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AnnouncementsNon-Commercial announcements FSFE in battle for European interoperabilityThe Free Software Foundation Europe has announced an effort to promote European interoperability. "FSFE has unleashed an advocacy push in order to prevent the European Commission from hollowing out an important European reference document on interoperability. A draft for a new version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) leaked to the press last week."
Commercial announcements Cavium Networks to acquire MontaVista SoftwareCavium Networks has a press release announcing that it has reached agreement to acquire embedded Linux vendor MontaVista Software. The deal is for $50 million in combined cash and stock. "After the acquisition, MontaVista Software will run as a separate operating unit and will retain the MontaVista brand name. In addition, Cavium Networks will continue the MontaVista business model and support embedded Linux on multiple architectures from multiple processor vendors. MontaVista will maintain its own dedicated and focused engineering, sales and product management staff. MontaVista's customers and partners will see no change in customer facing field operations and the web-based support and product download sites will be maintained." (thanks to Sven-Thorsten Dietrich.)
Red Hat expands Mission-Critical programRed Hat has announced an expansion of its Advanced Mission-Critical program in Japan. "Long-time Red Hat partner Hitachi Ltd., a leading global electronics company with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, has joined the Advanced Mission-Critical Program and will offer expanded services for mission-critical customers in Japan in collaboration with Red Hat. Red Hat announced the Advanced Mission-Critical Program in November 2008, combining substantially enhanced service levels with the proven advantages of Linux for workloads previously only thought to be supported on more expensive legacy platforms."
Samsung's new smartphone platformSamsung, evidently feeling that there are not enough Linux-based phone platforms out there, has announced the existence of its "bada" system. "The name 'bada', which means 'ocean' in Korean, was chosen to convey the limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform. It also alludes to Samsung's commitment to a variety of open platforms in the mobile industry. Samsung bada also represents the fresh challenges and opportunities available to developers, as well as the entertainment which consumers will enjoy once the new platform is open." Some more information can be found on bada.com.
Three Ulteo news announcementsThe Ulteo open-source virtual desktop project has announced the winning of an Open World Forum award, a new twitter-based news delivery system and an upcoming version 2.0 release.
Legal Announcements SFLC summary of Bilski v. KapposThe Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has compiled a summary of some of the main arguments in the Bilski v. Kappos case dealing with software patents. "As a legal services organization for free and open source software (FOSS), we filed a brief in support of the respondent arguing (1) that all software is unpatentable under Supreme Court precedent, (2) that software patenting reduces the level of innovation in software, and (3) that constitutional limitations from the First Amendment prevent Congress from making patent law that covers mental steps, basic ideas, or algorithms."
Analysis: The "Lorenzo Jones" case emerges (SCOTUS Blog)The SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) blog has an analysis of the oral arguments heard in the Bilski case today. This is a case that many hope will reduce the scope of what is patentable in the US, and the justices seemed skeptical of the arguments made in defense of the Bilski patent on a "business method". "The largest question left unanswered when the one-hour argument was over was whether the Court would go forward and issue a major new ruling interpreting patent law, when the practical result here seemed so evident. Lawyers and judges have invested heavy resources in the Bilski case, and it does raise a fundamental question that may well need answering. But, when there may well be no formulation of patent law that would salvage the Bilski-Warsaw creation, why bother?" (thanks to Rahul Sundaram).
Court Gets A Torrent-full About Linux (Linux Journal)Linux Journal looks at an Australian legal case involving BitTorrent. "The matter at hand is a lawsuit by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft yes, that's AFACT against iiNet, an Australian internet service provider over the ISP's role in allowing its service to be used for illegal BitTorrent downloading. The basis for the case, according to trial coverage, is an earlier case concerning photocopies of print books which held that the University of New South Wales was liable for copyright infringement essentially because they controlled the copiers. AFACT hopes to use the same argument against iiNet, holding it liable for what goes through because it owns the tube."
Articles of interest The State of Open Source on Firefox's Fifth Birthday (PC Magazine)PC Magazine looks at the growth of open source software. "This week marks the fifth anniversary of Mozilla's Firefox browser. Launched on November 9, 2004, the software now boasts an estimated 330 million users. Any company or product than can achieve that manner of popularity in such a short period of time is clearly a success, but Mozilla shouldn't get all of the credit. Most of the congratulations belong to the open source movement."
Microsoft, Novell say alliance still bearing fruit (ComputerWorld)Eric Lai takes a look at the Novell/Microsoft alliance after three years. "For Novell, the alliance has been a particular boon. Revenue related to SUSE Enterprise Linux is up 50% year over year, said Susan Heystee, vice-president and general manager for global strategic alliances at Novell. Most of that comes from $225 million in SUSE support vouchers purchased and sold by Microsoft to customers running both Windows Server and SUSE Linux."
Novell cuts 3 percent of its workforce (cnet)cnet reports that Novell has laid off 3 percent of its employees. "Linux jobs in the United States are booming, up 6 percent since January, according to data from Dice.com. This will come as small consolation to Novell employees, however, which weathered another round of layoffs at the Waltham, Mass.-based company. According to several sources within the company, and confirmed by Novell's public-relations director, Ian Bruce, Novell last week laid off 100 to 130 people of its roughly 3,900 global employees. While my sources indicated that the Workgroup division was particularly hard-hit, Bruce told me that the cuts came "across the company, both geographically and productwise.""
New Books Grails: A Quick-Start Guide--New from Pragmatic BookshelfPragmatic Bookshelf has published the book Grails: A Quick-Start Guide by Dave Klein.
Resources Let's Act on ACTA Before it's Too Late (Linux Journal)Glyn Moody looks at the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" (ACTA) in a Linux Journal article. This essentially secret (in the US, for "national security" reasons) treaty looks to implement a wide array of restrictions that the content "producers" are lobbying for. As one might guess, it is a vast expansion of copyright. "The second of these means that ISPs would become liable for copyright infringement committed by their users. The idea here is to force them to become copyright cops if they want to survive, and to shift the onus onto them for the policing of all digital content – a massive win for the media industries, which have hitherto shown themselves totally inept when it comes to trying to do the same."
Checking in on CodePlex (The Standards Blog)A few weeks ago LWN talked with Sam Ramji about the CodePlex Foundation. Since then the Foundation has published its new Project Acceptance and Operation Guidelines (PDF). Andy Updegrove takes a look at the new guidelines. "The Guidelines and recent reviews with Sam also provide more detail on what types of work the Foundation hopes to undertake. I think that two of the projects that are described in the Guidelines can be particularly useful. The first (mentioned earlier) is intended to provide a resource to help developers understand not only what individual OSS licenses say, but how they fit together. Given that open source is usually a mosaic of existing and new code, all of which is then further evolved, it's essential that the licensing rules that apply to composite code are compatible, rather than at internal war with each other. If this resource is well done, it will indeed be useful for hosted and outside projects alike."
Learning with Gcompris (Linux Journal)Mike Diehl takes a look at the Gcompris education suite for younger children. "Gcompris has a pretty simple user interface. Along the bottom of the screen, we have buttons that let us quit, see the credits, configure the program, and get help. Along the left side, we have icons for each game (I mean exercise) category. As you mouse over each icon, a brief written explanation of category is presented in the blue section of the screen. This is a nice compromise for kids who can't read and parents who would rather see text. The program's spoken prompts and classical music playing in the background make Gcompris a very professional program. Besides, everyone knows that classical music is good for kids."
Contests and Awards FSFE to award 36 Fellowship grantsThe Free Software Foundation Europe has announced a fellowship grant program. "Starting in November 2009, Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) will award three people with a Fellowship grant every month for the coming year. Everybody who is actively working for Free Software but cannot afford the Fellowship contribution can apply for the grant."
Matthias Ettrich receives German Federal Cross of Merit (KDE.News)KDE.News covers Matthias Ettrich's receipt of a German award. "Today at 4pm CET at the Center for Economics, Technology and Womens Issues at the Berlin Senate, KDE founder Matthias Ettrich was decorated with the German Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to Free Software. Matthias was awarded the medal in recognition of his work spurring innovation and spreading knowledge for the common good."
Surveys Linux owns 32 percent of netbook market, says study (DesktopLinux.com)DesktopLinux.com looks at the results of a study on the percentage of Linux-based netbooks. "ABI Research is projecting that in 2009 Linux will represent 32 percent of netbook sales, far higher than the seven percent figure claimed by Microsoft, says a report. ABI estimates that Linux will overtake Windows on netbooks by 2013, largely due to sales in less-developed countries."
Event Reports Linux-Kongress 2009 (The H)The H has a report from Linux-Kongress 2009, recently held in Dresden. "Theodore Ts'o said that it is hard to predict which trends will emerge after mobile and cloud computing in two or three years but that those who can answer this question might become rich. 2010 will (not) be the year of the Linux desktop just like the years before it, said the developer. Ts'o considers developing Linux for desktop PCs a difficult task while the required improvements to the software stack are in progress, they aren't happening as fast as many people would like, he explained."
Calls for Presentations ELC 2010 Call for PresentationsA call for presentations has gone out for ELC 2010, submissions should be in by January 15. "The CE Linux Forum would like to invite you to make a presentation at our upcoming Embedded Linux Conference. The conference will be held April 12-14, 2010 in San Francisco, California."
SCALE 8X Call For Papers closes December 1thThe call for papers for SCALE 8X ends on December 1, early bird registration opens on November 16. "Mark your calendars - be in Los Angeles Feb. 19-21st, 2010, for SCALE 8x, where Open Source Happens!"
Upcoming Events CONFidence 2.0 schedule online, registration closingThe schedule for CONFidence 2.0 has been posted, the event takes place on November 19-20 in Warsaw, Poland. "CONFidence is the one of the most technical conference in Eastern Europe."
FLOSS in health care track at Med-e-Tel 2010 (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews has announced the next Med-e-Tel conference. "The 8th annual Med-e-Tel conference (14-16 April 2010) will include a track that is dedicated specifically to Free/Libre Open Source Software in Health Care (FLOSS-HC).If you, your company or your organization is active or interested in FLOSS-HC Med-e-Tel is the place to be in 2010. One of the main goals of the FLOSS track is to serve as a forum for all people and organizations interested in FLOSS-HC, as a meeting place for old and new FLOSS-HC enthusiasts and a place for exchanging ideas, knowledge and experience and setting up new collaborations."
Events: November 19, 2009 to January 18, 2010The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it. Miscellaneous Perl far from dead, more popular than you think (Royal Pingdom)The Royal Pingdom takes a look at popular websites that use Perl. "Perl has been around since 1987 and became an early darling of web developers. These days, however, you don't hear much about Perl. Everyone seems to be talking about trendier languages like PHP, Python and Ruby, with Perl left in the back as a neglected, not-so-hip cousin. That might lead you to think that Perl is dying, but as it turns out, it's still used by plenty of websites out there, including some pretty big hitters."
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