Announcements

Non-Commercial announcements

An opportunity to End Software Patents: ESP briefs Court in Bilski case rehearing

End Software Patents (ESP) has sent out a press release about their amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief filed in a patent case which they believe could effectively stop software patents in the US. "ESP executive director Ben Klemens said, 'This is an historic opportunity to fix the US patent system, as the Bilski rehearing will directly address the boundaries of the subject matter of patents. In our brief, the End Software Patents project supports the Supreme Court's long-held position that computer software should not be patentable, and has highlighted to the Court the real economic harm software patents cause the US economy.'" Click below for the full release.

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Tri-Continental foundation of health experts collaborate on Global Health IT Solutions (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews reports on a new health care collaborative effort. "Open Health Tools (OHT) announced a collaborative effort between national health agencies, government-funded organizations and agencies, major healthcare providers, international standards organizations and companies from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States to develop common healthcare IT products and services. OHT's mission is to provide software tools and components that will accelerate the implementation of electronic health information interoperability platforms, which improve patient quality of care, safety and access to electronic health records (EHR)."

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Commercial announcements

Ampro Reveals Ubuntu-Based Embedded Linux

Ampro Computers Inc. has announced new Linux support for its line of board-level embedded computers. Derived from Ubuntu packages, Ampro Embedded Linux is a free, open-source, reduced-footprint operating system enhanced with device-oriented features such as its default touch-enabled Hildon graphical user interface, plus other selected technologies from the Ubuntu Mobile & Embedded (UME) project.

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gOS and Everex introduce MyMiniPC with MySpace Apps

gOS and Everex have announced the MyMiniPC. "Good OS (gOS) and Everex today introduced the limited edition MyMiniPC* running gOS Space 2.9, a special version of gOS Linux made for MySpace users, featuring brand new MySpace Apps just weeks after the MySpace API launch. MyMiniPC targets MySpace users with a glossy white case, 3D desktop, and a media center dock stacked with MySpace and Web 2.0 folders for News, Photos, Videos, Music, TV and Movies, and more. At one and half inches tall and weighing two pounds, the $499 MyMiniPC is the most compact and premium gOS desktop ever, aimed at the 100,000,000 MySpace users."

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KDE and Wikimedia Start Collaboration

KDE e.V and Wikimedia Deutschland have opened a shared office in Frankfurt, Germany. As two organizations that share similar goals and organizational challenges, they hope that working out of the same space will strengthen and expand their links to the Free Culture community, as well as allowing them to share resources, experience and infrastructure.

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CNR.com adds access to web software applications

Linspire, Inc. has announced the availability of web-based software applications at CNR.com. "As usage trends show an increasing demand for web-based applications in daily connected lives, CNR.com provides a single marketplace for users to easily find and select software titles from over 4,000 web-based software products."

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Microsoft publicly posts additional protocol documentation

Microsoft Corp. has announced the publication of additional protocol documentation. "Microsoft today posted on MSDN more than 14,000 pages of preliminary versions of technical documentation for Microsoft protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. With this action, Microsoft will have posted a cumulative total of more than 44,000 pages of protocol documentation that it committed in its interoperability principles. Anyone who wishes to do so can now access, for free, preliminary versions of the documentation for the "connection points" between these Microsoft products".

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No Starch Press Turns Table on File Sharing

No Starch Press has announced a plan to make new books available online. "No Starch Press, publisher of geek books, is trying something interesting with file-sharing sites. Recognizing that the book business is changing and that books end up on file-sharing sites within days of being released in electronic form, they thought they'd take matters into their own hands. The result? No Starch released their own "official pirate version" of two best-selling backlist titles, Leander Kahney's The Cult of Mac and The Cult of iPod. News of the release became a viral hit online, and there were over 11,000 downloads of the books in the first week."

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RedPost launches new Linux-based photo frame

RedPost has announced their second generation photo frame kit. "On June 18, 2007, we launched the RedPost/Kit, a do-it-yourself, linux-based digital photo frame, described by one blogger as a "modder's wet dream." It was unlike anything else available for $549. It encouraged hacking. It was clunky. It was heavy. It ran slow. It looked hot in its plasma-cut, robotically-welded, powder-coated steel case. Today, we're launching the Kit's kid brother, the Sign(beta). It's much lighter. It's a lot faster, with 4x the memory. It looks hot in its custom-designed, carefully polished, extruded aluminum case. It's no longer do-it-yourself -- just plug it in, go through the 5 minute config process, and you're up and running."

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VIA announces strategic open source driver development initiative

VIA Technologies Inc has announced a strategic open source driver development initiative. "Today at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, VIA Technologies, Inc., a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, announced a new initiative to improve support for the Open Source development community. As the first step in this initiative, VIA will open its official VIA Linux website at http://linux.via.com.tw this month. The site will initially host drivers, technical documentation, source code, and information regarding the VIA CN700, CX700/M, CN896 and the new VIA VX800 chipsets, with plans to add official forums and support for more products later on in the year." Note that there is nothing, yet, at the website.

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VMware Workstation 6.5 beta and VMware ACE 2.5 beta released

VMware Workstation 6.5 Beta 1 and VMware ACE 2.5 Beta 1 have been released.

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New Books

Packt Publishing announces AsteriskNOW

Packt Publishing has published the book AsteriskNOW by Nir Simionovich.

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Building a Server with FreeBSD 7--New from No Starch Press

No Starch Press has published the book Building a Server with FreeBSD 7 by Bryan Hong.

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Resources

The Australian Open Source Industry and Community Report

The folks at Waugh Partners (i.e. Pia and Jeff) have been working for some time on a definitive census of the the state of the open source industry in Australia. the results are now available in the form of a slickly-produced, 20-page report. "We knew that our country has produced some of the world's most influential Open Source innovators and projects. We knew that clever, home-grown Open Source companies were succeeding in local and export markets. But we didn't have the numbers. Until now."

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Linux Gazette #149 is out

Issue #149 of the Linux Gazette has been announced. "Linux Gazette is a volunteer-run monthly web magazine dedicated to two simple ideas: making Linux a little more fun, and sharing ideas and discoveries."

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Event Reports

Linux Foundation's Annual Collaboration Summit Kicks Off

The Linux Foundation (LF) has kicked off its annual Collaboration Summit. The brightest minds in the Linux server, desktop and mobile communities, among others, are gathering at the UT Super Computing Center in Austin, Texas to determine how to advance the operating system in the year ahead.

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Meeting Minutes

Perl 6 Design Minutes

The April 2, 2008 edition of the Perl 6 Design Minutes have been posted. "The Perl 6 design team met by phone on 02 April 2008. Larry, Allison, Patrick, Jerry, Will, Jesse, Nicholas, and chromatic attended."

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Calls for Presentations

EuroPython 2008 Call for Participation

A call for participation has gone out for EuroPython 2008. "EuroPython 2008, the European conference for the communities around Python, including the Zope and Plone communities, will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania from 7th July until 12th July (including three days of sprints). Proposals for talks and activities are now welcome". The submission deadline is May 22.

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Recon 2008 CFP last call, early registration open

A call for papers has gone out for Recon 2008. Recon 2008. The event takes place on June 10-15, 2008 in Montreal, Canada. The submission deadline is April 30.

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Upcoming Events

Support the Libre Graphics Meeting and Scribus

The Scribus desktop publishing project has announced a call for help for the 2008 Libre Graphics Meeting. The meeting will take place on May 8-11, 2008 in Wroclaw, Poland. "The Libre Graphics Meeting brings together developers and users of free software graphics applications, such as the GIMP,Inkscape, Scribus, Blender, Krita, the Open Clipart Library and more. For the first time, we are asking the community to help support this meeting. In its third edition, the organization needs your help!"

GnomeDesktop.org has more details on the LGM funding campaign.

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Mobile Linux Conference Set To Debut At LinuxWorld 2008 (sys-con.com)

The Mobile Linux Conference has been has been announced, it will take place on August 4-7, 2008 in San Francisco, CA. "IDG World Expo, the leading producer of world-class tradeshows and events around the globe has announced that LinuxWorld Conference & Expo® will include a new event, the Mobile Linux Conference, to address the increasing penetration of Linux into the mobile handset marketplace."

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OWASP NYC AppSec 2008 Conference announced

The OWASP NYC AppSec 2008 Conference will take place in New York, NY on October 7-10, 2008. "In association with: WASC, NYM InfraGard, AITGlobal, NYC PHP, NYCBUG, ISACA, ISSA and Pace University your invited to (2) days of Seminars and Technology Pavilion from the world's best application security technology minds, (2) days of hardcore hands-on training, all held at Pace University, located in downtown New York City at One Pace Plaza New York, NY 10038."

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Engine Yard Kicks Off Hackfest Series for Ruby Developers

Engine Yard has announced the Hackfest Series for Ruby Developers. "Engine Yard, provider of the leading Ruby and Rails deployment platform, today announced a series of Hackfests, informal community events open to Ruby developers, where sharing, learning, and hacking rule. The inaugural Hackfest was a resounding success with participation from over 100 top Ruby and Rails developers. Two more Engine Yard Hackfests are planned for the coming months."

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Likewise Software experts to speak at Samba eXPerience 2008

Likewise Software representatives will speak at Samba eXPerience 2008. "Likewise® Software, a leader in delivering authentication and audit solutions for mixed networks, today announced that its experts Krishna Ganugapati, VP of engineering, and Brian Koropoff and Rafal Szczesniak, software design engineers, will be presenting at Samba Experience 2008. Samba eXPerience 2008, organized by Sernet, takes place April 14-18, in Goettingen, Germany at the Hotel Freizeit."

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Events: April 17, 2008 to June 16, 2008

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
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 14 April 18	Samba eXPerience 2008	Göttingen, Germany
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 18 April 19	Third Annual Silicon Valley Ruby Conference	San Jose, CA, USA
April 18 April 20	National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition	San Antonio, TX, USA
April 18 April 20	Penguicon 2008	Troy, Michigan, 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 25 April 26	Guademy 2008	Valencia, Spain
April 27 May 2	INTEROP Las Vegas 2008	Las Vegas, NV, USA
April 28 May 4	Monotone Developer Summit	Wuppertal, Germany
May 2 May 3	Maker Faire Bay Area	San Mateo, CA, USA
May 5 May 9	Ruby on Rails Bootcamp with Charles B. Quinn	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
May 8	Embedded Masterclass 2008	London, UK
May 8 May 11	Libre Graphics Meeting 2008	Wroclaw, Poland
May 8 May 9	IV WHYFLOSS CONFERENCE MADRID 08	Madrid, Spain
May 9 May 11	Pycon Italia Due	Firenze, Italy
May 12 May 14	Where 2.0 Conference	Burlingame, CA, USA
May 13	Embedded Masterclass 2008	Bristol, UK
May 15	NLUUG spring conference 2008	Ede, the Netherlands
May 15 May 16	YAPC::Asia 2008	Tokyo, Japan
May 15 May 16	V WHYFLOSS CONFERENCE CORRIENTES 08	Corrientes, Argentina
May 16 May 17	FOSSCamp 2008	Prague, Czech Republic
May 17 May 18	4th Int. Workshop on Software Engineering for Secure Systems (SESS'08)	Leipzig, Germany
May 17 May 18	French-speaking Python Days	Paris, France
May 19 May 23	AFS and Kerberos Best Practices Workshop 2008	Newark, NJ, USA
May 20 May 23	PGCon 2008	Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
May 20 May 21	Digital Standards Organization (Digistan) Workshop	The Hague, The Netherlands
May 21 May 22	EUSecWest 2008	London, England
May 21 May 22	linuxdays.ch Genève	Genève, Switzerland
May 28 May 31	LinuxTag 2008 where .com meets .org	Berlin, Germany
May 29 June 1	RailsConf 2008	Portland, OR, USA
May 29 May 30	SyScan’08 Hong Kong	Hong Kong, China
May 30 May 31	eLiberatica 2008 - The benefits of Open and Free Technologies	Bucharest, Romania
June 2 June 5	VON.x Europe	Amsterdam, the Netherlands
June 3 June 4	Nordic Nagios Meet	Stockholm, Sweden
June 6 June 7	Portuguese Perl Workshop	Braga, Portugal
June 6 June 7	European Tcl/Tk User Meeting 2008	Strasbourg, France
June 9 June 13	Python Bootcamp with David Beazley	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
June 10 June 15	REcon 2008	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
June 11 June 13	kvm developer's forum 2008	Napa, CA, USA

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

Page editor: Forrest Cook