Non-Commercial announcements
Two new initiatives from the FSF
The Free Software Foundation has
announced
the creation of an "activist campaigns team" to try to spread the word on
software freedom. This group will be run by John Sullivan and Joshua Gay;
it will start by managing the BadVista.org and Defective By Design efforts.
There is also a new campaign called
PlayOGG.org, intended to promote use of the Ogg Vorbis audio format.
"OGG is your safest bet to be free from patent litigation when using
compressed audio. This is especially true given the recent upswing in
patent-based lawsuits. What is most frightening, and underscores the
landmine metaphor often used to describe software patents, is the recent
$1.5B preliminary judgment against Microsoft. Microsoft thought it had a
paid-up nonexclusive license to practice the patents in MP3. This judgment
demonstrates that there is no good way to protect yourself from these
threats. The only viable solution right now is to switch to OGG, and work
for the abolition of software patents."
Comments (53 posted)
Commercial announcements
Announcing CrossOver 6.1 for Linux and Mac
CodeWeavers has announced the availability of version 6.1
of CrossOver Mac and CrossOver Linux.
"
Version 6.1 includes a lot of improvements from 6.0; while many
applications should be affected by these improvements, the
biggest improvements will be in Outlook 2003 as well as in our
3D game support.
The major change in Outlook includes support for RPC over HTTP,
to enable people the check their email from outside the office.
There is also a wide range of other bug fixes and minor
improvements in Outlook."
Full Story (comments: none)
The DMCA requires use of DRM?
This must be the strangest use of the DMCA yet: here's
a press release from two companies called Media Rights Technologies and BlueBeat.com about the cease-and-desist letter they have sent to companies like Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft. It seems those companies are committing the crime of not using MRT's DRM products. "
MRT asserts Apple, Microsoft, Real and Adobe have produced billions of these products without regard for the DMCA or the rights of American Intellectual Property owners, actively avoiding the use of MRT's technologies. Failure to comply with this demand could result in a federal court injunction to any of the above named parties to cease production or sale of their products and/or the imposition of statutory damages of at least $200 to $2500 for each product distributed or sold."
Comments (7 posted)
EMC enhances support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
EMC Corporation has
announced its enhanced support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
"
EMC Corporation announced today at the Red Hat Summit that it has strengthened support for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments by completing interoperability
qualification of core EMC(R) platforms including EMC Symmetrix(R), EMC
CLARiiON(R), EMC Celerra(R), and EMC Invista(R).
EMC worked with Red Hat engineers to extensively test Red Hat
Enterprise Linux interoperability with EMC's core storage platforms in the
EMC E-Lab(TM), the leading industry testing facility of its kind."
Comments (none posted)
Free software drivers for the Intel 965GM Express Chipset
Intel has announced free driver software for the 965GM Express chip set.
"
The Intel 965GM Express Chipset represents the first mobile product that
implements fourth generation Intel graphics architecture. Designed to
support advanced rendering features in modern graphics APIs, this chipset
includes support for programmable vertex, geometry, and fragment shaders.
Extending Intel's commitment to work with the X.org and Mesa communities to
continuously improve and enhance the drivers, support for this new chipset
is provided through the X.org 2.0 Intel driver and the Mesa 6.5.3 releases.
These drivers represent significant work by both Intel and the broader open
source community."
Full Story (comments: 42)
Terra Soft Launches PS3 User Showcase
Terra Soft has launched the
Share Your Story page.
"
Terra Soft today launched a program to
engage its growing PS3 user base through the sharing of their unique stories
on the Terra Soft Showcase web pages.
As presented on the Terra Soft website, "You may be a super-geek, cranking out
code into the midnight hour. Or you may be just like the rest of us, cranking
out a mid term exam paper an hour before it's due. Either way, you have a
story to tell, a unique experience to share. And if you are using YDL on a
PLAYSTATION(R)3, an Apple PowerPC, or an IBM Power product, you are doing
something the rest of us would like to hear about.""
Full Story (comments: none)
TimeSys Introduces LinuxLink subscriptions for Intel IXP435 processors
TimeSys has announced the availability of LinuxLink subscriptions for
the Intel IXP435 line of processors.
"
This processor is a new addition to Intel's popular line of
network processors and TimeSys is the only vendor to provide
processor-optimized Linux packages and components for the IXP435.
Through the partnership between Intel and TimeSys, customers have
access to the LinuxLink service, which allows them to build and
assemble their own commercial-grade custom Linux platforms based on
the IXP435 processor."
Full Story (comments: none)
TimeSys Embedded supports 2.6.21 kernel
TimeSys claims to be the first embedded Linux vendor to support the
version 2.6.21 kernel.
"
TimeSys Corporation, the leading service provider to developers
in the embedded Linux market, today announced that LinuxLink by
TimeSys is the first commercial embedded Linux offering to deliver
support for the 2.6.21 Linux kernel. LinuxLink is a web-based
subscription service that simplifies embedded Linux development by
providing the optimized code, tools and support that organizations
need to accelerate their development and reduce their time to market."
Full Story (comments: none)
Zenoss among open-source leaders selected for Red Hat Exchange Launch
Zenoss Inc. has announced it is among the short list of partners involved
in the launch of Red Hat Exchange (RHX). RHX allows companies to find,
purchase and manage enterprise-ready open source software solutions through
a single, trusted source - Red Hat.
Full Story (comments: none)
New Books
SitePoint releases "The Art and Science of CSS"
SitePoint has published the book
The Art & Science of CSS
by Cameron Adams, Jina Bolton, David Johnson, Steve Smith and Jonathan Snook.
Full Story (comments: none)
Foundations of GTK Development published
The book
Foundations of GTK Development by Andrew Krause
has been published.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly Publishes 'Programming Firefox' by Kenneth Feldt (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine
reports on O'Reilly's publishing of the book
Programming Firefox
by Kenneth Feldt.
"
Subtitled Building Applications in the Browser, the new book by Kenneth Feldt covers using XUL and XPCOM to build Internet applications and extensions for Mozilla Firefox."
Comments (none posted)
Resources
FSFE Newsletter
The May 12, 2007 edition of the
Free Software Foundation Europe Newsletter is online, here is the
table of contents:
"
1. FSFE launches list of recommended Free Software lawyers
2. FSFE action on IPRED2 "Criminalisation" Directive
3. Transcript of Richard M. Stallman's speech in Brussels online
4. FSFE at A2K2 conference in Yale Law School
5. Georg Greve and Jonas Öberg in Belgrade, Serbia
6. Ivan Jelic joining European Core Team of FSFE
7. Merchandise available via web order
8. Get active: join the translation team!"
Full Story (comments: none)
Calls for Presentations
IMF 2007 - CFP deadline extension
The call for papers deadline for the 3rd International Conference on
IT-Incident Management & IT-Forensics has been extended to June
4, 2007. The event takes place in Stuttgart, Germany on September 11-12,
2007.
Full Story (comments: none)
Upcoming Events
OpenLogic to Host Webinar on Impact of GPLv3
OpenLogic, Inc. has
announced
a webinar on GPLv3 featuring Eben Moglen on Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 6
p.m. GMT. "
Participants in this webinar will learn first-hand how
changes to the GPL could impact enterprise organizations. Discussion topics
will include differences between GPLv2 and GPLv3 (including simplification,
internalization, patent defense clauses, digital rights management, and
GPL- covered devices in consumer products), what GPLv3 means to enterprises
committed to free and open source (including the future for open source
projects that switch to GPLv3 versus stay with GPLv2), and what's in store
for the release (including projected release date and the anticipated level
of adoption)."
Comments (none posted)
Maker Faire: 400 Makers, 40,000 Attendees, 200,000 Sq. Ft. of DIY Mayhem
O'Reilly has sent out a press release for the 2007 Maker Faire.
"
The 2nd Annual Bay Area Maker Faire (May 19 & 20) at the
San Mateo Fairgrounds in northern California is just 10 days away, and
this year's event is shaping up to be even better than last year's
award-winning DIY fiesta! This year's event will have twice as many
Makers (400), twice as many fans (40,000 anticipated), and twice the
terrain (200,000 square feet)."
Full Story (comments: none)
Mozilla Developer Day Paris: June 23, 2007
The next
Mozilla Developer Day will take place in Paris, France on June 23, 2007.
"
As mentioned in a couple of the Mozilla Project Update meetings, we’re going to have our third Developer Day of 2007 in Paris, on June 23rd. You can read more details on the wiki page — including a place to indicate if you’re interested in attending! Also, there’s a page for proposing a topic that you’d like to discuss with other Mozilla developers, or for indicating that you’ve got something to demo."
Comments (none posted)
Events: May 24, 2007 to July 23, 2007
The following event listing is taken from the
LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
May 14 May 25 |
The Pure Data Spring School 2007 |
Glasgow, Scotland |
May 21 May 25 |
Python Bootcamp with David Beazley |
Atlanta, USA |
May 22 May 24 |
Linux Days 2007, Geneva |
Geneva, Switzerland |
May 23 May 24 |
PGCon 2007 |
Ottawa, ON, Canada |
| May 25 |
Linuxwochen Austria - Krems |
Krems, Austria |
| May 26 |
PAKCON III |
Karachi, Pakistan |
May 29 May 30 |
Where 2.0 Conference |
San Jose, CA, USA |
May 29 May 30 |
I FLOSS CONFERENCE RESISTENCIA |
Resistencia, Argentina |
May 29 May 31 |
European ADempiere Developers Conference |
Berlin, Germany |
May 30 June 1 |
3rd UNIX Days Conference - Gdansk 2007 |
Gdansk, Poland |
May 30 June 1 |
Linuxwochen Austria - Wien |
Wien, Austria |
May 30 June 2 |
Linuxtag |
Berlin, Germany |
June 2 June 3 |
Journées Python Francophones |
Paris, France |
June 9 June 10 |
PyCon Uno - First Python Italian conference |
Florence, Italy |
| June 10 |
Pluto Meeting 2007 |
Padova, Italy |
June 10 June 15 |
DebCamp |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
June 11 June 14 |
Third International Conference on Open Source Systems |
Limerick, Ireland |
June 13 June 15 |
Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit |
Mountain View, CA, USA |
| June 16 |
DebianDay |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
| June 16 |
Firefox Developer Conference |
Tokyo, Japan |
June 17 June 22 |
2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference |
Santa Clara, USA |
June 17 June 23 |
Debian Developer Conference |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
June 18 June 20 |
O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference |
San Jose, CA, USA |
June 18 June 20 |
Advanced Workshop on GCC Internals |
Bombay, India |
| June 20 |
Open Source Showcase @ OpenAdvantage |
Birmingham, UK |
June 20 June 22 |
IT Underground |
Dublin, Ireland |
| June 23 |
Mozilla Developer Day |
Paris, France |
June 25 June 27 |
SOA World Conference and Expo 2007 |
New York, NY, USA |
June 27 June 29 |
Summer School of Sound |
Lancaster, UK |
June 27 June 30 |
2007 Linux Symposium |
Ottawa, Canada |
| June 29 |
NLUUG event theme innovation Enschede |
Enschede, the Netherlands |
June 30 July 7 |
Akademy 2007 |
Glasgow, Scotland |
July 2 July 6 |
Learning Programming with PHP |
Redditch, Worcestershire, UK |
| July 6 |
II WHYFLOSS CONFERENCE MADRID |
Madrid, Spain |
| July 7 |
Italian PostgreSQL Day |
Prato, Tuscany, Italy |
July 7 July 8 |
LugRadio Live 2007 |
Wolverhampton, United Kingdom |
July 9 July 11 |
EuroPython 2007 |
Vilnius, Lithuania |
July 9 July 13 |
PostgreSQL 8.2 Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch |
Atlanta, USA |
July 10 July 11 |
The Linux Foundation Japan Symposium |
Tokyo, Japan |
July 12 July 13 |
IV GUADEC-ES |
Granada, Spain |
July 12 July 13 |
DIMVA 2007 |
Lucerne, Switzerland |
| July 14 |
UK Gentoo Meeting 2007 |
London, UK |
July 15 July 21 |
GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference |
Birmingham, England |
July 18 July 20 |
GCC and GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit |
Ottawa, Canada |
July 22 July 24 |
Ubuntu Live |
Portland, OR, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Mailing Lists
New Pre-Release Firefox and Thunderbird announcement lists (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine
reports on the creation of a number of new mailing lists for
pre-release versions of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird.
"
The Mozilla Developer News weblog has announced the creation of several new mailing lists for pre-release versions of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Users who are interested in testing pre-release builds, such as release candidates and alphas, can subscribe to the announce-prerelease list to receive early notifications when such pre-release builds are made available."
Comments (none posted)
Web sites
Polish KDE Community Announces KDE.org.pl Web Site (KDE.News)
KDE.News
has announced
the new
Polish KDE site.
"
The Polish community of KDE is growing year after year. In association with KDE e.V. we're proud to announce the launch of the KDE.org.pl web site, with ambitions of becoming the starting point for the KDE element of Poland."
Comments (none posted)
Official Mozilla Corporation Weblog in the Works (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine
notes
plans to launch an official Mozilla Corporation weblog.
"
A project of the Mozilla marketing team, the new weblog will present the official Mozilla Corporation line on news and developments in the Mozilla ecosystem. The target audience for the weblog will be broad, encompassing users, community members, journalists and weblog authors. It is expected to launch by the end of May."
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook