Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
FSF offers "GNU Bucks" for finding nonfree works in free distributions
The Free Software Foundation has announced its new "GNU Bucks" bounty program. "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced that it will begin rewarding those who find and report any nonfree components in free software operating system distributions with public recognition and "GNU Bucks." The FSF maintains a list of guidelines covering what it means to be a free distribution, and endorses distributions that commit to meeting those guidelines. "By spurring users to find and report problems, this new awards program will help make sure that the FSF-endorsed free distributions of GNU/Linux stay really and truly free," said FSF executive director Peter Brown."
FSFE to EC: Dont waste an opportunity with a hasty deal
The FSFE's Karsten Gerloff blogs about two EU antitrust cases involving Microsoft. "High Noon in Brussels. At the end of her term, competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes is wrapping up two open cases against Microsoft. The company offered to settle in July 2009. FSFE is involved in both of cases. We are concerned that the Commission may end up reversing years of successful antitrust work if Neelie Kroes settles for far too little in order to close a deal, any deal. That would mean that Europeans remain stuck with the present Microsoft monopoly in most areas of the desktop."
OW2 Consortium and Open Solutions Alliance announce merger
The OW2 Consortium and Open Solutions Alliance have announced a merger. "Two prominent open source organizations - the OW2 Consortium and the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) - representing developers, vendors, consumers, and communities throughout the world plan to merge to constitute a global platform for supporting research, development, distribution, and adoption of open source software at all levels of the information systems stack."
Commercial announcements
Netgear's open-source router
Netgear has announced the availability of its WNR3500L router - a device which has been designed to be hackable from the outset. "The RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router with USB is also designed to serve as a reliable, high-performance open source Linux platform supporting a wide variety of applications created by multiple development partners and the dedicated open source community." There's even instructions on how to recover a bricked router - using Windows.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router"
Harald Welte is not impressed with Netgear's "open source router," which includes binary-only kernel modules. "Netgear as the vendor is simply relying on the fact that none of the authors who have written parts of the kernel against which their binary-only module links will ever make copyright claims against them. One would have hoped that Netgear did thoroughly study the Open Source market that they're trying to address. Apparently they either did not do that, or they chose to ignore the values/rules by which this community works, or they had somebody with limited understanding to advise them on this."
Articles of interest
Garmin Takes a New Tack With Linux-Based Nav Phone (LinuxInsider)
LinuxInsider looks at the Garmin Nuvifone G60. "Is there a market for a $300 proprietary Linux-based navigation device with phone capabilities? Garmin's Nuvifone will put that question to the test. Known for its navigators, Garmin might be following Palm's playbook by adding phone capabilities. Given the popularity of the iPhone, the advance of the Androids, Palm's struggle to push the Pre -- can the Nuvifone find a niche?"
Laptops for all (Economist)
The Economist looks at the OLPC deployment in Uruguay. "Nearly all of Uruguays 380,000 primary-school pupils have now received a simple and cheap XO laptop, a model developed by One Laptop Per Child, an NGO based in Massachusetts. The government hopes this will help poorer and disadvantaged children do better in school while also improving the overall standard of education. These ambitions will be tested for the first time later this month when every Uruguayan seven-year-old will take online exams in a range of academic subjects. The rest of the world should be intrigued: the first country in Latin America to provide free, compulsory schooling will become the first, globally, to find out whether furnishing a whole generation with laptops is a worthwhile investment."
The OpenBlockS 600 is a Linux server that fits in your palm (ComputerWorld)
Eric Lai takes a look at a palm-sized Linux server. "It comes installed with Plat'Home's own embedded SSD/Linux distribution by default, though customers can also request others such as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Java SE for Embedded and NetBSD."
Open Source Initiative loses corporate status
The 451 Group reports that the Open Source Initiative failed to get its paperwork together in time, so the corporation has been suspended by the state of California. "We are concerned about the impact that the suspension of the Open Source Initiative could have on open source developers, users, projects, and associated investors and vendors. The 451 Group has clients in all of the above categories so we believe it is appropriate to inform them of the suspension of the Open Source Initiative's legal status and how it might impact them. We are in the process of creating a formal analysis of the situation for 451 Group clients. We also believe that the potential impact is significant enough that, while the bare facts are already public, the issue deserves to be brought to the attention of the wider open source community. We will let the members of that community come to their own conclusions about what it means to them." Your editor is still struggling to figure out whether there will be any "impact" at all.
Linux saves Aussie electrical grid (the Inquirer)
the Inquirer covers an instance of emergency Linux adoption by Australia's Intergral Energy. "QUICK THINKING open sourcerers might have saved an Australian power supply system after its electrical grid control room network got infected with a virus. A Windows virus hit the networks of Intergral Energy and, according to a submission to Slashdot, the virus managed to spread to the operator display consoles in the control room. Quick thinking techies in the control systems department of the utility swapped the infected Windows boxes for machines running Linux that they were using for development. The move prevented the virus from taking over all the operator displays in the control room."
Legal Announcements
FSF files brief in Bilski case
The Free Software Foundation has filed an amicus curiae brief in the "in re Bilski" case, asking the court to affirm that software ideas are not patentable. "End Software Patents (ESP) executive director Ciaran O'Riordan explained, 'Every software patent is a restriction on software developers and users of computers, and there are currently 200,000 software patents in the USA. As well as being an unjust restriction on a common household tool, time has now also proven software patents to be an economic failure and a hindrance to the progress of the useful arts. This means they've failed their constitutional mandate and have no legal legitimacy. The Supreme Court has itself never authorized the patenting of software ideas, so there's real hope that this problem can finally be solved.'"
Red Hat Asks Supreme Ct. to Exclude Software From Patentability (Groklaw)
Groklaw covers a Red Hat filing in the Bilski case. "Red Hat has just filed its brief in Bilski, and it's saying things you certainly have been hoping someone would express to the Supreme Court. For one thing, they explain the tech, how programs are algorithms, and thus they should not be patentable. The brief asks the Supreme Court to adopt the lower court's machine-or-transformation test, but also -- yay! -- to exclude software from patentability!"
New Books
Programming in Python 3 (Second Edition) released
The book Programming in Python 3 (Second Edition) by Mark Summerfield has been published.
Resources
FOSS: War is over (if you want it) (451 CAOS)
The 451 CAOS site has posted an analysts view of the state of open source. "In 2009 we have seen signs of push back from FOSS advocates in resistance to what they see as dilution of the open source brand. We are seeing increasing demands for the Open Source Definition, which defines open source licenses, to be applied also to development models and business and end user licensing strategies. A software project might be licensed under an OSI-approved license, but if 98% of the developers are employees of a single company there is a valid question as to whether that is truly an open source development project."
Linux Gazette #167 is out!
This issue of the Linux Gazette covers QQ on Linux, by Silas Brown; Some notes on running the popular Chinese instant messaging, software; Away Mission - SecureWorld Expos, by Howard Dyckoff; Away Mission - Upcoming in October, by Howard Dyckoff; A Quick-Fire chroot Environment, by Ben Okopnik; Setting up a private login environment for multiple users; Two is better than one!, by Dr. S. Parthasarathy; Using Linux to Teach Kids How to Program, 10 Years Later (Part II), by Anderson Silva; and much more.
Contests and Awards
EFF announces awards
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the winners of its Pioneer Awards: "hardware hacker Limor "Ladyada" Fried, e-voting security researcher Harri Hursti, and public domain advocate Carl Malamud. The award ceremony will be held at 7 p.m., October 22nd, at the Westin San Francisco in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Summit, co-produced by O'Reilly and TechWeb. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffmann will keynote the event."
Call for award nominations: Government Open Source Conf.
A call for award nominations has gone out for the Government Open Source Conference, the event takes place in Washington, D.C. on November 5, 2009. Nominations are due by October 23. "Nominationsare now being accepted for the 2009 "Excellence Awards for Open Source Business Use in Government". The Awards will recognizegovernment employees who have made significant accomplishments in theapplication of Open Source Technology to meet government business or mission requirements."
Calls for Presentations
CFP reminder: GROW'10 - 2nd Workshop on GCC research opportunities
A call for papers has gone out for GROW'10. The event takes place in Pisa, Italy on January 23, submissions are due by November 13. "GROW workshop focuses on current challenges in research and development of compiler analyses and optimizations based on the free GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). The goal of this workshop is to bring together people from industry and academia that are interested in conducting research based on GCC and enhancing this compiler suite for research needs. The workshop will promote and disseminate compiler research (recent, ongoing or planned) with GCC, as a robust industrial-strength vehicle that supports free and collaborative research. The program will include an invited talk and a discussion panel on future research and development directions of GCC."
Upcoming Events
Akademy 2010 dates announced (KDEDot)
The Akademy 2010 dates have been announced. "Together with the local team possible dates for the conference were discussed. After taking in to account local constraints the dates of Sat 3rd - Sat 10th July were decided to be most appropriate, with Friday the 2nd July being the main day for arriving."
Linux Foundation announces End User Summit
The second annual Linux Foundation End User Summit has been announced. "The Summit is a unique opportunity for corporate end users to learn and interact with leaders from within the Linux community, including the highest-level maintainers and developers. The Summit will take place November 9-10, 2009 at the Hyatt Jersey City on the Hudson and will provide end users and kernel developers a direct connection to one another for advancing the features most critical to using Linux in the enterprise. Located just off the Exchange Place Path Station, corporate Linux users from financial services, healthcare, energy, and government will have quick access to the event from east coast hubs."
End Users Meet Year End (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal looks forward the the Linux Foundation End User Summit. "The Summit takes place over two days, comprising keynote addresses, panels, and topic-specific tracks. This year's conference will convene November 9 - 10 in Jersey City, New Jersey."
Come to Italy for the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference
Registration is open for the OpenOffice.org annual conference. "Registration officially opens today for the OpenOffice.org annual international conference 2009 (OOoCon), to be held in the beautiful and historic city of Orvieto, Umbria, Italy. Following pre-conference meetings on Nov.3rd, the main OOoCon events run from Nov 4th-6th. The Conference will include presentations not only from OpenOffice.org individual contributors, but also from the main commercial players in the OpenOffice.org / OpenDocument Format (ODF) world, including Sun Microsystems, IBM, Redflag 2000, Novell, and Microsoft."
SciPy India conference announced
SciPy India has been announced. "The first "Scientific Computing with Python" conference in India will be held from December 12th to 17th, 2009 at the Technopark in Trivandrum, Kerala, India. The theme of the conference will be "Scientific Python in Action" with respect to application and teaching. We are pleased to have Travis Oliphant, the creator and lead developer of numpy as the keynote speaker."
YAPC::Brasil 2009 announced (use Perl)
use Perl has announced YAPC::Brasil 2009. "nuba writes "We are proud to announce the YAPC::Brasil 2009, to be held from 30/October to 1/November in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We have humble goals this year: to put forth the greatest YAPC::Brasil ever, celebrate the Joy of Perl among ourselves, and tempt everyone else to join us in developing the programming language that has the happiest users!"
Events: October 15, 2009 to December 14, 2009
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| November 25 November 27 |
Open Source Developers Conference 2009 | Brisbane, Australia |
| November 27 November 29 |
Ninux Day 2009 | Rome, Italy |
| December 1 December 5 |
FOSS.IN/2009 | Bangalore, India |
| December 4 | Italian PostgreSQL Day 2009 | Pisa, Tuscany, Italy |
| December 5 December 7 |
Fedora Users and Developers Conference | Toronto, Canada |
| December 7 December 11 |
Annual Computer Security Applications Conference | Honolulu, HI, USA |
| December 7 December 13 |
Make Art 2009 | Poitiers, France |
| December 12 December 13 |
Django Development Sprint | Dallas, TX, USA |
| December 12 December 17 |
SciPy India 2009 | Kerala, India |
| December 12 | BSD community day | Utrecht, The Netherlands |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Forrest Cook