Announcements

Non-Commercial announcements

GNOME Foundation sponsoring accessibility projects

The GNOME Foundation has announced the availability of a small fund for the sponsoring of accessibility projects. "GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility starts accepting applications on March 1st and will run towards the end of the year. There will be two tracks to the program: In the first track accepted individuals will work towards accomplishing one of the major projects nominated for the program, earning US$6,000 and can take up to six months to complete the task. The second track will reward contributors US$1,000 for fixing five bugs out of a pool of accessibility bugs nominated by the program judges."

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Microsoft pledge excluding primary competitors

The Free Software Foundation Europe comments on Microsoft's recent interoperability pledge. "Yesterday's media briefing by Microsoft on its its pledge to release interoperability information for flagship products contained little actual news. Over the years Microsoft has made multiple similar pledges and they at times proved to be detrimental rather than beneficial for interoperability. Examining the terms of the Microsoft's latest action shows no major change of policy. The announcement confirmed that Microsoft was planning to use its software patent portfolio against interoperating products by requiring a patent license for all commercial activity. This is consistent with its previous attempts at allowing competition only where it provides no actual challenge to its monopolies."

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OSA marks first year with new members and new momentum

The Open Solutions Alliance has announced its 1 year anniversary. "The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving the interoperability and mainstream adoption of comprehensive open solutions, marked its one-year anniversary with three new members, a global focus, and significant advances toward seamless interoperability between commercial open-source applications."

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Commercial announcements

Guardian Digital announces successful SurfSecure deployments

Guardian Digital has announced successful deployments of SurfSecure. "Open Source veteran Guardian Digital is proud to capitalize on the increased need for robust web and content filtering with SurfSecure, based on the open source foundation of the EnGarde Secure Linux platform. After introducing the totally revamped solution late last year, various ISP, government and other B2B organizations have adopted it. This is a result of increased functionality and ease of use, but also because of the company's experience in fully supporting its open source solutions."

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Microsoft announces changes to promote interoperability

The announcement is sweeping enough to make one check the calendar, but we are still a month and a week early for pranks. Microsoft is making available specifications for APIs and communication protocols for Exchange, Office, SQL Server, SharePoint, and others without requiring a license or royalty payments. They will indicate what patents they believe cover any of the protocols and "will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates." There may be lurking dangers, but it appears to be a sincere effort at providing interoperability. "'Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions,' said Ozzie. 'By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.'"

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Novell ships SUSE Linux Enterprise point of service for retailers

Novell, Inc. has announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service. "Enterprise Point of Service allows retailers to customize and manage point of service (POS) systems, reducing their in-store and data center costs while increasing system flexibility and reliability."

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Open-Xchange offers lifeline to Zimbra users

Open-Xchange Inc. has announced a new program for Zimbra customers. "Open-Xchange Inc., the market-leading independent open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange, today announced a special program for Zimbra customers concerns about their investment in light of the pending Microsoft/Yahoo deal. Zimbra customers can fax the Open-Xchange Competitive Upgrade form to Open-Xchange together with a copy of their last two years groupware invoice and Open-Xchange will offer a two year subscription to an equivalent Open-Xchange product for 50% of the cost of their invoice."

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Sun Microsystems announces completion of MySQL acquisition

Sun Microsystems has announced the completion of the MySQL acquisition. "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced it has completed the acquisition of MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. Sun also unveiled the immediate availability of MySQL's complete portfolio of products and enterprise services backed by its 17,000-strong global sales and services organization and its extensive international network of authorized distribution channels."

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Timesys Announces Embedded Linux Support for Atmel AT91SAM9RL Microcontrollers

Timesys has announced Linux support for the AT91SAM9RL microcontroller from Atmel. Ideal for rapid design validation, Timesys is offering a free Board Support Package (BSP) for the Atmel 9RL.

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New Books

Groovy Recipes--New from Pragmatic Bookshelf

No Starch Press has published the book Groovy Recipes by Scott Davis.

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Subject to Change--New from O'Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book Subject to Change by Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, David Verba.

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Resources

Radeon R5xx 3D programming guide released

The release of GPU programming information by AMD/ATI has been welcomed, but there have been occasional complaints that the company has still held back on the documentation needed to make use of 3D acceleration. Those complaints should now come to an end: AMD has released 3D programming information for the R5xx chip family. Expect improved support for those chips (and probably R3xx and R4xx as well) soon. Hopefully the R6xx manuals will not be long in coming.

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Contests and Awards

2007 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice award winners

LinuxQuestions.org has announced the winners of its 2007 Members Choice Award. "Among the winners are Ubuntu, Firefox, MySQL, KDE, Compiz, Nagios and OpenOffice.org. The Members Choice Awards allow members of the Linux community to choose their favorite products in a variety of categories including Server Distribution of the Year, Desktop Distribution of the Year, Office Suite of the Year and Web Browser of the Year. The total number of categories this year was 27."

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Open Source Advocate, Canadian Copyfighter, and AT&T Whistleblower Win Pioneer Awards

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that this year's Pioneer Awards will go to Mitchell Baker and the Mozilla Foundation, Michael Geist, and Mark Klein. "The award ceremony will be held at 7pm, March 4th at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina in conjunction with the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech)."

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SourceForge opens 2008 Community Choice Awards

Voting is open for the 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards. "Ross Turk, Community Manager at SourceForge.net today announced the guidelines for the 2008 Community Choice Awards. Starting this year, the awards are open to any open source project, even those hosted outside of SourceForge. Keeping with tradition, the awards are chosen based solely on community voting in an open voting process."

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Education and Certification

LinuxCertified announces Linux System and Network Administration BootCamp

LinuxCertified has announced a new Linux System and Network Administration BootCamp. "This workshop is designed for information technology professionals and is designed to cover the most important Linux administration areas. LinuxCertified,Inc. a leading provider of Linux training, will offer weekend Linux system administration bootcamp on March 8th - 9th, 2008 in South Bay (CA). This workshop is designed for busy information technology professionals and is designed to cover the most important Linux administration areas."

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Meeting Minutes

Perl 6 Design Meeting Minutes (use Perl)

The minutes from the February 20, 2008 Perl 6 Design Meeting have been published. "The Perl 6 design team met by phone on 20 February 2008. Larry, Allison, Patrick, Jerry, Will, Jesse, and chromatic attended."

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Calls for Presentations

CFP: Workshop on Open Source Software for Computer and Network Forensics

A call for papers has gone out for the Workshop on Open Source Software for Computer and Network Forensics. "We are currently inviting the submission of full papers to the 1st Workshop on Open Source Software for Computer and Network Forensics (OSSCoNF), which will be held in conjunction with OSS2008, the Fourth International Conference on Open Source Systems. The conference will take place in September 7-10, 2008, in Milan, Italy. Workshops will be on September 10th, immediately after the main OSS2008 conference." The submission deadline is June 7.

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Upcoming Events

Fedora 10's FUDCon announced

The 2008 Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon) has been announced. "The next North American FUDCon will be in Boston, MA. It will be held from June 19-21, in parallel with this year's Red Hat Summit."

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LAC2008 -- The final countdown

The final countdown for LAC2008 has been announced. "The Linux Audio Conference 2008 is prepared. The organisation team of LAC2008 is looking forward to welcoming the international Linux audio community in Cologne. The conference is taking place at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) from February 28 to March 2, 2008."

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LugRadio Live USA 2008 is coming

Registration is open for LugRadio Live USA 2008. "LugRadio Live USA 2008, the 'rock-conference' from the team behind the popular LugRadio podcast, brings the successful and unique formula of the UK LugRadio Live events to The Metreon in San Francisco on the 12th and 13th April 2008. The event is supported extensively by Google and also supported by Dice. LugRadio Live USA 2008 brings together over 30 speakers across three stages, 30+ exhibitors, a range of BOF sessions, debate panels, lightbulb talk sessions, demos and much more, all wrapped up in the unique event that the UK incarnation has become known for, combining an incredibly loose, social, inclusive, and amusing atmosphere - if you are new to LugRadio Live, it is nothing you will have seen before."

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MySQL Conference and Expo 2008 keynote speakers announced

The keynote speakers have been announced for the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo. "Sun's Jonathan Schwartz and MySQL's Marten Mickos to Kick Off the World's Largest Open Source Database Event. The sixth annual MySQL Conference & Expo, co-presented by MySQL AB and O'Reilly Media, is expected to bring together 2,000 open source and database users from some of the most exciting and fastest-growing companies in the world, as well as from the large and active MySQL community. The conference will take place April 14-17, 2008, in Santa Clara, California."

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Events: March 6, 2008 to May 5, 2008

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
March 3 March 6	O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference	San Diego, CA, USA
March 3 March 6	Drupalcon Boston 2008	Boston, MA, USA
March 4 March 9	CeBIT Germany	Hannover, Germany
March 8 March 14	Asia OSS Conference & Showcase 2008	Guangzhou, China
March 11 March 12	4th AustralAsian Cleantech Forum	Melbourne, Australia
March 14 March 16	PyCon 2008	Chicago, IL, USA
March 15	FSF Associate Members Meeting	Cambridge, MA, USA
March 16 March 19	BossaConference 2008 - International Conference on Open Source Software for Mobile Embedded Platforms	Pernambuco, Brazil
March 16 March 21	Novell BrainShare 2008	Salt Lake City, UT, USA
March 16 March 20	Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa	Dakar, Senegal
March 17 March 20	Eclipse Community Conference	Santa Clara, CA, USA
March 17 March 20	Spring VON.x Conference	San Jose, CA, USA
March 19 March 20	LinuxWorld Expo 2008 Brussels	Brussels, Belgium
March 24	SDForum Global Open Source Conference	San Francisco, CA, USA
March 26 March 28	CanSecWest 2008	Vancouver, BC, Canada
March 26	Document Freedom Day	Everywhere, Worldwide
March 29 March 30	PostgreSQL Conference East 2008	College Park, MD, USA
March 31 April 2	UKUUG Spring 2008 Conference - Dynamic Languages	Birmingham, England
March 31	2008 European Workshop on System Security	Glasgow, Scotland
March 31 April 2	UKUUG Spring 2008 Conference	Birmingham, England
March 31 April 2	Sharkfest Wireshark Network Analysis Summit	Los Altos Hills, CA, USA
April 2	First meeting UKUUG PostgreSQL SIG	Birmingham, England
April 3 April 4	E-Mail Systems Conference 2008 (Exim and other mail systems)	Birmingham, England
April 4 April 5	openSUSE Packaging Days II	IRC, Everywhere
April 7 April 9	IT360 Conference & Expo	Toronto, Canada
April 7 April 11	Django Bootcamp with Juan Pablo Claude	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
April 8 April 10	Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit	Austin, TX, USA
April 10 April 13	Go-OO Conference 2008	Prague, Czech Republic
April 12 April 13	Open Source Developers Conference Taiwan, 2008	Taipei, Taiwan
April 12 April 13	LugRadio Live USA 2008	San Francisco, CA, USA
April 12 April 18	KDevelop Developer Meeting 2008	Munich, Germany
April 14 April 18	Embedded Systems Conference - Silicon Valley	San Jose, CA, USA
April 14 April 17	MySQL Conference and Expo	Santa Clara, CA, USA
April 15 April 17	Embedded Linux Conference 2008	Mountain View, CA, USA
April 15 April 17	SOA in Health Care	Chicago, IL, USA
April 16 April 18	X Developers' Conference 2008	Mountain View, CA, USA
April 16 April 18	X Developers' Conference for 2008	Mountain View, USA
April 16 April 18	Croatian Linux User Conference	Zagreb, Croatia
April 17 April 19	9th International Free Software Forum	Porto Alegre, Brazil
April 17 April 18	Samba Experience 2008	Göttingen, Germany
April 18 April 19	Third Annual Silicon Valley Ruby Conference	San Jose, CA, USA
April 21 April 25	Open Source meets Industry: Application Park and International Congress	Hannover, Germany
April 22	The Mobile Future	Santa Clara, CA, USA
April 22 April 25	Web 2.0 Expo	San Francisco, CA, USA
April 22	OSADL International Congress	Hannover, Germany
April 23 April 24	Troopers 2008 Security Conference	Munich, Germany
April 23	Linux Foundation Spring Legal Summit	Schaumburg, IL, USA
April 25 April 29	Open Tech Summit Taiwan 2008	Taipei, Taiwan
April 27 May 2	INTEROP Las Vegas 2008	Las Vegas, NV, USA

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

Audio and Video programs

Music made with Linux: Hitmuri "Des Leurres"

Florent Berthaut has released Hitmuri "Des Leurres", the music is freely downloadable. "Hi everyone, i've just released a new album entirely made with linux ( Tapeutape + Jack-Rack + Freewheeling + Ardour)."

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Page editor: Forrest Cook