LinuxWorld Belgium

The Linux Professional Institute will offer discounted certification exams at LinuxWorld Belgium on March 21 and 22, 2007.

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TimeSys expands educational webinar series

TimeSys Corporation "... is adding more sessions to its popular series of educational webinars for embedded Linux developers. Running through March and April, the new topics cover best practices for embedded Linux development through an examination of project risk and the benefits of a common toolset. Later sessions in the series look at technology choices for developers building devices with a graphical interface and an in-depth look at the QEMU processor emulator."

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Calls for Presentations

Black Hat USA CFP

A call for papers has gone out for the Black Hat USA security conference. The event takes place at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV on July 28 - August 2, 2007. Submissions are due by May 1.

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DeepSec IDSC 2007 Europe/Vienna CFP

A call for papers has gone out for the DeepSec In-Depth Security Conference. The event will take place on November 20-23, 2007 in Vienna, Austria. Proposals are due before June 10.

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GUADEC 2007 call for papers deadline extended

GUADEC 2007 call for papers deadline has been extended until March 15.

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Upcoming Events

GUADEMY: GNOME+KDE Hackmeeting (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has announced the GUADEMY GNOME+KDE Hack-meeting. The event will be held in Coruña, Spain on March 23-25, 2007. "KDE will be represented by Aaron Seigo, Larrosa, Astals and Rafael Fernandez, and from GNOME, Rodrigo Moya, Álvaro del Castilo, Álvaro López Ortega, Carlos Garnacho, Andrés Gómez and Iago Toral will be there."

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The 2007 JavaOne Conference

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the 2007 JavaOne Conference. The event will take place in San Francisco, CA on May 8-11, 2007.

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Linux Installfest workshop in Davis, CA

The Linux Users' Group of Davis will hold the next Linux Installfest in Davis, CA on Saturday March 31, 2007.

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The 2007 MySQL Conference and Expo

The 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo will take place in Santa Clara, California on April 23-26, 2007. "This year's program promises to be the most exciting ever, offering more than 110 sessions and workshops for every type of user -- from experienced database administrators and programmers to MySQL beginners. Attendees who register by March 14 will save $200 off the standard fee. Other discounts are also available that may be used in conjunction with early registration for additional savings."

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Perens to rain on Novell's parade

Bruce Perens has announced a press conference during the Novell Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City, UT during the week of March 19. "The topics will be: The Microsoft-Novell agreement, GPL version 3 and how it will impede Novell from making use of new innovation by the Free Software community and Software patents vs. Free Software."

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Samba eXPerience 2007

Some of the Samba eXPerience 2007 speakers have been announced. "The organizers are happy to welcome Howard Chu (Chief Architect of OpenLDAP) as the keynote speaker. Other topics include: talks from the WINE project and OpenChange to show the link to other projects, a talk regarding Samba and GPLv3 reflecting current legal discussions and, of course, developers, users, and vendors fill out the rest of the program with 25 talks in two days."

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SciPy’07 dates announced

The dates for the 2007 Scientific Python conference have been announced. "According to www.scipy.org, The SciPy 2007 Conference will be on August 16-17 this year; tutorials and sprints will run on the 14th, 15th, and 18th. I won’t be able to attend (new baby), but I’d like to organize a half-day or one-day session to update and extend the Software Carpentry notes. Lots of modules need writing, both on Python-specific stuff and on general software engineering skills for scientists and engineers."

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Events: March 22, 2007 to May 21, 2007

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
March 18 March 23	Novell BrainShare 2007	Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
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
April 23 April 25	Samba eXPerience 2007	Göttingen, Germany
April 23 April 27	PostgreSQL Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
April 23 April 26	MySQL Conference and Expo	Santa Clara, CA, USA
April 28 April 29	Linuxfest Northwest	Bellingham, WA, USA
May 3 May 4	Ubuntu Education Summit	Sevilla, Spain
May 3 May 5	SugarCRM Global Developer Conference	San Jose, CA, USA
May 4 May 6	Libre Graphics Meeting 2007	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
May 5 May 6	LayerOne Security Conference	Pasadena, CA, USA
May 5	Ubucon - Sevilla	Sevilla, Spain
May 6 May 11	Ubuntu Developer Summit	Sevilla, Spain
May 7	CommunityOne	San Francisco, CA, USA
May 8 May 9	World Summit on Intrusion Prevention	Baltimore, MD, USA
May 8 May 11	Annual Java Technology Conference	San Francisco, CA, USA
May 8 May 11	OSHCA 2007	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
May 9 May 11	Red Hat Summit	San Diego, CA, USA
May 10 May 11	IEEE International Workshop on Open Source Test Technology Tools	Berkeley, CA, USA
May 10	NLUUG Spring Conference 2007	Ede, The Netherlands
May 11 May 13	Conferenze Italiana sul Software Libero	Cosenza, Italy
May 12 May 13	KOffice ODF Weekend	Berlin, Germany
May 14 May 25	The Pure Data Spring School 2007	Glasgow, Scotland
May 16 May 18	php|tek	Chicago, IL, USA
May 17 May 20	RailsConf 2007	Portland, Oregon
May 18 May 19	eLiberatica Open Source and Free Software Conference	Brasov, Romania
May 18 May 19	FreedomHEC	Los Angeles, CA
May 18 May 19	BSDCan 2007	Ottawa, Canada
May 19 May 20	The 3rd International Workshop on Software Engineering for Secure Systems	Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
May 19 May 20	Rockbox International Developers Conference 2007	Stockholm, Sweden
May 19	Grazer LinuxDays 2007	Graz, Austria
May 19 May 20	Make Magazine Maker Faire 2007	San Mateo, CA, USA
May 19	Linuxwochen Austria - Graz	Graz, Austria

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

Page editor: Forrest Cook