The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the filing of a lawsuit
against the U.S. Department of Justice.
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
filed suit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) today,
demanding any records of a telecom industry lobbying
campaign to block lawsuits over their compliance with
illegal electronic surveillance. EFF's lawsuit comes as
Congress debates letting telecommunications companies off
scot-free as part of the hotly disputed "modernization" of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
EFF represents the plaintiffs in Hepting v. AT&T, a
class-action lawsuit brought by AT&T customers accusing the
telecommunications company of violating their rights by
illegally assisting the National Security Agency in
domestic surveillance."
James Bottomley has announced the results of the election for members of
the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board which was held on September
5th at the kernel summit. Five people were elected: Arjan van de Ven, Greg
Kroah-Hartman, Christoph Lameter, Olaf Kirch, and LWN's own Jonathan
Corbet. The first three listed were re-elected to the board, while Olaf Kirch and Jonathan Corbet are new. Click below for a bit more information on the election.
The Linux Foundation has signed a
collaboration agreement with the Information-technology Promotion
Agency of the Japanese government. The agreement is targeted at increasing
participation of Japanese developers in Linux and open source
software. "This announcement comes during a time of heightened
interest in open source use in Japan. Recent examples include the
increasing use of Linux in consumer electronics devices manufactured in
Japan and the Tokyo Stock Exchange's decision to use Linux for its next
generation enterprise system. In July 2007, the Japanese government made
open standards adoption a priority for all government IT procurements. The
government has stated it has budgeted JPY1.25 trillion, or US $10.4
billion, on IT spending over the next year and will also develop a
Linux-based system for its legal registration system."
The attempt to create a Linux driver for Atheros-based wireless adapters
would appear to be enough to keep the Software Freedom Law Center in
business all by itself. The SFLC has announced the availability of a new document
on the provenance and copyright status of the Linux ath5k driver. "Ultimately, all the copyright holders of the Linux ath5k-driver code,
derived from ar5k, have been contacted and have agreed to license
their changes under the ISC license, thus allowing improvements to be
re-incorporated into OpenBSD. One of the three historical branches of
the code reviewed by SFLC, however, included portions that are only
licensed under the GPL, and SFLC has determined that it would be very
difficult to re-incorporate that code into OpenBSD." The full
report is available on the SFLC web site.
Version 6.2 of CrossOver Linux and CrossOver Mac have been
announced.
"Version 6.2 supports the upcoming Team Fortress 2 release
from Valve software, right out of the Orange Box, as it were.
This adds to our growing list of games that work well in
CrossOver. We feel that CrossOver is now a viable way to
play popular games on Linux and on the Mac.
It also includes some major work on Outlook, particularly
for use in corporate environments, along with a range
of bug fixes for many other applications."
Levanta has announced a family of data center automation
solutions for growing Linux environments. "Levanta 6.0 delivers
fully-integrated system and application monitoring and policy-driven
automation of Linux system management functions in easy to deploy
appliances, resulting in significantly lower cost and shorter
implementation time."
Novell, Inc. has
announced a new deal with Mexico's Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda.
"The Instituto del
Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda (INFONAVIT), Mexico's largest mortgage
lender, has tapped SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise from Novell(R) as its platform
for customer transactions. Providing services to more than 12 million
people and 830,000 employers, INFONAVIT has deployed SUSE Linux Enterprise
as the basis for its new payment collection system. With SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server, INFONAVIT has a stable, flexible platform that enables
it to provide a high-quality, easy to use service, while streamlining costs
and administrative processes."
Open Kernel Labs has announced the availability of the OKL4
advanced open source microkernel architecture.
"Open Kernel Labs
(OK), a global provider of embedded systems software and virtualization
technology, announces the availability of OKL4 for FIC's OpenMoko
Neo1973 smart phone and the FancyPants advanced GUI platform from Fluffy
Spider Technologies (FST). The products will be demoed at the upcoming
ARM Developers Conference (Booth 511)."
OpenVZ is now available on the CentOS Live CD.
"The OpenVZ project today announced
availability of its operating system (OS) server virtualization software as a modified version of
the CentOS 4.4 bootable Live CD so that users can test drive the OpenVZ software without changes to
their computer or installing anything on their hard disk.
"We're following on the success of our delivery of a Live CD for the Knoppix distribution, which
is very popular with hobbyists," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project."
xTuple has announced the release of Version 2.2.1 of its PostBooks
Accounting, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) solution. "The release is a follow-up to the recent
version 2.2.0, and offers the open source community a new data import and
mapping tool called CSVimp, as well as enhanced documentation and examples
supporting the new xTuple Application Programming Interface (API) for
connecting to external systems. The release also contains bug fixes and
features suggested and contributed by the xTuple community."
A call for papers and materials has gone out for the 2008
Linux Audio Conference. The event will be held in
Cologne, Germany on February 28 through March 2, 2008.
Submissions are due by December 1.
The 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo will be held on April 15-18, 2008 in
Santa Clara, California.
"The event is
expected to bring over 1,600 open source and database users together to harness the power of MySQL
and celebrate the active MySQL ecosystem. The call for participation is now open for prospective
speakers; submissions will be accepted until October 30, 2007."
KDE.News has posted an
early announcement
for the 2008
Akademy conference.
"The annual KDE World Summit, Akademy, has found a home for 2008 in the heart of Europe, Belgium. The event is the most important conference for the contributors of the KDE project and will be held from Saturday August 9th to Saturday 16th at the De Nayer Institute, an associated campus of the University of Leuven. There are three sub-events: a contributors conference, the KDE e.V. annual general assembly and a week long hacking session."
The GNOME Boston Summit will take place on October 6-8, 2007 in Boston, MA.
"The Boston Summit is a three-day hackfest for GNOME developers and
contributors. It is not primarily aimed at users or new contributors, but if
you want to jump right into the deep end, it's a fantastic way to meet
everyone and get involved. Unlike traditional conferences, the Boston Summit
is all about getting developers together and getting things done. While
there are some non-hacking sessions, they are geared heavily towards
many-to-many, interactive discussion and planning, rather than one-to-many
presentations."