Here's a press release from
Turre Legal on a recent ruling from the Helsinki District Court. In
brief, the court ruled that, since the content scrambling system (CSS)
mechanism used with DVDs has been to thoroughly compromised, it is no
longer an "effective" protection mechanism; as a result, circumventing it
is not illegal. "Defendant's counsel Mikko Välimäki thinks the
judgment can have major implications: 'The conclusions of the court can be
applied all over Europe since the word 'effective' comes directly from
the directive'. He continues: 'A protection measure is no longer
effective, when there is widely available end-user software implementing a
circumvention method.'" (Thanks to Chel van Gennip).
MozillaZine
reports on the Mozilla Foundation's search for a new Executive
Director.
"The Mozilla Foundation is looking for a new Executive Director to lead and
manage the organisation. The successful candidate will take over from Frank
Hecker, who declared his intention to resign as Executive Director last
month. At that time, Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation Board of
Directors, announced that recruiter Eunice Azzani has been engaged to help
identify potential Executive Director candidates."
The Ardour digital audio workstation project
has announced
a new sponsor, the SAE Institute.
"SAE Institute, the leading worldwide college for audio engineering, has agreed to become a corporate sponsor of Ardour, the open source digital audio workstation project. This major sponsorship ensures continual development of Ardour as a free, community-based audio recording and production software. Ardour has previously received corporate support from Solid State Logic and Harrison, but has primarily relied on donations from the public and the dedication of creator Paul Davis".
The folks at Mozilla (whether it's "Corporation" or "Foundation" is not specified) have announced the awarding of a $100,000 grant to the Participatory Culture Foundation, which is working on the development of the Democracy Player (soon to be renamed "Miro," apparently). (LWN reviewed Democracy Player last September).
Novell, Inc. has
announced that it is working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
to reform software patents worldwide.
"Novell and the EFF will work to lobby governments and national and
international organizations to develop legislation and policies around
patents designed to promote innovation. A key area of focus will be the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where member governments
of the United Nations meet to coordinate positions on intellectual property
issues. Given the ease with which software ideas and code cross borders, a
global approach to the issue is required"
OpenLogic, Inc. has
announced a partnership with Japan's K.K. Ashisuto.
""OpenLogic and Ashisuto will make enterprise-grade open source
management tools and support available for large Japanese enterprises using
open source products," said Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic. "The
combination of Ashisuto's customer support experience and OpenLogic's open
source software experience will empower open source users to manage and use
open source software more easily while reducing risk."
Under the agreement, OpenLogic will provide support to Ashisuto
customers for hundreds of open source packages."
Frictional Games has announced the release of the game Penumbra.
"Recently we moved our office to a more Arctic location and took the
opptortunity to get ourselves a penguin pet. We put him through various
challenging escapades, strange rituals and voila: We can proudly present the Linux version of Penumbra: Overture Episode 1.
Penumbra: Overture is a first person survival horror game, created by
Frictional Games and runs on the internally developed HPL-Engine. An engine
that is now cross-platform, soon to be supporting the Mac OS X platform as
well."
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has
announced a collaboration with Redflag Chinese 2000
Software Co., Ltd.
"Sun Microsystems, Inc., the OpenOffice.org community and
Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., Ltd., today announced a joint
development effort that will focus on integrating new features in the
Chinese localization of OpenOffice.org, as well as quality assurance
and work on the core applications. Additionally, Redflag Chinese 2000
made public its commitment to the global OpenOffice.org community
stating it would strengthen its support of the development of the
world's leading free and open source productivity suite."
VA Software Corporation has
announced that it is changing its name to SourceForge, Inc.
"VA Software
Corporation (Nasdaq: LNUX), the online media and e-commerce leader in
community-driven open source innovation, today announced it has changed its
name to SourceForge, Inc. The change reflects the company's strategic focus
on its network of Web properties following the disposition of its
enterprise software business. The company's Nasdaq ticker symbol will
remain the same."
A call for papers has gone out for the Open Source Developers'
Conference 2007. The event will be held in Brisbane, Australia on
November 27-29, 2007, proposals are due by June 30.
KDE.News looks forward to
Akademy 2007. "With only a month to go the schedule for Akademy 2007
is filling up. Our tutorial day has been popular enough to fill up two
days covering subjects from Interview in Qt 4 to Emacs, Kopete plugins and
an introduction to KDE development."
Registration for GUADEC is now open.
"The GUADEC team is pleased to announce the registration is now open for GUADEC 2007 and will stay open up until the event.
To register, please go to
http://www.guadec.org/registration/."
KDE.News
reports
on the KDE presence at
LUGRadio Live 2007.
"KDE will be exhibiting at LUGRadio Live 2007 which is back in Wolverhampton,
England on July 7th and 8th. The event, now in its third year, is the largest
gathering of Free Software projects in the UK. LUGRadio Live overlaps with
the end of Akademy in Glasgow so you may want to stop by on your way home."
KDE.News covers the KDE
presence at LinuxTag 2007.
"This year Germany's LinuxTag conference and exhibition takes place in in Berlin's Messe for the first time. As with previous years there will be a KDE booth, where you can meet some of the people behind KDE. Meet them and talk about the project, programs, features and, of course, about the upcoming KDE 4 platform."
Novell is giving away 50 visitor vouchers for LinuxTag.
"We can provide approx. 50 visitor vouchers which enables you to get free
access to the event. If you're interested please send Florian an email.
He'll than provide you with a code to activate the
ticket online. This happens on first come, first serve basis."
The Summer School of Sound will take place at St. Martins College,
Lancaster, UK on June 27-29, 2007.
"Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux will lead a three day course,
exploring free and open source software available for home studio purposes
such as audio and midi sequencers, sound editors and virtual effect
racks, as well as the creative possibilities of puredata in an audio
workstation setup. The course will also provide information on how
to release and publish your work online (from encoding, to licensing
and streaming).
The Summer School of Sound will also include an evening performance on
Thursday 28 June by GOTO10 artists de Valk and Mansoux, as well as
Claude Heiland-Allen and Chun Lee."