FFII has sent out a release on the passage of the intellectual property
rights enforcement directive in the European Parliament. This directive
turns a number of "intellectual property" infringements into criminal
offenses, threatening ISPs and free software developers, among others. "The directive now goes to the Council for its first reading. Several
Council members, such as the Dutch and UK governments, have already
expressed serious concerns about the scope and nature of this directive."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a media release regarding
proposed new European copyright crimes.
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's)
European Office today announced a broad coalition aimed at
fixing a poorly drafted intellectual property enforcement
proposal that could make criminals of thousands of people
in the European Union.
The Second Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement
Directive (IPRED2) -- set for vote in the European
Parliament early next week -- makes "aiding, abetting, or
inciting" intellectual property infringement on a
"commercial scale" a criminal offence. However, IPRED2
defines criminal offences so vaguely that creators of
legitimate websites, Internet service providers, and even
librarians could be investigated by the police and face
criminal records as well as fines of hundreds of thousands
of euros."
The Free Software Foundation Europe has sent out a press release regarding
proposed changes to the European patent and copyright law.
"FSFE criticises the proposed "second Intellectual Property Enforcement
Directive" (IPRED2) for sweeping criminalisation across various areas of law
and loosely described areas of activity, including for 'attempting, aiding or
abetting and inciting.' The proposed text criminalises these acts for
infringement of many dissimilar laws including copyright, trademark, and
patents. "This threatens" according to a press release of FSFE "to introduce
intimidating degrees of punishment to activities which individuals,
community-based projects, and other small to medium-sized groups participate
in - groups that may not have sufficient money or lawyers to defend their
rights in court.""
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is challenging a patent by
NeoMedia Technologies, Inc.
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
took aim today at a bogus patent threatening innovative
technologies that enhance consumer awareness, requesting a
reexamination by the United States Patent and Trademark
Office (PTO).
NeoMedia Technologies, Inc., claims to own rights to all
systems that provide information over computer networks
using database-like lookup procedures that rely on scanned
inputs, such as a barcode. NeoMedia has used these claims
not only to threaten and sue innovators in the mobile
information space, but also to intimidate projects focused
on increasing awareness among consumers about the social
and environmental impact of the products they buy."
Eben Moglen has posted a weblog entry on what he will be doing once the GPLv3 process stops dominating his life. "As I return to teaching at Columbia I need to concentrate more of my remaining spare time and effort on the affairs of the Software Freedom Law Center, which is inevitably going to mean less involvement with the affairs of other organizations I care very much about.
In particular, its time for me to leave the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation, where Ive been since 2000."
The Open Solutions Alliance has
announced its six newest members.
"The Open Solutions Alliance
(OSA), a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving
interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open solutions, today
announced that six new organizations have joined the Alliance. The new
members include Black Duck, The Mambo Foundation, Onepoint, The Open Source
Technology Alliance (TOSTA), Palamida and Project.net. The OSA today has 18
members."
CollabNet and VA Software have announced a deal
wherein CollabNet will be buying the SourceForge Enterprise Edition code
and business from VA. The SourceForge
site will apparently remain with VA. "With the addition of
SourceForge Enterprise Edition business to CollabNet's product portfolio
and team, we have become the standard for this new method of performing
decentralized development. Unlike conventional software development
systems, CollabNet's solutions are designed to promote and optimize the
benefits of collaboration and distributed software development, based on
open source principles" No mention of open-sourcing the
newly-acquired code, however. (Thanks to Rick Moen, who has posted some
history of the SourceForge code).
Concurrent has announced version 4.1 of its NightStar
integrated software tool set.
"The revamped tool set features a
complete graphical user interface makeover making it more flexible and
easy to customize. NightStar 4.1 is one of the most advanced, yet
easy-to-use debugging environments for troubleshooting and tuning
complex Linux software applications."
Microsoft and Samsung have announced
a patent deal. "In these
product lines, Samsung and its distributors and customers may utilize
Microsoft's patents in Samsung's products with proprietary software, and
Samsung will also obtain coverage from Microsoft for its customers' use of
certain Linux-based products."
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has
announced the availability of the Java technology stack and developer tools for Ubuntu 7.04.
"This stack, which is comprised of key
popular Java technologies such as GlassFish(TM) v1 (the open source Java
Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 implementation), Java Platform, Standard
Edition (JDK 6), Java DB 10.2 (built from Apache Derby) and NetBeans(TM)
IDE 5.5 -- will be available in the Multiverse component of the Ubuntu
repository on April 19."
Zenoss, Inc. has
announced the launch of the Zenoss Global Partner Program.
"The new program brings expanded services and technology
capabilities to Zenoss users worldwide and creates new business
opportunities for systems integrators, hosters, managed service providers,
ISVs and OEMs.
The Zenoss Global Partner program provides a business and technology
framework for partnering with Zenoss, Inc. to deliver professional
services, managed services and technology solutions related to Zenoss Core,
the highest ranking open source IT monitoring solution on Sourceforge.net."
Novell, Inc. has
announced the winning of CODiE awards by
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and ZENworks Asset Management.
"Novell's Linux* and
enterprise management services took home top honors for Best Open Source
Solution and Best Asset Management Solution at the 2007 CODiE awards, the
annual program led by the Software Industry and Information Association
(SIIA) to recognize innovation in the software industry. SUSE(R) Linux
Enterprise Desktop from Novell(R) won in the open source category, while
Novell ZENworks(R) 7.5 Asset Management beat out the competition in the
asset management category."
The Linux Professional Institute has announced its latest Linux
certification affiliates.
"The Linux
Professional Institute, the world's premier Linux certification
organization, announced new affiliates throughout
Europe and Africa including LPI-Spain, LPI-France, LPI-Maghreb,
LPI-Malta/Cyprus and a new partner in South Africa."
The
web site for the recent 2007 Linux Audio Conference (LAC)
has been updated.
"It took us a while, but finally (and hopefully) the last updates
have been made to the LAC website."
KDE.news has announced the
Edu and School Day, which will take place in Glasgow, Scotland
during the Akademy conference.
"You are invited to aKademy Edu & School Day on Tuesday 3rd July. This day will focus on installing and running free educational software in schools, presenting software as well as getting feedback from teachers and community people."
DAM-4 (desktop_architects mailing list) has been announced, the event
will take place on June 13-15, 2007 (new dates) in Mountain View, CA.
"DAM-4 is being held in conjunction with the Linux Foundation
Collaboration Summit. The Linux Foundation Desktop Linux workgroup is
planning and sponsoring this event for the desktop architects. Once
again, the intent of this meeting is to bring desktop organizations
together to address common problems and to create some working synergy
across organizations."
O'Reilly has announced the program schedule and registration opening for
the 2007 Open Source Convention.
"This year's program will examine how open
technologies are making breakthroughs in the mainstream IT community, and
delve into the advances on the open source horizon. Now in its ninth year,
OSCON is the annual gathering of developers, hackers, visionaries, and
alpha geeks who are driving the open source movement. OSCON returns to the
Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon July 23-27, 2007."
SugarCRM has
announced the SugarCRM Global Developer Conference.
"SugarCRM, the world's
leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management
(CRM) software, today announced that it will host the first ever SugarCRM
Global Developer Conference, May 3-5, 2007, at the Sainte Claire Hotel in
San Jose, California. HP, Intel, Microsoft, MySQL, Novell, Pervasive,
Oracle and Sun are among the industry leaders sponsoring the conference,
which is designed for developers, administrators, users, and managers of
CRM projects."