Announcements

Introducing Google Public DNS: A new DNS resolver from Google

Google has announced Google Public DNS, an experimental public DNS resolver. "We believe that a faster DNS infrastructure could significantly improve the browsing experience for all web users. To enhance DNS speed but to also improve security and validity of results, Google Public DNS is trying a few different approaches that we are sharing with the broader web community through our documentation". (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth).

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Intel unveils 48-core cloud computing silicon chip (BBC)

The BBC covers Intel's latest x86 processor prototype. "Intel has unveiled a prototype chip that packs 48 separate processing cores on to a chunk of silicon the size of a postage stamp. The Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), as it is known, contains 1.3 billion transistors, the tiny on-off switches that underpin chip technology. Each processing core could, in theory, run a separate operating system."

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Why Open Source Phones Still Fail (PC Magazine)

PC Magazine says that open phones are failing because mobile carriers are afraid of them. "The networks can take a few mavericks that are willing to pay high prices, seek out obscure sales channels, or risk turning their phones into doorstops through jailbreaking. But the carriers know that as long as they subsidize phones, they'll control the phones are sold en masse. And those aren't going to be open devices."

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Sugar on a Stick v2 - a.k.a. Blueberry - released (The H)

The H has a brief look at the most recent "Sugar on a Stick" release. Sugar on a Stick uses a Fedora base with the Sugar learning platform added on top, all of which can be put onto a USB stick for a portable Sugar installation. "As Sugar on a Stick 2.0 ships with the latest 0.86.3 Sugar release, it features newly redesigned toolbars, improved wireless networking, easier keyboard configuration and better Gnash support for Adobe Flash content. The Sugar Learning Platform includes several collaborative applications, which Sugar calls 'Activities'. The Browse activity now includes support for tabbed browsing and Read adds EPUB file support for e-books." See the announcement for more details.

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Artifex launches a GPL-infringement suit against Palm

Artifex (the company behind Ghostscript) has sent out a press release describing its new lawsuit against Palm. "Palm’s own documentation admits including Artifex’s muPDF in Palm’s Pre product as the PDF rendering engine in their PDF viewer application, but Palm neither obtained a commercial license from Artifex nor complied with the terms of the GPL. Palm’s intentional refusal to comply with the terms of the GPL means that Palm willfully copied and distributed muPDF without authorization, and any and all such copies infringe Artifex’s exclusive copyright."

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Kuhn: The Anatomy of a Modern GPL Violation

Bradley M. Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center (and Software Freedom Conservancy) writes about the evolution of GPL violations on his blog. Originally, the violations were from vendors shipping free software tools for proprietary UNIX systems, but now violations have mostly moved into the embedded realm. "But, if you produce a mass market product based on BusyBox/Linux, some smart software developer is going to eventually buy one. They are going to get curious, and when they poke, they'll see what you put in there. And, that developer's next email is going to be to me to tell me all about that device. In my ten years of enforcement experience, I find that a company's odds of 'getting away' with a GPL violation are incredibly low. The user community eventually notices and either publicly shames the company (not my preferred enforcement method), or they contact someone like me to pursue enforcement privately and encourage the company in a friendly way to join the FLOSS community rather than work against it."

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New from O'Reilly--Books on Google Ad Tools, Programming, Electronics, and Geometry

O'Reilly has announced the publishing of new books on Google Ad Tools, Programming, Electronics, and Geometry.

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Linux Foundation awards Students with free membership for the holidays

The Linux Foundation has announced its "Get One, Give One" Holiday Membership Program. "The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that for every new individual member who joins the organization between today and January 31, 2009, the Linux Foundation will give a free membership to a student for one year. New members can elect to sponsor a student on the Linux Foundation wait list or can request the membership be given to a friend or family member with a valid student ID."

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2009 Linux Graphics Survey Results (Phoronix)

Phoronix has released the results of its 2009 graphics survey for Linux users. Nearly 14,000 responses were tallied for 13 different questions relating to Linux graphics use. "When it came to the less popular drivers, there were 485 counts towards the Nouveau driver while 361 towards NVIDIA's official open-source driver, the obfuscated xf86-video-nv driver. Last year the xf86-video-nv driver was twice as common as the xf86-video-nouveau driver, but with the Nouveau stack stabilizing and with Fedora switching to it for their default NVIDIA driver (and Ubuntu is in the process of doing so too), it is not shocking that xf86-video-nv driver is losing ground quickly. In 2010 we would not be surprised if this driver is outright abandoned by NVIDIA."

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Registration open for DjangoSki Conference

The DjangoSki Conference will be held on March 2-4 2010 in Whistler, Canada, the call for papers is open. "DjangoSki is a conference with a difference. It's set in the ski resort of Whistler and is half conference, half un-conference and, erm, half skiing. Come to the conference and meet with our keynote speakers: Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Matt Berg and David Ascher, then go skiing on the hills with everyone in the afternoon. Talk submission is now open. If you'd like to speak there, we'd love to hear you talk."

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PostgreSQL@FOSDEM 2010 - Call for talks

A call for talks has gone out for PostgreSQL@FOSDEM 2010, submissions are due by December 22. "FOSDEM is a major Free and Open Source event held annually in Brussels, Belgium, and attended by around 4000 people. As in recent years, the PostgreSQL project will have a devroom where we will be presenting a number of talks. The event will be held on the 6 - 7th February 2010. We're looking for developers, users and contributors to submit talks for inclusion on the program. Any topic related to PostgreSQL is acceptable as long as it is non-commercial in nature."

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Django Development Sprint

The next Django web platform Development Sprint has been announced. "There will be a Django Development sprint in Uptown Dallas next weekend (Dec 12 and 13). A development sprint is an excuse to get together, write some code, and have a good time doing it. The purpose of this sprint will be to help finish features and push out bug fixes in preparation for the Django 1.2 release, which feature freezes January 26. If you're interested in coming to work on other open source Django-based projects, that's welcome too."

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Speaker Slots still available for SCALE 8X

The SCALE 8X call for papers is ending soon, the conference takes place in Los Angeles, CA on February 19-21. "There are still some speaker slots available for SCALE 8X, but the Call For Papers closes December 15th. If you are considering speaking at one of the top regional Open Source conferences, we recommend you submit your proposal REAL SOON."

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Events: December 17, 2009 to February 15, 2010

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
December 12 December 17	SciPy India 2009	Kerala, India
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
February 2	Prague PostgreSQL Developers' Day 2010	Prague, Czech Republic
February 5 February 7	Frozen Perl 2010	Minneapolis, MN, USA
February 6	Super Happy Dev Castle #0	Belfast, N. Ireland, United Kingdom
February 6 February 7	Free and Open Source Developers' European Meeting	Brussels, Belgium
February 10	Red Hat Cloud Computing Forum	Online, Online
February 11 February 13	Bay Area Haskell Hackathon	Mountain View, USA

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

gnome.org outage: Dec 12, 13

gnome.org will go offline on December 12-13. "Red Hat is currently in the process of consolidating all its community hosted servers to a single hosting facility. As part of that, the gnome.org servers are being moved *this weekend*. You plan on doing something other than working on GNOME this weekend, or find a programming task that doesn't rely on access to GNOME servers."

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Announcing the LAM annual Best of mix 2009

The Linux Audio Musicians : Annual Mix list for 2009 has been announced. "I have been attempting to keep track of all the releases posted over the past year since the inaugural Linux Audio Musicians Best of mix was released in Nov 08. I'm pleased to announce that the latest Annual Best of Mix for 2009 is now up for your listening pleasure."

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First L2Ork track now available

The first Linux Laptop Orchestra performance has been recorded and is available online. "As our thanks to all who have so generously supported us both in person and through the endless corners of the internet, we've posted a track from our weekend recording session. "Citadel" is a piece for soprano and L2Ork that uses a poem by Ivan Gundulic, a famous Croatian poet from the Baroque era. The piece was recorded in a beautifully reverberant Burruss rotunda on the Virginia Tech campus."

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