Brief items
Just on the heels of its wireless driver being released in the staging tree of the 2.6.37 kernel, Broadcom has joined the Linux Foundation. "
In September, Broadcom announced it had open sourced its drivers for selected Wi-Fi chipsets, a pivotal move that garnered applause throughout the Linux community. Since then, the driver has been integrated into the latest Linux kernel release 2.6.37 and, as a result, is actively being improved upon by the entire Linux community. Given its portfolio of semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, Broadcom is an important addition to The Linux Foundation."
Full Story (comments: 21)
The linux.conf.au organizers have sent out an update on what effects, if
any, the flooding in Brisbane will have on the conference. It's hard to
say for sure, but it looks like LCA will happen as scheduled. "
It
would be a boost to morale and to our spirits, and a beginning to a return
to normality if people who made plans to come to Brisbane stick to those
plans, come to Brisbane, and enjoy what we hope will still be the best
community-driven linux conf around."
Full Story (comments: 2)
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is sponsoring a
challenge for "
researchers and software developers to engage in research and create apps that help consumers foster, measure, and protect Internet openness". Entries must consist of open source applications or research papers and will be judged on a variety of different criteria. Entries are due between February 1 and June 1 and winners will have their applications/research promoted by the FCC along with their expenses paid for a reception in Washington, DC. "
The Open Internet Challenge seeks to encourage the development of new, more effective applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with open Internet principles. These software tools could, for example, detect whether a broadband provider is interfering with DNS responses, application packet headers, or content." (Thanks to Charles E. Bermingham.)
Comments (none posted)
A
review is underway in
the UK to identify barriers to growth within the country's "intellectual property
framework." The IP review team has
issued
a call for evidence seeking information on how well the current patent
system is working (or not working). Evidence should be should be presented
to the review team by March 1. (Thanks to Alan Cox)
Comments (none posted)
Articles of interest
Luis Villa has
left the Mozilla
Corporation to work at the law firm of Greenberg, Traurig.
"
Mozilla has been terrific for me. Working with happy, dedicated,
passionate people is always a joy, and I've learned a ton from my teammates
in legal and from Mitchell. I particularly can't say enough good things
about my boss, Harvey- he's been a tremendous mentor to me. And of course
Mozilla is exactly the kind of job I went to law school to get- directly
helping hackers ship world-class software. Leaving today was hard- I'll
miss my coworkers, and I realized over the past few days that some of them
may even miss me ;)" He adds that he will continue to work on the
new MPL, which should be released soon.
Comments (4 posted)
This edition of the community corner features Jon "maddog" Hall with some
reflections on Linux in Russia, plus an LPIC-1 exam preparation screencast
from PaulPaulito.com and a "Top Story" of 2010 poll.
Full Story (comments: none)
InsideHPC has
received
an anonymous tip that Oracle has ceased development of Lustre.
"
We can look forward to more Limbo for a while, but what happens next
with stewardship of Lustre? Will Oracle quietly kill it like they did with
OpenSolaris? Will they set the legacy code base free like they did with
Grid Engine? Or will they just cash in and sell it? Chances are that
Lustre is being shopped around and we won't hear a peep from the Dark Tower
until a sale is announced. That could be months, and that kind of prolonged
uncertainty would not be good for the Lustre community." (Thanks to
Chris Samuel)
Comments (7 posted)
The Guardian
looks
at the implications of the recent PS3 hack. "
Like many members of the hacker community, Fail0verflow is resolutely anti-piracy — its members bypass console security systems merely as an intellectual challenge, or to run their own operating systems and applications. Consequently, the group didn't itself reveal the key. However, days later hacker, George Hotz (also known as Geohot), previously responsible for opening the iPhone system to so-called "jailbreak" hacks, did released the required firmware package decrypter on his website. Although the current hack requires users to modify their PS3 to run homebrew apps (or use a PS3 'Jailbreak' dongle, which bypasses the security system on machines with older versions of the firmware), further developments may ensure that anyone with the relevant software tools and technical knowledge could produce applications that will run on any PS3. It would then effectively be an open system. And naturally, the floodgates that have prevented widescale piracy on the console for the last few years could be smashed to pieces."
Comments (71 posted)
New Books
"The Org Mode 7 Reference Manual - Organize your life with GNU Emacs" by
Carsten Dominik and others is available from Network Theory Ltd.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly Media has released "jQuery Pocket Reference" by David Flanagan.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly Media has released "Building Wireless Sensor Networks" by Robert
Faludi.
Full Story (comments: none)
Calls for Presentations
KDE-India will be holding conf.kde.in March 9-11, 2011 in Bengaluru
(Bangalore), India. The
Call for
Participation is open until January 15.
Full Story (comments: none)
The Linux Audio Conference (LAC) takes place in Maynooth, Ireland, May 6-8,
2011. The deadline for the call for papers has been extended until
February 20.
Full Story (comments: none)
The H
covers
the OpenStreetMap
State of the Map
conference, taking place September 9-11 in Denver, Colorado. Tne call
for papers is open until March 15.
Comments (none posted)
Upcoming Events
The Linux Foundation has
announced
its events schedule for the coming year. There will be LinuxCon events in
Yokohama, Vancouver, Prague (co-located with the Kernel Summit), and Sao
Paulo, with a number of other conferences scheduled as well.
Comments (none posted)
Events: January 20, 2011 to March 21, 2011
The following event listing is taken from the
LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
January 16 January 22 |
PyPy Leysin Winter Sprint |
Leysin, Switzerland |
| January 22 |
OrgCamp 2011 |
Paris, France |
January 24 January 29 |
linux.conf.au 2011 |
Brisbane, Australia |
| January 27 |
Ubuntu Developer Day |
Bangalore, India |
January 27 January 28 |
Southwest Drupal Summit 2011 |
Houston, Texas, USA |
January 29 January 31 |
FUDCon Tempe 2011 |
Tempe, Arizona, USA |
February 2 February 3 |
Cloud Expo Europe |
London, UK |
| February 5 |
Open Source Conference Kagawa 2011 |
Takamatsu, Japan |
February 5 February 6 |
FOSDEM 2011 |
Brussels, Belgium |
February 7 February 11 |
Global Ignite Week 2011 |
several, worldwide |
February 11 February 12 |
Red Hat Developer Conference 2011 |
Brno, Czech Republic |
| February 15 |
2012 Embedded Linux Conference |
Redwood Shores, CA, USA |
| February 25 |
Build an Open Source Cloud |
Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| February 25 |
Ubucon |
Los Angeles, CA, USA |
February 25 February 27 |
Southern California Linux Expo |
Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| February 26 |
Open Source Software in Education |
Los Angeles, CA, USA |
March 1 March 2 |
Linux Foundation End User Summit 2011 |
Jersey City, NJ, USA |
| March 5 |
Open Source Days 2011 Community Edition |
Copenhagen, Denmark |
March 7 March 10 |
Drupalcon Chicago |
Chicago, IL, USA |
March 9 March 11 |
ConFoo Conference |
Montreal, Canada |
March 9 March 11 |
conf.kde.in 2011 |
Bangalore, India |
March 11 March 13 |
PyCon 2011 |
Atlanta, Georgia, USA |
| March 19 |
Open Source Conference Oita 2011 |
Oita, Japan |
| March 19 |
OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan Mappers Symposium |
Tokyo, Japan |
March 19 March 20 |
Chemnitzer Linux-Tage |
Chemnitz, Germany |
If your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol