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AnnouncementsBrief items Fun patent application of the day: location historyIt would appear that Apple has not just implemented a location database on its devices; it is trying to patent the entire concept. Claim 1 reads: "A computer-implemented method performed by a location aware device, the method comprising: configuring a processor of the location aware device to collect network information broadcast from a number of network transmitters over a time span; and storing the network information and corresponding timestamps in a database as location history data." Perhaps it is in everybody's interest not to challenge this one.
GNOME Project Announces new Outreach Program for Women InternsThe GNOME project is continuing its outreach program aimed at recruiting women. "The GNOME 3.0 release has far more contributions by women than any previous release in GNOME history. This is largely thanks to the hard work of the first round of the Outreach Program for Women interns, who participated in the program from December 15, 2010 to March 15, 2011. All eight participants had their work included in the main branches of their projects and therefore included in GNOME 3.0. Following on the heels of the successful first round, the GNOME Project is delighted to announce the participants of a new round of the Outreach Program for Women internships."
Students announced for 2011 Google Summer of CodeGoogle has announced the students that have been accepted for this year's Summer of Code. "We have announced the 1,116 students that will be participating in this year's Google Summer of Code program. Students will now start the community bonding period where they will get to know their mentors and prepare for the program by reading documentation, hanging out in the IRC channel and familiarizing themselves with their new community before beginning their actual coding at the end of May."
MIPS Technologies Now Porting Android 'Honeycomb' PlatformMIPS Technologies has announced that it has official source access to Android 3.0 also known as "Honeycomb." MIPS Technologies is now porting Honeycomb to the MIPS architecture.
The Open Invention Network announces lots of new membersThe Open Invention Network has announced that 74 companies have become licensees in the first quarter of 2011. "During the first quarter, OIN welcomed companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Facebook, Juniper, Fujitsu General, and others. We've also successfully licensed a number of the leading Linux distributions in the first quarter. Finally, we greatly appreciate the large number of activist individuals who signed an OIN license in the quarter."
The WebM Community Cross-License Initiative launchesThe WebM video format project has announced the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative, a sort of patent pool for WebM users. "CCL members are joining this effort because they realize that the entire web ecosystem--users, developers, publishers, and device makers--benefits from a high-quality, community developed, open-source media format. We look forward to working with CCL members and the web standards community to advance WebM's role in HTML5 video." There are 17 members at the outset.
Articles of interest Barnes & Noble Charges Microsoft with Misusing Patents (Groklaw)Groklaw has the response by Barnes & Noble to Microsoft's Android-related patent suit. "Microsoft has a scheme, Barnes & Noble asserts, to dominate Android and make it undesirable to device manufacturers and customers by demanding 'exorbitant license fees and absurd licensing restrictions' -- a license fee that it says is more than Microsoft charges for its entire operating system for mobile devices, Windows 7. Others have, it believes, signed it. Barnes & Noble says the deal with Nokia is in furtherance of this scheme."
1+1 (pat. pending) - Mathematics, Software and Free Speech (Groklaw)Groklaw has posted a lengthy guest article arguing that software is simply mathematics and should not be subject to patents. "I will now substantiate the idea that software is mathematics. Let's cast aside the effect of the real world semantics on the patentability of mathematics for the moment. I will return to this question when I explain why mathematics is speech. Then I will explain that patenting a mathematical computation of the basis of its semantics is granting exclusive rights on speech. For now the focus is on showing that the patented software method is always a mathematical algorithm."
The FTC weighs in on patent reform (opensource.com)Over at opensource.com, Red Hat's VP and assistant general counsel Rob Tiller writes about a US Federal Trade Commission report [PDF] on some of the problems with software patents. "The FTC report recognized that in the IT industry, it's virtually impossible to do clearance searches to verify that new products don't infringe existing patents. The lack of clarity in individual patents combined with the sheer numbers of existing patents make clearance cost prohibitive. Because IT products can contain a large number of components that might each be covered by one or more patents, the number of potentially applicable patents is also large. The report went so far as to characterize clearance as 'a virtual perfect storm of difficulties.'"
Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict (The Register)The Register is reporting that Google (and Linux) has been found to infringe on a patent on open hashing with automatic expiration—not the most innovative idea ever, even in 1997 when the patent was filed. The damages, $5M, seem rather small in comparison to some that we have seen coming out of east Texas. "Asked to comment, a Google spokeswoman said: 'Google will continue to defend against attacks like this one on the open source community. The recent explosion in patent litigation is turning the world's information highway into a toll road, forcing companies to spend millions and millions of dollars defending old, questionable patent claims, and wasting resources that would be much better spent investing in new technologies for users and creating jobs.'"
New Books Crafting Rails Applications--New from Pragmatic BookshelfPragmatic Bookshelf has released "Crafting Rails Applications", by Jose Valim.
Calls for Presentations KVM Forum 2011: Call For ParticipationThe KVM Forum will take place August 15-16, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada, co-located with LinuxCon North America. The call for participation is open for technical talks, end-user talks and birds of a feather sessions, until May 16.
Upcoming Events Events: May 5, 2011 to July 4, 2011The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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