Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Free Documentation License 1.3
The Free Software Foundation has announced the release of version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License. The big change would appear to be a clause allowing FDL-licensed text to be relicensed to the Creative Commons attribution-sharealike license. "This new permission has been added at the request of the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the Wikipedia project. The same terms are available to any public wiki that uses materials available under the new license. The Wikimedia Foundation will now initiate a process of community discussion and voting to determine whether or not to use CC-BY-SA 3.0 as the license for Wikipedia."
Motorola and Google join the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board
Motorola and Google have joined the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board. "We excited to announce today that Motorola and Google are joining the GNOME Foundation as sponsors and advisory board members. With these new additions to its advisory board, the GNOME Foundation continues to strengthen its industry support and shows that the support for free and open source software is growing - especially in the mobile space with technologies like GNOME Mobile."
Knuth: no more checks for bug reports
Donald Knuth pioneered the idea of bounties for bug reports many years ago. He has now announced, in classic Knuthian style, that he can no longer write checks for these reports because he's tired of being ripped off. "It turns out that only 9 of the first 275 checks that I've sent out since the beginning of 2006 have actually been cashed. The others have apparently been cached. So this change in policy will probably not affect too many people. On the other hand, I don't like to renege on promises, so I shall do my best to find a suitable way to send money to anyone who really prefers legal tender."
Commercial announcements
OXID eSales goes Open Source
OXID eSales has announced the release of its eSales product OXID eShop PE4 under the GPLv3 license. "The new Community Edition, OXID eShop CE, will offer the identical software to the latest release of OXID's proprietary professional edition, OXID PE 4.0, providing a fully functional out-of-the-box software solution for companies looking to build an online shop. The Community Edition is available for free download immediately under the GNU Public License version three (GPLv3)."
Zenoss to demonstrate open-source network monitoring solutions at LISA '08
Zenoss has announced plans to demonstrate their latest offerings at the LISA Conference in San Diego, CA on November 12-13, 2008. "Zenoss will be releasing their latest enterprise management and monitoring solutions featuring new capabilities for monitoring J2EE applications, Windows server, and native VMware instances. This latest version was developed in conjunction with the Zenoss open source community who provided product input, beta testing, and over 30 Zenoss extensions. In addition to showcasing its solutions during the show, Zenoss will also conduct its third annual Open Source Systems Management Survey."
New Books
Enterprise Rails - New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Enterprise Rails by Dan Chak.Web Security Testing Cookbook--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Web Security Testing Cookbook by Paco Hope and Ben Walther.
Resources
Linux Gazette #156 is out!
Issue #156 of Linux Gazette has been published. Topics this time include: A (not so) short overview of the Geographic Information System GRASS, Writing Network Device Drivers for Linux, Installing and configuring root-access sandboxes in a running Linux system, The Red Hat Linux Boot Process, and lots more. Click below for the full announcement.White Paper: rPath Puts Adoption Model in the Cloud
rPath has published a white paper entitled The Pragmatist's Guide to Cloud Computing (registration required). ""Virtualization and cloud computing have a transformative impact on the cost and efficiency of software delivery and consumption, which makes investments in these areas of even greater importance during a down economy," said Jake Sorofman, VP of marketing for rPath. "But despite its importance, the path to cloud remains elusive for many organizations. rPath developed the Cloud Computing Adoption Model to propose what we believe is a useful incremental approach to cloud adoption, while also stimulating a public conversation about patterns and practices that can help us all become smarter about virtualization and cloud initiatives.""
Contests and Awards
2008 OpenVAS contest winners announced
Three winners have been selected for the OpenVAS Contest. "The 2008 OpenVAS Contest took place from August 23rd to October 15th, 2008. With 5 nominees who contributed a large number of improvements to the OpenVAS framework and extended the Open Source Network Vulnerability Testing, it was a great success. During the contest duration the number of OpenVAS Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) increased dramatically: from 3750 NVTs up to 5736 NVTs (an overall increase of over 50%). The most significant number of NVTs, which deliver full support for Gentoo and FreeBSD local security checks, were contributed by Thomas Reinke who deserves special thanks for his continuing support of OpenVAS."
The first official Python coin has been released in the Netherlands
Stani, author of Stani's Python Editor, has won a competition for a commemorative coin design. "I am pleased to announce that I won the competition for the next 5 euro commemorative coin with the theme 'Netherlands and Architecture'. The design of the coin was totally developed with python. I used PIL for raster image manipulation and pyCairo for generating vector graphics." See: How to make money with free software... for photos and more information on the effort.
Education and Certification
Free Web Seminars from MontaVista and Freescale (MarketWatch)
MarketWatch notes that MontaVista and Freescale will hold free web seminars on November 18. "MontaVista(R) Software, Inc., the leader in embedded Linux(R) commercialization, announces registration for two free web seminars on improving embedded Linux Startup time, presented with Freescale(TM) Semiconductor, OpenSystems Media and Christopher Hallinan, author of Embedded Linux Primer, the number one-selling book on embedded Linux. The web seminars will provide strategies for improving embedded Linux startup time and present techniques that help design engineers to reduce boot time while preserving the base functionality required of most embedded Linux systems."
Meeting Minutes
Perl 6 Design Minutes (use Perl)
The minutes from the October 29, 2008 Perl 6 Design Meeting have been published. "The Perl 6 design team met by phone on 29 October 2008. Larry, Allison, Patrick, Jerry, Will, Jesse, Nicholas, and chromatic attended."
Calls for Presentations
DC BSDCon 2009 Call for Papers
A call for papers has gone out for DC BSDCon 2009. The event takes place in Washington, D.C. on February 4-5, 2009, papers are due by December 1.Call for papers for GCC Research Opportunities Workshop GROW'09
A Call for papers has gone out for the GCC Research Opportunities Workshop, GROW'09. The event takes place on January 25-28, 2009 in Paphos, Cyprus, the deadline has been extended to November 21.Camp KDE 2009: Call For Presentations Deadline (KDE.News)
KDE.News has announced The Call For Presentations deadline for Camp KDE 2009. "The Call For Presentations deadline for Camp KDE 2009 will be Friday, November 21. Due to the compressed planning of this event, deliberation will be held over the weekend and selected presentations will be announced on Monday, November 24 so that travel decisions can be made." Camp KDE takes place on January 17-23, 2009 in Negril, Jamaica.
Upcoming Events
O'Reilly Money:Tech conference opens registration
Registration is open for the 2009 O'Reilly Money:Tech conference. "Registration has opened for Money:Tech 2009, February 4-6, 2009, in New York City, and program chairs Paul Kedrosky and Rob Passarella have announced the program. Money:Tech 2009 is the preeminent conference for investment professionals examining the impact technology has on trading, finance, and investing. Money:Tech 2009 will showcase tools, techniques, and technologies; provide a forum for leading-edge viewpoints; and deliver a first look at industry trends that will have merged into the mainstream by next year."
O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference opens registration
Registration is open for the 2009 O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. "Registration has opened for the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, taking place February 9-11, 2009, at the Marriot Marquis Times Square in New York City. Program Chair Andrew Savikas and co-Chair Mac Slocum have announced the program, which investigates the emerging trends in digital publishing through keynotes, sessions, tutorials, panels, and other events designed to surpass the high expectations inspired by the sold-out TOC 2008."
POC2008 conference, South Korea
POC2008 has been announced. "The 3rd international hacking and security conference "POC2008" by hackers will be held in Seoul, Korea on November 13 ~ 14."
Events: November 13, 2008 to January 12, 2009
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 10 November 14 |
Python Bootcamp with Dave Beazley | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| November 11 November 14 |
DeepSec IDSC 2008 | Vienna, Austria |
| November 12 November 14 |
php|works 2008 | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| November 12 November 13 |
PacSec Applied Security Conference | Tokyo, Japan |
| November 13 November 14 |
International Hacking and Security Conference | Seoul, Korea |
| November 14 November 16 |
OpenSQL Camp 2008 | Charlottesville, VA, USA |
| November 16 November 20 |
Middle East IT Security Conference | Dubai, UAE |
| November 19 November 20 |
Linux Foundation Japan Symposium | Tokyo, Japan |
| November 20 November 21 |
FreedomHEC Taipei 2008 | Taipei, Taiwan |
| November 22 | The phpnw08 conference | Manchester, UK |
| November 22 | PGDay Rio de la Plata | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| November 22 | Mandriva 2009 Installfest | Everywhere, World |
| November 25 November 29 |
FOSS.IN 2008 | Bangalore, India |
| November 25 November 30 |
make art 2008 | Poitiers, France |
| November 28 | Informazione geografica aperta e libera | Pontedera (PI), Italy |
| November 28 November 29 |
WhyFLOSS La Plata - Argentina | La Plata, Argentina |
| November 29 | LinuxDay in Vorarlberg (Deutschland, Schweiz, Liechtenstein und Österreich) | Dornbirn, Austria |
| December 1 | First Nuxeo Developer Day | Paris, France |
| December 1 December 2 |
Open World Forum | Paris, France |
| December 2 December 5 |
Open Source Developers' Conference 2008 | Sydney, NSW, Australia |
| December 4 December 7 |
PIKSEL08 - code dreams | Bergen, Norway |
| December 5 December 6 |
FOSSCamp | Mountain View, CA, USA |
| December 5 December 13 |
International Joint Conferences on Computer, Information, and Systems Sciences, and Engineering | Online |
| December 7 December 12 |
Computer Measurement Group Conference 2008 | Las Vegas, NV, USA |
| December 8 December 12 |
Ubuntu Developer Summit | Mountain View, CA, USA |
| December 8 | Forum PHP Paris 2008 | Paris, France |
| December 10 December 11 |
First Workshop on I/O Virtualization | San Diego, CA, USA |
| December 13 | NLLGG meeting/BSD Community Day | Utrecht, The Netherlands |
| December 27 December 30 |
Chaos Communication Congress | Berlin, Germany |
| January 8 January 11 |
Consumer Electronics Show | Las Vegas, NV, USA |
| January 9 January 11 |
Fedora User and Developer Conference | Boston, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Forrest Cook