Brief items
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of organizations
and law schools have launched
Trolling
Effects, an online resource that aims to "
unite and empower
would-be victims of patent trolls through a crowdsourced database of demand
letters and to serve as a clearinghouse of information on the troll epidemic."
Full Story (comments: none)
The Free Software Foundation has
announced
a fundraising effort for the Replicant project. "
While most of
Android is already free software, device manufacturers distribute the OS
with some key nonfree parts. Those parts are in the layer of Android that
communicates with the phone or tablet hardware, such as the WiFi and
Bluetooth chips. In addition, every commonly available Android device comes
pre-loaded with a variety of proprietary applications running on top of the
operating system. Replicant seeks to provide all of the same functionality
using only free software."
Comments (88 posted)
Videos from the
recently-concluded GNU Tools Cauldron event are now publicly
available. Many topics are covered, including re-architecting GCC, data
race detection in GDB, the impact of compiler options on energy
consumption, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Articles of interest
The Ada Initiative has a report on its progress during the first half of
2013. "
2012 was a tipping point for women in open technology and culture. In 2013 the Ada Initiative has worked hard to build on that momentum, through the AdaCamp conference, Impostor Syndrome training, workshops, speeches, interviews in the mainstream media, and more. With your help, we're continuing to make a difference for women in open technology and culture. Thank you so much for your support of our work!"
Full Story (comments: none)
A coalition led by Microsoft has recently submitted an antitrust complaint
to the European Commission claiming that the distribution of Free
Software free of charge hurts competition. The Free Software Foundation
Europe has
written
a letter to the European Commission's competition authorities refuting
that claim. "
In its letter, FSFE urges the Commission to consider
the facts properly
before accepting these allegations at face value. "Free Software is a
boon for humankind. The only thing that it is dangerous to is
Microsoft's hopelessly outdated, restrictive business model," says
Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's president."
Full Story (comments: none)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has
released
its report on its actions regarding the Aaron Swartz case; the
conclusion is that MIT did nothing wrong. "
However, the report says
that MIT’s neutrality stance did not consider factors including 'that the
defendant was an accomplished and well-known contributor to Internet
technology'; that the law under which he was charged 'is a poorly drafted
and questionable criminal law as applied to modern computing'; and that
'the United States was pursuing an overtly aggressive prosecution.' While
MIT’s position 'may have been prudent,' the report says, 'it did not duly
take into account the wider background' of policy issues 'in which MIT
people have traditionally been passionate leaders.'"
Comments (18 posted)
New Books
Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "OpenGL ES 2 for Android" by Kevin Brothaler.
Full Story (comments: none)
Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "Rapid Android Development" by Daniel Sauter.
Full Story (comments: none)
Contests and Awards
The recipients of the 2013 O’Reilly Open Source Awards have been
announced.
Awards go to Behdad Esfahbod (HarfBuzz), Jessica McKellar (Python Software
Foundation), Limor Fried (Adafruit Industries), Valerie Aurora (Ada
Initiative), Paul Fenwick (Perl), and Martin Michlmayr (Debian Project).
Comments (none posted)
Calls for Presentations
CFP Deadlines: August 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013
The following listing of CFP deadlines is taken from the
LWN.net CFP Calendar.
| Deadline | Event Dates |
Event | Location |
|---|
| August 7 |
September 12
September 14 |
SmartDevCon |
Katowice, Poland |
| August 15 |
August 22
August 25 |
GNU Hackers Meeting 2013 |
Paris, France |
| August 18 |
October 19 |
Hong Kong Open Source Conference 2013 |
Hong Kong, China |
| August 19 |
September 20
September 22 |
PyCon UK 2013 |
Coventry, UK |
| August 21 |
October 23 |
TracingSummit2013 |
Edinburgh, UK |
| August 22 |
September 25
September 27 |
LibreOffice Conference 2013 |
Milan, Italy |
| August 30 |
October 24
October 25 |
Xen Project Developer Summit |
Edinburgh, UK |
| August 31 |
October 26
October 27 |
T-DOSE Conference 2013 |
Eindhoven, Netherlands |
| August 31 |
September 24
September 25 |
Kernel Recipes 2013 |
Paris, France |
| September 1 |
November 18
November 21 |
2013 Linux Symposium |
Ottawa, Canada |
| September 6 |
October 4
October 5 |
Open Source Developers Conference France |
Paris, France |
| September 15 |
November 8 |
PGConf.DE 2013 |
Oberhausen, Germany |
| September 15 |
November 15
November 16 |
Linux Informationstage Oldenburg |
Oldenburg, Germany |
| September 15 |
October 3
October 4 |
PyConZA 2013 |
Cape Town, South Africa |
| September 15 |
November 22
November 24 |
Python Conference Spain 2013 |
Madrid, Spain |
| September 15 |
April 9
April 17 |
PyCon 2014 |
Montreal, Canada |
| September 15 |
February 1
February 2 |
FOSDEM 2014 |
Brussels, Belgium |
If the CFP deadline for your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Upcoming Events
The schedule for DebConf13 (August 11-18 in Vaumarcus, Switzerland) has
been posted. "
DebConf13 talks will mostly happen in two rooms
simultaneously, except for a few plenaries which will be presented in the
main room with no parallel event. A third room will be available for
discussion groups and ad-hoc sessions. As usual, we’ve tried to cluster
related activities in sequence, even though it was not always possible."
Full Story (comments: none)
The Python Game Programming Challenge,
PyWeek, will run its 17th challenge during
the week of September 1-8, 2013. The PyWeek challenge invites entrants to
write a game in one week from scratch either as an individual or in a team.
Full Story (comments: none)
Ohio LinuxFest (September 13-15 in Columbus, Ohio) has announced that Kirk
McKusick will be a keynote speaker. "
Kirk McKusick is a longtime promoter of Free Software, particularly the
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) of Unix. In the early days he shared
an office with Bill Joy (later founder of Sun Microsystems), and is
credited with designing the original Berkeley Fast File System (FFS). He
implemented soft updates, an alternative approach to maintaining disk
integrity after a crash or power outage, in FFS, and a revised version of
UFS known as "UFS2", and is primarily responsible for creating the
complementary features of filesystem snapshots and background fsck (file
system check and repair)."
Full Story (comments: none)
Events: August 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013
The following event listing is taken from the
LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|
July 31
August 4 |
OHM2013: Observe Hack Make |
Geestmerambacht, the Netherlands |
August 1
August 8 |
GUADEC 2013 |
Brno, Czech Republic |
August 3
August 4 |
COSCUP 2013 |
Taipei, Taiwan |
August 6
August 8 |
Military Open Source Summit |
Charleston, SC, USA |
August 7
August 11 |
Wikimania |
Hong Kong, China |
August 9
August 11 |
XDA:DevCon 2013 |
Miami, FL, USA |
August 9
August 12 |
Flock - Fedora Contributor Conference |
Charleston, SC, USA |
August 9
August 13 |
PyCon Canada |
Toronto, Canada |
August 11
August 18 |
DebConf13 |
Vaumarcus, Switzerland |
August 12
August 14 |
YAPC::Europe 2013 “Future Perl” |
Kiev, Ukraine |
August 16
August 18 |
PyTexas 2013 |
College Station, TX, USA |
August 22
August 25 |
GNU Hackers Meeting 2013 |
Paris, France |
August 23
August 24 |
Barcamp GR |
Grand Rapids, MI, USA |
August 24
August 25 |
Free and Open Source Software Conference |
St.Augustin, Germany |
August 30
September 1 |
Pycon India 2013 |
Bangalore, India |
September 3
September 5 |
GanetiCon |
Athens, Greece |
September 6
September 8 |
State Of The Map 2013 |
Birmingham, UK |
September 6
September 8 |
Kiwi PyCon 2013 |
Auckland, New Zealand |
September 10
September 11 |
Malaysia Open Source Conference 2013 |
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
September 12
September 14 |
SmartDevCon |
Katowice, Poland |
| September 13 |
CentOS Dojo and Community Day |
London, UK |
September 16
September 18 |
CloudOpen |
New Orleans, LA, USA |
September 16
September 18 |
LinuxCon North America |
New Orleans, LA, USA |
September 18
September 20 |
Linux Plumbers Conference |
New Orleans, LA, USA |
September 19
September 20 |
UEFI Plugfest |
New Orleans, LA, USA |
September 19
September 20 |
Open Source Software for Business |
Prato, Italy |
September 19
September 20 |
Linux Security Summit |
New Orleans, LA, USA |
September 20
September 22 |
PyCon UK 2013 |
Coventry, UK |
September 23
September 25 |
X Developer's Conference |
Portland, OR, USA |
September 23
September 27 |
Tcl/Tk Conference |
New Orleans, LA, USA |
September 24
September 25 |
Kernel Recipes 2013 |
Paris, France |
September 24
September 26 |
OpenNebula Conf |
Berlin, Germany |
September 25
September 27 |
LibreOffice Conference 2013 |
Milan, Italy |
September 26
September 29 |
EuroBSDcon |
St Julian's area, Malta |
September 27
September 29 |
GNU 30th anniversary |
Cambridge, MA, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
