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AnnouncementsNon-Commercial announcements LiMo and GNOME join forcesThe LiMo and GNOME Foundations have announced a new partnership. "Starting immediately, LiMo Foundation will become a member of GNOME Foundation's Advisory Board and GNOME Foundation will become an Industry Liaison Partner for LiMo Foundation. This development represents a natural formalization founded upon the significant use of GNOME Mobile software components within Release 2 and Release 3 of the LiMo Platform."
Commercial announcements GENIVI goes with MeeGoThe Linux Foundation has sent out an announcement stating that the GENIVI alliance has chosen MeeGo as the base of its "in-vehicle infotainment" (IVI) platform. "IVI is a rapidly growing and evolving field that encompasses the digital applications that can be used by all occupants of a vehicle, including navigation, entertainment, location-based services, and connectivity to devices, car networks and broadband networks. MeeGo will provide the base for the upcoming GENIVI Apollo release that will be used by members to reduce time to market and the cost of IVI development. MeeGo's platform contains a Linux base, middleware, and an interface layer that powers these rich applications."
Legal Announcements The DMCA just got a little weakerHere is the text of a ruling by the US Court of Appeals in a suit by MGE UPS Systems against General Electric. The court has ruled that simply circumventing technical measures is not, by itself, a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "However, MGE advocates too broad a definition of "access;" their interpretation would permit liability under § 1201(a) for accessing a work simply to view it or to use it within the purview of 'fair use' permitted under the Copyright Act. Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners." What this ruling means in the long term - especially for defendants who are not GE - remains to be seen, but it is a step in the right direction.
The EFF wins three DMCA exemptionsThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced that it has won three exemptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules as part of the regular, three-year process. These include cellphone unlocking, fair use of DVD content, and, happily, liberating locked-down phones. "In its reasoning in favor of EFF's jailbreaking exemption, the Copyright Office rejected Apple's claim that copyright law prevents people from installing unapproved programs on iPhones: 'When one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses.'"
Articles of interest Gratton: The Sad State of Open Source in Android tabletsAngus Gratton has posted a survey of GPL compliance across several Android-based tablets, along with some comments on his findings. "With the exception of Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader, a device that isn't even really a tablet, I couldn't find a single tablet manufacturer who was complying with the minimum of their legal open source requirements under GNU GPL. Let alone supporting community development."
Sony now facing single class-action for PS3 other-OS removal (ars technica)Ars technica reports on the status of the suits against Sony for removing the "Other OS" option, thus removing the ability to install Linux. Those suits are now combined into a single class-action lawsuit. "None of the plaintiffs are likely to get rich. If the plaintiffs win, the lawyers will get paid, Sony will probably have to pay PlayStation 3 owners a small refund to make up for the loss of the option, or there will be a coupon or game giveaway. This consolidation just makes that settlement more likely, and much simpler from a legal perspective. It shows a large number of gamers affected, and makes reasonable restitution possible on a large scale."
Droid X rooted, bootloader still locked (ars technica)Ars technica reports that Stephen Bird has found a way to gain root access on Motorola's new Droid X smartphone. "Droid X owners can use the Android debugging tool to run the exploit on their device. Step-by-step instructions are available from the AllDroid forum community. The exploit will give users the ability to modify the contents of the filesystem and use certain third-party software like screenshot and tethering tools that only work on rooted devices."
Novell opens Linux appliance gallery (Channel Register)Channel Register reports that Novell is launching the SUSE Gallery. "It has been a year since Novell launched its SUSE Appliance Program, which offers a set of online tools, dubbed SUSE Studio, for spinning up software appliances based on its SUSE Linux distro. The appliance tools were aimed at software developers who wanted to code appliances for their own purposes - perhaps as a means of more easily supporting and redistributing their own application software to their customers - not for distributing software appliances to the general public. But that is precisely what some software developers want to be able to do, according to Joanna Rosenberg, ISV marketing manager at Novell, and so on the first birthday of the SUSE Appliance Program, Novell is opening up what it calls the SUSE Gallery."
Government Computers to Get Linux-Based Operating System (Moscow Times)According to an article in the Moscow Times, the Russian government is working on a Linux-based "national operating system" for its computers. "The operating system, for use on the computer systems of government agencies and state-run companies, will be 90 percent based on the open-source Linux operating system, Deputy Communications and Press Minister Ilya Massukh said. He said use of the operating system would be optional for all agencies." (Thanks to Eugene Markow)
What Could You Do With a $35 Tablet? (NetworkWorld)The media has been buzzing about a prototype tablet from India. This article in NetworkWorld is one of many covering a device that may be available in 2011. "The $35 tablet prototype from India will run a variation of the open source Linux operating system. It has 2Gb of RAM, but no internal storage--relying on a removable memory card. The device has a USB port, and built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. Seems like reasonable enough specs--especially for $35. On the software side, the $35 tablet has a PDF reader, multimedia player, video conferencing, Web browser, and word processor."
New Books Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook--New from O'ReillyO'Reilly has released "Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook" by Michael Lopp.
Calls for Presentations PGDay.EU 2010 Call for PapersPGDay.EU 2010, the European PostgreSQL conference, will be held December 6-8, 2010 in Stuttgart, Germany. "We are now accepting proposals for talks. Please note that we are looking for talks in both English and German." The submission deadline is October 11, 2010.
Upcoming Events Events: August 5, 2010 to October 4, 2010The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it. Mailing Lists A new mailing list for libpeasA new mailing-list has been created for the libpeas GObject-based plugin engine. Send an email to libpeas-list@gnome.org to subscribe.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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