Announcements

EFF: National Coalition of Authors Urge Rejection of Google Book Search Deal

A coalition of authors and publishers is urging a federal judge to reject the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search, arguing that the sweeping agreement to digitize millions of books ignores critical privacy rights for readers and writers. "The settlement, currently pending approval from a New York federal district court, would end the legal challenges brought by the Authors' Guild over the Google Book Search project. It would give Google the green light to scan and digitize millions of books and allow users to search for and read those books online. However, Google's system could monitor what books users search for, how much of the books they read, and how long they spend on various pages."

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The Open Invention Network acquires 22 more patents

The Open Invention Network has announced the acquisition of 22 software patents formerly owned by Microsoft. "We are pleased to have purchased these patents and view this as a model of successful collaboration among defensive patent organizations that share a common goal of creating freedom of action for practicing entities across Linux and the broader technology sector. The prospect of these patents being placed in the hands of non-practicing entities was a threat that has been averted with these purchases, irrespective of patent quality and whether or not the patents truly read on Linux."

Information on what the patents actually covered remains scarce. Readers wanting a conspiratorial view of the whole thing can find it at Groklaw.

Comments (6 posted)

Canonical adds advanced Ubuntu service and support offering

Canonical has announced a new support service. "Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, announced today an advanced service and support offering that gives large enterprises with complex IT environments a highly-skilled, dedicated Canonical support professional. Premium Service Engineer (PSE), a new level of support for large enterprises, offers a single point of contact for Canonical's large customers - enabling a faster response time and faster issue resolution. PSEs have access to all levels of support, including Canonical's platform engineers."

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Red Hat and HP optimize RHEL virtualization for HP BladeSystem (Reuters)

Reuters reports on a collaboration between Red Hat and HP. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is now available on HP BladeSystem and HP ProLiant servers. With this combination, customers can take advantage of an open source, standards-based virtual infrastructure that provides scalability and security capabilities. Additionally, enterprises will be able to leverage management capabilities offered by both companies."

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Drupal's new trademark policy

Drupal would appear to be the latest project which is attempting to assert heavy-handed control through the use of a new trademark policy; complaints from users are beginning to appear. "This policy - as well as the accompanying website - may be changed at any time. You accept that all licenses accorded under this policy are non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sub-licensable, revocable at any time, and subject to changes in policy. Hence, changes in this policy may cause permissions to be revoked or made dependent on additional obligations."

Comments (16 posted)

EU investigates Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun

The EU Commission has issued a press release regarding Oracle's plans to acquire Sun. "The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation under the EU Merger Regulation into the planned acquisition of US hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, a US database and application software company. The Commission’s initial market investigation indicated that the proposed acquisition would raise serious doubts as to its compatibility with the Single Market because of competition concerns on the market for databases. The decision to open an in-depth inquiry does not prejudge the final result of the investigation. The Commission now has 90 working days, until 19 January 2010, to take a final decision on whether the concentration would significantly impede effective competition within the European Economic Area (EEA) or a substantial part of it." (Found on Groklaw).

Comments (21 posted)

Medical : Sourceforge Project of the Month (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews notes that the application Medical has won an award. "Medical, the Open Source Health and Hospital Information System, has been the winner in SourceForge project of the month. In the latest release, Medical includes a new section on genetics (NCBI / genecards) and family history. It also contains perinatal and puerperium information. Medical is part of the GNU solidario project, a non-profit effort to provide Health and Education to emerging economies with free software."

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Distro Summit 2010: Call for Papers

A call for papers has gone out for the Distro Summit 2010, submissions are due by September 30. "Distro Summit 2010 is a one-day technical conference with a strong focus on collaboration between Free Software distributions. The event is hosted at the linux.conf.au, which will be held in Wellington (New Zealand) on the 18-23 of January, 2010. We are looking for proposals from any Free Software distribution, from the typical full distributions (both linux and non-linux) to the niche market derivatives."

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GitTogether '09 Developer/User Summit

The GitTogether '09 Developer/User Summit takes place on October 27-29, 2009 in Mountain View, CA, proposals are being solicited. "Like last year, this GitTogether immediately follows the Google Summer of Code mentor summit, so some of our end-user groups may already have representatives in the area and might like to attend. We've timed the GitTogether to follow the summit so we can get some users to attend while they are still in the area. Git contributors and users alike are welcome to attend. Admission is free, as everything is being donated by Google, but you will need to arrange for your own travel and lodging."

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PyCon 2010: Call for Proposals

A call for proposals has gone out for PyCon 2010, which takes place on February 17-25, 2010 in Atlanta, GA. "Due date: October 1st, 2009 Want to showcase your skills as a Python Hacker? Want to have hundreds of people see your talk on the subject of your choice? Have some hot button issue you think the community needs to address, or have some package, code or project you simply love talking about? Want to launch your master plan to take over the world with python?"

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The SCALE 8x CFP is open

A call for papers has gone out for SCALE 8x, abstracts are due by December 15. "The Eighth Annual So Cal Linux Expo is coming! It will be February 19th-21st, 2010, and will again be at the Westin LAX. The Call for Papers for the conference is now open. Besides the regular conference tracks, SCALE 8x will include specialty tracks for both developers and beginners."

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Akademy 2010 in Tampere, Finland (KDEDot)

KDE.News has announced Akademy 2010, the date will be late June or early July. "The KDE community is proud to announce the location of next year's Akademy: Tampere, Finland. Akademy is the yearly world conference held by the KDE community to celebrate the Free Software desktop and work towards the future of KDE. After a successful Akademy 2009 on the Canary Islands, as part of the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Akademy heads north to the birthplace of Linux where contributors will enjoy the midnight sun as they spend a week to present, plan and participate in the development of KDE software."

Comments (1 posted)

ELC-E 2009 registration has opened

Registration has opened for ELC-E 2009. "The next Embedded Linux Conference event is upcoming: ELC-E 2009, October 15&16, Grenoble France. I'd like to inform you that registration has opened, and we managed to line up a very exciting program this year!"

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Ninux Day 2009, Rome Italy

Ninux Day 2009 takes place in Rome, Italy on November 27-29, 2009. "The Ninux.org team is glad to announce the first "Ninux Day", the only day that lasts a weekend ;) A weekend surreal time slot on topics about wireless communities. Under the same roof for the first time you'll find hackers, geeks, nerds, engineers, artists, curious and academics."

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Lenz Grimmer to Keynote openSUSE Conference

The openSUSE Conference keynote speaker has been announced. "The openSUSE Project is happy to announce that Lenz Grimmer will be delivering the opening keynote for the first-ever openSUSE Conference. The openSUSE Conference will be held September 17 through September 20 in Nürnberg, Germany."

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PostgreSQL Conference West registration opens

Registration is open for the PostgreSQL Conference West. "Being held at Seattle Central Community College from October 16th 2009 through October 18th 2009, West is set to be the venue for PostgreSQL education, advocacy and technical information transfer."

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Events: September 17, 2009 to November 16, 2009

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
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
October 12 October 14	Qt Developer Days	Munich, Germany
October 15 October 16	Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2009	Grenoble, France
October 16 October 17	Pycon Poland 2009	Ustron, Poland
October 16 October 18	Pg Conference West 09	Seattle, WA, USA
October 16 October 18	German Ubuntu conference	Göttingen, Germany
October 18 October 20	2009 Kernel Summit	Tokyo, Japan
October 19 October 22	ZendCon 2009	San Jose, CA, USA
October 21 October 23	Japan Linux Symposium	Tokyo, Japan
October 22 October 24	Décimo Encuentro Linux 2009	Valparaiso, Chile
October 23 October 24	Ontario GNU Linux Fest	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
October 23 October 24	PGCon Brazil 2009	Sao Paulo, Brazil
October 24 October 25	PyTexas	Fort Worth, TX, USA
October 24 October 25	FOSS.my 2009	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
October 24	Florida Linux Show 2009	Orlando, Florida, USA
October 24	LUG Radio Live	Wolverhampton, UK
October 25	Linux Outlaws and Ubuntu UK Podcast OggCamp	Wolverhampton, UK
October 26 October 28	Techno Forensics and Digital Investigations Conference	Gaithersburg, MD, USA
October 26 October 28	GitTogether '09	Mountain View, CA, USA
October 26 October 28	Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference	Portland, OR, USA
October 27 October 30	Linux-Kongress 2009	Dresden, Germany
October 28 October 30	Hack.lu 2009	Luxembourg
October 28 October 30	no:sql(east).	Atlanta, USA
October 29	NLUUG autumn conference: The Open Web	Ede, The Netherlands
October 30 November 1	YAPC::Brasil 2009	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
October 31	Linux theme day with ubuntu install party	Ede, Netherlands
November 1 November 6	23rd Large Installation System Administration Conference	Baltimore, MD, USA
November 2 November 6	ApacheCon 2009	Oakland, CA, USA
November 2 November 6	Ubuntu Open Week	Internet, Internet
November 3 November 6	OpenOffice.org Conference	Orvieto, Italy
November 4 November 5	Linux World NL	Utrecht, The Netherlands
November 5	Government Open Source Conference	Washington, DC, USA
November 6 November 8	WineConf 2009	Enschede, Netherlands
November 6 November 10	CHASE 2009	Lahore, Pakistan
November 6 November 7	PGDay.EU 2009	Paris, France
November 7 November 8	OpenFest 2009 - Biggest FOSS conference in Bulgaria	Sofia, Bulgaria
November 7 November 8	OpenRheinRuhr	Bottrop, Germany
November 7 November 8	Kiwi PyCon 2009	Christchurch, New Zealand
November 9 November 13	ACM CCS 2009	Chicago, IL, USA
November 10 November 11	Linux Foundation End User Summit	Jersey City, New Jersey
November 12 November 13	European Conference on Computer Network Defence	Milan, Italy
November 13 November 15	Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit	Göteborg, Sweden
November 14	pyArkansas	Conway, AR, USA

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

Third Plasma Summit Lifts KDE Desktop To Higher Grounds (KDEDot)

KDE.News covers the third Plasma developers meeting. "Last week, the third Plasma developers meeting was held in the Swiss Alps. 15 developers from 3 continents came to Randa, Canton Wallis to work on Plasma's code, design new ideas and concepts and to strengthen their bonds as a sub-community within KDE. Topics of this third Plasma sprint, which is named after a plasma fusion reactor, included but were not limited to Plasma on mobile devices, network-enabled Plasma widgets and a richer user interface thanks to a new animation framework. Furthermore deeper integration of web services in the Plasma shell, semantic awareness of Plasma components, secure privilege elevation and polishing of the existing functionality, among many other things, were on the agenda."

Comments (none posted)

Announcing: Python Open Mike blog

The Python Open Mike blog has been launched. "A new blog, python-open-mike.posterous.com, has been created for open discussion in the Python community. *Anyone* can post to this blog, simply by emailing to post@python-open-mike.posterous.com. Not everyone has, wants, or feels ready for a blog of their own; we want to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak out to the Python community. We hope to broaden discussion in the Python blogosphere by making it even easier for new participants to join in the conversation.."

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