Brief items
The Harmony Project (an effort to create a standardized set of contributor
agreements last
covered here in April) has
launched version
1.0 of its agreements. There is a cute
selection tool allowing
projects to pick the agreement which best suits their wishes. It's not
clear how the agreements have changed since the first public disclosure in
April.
Harmony remains controversial; see these responses by Bradley
Kuhn, Richard
Fontana, and Dave
Neary. Quoting Richard: "Despite my admiration, respect and
affection for those who have been driving Harmony, I cannot endorse the
product of their work. I believe Harmony is unnecessary, confusing, and
potentially hazardous to open source and free software development."
Comments (11 posted)
Nortel has
announced
that it has sold its pile of patents for $4.5 billion. "
The
sale includes more than 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning
wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service
provider, semiconductors and other patents. The extensive patent portfolio
touches nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as
well, including Internet search and social networking." Google's
attempt to buy these patents failed; they have gone to a consortium made up
of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion, and Sony. It's not
hard to imagine unpleasant things resulting from that.
Comments (40 posted)
The European Space Agency (ESA) has
announced
a
Summer of Code
program. "
ESA Summer of Code in Space (SOCIS) is a pilot program
run by the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency that offers
student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open
source software projects. Through SOCIS, accepted student applicants are
paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus
gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. In turn, the
participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new
developers." Mentoring organizations can apply before July 15.
Comments (1 posted)
The
results of an online
survey in which neuroscientists were asked to share some details about
their computing environments are available. A
paper
(PDF) by Michael Hanke and Yaroslav O. Halchenko shows that GNU/Linux is
prevalent in neuroscience computing. "
GNU/Linux is often perceived
as a huge heterogeneous family of distributions that is impossible to
support as a whole. However, our data show that the vast majority of all
GNU/Linux-based neuroscientists use only two flavors of this platform: Red
Hat-based, and Debian-based GNU/Linux distributions, with a preference for
Debian-based systems in the personal environment." (Thanks to Adrian M. Whatley)
Comments (none posted)
Articles of interest
The July edition of the Free Software Foundation Europe Newsletter is out.
Full Story (comments: none)
CRN
reports
that the UK company Linux IT is offering to underwrite any community-based
open-source software that meets the requirements of its verification
process. "
Michael Breeze, marketing director at open-source software
distributor Interactive Ideas, backed Linux IT's strategy. "We are seeing
many companies and public sector organisations that are now actively
looking for open source software alternatives, but having supported
software is critical," he said. "The new programme from Linux IT now
provides those companies with the option of using more open source software
in a structured, supported environment.""
Comments (none posted)
New Books
Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "Designed for Use" by Lukas Mathis.
Full Story (comments: none)
No Starch Press has released "Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's Guide"
by David Kennedy, Jim O'Gorman, Devon Kearns, and Mati Aharoni.
Full Story (comments: none)
No Starch Press has released "The Book of Ruby" by Huw Collingbourne.
Full Story (comments: none)
Calls for Presentations
The 2012 iteration of linux.conf.au (Ballarat, January 16-20) is now
accepting proposals for talks; the deadline is July 29. "
Though there are many elements needed to run a great conference, it is the
speakers that truly make linux.conf.au such an amazing event. Being an
international conference, but one with a uniquely Australian flavour, we are
working to bring a terrific mix of both local and global speakers from
different backgrounds to Ballarat in January."
Full Story (comments: none)
Upcoming Events
The
PG Day 2011 in
Denver, CO was scheduled for September and has been moved to October 21.
The call for papers is open until August 31 and free registration is open
until July 31.
Full Story (comments: none)
The GNU Radio conference is open for registration. The conference takes
place September 14-16, 2011 in Philadelphia, PA. "
Ettus Research,
LLC will cover registration fees for any student who comes and will give a
presentation on their work with GNU Radio."
Full Story (comments: none)
Events: July 14, 2011 to September 12, 2011
The following event listing is taken from the
LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
July 9 July 14 |
Libre Software Meeting / Rencontres mondiales du logiciel libre |
Strasbourg, France |
July 11 July 15 |
Ubuntu Developer Week |
online event, |
July 11 July 16 |
SciPy 2011 |
Austin, TX, USA |
July 15 July 17 |
State of the Map Europe 2011 |
Wien, Austria |
July 17 July 23 |
DebCamp |
Banja Luka, Bosnia |
| July 19 |
Getting Started with C++ Unit Testing in Linux |
, |
July 24 July 30 |
DebConf11 |
Banja Luka, Bosnia |
July 25 July 29 |
OSCON 2011 |
Portland, OR, USA |
July 30 July 31 |
PyOhio 2011 |
Columbus, OH, USA |
July 30 August 6 |
Linux Beer Hike (LinuxBierWanderung) |
Lanersbach, Tux, Austria |
August 4 August 7 |
Wikimania 2011 |
Haifa, Israel |
August 6 August 12 |
Desktop Summit |
Berlin, Germany |
August 10 August 12 |
USENIX Security 11: 20th USENIX Security Symposium |
San Francisco, CA, USA |
August 10 August 14 |
Chaos Communication Camp 2011 |
Finowfurt, Germany |
August 13 August 14 |
OggCamp 11 |
Farnham, UK |
August 15 August 16 |
KVM Forum 2011 |
Vancouver, BC, Canada |
August 15 August 17 |
YAPC::Europe 2011 Modern Perl |
Riga, Latvia |
August 17 August 19 |
LinuxCon North America 2011 |
Vancouver, Canada |
August 20 August 21 |
PyCon Australia |
Sydney, Australia |
August 20 August 21 |
Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters |
Tapei, Taiwan |
August 22 August 26 |
8th Netfilter Workshop |
Freiburg, Germany |
| August 23 |
Government Open Source Conference |
Washington, DC, USA |
August 25 August 28 |
EuroSciPy |
Paris, France |
August 25 August 28 |
GNU Hackers Meeting |
Paris, France |
| August 26 |
Dynamic Language Conference 2011 |
Edinburgh, United-Kingdom |
| August 27 |
PyCon Japan 2011 |
Tokyo, Japan |
| August 27 |
SC2011 - Software Developers Haven |
Ottawa, ON, Canada |
August 27 August 28 |
Kiwi PyCon 2011 |
Wellington, New Zealand |
August 30 September 1 |
Military Open Source Software (MIL-OSS) WG3 Conference |
Atlanta, GA, USA |
September 6 September 8 |
Conference on Domain-Specific Languages |
Bordeaux, France |
September 7 September 9 |
Linux Plumbers' Conference |
Santa Rosa, CA, USA |
| September 8 |
Linux Security Summit 2011 |
Santa Rosa, CA, USA |
September 8 September 9 |
Italian Perl Workshop 2011 |
Turin, Italy |
September 8 September 9 |
Lua Workshop 2011 |
Frick, Switzerland |
September 9 September 11 |
State of the Map 2011 |
Denver, Colorado, USA |
September 9 September 11 |
Ohio LinuxFest 2011 |
Columbus, OH, USA |
September 10 September 11 |
PyTexas 2011 |
College Station, Texas, USA |
September 10 September 11 |
SugarCamp Paris 2011 - "Fix Sugar Documentation!" |
Paris, France |
September 11 September 14 |
openSUSE Conference |
Nuremberg, Germany |
If your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol