Announcements

Coalition launches petition over Amazon/Kindle DRM

The FSF has announced a campaign against digital restrictions management on the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader. "The Free Software Foundation's DefectiveByDesign.org campaign, supported by prominent authors, journalists, and librarians, has launched a petition against the Amazon Kindle's use of digital restrictions management (DRM). "The freedom to read without supervision or interference is central to a free society," said FSF executive director Peter Brown. "When ebook products like the Kindle use DRM to restrict what users can do with their books, that is a clear threat to the free exchange of ideas.""

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The FSF launches a "freedom to read" petition

DefectiveByDesign.org has launched a petition to protest Amazon's handling of George Orwell's 1984. "We believe in a way of life based on the free exchange of ideas, in which books have and will continue to play a central role. Devices like Amazon's are trying to determine how people will interact with books, but Amazon's use of DRM to control and monitor users and their books constitutes a clear threat to the free exchange of ideas."

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OpenBTS injunction lifted

The injunction against distribution of the OpenBTS cellular base station system has now been lifted. The main effect for the moment appears to be the opening up of the project's internal discussion mailing list. "Also, we'll be updating the gnuradio-based OpenBTS repository and site sometime in September. We'd do it sooner, but we're busy getting ready for this year's experimentation of OpenBTS at Burning Man 2009." See this article from February for a description of some of the problems surrounding OpenBTS.

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Canonical to Offer Ubuntu Desktop support and services

Canonical will be offering Ubuntu Desktop support and services. "Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, announced today it has launched new support services for individuals using Ubuntu desktop and small businesses looking for cost effective alternatives to Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac. Ubuntu is the fastest growing open source desktop with millions of users around the world using it at home and work. Support from Canonical's team of experts enables users to take full advantage of the powerful Ubuntu operating system. The services include installation support, as well as ongoing assistance with configuration and applications"

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Linux Foundation introduces Linux-branded credit card

The Linux Foundation has announced a new Linux-branded credit card. "The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced it will offer an affinity Visa Platinum credit card for people who want to contribute to advancing the Linux operating system through Linux Foundation initiatives. “This credit card is in response to requests by individuals who want to get involved and support the Linux Foundation’s community activities,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “Some people write code while others work on marketing or defending Linux. The Linux-branded credit card is an easy way for anyone to contribute to the growth of Linux and identify themselves as supporters of the community by carrying Tux in their pocket.”"

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MIPS makes Android source code public

MIPS has announced the release of the source code for the MIPS architecture port of Android. "MIPS Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for home entertainment, communications, networking and portable multimedia markets, today announced it has met a key milestone in driving the Android(tm) platform beyond mobile handsets. Just two months after announcing its port of the Android platform to the MIPS(r) architecture, the company is making the source code publicly available."

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MUSA Technology Partners introduces Linux/Open Source service desk

MUSA Technology Partners has announced new service support for Linux. "MUSA Technology Partners, a leading provider of technology products, services and support, announced today that it is now offering its Linux and Open Source support services to all businesses. While MUSA's Service Desk currently offers specifically Linux and Open Source support, the firm will be rapidly incorporating additional services over the next six months."

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Head First Data Analysis--New from O'Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book Head First Data Analysis by Michael Milton.

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O'Reilly publishes book excerpts

O'Reilly has published a number of new book excerpts including: Afterword: The Language Challenge - Natural Language Processing with Python, Writing Backward-Compatible Code - Ruby Best Practices, Ruby Worst Practices - Ruby Best Practices, Leveraging Ruby's Standard Library - Ruby Best Practices and Parrot Reference - Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials.

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Linux Gazette #165 is out

Issue #165 of the Linux Gazette has been published. Topics include: "Talkback, 2-Cent Tips, News Bytes, by Deividson Luiz Okopnik and Howard Dyckoff, Away Mission: June - JavaOne, SemTech, and Velocity, by Howard Dyckoff, Away Mission - LinuxWorld Morphs into OpenSource World - August 2009, by Howard Dyckoff, Software Development on the Nokia Internet Tablets, by Bruce Forsberg, Linux Layer 8 Puppet, by Lisa Kachold, GNOME and Red Hat Linux Eleven Years Ago, by Oscar Laycock, Encryption with TrueCrypt, by Ariel Maiorano, Real World Cases For Apache's mod_rewrite, by Anderson Silva and The Linux Launderette."

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Linux on the Intel iMac - Triple booting

Scott Dowdle presents a HOWTO on Triple booting Linux on the Intel iMac. "Apple realized some time ago that people might want to dual-boot their new machines so they created Boot Camp. Indeed, Boot Camp does make it easy to dual-boot and they even give you all of the drivers needed to make Windows support their hardware... but what about triple-booting? Maybe someday the Boot Camp developers will implement triple-booting but for now it only supports dual-boot."

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ODBMS.org publishes panel discussion

ODBMS.org has released the transcripts from a recent panel discussion. "ODBMS.ORG, a vendor-independent non-profit group of high-profile software experts lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari, has exclusively published the panel discussion "A New Renaissance for ODBMSs?"."

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PHP TestFest 2009 winners announced

The winners of the PHP TestFest 2009 have been announced. "A group of winners of PHP elePHPhants or TestFest mugs have been picked at random from the people that contributed the 887 tests during the 2009 PHP TestFest."

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Red Hat awards Fedora Scholarship

Red Hat has announced the reward of a scholarship program to John McLean. "The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced that John McLean is the recipient of the 2009 Fedora Scholarship, a program now in its second year. The Fedora Scholarship program recognizes college and university-bound students across the globe for their contributions to free software and the Fedora Project. McLean was selected from an impressive applicant pool and plans to attend Duke University this fall and double major in computer science and religion."

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Ongoing Oxygen Icons Usability Survey: KDevelop (KDEDot)

KDE.News has announced a new Oxygen Icons Usability Survey. "Every few weeks Nuno Pinheiro and the KDE Oxygen Icons team are publishing a new usability survey online to get feedback from users on the look and feel of icons. In particular, the Oxygen team is looking for feedback from individuals that have had no exposure to KDE, so if you are at home or at work, poke your friends and family and have them complete the survey, or simply take the survey yourself."

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Minutes for GNOME+KDE meeting at GUADEC

The minutes from the GNOME+KDE meeting at GUADEC have been published. (Thanks to Brian Cameron).

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5th European Conference on Computer Network Defence CFP

A call for papers has gone out for EC2ND 2009, the 5th European Conference on Computer Network Defence. "The 5th European Conference on Computer Network Defence will take place in November 2009 at the Politecnico di Milano technical university in Milano, Italy. The theme of the conference is the protection of computer networks. The conference will draw participants from academia and industry in Europe and beyond to discuss hot topics in applied network and systems security." Submissions are due by September 15.

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Feds to host NHIN software code-a-thon (Health IT)

The Health and Human Services Department will sponsor a "code-a-thon" on August 27, 2009. "The code-a-thon is expected to foster personal connections and help expand the talent pool of developers that might contribute to the CONNECT project, according to Brian Behlendorf, an open source advocate and a contractor on the administration's Open Government initiative team headed White House chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra."

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OpenSource World: we got r0ml

Robert "r0ml" Lefkowitz will deliver a keynote at OpenSource World, the event takes place on August 11-13 in San Francisco. "Finally, we get to hear about the missing angle for open source in IT departments. When you drag peer production code and ideas into the Corporate IT Department, can you actually MAKE NEW STUFF with it, or is open source just a snoozy cheaper/more reliable way to do the same old IT projects you were going to do anyway?"

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openSUSE Conference Keynote announcement

The openSUSE Conference keynote has been announced. "The opening keynote will be given by Leslie Hawthorn of Google. Leslie is a program manager for Google's Open Source Programs Office, and community manager for the Google Summer of Code. The topic of the keynote is "Mentoring for Fun and Profit," and the full description can be found on the openSUSE Conference Web site."

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Events: August 13, 2009 to October 12, 2009

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
August 10 August 14	USENIX Security Symposium	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
August 11 August 13	Flash Memory Summit	Santa Clara, 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
September 28 September 30	Real time Linux workshop	Dresden, Germany
September 28 September 30	X Developers' Conference 2009	Portland, OR, USA
September 28 October 2	Sixteenth Annual Tcl/Tk Conference (2009)	Portland, OR 97232, USA
September 30	HCC!Linux Theme Day	Houten, Netherlands
October 1 October 2	Open World Forum	Paris, France
October 2 October 4	7th International Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics	Mountain View, CA, USA
October 2	LLVM Developers' Meeting	Cupertino, CA, USA
October 2 October 4	Linux Autumn (Jesien Linuksowa) 2009	Huta Szklana, Poland
October 2 October 4	Ubuntu Global Jam	Online, Online
October 2 October 3	Open Source Developers Conference France	Paris, France
October 2	Mozilla Public DevDay/Open Web Camp 2009	Prague, Czech Republic
October 3 October 4	T-DOSE 2009	Eindhoven, The Netherlands
October 3 October 4	EU MozCamp 2009	Prague, Czech Republic
October 7 October 9	Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre	Santiago, Chile
October 8 October 10	Utah Open Source Conference	Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
October 9 October 11	Maemo Summit 2009	Amsterdam, The Netherlands
October 10 October 12	Gnome Boston Summit	Cambridge, MA, USA
October 10	OSDN Conference 2009	Kiev, Ukraine

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

New KDE Buzz (KDEDot)

KDE.News has announced the launch of buzz.kde.org. "While you wait for the KDE 4.3 gates to open, you may be interested in our new buzz.kde.org site, using an experimental "LifeStream" tracking KDE on identi.ca and Twitter, Picasaweb, Flickr and Youtube. Check out buzz.kde.org for the stream for who's saying what about the hottest Free Desktop release this year!"

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Embedded Linux Conference videos posted

The folks at Free Electrons have posted videos from the Embedded Linux Conference, held in early April. Videos from 45 talks have been posted; they are in high-definition Theora format.

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