Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
The FSF warns (again) against Mono
The Free Software Foundation has put out a release stating that Microsoft's "Community Promise" is not sufficient, and that free software developers should still avoid mono. "The Community Promise only extends to claims in Microsoft patents that are *necessary* to implement the covered specifications. Judging just by the size of its patent portfolio, it's likely that Microsoft holds patents which a complete standard implementation probably infringes even if it's not strictly necessary--maybe the patent covers a straightforward speed optimization, or some common way of performing some task. The Community Promise doesn't say anything about these patents, and so Microsoft can still use them to threaten standard implementations."
KDE repository reaches 1,000,000 commits (KDEDot)
KDE.News covers a new repository commit milestone. "KDE announced today that the one millionth commit has been made to its Subversion-based revision control system. "This is a wonderful milestone for KDE," said Cornelius Schumacher, President of the KDE e.V. Board of Directors. "It is the result of years of hard work by a large, diverse, and talented team that has come together from all over the globe to develop one of the largest and most comprehensive software products in the world.""
Open Source for America launches
A group called Open Source for America has announced its existence. "The mission of Open Source for America is to serve as a centralized advocate and to encourage broader U.S. Federal Government support of and participation in free and open source software. Specifically, Open Source for America will: help effect change in policies and practices to allow the Federal Government to better utilize these technologies; help coordinate these communities to collaborate with the federal government on technology requirements; and raise awareness and create understanding among federal government leaders about the values and implications of open source software." In other words, we finally have a lobbying organization in the US. There's a fairly high-profile board of advisors (Ghosh, Moglen, O'Reilly, Peters, Phipps, Shuttleworth, Tiemann, Zemlin, ...), some case studies, and, inevitably, a Twitter feed.
Commercial announcements
Palm releases Mojo SDK for developing WebOS apps
Palm has announced the release of the Mojo Software Development Kit. "After a successful early access program, Palm's Mojo Software Development Kit is available to all interested app developers. The SDK can be downloaded from a new developer portal -- Palm webOSdev -- at developer.palm.com. Any interested developer with a valid email address can access the SDK, its associated documentation, and new Mojo developer forums."
New Books
Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript by Robin Nixon.Python Essential Reference, 4th Edition - Now Available
David Beazley has announced the publication of his book Python Essential Reference, 4th Edition.Testing, Debugging, and Optimizing-Python in a Nutshell (O'ReillyNet)
O'Reilly has published an excerpt from the book Testing, Debugging, and Optimizing-Python in a Nutshell by Alex Martelli.
Resources
EFF: A practical guide to Internet technology for political activists in repressive regimes
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the publication of a new guide: Surveillance Self-Defense International. "Recent political protests in Iran, China, and elsewhere have demonstrated the enormous power of the Internet for organizing protests and reporting events to the world. But governments have also used the Internet to track, harass, and undermine. SSDI urges activists to consider the risks in using various technologies and outlines strategies that can allow protestors to continue to use the Internet safely."
Open Source Database Magazine, issue 1
The first issue of Open Source Database Magazine is available as a 26-page PDF file. It includes articles on XtraBackup, PostgreSQL 8.4, and more. "Welcome to the inaugural issue of Open Source Database Magazine. It is my goal that this magazine provides a place for people to learn about open source databases of any stripe - be they Postgres, SQLite, MySQL, Drizzle, CouchDB, Hadoop or something else."
Calls for Presentations
linux.conf.au 2010 CFP closing
We just got a reminder that the call for papers for linux.conf.au 2010 (January 18 to 23, Wellington, New Zealand) will close on Friday, July 24. It's time for all the procrastinators out there to start pulling together their thoughts and put in a proposal. "The LCA2010 Papers Committee is looking for a broad range of papers spanning everything from programming and software to desktop and userspace to community, government and education."
O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing 2010 Conference Opens Call for Participation
A call for participation has gone out for the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, the submission deadline is September 1. "The O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (TOC) will explore the critical trends emerging around the business of digital publishing February 22-24, 2010, at the Marriot Marquis in New York City. From authoring, editing, and layout to distribution and consumption, new technologies are changing all aspects of publishing. As digitalization and globalization continue to accelerate the rate of change, publishers face the urgent necessity of building a solid business on the shifting foundation of paid vs. free content, format and device innovations, conflicting standards and royalties. TOC offers publishers the blueprints for success."
Upcoming Events
DjangoCon '09 registration
Registration is open for DjangoCon. "DjangoCon '09 will be in Portland, Oregon at the DoubleTree Green Hotel between 8th and 12th September. The first 3 days are conference days and the last 2 days are sprint days. Keynotes will be: Ian Bicking, Ted Leung and Avi Bryant."
FRHACK list of talks and speakers released
The list of talks and speakers has been released for FRHACK 01. "FRHACK 01 September 7-8, 2009, at the Great Kursaal Hall of Besançon, France."
MAKE ART 2009
MAKE ART 2009 has been announced. "make art is an international festival dedicated to the integration of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) in digital art. The fourth edition of make art ? What The Fork?! distributed and open practices in FLOSS art - will take place in Poitiers (FR), from the 7th to the 13th of December 2009. make art offers performances, presentations, workshops and an exhibition, focused on the encounter between digital art and free software."
Register today for the openSUSE conference
Registration has opened for the openSUSE conference, the event will take place on September 17-20, 2009 in Nürnberg, Germany. "The openSUSE Conference schedule is up and registration is open! Attending the openSUSE Conference is free, but registration is required. Lunch will be provided, so please be sure to sign up early so we can get an accurate headcount."
SciPy 2009 conference schedule posted
The conference schedule for SciPy 2009 has been published, the event takes place on August 18-23 in Pasadena, CA. "This year's program is very rich. In order to limit the number of interesting talks that we had to turn down, we decided to reduce the length of talks. Although this results in many short talks, we hope that it will foster discussions, and give new ideas. Many subjects are covered, both varying technical subject in the scientific computing spectrum, and covering a lot of different research areas."
Events: July 30, 2009 to September 28, 2009
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| July 24 July 30 |
DebConf 2009 | Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain |
| July 25 July 30 |
Black Hat Briefings and Training | Las Vegas, NV, 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 |
| August 31 September 4 |
Ubuntu Developer Week | Internet, Internet |
| September 1 September 4 |
JBoss World Chicago | Chicago, IL, USA |
| September 1 September 4 |
Red Hat Summit Chicago | Chicago, IL, USA |
| September 1 September 5 |
DrupalCon | Paris, France |
| September 4 September 5 |
PyCon 2009 Argentina | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| September 7 September 11 |
XtreemOS summer school | Oxford, UK |
| September 7 September 8 |
FRHACK.ORG IT Security Conference | Besançon, France |
| September 8 September 12 |
DjangoCon '09 | Portland, OR, USA |
| September 10 September 11 |
Fedora Developer Conference 2009 | Brno, Czech Republic |
| September 12 | Evil Robot Conference (Free Conference, Free Software) | Raleigh, NC, USA |
| September 14 September 18 |
Django Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch | Atlanta, Georgia, USA |
| September 15 September 17 |
International Conference on IT Security Incident Management and IT Forensics | Stuttgart, Germany |
| September 17 September 18 |
Internet Security Operations and Intelligence 7 | San Diego, CA, USA |
| September 17 September 20 |
openSUSE Conference | Nuremberg, Germany |
| September 18 September 19 |
BruCON | Brussels, Belgium |
| September 18 September 20 |
EuroBSDCon 2009 | Cambridge, UK |
| September 19 | Atlanta Linux Fest 2009 | Atlanta, Georgia, USA |
| September 19 | Beijing Perl Workshop | Beijing, China |
| September 19 | Software Freedom Day | Worldwide |
| September 20 | SELinux Developer Summit 2009 @ LinuxCon | Portland, Oregon, USA |
| September 21 September 23 |
LinuxCon 2009 | Portland, OR, USA |
| September 21 September 25 |
Ruby on Rails Bootcamp with Charles B. Quinn | Atlanta, USA |
| September 23 September 25 |
Linux Plumbers Conference | Portland, Oregon, USA |
| September 23 September 25 |
Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection | Saint-Malo, Brittany, France |
| September 23 September 25 |
OpenSolaris Developer Conference 2009 | Hamburg, Germany |
| September 23 | Bacula Conference 2009 | Cologne, Germany |
| September 24 September 26 |
Joomla! and Virtue Mart Day Germany | Bad Nauheim, Germany |
| September 25 September 27 |
International Conference on Open Source | Taipei, Taiwan |
| September 25 September 27 |
Ohio LinuxFest | Columbus, Ohio, USA |
| September 26 September 27 |
PyCon India 2009 | Bengaluru, India |
| September 26 | Open Source Conference 2009 Okinawa | Ginowan City, Okinawa, Japan |
| September 26 September 27 |
Mini-DebConf at ICOS | Taipei, Taiwan |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Event Reports
O'Reilly Velocity Conference report
O'Reilly has published a report from the recent Velocity Conference. "The second year of the O'Reilly Velocity Web Performance and Operations Conference drew more than 700 web developers and experts, a larger group than attended last year's, to San Jose June 22-24, 2009. They came to Velocity to pose their toughest questions to the people doing the best performance and operations work in the world."
Audio and Video programs
Podcast with Chris DiBona on the (computational) value of sharing
Eric Steuer talks with Chris Dibona in a new podcast. "Eric Steuer is the creative director of Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that works to make it easier for creators to share their work with the rest of the world. It also provides tools to make it easier for people to find creative work that's been made available to them-and the rest of the world-to use, share, reuse etc., freely and legally. What follows is the first in a series of interviews called "We like to share," in which Eric talked to people who work across a variety of fields who use sharing as an approach to benefit the work that they do. The latest interview is with Chris Dibona, the Open Source Programs Manager for Google."
Page editor: Forrest Cook