Announcements

Lessig on the model train decision

Lawrence Lessig comments on the appeals court's decision establishing the validity of the Artistic License, calling it "huge and important." "In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license."

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EFF: Judge Lifts Unconstitutional Gag Order Against MIT Students

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release concerning the lifting of a gag order on some MIT students. "Today, a federal judge lifted an unconstitutional gag order that had prevented three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students from disclosing academic research regarding vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system. The court found that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Agency (MBTA) had no likelihood of success on the merits of its claim under the federal computer intrusion law and denied the transit agency's request for a five-month injunction. In papers filed yesterday, the MBTA acknowledged for the first time that their Charlie Ticket system had vulnerabilities and estimated that it would take five months to fix."

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Canonical joins the Linux Foundation

Here's a press release from the Linux Foundation, announcing that Canonical has just joined as a member. "'Canonical is an important new member for The Linux Foundation,' said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. 'Matt [Zimmerman] and his team have created an exciting distribution that has taken the world by storm. They have rallied the cause of cross-industry, cross-community collaboration for years. We are extremely pleased to work even more closely with Canonical as we push Linux to the next stage of growth.'"

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Perl Foundation statement on the U.S. Court of Appeals (use Perl)

use Perl reports on the Perl Foundation's statement in the the Jacobsen v. Katzer license case. "As we mentioned in March, The Perl Foundation was part of a coalition of groups that collaborated on a "friend of the court" brief that was filed to support the appeal. Allison Randal, and Roberta Cairney, who also helped out with Artistic 2.0, worked on the brief with Chris Ridder, from Creative Commons, and representatives of several other open source, free software, and public license organizations."

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The SFLC's Guide to GPL Compliance

The Software Freedom Law Center has released A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance, a document which appears to be aimed at corporate management. It is a detailed and clear discussion of the issues as seen from the SFLC point of view. "The companies we contact about GPL violations often respond with: 'We didn't know there was GPL'd stuff in there'. This answer indicates a failure in the software acquisition and procurement process. Integration of third-party proprietary software typically requires a formal arrangement and management/legal oversight before the developers incorporate the software. By contrast, your developers often obtain and integrate FOSS without intervention. The ease of acquisition, however, does not mean the oversight is any less necessary. Just as your legal and/or management team negotiates terms for inclusion of any proprietary software, they should be involved in all decisions to bring FOSS into your product."

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CadSoft releases Eagle 5.2

CadSoft has released version 5.2 of their Eagle printed circuit CAD application. This release adds some new capabilities and bug fixes. See the What's new document for details.

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Clarion Corporation of America unveils ClarionMiND

Clarion Corporation of America has announced the launch of ClarionMiND, a Linux-based Mobile Internet Navigation Device. "ClarionMiND is based on the new Intel(R) Atom(TM) processor Z5xx series and is scheduled to begin shipment in the 4th quarter of 2008 in the U.S. market. ClarionMiND will provide an all- new portable device experience and enable users access to two-way connected navigation, high-speed Internet experiences, digital music and video playback, and many other innovative entertainment features."

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Fedora's scholarship program

Red Hat has announced a new program providing college scholarships for Fedora and free software contributors. "The Fedora Scholarship program furthers Red Hat and the Fedora Project's commitment to helping develop and foster up and coming talent in the open source software field. Applicants will be evaluated on criteria including the quality of contributions made to Fedora and other free software projects, references provided by Fedora community members, the amount of time the applicant has been contributing to Fedora and the overall quality of the application. Recipients will receive a scholarship to be applied toward tuition for the student's college or university education."

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Memopal: Online Backup in Public Beta for Linux

Memopal has announced the availability of a beta version of their backup solution for the Ubuntu and Debian distributions. "The public beta version of Memopal for Linux is now downloadable. This launch was timed to almost immediately follow the release of the MAC version. As such, it is part of a wider strategy, the goal of which is to make Online Backup available to as many operating systems as possible."

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Microsoft and Novell do it again

Microsoft and Novell have announced that, since their deal turned out so well, they will be expanding it. "The investment focuses on enhanced programs from Novell to provide tools, support, training and resources for customers seeking an enterprise-class Linux platform and specifically, the optimal interoperability solution between Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. It also includes Microsoft's commitment to purchase up to $100 million in certificates that those customers can redeem for expanded support from Novell that includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server support and support for moving toward an enterprise-class Linux platform."

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RealPlayer now available for Intel Atom Processor-Based Netbooks

RealNetworks, Inc. has announced the availability of the RealPlayer media player for Intel Atom Processor machines running Linux. "The new RealPlayer can play content in all the most sought-after formats, including: RealMedia(R), Windows Media, MP3, MPEG4, H.264, AAC, AAC+, VC-1 and Ogg. Devices that use the Intel Atom processor with Moblin based OS will have the added benefit of highly optimized performance and battery life when playing media content. RealPlayer can be used to play content in a browser window for an embedded Internet experience, and also as a stand-alone media player."

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PostgreSQL Conference: West - Call for Papers

A call for papers has gone out for PostgreSQL Conference: West. "The second annual PostgreSQL Conference: West is being held on October 10th through October 12th 2008 in the The Native American Student & Community Center at Portland State University."

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ToorCon 10 Call For Papers

A call for papers has gone out for ToorCon 10, submissions are due by August 29. "We'll be having the main conference again at the San Diego Convention Center on September 26th-28th, starting off with our standard reception on Friday night, 50-minute talks on Saturday, and 20-minute talks on Sunday. We will also be having 2 days of hands-on training on September 24th-25th, 2008 and our Deep Knowledge Seminars on September 26th, 2008. Talks are currently being accepted for all slots and will be given preference based on the order that they are received."

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7th National Medical Banking Institute National Call for White Papers (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews has announced a call for white papers by the 7th National Medical Banking Institute. The submission deadline is October 15. "The editorial staff of the International Journal of Medical Banking is seeking white papers in the following areas: Open source healthcare programs linking banking and healthcare systems; Information privacy, confidentiality and security that focuses on cross-industry issues in banking and healthcare; Treasury and cash management programs targeting healthcare; Card-based platforms and technologies that link healthcare and banking platforms; Independent Health Record Banks; Consumer-driven healthcare technology tools that integrate with banking platforms; Point of service technologies that enable payment at the counter; Community coalition building."

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FOSS.IN/2008: Event Announcement

FOSS.IN/2008 has been announced. "Team FOSS.IN is happy to announce that this year's edition of Asia's biggest Free and Open Source Software contributor conference will be held on November 25th to 29th, 2008, at the National Science Symposium Centre, of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India."

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Speakers for the Linux Plumbers Conference

The list of accepted talks for the Linux Plumbers Conference has been posted. This event is off to a strong start; there are a lot of interesting, highly technical talks on the agenda.

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Announcing the pyArkansas Conference

The pyArkansas conference has been announced. "The Arkansas Python Users Group announces a 1-day Python conference to be held on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas (www.uca.edu) on October 4. We plan a 3-hour "Introduction to Python" class as well as talks on text/file processing, Python standard library, Django, pyGame, OLPC and GIS programming."

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Helping Hands: 10 Things You Didn't Know about F-Spot

The OpenSUSE project has announced an online presentation about the F-Spot photo management application. "This week, the Helping Hands Program is proud to host "Ten Things You Didn't Know about F-Spot" presented by the F-Spot Developer Team. This event will be held on Friday, August 22nd at 14:30 UTC in the #opensuse-gnome IRC Channel on the Freenode Network."

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Events: August 28, 2008 to October 27, 2008

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
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
September 2 September 4	RailsConf Europe 2008	Berlin, Germany
September 5 September 7	FUDCon Brno 2008	Brno, Czech Republic
September 6 September 7	DjangoCon 2008	Mountain View, CA, USA
September 7 September 10	Workshop on Open Source Software for Computer and Network Forensics	Milan, Italy
September 7 September 14	Python Game Programming Challenge	Online
September 8	Encontro Nacional de openSUSE	Porto, Portugal
September 9 September 11	EFMI STC 2008	London, England
September 12 September 14	The UK Python Conference	Birmingham, England
September 15 September 18	ZendCon PHP 2008	Santa Clara, CA, USA
September 15 September 16	Linux Kernel Summit 2008	Portland, OR, USA
September 16 September 19	Web 2.0 Expo	New York, NY, USA
September 17 September 19	The Linux Plumbers Conference	Portland, OR, USA
September 18 September 19	Italian Perl Workshop	Pisa, Italy
September 19 September 20	Maemo Summit 2008	Berlin, Germany
September 20	Celebrating Software Freedom Day in Riga, Latvia	Riga, Latvia
September 22 September 25	Storage Developer Conference 2008	Santa Clara, CA, USA
September 23 September 25	4th International Conference on IT Incident Management and IT Forensics	Manheim, Germany
September 24 September 25	OpenExpo 2008 Zürich	Winterthur, Switzerland
September 25 September 27	Firebird Conference 2008	Bergamo, Italy
September 26 September 27	PGCon Brazil 2008	Sao Paulo, Brazil
September 26	Far East Perl Workshop 2008	Vladivostok, Russia
September 26 September 28	ToorCon Information Security Conference	San Diego, CA, USA
September 27 September 28	WineConf 2008	Bloomington, MN, USA
September 29 October 3	Netfilter Workshop 2008	Paris, France
September 29 September 30	Conference on Software Language Engineering	Toulouse, France
September 30 October 1	BA-Con 2008	Buenos Aires, Argentina
October 1 October 3	Vision 2008 Embedded Linux Developers Conference	San Francisco, USA
October 2 October 3	ekoparty Security Conference	Buenos Aires, Argentina
October 3 October 4	Open Source Days 2008	Copenhagen, Denmark
October 4	PyArkansas 2008	Central Arkansas, USA
October 4 October 5	Texas Regional Python Unconference 2008	Austin, TX, USA
October 7 October 10	OWASP NYC AppSec 2008 Conference	New York, NY, USA
October 7	Openmind 2008	Tampere, Finland
October 7 October 10	Linux-Kongress 2008	Hamburg, Germany
October 7	Red Hat Government Users and Developers Conference	Washington, DC, United States
October 10 October 12	Ohio LinuxFest 2008	Columbus, Ohio, USA
October 10 October 12	PostgreSQL Conference West 08	Portland, OR, USA
October 10 October 12	Skolelinux Developer Gathering	Oslo, Norway
October 11 October 12	Pittsburgh Perl Workshop	Pittsburgh, PA, USA
October 11 October 12	MerbCamp	San Diego, CA, USA
October 13 October 14	Linux Foundation End User Collaboration Summit	New York, USA
October 13	Skolelinux User Conference	Oslo, Norway
October 15 October 16	OpenSAF Developer Days	Munich, Germany
October 17 October 18	European PGDay 2008	Prato, Italy
October 18 October 19	Maker Faire Austin	Austin, TX, USA
October 19 October 24	Colorado Software Summit 2008	Keystone, CO, USA
October 20 October 24	15th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference	Manassas, VA, USA
October 21 October 23	Web 2.0 Expo Europe	Berlin, Germany
October 21 October 24	Systems	Munich, Germany
October 22 October 24	Hack.lu 2008	Parc Hotel Alvisse, Luxembourg
October 22 October 24	Encuentro Linux	Concepción, Chile
October 24 October 26	Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit	Gothenburg, Sweden
October 25 October 26	T-DOSE 2008	Eindhoven, the Netherlands
October 25	Ontario Linux Fest 2008	Toronto, Canada
October 26 October 31	IBM Information On Demand 2008	Mandalay Bay - Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

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

GSP East '08--Social Networks Move into Future

O'Reilly has published an event report from the 2008 GSP East conference. "At the O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns East conference in Washington, D.C., June 9-11, Facebook announced that it had more than 80 million active users worldwide, a milestone that illustrated the phenomenal growth and business opportunities presented by the explosion of social networking since Facebook was founded barely four years ago. Social networks are quickly changing the way people connect, communicate, work and play on the net."

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RailsConf '08--Passionate about Rails

O'Reilly has sent out a press release for the recently held RailsConf '08. ""Passionate and fascinating" is the way one developer summed up RailsConf 2008 in Portland May 26-June 1, the largest physical gathering of Ruby and Rails developers in the world. His view was echoed in conversations and blogs by many of the more than 1,800 programmers from around the world who attended the four-day conference co-presented by O'Reilly Media and Ruby Central. Some of the conference-goers have already made plans to go to RailsConf Europe, scheduled for September 2-4 in Berlin."

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Announcing the Java Game Tome

Noble Master Games has launched the Java Game Tome site. "Noble Master Games has created the Java Game Tome, a game showcase platform for Java game developers. The Java Game Tome is an internet site that focuses entirely on games written in the Java programming language. Games run as Java Applet, Java Webstart or via download. Games are available for all major operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux."

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Meet Open Invention Network CEO Keith Bergelt (Linux.com)

Linux.com features a video interview with Keith Bergelt. "Linux.com correspondent R. Scott Belford caught up with Open Invention Network CEO Keith Bergelt at the 2008 LinuxWorld Expo and had a pleasant (on-camera) conversation with him."

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