Legal Announcements
Groklaw
has the
latest ruling from Conservancy v. Best Buy. "
One of the defendants was
Westinghouse Digital Technologies, LLC, which refused to participate in
discovery. It had applied for a kind of bankruptcy equivalent in
California. Judge Shira Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York has
now granted Software Freedom Conservancy, a wing of Software Freedom Law
Center, triple damages ($90,000) for willful copyright infringement,
lawyer's fees and costs ($47,865), an injunction against Westinghouse, and
an order requiring Westinghouse to turn over all infringing equipment in
its possession to the plaintiffs, to be donated to charity. So, presumably
a lot of high-def TVs are on their way to charities." Given that
the defendant is in bankruptcy, one should not hold one's breath waiting
for those TVs, but, as the article points out, this ruling cannot fail to
get the attention of the other defendants.
Comments (20 posted)
Articles of interest
Reddit has posted
an
extensive interview with Richard Stallman. "
The
main shortcoming of Linux is at the level of device support. The
obstacle there isn't a lack of ability among Linux developers, but
rather the use of devices whose specs are secret.
Finishing the HURD would not advance us at all in supporting these
devices. The work that is needed is at the driver and firmware level.
That's why our high priority task list includes items relating to free
drivers, but not the HURD."
Comments (14 posted)
Here's
a
report on iTnews saying that Oracle has abruptly shut down a set of
servers used to perform quality assurance on PostgreSQL releases.
"
Sun Microsystems - and for a short time its new owner Oracle - had
provided three member servers to ensure PostgreSQL was stable on the
Solaris operating system. The development of PostgreSQL had been supported
by Sun - which contributed DTrace support, amongst other features to the
database platform. At the start of July, Oracle shut down its three
PostgreSQL build farm servers without warning, leaving the PostgreSQL
community rushing to find replacements."
Comments (21 posted)
New Books
Roland Mas and Raphaël Hertzog have announced their intent to
translate their French Debian administration book into English. "
The
resulting book will be published under a Debian Free Software
Guidelines-compliant license if we manage to collect the 25000€ that
will allow us to complete this translation in good conditions."
Full Story (comments: 1)
O'Reilly has released "HTML5: Up and Running" by Mark Pilgrim.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has released "Head First WordPress", A Brain-Friendly Guide to
Creating Your Own Custom WordPress Blog, by Jeff Siarto.
Full Story (comments: none)
Resources
The Free Software Foundation Europe Newsletter for August 2010 is out.
"
The focus of this edition is Free Software in the public sector: on
a national level within the United Kingdom, in the Italian region of Bozen,
and in the Austrian city of Linz. We introduce a new definition and of
mnemonic Open Standards, and invite you to participate in upcoming local
Free Software events."
Full Story (comments: none)
The July issue of the CE Linux Forum Newsletter covers Embedded Linux
Conference Europe Speakers, LinuxCon Japan Schedule, and the eLinux wiki
Android Portal.
Full Story (comments: none)
Education and Certification
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) has launched the "Virtualization and
High Availability" exam elective for their LPIC-3 certification program.
"
Exam development for the LPI-304 "Virtualization and High
Availability" included extensive consultation with industry, a global Job
Task Analysis survey amongst IT professionals, and close to a hundred
"beta" exams at a series of special events around the world. These "beta"
exams were offered to qualified IT professionals in order to establish the
psychometric data necessary to ensure exam questions and objectives were
relevant and of the highest quality."
Full Story (comments: none)
Meeting Minutes
Developers working on Battle For Wesnoth recently held an IRC meeting to
discuss
the Apple App Store
port and other situations which make GPL license compliance hard.
"
The point was generally agreed that this meeting was about where our
boundaries are, and not specifically about Apple; other platforms we
are considering present similar issues. Android (with AT&T's apparent
removal of the 'allow third party apps' button) and PalmOS were
specifically mentioned as imminent porting targets." Numerous
proposals can be found in the minutes, but no decisions have yet been made.
Full Story (comments: 14)
Upcoming Events
The GNOME and KDE projects have
announced that they will be holding a joint desktop summit in Berlin in August, 2011. "
The 2011 Desktop Summit will build on the first Summit's success. More than 1,000 contributors from more than 50 countries are expected to attend the 2011 event in Berlin. In addition to members of the GNOME and KDE development community, the conference will also attract many participants in the overall FLOSS community from local projects, organizations, and companies."
Comments (none posted)
Events: August 12, 2010 to October 11, 2010
The following event listing is taken from the
LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
August 10 August 12 |
LinuxCon |
Boston, USA |
| August 13 |
Debian Day Costa Rica |
Desamparados, Costa Rica |
| August 14 |
Summercamp 2010 |
Ottawa, Canada |
August 14 August 15 |
Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters |
Taipei, Taiwan |
August 21 August 22 |
Free and Open Source Software Conference |
St. Augustin, Germany |
August 23 August 27 |
European DrupalCon |
Copenhagen, Denmark |
| August 28 |
PyTexas 2010 |
Waco, TX, USA |
August 31 September 1 |
LinuxCon Brazil 2010 |
São Paulo, Brazil |
August 31 September 3 |
OOoCon 2010 |
Budapest, Hungary |
September 6 September 9 |
Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Conference |
Barcelona, Spain |
September 7 September 9 |
DjangoCon US 2010 |
Portland, OR, USA |
September 8 September 10 |
CouchCamp: CouchDB summer camp |
Petaluma, CA, United States |
September 10 September 12 |
Ohio Linux Fest |
Columbus, Ohio, USA |
| September 11 |
Open Tech 2010 |
London, UK |
September 13 September 15 |
Open Source Singapore Pacific-Asia Conference |
Sydney, Australia |
September 16 September 17 |
Magnolia-CMS |
Basel, Switzerland |
September 16 September 17 |
3rd International Conference FOSS Sea 2010 |
Odessa, Ukraine |
September 16 September 18 |
X Developers' Summit |
Toulouse, France |
September 17 September 18 |
FrOSCamp |
Zürich, Switzerland |
September 17 September 19 |
Italian Debian/Ubuntu Community Conference 2010 |
Perugia, Italy |
| September 18 |
Software Freedom Day 2010 |
Everywhere, Everywhere |
September 18 September 19 |
WordCamp Portland |
Portland, OR, USA |
September 21 September 24 |
Linux-Kongress |
Nürnberg, Germany |
| September 23 |
Open Hardware Summit |
New York, NY, USA |
September 24 September 25 |
BruCON Security Conference 2010 |
Brussels, Belgium |
September 25 September 26 |
PyCon India 2010 |
Bangalore, India |
September 27 September 28 |
Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems |
Tokyo, Japan |
September 27 September 29 |
Japan Linux Symposium |
Tokyo, Japan |
| September 29 |
3rd Firebird Conference - Moscow |
Moscow, Russia |
September 30 October 1 |
Open World Forum |
Paris, France |
| October 1 |
Firebird Day Paris - La Cinémathèque Française |
Paris, France |
October 1 October 2 |
Open Video Conference |
New York, NY, USA |
October 3 October 4 |
Foundations of Open Media Software 2010 |
New York, NY, USA |
October 4 October 5 |
IRILL days - where FOSS developers, researchers, and communities meet |
Paris, France |
October 7 October 9 |
Utah Open Source Conference |
Salt Lake City, UT, USA |
October 8 October 9 |
Free Culture Research Conference |
Berlin, Germany |
If your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol