Announcements

Non-Commercial announcements

OpenOffice.org announces seven year anniversary

The OpenOffice.org reached the 7 year anniversary on October 13, 2007. "Founded by Sun Microsystems on October 13th, 2000, continues to experience tremendous growth. The project recently counted 104 million downloads from its website, and downloads have been increasing since the release of OpenOffice.org 2.3 last month. It is widely considered the most important open source productivity suite and one of the largest open source projects. OpenOffice.org is available in more than 80 languages and runs natively on every major platform; it uses the ISO standard, the OpenDocument Format, for its files."

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OSI Approves Microsoft License Submissions

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has approved two licenses submitted by Microsoft as open source licenses. "The formal evaluation of these licenses began in August and the discussion of these licenses was vigourous and thorough. The community raised questions that Microsoft (and others) answered; they raised issues that, when germane to the licenses in question, Microsoft addressed. Microsoft came to the OSI and submitted their licenses according to the published policies and procedures that dozens of other parties have followed over the years. Microsoft didn't ask for special treatment, and didn't receive any. In spite of recent negative interactions between Microsoft and the open source community, the spirit of the dialog was constructive and we hope that carries forward to a constructive outcome as well." Additional commentary can be found at Microsoft's Port 25 blog and at the 451 CAOS Theory blog.

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Commercial announcements

Alfresco to make JLAN Shared File Drive Interface available via GPL

Alfresco Software, Inc. has announced plans to release Alfresco JLAN under the GNU Public License. "Alfresco JLAN is a unique implementation of an embedded virtual file system that offers the only Java client and server implementation of Microsoft Window's CIFS (Common Internet File System) protocol, allowing content, system administration information, and rows in a database to appear as a shared drive."

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Asianux Consortium Announces Mobile Linux Product

The Asianux consortium has announced its mobile Linux product. "The Asianux consortium, where Miracle Linux Corp of Japan, Red Flag Software Co Ltd of China and Haansoft Inc of South Korea are jointly developing Linux products, announced Oct. 15, 2007 that it will start shipping its "Asianux Mobile Midinux Edition" mobile Linux product in January 2008. Expected applications are mobile devices with Internet access capability. Based on the "Midinux 1.0" mobile Linux product that Red Flag announced in June 2007, the new product has been optimized for mobile devices featuring x86 architecture microprocessors. Miracle Linux and Haansoft will market this product in Japan and South Korea, respectively."

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Novell Delivers Desktop-to-Server Software Suite for Small Businesses

Novell, Inc. has announced that the Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition is now available to customers worldwide. "The Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition is based on SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise and includes Novell GroupWise(R) for e-mail, task management and calendaring; Novell Open Enterprise Server for storage, print and management services; SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for running applications; SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell for complete desktop productivity; and the Novell edition of the popular office productivity suite OpenOffice.org for Windows* and Linux*. To accommodate growing businesses, the suite features support for up to five servers and 200 users."

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Pentaho announces Open BI Suite 1.6

Pentaho has announced the release of Pentaho Open BI Suite version 1.6. "Pentaho Corp., creator of the world's most popular open source business intelligence (BI) suite, today announced delivery of Pentaho Open BI Suite 1.6. The new release provides general availability of major new enhancements including an enterprise BI metadata layer that streamlines use of BI data as well as a thin-client reporting interface enabling business users to create their own ad hoc queries and reports."

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SAP contributes memory analyzer tool to Eclipse developer community

SAP AG has announced the contribution of a memory analyzer tool to the Eclipse platform. "As part of its commitment to support the open-source developer community, SAP AG today announced that for the first time it will contribute software development capabilities to the Eclipse community. This new tool will enable developers to build more efficient enterprise applications within Eclipse, the leading open source integrated development environment (IDE). All Java developers will be able to benefit from memory analyzer capabilities within Eclipse that were previously available only for the SAP NetWeaver(R) technology platform."

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TimeSys introduces LinuxLink subscriptions for MIPS 74K

TimeSys Corporation has announced the availability of LinuxLink support subscriptions for the MIPS 74K processor core family. "This high performance processor core is a new addition to the MIPS(R) 32-bit line of processor cores. Through the collaboration between MIPS and TimeSys, customers can build their own custom Linux software platforms using the MIPS32 74K core."

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VariCAD 2007 3.00 released

Version 3.00 of VariCAD 2007, a 3D/2D CAD system for mechanical engineering, is available for Linux. The VariCAD news page says: "The new VariCAD 2007 3.00 includes a completely rebuilt BOM (work with attributes, automatic title blocks filling etc.), improved user interface, new improvements in STEP and DWG file compatibility, a further extended tutorial and quick demonstration, and more. A free 30-day trial version is available for download."

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New Books

Learning Python, 3rd Edition--New from O'Reilly Media

O'Reilly has published the book Learning Python, 3rd Edition by Mark Lutz.

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Packt Publishing publishes Mastering OpenLDAP

Packt Publishing has published the book Mastering OpenLDAP: Configuring, Securing and Integrating Directory Services by Matt Butcher.

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Surveys

The Linux Foundation's desktop Linux survey

The Linux Foundation has announced an online survey aimed at determining what the highest-priority needs are for the Linux desktop. "The survey will take only few minutes of your time, and your feedback is essential in helping us to focus our development efforts and accelerate the global adoption of Linux desktops and clients. For example, past surveys highlighted the need to address printing and wireless issues, so we set up focused workgroups and conferences to help developers and vendors work out common solutions to these requirements." The survey is available in several languages.

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Zero Install survey 2007 results

The results from the 2007 Zero Install survey have been announced. "Random summary: People mainly use Zero Install to run ROX applications. Ubuntu is incredibly popular. Not many people found the bug reporting feature. Hardly anyone uses it with Xfce. Software authors' most common reason for using it was to be able to make a single package that runs everywhere."

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Calls for Presentations

Black Hat Tokyo + DC and Europe CfPs now open

Calls for papers have gone out for the Black Hat D.C. and Black Hat Amsterdam security conferences. Black Hat D.C. will take place on February 18-21 in the Washington DC City Center and Black Hat Amsterdam will take place on March 25-28 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Also, Black Hat Japan 2007 starts on October 23, 2007 in Tokyo.

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FOSS.IN/2007 extended CfP closing October 20

The extended call for papers for FOSS.IN/2007 closes on October 20, 2007. "The extended deadline has had some good effects - many more contributor-oriented talks have come in. The Project Days have seen good submissions, and they are really shaping up well. We have sent the list of talks submitted so far to the PD proposers, and should be hearing from them on Monday with initial lists. Debian-Ubuntu, Fedora, Gnome, KDE are all doing fine - great talks, lots of community participation. I'd be happier, though, to see some more talks in the Mozilla PD (to give us a wider choice) and more practical, hands-on talks. How come no talk on Mozilla/Firefox extensions?"

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Upcoming Events

CELF Embedded Linux Conference - Europe

The 2007 CELF Embedded Linux Conference will be held in Linz, Austria on November 2-3, 2007. "This joint conference will consist of over 60 presentations on the subject of embedded and real-time Linux. Presentations on embedded Linux will cover a wide range of topics, including kernel enhancements for realtime, improved memory size, security, and power management. Also, there will be presentations on licensing issues, embedded distributions (covering OpenEmbedded, Embedded Debian, and PokyLinux), embedded graphics systems, flash file systems, and reports of experiences embedding Linux in actual products like TV sets and handheld devices. There will be tutorials on toolchains, packaging tools, and distributions, as well as "Birds of a Feather" sessions on a variety of topics."

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High Level Sponsor Support for Web 2.0 Summit

O'Reilly has announced the top sponsors for the Web 2.0 Summit. "Participants include Platinum sponsor Nokia, and Gold sponsors Adobe, AOL, eBay, Etelos, HP Invent, Level 3 Communications, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and WebEx. The fourth annual Web 2.0 Summit will be held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, October 17-19."

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O'Reilly Where 2.0 2008 charts Location-Aware technologies

O'Reilly has announced the 2008 Where 2.0 Conference. "Now in its fourth year, the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference will bring together the people, projects, and issues building new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry. The conference, taking place May 12-14, 2008 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, CA, will draw over 500 leading-edge developers and innovators from companies who are building location aware technology."

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Events: October 25, 2007 to December 24, 2007

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
October 21 October 25	OOPSLA 2007	Montreal, Canada
October 21 October 26	Colorado Software Summit	Keystone, CO, USA
October 22 October 26	OpenGL Bootcamp with Rocco Bowling	Atlanta, GA, USA
October 23 October 25	Open aLANtejo 07 - CNSL07	Évora, Portugal
October 23 October 26	Black Hat Japan	Tokyo, Japan
October 25 October 26	FSOSS 2007 - Free Software and Open Source Symposium	Toronto, Canada
October 27 October 28	FOSSCamp 2007	Cambridge, MA, USA
October 27	Linux Day Italy	many cities around country, Italy
October 28 November 2	Ubuntu Developer Summit	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
October 29	3rd International Workshop on Storage Security and Survivability	Alexandria, VA, USA
October 29 November 1	Fall VON Conference and Expo	Boston, MA, USA
October 30 October 31	BCS'07	Jakarta, Indonesia
October 31 November 1	LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	Utrecht, Netherlands
November 1 November 2	The Linux Foundation Japan Symposium	Tokyo, Japan
November 2	5th ACM Workshop on Recurring Malcode	Alexandria, VA, USA
November 2 November 3	Embedded Linux Conference, Europe	Linz, Austria
November 2 November 4	Real-Time Linux Workshop	Linz, Austria
November 3	Linux-Info-Tag Dresden	Dresden, Germany
November 5 November 9	Python Bootcamp with Dave Beazley	Atlanta, USA
November 7	NLUUG 25th anniversary conference	Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
November 7	Alfresco North American Community Conference 2007	New York, NY, USA
November 8 November 9	Blog World Expo	Las Vegas, NV, USA
November 10 November 11	Linuxtage	Essen, NRW, Germany
November 11 November 17	Large Installation System Administration Conference	Dallas, TX, USA
November 12 November 16	Ruby on Rails Bootcamp with Charles B. Quinn	Atlanta, USA
November 12 November 15	OWASP & WASC AppSec 2007 Conference	San Jose, USA
November 12 November 16	ApacheCon US 2007	Atlanta, GA, USA
November 13 November 14	IV Latin American Free Software Conference	Foz do Iguacu, Brazil
November 15 November 18	Piksel07	Bergen, Norway
November 15	Alfresco European Community Conference	Paris, France
November 16 November 18	aKademy-es 2007	Zaragoza, Spain
November 20 November 23	DeepSec ISDC 2007	Vienna, Austria
November 22 November 23	Conferencia Rails Hispana	Madrid, Spain
November 24	LinuxDay in Vorarlberg (Deutschland, Schweiz, Liechtenstein und Österreich)	Dornbirn, Austria
November 26 November 29	Open Source Developers' Conference	Brisbane, Australia
November 28 November 30	Mono Summit 2007	Madrid, Spain
November 29 November 30	PacSec 2007	Tokyo, Japan
December 1	Django Worldwide Sprint	Online, World
December 1	London Perl Workshop 2007	London, UK
December 4 December 8	FOSS.IN 2007	Bangalore, India
December 7 December 8	Free Software Conference Scandinavia	Gotherburg, Sweden
December 7 December 8	PGCon Brazil	Sao Paulo, Brazil
December 10	Paris on Rails (2nd Edition)	Paris, France
December 11 December 12	3rd DoD Open Conference: Deployment of Open Technologies and Architectures within Military Systems	Vienna, VA, USA
December 15 December 22	Unix Meeting 2007	IRC, Worldwide

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

Miscellaneous

Transcript: Richard Stallman, honorary degree speech, Pavia 2007

The Fellowship of FSFE has posted a transcript from Richard Stallman's acceptance speech for an honorary University of Parva, Italy degree. "Innovation can create riches and once in a while, those riches can lead to general economic prosperity, especially if you don't have neo-liberal economics to impede the result. But innovation affects things much more important than riches or even economic prosperity. Democracy was an innovation, fascism was an innovation. Today, in Italy, we see the innovation of placing criminal charges against fishermen for saving people from drowning in the sea. Innovations can directly affect our freedom, which is more important than anything else. Innovation can affect social solidarity, for good or for ill." (Thanks to Alessandro Rubini and Ciaran O'Riordan).

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