Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
RosettaNet reinstates free standards access
RosettaNet has announced the lifting of fees for access to its standards. "RosettaNet, a not-for-profit consortium that facilitates development of XML-driven business-process standards for global trade networks, announced it will eliminate the fee requirements for non-member companies to access its standards, beginning Jan. 1, 2009. It also said benefits would be expanded for its members. RosettaNet standards provide a common language for transaction messaging within the global trading network, allowing users to improve the interoperability of their business processes."
Commercial announcements
A Mozilla year-end report
Mitchell Baker reports on the state of Mozilla. Income continues to rise, and continues to come mostly from Google. Beyond that: "Our community remains healthy and vibrant. The percentage of code contributed to Firefox by people not employed by Mozilla remained steady at about 40% of the product we ship. This is true despite a significant amount of new employees in 2007."
VIA releases chipset documentation
VIA chose the FreedomHEC conference in Taipei for the announcement that it has released a bunch of documentation on its graphical processing units and is working actively with the OpenChrome project. Harald Welte responds: "This definitely marks a big milestone in VIA's new, much more FOSS friendly Linux support. Not only releasing the source code to VIA's own graphics driver, but actually interoperating with OpenChrome to help to create one future driver base and fight against the fragmentation of the developer and user base."
New Books
JRuby Cookbook - New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book JRuby Cookbook by Justin Edelson and Henry Liu.New Book, After the Software Wars
Keith Curtis has announced his new book After the Software Wars, a freely downloadable PDF version will be available on a temporary basis. "The book talks about why Microsoft is toast, implications for Google, why software is unreliable today, the Java mess, patents and copyright, Ubuntu, remaining challenges for free software, and many other things."
SQL in a Nutshell--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book SQL in a Nutshell by By Kevin E. Kline, with Daniel Kline and Brand Hunt.
Resources
TuxMobil Surpasses 8,000 Linux Installation Guides Available
TuxMobil, a directory of information about installing Linux on mobile devices, has announced that they have reached 8,000 installation guides on the site. "Because of the growing interest in Linux, the quantity of installation guides has increased rapidly during the past year -- more than any other year since TuxMobil's inception in 1997. The installation guides are ordered by manufacturer, distribution and language, and these guides offer hands-on information for almost any laptop model ever produced." Click below for the full announcement.
Education and Certification
MontaVista webinars assist with migration to embedded Linux
MontaVista has announced a pair of Linux migration webinars webinars. "The online webinars, on Tuesday, December 9, 2008, will deliver helpful information for device developers who are looking to migrate their device interfaces from the VxWorks(R) RTOS to embedded Linux."
Calls for Presentations
Call For Papers opens for ApacheCon US 2009
The ApacheCon US 2009 call for papers has been announced. "The Call for Papers is now open for ApacheCon US 2009, taking place 2-6 November in Oakland, California. Proposals are being accepted at http://us.apachecon.com/c/acus2009/cfp/ and can be revised at anytime until the submissions closing deadline of 28 February 2009."
CanSecWest 2009 CFP
A call for papers has gone out for CanSecWest 2009. The event takes place on March 18-20, 2009 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The submission deadline is December 8.FRHACK 01 Call For Papers
A call for papers has gone out for FRHACK 01, the First International IT Security Conference. The event takes place in Besançon, France on September 7-8, 2009, subissions are due by June 1.NLUUG spring conference CfP
A call for papers has gone out for the NLUUG spring conference. The event takes place on May 7, 2009 in Ede, the Netherlands. The submission deadline is January 6. "The NLUUG Spring Conference 2009 focuses on storage and the means to organise it: file systems, physical storage, connections and search."
Upcoming Events
FTC Announces First in Series of Hearings on Evolving Intellectual Property Marketplace
The US Federal Trade Commission has announced the first of a possible series of public hearings to explore the evolving market for intellectual property (IP). The hearings will be held beginning on December 5, 2008, in Washington, DC. "The patent system has experienced significant change since the FTC released its first IP Report in October 2003, and more changes are under consideration. The courts and patentees are exploring the full implications of Supreme Court and Federal Circuit decisions on injunctive relief, patentability, and licensing issues. Congress has considered sweeping legislative patent reform, and new debates on the appropriate methods for calculating infringement damages have engaged the patent community. New business models for buying, selling and licensing patents have emerged and evolved since 2003. In addition, there is new learning regarding the operation of the patent system and its contribution to innovation and competition." (Thanks to David A. Wheeler)
Gran Canaria Desktop Summit 2009
The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit (GUADEC/Akademy) will take place on July 3-11, 2009 in Gran Canaria, Spain. "The GNOME and KDE communities will use this co-located event to intensify momentum and increase collaboration between the projects. It gives a unique opportunity for key figures to collaborate and improve the free and open source desktop for all."
Events: December 4, 2008 to February 2, 2009
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| January 15 January 16 |
Foundations of Open Media Software 2009 | Hobart, Tasmania, Australia |
| January 17 January 23 |
Camp KDE 2009 | Negril, Jamaica |
| January 19 January 24 |
linux.conf.au - penguins march south | Hobart, Australia |
| January 25 January 29 |
Ruby on Rails Bootcamp with Charles B. Quinn | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| January 25 January 28 |
GCC Research Opportunities | Paphos, Cyprus |
| January 31 | Greater London Linux Users Group meeting | London, UK |
| January 31 February 3 |
Black Hat Briefings DC | Arlington, VA, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Forrest Cook