Announcements

The ACTA treaty is secret for "national security"

James Love reports on the latest attempt to get the text of the proposed ACTA treaty from the US government. "The agreement, misleadingly named the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is thought to cover a wide range of intellectual property enforcement issues -- including standards for granting injunctions for alleged infringement of patents or copyrights, damages, seizures of goods in transit, surveillance of Internet digital file transfers, searches of personal property, and a dozen other topics." The answer: the treaty, despite being available to governments and lobbyists, is classified for "national security" reasons and we cannot see it. "Change," it seems, only goes so far.

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CPMPPSO call for submissions

A call for submissions has gone out for the Common Persistent Model Patterns for Performance and/or Scalability Optimization reports. "ODBMS.ORG, a vendor-independent non-profit group of high-profile software experts lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari, today announced the opening of a call for submissions for Common Persistent Model Patterns for Performance and/or Scalability Optimization. ODBMS.ORG invites both vendors and Application architects, Enterprise architects, Developers who use databases to submit implementation techniques (database design patterns) which are generally useful for all adopters. The best submissions will be published in a new series of reports in ODBMS.ORG. All submissions will be published under free software licenses." Submissions are due by May 29, 2009.

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FFII: EPO seeks to validate software patents without the European Parliament

The FFII has sent out an advisory warning that the European Patent Office is trying to establish software patents via an indirect route. "The President of the European Patent Office (EPO), Alison Brimelow, has asked the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) to decide on the interpretation of the European Patent Convention (EPC) regarding the exclusion of software from patentability. The EBA is replacing the European Parliament in order to validate software patents EU-wide without the need of a debate." There is an opportunity to comment on the upcoming decision through the end of April.

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Audacity: GSoC call for students

The Audacity audio editor project has announced a preliminary call for students for the 2009 Google Summer of Code. "GSoC offers student developers a $4,500 stipend to write code for open source projects. We're asking interested students to contact us now to discuss their proposals. We're looking for projects that will move us towards a new stable 1.4 Release later this year. If you are an eligible student, or know one who might be interested, please review our draft documentation."

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XMMS2: GSoC call for students

The XMMS audio player project has announced its application for the 2009 Google Summer of Code. "We have just applied for Google Summer of Code 2009. Hopefully we will be included in the program for the fourth year in a row. Get involved in our ideas and community now!"

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EFF launches search tool for uncovered government documents

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced a search tool for uncovered government documents. "In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy."

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Gran Canaria Desktop Summit Call for Participation

A call for participation is out for the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. The Summit will also co-host GUADEC, the GNOME Conference and Akademy, the KDE conference. The Desktop Summit runs from July 4 to July 10 2009, in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain.

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Japan Linux Symposium call for participation

The first annual Japan Linux Symposium will be held October 21-23 in Tokyo, immediately after the 2009 Kernel Summit. The call for participation is now open, with submissions due by May 1. JLS looks to be an interesting event, bringing together developers from around the world in a country which is rapidly becoming a major contributor. Talks are sought on a wide variety of topics; see the CFP for details.

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ToorCamp 2009 call for participation

A call for participation has gone out for ToorCamp 2009. "ToorCamp is the United State's first ever full-scale hacker camp. Modelled after the camps in Holland and Germany, ToorCamp will focus on all of the technology topics that ToorCon has become famous for but will expand out into other areas of society. ToorCamp will offer 2 days of talks on many different topics -- Security, Internet, Emerging Technologies, Hardware Hacking, and Privacy are just some of the areas we will be covering. ToorCamp will also feature 2 days of hands-on workshops on a multitude of different skills that you may have never found yourself interested in learning about before. Blacksmithing, Lock Picking, Orienteering, Logic Design, Archery -- These are just a few of the topics you can expect." The event takes place on July 2-5, 2009 in a Titan-1 missile silo near Moses Lake, WA. Submissions are due by April 3.

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YAPC::NA::09 just $99 for the next day days + CFP

YAPC::NA::09 tickets are discounted until March 25. The event takes place in Pittsburgh, PA on June 22-24. "The very first Yet Another Perl Conference was held in '99. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of that event, we are offering a special YAPC|10 admission price of $99 — but only for 10 days! After that, the price goes up to $125." Also, a call for proposals has been announced for the event, submissions are due by April 24.

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FUDCon and LinuxTag reminders

A reminder has been posted for FUDCon and LinuxTag. "I'm here to remind everyone about the relevant details for FUDCon Berlin 2009 and LinuxTag 2009.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxTag_2009
LINUXTAG: Berlin, Germany. June 24 - 27. FUDCON: Berlin, Germany. June 26 - 28."

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Preliminary PGCon 2009 schedule released

The preliminary schedule for PGCon 2009 has been announced, the event takes place on May 19-22 in Ottawa, Canada. "PGCon is the premiere PostgreSQL conference. It is simply the best place to meet other PostgreSQL people and learn more. The talks are absolutely amazing, not to mention the great social atmosphere."

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PyCon 2009 hosts cross-community summit meetings

PyCon 2009 will host some cross-community summit meetings. "Python programmers won't be the only ones coming to PyCon this month. PyCon 2009 is hosting two new summit events that will draw key developers and strategists not only from Python, but also from the Perl, Ruby, Java, .NET, and JavaScript communities. The Virtual Machine Summit on March 25, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, and Python Language Summit on March 26, both at PyCon 2009 in Chicago, are invitation-only events that will bring cross-discipline groups together to discuss and strategize on challenges that are common across their projects."

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Events: March 26, 2009 to May 25, 2009

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
March 23 March 27	iPhone Bootcamp	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
March 23 April 3	Google Summer of Code '09 Student Application Period	online, USA
March 23 March 27	ApacheCon Europe 2009	Amsterdam, The Netherlands
March 24 March 26	UKUUG Spring 2009 Conference	London, England
March 25 March 29	PyCon 2009	Chicago, IL, USA
March 27 March 29	Free Software and Beyond The World of Peer Production	Manchester, UK
March 28	Open Knowledge Conference 2009	London, UK
March 31 April 2	Solutions Linux France	Paris, France
March 31 April 3	Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco	San Francisco, CA, USA
April 3 April 5	PostgreSQL Conference: East 09	Philadelphia, PA, USA
April 3 April 4	Flourish Conference	Chicago, IL, USA
April 6 April 8	CELF Embedded Linux Conference	San Francisco, CA, USA
April 6 April 7	Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop	San Francisco, CA, USA
April 8 April 10	Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit	San Francisco, CA, USA
April 14	OpenClinica European Summit	Brussels, Belgium
April 15	Linuxwochen Österreich - Krems	Krems, Austria
April 16 April 17	Nordic Perl Workshop 2009	Oslo, Norway
April 16 April 19	Linux Audio Conference 2009	Parma, Italy
April 16 April 18	Linuxwochen Austria - Wien	Wien, Austria
April 20 April 24	samba eXPerience 2009	Göttingen, Germany
April 20 April 23	MySQL Conference and Expo	Santa Clara, CA, USA
April 20 April 24	Perl Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, GA, USA
April 20 April 24	Cloud Slam '09	Online, Online
April 22 April 25	ACCU 2009	Oxford, United Kingdom
April 23 April 26	Liwoli 2009	Linz, Austria
April 23	Linuxwochen Austria - Linz	Linz, Austria
April 23 April 24	European Licensing and Legal Workshop for Free Software	Amsterdam, The Netherlands
April 25 May 1	Ruby & Ruby on Rails Bootcamp	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
April 25 April 26	LinuxFest Northwest 2009 10th Anniversary	Bellingham, Washington, USA
April 25	Linuxwochen Austria - Graz	Graz, Austria
April 25	Festival Latinoamericano instalación de Software libre	All Latin America, All Latin America
April 25	Grazer Linux Tage 2009	Graz, Austria
April 27	OSDM 2009	Bangkok, Thailand
May 4 May 8	JavaScript/Ajax Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
May 4 May 7	RailsConf 2009	Las Vegas, NV, USA
May 4 May 6	EuroDjangoCon 2009	Prague, Czech Republic
May 4 May 6	SYSTOR 2009---The Israeli Experimental Systems Conference	Haifa, Israel
May 5	Linuxwochen Austria - Salzburg	Salzburg, Austria
May 6 May 9	Libre Graphics Meeting 2009	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
May 6 May 8	Embedded Linux training	Maynard, USA
May 7	NLUUG spring conference	Ede, The Netherlands
May 8 May 10	PyCon Italy 2009	Florence, Italy
May 8 May 9	Linuxwochen Austria - Eisenstadt	Eisenstadt, Austria
May 8 May 9	Erlanger Firebird Conference 2009	Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
May 11	The Free! Summit	San Mateo, CA, USA
May 13 May 15	FOSSLC Summercamp 2009	Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
May 15 May 16	CONFidence 2009	Krakow, Poland
May 15	Firebird Developers Day - Brazil	Piracicaba, Brazil
May 16 May 17	YAPC::Russia 2009	Moscow, Russia
May 18 May 19	Cloud Summit 2009	Las Vegas, NV, USA
May 19 May 22	PGCon PostgreSQL Conference	Ottawa, Canada
May 19	Workshop on Software Engineering for Secure Systems	Vancouver, Canada
May 19 May 22	php|tek 2009	Chicago, IL, USA
May 19 May 21	Where 2.0 Conference	San Jose, CA, USA
May 19 May 22	SEaCURE.it	Villasimius, Italy
May 21	7th WhyFLOSS Conference Madrid 09	Madrid, Spain
May 22 May 23	eLiberatica - The Benefits of Open Source and Free Technologies	Bucharest, Romania
May 23 May 24	LayerOne Security Conference	Anaheim, CA, USA

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

Fosdem 2009 videos released

Conference videos from Fosdem 2009 are available. "In our tradition of releasing embedded Linux conference videos, we are happy to release 9 videos from the embedded room at the Fosdem 2009 conference in Brussels last month".

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