The Free Software Foundation's Defective by Design campaign has
targeted the the BBC iPlayer. "Two weeks after the BBC officially
launched the iPlayer, protesters wearing bright yellow Hazmat suits
gathered outside BBC Television Center in London and BBC headquarters in
Manchester to demand that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) be
eliminated from the BBC."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release
concerning a court battle over surveillance by the US National Security
Agency.
"In the wake of Congress approving a
dramatic expansion of U.S. warrantless wiretapping powers,
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments
on the future of two critical lawsuits over illegal
surveillance of Americans. The hearing is set for August
15, at 2 p.m. in San Francisco.
The government is fighting to get the cases thrown out of
court, contending that the litigation jeopardizes state
secrets."
FiveRuns has announced the launch of RM-Install, a
free, multi-platform Rails stack.
"RM-Install is the second component
available from the FiveRuns Enterprise Management Suite for Rails,
designed to manage the full Rails application lifecycle."
Motama has announced its next-generation multimedia architecture.
"Motama's key technology provides a ground-breaking new software
solution - called Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM) -
which allows for developing distributed and networked multimedia
applications easily. For the first time, Motama now offers a greatly
improved and extended version of its NMM technology as free download".
Novell, Inc. has
announced the availability of Novell(R) ZENworks(R) Configuration
Management to its systems management portfolio.
"This flexible,
easy-to-use solution for configuration management allows companies to add
patch, asset and endpoint security management capabilities to meet the
specific needs of their IT environments. As a result, companies can
centrally manage their IT resources to meet compliance and auditing needs,
ease costs, improve security, and streamline business processes."
Oracle Corporation has
announced Oracle(R) Database 11g for Linux.
"Oracle
Database 11g delivers the next-generation of enterprise information
management, helping customers tackle the demands of rapid data growth,
changing environments, and the need to deliver higher quality of services
while reducing and controlling IT costs."
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has
announced
the OpenJDK(TM) Community Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) License.
"With this
release, Sun is placing the means for certifying "Write Once, Run
Anywhere(TM)" compatibility into the hands of the community.
This license is for the Java(TM) Compatibility Kit (JCK). The JCK is
the Technology Compatibility Kit, a suite of tests, tools and documentation
that determines whether or not an implementation complies with the Java
Platform Standard Edition 6 specification."
The second and final discussion draft of the Affero GPL version 3 has
been released. "The GNU Affero GPL version 3 consists of the text of
GPLv3, slightly adapted for the new name, and an additional paragraph in
section 13 that requires people who modify the software to publicly provide
source when users interact with the software over a network." The
changes this time around are mostly tweaks to that additional paragraph.
People who are interested in this license should speak now; more
information is available at the AGPL second draft
guide page.
The August 9, 2007 edition of the FSFE Newsletter is online
with the latest Free Software Foundation Europe news.
Topics include:
Mythbusting MS-OOXML,
First Swedish Fellowship meeting held in Gothenburg,
Free Software on Exit festival 2007, Novi Sad, Serbia,
Freedom in the hills: the Bergtagung,
GNU GPL licence confirmed once again in a court of law,
Submit Free Software projects to the Trophées du Libre,
Ongoing work of spreading GNU GPLv3 understanding and
Tell a friend about the Fellowship, share this newsletter.
For a little while now, LWN editor Jonathan Corbet has been working with
the Linux Foundation to maintain a page called the Linux
Platform Weather Forecast. The idea is to summarize developments in
(mostly, but not limited to) the Linux kernel area so that interested
parties can get a sense for what is coming. The Linux Foundation has
gotten around to announcing the existence of this page, leading to a number
of articles (1,
2...). LWN
readers, of course, will not be surprised by much that is found there.
Linux-Watch
has announced the voting for the 2007 Desktop Linux Survey.
"DesktopLinux.com launched its 2007 Desktop Linux Survey on August 13, asking users of Linux desktops to identify what distributions they use, as well as their choice of windowing environment (KDE, GNOME, etc.), web browsers, email clients, and Windows-on-Linux solutions."
O'Reilly has sent out a press release for the recently held
Ninth Annual Open Source Convention (OSCON).
"The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), held July 23-27 at the
Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon brought together over 3,000 industry luminaries,
developers, hackers, and business people to advance the discussion and share information
surrounding open source computing. The conference covered every area of the open source arena:
Administration, Business, Databases, Emerging Topics, Java, Linux, People, Perl, PHP, Programming,
Python, Ruby, Security, and Web Applications. A "united nations" of computing languages, attendees
at OSCON were not only speaking in multiple technical languages, they were finding unique solutions
to integrating tools seamlessly."
O'Reilly has announced the 2008
Emerging Technology Conference. The event will be held in
San Diego, CA on March 3-6, 2008.
"Program Chair Brady Forrest is formulating an even more comprehensive program for 2008: "We are
going to be expanding the scope of ETech," notes Forrest, " looking beyond the Web to
manufacturing, biotech, large-scale systems, sensor networks, alternate reality games,
visualizations, robotics, policy, human enhancement and clean tech.""
Summercon 2007 will be held
from August 24-26 at the Wyndham Midtown Hotel in Atlanta, GA.
"Summercon is our chance to get together, talk to each other face-to-face, and swap information about innovations, trends, practices, and rumors in the field of computer security. We welcome all walks of life and all sides of the debate to Summercon: hackers, crackers, script kiddies, w4r3z dud3z, feds, narcs, cops, concerned parents, hangers-on, strippers, media whores, Geraldo Rivera, and Kevin Mitnick."
Pulvermedia has
announced the eleventh annual Fall VON Conference & Expo.
The event will be held in Boston, MA on October 29 - November 1, 2007.
"This year, Pulvermedia's flagship event, which is the largest,
longest- running, and most significant event in the IP communications
industry, will feature several new adjoining conferences, and multiple new
events and pavilions on the expo floor. As a result, a record number of
attendees, participating companies and speakers are expected to take part
throughout the four-day event."