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AnnouncementsBrief items Oracle acquires KspliceKsplice is a mechanism for applying patches to running kernels without the need to bring the system down; LWN covered it back in 2008. Now the company that was built around this technology has been acquired by Oracle, which plans to offer the service with its enterprise distribution. "The addition of Ksplice's technology will increase the security, reliability and availability of Oracle Linux by enabling customers to apply security updates, diagnostics patches and critical bug fixes without rebooting."
The Open Cloud Initiative launchesThe Open Cloud Initiative has announced its existence. "Its purpose is to provide a legal framework within which the greater cloud computing community of users and providers can reach consensus on a set of requirements for Open Cloud, as described in the Open Cloud Principles (OCP) document, and then apply those requirements to cloud computing products and services, again by way of community consensus." Comments are sought on the draft open cloud principles.
Microsoft/Novell agreement renewedMicrosoft has announced that the controversial patent deal with Novell has been renewed for a few more years. "This relationship will extend through Jan. 1, 2016, with Microsoft committed to invest $100 million in new SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates for customers receiving Linux support from SUSE."
DebConf video streams availableDebConf 11 (July 24-30) is underway in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Streaming videos of the conference are available for those who would like to follow along at home. There is also an IRC channel to allow remote participants to comment and ask questions about the ongoing sessions.
Canonical Takes Ubuntu for Business Into the Channel with New Support ProgramCanonical has announced the launch of its new Ubuntu Advantage (UA) partner program, "designed to help resellers bring a new set of support services for Ubuntu server, desktop and cloud installations direct to businesses. The program is launching with global partners, including CSS in the US, Asia and EMEA, Ashisuto in Japan, RedPill Linpro in Scandinavia and Alterway in France."
Articles of interest When Patents Attack! (This American Life)National Public Radio [US] recently aired an episode of "This American Life" which took a critical look at the patent system. From the transcript: "Why would a company rent an office in a tiny town in East Texas, put a nameplate on the door, and leave it completely empty for a year? The answer involves a controversial billionaire physicist in Seattle, a 40 pound cookbook, and a war waging right now, all across the software and tech industries. We take you inside this war, and tell the fascinating story of how an idea enshrined in the US constitution to promote progress and innovation, is now being used to do the opposite." The episode is available at the "This American Life" website. (Thanks to Jack Davis and Daniel Morsing)
Shuttleworth: The responsibilities of ownershipMark Shuttleworth's push for copyright assignment agreements takes an interesting turn with this lengthy post suggesting that contributors owe a project their copyrights since they are dumping a maintenance load on that project. "So, one of the reasons I'm happy to donate (fully and irreversibly) a patch to a maintainer, and why Canonical generally does assign patches to upstreams who ask for it, is that I think the rights and responsibilities of ownership should be matched. If I want someone else to handle the work - the responsibility - of maintenance, then I'm quite happy for them to carry the rights as well. That only seems balanced. In the common case, that maintenance turns out to be as much work as the original crafting of the patch, and frankly, it's the 'boring work' part, while the fun part was solving the problem immediately at hand."
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-NoResponding to a considerable amount of pressure to adopt an anti-harassment policy for OSCON, Tim O'Reilly has posted a statement on inappropriate behavior at O'Reilly events. "While we're still trying to understand exactly what might have happened at Oscon or other O'Reilly conferences in the past, it's become clear that this is a real, long-standing issue in the technical community. And we do know this: we don't condone harassment or offensive behavior, at our conferences or anywhere. It's counter to our company values. More importantly, it's counter to our values as human beings."
Märdian: Openmoko GTA04 "Phoenux"The Openmoko community has teamed up with German Openmoko distributor Golden Delicious Computers to develop the GTA04, an open smartphone. "Golden Delicious Computers and the enthusiasts from the Openmoko community started off with the idea of stuffing a BeagleBoard into a Neo Freerunner case and connecting an USB UMTS dongle to it — this was the first prototype GTA04A1, announced in late 2010 and presented at OHSW 2010 and FOSDEM 2011." (Thanks to Neil Brown)
Linux Foundation Releases New White Paper on FOSS Compliance for Suppliers (Linux.com)The Linux Foundation has announced the availability of a white paper on compliance practices for free/open source software. "It examines compliance practices needed when software supplied by a third party vendor is brought into the code baseline of a product to be distributed externally. The white paper discusses requirements a company should impose upon its suppliers to disclose FOSS in their deliverables and to provide what's needed to achieve compliance. The paper also discusses steps a company can take to review and validate the FOSS disclosures made by its suppliers. In addition to those topics, the white paper addresses measures a company can undertake to assess its suppliers' compliance capabilities." Registration is required to view the paper.
Linux Foundation Monthly Newsletter: July 2011The July edition of the LF monthly covers additions to LinuxCon NA, new members, 20th anniversary events, and several other topics.
Humble Indie Bundle 3: Pay What You Want for Linux Games (Linux.com)Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier covers the release of the third Humble Indie Bundle. "The Humble Bundle sales, and Humble Indie Bundle sales, are an experiment in letting users set their own price for games. Yes, you read that right — users can set their own price for games. Better yet, the games are DRM-free, so you can download and install them without worrying about managing a key or having the DVD in the drive to play a game."
FSFE: Fellowship interview with Bernhard ReiterGuido Arnold interviews Bernhard Reiter, on behalf of the Free Software Foundation Europe. "Bernhard is founder and Executive Director of Intevation GmbH, a company with exclusively Free Software products and services since 1999. He played a crucial role in the establishment of FSFE as one of its founders, and architect of the original German team. Beside that he participated in setting up three important Free Software organisations: FreeGIS.org, FFII, and FossGIS."
New Books CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development--New from Pragmatic BookshelfPragmatic Bookshelf has released "CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development" by Trevor Burnham.
Contests and Awards Sourcefabric CMS theme contestSourcefabric has launched a new global theme contest, in which designers worldwide are invited to submit themes for Newscoop, "the open source CMS for news organisations." "Sourcefabric's Newscoop Theme Contest gives aspiring designers a chance to submit themes for newspaper sites like El Faro. Two winning entries will receive all-expenses paid trips to Prague for Sourcecamp 2011, the annual get-together of the Sourcefabric community."
Upcoming Events Events: August 4, 2011 to October 3, 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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