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AnnouncementsNon-Commercial announcements EFF Challenges Bogus Patent on Internet SubdomainsThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release concerning bogus patents on Internet subdomains. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging a bogus patent on Internet subdomains that has been used to threaten small businesses and innovators. Ideaflood, a self-proclaimed "intellectual property holding company," used this illegitimate patent to demand payment from website hosting companies that offer virtual, personalized subdomains -- like "action.eff.org" for the parent domain "eff.org." But in a reexamination request filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) today, EFF and Rick Mc Leod of Klarquist Sparkman, LLP show that the method Ideaflood claims to have invented was well known before the patent was issued. In fact, website developers were having public discussions about how to create these virtual subdomains on an Apache developer mailing list for more than a year before Ideaflood made its patent claim."
FSF: Microsoft cannot declare itself exempt from the requirements of GPLv3The Free Software Foundation has released the following statement in response to claims by Microsoft regarding their obligations under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3). "We do not, however, agree with Microsoft's characterization of the situation involving GPLv3. Microsoft cannot by any act of anticipatory repudiation divest itself of its obligation to respect others' copyrights. If Microsoft distributes our works licensed under GPLv3, or pays others to distribute them on its behalf, it is bound to do so under the terms of that license. It may not do so under any other terms; it cannot declare itself exempt from the requirements of GPLv3."
The FSF's environmental press releaseHere is the press release from the Free Software Foundation trying to turn Windows into an environmental issue. "Today, environmental and social justice groups united to call for the rejection of Microsoft Windows Vista and for society's adoption of free software, highlighting environmental concerns and technology restrictions associated with proprietary software."
The Linux Foundation on OOXMLThe Linux Foundation has sent out a press release giving its position on the upcoming vote on the adoption of Microsoft's OOXML format as an ISO/IEC standard. "For all these reasons and more, the Linux Foundation calls upon those National Bodies that have not yet cast their votes to vote 'No, with comments.' Those comments should reflect their best, neutral, technical judgment, based upon OOXML in its current form. Only by doing so, we believe, can both the future availability of documents, but the integrity of the standard setting process be assured."
US District court says that the artistic license is a contractThe Law & Life weblog has a summary of a decision in the JMRI case in California. "The decision makes two important points: (1) the Artistic License is a contract and (2) the failure to include the copyright notices was not a 'restriction' on the scope of the license... The second point is very important because it deals with remedies. Generally, the remedy for contract violations under US law is damages, not 'injunctive relief' (which means that the court order a party to cease their violation). On the other hand, copyright infringement generally includes a presumption that injunctive relief is appropriate." LWN first covered the JMRI case in April, 2006; interested parties can read a summary of the case (which has gotten more complicated since then) or can go straight to the court's ruling [PDF].
Commercial announcements Mandriva Benelux is launchedMandriva has announced the launch of Mandriva Benelux "Our target areas are corporate applications and solutions to individuals, educational institutions, public and private organizations, ISVs and OEMs all over the Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg region. The goal of Mandriva Benelux NV is to provide local distribution of Mandriva Linux and other integrated open source applications in multiple languages throughout Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg."
Marvell 88ALP01 data sheet releasedAlmost one year ago, the One Laptop Per Child project took some grief for developing device drivers for its laptop under non-disclosure agreements. It was asserted that, by giving in to hardware vendors in this way, OLPC was ensuring that specifications for the hardware would never become available. So it is nice to see that Marvell has followed through on at least part of its promise and released the 88ALP01 data sheet. This specification covers the camera, SD, and NAND flash controllers.
Mozilla announces Firefox Campus EditionMozilla has announced the Firefox browser Campus Edition. "The bundled version of Firefox with three popular add-ons is geared towards students and provides easy access to music, timesaving research tools and highly rated web sites."
German Universities tap Novell for infrastructure needsNovell, Inc. has announced a Linux deployment at some German universities. "Novell today announced that state universities across the Federal State of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany have selected Novell for their critical IT infrastructure systems. The agreement will give 560,000 students and employees across 33 universities access to key enterprise management and Linux* services from Novell, including SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Desktop."
New Books Learning PHP and MySQL, 2nd Edition--New from O'ReillyO'Reilly has published the book Learning PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition by Michele E. Davis and Jon A. Phillips.
Security Power Tools--New from O'Reilly MediaO'Reilly has published the book Security Power Tools by Nicolas Beauchesne, Philippe Biondi, Bryan Burns, Chris Iezzoni, Jennifer Statis Grannick, Paul Guersch, Dave Killion, Michael Lynn, Steve Manzuik, Eric Markham, Eric Moret and Julien Sobrier.
Surveys 2007 Desktop Linux Survey results revealed (DesktopLinux.com)DesktopLinux.com presents the results from the 2007 Desktop Linux Survey. "The leading Linux distribution is the Ubuntu family -- 30 percent of our survey respondents are using Ubuntu or one of its sister distributions: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Edubuntu. While there are other distributions that owe a great deal to Ubuntu -- Linspire, Freespire, MEPIS, Linux Mint, and Pioneer all come quickly to mind -- we decided not to count them for Ubuntu this year, since some, like Freespire, have just made the switch, while others, such as MEPIS, are switching back to Debian, and Pioneer is going in its own direction. Next in popularity, after the ever-popular Ubuntu family, comes the SUSE Linux family with 21 percent."
Education and Certification Learn embedded Linux, get a Linux laptop (LinuxDevices.com)LinuxDevices.com reports that LinuxCertified will hold a three-day class on embedded and real-time Linux development. "Set for Sept. 12-14 in Sunnyvale, Calif., LinuxCertified's embedded Linux course promises to examine, "why Linux, how to embed Linux, and how to measure and obtain real-time performance," the vendor said."
Calls for Presentations O'Reilly ETel Conference 2008 Call For ParticipationA Call For Participation has gone out for the 2008 O'Reilly ETel Conference. "Now in its third year, ETel, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, brings together all of the voices in telephony that need to be heard--from telecommunication company executives, garage hackers, mobile executives, programmers, researchers to venture capitalists, community activists and CEOs. The call for participation is now open; submissions will be accepted until September 17, 2007. The conference, taking place March 3-4 in San Diego, California, is an ambitious mix of inspirational speakers who lay out visionary road maps to the future, combined with practical, unconventional hacks from small, innovative startups."
Fedora Mini-conf at LCA2008 - Call for PresentationsA Fedora mini-conf has been scheduled for linux.conf.au 2008 in Melbourne, Australia. Presentations are being solicited for 50, 25, and 10 minute slots. Click below for more information.
LinuxChix Women's mini-conf: Call for PresentationsLinuxChix, the organization for women who like Linux and free software, announces a mini-conf as part of linux.conf.au 2008 in Melbourne, Australia. A call for 50, 25, and 10 minute presentations is being announced as well. Click below for more information.
MySQL Miniconf at LinuxConfAU 2008: Call for PapersA call for papers has gone out for the MySQL Miniconf at LinuxConfAU 2008. "There are about 6 or 7 slots of 50 minutes each. We could do 2x25 minutes for some, and possibly a slot with 5 minute lightning talks. A proposal should contain a short title and abstract of what you intend to talk about, what duration the talk would be (5, 25, 50), and a brief bio of yourself."
Upcoming Events Cell Hack-a-thon II announcedThe Cell Hack-a-thon II will be held in Austin, TX on September 22-25, 2007. "You are invited to attend Hack-a-thon II, Austin, Texas, September 22-25, two days prior to and then in conjunction with the Power Architecture Developer Conference. In this 4 day event, Terra Soft will host a 6 node PS3 cluster and hands-on workshop for the installation of Yellow Dog Linux, compute image deployment via Y-HPC, and use of Torque and Moab for job management. Hack-a-thon attendees are given opportunity to test their own parallel and distributed code."
HITBSecConf2007 - Malaysia is less than 2 weeks awayHITBSecConf2007 will be held on September 3-6, 2007 in Malaysia. "Organized as a community centric, non-profit effort, HITBSecConf is Asia's largest network security event featuring 4 keynote speakers, 7 tracks of technical training sessions and access to over 30 hours of deep knowledge demos and presentations!"
Legal Conference News from the Linux FoundationThe Linux Foundation has announced a Legal Summit. "The Linux Foundation is pleased to issue an invitation to in-house counsel for all of our members to participate in the Linux Foundation Legal Summit on October 25 and 26, 2007. This collaborative workshop will provide an opportunity for in-house counsel involved in shaping member policies around open source or open standards issues to lend their experience and expertise to the development of Linux Foundation legal strategy."
Office 2.0 agenda finalizedThe Office 2.0 Conference will take place in San Francisco, CA on September 5-7, 2007. "The event will feature over 100 speakers and panelists, and include 6 keynote presentations and 21 panels. The conference will be kicked off with a quick presentation of the exclusive applications developed for the iPhone by Etelos, and an introduction to the enterprise-grade WiFi network deployed for the event by Covad and Swisscom. This year, every attendee will receive an iPhone to support real-time collaboration during the event."
Ubuntu Developer Summit Boston 2007 AnnouncedThe Ubuntu Developer Summit to plan the next Ubuntu release has been announced. It is slated for 27 October through 2 November in Cambridge, Mass. Click below for more details.
Events: September 6, 2007 to November 5, 2007The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it. Audio and Video programs KDE Multimedia Meeting Video Interviews (KDE.News)Seb Ruiz has announced the availability of video interviews from the KDE Multimedia Meeting. "You might remember, that a little over a year ago kde.nl graciously hosted the KDE multimedia meeting (or k3m for short). Whilst we were there, hacking away, the folks from Source21 joined us to do some interviews for their open source software vidcast. If you take some time to watch the video, youll hear from Martijn Klingens (KDE marketing, KDE.nl), Matthias Kretz (Phonon) and myself (Amarok) speaking about our respective areas of expertise."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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