A coalition of authors and publishers is urging a federal judge to reject
the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search, arguing that
the sweeping agreement to digitize millions of books ignores critical
privacy rights for readers and writers. "The settlement, currently
pending approval from a New York federal district court, would end the
legal challenges brought by the Authors' Guild over the Google Book Search
project. It would give Google the green light to scan and digitize
millions of books and allow users to search for and read those books
online. However, Google's system could monitor what books users search
for, how much of the books they read, and how long they spend on various
pages."
The Open Invention Network has announced
the acquisition of 22 software patents formerly owned by Microsoft.
"We are pleased to have purchased these patents and view this as a
model of successful collaboration among defensive patent organizations that
share a common goal of creating freedom of action for practicing entities
across Linux and the broader technology sector. The prospect of these
patents being placed in the hands of non-practicing entities was a threat
that has been averted with these purchases, irrespective of patent quality
and whether or not the patents truly read on Linux."
Information on what the patents actually covered remains scarce. Readers
wanting a conspiratorial view of the whole thing can find it at
Groklaw.
Canonical has announced a new support service.
"Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, announced today an
advanced service and support offering that gives large enterprises with complex IT environments a
highly-skilled, dedicated Canonical support professional.
Premium Service Engineer (PSE), a new level of support for large enterprises, offers a single point
of contact for Canonical's large customers - enabling a faster response time and faster issue
resolution. PSEs have access to all levels of support, including Canonical's platform engineers."
Reuters reports on a collaboration between Red Hat and HP.
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is now available on HP BladeSystem and HP ProLiant
servers. With this combination, customers can take advantage of an open source,
standards-based virtual infrastructure that provides scalability and security
capabilities. Additionally, enterprises will be able to leverage management
capabilities offered by both companies."
Drupal would appear to be the latest
project which is attempting to assert heavy-handed control through the use
of a new trademark policy;
complaints from users are beginning to appear. "This policy - as
well as the accompanying website - may be changed at any time. You accept
that all licenses accorded under this policy are non-exclusive,
non-transferable, non-sub-licensable, revocable at any time, and subject to
changes in policy. Hence, changes in this policy may cause permissions to
be revoked or made dependent on additional obligations."
The EU Commission has issued a
press release
regarding Oracle's plans to acquire Sun.
"The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation under the EU Merger Regulation into the planned acquisition of US hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, a US database and application software company. The Commissions initial market investigation indicated that the proposed acquisition would raise serious doubts as to its compatibility with the Single Market because of competition concerns on the market for databases. The decision to open an in-depth inquiry does not prejudge the final result of the investigation. The Commission now has 90 working days, until 19 January 2010, to take a final decision on whether the concentration would significantly impede effective competition within the European Economic Area (EEA) or a substantial part of it."
(Found on Groklaw).
LinuxMedNews
notes
that the application Medical has won an award.
"Medical, the Open Source Health and Hospital Information System, has been the winner in SourceForge project of the month.
In the latest release, Medical includes a new section on genetics (NCBI / genecards) and family history. It also contains perinatal and puerperium information.
Medical is part of the GNU solidario project, a non-profit effort to provide Health and Education to emerging economies with free software."
KDE.News covers
the third Plasma developers meeting. "Last week, the third Plasma
developers meeting was held in the Swiss Alps. 15 developers from 3
continents came to Randa, Canton Wallis to work on Plasma's code, design
new ideas and concepts and to strengthen their bonds as a sub-community
within KDE. Topics of this third Plasma sprint, which is named after a
plasma fusion reactor, included but were not limited to Plasma on mobile
devices, network-enabled Plasma widgets and a richer user interface thanks
to a new animation framework. Furthermore deeper integration of web
services in the Plasma shell, semantic awareness of Plasma components,
secure privilege elevation and polishing of the existing functionality,
among many other things, were on the agenda."
A call for papers has gone out for the Distro Summit 2010,
submissions are due by September 30.
"Distro Summit 2010 is a one-day technical conference with a strong focus on
collaboration between Free Software distributions. The event is hosted at
the linux.conf.au, which will be held in Wellington (New Zealand) on the
18-23 of January, 2010.
We are looking for proposals from any Free Software distribution, from the
typical full distributions (both linux and non-linux) to the niche market
derivatives."
The GitTogether '09 Developer/User Summit takes place on October
27-29, 2009 in Mountain View, CA, proposals are being solicited.
"Like last year, this GitTogether immediately follows the Google
Summer of Code mentor summit, so some of our end-user groups may
already have representatives in the area and might like to attend.
We've timed the GitTogether to follow the summit so we can get some
users to attend while they are still in the area.
Git contributors and users alike are welcome to attend. Admission is
free, as everything is being donated by Google, but you will need
to arrange for your own travel and lodging."
A call for proposals has gone out for PyCon 2010, which takes place on
February 17-25, 2010 in Atlanta, GA.
"Due date: October 1st, 2009
Want to showcase your skills as a Python Hacker? Want to have
hundreds of people see your talk on the subject of your choice? Have some
hot button issue you think the community needs to address, or have some
package, code or project you simply love talking about? Want to launch
your master plan to take over the world with python?"
A call for papers has gone out for SCALE 8x, abstracts are due by
December 15.
"The Eighth Annual So Cal Linux Expo is coming! It will be February 19th-21st, 2010, and will again
be at the Westin LAX.
The Call for Papers for the conference is now open. Besides the regular conference tracks, SCALE 8x
will include specialty tracks for both developers and beginners."
KDE.News has
announced Akademy 2010, the date will be late June or early July.
"The KDE community is proud to announce the location of next year's Akademy: Tampere, Finland. Akademy is the yearly world conference held by the KDE community to celebrate the Free Software desktop and work towards the future of KDE.
After a successful Akademy 2009 on the Canary Islands, as part of the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Akademy heads north to the birthplace of Linux where contributors will enjoy the midnight sun as they spend a week to present, plan and participate in the development of KDE software."
Registration has opened for ELC-E 2009.
"The next Embedded Linux Conference event is upcoming: ELC-E 2009, October 15&16, Grenoble France.
I'd like to inform you that registration has opened, and we managed to line up a very exciting
program this year!"
Ninux Day 2009 takes place in Rome, Italy on November 27-29, 2009.
"The Ninux.org team is glad to announce the first "Ninux Day", the only
day that lasts a weekend ;)
A weekend surreal time slot on topics about wireless communities.
Under the same roof for the first time you'll find hackers, geeks,
nerds, engineers, artists, curious and academics."
The openSUSE Conference keynote speaker has been announced.
"The openSUSE Project is happy to announce that Lenz Grimmer will be delivering
the opening keynote for the first-ever openSUSE Conference. The openSUSE
Conference will be held September 17 through September 20 in Nürnberg,
Germany."
Registration is open for the PostgreSQL Conference West.
"Being held at Seattle Central Community College from October 16th 2009
through October 18th 2009, West is set to be the venue for PostgreSQL
education, advocacy and technical information transfer."
The Python Open Mike blog has been launched.
"A new blog, python-open-mike.posterous.com, has been created for open
discussion in the Python community. *Anyone* can post to this blog,
simply by emailing to post@python-open-mike.posterous.com.
Not everyone has, wants, or feels ready for a blog of their own; we
want to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak out to the
Python community. We hope to broaden discussion in the Python
blogosphere by making it even easier for new participants to join in
the conversation.."