Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Linuxaudio.org announces new members
Linuxaudio.org, a not-for-profit consortium of libre software projects and artists, companies, institutions, organizations, and hardware vendors, has announced its newest members. "In its bi-monthly membership update, Linuxaudio.org is pleased to announce nine new members, bringing the total number of members to fifty two".
OpenVZ now available on the latest Linux kernel
The OpenVZ project has announced availability of beta level software based on the Linux kernel 2.6.18.Google Pledges Annual Donation to Samba
The Samba project has announced the pledge of an annual donation by Google. "The Samba Team is delighted to announce that Google has committed to providing the Samba project with an annual donation of US $20,000.00. "This is fantastic news for the Samba project" said team member Andrew Tridgell, "and will allow us to provide more support for developers who could not otherwise afford the travel expenses to attend conferences. Contributions like these make a huge difference!"."
Commercial announcements
Accenture Joins The Open Group
The Open Group has announced its latest member, Accenture. "Accenture will serve on The Open Group's Architecture Forum, which identifies and establishes standards for the development of enterprise-wide information systems."
AdventNet upgrades ManageEngine firewall analyzer
AdventNet Inc. has announced the release of version 4.0 of its ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer. "ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer is an enterprise-class, vendor-neutral software for firewall log analysis. It enhances the availability and security of your network by continuously collecting, analyzing, and reporting on the firewall traffic logs. Firewall Analyzer supports almost all major firewalls including Cisco Pix, CheckPoint, NetScreen, WatchGuard, SonicWall, FortiGate and many more!"
CA joins Community Patent Review Project as lead sponsor
CA has announced that it has joined the Community Patent Review Project. "Selected by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) as one of its strategic initiatives to improve and streamline the patent application review process, the Community Patent Review project is a collaborative effort between USPTO and New York Law School's Institute for Information Law & Policy. The project will deploy an online system to allow the scientific community to provide input into the patent examination process."
Cleversafe announces the Cleversafe Desktop
Cleversafe has announced the release of the Cleversafe Desktop, an open-source application for managing dispersed storage grids. "The Cleversafe Desktop will provide a way for anyone -- technical or not -- to take advantage of Dispersed Storage, and complements Cleversafe's other interfaces, Command Line Interface (CLI), Dispersed Storage Grid File System (DSGFS) and Dispersed Storage API (DSAPI)."
Novell's press release on partnership with Microsoft
Here is Novell's press release on its deal with Microsoft. There are a number of aspects to it, including joint marketing of products, the establishment of a shared research facility to work on topics like virtualization and document formats, and a patent deal: "As part of this agreement, Microsoft will provide a covenant not to assert its patent rights against customers who have purchased SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or other covered products from Novell, and Novell will provide an identical covenant to customers who have a licensed version of Windows or other covered products from Microsoft."
Some more details from Novell
Here's a new press release from Novell on its Microsoft deal. The company is getting almost $250 million from Microsoft up front. There's some real weasel words with regard to the GPL: "Under the patent cooperation agreement, Novell's customers receive directly from Microsoft a covenant not to sue. Novell does not receive a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft, and we have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Novell or anyone else in the open source community, including developers, has under the GPL and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL." Some serious hair-splitting is going on here.
The OpenMoko open phone
A company called OpenMoko has announced the availability of "a completely integrated open source mobile communications platform." It's based on the OpenEmbedded platform and is meant to be hackable. Some pictures are available on the OpenMoko site. Much of the system-level software was done by Harald Welte, who says "So basically, from a Free Software community level, this is exactly the kind of phone you want to get involved with, and play with. Yes, it's not the perfect phone. It runs a proprietary GSM stack on a separate processor. There are some minor, self-contained proprietary bits on the back end side in userspace. But well, it's probably the best you can do as a first shot of a new generation of devices, and without too much existing market power to put on upstream vendors."
XenSource announces XenEnterprise for Windows and Linux
XenSource, Inc. has announced XenEnterprise for Windows and Linux, a commercially-packaged Xen virtualization solution supporting both Microsoft Windows and Linux guests.Xilinx announces Virtex-5 LXT logic design solution
Xilinx, Inc. has announced a logic design system for their Virtex-5 LXT FPGA chips. "Xilinx, Inc. today announced availability of a complete logic design solution including an update to its Integrated Software Environment (ISE(TM)) design tools for their newest Virtex(TM)-5 LXT Platform FPGAs, the industry's first FPGA to deliver hard- coded PCI Express(R) technology and Tri-mode Ethernet Media Controller (MAC) blocks. ISE 8.2i delivers a unique integrated timing closure environment and productivity-enhancing features, allowing users to fully exploit the connectivity, performance, and power advantages of the Virtex-5 LXT family."
New Books
The Compleat Canadian Copyright Act 1921-2006
The second edition of the book The Compleat Canadian Copyright Act 1921-2006 has been published. "It is a reference work documenting 85 years of the shifting balance of power between creators, users, proprietors, Parliament and foreign interests reflected in the changing provisions of the Act. It is the record of legislative attempts to accommodate new ways, new technologies, to fix the expression of ideas or knowledge into a material matrix thereby creating new subject matter for copyright, e.g., talking pictures, radio and television, VCRs, DVDs, WWW, et al and in the process creating streams of royalties to be gained through their exploitation."
Rocky Nook releases "GIMP 2 for Photographers"
Rocky Nook has published the book GIMP 2 for Photographers by Klaus Goelker.Learning JavaScript - O'Reilly's Latest Release
O'Reilly has published the book Learning JavaScript by Shelley Powers.Prentice Hall Professional Releases Second Edition of Linux Administration Handbook
Prentice Hall Professional has published the book Linux Administration Handbook, second edition by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder and Trent R. Hein.Syngress Releases "WarDriving and Wireless Penetration Testing"
Syngress Publishing, Inc. has published the book WarDriving & Wireless Penetration Testing by Chris Hurley, Frank Thornton, Dan Connelly, Brian Baker, and edited by Russ Rogers.
Resources
The Austin Group announces the availability of revision draft 2
The Austin Group has released the second draft of the Austin Group specifications. "We're pleased to announce the availability of draft 2 of the Revision to the Austin Group specifications. This is the second draft of the revision project and is a ballot draft with IEEE and ISO balloting, for the full roadmap to the revision see Austin/319."
The Open Group announces new API sets for single UNIX Specification
The Open Group has announced the publication of new API sets for the next revision of the Single UNIX Specification. "Developed by The Open Group's Base Working group, the Open Group Technical Standards Extended API Sets Part 1 to 4 add eighty-eight new interfaces. The new interfaces include support for the use of locales in multi-threaded applications, the addition of robust mutexes, a set of filesystem routines that avoid common race conditions, and a number of widely used interfaces drawn from the open source community."
The Python Journal lives again!
Richard Jones reports on the return of the Python Journal. "The Python Journal has been resurrected. We're still sorting out some bits, but we're pretty happy with the first issue. I'll be helping out on the technical side, sorting out typesetting and the website. There might even be some articles from me, though I'll be dealing with OSDC 2006 first."
Education and Certification
PostgreSQL CE 8 Silver Release
A new PostgreSQL certification exam has been announced. "PostgreSQL CE is a certification exam for PostgreSQL engineers who are involved in system development, administration, maintenance, etc. The first English version of PostgreSQL was released on March, 2005, and was based on PostgreSQL 7.4. The newest exam to be released this time will be based on PostgreSQL 8.0, which includes PITR, Tablespace and so on."
Calls for Presentations
2007 PHP Quebec Conference CFP
A call for proposals has gone out for the 2007 PHP Quebec Conference. The event takes place on March 14-16, 2007 in Montreal, Canada, submissions are due by November 17.RailsConf 2007 CFP
A Call for Participation has gone out for RailsConf 2007. The event takes place from May 17-20, 2007 in Portland, Oregon, proposals are due by November 27.
Upcoming Events
OpenOffice.org 2007 Conference - Call for Location
A call for location has gone out for the OpenOffice.org 2007 Conference. "The annual OpenOffice.org Conference continues to go from strength to strength, with this year's glittering event in Lyon, France attracting over 600 registrations and enjoying a civic reception laid on by the Mayor of Lyon in the historic town hall. Can your team do even better next year? We are collecting applications from teams who are willing to organize OOoConf 2007."
Pd Q and Faust interfaces / ICMC 2006 demo
Albert Graef will be holding demos of the Pd Q and Faust interfaces at the icmc2006 conference in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 11. "Yann and me will show Faust, Q and their Pd and SuperCollider interfaces at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) next week in New Orleans, so if you have an opportunity to come we hope to meet you there."
Events: November 16, 2006 to January 15, 2007
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 11 November 17 |
Supercomputing 2006 | Tampa, FL, USA |
| November 14 November 16 |
LinuxWorld Cologne | Cologne, Germany |
| November 16 November 17 |
III Latin American Free Software Conference | Iguassu Falls, Brazil |
| November 16 November 17 |
Conference on Software Patents | Boston, MA, USA |
| November 18 | Richard Stallman speaks in Seoul | Seoul, South Korea |
| November 21 November 24 |
15th International Conference on Computing | Mexico City, Mexico |
| November 24 November 26 |
FOSS.IN 2006 | Bangalore, India |
| November 25 | FAVE 2006 - free software multimedia event in London | London, UK |
| November 27 November 30 |
PacSec Applied Security Conference 2006 | Tokyo, Japan |
| December 1 December 2 |
PHP Conference Brasil | Sao Paolo, Brazil |
| December 2 December 3 |
Technical Dutch Open Source Event | Eindhoven, the Netherlands |
| December 3 December 8 |
Large Installation System Administration Conference | Washington, D.C. |
| December 5 December 8 |
Open Source Developers' Conference 2006 | Melbourne, Australia |
| December 7 December 8 |
Desktop Architects Meeting | Portland, OR, USA |
| December 9 | London Perl Workshop | London, England |
| December 12 December 19 |
Virtual Congress UnInet Meeting UMeet'2006 | irc.uninet.edu, #linux |
| December 27 December 30 |
23rd Chaos Communication Congress 2006 | Berlin, Germany |
| January 11 January 12 |
Foundations of Open Media Software | Sydney, Australia |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Event Reports
Presentations and Projects Plentiful at Gelato ICE
Gelato presents coverage of the recent Gelato ICE: Itanium(r) Conference & Expo in Singapore. "Over 100 scientists, developers, and engineers from more than 30 companies and institutions convened from all around the globe for the October 2006 Gelato ICE: Itanium(r) Conference & Expo held in Singapore."
Plone Conference 2006 blows away (z3lab.org)
z3lab.org presents coverage of the 2006 Plone Conference. "This is how my first day (or shall I say evening?) in Seattle started. Alex Limi later reported in his keynote that he had a similiar conversation in a taxicab, except his driver actually knew what Open Source and SourceForge were. That's almost hard to believe. Fact is, though, Plone's more popular than ever. And so I was not the only one who came to the city that is usually better known for its proprietary software vendor. 360 other people decided to do so, too! There are some statistics about that number that are worth mentioning".
Page editor: Forrest Cook