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AnnouncementsNon-Commercial announcements Google Summer of Code 2009 announcementsThe following projects have announced their participation in the 2009 Google Summer of Code. See the official Google Summer of Code site for more information.
Stallman: the JavaScript trapRichard Stallman has posted a warning about non-free JavaScript code and a call for a mechanism which would enable browsers to run only freely-licensed JavaScript. "It is possible to release a Javascript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original. Current free browsers do not offer a facility to run your own modified version instead of the one delivered in the page. The effect is comparable to tivoization, although not quite so hard to overcome."
Sugar Labs Nonprofit Announces New Version of Sugar Learning PlatformSugar Labs has announced the availability of version 0.84 of the Sugar Learning Platform for the One Laptop Per Child XO-1, classroom PCs, and netbook computers. "Designed from the ground up for children, the Sugar computer environment is used by almost one-million students aged 5 to 12 in over 40 countries every school day. This improved version features new collaborative Sugar Activities and, in response to teacher feedback, the ability to easily suspend and resume Activities, saving time in the classroom."
Commercial announcements Mandriva announces Q4 financial resultsMandriva has announced its latest financial results. " Turnover is 0.83 million Euros, operating revenue is 1.11 million Euros while costs are down to 1.51 million Euros representing a trading loss of 0.40 million Euros. Turnover remains at the same level as for the previous quarter. Net loss comes to 0.14 million Euros. The company has redeployed its strategy around the OS (OEM, ODM ...) applications yielding strong added value (Pulse 2; ...) and the web. The financial restructuring carried out at the end of 2008, along with the sales reorganisation currently underway, should begin to show tangible results in the 2009 financial year."
TomTom joins the Open Invention NetworkThe Open Invention Network has announced that TomTom has signed up. There's no mention of the Microsoft litigation, but clearly that has to be a motivating factor; it suggests that OIN may get involved in that case. "'Linux plays an important role at TomTom as the core of all our Portable Navigation Devices,' said Peter Spours, director of IP at TomTom. 'We believe that by becoming an Open Invention Network licensee, we encourage Linux development and foster innovation in a technical community that benefits everyone.'"
Contests and Awards Wietse Venema and Creative Commons win FSF awardsThe Free Software Foundation has announced the recipients of its annual free software awards. "Creative Commons was honored with the Award for Projects of Social Benefit, and Wietse Venema was honored with the Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Presenting the awards was FSF founder and president Richard Stallman."
Event Reports O'Reilly's ETech conference scopes out ideas at the edge of innovationO'Reilly has published a report on the recent ETech 2009 conference. "ETech 2009, O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference held March 9-12 in San Jose, urged web technologists and visionaries to grasp the opportunities in today's financial and political turmoil by focusing on work they care deeply about. Through four jam-packed days, conference-goers immersed themselves in revolutionary ideas and emergent technologies they can exploit to succeed."
Meeting Minutes Amendments to the OpenOffice.org Community Council CharterThe OpenOffice.org Community Council Charter has been amended. "The main changes are an increase in the number of members from nine to ten and the corresponding voting constituencies. With the new charter, any OpenOffice.org community member may stand for a council seat. We are looking forward to the upcoming elections to increase the vitality of our community and the Community Council."
Calls for Presentations EuroSciPy 2009 call for papersEuroSciPy 2009 has been announced, along with a call for papers. "We're pleased to announce the EuroSciPy 2009 Conference to be held in Leipzig, Germany on July 25-26, 2009. This is the second conference after the successful conference last year. Again, EuroSciPy will be a venue for the European community of users of the Python programming language in science." Submissions are due by June 15.
Call for presentations - Libre Graphics Meeting 2009A call for presentations has gone out for the Libre Graphics Meeting 2009. "Libre Graphics Meeting, the premiere workshop and conference for developers and enthusiasts of free software graphics, will be held May 6-9, 2009, at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. LGM invites you to share your work with the community. Topics of interest include reports on major open source graphics projects, technology previews, engineering talks, power-user techniques, graphics business best practices, and general issues such as open file formats and collaboration." Submissions are due by April 1.
UKUUG - Summer 2009 - Call For PapersA call for papers has gone out for the UKUUG summer 2009 conference. Submissions are due by May 8. "Summer 2009 will take place at the Birmingham Conservatoire from Friday 7th to Sunday 9th August. The conference this year will have a choice of conference streams, and we are particularly keen to get other groups and projects involved."
Upcoming Events FSFE announces the second European Licensing and Legal Workshop for Free SoftwareThe Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has announced a workshop on the licensing and legal aspects of free software to be held April 23-24 in Amsterdam. It is primarily targeted at members of the European Legal Network, which was created to address free software legal issues throughout all of the different jurisdictions in Europe. "This event is one of the activities of FSFE's Freedom Task Force (FTF). The FTF is an infrastructure activity to help individuals, projects and businesses understand Free Software licensing and the opportunities that it presents. The FTF works in partnership with gpl-violations.org to deal with licence violations in the European arena. The goal of the FTF is to foster best practice throughout the industry." Click below for the full announcement.
White Oak Technologies, Inc., Google, Sun Microsystems Sponsor PyConWhite Oak Technologies, Inc., Google, Sun Microsystems have been announced as sponsors of the PyCon 2009 conference. "White Oak Technologies, Inc., Google, Sun Microsystems Sponsor World's Largest Python Conference Python 3.0 enters spotlight at PyCon 2009 CHICAGO - March 24, 2009 - PyCon 2009, the largest annual conference of the worldwide Python programming community, takes place March 25 - April 2 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare and the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare in Chicago, IL. The core conference runs March 27-29, with days of special events both before and after the main conference."
Events: April 2, 2009 to June 1, 2009The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it. Web sites KDE Brainstorm: Get Your Ideas Into KDE! (KDEDot)KDE.News has announced the new brainstorm forum. "KDE is about the community, rather than the product. It is not all about the code: there are many other ways in which people can be part of KDE, and a very simple way is to connect with other people. In an effort to bridge the gap between users and developers, the KDE Community Forums have launched a new initiative to coordinate feature requests. A new "Brainstorm" section has been created in the KDE Community Forums: users are encouraged to post requests there."
Miscellaneous Creative Commons weighs in on proposed OpenStreetMap licenseThe OpenStreetMap (OSM) project has been looking into changing the license that covers its data for some time now. A new license—the Open Database License or ODbL—was proposed in February to replace the current Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. LWN had a detailed look at the licensing issues in October 2008, but the controversy goes back at least a year before that.Creative Commons recently made some comments on ODbL that are rather critical of the license, at least for use by OSM; it would rather see OSM data reside in the public domain—as would a number of OSM contributors. "In general, we believe that the interests of both providers and users of data and databases, particularly in science, education, and other areas where the ability to exchange and re-use data freely is critical to achieving the objectives of the data exchange community, are best served by reducing unnecessary transaction costs, simplifying legal tools, and providing as much clarity and certainty to providers and users of their respective rights and obligations as the law allows." This seems likely to muddy the waters further, which may delay or change any OSM relicensing plans.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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