Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
EFF Challenges Government's 'Back Door Wiretap'
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is challenging the US government's Back Door Wiretap policy. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties groups filed an amicus brief in Warshak v. United States urging the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to hold that the government's seizure of email without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment and federal privacy statutes, as well as the Justice Department's own surveillance manual."
EFF busts bogus Internet subdomain patent
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the winning of a case against a bogus patent. "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it will revoke an illegitimate patent on Internet subdomains as a result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Patent Busting Project campaign. U.S. Patent No. 6,687,746, now held by Hoshiko, LLC, claimed to cover the method of automatically assigning Internet subdomains, like "action.eff.org" for the parent domain "eff.org." Previous patent owner Ideaflood used this bogus patent to demand payment from website hosting companies offering personalized domains, such as LiveJournal, a social networking site where each of its three million users may have their own subdomain."
EFF and Public Knowledge reluctantly drop lawsuit for information about ACTA
The EFF and Public Knowledge have dropped a lawsuit seeking information about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. "The Obama Administration's decision to support Bush-era concealment policies has forced the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (PK) to drop their lawsuit about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). EFF and PK had been seeking important documents about the secret intellectual property enforcement treaty that has broad implications for global privacy and innovation."
Gnash V9 Summer Bash (Open Media Now)
Open Media Now has announced the Gnash V9 Summer Bash which takes place from mid May through mid August, 2009. "The Bash is a summer project designed to achieve a critical leap in version 9 free flash functionality by enlisting the help of student interns to hammer our way through a big stack of ActionScript3 (AS3) Class Libraries. The 2009 Gnash Summer Bash will result in Gnash v9 (and v10) compatibility with a number of high-demand websites -- including educational, major media, and other popular sites." See blog posting #1 for the current project status.
SFLC Files Amicus Brief in Jacobsen v. Katzner
The Software Freedom Law Center has announced the filing of an Amicus Brief. "Today, SFLC filed brief amicus curiae in the case, Jacobsen v. Katzer before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). In the brief, SFLC argues that a Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) developer whose license has been violated should be able to call upon the courts to prevent further infringing distributions."
Commercial announcements
Kineo Open Source supports Moodle
Kineo Open Source has announced its monetary supports for Moodle. "Kineo Open Source has donated $3000AUS to Moodle, the open source learning management system. This will be put into the development fund run by the Moodle Trust, which contracts programmers to work on Moodle, to help fund the development of the Site-Wide Groups feature in Moodle 2.0 which is due at the end of 2009."
New Books
Head First Networking--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Head First Networking by Al Anderson and Ryan Benedetti.
Resources
Linux Foundation Newsletter
The June, 2009 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter has been published. "In this month's Linux Foundation newsletter: * Linux Foundation Expands Individual Membership Program * Provider of Interactive Teaching Solutions Joins Linux Foundation * Open Voices Interview Series Continues with IBM's Bob Sutor * Online Training Courses Launched This Month * Linux Foundation in the News * From the Director"
Contests and Awards
Public voting Awards Persistent Model Patterns.
Nominations are open for the ODBMS.ORG Awards. "Dear Colleagues I`d like to encourage you and your colleagues to take part to the public voting for the ODBMS.ORG Awards - for the most valuable Persistent Model Patterns."
Book created with Scribus wins Belgian design award
A book created with the Scribus drawing application has won a Belgian award. "Our dear friends at OSP in Brussels have won the 2009 Plantin Moretus Award for the best-designed Belgian book in the category non-fiction: Liesbeth Huybrechts, CrossOver: Kunst, media en technologie in Vlaanderen, Gent 2009. The book was produced with Open Source tools, and the final layout has been created in Scribus. Moreover, OSP used the Free Liberation font family exclusively."
Surveys
Survey predicts continued strong growth of Linux use on mainframes
A survey commissioned by CA reports that Linux use on the mainframe will continue to grow. "The study surveyed 100 IT executives and managers at companies with at least $2 billion in annual revenue about their use of the Linux operating system on IBM mainframes. 93% of respondents projected that their use of IBM's IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) specialty mainframe processor would increase or at least remain steady over the course of the next two years. 42% projected that their use of the IFL would grow between 21% and 40%, and 10% projected that it would grow more than 76%. The two main reasons cited by respondents for this increased use of Linux on the mainframe were 1) the desire to take advantage of computing capacity available on their mainframe's central processors and/or IFLs, and 2) their assessment that using Linux on the mainframe would be more cost-effective than other platforms."
June 2009 Web Server Survey (Netcraft)
The Netcraft June 2009 Web Server survey is out. "In the June 2009 survey we received responses from 238,027,855 sites, an increase of 2,137,329 on last month. A reduction in activity at Microsoft Live Spaces was responsible for the large drop in the number of Microsoft-IIS sites detected. Apache retains the dominant market share of 47.12%, approximately 112.2 million sites in total, and saw a modest increase in market share of 0.63 percentage points this month. Meanwhile, Google has increased its market share by 1.3 percentage points to nearly 12 million sites, due mainly to increased activity on Blogger. nginx continues to grow strongly, increasing its market share by 1 percentage point."
Education and Certification
Announcing the XtreemOS Summer School
The XtreemOS Summer School will be held at Wadham College, University of Oxford Oxford, UK, on September 7-11, 2009. "XtreemOS is a Linux-based operating systems that includes Grid functionalities. It is characterised by properties such as transparency, hiding the complexity of in the underlying distributed infrastructure; scalability, supporting hundreds of thousands of nodes and millions of users; and dependability, providing reliability, highly availability and security. The XtreemOS Summer School will include lectures on modern distributed paradigms such as Grid computing, Cloud computing, and network-centric operating systems."
Calls for Presentations
LCA 2010: Call for Miniconfs now open
A Call for Miniconfs has been posted for LCA 2010. "We are pleased to invite proposals for Miniconfs on any Free Software related subject; from Linux and the BSDs to OpenOffice.org, from networking to audio-visual magic, from deep hacks to Creative Commons. The LCA2010 Miniconf Review Committee will be accepting Miniconf Proposals up until the close of business on Friday 17 July 2009. Successful Miniconf Proposals will be notified in early September 2009." The event takes place on January 18-23, 2010 in Wellington, New Zealand.
2009 Linux Plumbers Conference Deadline Extension
The Linux Plumbers Conference has extended its deadline for proposal abstracts until Monday June 22. There are numerous tracks covering many different parts of the Linux plumbing. "We have an exciting program shaping up! Tutorials include an advanced git tutorial from Linus Torvalds. Keynotes include Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO, live via video with real time Q&A (invitee, to be confirmed), and Keith Packard, Intel, X Window guru." Click below for the full announcement.
NLUUG autumn conference call for papers
A call for papers has gone out for the NLUUG autumn conference, which will take place in Ede, The Netherlands. "Important dates: Deadline abstracts: June 29, 2009 Acceptance notification: July 5, 2009 Conference: October 29, 2009".
Request for proposals: PostgreSQL Conference 2009 Japan
A request for proposals has gone out for the PostgreSQL Conference 2009 Japan. "Submission deadline is June 30th, 2009 17:00 JST. Please send your proposal as soon as possible. Please note that if you are selected as a speaker at the conference, the admission fee will be exempted (it will be around 10,000 Japanese yen, which is about US $102.04 according to today's rate)." The event will be held on November 20 and 21, 2009 at AP Hamamatsucho, Tokyo.
Upcoming Events
Call for keys for DebConf9 keysigning
The DebConf9 keysigning call for keys been announced. "As part of the 10th Debian Conference in Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain, will be OpenPGP (pgp/gpg) keysignings. If you intend to participate in the DebConf9 keysignings, please send your ascii armored public key as explained at not later than 23:59 UTC on Sunday 12th of July, 2009."
Flash Memory Summit announced
The 2009 Flash Memory Summit will take place in Santa Clara, CA on August 11-13, 2009. "The Flash Memory Summit is the only place where you will hear the people making these products happen! Network with companies and people that will create the next generation of hardware and software at the Flash Memory Summit. This power-packed 3-day event will cover the latest topics in flash memory. Hear about flash in embedded systems, laptop design, flash in enterprise storage systems, green flash, solid state drives, flash performance, flash-based design, flash in computers, mobile applications, software, new non-volatile memory technologies, reliability, security, and much more!"
The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit Keynotes (KDEDot)
KDE.News has announced the keynotes from the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit which will take place on July 3-11 in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. "The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. are excited to announce the keynotes for the first ever co-located Akademy and GUADEC, over 100 talks as well as BOFs, keynote sessions, lightning talks and many opportunities to meet other developers and begin collaborating between projects. Current confirmed keynotes are: * Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation * Walter Bender, Executive Director, Sugar Labs * Robert Lefkowitz, Distinguished Engineer of the ACM * Jakub Pavelek, Nokia".
OSCON 2009 early bird registration extended
Early bird registration for OSCON 2009 has been extended to June 23. "Registration is now open for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON). OSCON 2009 will be July 20-24 in San Jose, California."
OSCON: booth volunteers wanted
A call for booth volunteers has gone out for OSCON. "I'm organizing a Python booth for the OSCON Exhibit Hall Weds 7/22 and Thurs 7/23. If you'd like to help staff the booth, please join the OSCON mailing list".
Events: June 25, 2009 to August 24, 2009
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| June 20 June 26 |
Beginning iPhone for Commuters | New York, 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 |
| July 13 July 17 |
(Montreal) Linux Symposium | Montreal, Canada |
| July 15 July 17 |
Kernel Conference Australia 2009 | Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| July 15 July 16 |
NIT Agartala FOSS and GNU/Linux fest | Agartala, India |
| July 18 July 19 |
Community Leadership Summit | San Jose, CA, USA |
| July 19 July 20 |
Open Video Conference | New York City, USA |
| July 19 | pgDay San Jose | San Jose, CA, USA |
| July 20 July 24 |
2009 O'Reilly Open Source Convention | San Jose, CA, USA |
| July 24 July 30 |
DebConf 2009 | Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain |
| July 25 July 30 |
Black Hat Briefings and Training | Las Vegas, NV, USA |
| July 25 July 26 |
EuroSciPy 2009 | Leipzig, Germany |
| July 25 July 26 |
PyOhio 2009 | Columbus, OH, USA |
| July 26 July 27 |
InsideMobile | San Jose, CA, USA |
| July 31 August 2 |
FOSS in Healthcare unconference | Houston, TX, USA |
| August 3 August 5 |
YAPC::EU::2009 | Lisbon, Portugal |
| August 7 August 9 |
UKUUG Summer 2009 Conference | Birmingham, UK |
| August 7 | August Penguin 2009 | Weizmann Institute, Israel |
| August 10 August 14 |
USENIX Security Symposium | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| August 11 August 13 |
Flash Memory Summit | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| August 11 | FOSS Dev Camp - Open Source World | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| August 12 August 13 |
OpenSource World Conference and Expo | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| August 12 August 13 |
Military Open Source Software | Atlanta, Georgia, USA |
| August 13 August 16 |
Hacking At Random 2009 | Vierhouten, The Netherlands |
| August 18 August 23 |
2009 Python in Science Conference | Pasadena, CA, USA |
| August 22 August 23 |
Free and Open Source Conference (FrOSCon) | St. Augustin, Germany |
| August 22 August 23 |
OpenSQL Camp | St. Augustin, Germany |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Event Reports
Code Sprint challenges Ingres open source community
An event report from the recent Ingres Code Sprint has been published. "Whoever said the finish line is the end of the race clearly has never participated in an Ingres Code Sprint. Ingres, the leading provider of open source database management software and pioneer of the New Economics of IT, hosted the Ingres Code Sprint, a two-day event held last week in advance of the UK Ingres Users Association Annual Conference in London. Ingres Code Sprint brought together customers, partners, and Ingres engineers to design, code, and create new features. As a result of the two-day code-fest, compelling new features will now be added to the Ingres product line."
Audio and Video programs
Open Voices Interview with Bob Sutor, IBM (Linux.com)
Jim Zemlin interviews IBM's Bob Sutor in a fairly lengthy Linux.com podcast. "In this episode of Open Voices, Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin talks with newly appointed VP of Linux and Open Source at IBM Bob Sutor. They cover IBMs current support of Linux, the origin of that support, and the hotspots Bob sees in the Linux and open source market today. Highlights include conversation about cloud computing, Linux on the desktop, ODF, and the growth of the Linux community. Bob will cover these topics in more detail during his keynote at the upcoming LinuxCon conference in September in Portland, OR."
Page editor: Forrest Cook