Lawrence Lessig comments
on the appeals court's decision establishing the validity of the Artistic
License, calling it "huge and important." "In non-technical terms,
the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set
conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you
violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a
copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put
precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright
licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the
license."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release
concerning the lifting of a gag order on some MIT students.
"Today, a federal judge lifted an unconstitutional
gag order that had prevented three Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) students from disclosing academic
research regarding vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare
payment system. The court found that the Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Agency (MBTA) had no likelihood of success
on the merits of its claim under the federal computer
intrusion law and denied the transit agency's request for a
five-month injunction. In papers filed yesterday, the MBTA
acknowledged for the first time that their Charlie Ticket
system had vulnerabilities and estimated that it would take
five months to fix."
Here's a
press release from the Linux Foundation, announcing that Canonical has
just joined as a member. "'Canonical is an important new member for
The Linux Foundation,' said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux
Foundation. 'Matt [Zimmerman] and his team have created an exciting
distribution that has taken the world by storm. They have rallied the cause
of cross-industry, cross-community collaboration for years. We are
extremely pleased to work even more closely with Canonical as we push Linux
to the next stage of growth.'"
use Perl
reports
on the Perl Foundation's statement in the the Jacobsen v. Katzer
license case.
"As we mentioned in March, The Perl Foundation was part of a coalition of groups that collaborated on a "friend of the court" brief that was filed to support the appeal. Allison Randal, and Roberta Cairney, who also helped out with Artistic 2.0, worked on the brief with Chris Ridder, from Creative Commons, and representatives of several other open source, free software, and public license organizations."
The Software Freedom Law Center has released A
Practical Guide to GPL Compliance, a document which appears to be aimed
at corporate management. It is a detailed and clear discussion of the
issues as seen from the SFLC point of view. "The companies we
contact about GPL violations often respond with: 'We didn't know there was
GPL'd stuff in there'. This answer indicates a failure in the software
acquisition and procurement process. Integration of third-party proprietary
software typically requires a formal arrangement and management/legal
oversight before the developers incorporate the software. By contrast, your
developers often obtain and integrate FOSS without intervention. The ease
of acquisition, however, does not mean the oversight is any less necessary.
Just as your legal and/or management team negotiates terms for inclusion of
any proprietary software, they should be involved in all decisions to bring
FOSS into your product."
CadSoft has released version 5.2 of their Eagle printed circuit CAD application. This release adds some new capabilities and bug fixes. See the What's new document for details.
Clarion Corporation of America has
announced the launch of
ClarionMiND, a Linux-based Mobile Internet Navigation Device.
"ClarionMiND is based on
the new Intel(R) Atom(TM) processor Z5xx series and is scheduled to begin
shipment in the 4th quarter of 2008 in the U.S. market. ClarionMiND will
provide an all- new portable device experience and enable users access to
two-way connected navigation, high-speed Internet experiences, digital
music and video playback, and many other innovative entertainment
features."
Red Hat has announced a new program providing college scholarships for
Fedora and free software contributors. "The Fedora Scholarship
program furthers Red Hat and the Fedora Project's commitment to helping
develop and foster up and coming talent in the open source software
field. Applicants will be evaluated on criteria including the quality of
contributions made to Fedora and other free software projects, references
provided by Fedora community members, the amount of time the applicant has
been contributing to Fedora and the overall quality of the
application. Recipients will receive a scholarship to be applied toward
tuition for the student's college or university education."
Memopal has
announced
the availability of a beta version of their backup solution for the
Ubuntu and Debian distributions.
"The public beta
version of Memopal for Linux is now downloadable. This launch was timed to
almost immediately follow the release of the MAC version. As such, it is
part of a wider strategy, the goal of which is to make Online Backup
available to as many operating systems as possible."
Microsoft and Novell have announced that, since their deal turned out so well, they will be expanding it. "The investment focuses on enhanced programs from Novell to provide
tools, support, training and resources for customers seeking an
enterprise-class Linux platform and specifically, the optimal
interoperability solution between Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. It also includes Microsoft's
commitment to purchase up to $100 million in certificates that those
customers can redeem for expanded support from Novell that includes SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server support and support for moving toward an
enterprise-class Linux platform."
RealNetworks, Inc. has
announced the availability of the RealPlayer media player for
Intel Atom Processor machines running Linux.
"The new RealPlayer can play content in all the most sought-after
formats, including: RealMedia(R), Windows Media, MP3, MPEG4, H.264, AAC,
AAC+, VC-1 and Ogg. Devices that use the Intel Atom processor with Moblin
based OS will have the added benefit of highly optimized performance and
battery life when playing media content. RealPlayer can be used to play
content in a browser window for an embedded Internet experience, and also
as a stand-alone media player."
O'Reilly has published an event report from the 2008 GSP East conference.
"At the O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns East conference in
Washington, D.C., June 9-11, Facebook announced that it had more than 80
million active users worldwide, a milestone that illustrated the
phenomenal growth and business opportunities presented by the explosion of
social networking since Facebook was founded barely four years ago.
Social networks are quickly changing the way people connect, communicate,
work and play on the net."
O'Reilly has sent out a press release for the recently held RailsConf '08.
""Passionate and fascinating" is the way one developer
summed up RailsConf 2008 in Portland May 26-June 1, the largest physical
gathering of Ruby and Rails developers in the world.
His view was echoed in conversations and blogs by many of the more than
1,800 programmers from around the world who attended the four-day
conference co-presented by O'Reilly Media and Ruby Central. Some of the
conference-goers have already made plans to go to RailsConf Europe,
scheduled for September 2-4 in Berlin."
A call for papers has gone out for PostgreSQL Conference: West.
"The second annual PostgreSQL Conference: West is being held on October
10th through October 12th 2008 in the The Native American Student &
Community Center at Portland State University."
A call for papers has gone out for ToorCon 10, submissions are due by
August 29.
"We'll be having the main conference again at the
San Diego Convention Center on September 26th-28th, starting off with
our standard reception on Friday night, 50-minute talks on Saturday,
and 20-minute talks on Sunday. We will also be having 2 days of
hands-on training on September 24th-25th, 2008 and our Deep Knowledge
Seminars on September 26th, 2008. Talks are currently being accepted
for all slots and will be given preference based on the order that
they are received."
LinuxMedNews has
announced
a call for white papers by the 7th National Medical Banking Institute.
The submission deadline is October 15.
"The editorial staff of the International Journal of Medical Banking is
seeking white papers in the following areas: Open source healthcare programs
linking banking and healthcare systems; Information privacy, confidentiality
and security that focuses on cross-industry issues in banking and healthcare;
Treasury and cash management programs targeting healthcare; Card-based
platforms and technologies that link healthcare and banking platforms;
Independent Health Record Banks; Consumer-driven healthcare technology tools
that integrate with banking platforms; Point of service technologies that
enable payment at the counter; Community coalition building."
FOSS.IN/2008 has been announced.
"Team FOSS.IN is happy to announce that this year's edition of Asia's
biggest Free and Open Source Software contributor conference will be held
on November 25th to 29th, 2008, at the National Science Symposium Centre,
of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India."
The list of
accepted talks for the Linux Plumbers Conference has been posted. This
event is off to a strong start; there are a lot of interesting, highly
technical talks on the agenda.
The pyArkansas
conference has been announced.
"The Arkansas Python Users Group announces a 1-day Python conference to be
held on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas (www.uca.edu) on
October 4. We plan a 3-hour "Introduction to Python" class as well as talks
on text/file processing, Python standard library, Django, pyGame, OLPC and
GIS programming."
The OpenSUSE project has announced an online presentation about the
F-Spot photo management
application.
"This week, the Helping Hands Program is proud to host "Ten Things You
Didn't Know about F-Spot" presented by the F-Spot Developer Team. This
event will be held on Friday, August 22nd at 14:30 UTC in the
#opensuse-gnome IRC Channel on the Freenode Network."
Noble Master Games has launched the
Java Game Tome site.
"Noble Master Games has created the Java Game Tome, a game
showcase platform for Java game developers.
The Java Game Tome is an internet site that focuses entirely on games written in the Java
programming language. Games run as Java Applet, Java Webstart or via download. Games are available
for all major operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux."
Linux.com features a video
interview
with Keith Bergelt.
"Linux.com correspondent R. Scott Belford caught up with Open Invention Network CEO Keith Bergelt at the 2008 LinuxWorld Expo and had a pleasant (on-camera) conversation with him."