The GNOME Foundation has released its
report for the second quarter of 2009 [PDF] - the first of what will
apparently be a regular series of such reports. "In these quarterly
reports we want to focus on what the GNOME Foundation and its members are
doing, so most of the reporting is done by the teams doing the work.
You'll hear directly from the release team about the incredibly busy
quarter they've had, you'll see first hand how much the travel committee is
improving our ability to sponsor travel for GNOME Foundation members, and
you'll read updates from all our teams focused on our mission of providing
a free desktop accessible for everyone."
A determined petition campaign has finally achieved its goal: the British government has apologized for its treatment of Alan Turing. "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we cant put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him." Congratulations to all the people who worked to bring a small bit of late justice to an important figure in our field.
Apple has decided
to open the code behind Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch feature. "The user-space implementation of the Grand Central Dispatch services API, called libdispatch, has been delivered as its own open source project, joining with other components that are part of projects Apple has already designated as open, including the kernel components in the Darwin OS XNU kernel and the blocks runtime that is part of the LLVM project."
EmbedOne has announced the launch of its embedded Linux OS, tools and services.
"Meshcom Technologies, Inc. today announced its new brand
name - EmbedOne - for its new embedded Linux line of business. At the same time, new publicly
available suite of software and services for the embedded Linux community was announced."
Microsoft has launched
the open source CodePlex Foundation. "The goals of the CodePlex
Foundation are spelled out on the website as enabling the "exchange of code
and understanding among software companies and open source communities," as
well as "increasing participation in open source community projects."
Further goals include complementing "existing open source foundations and
organizations, providing a forum in which best practices and shared
understanding can be established by a broad group of participants, both
software companies and open source communities.""
The Nokia PUSH N900
program has announced its existence; essentially, Nokia is trying to
jump-start a development community for this device. "The brief is
simple: tell us how you would hack and mod the N900 & Maemo to connect the
N900 to something you love. An expert judging panel will be selecting
winning submissions and the groups behind them will receive N900 devices,
funding and support to develop their PUSH idea."
The August, 2009 edition of the FSFE Newsletter is online
with the latest Free Software Foundation Europe news.
Topics include:
"Fellowship meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, 26 August,
4th FrOSCon in St. Augustin, Germany, 22-23 August,
Software patent infringed: Microsoft barred from selling Word,
New overview on our community contacts,
Fellowship meeting and KDE 4.3 release party in Stuttgart, Germany, 01 August".
The September, 2009 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter has been
published. Topics include:
"* Updated Study Reveals 10% Increase in Linux Kernel Developers
* Vote For Your Favorite Fake Linus Torvalds
* Last Week to Register for LinuxCon Training - Special 20% Discount
* Watch LinuxCon Keynotes Online for Free
* LinuxCon Kernel Roundtable Moderator Interviewed
* Members' Discounts for LF Events
* VIA Technologies, Inc. Joins Linux Foundation
* Zemlin to Keynote at Open World Forum
* Linux Foundation in the News
* From the Director".
The H has a
lengthy article exploring trademarks and free software. "The
issue is trust, and trust goes both ways. Users and developers, who are
often involved on a purely voluntary basis, are resistant to the
paternalism that is implicit in a Trademark License Agreement, and some
view it as a surreptitious method for suppressing criticism. The most
contentious clause in such agreements has been the claim to ownership of
all domains that include the trademark, illustrated by the clause in the
Drupal trademark and logo policy which seeks to deny a trademark license to
domains which do not qualify as 'fostering the Drupal software', such as
"creating a Drupal fork 'ImprovedDrupal', or 'publishing a website
'drupalhallofshame.com' with pictures of infamous Drupal
contributors.'"
LinuxMedNews has
announced
the Linux Medical News Freedom Award nominations.
"Nominations are officially open for the 9th annual Linux Medical News Freedom Award to be presented at the November 14th-18th AMIA Fall conference in San Francisco, CA. Deadline for entries is September 30th, 2009."
Distro Summit 2010 is a one-day
technical conference with a strong focus on collaboration between Free
Software distributions. The call
for proposals is open until September 30, 2009. The event is co-hosted
with linux.conf.au, which will
be held in Wellington (New Zealand) on the 18-23 of January, 2010.
The Miniconf Call for Papers has been announced for LCA2010
"Miniconfs are an important part of linux.conf.au, allowing 1-day long
dedicated streams for specific communities of interest over the course
of two days. The Call for Miniconf Papers marks another opportunity
for delegates to submit session proposals to a Miniconf of their
choosing for selection. Among the Miniconfs being held in Wellington
next year are - "The Business of Open Source", "Education", "Free the
Cloud", and "Open and the Public Sector"."
A call for papers has gone out requesting articles on Open Source Hardware
for the Journal of Information Law and Technology/
European Journal of Law and Technology.
"The question we are setting in this call for papers is: what is the best
method to enforce the open source philosophy for hardware, to ensure
that contributions based upon the work of others remain open for others
to develop."
A call for papers has gone out for the SecurityTubeCon, it takes place in
cyberspace on November 6-8, 2009.
"SecurityTube.net is pleased to announce the CFP for SecurityTubeCon, the
first hacker conference, to be held completely online!
SecurityTubeCon is aimed at democratizing hacker conferences by allowing
any researcher, regardless of his physical location, to share his work
with the community. Unlike other Cons we will not *accept / reject*
speakers. If you have something interesting to share, you WILL be heard."
The Boston Software Freedom Day has been announced.
"On
Saturday, September 19th, Boston's casual free software users and the
technologically curious will gather together for a Software Freedom
Day event hosted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
Software Freedom Day is the international holiday dedicated to
recognizing and promoting software that respects computer users'
freedom. While the FSF is hosting its day-long public gathering in
Boston, other teams all over the globe will be celebrating in their own
cities, towns and villages as well."
The Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) will take place on
November 5 in Washington D.C.
"The Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) has moved to Washington D.C. this year to
demonstrate how open source is fulfilling implementation of the Federal CIOs 5 Technology Pillars
and allowing agencies to accomplish their mission goals in more secure, cost effective, and
innovative ways."
The LCA2010 Organizers have announced the schedule
of talks for linux.conf.au 2010. "A full schedule of talks is now available for LCA2010. The conference brings together speakers from around the world presenting a variety of topics; from the strongly technical such as Linux kernel development, to social interaction within communities and issues relating to diverse and minority groups. linux.conf.au 2010 runs for a full week starting Monday 18th January, with more than 65 talk sessions, together with a number of Keynote presentations and 14 Miniconfs."
Three funding programs have been announced for LCA2010.
"The three funding programmes - InternetNZ Oceania Programme, InternetNZ
Kiwi Fellowship and Google Diversity Programme - have been created to
assist those delegates contributing to the Open Source community who,
without financial assistance, would not be able to attend LCA2010."
The 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference has announced the the schedule of
talks for the upcoming event. Christopher Marklund of Laika (the
animation studio behind Coraline) has been added as a keynote. "If
you're interested in attending LPC, please register right away,
as we are very close to reaching our maximum capacity and will
need to start turning away people soon."
ars Technica
discusses
comments from the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin to Microsoft.
"Zemlin's comments about Microsoft are a response to a patent auction carried out by Microsoft to sell a number of patents that the company allegedly said were related to Linux. The patents, which were originally obtained by Microsoft from SGI, were sold to Allied Security Trust (AST), a patent-holding group that grants its members perpetual licenses before reselling the patents.
Zemlin suggests that Microsoft's intention was to surreptitiously slip the intellectual property to a patent troll that would then go after Linux companies."