Announcements

Non-Commercial announcements

FFII puts up a prize in fight against Microsoft Office standardisation

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is offering a prize of up to 2,500 Euro in a fight against standardization of the Microsoft OOXML format. "Veteran FFII campaigner Benjamin Henrion, founder of the noOOXML.org site, explains: "Microsoft is spending millions on rent-a-crowd support for international certification for its proprietary Office format, OOXML. But we already have an ISO standard for word processing, called ODF (Open Document Format). OOXML is Microsoft's attempt to subvert this existing standard, to keep its strangle-hold on the world of documents. It's time for activists across the world to stand up, to reach out to their national ISO bodies, and to explain why Microsoft's format is not open, not a standard, and not XML.""

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Six questions on OOXML

The FSF Europe has posted six questions on Microsoft's "Open Office XML" format which, they believe, any agency pondering standardizing on that format should be able to answer. "MS-OOXML is accompanied by an unusually complex and narrow 'covenant not to sue' instead of the typical patent grant. Because of its complexity, it does not seem clear how much protection from prosecution for compatibility it will truly provide... Does your national standardisation body have its own, independent legal analysis about the exact nature of the grant to certify whether it truly covers the full spectrum of all possible MS-OOXML implementations?"

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GPLv3 is out

As expected, the final version of GPLv3 is now available. See this page for the full text. There have been some changes since the "last call" draft, but they are mostly minor tweaks. Click below for the press release.

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iPhone restricts users, GPLv3 frees them (GNU/FSF Press)

The Free Software Foundation press has sent out a press release concerning the new Apple iPhone. "Tivoization and the iPhone? "Tivoization" is a term coined by the FSF to describe devices that are built with free software, but that use technical measures to prevent the user from making modifications to the software -- a fundamental freedom for free software users -- and an attack on free software that the GPLv3 will put a stop to. The iPhone is leaving people questioning: Does it contain GPLed software? What impact will the GPLv3 have on the long-term prospects for devices like the iPhone that are built to keep their owners frustrated?"

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KDAB Becomes Patron of KDE (KDE.News)

KDE.News reports that KDAB has become a new patron of KDE. "The KDE e.V. and KDAB are happy to announce continued collaboration on the Free Desktop, with KDAB becoming the latest new Patron of KDE. KDAB is known for its high-quality software services."

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An update from OpenMoko

For those who have been waiting for an update on the completely open OpenMoko phone project - one is finally out there. It seems that OpenMoko has been absorbed into FIC, the company which is making the hardware. Developers will be able to start ordering phones to hack on starting July 9, with general availability happening in October. "OpenMoko -- together with all of you in the community -- will design, from the ground up, open devices and write the free software platform that powers them. FIC will build the hardware and help us set phones free around the world. This is about the most perfect relationship we can think of."

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Commercial announcements

Apatar to launch open-source on-demand data integration tools

Apatar, Inc. has announced its launch of new open-source on-demand data integration software tools and services. "Apatar helps users integrate information between databases, files, and applications. Imagine you could visually design (drag and drop) a workflow to exchange data and files between files (Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, CSV/TXT files), databases (such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), applications (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM), and the top Web 2.0 destinations (Flickr, RSS feeds, Amazon S3), all without having to write a single line of code. Users install a visual job designer application to create integration jobs called DataMaps, link data between the source(s) and the target(s), and schedule one-time or recurring data transformations. Imagine this capability fits cleanly and quickly into your projects."

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The myFUNAMBOL portal has been launched

Funambol has announced the launch of the myFUNAMBOL portal. "Funambol, the mobile open source software company, announced it will begin inviting consumers today to join the new myFUNAMBOL portal to access free mobile email, contacts and calendars on everyday cell phones. myFUNAMBOL also provides the first over-the-air mobile contacts application for the new iPhone, which demonstrates the pace of innovation available with open source."

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Linspire joins Microsoft in developing and deploying open source translators

Linspire, Inc. has announced a collaboration with Microsoft involving document translation software. "Linspire, Inc., developer of the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems, today announced it will join the current efforts to improve the ability of OpenOffice.org users to work with the Office Open XML format by increasing the interoperability between ODF and Open XML. Linspire is joining with others who have signed on to this effort, including Novell and Xandros, to create bi-directional open source translators for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations between ODF and Open XML."

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French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries choose Mandriva

Mandriva has announced the choosing of the Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0 for the French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries servers. "The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries chose to migrate its local servers (about 400 machines) from Windows NT Server to Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0, within two years. This migration comes with a complete range of personalized services (training and support). Mandriva was chosen to provide these services which will continue over a period of 18 months and will potentially involve more than 200 people in the ministry."

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Motorola to form industry-wide consortium for the OpenSAF project

Motorola, Inc.g has announced plans to form an industry-wide consortium that will support the OpenSAF (Service Availability Forum) project. "The company also announced the first release of the open source code related to the project. The consortium also will manage any future development of the OpenSAF code base. Leading companies including Ericsson, HP and Nokia Siemens Networks have expressed support for this initiative."

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OpenSceneGraph 2.0 released

OpenSceneGraph Professional Services has announced the release of OpenSceneGraph 2.0. "OpenSceneGraph 2.0, written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets a real-time visualization tool which rivals established commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality and performance."

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Oracle and i-flex solutions announce full Oracle stack support for IBM System z

Oracle Corporation and i-flex Solutions have announced the availability of i-flex FLEXCUBE for Corebanking on the IBM System z mainframe platform. ""Financial institutions are balancing requirements to control global costs while enhancing responsiveness to rapidly capitalize on new growth opportunities," said Rajesh Hukku, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Financial Services Global Business Unit and Chairman at i-flex solutions. "Oracle's increased leverage of the i-flex core banking applications to provide support for zLinux reflects the company's commitment to provide financial services companies with applications and additional mainframe options that help accelerate development of new products and services while and enhancing the value of existing systems.""

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Palamida adds GPLv3 functionality to IP analyzer

Palamida has announced the addition of GPLv3 detection to its IP Amplifier intellectual property detection and reporting solution. "Palamida(TM), the leader in software risk management solutions for open source, today announced that it has enhanced IP Amplifier, the company's flagship intellectual property detection and reporting solution, with the addition of the GPL v3 analyzer functionality. Further expanding their solutions and services, Palamida has also created a comprehensive GPL v3 online educational resource repository, http://gpl3.palamida.com, to assist organizations looking to implement software licensed under GPL v3."

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Free Valentina community database server released

Paradigma Software, Inc. has announced the release of version 3.1 of its database technology and the first release of the Valentina community database server. "Valentina technology release 3.1 provides many improvements to the technologies that set Valentina apart from other databases. These features include: Link Refactoring Commands. New native API methods VLink2.CopyLinksTo() and VLink2.CopyLinksFrom(), plus SQL COPY LINKS are powerful and flexible methods to convert from relational database M:M schemas to much, much faster Binary Link M:M. The same techniques support translations between Relational FK, Binary Links and ObjectPtrs."

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New Books

Beautiful Code--New from O'Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book Beautiful Code by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson.

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New OpenSceneGraph books available

Two new books about OpenSceneGraph have been published. The titles include the OpenSceneGraph Quick Start Guide, and the OpenSceneGraph Reference Manual v1.2.

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Event Reports

OLS papers online

The papers accepted for the 2007 Ottawa Linux Symposium are available online. Whether or not you were at the event, the papers are a useful reference on the topics which were discussed.

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The O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference wrap-up

O'Reilly has a press release about the Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (TOC) held last month. "[TOC] was the first of its kind: a conference dedicated to utilizing technology to create and maximize publishing opportunities. Drawing nearly 500 attendees, this event was produced by O'Reilly Media, Inc. Attendees included book publishers, editors, marketing and production managers, publishing consultants, authors, and business managers in publishing."

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Upcoming Events

KDE developers receive Mandriva Flash Linux keys at aKademy 2007

Mandriva will be giving special edition Mandriva Flash USB keys to KDE developers at the aKademy 2007 conference. ""We are very happy to welcome Mandriva as a silver sponsor for aKademy 2007", said Jonathan Riddell of the aKademy Team. "As a long term supporter and distributor of KDE the summit organising team is looking forward to giving our developers, contributors and industry partners at the conference a special present from Mandriva.""

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RailsConf Europe 2007 program unveiled

The program for the RailsConf Europe 2007 has been released. "RailsConf Europe, taking place 17-19 September in Berlin, is being co-presented by Ruby Central, Inc. and O'Reilly Media, Inc. This three day event, held at the Maritim proArte Hotel, is dedicated entirely to Ruby on Rails. The Ruby on Rails development framework, only three years old, has gone from cult favorite to major player in the web development world."

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Events: July 12, 2007 to September 10, 2007

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
July 9 July 13	PostgreSQL 8.2 Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
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
July 23 July 27	O'Reilly Open Source Convention	Portland, OR, USA
July 23 July 27	Asterisk Bootcamp with Jared Smith at Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
July 23 July 25	Open Group Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference	Austin, TX, USA
July 24 July 27	Ninth course on the Exim mail transfer agent	Cambridge, UK
July 28 August 2	Black Hat USA 2007	Las Vegas, NV, USA
July 30 August 3	Ruby on Rails Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
August 3 August 5	Wikimania 2007 (Annual Wikimedia conference)	Taipei, Taiwan
August 3 August 5	DefCon 15	Las Vegas, NV, USA
August 4 August 7	LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	San Francisco, CA, USA
August 6 August 10	16th USENIX Security Symposium	Boston, MA, USA
August 6 August 9	LinuxWorld Conference and Expo	San Francisco, CA, USA
August 7 August 9	Flash Memory Summit 2007	Santa Clara, CA, USA
August 7 August 11	7as Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre	Córdoba, Argentina
August 8 August 12	Chaos Communication Camp	Finow airport, Germany
August 10	August Penguin 2007	Tel Aviv, Israel
August 11	Picn*x XVI - The Linux 16th Anniversary Picnic	Sunnyvale, CA, USA
August 11 August 15	Virtual FudCon8	Online, IRC
August 14 August 18	Scientific Tools for Python	Pasadena, CA, USA
August 19	Open Source Health Informatics Working Group	Brisbane, Australia
August 20 August 24	PHP Training at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
August 20 August 25	DallasCon 2007-cancelled	Dallas, Texas, USA
August 22 August 25	Python 3000 Sprint	Mountain View and Chicago, USA
August 24 August 26	Summercon 2007	Atlanta, GA, USA
August 25 August 26	FrOSCon 2007	Sankt Augustin (near Bonn), Germany
August 27 September 1	International Computer Music Conference 2007	Copenhagen, Denmark
August 28 August 29	XCon2007	Beijing, China
August 29 August 31	KVM Forum 2007	Tucson, AZ, United States
September 1	ENOS 2007	Caldas da Rainha, Leiria, Portugal
September 2 September 4	LinuxConf Europe 2007	Cambridge, England
September 3 September 6	HITBSecConf2007	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
September 5 September 7	RAID 2007	Gold Coast, QL, Australia
September 5 September 6	2007 Linux Kernel Developers Summit	Cambridge, UK
September 5 September 7	Office 2.0 Conference	San Francisco, CA, USA
September 6 September 8	Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems	Dortmund, Germany
September 7 September 8	LinuxWorld China 2007	Beijing, China
September 7 September 8	LinuxChix Brasil	Asa Sul, Brazil
September 8 September 12	GITEX Technology Week	Dubai, United Arab Emirates
September 8 September 9	PyCon UK 2007	Birmingham, UK

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

Page editor: Forrest Cook