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Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Cairo participates in Google Summer of Code 2008
The Cairo graphics project has announced its participation in the Google Summer of Code 2008. "This is a fantastic opportunity for students to gain experience with the free-software community, work closely with experts, and also make a valuable contribution to a significant project. More than that, working with the cairo graphics library and community is a lot of fun! (And Google even pays the student a little bit.)"
OpenMRS a participant in the 2008 Google Summer of Code (LinuxMedNews)
LinuxMedNews has announced the participation of the OpenMRS medical record system in the 2008 Google Summer of Code. "OpenMRS is excited to accept applications for the 2008 Google Summer of Code. It's the community's second year of participation in the project, which brought a dozen open source developers into the community to build facilities such as statistical patient matching algorithms, and quick installers into OpenMRS. If you're an actively enrolled student, and would like to spend your summer learning how to participate in an open source community, come visit our project page, and apply."
OSA announces European plans
The Open Solutions Alliance has launched a new European chapter. "The OSA announced in January 2008 its plans to launch a global, chapter-based structure with the European chapter as its first chapter outside the United States. OSA Europe will address business users' requirements for open solutions by federating a European open source business ecosystem, promoting interoperability and developing synergies between European software vendors."
Happy Run Some Old Web Browsers Day!
For those who hearken back to the days when browsers and web pages were far simpler, Jamie Zawinski has resurrected old domains and browsers for your viewing pleasure. "I had originally planned on re-hosting these web sites on an SGI Indy running Mosaic Netsite Commerce Server, just for maximal comedic value... and to see how long it took before someone Øwned it, since there must be someone out there who still remembers how to launch an assault on Irix 5.3. Unfortunately, that wasn't possible for political reasons explained below." (Seen on Boing Boing)
Commercial announcements
MainConcept announces cross-platform video and audio CODECs
MainConcept AG has announced the release of its Codec SDK 7.5. "MainConcept is the first industry-wide vendor providing its broad range of codecs in one concise package for Windows, Mac/Intel and Linux simultaneously, delivering on its mission to make every codec available for every platform. Based on a comprehensive set of industry codecs such as H.264, MPEG-2, DVCPRO HD, JPEG 2000, and Dolby(R)Digital, professional software developers are now able to seamlessly integrate low level codec components and DirectShow filters for video and audio encoding and decoding into their own solutions for any major PC platform."
Open-Xchange Joins Eclipse Foundation
Open-Xchange has joined the Eclipse Foundation. "'Open-Xchange is the only independent, open source collaboration software project and product and as such, we are committed to embracing a fully open development framework that is cross platform and that embraces industry standards,' said Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange. 'Today, we are inviting the Eclipse community to fully participate in the evolution of our open communication platform and by doing so, offering contributors and industry partners long-term security to continue independent development.'"
Plat'Home launches Linux-based Eco-Friendly servers
Plat'Home is selling its OpenBlockSTM server in the USA. "Plat'Home, Japan's Linux technology pioneer, is bringing its OpenBlockSTM server, a small, easy-to-use, easy-to-configure solution for growing companies, to North America. Part of the first ecology-friendly line of Linux servers ever shipped in the United States, Plat'Home's OpenBlockS server has been built and tested to provide enterprise-grade reliability in its RISC-based hardware, and has eliminated moving parts including a hard disk drive and cooling fan. It is also RoHS certified, a European Union directive meaning free of lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and other damaging materials."
Transgaming becomes Khronos Group Member
Transgaming has announced that it has joined the Khronos Group. "TransGaming Inc., a leading developer of portability and graphics technologies has become a Khronos Group Contributing Member, joining over one hundred industry leading technology companies. TransGaming will participate and vote with all Members in the ongoing development and promotion of open standards for the authoring and acceleration of dynamic media on platforms ranging from embedded systems to high-performance desktop and workstation systems."
Volantis releases Mobility Server to the Open Source Community
Volantis Systems has released its Mobility Server to the open source community under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version three. The company also launched the Mobility Server Project to help developers build out the mobile platform.
Resources
The Linux Foundation's kernel development paper
The Linux Foundation has posted a white paper on the kernel development process written by Greg Kroah-Hartman, Amanda McPherson, and LWN editor Jonathan Corbet. There will be little new there for those who have read similar reports on LWN or seen Greg's talk, but it is, in your editor's humble opinion, a good summary of the information. Articles based on this information are starting to show up in the press; this paper is the source they are all working from.
SFLC releases paper on shareware redistribution of free software
The Software Freedom Law Center has announced announced a new paper on shareware redistribution of free software. "The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), today published a paper that addresses free software distributed as shareware in violation of its original license. The paper describes actions free software developers can take to prevent, discover and deal with shareware-related license infringement. It was written after several free software authors contacted SFLC with concerns about their software being incorporated into shareware products without attribution and without source code distribution."
Education and Certification
LPI to Develop Enterprise-level "Security" Exam
The Linux Professional Institute has announced plans to develop a new "Security" exam elective for its LPIC-3 certification program. "Exam development for the LPI-303 "Security" elective is underway with the identification of job tasks associated with qualified candidates who have expertise in enterprise-level security skills. This will be followed by an extensive global Job Task Analysis survey in July-August 2008. The exam development program will also include objective and item development and a series of "beta" exams at special events around the world (October-November 2008). The initial LPIC-3 exams made successful and extensive use of volunteer participation in special "beta" exam events. Final exams are expected to be published and launched at the end of February 2009."
Event Reports
Tracing Summit coverage
The TracingSummit2008 recently took place in Montreal, Canada. "New electronic services rely on an increasingly sophisticated infrastructure composed of powerful servers, numerous fixed or mobile clients, and the system and networking software. The central processing units have evolved from simple processors, to symmetric multi-processors (SMP), non-uniform memory access (NUMA) SMPs and more recently multi-core (SMP on a single chip) systems. Embedded soft and hard real-time multi-core multi-computer systems are exceedingly difficult to debug and tune. Many problems, often timing related, only show under real loads, when the hardware (cache, page tables, synchronization) and software (operating system, virtual machines, libraries and applications) are interacting in real-time."
Meeting Minutes
Perl 6 Design Minutes for 26 March 2008
The Minutes from the March 26, 2008 Perl 6 Design meeting have been posted. "The Perl 6 design team met by phone on 26 March 2008. Larry, Allison, Patrick, Will, Jerry, Jesse, Nicholas, and chromatic attended." Additional meeting notes are also available.
Calls for Presentations
Nordic Perl Workshop 2008 - Call for Papers
A call for papers has gone out for the Nordic Perl Workshop 2008. "Stockholm Perl Mongers and its fellow Nordic Perl Mongers arranges the annual Nordic Perl Workshop in Stockholm, Sweden on the 24th and 25th of May (over a weekend). This is the second time the workshop is arranged in Stockholm and the 6th time in total. The venue for this years workshop is located right next to Vasaparken near Odenplan, in the heart of Stockholm. During summertime this is a green oasis where one can chill in the grass, watch people or take a break in some of the park's coffee-shops. Odenplan also offers a wide range of restaurants and pubs in it's vicinity." The submission deadline is May 2.
Upcoming Events
Early Registration Extension for Linux Symposium
Early registration for Linux Symposium has been extended until April 15, 2008. The Linux Symposium will be held July 23 - 26, 2008 in Ottawa, Canada.
Explore Mobile Future with Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley
"The Mobile Future: Technology Revolutionizing Our Lives" is a one-day conference gathering leading academics, researchers, pundits and industry experts to discuss their visions of this mobile future, along with technology and business models for achieving them. The conference will be held April 22, 2008, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif. USA.
PHP TestFest 2008
PHP TestFest 2008 has been announced. "The PHP-QA team would like to announce the TestFest for the month of May 2008. The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event, local User Groups (UG) are invited to join the TestFest. These UGs can meet physically or come together virtually. The point however is that people network to learn together. Aside from being an opportunity for all of you to make friends with like minded people in your (virtual) community, it also will hopefully reduce the work load for the PHP.net mentors."
SDForum presents third annual Silicon Valley Ruby conference
SDForum has announced the Third Annual Silicon Valley Ruby Conference. "Keynote addresses will be delivered by Tim Bray, director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems, and John Lam, creator of the original RubyCLR, leading visionary for IronRuby and open source ambassador at Microsoft." The event will take place on April 18-19, 2008 at The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA.
SELinux Developer Summit 2008, Ottawa
The SELinux Developer Summit will take place in Ottawa, Canada on July 22, 2008. "The SELinux Developer Summit will be a one day summit intended to provide a forum for focused technical discussion regarding current and future development plans for SELinux and related Flask/TE projects. The intended audience will consist of current SELinux developers, system/security administrators, distribution organizers/packagers, and power users. The format will be a mix of presentations and moderated discussion, including a panel where attendees will be invited to submit questions and feedback."
TechInsights announces intellectual property symposium
TechInsights has announced the Intellectual Property Symposium, which will be co-located with the Embedded Systems Conference. "TechInsights today announced the industry panel topics for its inaugural Intellectual Property Symposium, a joint effort of EE Times, Semiconductor Insights and Portelligent, which is scheduled to take place April 15-16, 2008 at the San Jose Fairmont. The Intellectual Property Symposium is the first and only event to bring together the foremost legal, business and government minds to discuss the importance and logistics of properly protecting, managing and leveraging intellectual property."
Page editor: Forrest Cook