Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
EFF: Jewelry company quest to expand trademark law could quash internet commerce
The Electronic Frontier Foundation discusses the legal implications of a case between Tiffany and eBay. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) along with Public Citizen and Public Knowledge urged a U.S. court of appeals Wednesday to reject jewelry-maker Tiffany's attempt to rewrite trademark law and create new barriers for online commerce and communication. Tiffany sued the online marketplace eBay, claiming that eBay should be held liable for trademark infringement when sellers offer counterfeit Tiffany goods on the eBay site. The evidence in the case showed that eBay quickly takes down listings when Tiffany sends notice that it believes a specific item is not genuine. However, Tiffany wants eBay to police listings on its own and to be held responsible for any counterfeit items it missed."
Announcing the 2008 Perl Advent Calendar (use Perl)
The 2008 Perl Advent Calendar has been announced. "Did anybody yet mention that the Perl Advent Calendar 2008 is live? Take a look: one article a introducing a module that is not as well known as it deserves, per day, until Christmas." Also, the Catalyst web framework Advent Calendar is online with daily tips.
Commercial announcements
Appcelerator brings Web Applications to the desktop with Titanium
Appcelerator, Inc. has announced the public preview release of their Appcelerator Titanium web technology platform. "Titanium allows developers to use standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript to quickly and easily develop applications that can be deployed to multiple platforms, including the desktop, the browser or the mobile device. Unlike traditional Web applications, which are limited to operating within the browser, Titanium desktop applications are able to read and write local data on the desktop and interact with the operating system."
IBM's new Ubuntu-based desktop offering
IBM has announced the availability of a new desktop offering based on Ubuntu Linux. "This solution runs open standards-based email, word processing, spreadsheets, unified communication, social networking and other software to any laptop, browser, or mobile device from a virtual desktop login on a Linux-based server configuration." Only $49/user in quantities of 1,000.
Redpill Linpro releases thin client management tool source code
Redpill Linpro has announced the release of Multiframe version 5 under a GPL license. "Redpill Linpro, a leading Nordic vendor of Open Source products and services, have released the source code for its industry-leading thin client management tool - Multiframe. The availability of the source code for Multiframe version 5 encourages the Open Source community to build new features and applications to enhance the capabilities of the software package."
Renoise 2.0 - Release Candidate 1 announced
Release Candidate 1 of Renoise 2.0 is available. "Renoise has a different approach to making music compared to conventional sequencers, called Tracking. Tracking comes from the demoscene that pushes technical limits to show off coding skills, art, and music beyond what is thought possible." The software is not open-source, but the free demo is fun.
New Books
New Book: Programming in Python 3
Mark Summerfield has announced his new book Programming in Python 3.Learning Rails--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Learning Rails by Simon St. Laurent and Edd Dumbill.Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts--New from No Starch Press
No Starch Press has published the book Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts by Steve Pugh.Announcing the Scribus Official Manual
An Official Manual for the Scribus desktop publishing system has been announced. "The long-awaited Scribus Official Manual is in its final stages of production, and we now have a site open for pre-publishing sales. For those who are not already aware, the manual began about one year ago as a collaborative effort. The lead authors, Gregory Pittman and Christoph Schäfer, worked with a number of other contributors on this important project. The manual represents the most comprehensive source of information about using Scribus, and includes other useful information about DTP, fonts, color management, and more."
Resources
FSFE Analysis on conflicts between patents and standards
The Free Software Foundation Europe analyzes the conflicts between patents and standards. "Following up on the European Commission's "IPR in ICT Standardisation" workshop two weeks ago in Brussels, FSFE president Georg Greve analysed the conflicts between patents and standards. The resulting paper is about the most harmful effects of patents on standards, the effectiveness of current remedies, and potential future remedies."
A guide to reporting and fixing license violations
The Free Software Foundation Europe's Freedom Task Force and GPL-Violations.org have teamed up to produce a guide to reporting and fixing license violations. The guide looks at steps to take as well as resources available for reporting a violation, handling a violation report, and avoiding violations to begin with. "Be careful when reporting a violation. Accusations and suspicions voiced on public mailing lists create uncertainty and do little to solve violations. By checking your facts you can help experts resolve violations quickly." Click below for the press release announcing the guide.
The Open World Forum FLOSS Roadmap
Open World Forum has announced the availability of the 2020 FLOSS Roadmap, a 78-page PDF file describing this group's vision of where free software is going. "This is a prospective Roadmap, and a projection of the influences that will affect FLOSS between now (2008) and 2020, with descriptions of all FLOSS-related trends as anticipated by OWF contributors over this period of time. It also highlights all sectors that will, potentially, be impacted by FLOSS, from the economy to the Information Society."
Calls for Presentations
SCALE registration opens, speaker positions are still available
Registration is open for SCALE 7x, the Southern California Linux Exposition. SCALE will be held on February 20-22, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA. "Due to the holidays the Calls For Proposals for SCALE 7x have been extended until December 10th, 2008. The Beginner and Developer tracks are almost full; there are still available spots in the three general audience speaker tracks. But if you're considering submitting a proposal, don't delay; the window of opportunity is closing! OSSIE, the Open Source Software in Education seminar and WIOS, the Women in Open Source seminar still have open speaker spots in their Friday tracks. Their Calls for Papers close December 31st."
Upcoming Events
Events: December 18, 2008 to February 16, 2009
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| February 4 February 5 |
DC BSDCon 2009 | Washington, D.C., USA |
| February 4 February 6 |
Money:Tech 2009 | New York, NY, USA |
| February 5 February 9 |
German Perl Workshop | Frankfurt, Germany |
| February 7 | Frozen Perl 2009 | Minneapolis, MN., USA |
| February 7 February 8 |
FOSDEM 2009 | Brussels, Belgium |
| February 9 February 11 |
O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing | New York, NY, USA |
| February 15 | Free Software Awards 2009 Deadline | Soissons, France |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Mailing Lists
Announcing a new python-porting mailing list
A new python-porting mailing list has been announced. "Hi all, to facilitate discussion about porting Python code between different versions (mainly of course from 2.x to 3.x), we've created a new mailing list python-porting@python.org It is a public mailing list open to everyone. We expect active participation of many people porting their libraries/programs, and hope that the list can be a help to all wanting to go this (not always smooth :-) way."
Page editor: Forrest Cook