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AnnouncementsNon-Commercial announcements Weird stuff from Alexis de Tocqueville Institution Remember the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution? They are the folks who put out the "Linux may help terrorists" press release almost exactly two years ago. They are at it again with this strange release hyping an upcoming book. "In one of the few extensive and critical studies on the source of open source code, Kenneth Brown, president of AdTI, traces the free software movement over three decades -- from its romantic but questionable beginnings, through its evolution to a commercial effort that draws on unpaid contributions from thousands of programmers. Among other points, the study directly challenges Linus Torvalds' claim to be the inventor of Linux." They promise excerpts from the book on May 20.
FFII: EU Ambassadors vote to back Software Patents FFII has sent out a news release (click below) stating that the EU Council of Ministers has approved a new patent directive which removes the amendments added by the European Parliament last year. "Instead the lax language of the original Commission proposal is to be reinstated in its entirety, with direct patentability of program text fragments added as icing on the cake. The proposal is now scheduled to be confirmed without discussion at a meeting of ministers on 17-18 May, unless one of the Member States changes its vote." As one might imagine, FFII is urging action to bring about such a change.
The AGNULA project protests against software patents The AGNULA project has published a protest against EU software patents. "In September 2003, the European Parliament had voted to maintain and reinforce the exclusion of software and business methods from patentability. On May 5 2004, the Irish Presidency managed to secure a qualified majority for a counter-proposal to the software patents directive, with only a few countries - including Belgium and Germany - showing resistance. This proposal discards all limiting amendments from the European Parliament, reinstates the laxist provisions from the Commission, adding direct patentability of data structures and process descriptions as icing on the cake."
EU Software Patent Legislation: a real threat for Linux and Open Source Mandrakesoft urges people to get involved in stopping the adoption of software patents in the EU. "Mandrakesoft would like to forewarn and mobilize its users and the software community about the very real threat of such a law. Please contact the media, your political representatives, and your government, and urge them to vote against unlimited Software Patents and to revert to the previous European Parliament position."
Marist College joins OSDL Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York has announced that it has joined the Open Source Development Labs. Marist is the first college to become an affiliate member of OSDL through a newly established College and University affiliate program.
Open Source Based Search Engine ObjectsSearch.com has announced a web search engine that is based on open-source code.
Anti-FUD from Open Source Industry Australia Open Source Industry Australia has sent out a couple of press releases relevant to current attacks on free software. This one warns against the risks of using proprietary software in defense applications: "Whilst there have been numerous attempts at inserting trojan code into both closed and open source products, all such attempts on open source program have been discovered and reversed, prior to the code becoming widely deployed and therefore a security risk to business, government and security agency users.."Then, there is this warning about relying on vendor "roadmaps." "Very often the actual path followed by the vendor marketing the 'vision' bears little real resemblance to the eventual technology users will be asked to run a few years later."
Reusable Zope Public License Version 2.1 of the Zope Public License has been announced. "We have updated the Zope Public License (ZPL) to revision 2.1. ZPL 2.1 is reusable. It supports having a consistent license for Zope and third-party products without requiring 3rd-party developers to assign copyright to Zope Corporation."
Commercial announcements Acucorp Announces Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Acucorp, Inc. has announced its support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. "Acucorp's announcement of support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 coincides with its official designation as a Red Hat Ready Partner. This designation requires companies to meet certain certification guidelines, confirm that their software runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and agree to support customers who deploy their applications on the Red Hat platform."
Astaro Raises $6.7M in Venture Capital Astaro Corporation has announced that it has raised more venture capital. "Astaro Corp., developers of the most popular Open Source-based security product, today announced it has raised a Series B round of $6.7 million from co-investors Insight Venture Partners of New York and Wellington Partners of Munich, Germany. The same group of investors co-led the company’s Series A round of $6.2 million in May 2003, bringing the total amount raised to date to $12.9 million."
California Digital and Lawrence Livermore Deploy Fastest Linux Cluster California Digital, Quadrics, and Intel have announced that they have successfully deployed the "most powerful Linux supercomputer ever built", a 4,096 Itanium 2 processor based Linux cluster code named "Thunder" at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Flashline's Pattern Book for Open Source Initiatives Flashline, Inc. has announced the Flashline Pattern Book for Open Source in the Enterprise. "The Flashline Pattern Book offers a collection of documents based on best practices that address various aspects of the creation, launch and ongoing management of an open source software initiative, from building a business case to budget, staffing, and licensing issues."
LynuxWorks Announces Fourth Quarter Results LynuxWorks has announced growth and profitability at the close of its fiscal year 2004. BlueCat Linux 5.0, "the industry's first embedded Linux product built on the 2.6 kernel, continues to be the platform of choice for developers of consumer electronics products."
Mandrakesoft introduces Personalized Solutions and Maintenance Program Mandrakesoft has announced its new Personalized Solutions and Maintenance Program (PSMP). "The "Personalized Solutions and Maintenance Program" (PSMP) is an easy-to-use, cost effective program designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. PSMP allows you to purchase Mandrakesoft solutions at volume prices. It reduces the costs associated with evaluating, acquiring, implementing, and maintaining eBusiness software, and provides streamlined purchasing and centralized solution management through an Internet based graphical interface."
Metrowerks Enables Development With Linux Metrowerks Corporation has announced the CodeWarrior Development Studio for ColdFire ISA, Linux Platform Edition.
New Books "JavaServer Faces" Released by O'Reilly O'Reilly has published the book JavaServer Faces by Hans Bergsten.
No Starch Releases "How Linux Works" No Starch Press has published the book How Linux Works by Brian Ward.
"Network Security Hacks" Released by O'Reilly O'Reilly has published the book Network Security Hacks by Andrew Lockhart.
Two new books on R Volumes 1 and 2 of The R Reference Manual are available from Network Theory Ltd. "They are published under a free documentation license and raise money for the R Foundation ($10 for each set of manuals sold)."
Prentice Hall PTR publishes "Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager" Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall PTR has published the book Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager by Mel Gorman.
Resources CLOS papers by Richard Gabriel available online A set of papers on the Common Lisp Object System are available online. "Richard Gabriel has made available online the text of all the CLOS papers he authored or co-authored. They include the original design documents and some overview articles. CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) is the Object-Oriented subsystem of the Common Lisp programming language."
LPI-News The April, 2004 edition of the LPI-News has been published. Take a look to see what the Linux Professional Institute is up to.
Contests and Awards The Seventh ICFP Programming Contest The Seventh International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) Programming Contest has been announced. "On Friday 4th June at 16:00 UTC (12:00 noon EDT), the programming task will be published on this web site. Teams will have 72 hours to write and submit a program to perform this task."
SCO in the SD Times 100 The SCO Group has sent out a press release proclaiming its being named in the "SD Times 100." ""SCO is honored to be named among the many influential companies that comprise the SD Times 100. We pride ourselves in the work we do to create world renowned Unix-based solutions designed by some of the most experienced and outstanding engineers in the industry." For the curious, here is the SD Times 100; SCO appears under "Influencers" in the company of Apache, Eclipse, O'Reilly, OSDL, and the W3C; the entry reads "The company's legal assaults on IBM and Linux users dominated 2003's tech headlines and shook up the open-source community. No other IT topic inspires such fervent debate, fear, uncertainty and doubt." Honored, indeed.
UKUUG 2004 Open Source Award UKUUG (the UK's Unix and Open Systems User Group) has made its 2004 Open Source Award to Julian Field of the University of Southampton for his work in creating, developing and supporting MailScanner, an e-mail security system. The award is made annually to give particular recognition to the development of free and open source software in the UK. MailScanner is distributed free under the GNU General Public License.
Upcoming Events THE AGNULA PROJECT @ creAzione Representatives of the AGNULA project will be present at the creAzione event in Milan, Italy on May 20-22, 2004.
EuroPython Update The EuroPython Team has posted a status update for the event. "EuroPython 2004, being held June 7-9 in Göteborg, Sweden is now less than three weeks away!"
OLS early registration ends in 15 Days. If you are planning to go to OLS and haven't registered yet, there's still time to get the early registration discount.
Linux Audio Conference 2005 The 2005 Linux Audio Conference will take place at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany on April 21-24, 2005.
Forum PHP 2004, Paris The forum PHP 2004 (in French) will be held in Paris, France on November 25 and 26, 2004.
Events: May 20 - July 15, 2004
Software announcements This week's software announcements Here are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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