Announcements

The 2009 Q2 GNOME Quarterly Report

The GNOME Foundation has released its report for the second quarter of 2009 [PDF] - the first of what will apparently be a regular series of such reports. "In these quarterly reports we want to focus on what the GNOME Foundation and its members are doing, so most of the reporting is done by the teams doing the work. You'll hear directly from the release team about the incredibly busy quarter they've had, you'll see first hand how much the travel committee is improving our ability to sponsor travel for GNOME Foundation members, and you'll read updates from all our teams focused on our mission of providing a free desktop accessible for everyone."

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Alan Turing gets a belated apology

A determined petition campaign has finally achieved its goal: the British government has apologized for its treatment of Alan Turing. "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him." Congratulations to all the people who worked to bring a small bit of late justice to an important figure in our field.

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Apple Open Sources Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch (Apple Insider)

Apple has decided to open the code behind Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch feature. "The user-space implementation of the Grand Central Dispatch services API, called libdispatch, has been delivered as its own open source project, joining with other components that are part of projects Apple has already designated as open, including the kernel components in the Darwin OS XNU kernel and the blocks runtime that is part of the LLVM project."

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EmbedOne Linux shows the way for new level of OS integration

EmbedOne has announced the launch of its embedded Linux OS, tools and services. "Meshcom Technologies, Inc. today announced its new brand name - EmbedOne - for its new embedded Linux line of business. At the same time, new publicly available suite of software and services for the embedded Linux community was announced."

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Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Microsoft has launched the open source CodePlex Foundation. "The goals of the CodePlex Foundation are spelled out on the website as enabling the "exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities," as well as "increasing participation in open source community projects." Further goals include complementing "existing open source foundations and organizations, providing a forum in which best practices and shared understanding can be established by a broad group of participants, both software companies and open source communities.""

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The Nokia PUSH N900 program

The Nokia PUSH N900 program has announced its existence; essentially, Nokia is trying to jump-start a development community for this device. "The brief is simple: tell us how you would hack and mod the N900 & Maemo to connect the N900 to something you love. An expert judging panel will be selecting winning submissions and the groups behind them will receive N900 devices, funding and support to develop their PUSH idea."

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Hacking: The Next Generation--New from O'Reilly

O'Reilly has published the book Hacking: The Next Generation by Nitesh Dhanjani, Billy Rios and Brett Hardin.

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Manage Your Project Portfolio--New from Pragmatic Bookshelf

Pragmatic Bookshelf has published the book Manage Your Project Portfolio by Johanna Rothman.

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FSFE Newsletter

The August, 2009 edition of the FSFE Newsletter is online with the latest Free Software Foundation Europe news. Topics include: "Fellowship meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, 26 August, 4th FrOSCon in St. Augustin, Germany, 22-23 August, Software patent infringed: Microsoft barred from selling Word, New overview on our community contacts, Fellowship meeting and KDE 4.3 release party in Stuttgart, Germany, 01 August".

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Linux Foundation Newsletter

The September, 2009 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter has been published. Topics include: "* Updated Study Reveals 10% Increase in Linux Kernel Developers * Vote For Your Favorite Fake Linus Torvalds * Last Week to Register for LinuxCon Training - Special 20% Discount * Watch LinuxCon Keynotes Online for Free * LinuxCon Kernel Roundtable Moderator Interviewed * Members' Discounts for LF Events * VIA Technologies, Inc. Joins Linux Foundation * Zemlin to Keynote at Open World Forum * Linux Foundation in the News * From the Director".

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Trademarks - The dinosaur in the room (H Online)

The H has a lengthy article exploring trademarks and free software. "The issue is trust, and trust goes both ways. Users and developers, who are often involved on a purely voluntary basis, are resistant to the paternalism that is implicit in a Trademark License Agreement, and some view it as a surreptitious method for suppressing criticism. The most contentious clause in such agreements has been the claim to ownership of all domains that include the trademark, illustrated by the clause in the Drupal trademark and logo policy which seeks to deny a trademark license to domains which do not qualify as 'fostering the Drupal software', such as "creating a Drupal fork 'ImprovedDrupal', or 'publishing a website 'drupalhallofshame.com' with pictures of infamous Drupal contributors.'"

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Nominations open for 2009 Linux Medical News Freedom Award (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews has announced the Linux Medical News Freedom Award nominations. "Nominations are officially open for the 9th annual Linux Medical News Freedom Award to be presented at the November 14th-18th AMIA Fall conference in San Francisco, CA. Deadline for entries is September 30th, 2009."

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Distro Summit 2010: Call for Papers

Distro Summit 2010 is a one-day technical conference with a strong focus on collaboration between Free Software distributions. The call for proposals is open until September 30, 2009. The event is co-hosted with linux.conf.au, which will be held in Wellington (New Zealand) on the 18-23 of January, 2010.

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LCA2010 Miniconf Call for Papers is open

The Miniconf Call for Papers has been announced for LCA2010 "Miniconfs are an important part of linux.conf.au, allowing 1-day long dedicated streams for specific communities of interest over the course of two days. The Call for Miniconf Papers marks another opportunity for delegates to submit session proposals to a Miniconf of their choosing for selection. Among the Miniconfs being held in Wellington next year are - "The Business of Open Source", "Education", "Free the Cloud", and "Open and the Public Sector"."

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Open Source Hardware: Call for Papers

A call for papers has gone out requesting articles on Open Source Hardware for the Journal of Information Law and Technology/ European Journal of Law and Technology. "The question we are setting in this call for papers is: what is the best method to enforce the open source philosophy for hardware, to ensure that contributions based upon the work of others remain open for others to develop."

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SecurityTubeCon CFP, Venue: Cyberspace

A call for papers has gone out for the SecurityTubeCon, it takes place in cyberspace on November 6-8, 2009. "SecurityTube.net is pleased to announce the CFP for SecurityTubeCon, the first hacker conference, to be held completely online! SecurityTubeCon is aimed at democratizing hacker conferences by allowing any researcher, regardless of his physical location, to share his work with the community. Unlike other Cons we will not *accept / reject* speakers. If you have something interesting to share, you WILL be heard."

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FSF announces Boston Software Freedom Day

The Boston Software Freedom Day has been announced. "On Saturday, September 19th, Boston's casual free software users and the technologically curious will gather together for a Software Freedom Day event hosted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Software Freedom Day is the international holiday dedicated to recognizing and promoting software that respects computer users' freedom. While the FSF is hosting its day-long public gathering in Boston, other teams all over the globe will be celebrating in their own cities, towns and villages as well."

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Government Open Source Conference announced

The Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) will take place on November 5 in Washington D.C. "The Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) has moved to Washington D.C. this year to demonstrate how open source is fulfilling implementation of the Federal CIOs 5 Technology Pillars and allowing agencies to accomplish their mission goals in more secure, cost effective, and innovative ways."

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LCA2010 Schedule is available

The LCA2010 Organizers have announced the schedule of talks for linux.conf.au 2010. "A full schedule of talks is now available for LCA2010. The conference brings together speakers from around the world presenting a variety of topics; from the strongly technical such as Linux kernel development, to social interaction within communities and issues relating to diverse and minority groups. linux.conf.au 2010 runs for a full week starting Monday 18th January, with more than 65 talk sessions, together with a number of Keynote presentations and 14 Miniconfs."

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LCA2010 announces three funding programs

Three funding programs have been announced for LCA2010. "The three funding programmes - InternetNZ Oceania Programme, InternetNZ Kiwi Fellowship and Google Diversity Programme - have been created to assist those delegates contributing to the Open Source community who, without financial assistance, would not be able to attend LCA2010."

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Linux Plumbers Conference schedule posted

The 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference has announced the the schedule of talks for the upcoming event. Christopher Marklund of Laika (the animation studio behind Coraline) has been added as a keynote. "If you're interested in attending LPC, please register right away, as we are very close to reaching our maximum capacity and will need to start turning away people soon."

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Events: September 24, 2009 to November 23, 2009

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
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 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
November 16 November 19	Web 2.0 Expo	New York, NY, USA
November 16 November 20	INTEROP	New York, NY, USA
November 16 November 20	Ubuntu Developer Summit for Lucid Lynx	Dallas, TX, USA
November 17 November 20	DeepSec IDSC	Vienna, Austria
November 19 November 22	Piksel 09	Bergen, Norway
November 19 November 21	Firebird Conference 2009	Munich, Germany
November 19 November 20	CONFIdence 2009	Warsaw, Poland
November 20 November 21	PostgreSQL Conference 2009 Japan	Tokyo, Japan
November 21	Baltic Perl Workshop 2009	Riga, Latvia

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

Linux Foundation to Microsoft: stop secretly attacking Linux (ars Technica)

ars Technica discusses comments from the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin to Microsoft. "Zemlin's comments about Microsoft are a response to a patent auction carried out by Microsoft to sell a number of patents that the company allegedly said were related to Linux. The patents, which were originally obtained by Microsoft from SGI, were sold to Allied Security Trust (AST), a patent-holding group that grants its members perpetual licenses before reselling the patents. Zemlin suggests that Microsoft's intention was to surreptitiously slip the intellectual property to a patent troll that would then go after Linux companies."

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