Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Freedom Food: FSFE to cook for its donors
The Free Software Foundation Europe is holding a feast, the date and location is to be determined. "For this year's round of fund-raising, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has cooked up something special. The biggest donor of 2009 will share a cooking session with FSFE's President and other members of the organisation's executive team. FSFE is looking to raise 100,000 Euro during the last quarter of 2009. Free Software and cooking are both about creativity, skill and enjoying yourself. "Recipes can be used for any purpose, including sharing them with others, and making your own improvements. In these respects cooking is just like Free Software - you have the freedom to use, study, share and improve" says FSFE's President Karsten Gerloff."
FSF works with PayPal
The Free Software Foundation has announced that it is working with PayPal to the benefit of the free software community. "A large number of people in the free software community feel that PayPal is a convenient way to send money to others. Part of the reason for this is that you can use many of PayPal's services with only free software--they typically don't require special proprietary software, or even JavaScript. However, FSF recently discovered that PayPal had added a proprietary software license to its User Agreement. FSF license compliance engineer Brett Smith explained, "Of course, the FSF couldn't agree to those terms, so as soon as we learned about them, we contacted PayPal to see if we could make other arrangements. The company listened to our concerns, and specifically excepted us from these conditions. But not only that: next year, PayPal is also updating its user agreement to ensure that the free software community can continue to receive and make payments without having to accept a proprietary software license.""
State of Mozilla and 2008 Financial Statements
Mitchell Baker has put up the annual state of Mozilla posting. Mozilla remains nearly unique among free software projects in its ability to complain about the performance of its investment portfolio; the overall picture, though, says that things are going quite well. "The number of people using Firefox on a daily basis increased from 28 million in 2006 to 49 million in 2007. In 2008 we moved up to 75 million daily users. As of November 2009 the daily number has grown to 110 million, bringing the total number of users to approximately 330 million people."
Open Letter to the EC about Open Standards and Interoperability
The Open Source Software Thematic Group (GTLL) has sent a letter to the EC concerning open standards and interoperability. "Our Open Source Software Thematic Group became deeply concerned two weeks ago after we learned that the European Commission was preparing a new version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) with definitions of interoperability, open standards and maybe even open source completely void of any substance, allowing any proprietary software vendor to claim being compatible with the new guidelines."
Commercial announcements
Sony Ericsson releases WebSDK
Sony Ericsson has announced the Sony Ericsson WebSDK, an open source tool created in collaboration with the PhoneGap open source community. "The SDK makes it possible for web and mobile developers to create mobile apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript programming. A bridge component allows JavaScript to access platform features and data such as accelerometer, GPS, Camera and contacts."
Articles of interest
Live Blog: The Google Chrome OS Press Event (ReadWriteWeb)
ReadWriteWeb covers the Google Chrome OS press event. "Google has scheduled a press event for 10am PST this morning where the company plans to announce more details about its Linux-based Google Chrome OS. According to the information we received from Google, the company plans to launch Chrome OS next year. We don't expect Google to release an early build of Chrome OS today, but we would be more than happy to be wrong. We do, however, expect to hear more details about the OS and to see a demo of Chrome OS's functionality." (Thanks to Don Marti).
Why Tim O'Reilly Sees Microsoft as a Proponent of the Open Web (eWeek)
eWeek reports on Tim O'Reilly's prediction of a shift towards openness at Microsoft. "At the Web 2.0 Expo, Tim O'Reilly predicts that Microsoft will emerge as a leading proponent of the open Web, despite the company's tradition of fostering its own proprietary operating systems and development languages. O'Reilly says Microsoft's recent deals to index Twitter tweets and use Wolfram Alpha's APIs for computational data show a shift in its willingness to work with other Web companies. Moreover, the Windows Azure cloud computing operating system is designed to work with open-source technology."
New Books
Debug It!--New from Pragmatic Bookshelf
Pragmatic Bookshelf has published the book Debug It! by Paul Butcher.jQuery Cookbook--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book jQuery Cookbook, edited by Cody Lindley.Programming Google App Engine--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Programming Google App Engine by Dan Sanderson.Programming Python 3 (Second Edition) now available
Mark Summerfield has announced the publication of the second edition of his book Programming in Python 3.RESTful Java with JAX-RS--New from O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly has published the book RESTful Java with JAX-RS by Bill Burke.
Resources
GNOME Journal Issue 17 released
Issue 17 of the GNOME Journal is available; the theme of this issue is "Women in open source." Topics covered include Telepathy, the "un-scary screwdriver," a look back at the 2006 women's summer outreach program, GNOME Shell, and more.
Contests and Awards
2009 Linux Medical News Freedom Award Recipients (LinuxMedNews)
LinuxMedNews has announced the winners of its 2009 Freedom Award. "It was a difficult choice this year among many worthy people and projects but the panel of judges has spoken. The recipients of the 2009 Linux Medical News Freedom Award presented at the American Medical Informatics Association (amia.org) Fall Conference are the open source, US Government NHIN Connect project and Kevin Toppenberg, MD for his invaluable work and use of Veterans Affairs VistA in the private sector."
Education and Certification
Students line up for new free software master at open universities (OSOR)
The Open Source Observatory has a brief article on the "Free Technology Academy," a program oriented around free software and open standards beginning at two European universities. "The FTA will begin on 25 January 2010. The first two courses tutored are 'the concepts of Free Software and Open Standards' and 'The GNU/Linux Operating System'. The programme for the second semester lists 'Web applications development', 'Software development' and 'Economical models'."
LPI announces new partner in the Netherlands
The Linux Professional Institute has announced its newest partner. "The Linux Professional Institute, the world's premier Linux certification organization, announced a new sub-affiliate for their program in Central Europe: LPI-The Netherlands".
Linux Professional Institute announces new affiliate in Turkey
The Linux Professional Institute has announced a new Turkish affiliate. "LPI-Turkey will be managed by Endersys Consultancy and Software Ltd. Endersys was founded in 2006 and provides Linux and Open Source solutions, services and IT consulting in Turkey."
Calls for Presentations
CFP: FOMS 2010
A call for papers has gone out for FOMS 2010, the Foundations of Open Media Software workshop. Submissions are due by November 30. "FOMS 2010 will take place from 13-15th January 2010 in Wellington, NZ, in the week ahead of LCA. If you are an open media software developer, you should really come along - we will have some key developers come from all over the planet. FOMS is free for community members - the attendance fee for professional delegates is A$420."
Linux Audio Conference 2010
The Linux Audio Conference 2010 has been announced. "Linux Audio Conference 2010 The conference about Open Source Software for music and audio May 1-4 2010 Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU) Utrecht, The Netherlands Registration is open, and so is the call for abstracts and papers."
Upcoming Events
DrupalSouth: Wellington, NZ
DrupalSouth Wellington has been announced. "DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 is the New Zealand Drupal event. It will be NZ's largest ever gathering of Drupal developers, designers, contributers and business folk. DrupalSouth Wellington will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January - the weekend after Linux.conf.au Wellington."
PostgreSQL vs MySQL discussion
A web-based discussion on PostgreSQL vs MySQL has been announced, it will take place on December 8. "For years, the common industry perception has been that MySQL is faster and easier to use than PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is perceived as more powerful, more focused on data integrity, and stricter at complying with SQL specifications, but correspondingly slower and more complicated to use. Like many perceptions formed in the past, these things aren't as true with the current generation of releases as they used to be."
PyCon registration is open
Registration is open for PyCon, the event takes place in Atlanta, Georgia on February 17-25, 2010. "Registering early gets you early-bird registration rates, guarantees you the tutorials you want, and helps the PyCon volunteers plan better."
Events: December 3, 2009 to February 1, 2010
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| December 19 | New Mexico Linux Fest | Albuquerque, NM, USA |
| December 27 December 30 |
26th Chaos Communication Congress | Berlin, Germany |
| January 13 January 15 |
Foundations of Open Media Software | Wellington, New Zealand |
| January 15 January 22 |
Camp KDE 2010 | San Diego, CA, USA |
| January 18 January 23 |
linux.conf.au | Wellington, New Zealand |
| January 23 | Workshop on GCC Research Opportunities | Pisa, Italy |
| January 23 January 24 |
DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 | Wellington, New Zealand |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Mailing Lists
PyGUI Mailing List announced
A new PyGUI Mailing List has been announced. "PyGUI is a cross-platform GUI toolkit designed to be lightweight and have a highly Pythonic API."
Page editor: Forrest Cook