Announcements

Mandriva signs the AFUL petition

Mandriva has announced that it has signed the AFUL petition against the sale of bundled software. "Nowadays, when you buy a new computer, several pieces of software are already pre-installed, be it the operating system, antivirus software or burning software. It is almost impossible for consumers to know the selling price, contracts and conditions of use of these applications and, if they wish to, to refuse to purchase them. On average, the price of this software constitutes between 10% and 25% of the purchase price of the computer - that is to say from 100 to 300 Euro. Although the French Consumer Code forbids tied sale of goods (the computer hardware) and services (software licenses), the situation continues and deprives consumers of real freedom of choice."

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Fluffy Spider Technologies partners with Technical Solutions

Fluffy Spider Technologies (FST) and Technical Solutions (Techsol) have announced an international joint research, development, and marketing alliance. "The FST and Techsol alliance enables developers of products such as smart phones, TV set-top boxes, point-of-service terminals, in-car systems and building automation devices to outsource innovative hardware design and manufacture, with further cost reductions, and benefit from the embedded software platform that allows them to dramatically enhance the user experience."

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Gaia Flash Framework released

Steven Sacks has announced the release of the Gaia Flash Framework. "Technology author Steven Sacks today announced the free public release of his Gaia Flash Framework(R). Gaia is an open-source framework that provides powerful solutions for building Flash websites to designers and developers of all skill levels. Gaia dramatically reduces development time and is the first tool to feature a scaffolding engine for Flash."

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Intuit's QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Embraces Linux

The press release is thin on technical details and there is no mention of client-side Linux support, but Intuit is, perhaps for the first time, actually admitting that Linux shops exist. It appears they are offering a way to store the database for their mid-range QuickBooks on Linux servers. "The offering will enable the tens of thousands of growing companies that are passionate about using open source environments to take advantage of Intuit's award-winning mid-market system while maintaining the increased security, manageability and lower total cost of ownership of Linux. The decision to extend the offering beyond Windows, made at the QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions User Conference, is part of Intuit's effort to continue to meet the needs of more complex businesses."

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Another day another Microsoft patent deal

Microsoft has announced that it has signed a patent agreement with LG Electronics. "The specific financial terms of the agreement are confidential, but the parties are disclosing that Microsoft will be making a net balancing payment to LGE and MicroConnect for patents related to operating systems and computer systems. LGE will be making ongoing payments to Microsoft for the value of Microsoft patents as they relate to Linux-based embedded devices that LGE produces."

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Microsoft hires a Director of Linux Interoperability

As announced on Microsoft's 'PORT 25' weblog, Tom Hanrahan, formerly the Director of Engineering for the Linux Foundation, has joined the company. His title is most likely new to Microsoft org charts. "Tom will join as the Director of Linux Interoperability, and will head our Linux/Windows interoperability work, including leadership of the Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab. This development lab will undertake much of the engineering work involved in the multi-year technical partnership. Among other things, Tom has much to teach us on 'developing in the open' -- how to work in a transparent way with a broad engineering community."

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OpenLogic Partners with Aegif

OpenLogic, Inc. has announced a partnership with Aegif. "Aegif employs experienced consultants who offer strategic advice and solutions on content and document management -- and has a wide variety of clients including the largest companies in Japan. As a part of today's agreement, Aegif will use OpenLogic to provide and support the open source software needed to run major open source ECM products, as well as other open source packages. The underlying software stacks needed to run ECM open source products in Japan are often different than in the U.S. and require localized support."

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PrismTech uses Gumstix for Software Defined Radio

PrismTech has announced a Software Defined Radio Solution that uses the Gumstix miniature computer. "PrismTech, an acknowledged leader in the provision of high performance middleware and tools, today announced the availability of its SpectraT Operating Environment (OE) on the GumstixT family of small form factor computers. This technology breakthrough delivers the first complete COTS Software Communications Architecture (SCA) software defined radio (SDR) solution on the world's smallest full-function computer, offering significant cost, size, weight and power (SWaP) benefits for SDR developers."

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Qt Jambi 4.3 released

Version 4.3 of Qt Jambi, a rich client Java development framework with a dual license, has been has been announced by Trolltech. "With an intuitive, easy to learn API and integrated development tools for User Interface (UI) design and internationalization, Qt Jambi enables rapid development of advanced rich-client applications."

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Zenoss Releases New Version of Open Source IT Management Product

Zenoss Inc. has released the next major version of Zenoss Core, version 2.0. "The new version of Zenoss Core, an integrated IT management software solution, allows IT administrators to track the configuration and health of their entire IT environment. Zenoss Core is the first commercial open source IT management solution to include a configuration management database (CMDB), and adds several other features that deliver on the company's mission of simplifying enterprise IT management."

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Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 2nd Ed, New from No Starch

No Starch Press has published the book Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 2nd Edition by Rickford Grant.

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Comparing ODF and OOXML

Sam Hiser has put up a detailed comparison of the OpenDocument and Microsoft OOXML document formats. "ODF is the only format unencumbered by intellectual property rights (IPR) restrictions on its use in other software, as certified by the Software Freedom Law Center. Conversely, many elements designed into the OOXML formats but left undefined in the OOXML specification require behaviors upon document files that only Microsoft Office applications can provide. This makes data inaccessible and breaks work group productivity whenever alternative software is used."

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StorageSS deadline extended to June 15

The 3rd International Workshop on Storage Security and Survivability (StorageSS) paper submission deadline has been extended to June 15.

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aKademy keynote speakers announced (KDE.News)

KDE.News has announced the keynote speakers for aKademy 2007. "The opening talk will be from Lars Knoll of Trolltech who will tell us about their plans for Qt 4.4 and their relationship with KDE. Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical will be talking on the 10 Challenges to Open Source. On Sunday, Dan Kohn of The Linux Foundation will talk on the state of Linux Standardisation on the Desktop. Continuing the week the Edu and Schools Day will be opened by Sulamita Garcia with a talk on Intel's Classmate PC."

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CIFS Engineering Workshop in Mountain View, California

A CIFS Engineering Workshop will be held in Mountain View, California on September 26-28, 2007. "This event is intended for engineers working on any CIFS products and services, not just products based on the Samba codebase. We welcome engineers from any implementers of the CIFS and SMB2 protocols, or from people shipping products based on these protocols, or people with a deep interest in advancing the standardization of these protocols."

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Invitation to EBU Seminar

An European Broadcasting Union international training seminar will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on October 1-2, 2007. "Want to learn if Free and Open Source Software provides relevant alternatives for your TV & Radio production and delivery platforms? This seminar is designed for you. The seminar will be your guide through the specifics of FOSS and address key issues such as licensing, costs & support."

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Registration is Open - Flash Memory Summit 2007

Online registration is open for the second annual Flash Memory Summit taking place in Santa Clara, California, August 7 - 9, 2007.

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Events: June 21, 2007 to August 20, 2007

The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.

Date(s)	Event	Location
June 17 June 23	Debian Developer Conference	Edinburgh, Scotland
June 17 June 22	2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference	Santa Clara, USA
June 20 June 22	IT Underground	Dublin, Ireland
June 23	Mozilla Developer Day	Paris, France
June 25 June 27	SOA World Conference and Expo 2007	New York, NY, USA
June 27 June 30	2007 Linux Symposium	Ottawa, Canada
June 27 June 29	Summer School of Sound	Lancaster, UK
June 29	NLUUG event theme innovation Enschede	Enschede, the Netherlands
June 30 July 7	Akademy 2007	Glasgow, Scotland
July 2 July 6	Learning Programming with PHP	Redditch, Worcestershire, UK
July 6	II WHYFLOSS CONFERENCE MADRID	Madrid, Spain
July 7	Italian PostgreSQL Day	Prato, Tuscany, Italy
July 7 July 8	LugRadio Live 2007	Wolverhampton, United Kingdom
July 9 July 11	EuroPython 2007	Vilnius, Lithuania
July 9 July 13	PostgreSQL 8.2 Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
July 10 July 11	The Linux Foundation Japan Symposium	Tokyo, Japan
July 12 July 13	IV GUADEC-ES	Granada, Spain
July 12 July 13	DIMVA 2007	Lucerne, Switzerland
July 14	UK Gentoo Meeting 2007	London, UK
July 15 July 21	GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference	Birmingham, England
July 18 July 20	GCC and GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit	Ottawa, Canada
July 22 July 24	Ubuntu Live	Portland, OR, USA
July 23 July 27	O'Reilly Open Source Convention	Portland, OR, USA
July 23 July 27	Asterisk Bootcamp with Jared Smith at Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
July 23 July 25	Open Group Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference	Austin, TX, USA
July 24 July 27	Ninth course on the Exim mail transfer agent	Cambridge, UK
July 28 August 2	Black Hat USA 2007	Las Vegas, NV, USA
July 30 August 3	Ruby on Rails Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
August 3 August 5	Wikimania 2007 (Annual Wikimedia conference)	Taipei, Taiwan
August 3 August 5	DefCon 15	Las Vegas, NV, USA
August 4 August 7	LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	San Francisco, CA, USA
August 6 August 10	16th USENIX Security Symposium	Boston, MA, USA
August 6 August 9	LinuxWorld Conference and Expo	San Francisco, CA, USA
August 7 August 9	Flash Memory Summit 2007	Santa Clara, CA, USA
August 7 August 11	7as Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre	Córdoba, Argentina
August 8 August 12	Chaos Communication Camp	Finow airport, Germany
August 10	August Penguin 2007	Tel Aviv, Israel
August 11	Picn*x XVI - The Linux 16th Anniversary Picnic	Sunnyvale, CA, USA
August 11 August 15	Virtual FudCon8	Online, IRC
August 14 August 18	Scientific Tools for Python	Pasadena, CA, USA
August 19	Open Source Health Informatics Working Group	Brisbane, Australia

If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.

GNOME Blogs upgraded to WordPress MU

The GNOME Blogs site has been moved to WordPress MU, numerous site improvements have been added.

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