Announcements

Protesters call on the BBC to eliminate DRM from the iPlayer

The Free Software Foundation's Defective by Design campaign has targeted the the BBC iPlayer. "Two weeks after the BBC officially launched the iPlayer, protesters wearing bright yellow Hazmat suits gathered outside BBC Television Center in London and BBC headquarters in Manchester to demand that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) be eliminated from the BBC."

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EFF: Appeals Court Battle Over NSA Surveillance on August 15

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release concerning a court battle over surveillance by the US National Security Agency. "In the wake of Congress approving a dramatic expansion of U.S. warrantless wiretapping powers, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on the future of two critical lawsuits over illegal surveillance of Americans. The hearing is set for August 15, at 2 p.m. in San Francisco. The government is fighting to get the cases thrown out of court, contending that the litigation jeopardizes state secrets."

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FiveRuns releases free, multi-platform Rails stack

FiveRuns has announced the launch of RM-Install, a free, multi-platform Rails stack. "RM-Install is the second component available from the FiveRuns Enterprise Management Suite for Rails, designed to manage the full Rails application lifecycle."

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Two Microsoft licenses submitted for OSI approval

Microsoft has, as promised, requested Open Source Initiative approval for its Microsoft Community License and Microsoft Permissive License. The initial responses on the mailing list are generally positive.

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Next generation multimedia architecture now available from Motama for free (Motama GmbH)

Motama has announced its next-generation multimedia architecture. "Motama's key technology provides a ground-breaking new software solution - called Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM) - which allows for developing distributed and networked multimedia applications easily. For the first time, Motama now offers a greatly improved and extended version of its NMM technology as free download".

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Novell launches ZENworks Configuration Management

Novell, Inc. has announced the availability of Novell(R) ZENworks(R) Configuration Management to its systems management portfolio. "This flexible, easy-to-use solution for configuration management allows companies to add patch, asset and endpoint security management capabilities to meet the specific needs of their IT environments. As a result, companies can centrally manage their IT resources to meet compliance and auditing needs, ease costs, improve security, and streamline business processes."

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Oracle announces general availability of Oracle(R) Database 11g

Oracle Corporation has announced Oracle(R) Database 11g for Linux. "Oracle Database 11g delivers the next-generation of enterprise information management, helping customers tackle the demands of rapid data growth, changing environments, and the need to deliver higher quality of services while reducing and controlling IT costs."

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Sun releases new license for Java Compatibility Tests to the OpenJDK community

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the OpenJDK(TM) Community Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) License. "With this release, Sun is placing the means for certifying "Write Once, Run Anywhere(TM)" compatibility into the hands of the community. This license is for the Java(TM) Compatibility Kit (JCK). The JCK is the Technology Compatibility Kit, a suite of tests, tools and documentation that determines whether or not an implementation complies with the Java Platform Standard Edition 6 specification."

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Second and final AGPL draft released

The second and final discussion draft of the Affero GPL version 3 has been released. "The GNU Affero GPL version 3 consists of the text of GPLv3, slightly adapted for the new name, and an additional paragraph in section 13 that requires people who modify the software to publicly provide source when users interact with the software over a network." The changes this time around are mostly tweaks to that additional paragraph. People who are interested in this license should speak now; more information is available at the AGPL second draft guide page.

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FSFE Newsletter

The August 9, 2007 edition of the FSFE Newsletter is online with the latest Free Software Foundation Europe news. Topics include: Mythbusting MS-OOXML, First Swedish Fellowship meeting held in Gothenburg, Free Software on Exit festival 2007, Novi Sad, Serbia, Freedom in the hills: the Bergtagung, GNU GPL licence confirmed once again in a court of law, Submit Free Software projects to the Trophées du Libre, Ongoing work of spreading GNU GPLv3 understanding and Tell a friend about the Fellowship, share this newsletter.

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The Linux Platform Weather Forecast

For a little while now, LWN editor Jonathan Corbet has been working with the Linux Foundation to maintain a page called the Linux Platform Weather Forecast. The idea is to summarize developments in (mostly, but not limited to) the Linux kernel area so that interested parties can get a sense for what is coming. The Linux Foundation has gotten around to announcing the existence of this page, leading to a number of articles (1, 2...). LWN readers, of course, will not be surprised by much that is found there.

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Vote in the 2007 Desktop Linux Survey (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch has announced the voting for the 2007 Desktop Linux Survey. "DesktopLinux.com launched its 2007 Desktop Linux Survey on August 13, asking users of Linux desktops to identify what distributions they use, as well as their choice of windowing environment (KDE, GNOME, etc.), web browsers, email clients, and Windows-on-Linux solutions."

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The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference expands it's scope

O'Reilly has announced the 2008 Emerging Technology Conference. The event will be held in San Diego, CA on March 3-6, 2008. "Program Chair Brady Forrest is formulating an even more comprehensive program for 2008: "We are going to be expanding the scope of ETech," notes Forrest, " looking beyond the Web to manufacturing, biotech, large-scale systems, sensor networks, alternate reality games, visualizations, robotics, policy, human enhancement and clean tech.""

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Linux Installfest workshop in Davis, CA

The Linux Users' Group of Davis will be holding its next Linux Installfest workshop in Davis, CA on Saturday, August 18th, 2007.

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Summercon 2007, Atlanta

Summercon 2007 will be held from August 24-26 at the Wyndham Midtown Hotel in Atlanta, GA. "Summercon is our chance to get together, talk to each other face-to-face, and swap information about innovations, trends, practices, and rumors in the field of computer security. We welcome all walks of life and all sides of the debate to Summercon: hackers, crackers, script kiddies, w4r3z dud3z, feds, narcs, cops, concerned parents, hangers-on, strippers, media whores, Geraldo Rivera, and Kevin Mitnick."

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Fall Von Conference and Expo, Boston

Pulvermedia has announced the eleventh annual Fall VON Conference & Expo. The event will be held in Boston, MA on October 29 - November 1, 2007. "This year, Pulvermedia's flagship event, which is the largest, longest- running, and most significant event in the IP communications industry, will feature several new adjoining conferences, and multiple new events and pavilions on the expo floor. As a result, a record number of attendees, participating companies and speakers are expected to take part throughout the four-day event."

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Events: August 23, 2007 to October 22, 2007

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
August 20 August 24	PHP Training at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, USA
August 20 August 25	DallasCon 2007-cancelled	Dallas, Texas, USA
August 22 August 25	Python 3000 Sprint	Mountain View and Chicago, USA
August 24 August 26	Summercon 2007	Atlanta, GA, USA
August 25 August 26	FrOSCon 2007	Sankt Augustin (near Bonn), Germany
August 27 September 1	International Computer Music Conference 2007	Copenhagen, Denmark
August 28 August 29	XCon2007	Beijing, China
August 29 August 31	KVM Forum 2007	Tucson, AZ, United States
September 1	ENOS 2007	Caldas da Rainha, Leiria, Portugal
September 2 September 4	LinuxConf Europe 2007	Cambridge, England
September 3 September 6	HITBSecConf2007	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
September 5 September 7	RAID 2007	Gold Coast, QL, Australia
September 5 September 6	2007 Linux Kernel Developers Summit	Cambridge, UK
September 5 September 7	Office 2.0 Conference	San Francisco, CA, USA
September 6 September 8	Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems	Dortmund, Germany
September 7 September 8	LinuxWorld China 2007	Beijing, China
September 7 September 8	LinuxChix Brasil	Asa Sul, Brazil
September 8 September 12	GITEX Technology Week	Dubai, United Arab Emirates
September 8 September 9	PyCon UK 2007	Birmingham, UK
September 10 September 14	Django Bootcamp with Juan Pablo Claude	Atlanta, GA, USA
September 10 September 12	X Developers' Summit	Cambridge, UK
September 10 September 12	Sun Grid Engine Workshop 2007	Regensburg, Germany
September 11 September 12	3rd International Conference on IT-Incident Management and IT-Forensics	Stuttgart, Germany
September 11 September 14	5th Netfilter Workshop	Karlsruhe, Germany
September 11 September 13	VMworld 2007	San Francisco, CA, USA
September 14 September 15	EuroBSDCon 2007	Copenhagen, Denmark
September 14	Django Sprint	online
September 15 September 16	Texas Python Unconference	Houston, TX, USA
September 15	Software Freedom Day	The Internet, Worldwide
September 17 September 19	RailsConf Europe 2007	Berlin, Germany
September 17	Bruce Perens to speak in Berkeley, September 17	Berkeley, CA, USA
September 18 September 21	Embedded Systems Conference	Boston, MA, USA
September 18 September 20	High Performance Embedded Computing Workshop	Lexington, MA, USA
September 19 September 21	OpenOffice.org Conference 2007	Barcelona, Spain
September 19 September 21	Gartner Open Source Summit	Las Vegas, NV, USA
September 22 September 25	Cell Hack-a-thon II	Austin, TX, USA
September 24 September 27	14th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference	New Orleans, USA
September 24 September 25	Power Architecture Developer Conference	Austin, TX, USA
September 24 September 27	Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial 2007	Victoria, BC, Canada
September 27 September 28	Audio Mostly 2007	Ilmenau, Germany
September 28 September 30	Ohio LinuxFest 2007	Columbus, USA
September 28 September 29	Freed.in	Delhi, India
September 28	IRC discussion on AGPLv3 and GPLv3	online, world
September 30 October 3	Gelato ICE: Itanium® Conference & Expo	Biopolis, Singapore, Singapore
October 2 October 3	Openmind 2007	Tampere, Finland
October 3 October 5	Apache Cocoon Get Together	Rome, Italy
October 6 October 7	Wineconf 2007	Zurich, Switzerland
October 6 October 8	GNOME Boston Summit	Boston, MA, USA
October 7 October 9	Graphing Social Patterns	San Jose, CA, USA
October 8 October 10	VISION 2007 Embedded Linux Developer Conference	Santa Clara, USA
October 8	Embedded Linux Bootcamp for Beginners	Santa Clara, CA, USA
October 9 October 10	Profoss	Brussels, Belgium
October 10 October 12	Plone Conference 2007	Naples, Italy
October 12	Legal Summit for Software Freedom	New York, NY, USA
October 13 October 14	T-DOSE 2007 (Technical Dutch Open Source Event)	Eindhoven, The Netherlands
October 13	The Ontario Linux Fest Conference	Toronto, Canada
October 13	Aka Linux Kernel Developer Conference	Beijing, China
October 16	Databases and the Web	London, England
October 17 October 19	2007 WebGUI Users Conference	Madison, WI, USA
October 17 October 19	Web 2.0 Summit	San Francisco, CA, USA
October 18 October 20	HackLu 2007	Kirchberg, Luxembourg
October 19 October 21	ToorCon 9	San Diego, CA, USA
October 20 October 21	Ubucon.de	Krefeld (Köln), Germany
October 20	PostgreSQL Conference Fall 2007	Portland, OR, USA
October 20	./freedom & opensource day - PERU	Lima, PERU
October 21 October 25	OOPSLA 2007	Montreal, Canada
October 21 October 26	Colorado Software Summit	Keystone, CO, USA

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

The Ninth Annual OSCON

O'Reilly has sent out a press release for the recently held Ninth Annual Open Source Convention (OSCON). "The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), held July 23-27 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon brought together over 3,000 industry luminaries, developers, hackers, and business people to advance the discussion and share information surrounding open source computing. The conference covered every area of the open source arena: Administration, Business, Databases, Emerging Topics, Java, Linux, People, Perl, PHP, Programming, Python, Ruby, Security, and Web Applications. A "united nations" of computing languages, attendees at OSCON were not only speaking in multiple technical languages, they were finding unique solutions to integrating tools seamlessly."

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