Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Announcing Bitbucket
Jesper Noehr has announced the Bitbucket project. "Bitbucket is a place for you and your team to host and follow your Mercurial projects. Mercurial is a so-called DVCS, or Distributed Version Control System, a new paradigm in version control, rapidly substituting the likes of Subversion and CVS."
Liberty Alliance Marks Policy and Privacy Milestone for Identity-Enabled Applications
Liberty Alliance has announced the release of the Liberty Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) and the Liberty Identity Governance Framework (IGF). The IAF defines a global standard framework and necessary support programs for validating trusted identity assurance service providers. The IGF is a declarative policy framework for managing identity flows within organizations. The implementation is ongoing at OpenLiberty.org. More details on the IGF can be found in this press release.Over 8,000,000 Mozilla Firefox 3 Downloads in 24 Hours (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine reports on the download rate for the newly released Firefox 3 browser. "The official Mozilla Blog reports that there were over eight million downloads of Mozilla Firefox 3 in the twenty-four hours after release, despite the widespread server availability problems. The Spread Firefox Download Day 2008 page has an interactive map showing the numbers of downloads in different countries and Mozilla Corporation CEO John Lilly has a weblog post with more statistics from Firefox 3's first twenty-four hours."
NoTA Embedded Device Communication Architecture open-sourceed
The NoTA Embedded Device Communication Architecture has been released as open-source software. "We have released an open-source version of "NoTA", which is a new communications architecture for embedded devices. Publication took place during the first NoTA Conference, on June 11th in Helsinki."
EFF wants help busting the Seer patent
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a call for prior art relating to a digital music sequencing patent held by Seer Systems. "We are especially interested in prior art (before 1997) relating to downloading and playing parts of 'musical work files' in real time. One such example might be a system for streaming media files by taking the file one piece at a time and downloading the necessary sound files and musical data for that part before playing it and moving on to another section."
The Symbian Foundation launches
The Symbian Foundation has announced its existence. The foundation's plan is to make the Symbian S60 handset platform available royalty-free to its members - for now. "Also, it will commit to moving the platform to open source during the next two years, with the intent to use the Eclipse Public License. This will make the platform code available to all for free, bringing additional innovation to the platform and engaging even a broader community in future developments." This is all a result of Nokia's purchase of Symbian.
UKUUG appeals the initial court decision on BSI's OOXML action
The UK's Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) has announced that it will appeal a legal decision on OOXML. "The High Court has rejected the UKUUG's application for a Judicial Review of BSI's actions in voting 'yes' to the fast-tracking of the Microsoft sponsored DIS29500 (OOXML) in April 2008. UKUUG is appealing that decision since it believes that the judge was wrong in his reading of the papers. The matter will now be heard in open court. UKUUG believe that problems in OOXML might be resolved but only after a thorough and open examination of over 1,000 technical and several legal issues by experts in this field from all interested stakeholders. Only some 20% of issues initially found were adequately discussed at the BRM, OOXML is thus riddled with technical holes; no one can implement it." (Thanks to Alain Williams).
Commercial announcements
Black Duck on GPLv3 adoption
Black Duck Software observes the first anniversary of GPLv3 with a press release about its study of adoption of this license. "Since the release of GPLv3, 2,345 open source projects have opted to use the license. The number of projects covered by GPLv3 has been growing at a rate of about 20 percent per month over the past six months. Ubuntu, SugarCRM, Samba and Funambol are a few of the widely used projects that have selected GPLv3." Version 2 is still the dominant license, though.
Komodo IDE 4.4 and Komodo Edit 4.4 released
ActiveState has released version 4.4 of Komodo IDE and Komodo Edit. "Komodo IDE is a commercial multi-platform integrated development environment for dynamic languages (Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, JavaScript) and web tech (HTML, CSS, XML, XSLT): full-featured debuggers; code browsing; Subversion, CVS and Perforce integration, regular expression toolkit (Rx); interactive shells; and everything in Komodo Edit."
Openmoko signs five distributors for Freerunner mobile phone
Openmoko has announced the signing of five new Distributors for its Freerunner open-source mobile phone. "Today, Openmoko will begin shipping the next generation Neo Freerunner to Pulster, Golden Delicious Computers and TRIsoft located in Germany, Bearstech in France and IDA Systems based in India."
SLES10 Installer now available for Open-Xchange Server 5
A new Open-Xchange Server installer is available for SLES 10. "Sterne&Co. LLC is proud to announce the release of an installer for Open-Xchange Server 5 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. This 64-bit installer was developed and funded by Sterne&Co. LLC in response to customer demand. This third party installer is NOT a supported product of Open-Xchange Inc. nor Novell Inc. Open-Xchange Server 5 is an email and groupware software application based on open source technology. Until now, OpenExchange Server 5 was only available on SUSE Linux 9 or Red Hat 4."
Yamaha announces Linux-based Internet Piano
Yamaha Corporation of America has announced version 3.0 of their Linux-based Yamaha Disklavier Piano. ""When a piano comes with a hard drive, Ethernet jack, video output, stereo speakers, audio/microphone input, CD and floppy drives, USB jacks and an open-source Linux operating system, all kinds of new tricks are possible." -- David Pogue, New York Times, April 17, 2008"
New Books
Essential SQLAlchemy - New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Essential SQLAlchemy by Rick Copeland.The Ultimate HTML Reference--New from SitePoint
SitePoint has published the book The Ultimate HTML Reference by Ian Lloyd.
Calls for Presentations
CfP: First International Conference on Software Language Engineering
A call for papers has gone out for the First International Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE 2008). The conference takes place in Toulouse, France on September 29-30, 2008, submissions are due by July 14, 2008.IFIP Working Conference on Domain Specific Languages cfp
A call for papers has gone out for the IFIP Working Conference on Domain Specific Languages. The event takes place in Oxford, England on July 15-17, 2009, submissions are due by December 14, 2008.make art 2008 Call for projects
A call for projects has gone out for make art 2008. "Make Art is an international festival dedicated to the integration of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) in digital art. The third edition of make art - OpenOS - will take place in Poitiers (FR), from the 24th to the 30th of November 2008. make art offers performances, presentations, workshops and an exhibition, focused on the blurred line between art and software programming. We're currently seeking new, innovative FLOSS based works and projects: music and audiovisual performances, presentations, software demos, and installations."
Upcoming Events
EFMI Special Topic Conference on Open Source (LinuxMedNews)
The EFMI Special Topic Conference on Open Source has been announced. "The EFMI (European Federation for Medical Informatics - www.efmi.org) Special Topic Conference (STC) for 2008 will take place in London, UK on 9-11 September 2008. This EFMI Special Topic Conference (STC) will be organised by members of the IMIA and EFMI Open Source Working Groups with a focus on Open Source in European Health Care."
Events: July 3, 2008 to September 1, 2008
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| July 1 July 5 |
Libre Software Meeting 2008 | Mont-de-Marsan, France |
| July 3 July 4 |
SyScan08 Singapore | Novotel Clarke Quay, Singapore |
| July 3 | Penguin in a Box 2008: Embedded Linux Seminar | Herzelia, Israel |
| July 5 | Open Tech 2008 | London, England |
| July 7 July 12 |
EuroPython 2008 | Vilnius, Lithuania |
| July 7 July 12 |
GUADEC 2008 | Istanbul, Turkey |
| July 14 July 18 |
PHP 5 & PostgreSQL Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch | Atlanta, USA |
| July 18 July 20 |
RubyFringe | Canada, Toronto |
| July 19 | Firebird Developers Day | Piracicaba-SP, Brazil |
| July 19 July 25 |
Ruby & Ruby on Rails Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch | Atlanta, USA |
| July 19 July 20 |
LugRadio Live 2008 - UK | Wolverhampton, United Kingdom |
| July 20 | OSCON PDXPUG Day | Portland, OR, USA |
| July 21 July 25 |
O'Reilly Open Source Convention | Portland, OR, USA |
| July 21 July 22 |
Ubuntu Live - cancelled | Portland, Oregon, USA |
| July 23 July 26 |
Ottawa Linux Symposium | Ottawa, Canada |
| July 26 | PyOhio 2008 | Columbus, OH, USA |
| July 26 July 27 |
EuroSciPy2008 | Leipzig, Germany |
| August 1 | LLVM Developers' Meeting | Cupertino, CA, USA |
| August 3 August 9 |
DebCamp 2008 | Mar del Plata, Argentina |
| August 4 August 7 |
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| August 9 August 16 |
Akademy 2008 | Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium |
| August 9 August 17 |
Linuxbierwanderung (Linux Beer Hike) | Samnaun/Compatsch, Switzerland |
| August 10 August 16 |
Debian Conference 2008 | Mar del Plata, Argentina |
| August 11 August 15 |
SAGE-AU'2008 | Adelaide, Australia |
| August 12 August 14 |
Flash Memory Summit | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| August 13 August 15 |
YAPC::Europe 2008 | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| August 18 | Debian Day | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| August 19 August 24 |
SciPy 2008 Conference | Pasadena, CA, USA |
| August 20 August 22 |
Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| August 23 August 24 |
FrOSCon 2008 | Saint Augustin, Germany |
| August 26 August 29 |
WebGUI Users Conference 2008 | Madison, WI, USA |
| August 27 August 30 |
Drupalcon Szeged 2008 | Szeged, Hungary |
| August 28 August 30 |
Utah Open Source Conference 2008 | Salt Lake City, UT, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Forrest Cook