Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
The GNOME Foundation is looking for help
The GNOME Foundation has posted a call for help to keep operating at its current level in a hostile economy. "As the economy persists on this roller coaster of ups and downs, the Foundation is rolling with the punches and looking for ways to best serve our members. While we can look at this downturn as a time to tighten our belts, I would much rather look at this as an opportunity for the community to take a stake in the future of the Foundation and show that we are not exclusively reliant on corporate coffers to grow GNOME."
Request for Comment: TPF to engage Richard Dice on 6 month contract (use Perl)
use Perl has a Request for Comment concerning the employment of Richard Dice to work on Perl. "The plan includes a long list of projects, most of which have been discussed within TPF for a while but have been on indefinite hold due mainly to lack of available effort to address them properly. Some are for TPF process improvement and others are in more direct support of the Perl community. The essence of plan is that I be employed on contract by TPF for the next 6 months working on this list."
Want to host the 2010 Linux Plumbers Conference?
The Linux Plumbers Conference was first held in Portland, Oregon last year; it will be returning to Portland in September. For 2010, though, the LPC organizers are taking a cue from the linux.conf.au playbook and are looking for a team interested in hosting the event in a different North American city. Applications are being sought now, with the deadline being the beginning of July. If you would like to bring a high-level Linux event to your town, now is the time to start getting an organizing team together. Click below for the full call for applications.
Commercial announcements
CadSoft releases Eagle 5.6
CadSoft has released version 5.6 of their Eagle printed circuit CAD application. This release adds improvements to a number of different commands. See the What's new document for details.Springsource Acquires Hyperic
SpringSource has announced it has acquired substantially all of the assets of Hyperic. "San Francisco-based Hyperic, recently named a "cool vendor" by Gartner and a "company to watch in 2009" by Linux Magazine, provides web application performance management software that is used by numerous Fortune 1000 entities, including many of the world's largest SaaS and consumer web companies. Hyperic's solutions monitor and manage the performance and availability of the entire application stack from hardware and operating systems to virtual machines, web servers, application servers, databases, and more -- giving IT and web operations a unified view and control of the performance and health of their entire web infrastructure." SpringSource's Spring Framework is an Apache-licensed Java application framework. (Found on Linux Journal)
Zenoss Core 2.4 Open Source Network Monitoring is available
Zenoss Inc. has announced the release of Zenoss Core 2.4. "Zenoss Inc., the leading commercial open source network and systems management provider, today announced the general availability of the latest version of their award-winning open source network monitoring tool, Zenoss Core 2.4. This release was made possible by the collaboration of more than 50,000 members of the Zenoss user community who helped report, test and fix over 500 bugs as well as test numerous beta releases."
New Books
The Blender GameKit, 2nd Edition--New from No Starch Press
No Starch Press has published the book The Blender GameKit, 2nd Edition by Carsten Wartmann.
Resources
LF: Linux is the operating system of the cloud
The Linux Foundation has released a new white paper highlighting (in marketing-speak) the use of Linux in "cloud computing" environments. "One of the most common concerns that analysts and other advisers have for potential cloud customers is the lack of standards, and the resulting potential for lockin. For all of the advantages in deployment speed and flexibility, the nascent stage of many cloud offerings and the absence of common, agreed upon formats for packaging, runtimes, and virtual images introduces risk. Fortunately, customers can leverage Linux as a hedge against this possibility. The differences between Linux instances hosted in cloud environments and those hosted locally or at a data center, after all, are generally less technical than geographical. By standardizing on Linux workloads, customers will have the flexibility to deploy locally or remotely as the economics and circumstances dictate."
Announcing the Community RFB protocol specification
An online version of the Community RFB protocol specification has been announced. "RFB ("remote framebuffer") is a simple protocol for remote access to graphical user interfaces. Because it works at the framebuffer level it is applicable to all windowing systems and applications, including X11, Windows and Macintosh. RFB is the protocol used in VNC (Virtual Network Computing)."
GNOME Journal, May 2009 edition released
The May, 2009 edition of the GNOME Journal is available. "After an extended break, the latest issue of the GNOME Journal has been published. It features an interview with Stormy Peters, the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation by Jayson Rowe, a review of the Gourmet Recipe Manager application by Sriram Ramkrishna, a look at the GConf Configuation System for developers by Natan Yellin, an Introduction to the Message Indicator for developers by Ken VanDine, and a letter from our editor, Jim Hodapp."
Linux Foundation Newsletter, April 2009
The April, 2009 edition of the Linux Foundation newsletter has been published. "In this month's Linux Foundation newsletter: * Linux Foundation to Host Moblin Project * Annual Collaboration Summit Held in San Francisco * Video Contest Winner Revealed * Linux Foundation Site Revamped * Linux Foundation in the News".
Linux Gazette #162
Issue #162 of the Linux Gazette has been published. Topics include: "* Mailbag * Talkback * 2-Cent Tips * News Bytes, by Deividson Luiz Okopnik and Howard Dyckoff * Command-Line Processing with 'process-getopt', by Bob Hepple * New Options in the World of File Compression, by Brian Lindholm A short history of compression; a comparison of gzip, bzip2, and 7-zip; and a pointer to some conversion software. * Joey's Notes: TCP Wrappers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, by Joey Prestia Our monthly column of basic Linux advice and education * XKCD, by Randall Munroe".
Contests and Awards
Linux Journal Announces Winners of its 2009 Readers' Choice Awards (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal has announced the winners of its annual Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards. The results are not particularly surprising. Favorite Primary Linux Distribution of Choice - Ubuntu; Favorite Desktop Environment - GNOME; Favorite Web Browser - Firefox; Favorite E-Mail Client - Mozilla Thunderbird; and that's just for starters.
Calls for Presentations
Call for Presentations: ELC-Europe 2009
A call for presentations has gone out for ELC-Europe 2009. The event takes place on October 15-16, 2009 in Grenoble, France. The submission deadline is June 15. "CELF is the primary sponsor of this event, which is open to the public. This year we will be holding the conference in conjunction with the Embedded Systems Week (ESWEEK), an exciting event which brings together conferences, tutorials and workshops centered on various aspects of embedded systems research and development."
EuroSciPy: abstracts deadline extended
The EuroSciPy Call for Abstracts deadline has been extended to May 8. "Some people asked for more time to prepare their abstracts. Therefore, we extended the deadline for the submission of abstracts for EuroSciPy 2009 to May 8, 2009. Please send your abstract to mmueller at python-academy dot de. More details below. We're pleased to announce the EuroSciPy 2009 Conference to be held in Leipzig, Germany on July 25-26, 2009."
Call for Papers Hack.lu 2009
A call for papers has gone out for Hack.lu 2009. "The purpose of the hack.lu convention is to give an open and free playground where people can discuss the implication of new technologies in society. hack.lu is a balanced mix convention where technical and non-technical people can meet each other and share freely all kind of information. The convention will be held in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg in October 2009 (28-30.10.2009)." Abstracts are due by June 15.
Piksel09 :: Call for Projects
A call for projects has gone out for Piksel09. "Piksel is an international event for artists and developers working with Free/Libre and Open Source technologies in artistic practice. Part workshop, part festival, it is organised in Bergen, Norway,and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of FLOSS & art." The event takes place on November 19-22 2009 in Bergen, Norway, the project deadline is July 15.
Upcoming Events
CONFidence 2009 trainings
A reminder has gone out for CONFidence 2009. "CONFidence is an international conference that has been taking place in May in Poland for the last 5 years. CONFidence is focused on research and best practices of database, application, systems and network security. CONFidence is a two-day event, (15-16 May, 2009) divided in three tracks. The speakers list includes: Bruce Schneier, Tavis Ormandy, Jacob Appelbaum, Joanna Rutkowska, Rich Smith, Mario Heiderich, Mark Schoenefeld and many many more top security experts."
OSCON 2009 registration open
Registration is open for OSCON 2009. "Registration is now open for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON). OSCON 2009 will be July 20-24 in San Jose, California. Early registration ends June 2. Use the special discount code 'os09pgm' for an extra 15% off."
Events: May 14, 2009 to July 13, 2009
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| May 25 May 29 |
Ubuntu Developers Summit - Karmic Koala | Barcelona, Spain |
| May 27 May 28 |
EUSecWest 2009 | London, UK |
| May 28 | Canberra LUG Monthly meeting - May 2009 | Canberra, Australia |
| May 29 May 31 |
Mozilla Maemo Mer Danish Weekend | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| May 31 June 3 |
Techno Security 2009 | Myrtle Beach, SC, USA |
| June 1 June 5 |
Python Bootcamp with Dave Beazley | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| June 2 June 4 |
SOA in Healthcare Conference | Chicago, IL, USA |
| June 3 June 5 |
LinuxDays 2009 | Geneva, Switzerland |
| June 3 June 4 |
Nordic Meet on Nagios 2009 | Stockholm, Sweden |
| June 6 | PgDay Junín 2009 | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| June 8 June 12 |
Ruby on Rails Bootcamp with Charles B. Quinn | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| June 10 June 11 |
FreedomHEC Taipei | Taipei, Taiwan |
| June 11 June 12 |
ShakaCon Security Conference | Honolulu, HI, USA |
| June 12 June 13 |
III Conferenza Italiana sul Software Libero | Bologna, Italy |
| June 12 June 14 |
Writing Open Source: The Conference | Owen Sound, Canada |
| June 13 | SouthEast LinuxFest | Clemson, SC, USA |
| June 14 June 19 |
2009 USENIX Annual Technical Conference | San Diego, USA |
| June 17 June 19 |
Open Source Bridge | Portland, OR, USA |
| June 17 June 19 |
Conference on Cyber Warfare | Tallinn, Estonia |
| June 20 June 26 |
Beginning iPhone for Commuters | New York, USA |
| June 22 June 24 |
Velocity 2009 | San Jose, CA, USA |
| June 22 June 24 |
YAPC|10 | Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
| June 24 June 27 |
LinuxTag 2009 | Berlin, Germany |
| June 24 June 27 |
10th International Free Software Forum | Porto Alegre, Brazil |
| June 26 June 28 |
Fedora Users and Developers Conference - Berlin | Berlin, Germany |
| June 26 June 30 |
Hacker Space Festival 2009 | Seine, France |
| June 28 July 4 |
EuroPython 2009 | Birmingham, UK |
| June 29 June 30 |
Open Source China World 2009 | Beijing, China |
| July 1 July 3 |
OSPERT 2009 | Dublin, Ireland |
| July 1 July 3 |
ICOODB 2009 | Zurich, Switzerland |
| July 2 July 5 |
ToorCamp 2009 | Moses Lake, WA, USA |
| July 3 July 11 |
Gran Canaria Desktop Summit (GUADEC/Akademy) | Gran Canaria, Spain |
| July 3 | PHP'n Rio 09 | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| July 4 | Open Tech 2009 | London, UK |
| July 6 July 10 |
Python African Tour : Sénégal | Dakar, Sénégal |
| July 7 July 11 |
Libre Software Meeting | Nantes, France |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Web sites
ESP launches en.swpat.org: a wiki for anti-software patent campaigns
End Software Patents (ESP) has announced a new wiki to document the case against software patents at en.swpat.org. "ESP's executive director Ciaran O'Riordan explains: 'So far, we have articles about the case law, legislation, and patent office behavior in various countries. We have articles about economic studies, about related books, about the various ways to fight software patents, about each of the arguments against software patents, and most importantly, the evidence for each argument. [...]'" Click below for the full announcement.
My developerWorks: 6 ways to build your technical skills and your professional network (developerWorks)
IBM has launched My developerWorks, a social networking site. "It may look small at first: just sticking "My" in front of developerWorks. But what those characters represent is huge: You can now interact with developerWorks' how-to content and with your peers on a personal level—by personalizing and customizing your view of developerWorks content so you see just the information that's pertinent to you. My developerWorks makes it easy. It also gives you a window into the ways your peers are using, tagging, and contributing to the knowledge base, so you can learn from each other while building your skills and your professional network at the same time."
Page editor: Forrest Cook