Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
GNOME Foundation Advisory Board Fees changing
The GNOME Foundation Advisory Board fees will be going up. "For 2010, with the support of our advisory board, we are raising the GNOME Advisory board fees to $20,000 for large companies and $10,000 for small companies. The additional funding will enable us to to hold regular and active hackfests, support a small staff and support GNOME at local events worldwide."
Commercial announcements
Oracle's commitments for MySQL
Oracle has sent out a press release outlining a set of ten commitments it has made to the European Union regarding the future of MySQL. "Oracle shall continue to enhance MySQL and make subsequent versions of MySQL, including Version 6, available under the GPL. Oracle will not release any new, enhanced version of MySQL Enterprise Edition without contemporaneously releasing a new, also enhanced version of MySQL Community Edition licensed under the GPL."
Red Hat open-sources SPICE
Red Hat has announced that it has open sourced its recently acquired SPICE desktop virtualization technology. "Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that, in an effort to openly collaborate with partners to drive the future of virtualization, it has open sourced its SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment) hosted virtual desktop protocol. SPICE is a core component of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops product that is currently in beta. Through the Spice project, Red Hat will collaborate with its partners and the open source community to expand the development of the protocol in an effort to help break down barriers to virtualization adoption."
Articles of interest
French army sides with Mozilla in Microsoft email war (Reuters)
Reuters takes a look at the use of Thunderbird by the French military. "The military found Mozilla's open source design permitted France to build security extensions, while Microsoft's secret, proprietary software allowed no tinkering. "We started with a military project, but quickly generalized it," said Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Suel of the Ministry of Defense and one of those in charge of the project." (Thanks to Philip Webb)
Web Boosts the Cause of Free Color (Internet Evolution)
Internet Evolution discusses the problems inherent in the Pantone monopoly and introduces the Open Color Standard project as a potential solution. "What we have, then, is a venerable, widely supported, but largely inflexible and very expensive de facto standard. It has a huge impact on both print and digital media, not to mention the clothes you wear, the color you paint your living room, even the specific shades used to define healthy dirt or high-grade orange juice. It is, in short, a bloated monopoly eating up more and more of the color market."
Poulsbo mess casts a shadow on Intel's Moblin project (ars technica)
Ars technica takes Intel to task for the GMA500 graphics mess. "The crappy Poulsbo Linux drivers are practically notorious by now, so these issues aren't exactly news to Linux enthusiasts who have been watching the fiasco unfold for over a year; it has been like a trainwreck in slow motion. The real problem is Intel's lack of responsiveness to the concerns expressed by the Linux community. Intel has responded to criticism with extraordinary dismissiveness and has failed to provide meaningful clarification about the extent to which it intends to provide Linux software support for the hardware that it sells to vendors."
Legal Announcements
Best Buy, Samsung, And Westinghouse Named In SFLC Suit Today
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed suit against Samsung, Best Buy, Westinghouse, and others for GPL violations with regard to BusyBox. "The SFLC confirmed BusyBox violations in nearly 20 separate products cited in the complaint and gave each defendant ample time to comply with the requirements of the license. 'We try very hard to resolve these types of issues privately with companies, as we always prefer cooperation' said SFLC counsel Aaron Williamson. 'We brought this suit as a last resort after each of these defendants ignored us or failed to meaningfully respond to our requests that they release the source code'." Click below for the full announcement.
Bruce Perens: Statement on Busybox Lawsuits
Bruce Perens, creator of Busybox, comments on Busybox related lawsuits (for GPL violations). "First, I'd like to point out that I'm not represented in these lawsuits, and that the parties and the Software Freedom Law Center have never attempted to contact me with regard to them. As far as I am aware, and under advice of various attorneys, I still hold an interest in Busybox through both content and compilation copyrights."
Microsoft licenses another flash file format (cnet)
cnet reports that Microsoft is licensing the exFAT format. "Microsoft on Thursday said it has started licensing the technology behind another flash memory format. The company announced a program to license out the Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) format, which is an updated version of the file allocation table format. Microsoft also licenses out that format, though its patents there have been the subject of contention, particularly since many distributions of Linux include the FAT formats. The newer format, exFAT, can work on far larger-capacity devices than its predecessor--256 terabytes, as opposed to 32GB for FAT."
Resources
FSFE Newsletter
The November, 2009 edition of the FSFE Newsletter is online with the latest Free Software Foundation Europe news. Topics include: "November: another month full of activities and work to do for FSFE. Among other things we launched the Fellowship grant project, fought for Open Standards in the European public sector, had an excellent time at the FSCONS in Sweden, and participated in WIPO to ensure that Free Software principles are respected. To keep FSFE strong and independent, we have launched our year-end fund raising campaign: Cooking for Freedom."
Linux Foundation Newsletter
The December, 2009 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter has been published. "In this month's Linux Foundation newsletter: * Get One, Give One Shares Benefits of LF Membership * 4th Annual Collaboration Summit Approaches * More Japan Linux Symposium Videos Available * LinuxCon 2010 Dates, Location Set * Linux Foundation in the News * From the Foundation: Browser Shares Reveal True Benefits of Open Source".
Open Source Hardware 2009 (Make)
Make Magazine has posted a guide to over 125 open source hardware projects. "Fab@Home is a project dedicated to making and using fabbers - machines that can make almost anything, right on your desktop. This website provides everything you need to know in order to build or buy your own simple fabber, and to use it to print three dimensional objects. The hardware designs and software on this website are free and open-source."
Education and Certification
LPI Expands Training Partner Program to 44 nations
The Linux Professional Institute has announced the expansion of its training program to 44 nations. "The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization, announced that it had expanded its training partner program to include 44 nations--up from 33 a year ago. In addition the organization has increased the number of LPI-Approved Training Partners (LPI-ATP) and LPI-Approved Academic Partners (LPI-AAP) to a total of 242 partners -- up 10% from this time last year."
Python Concurrency Workshop
David Beazley will be holding a Python Concurrency Workshop on January 14-15 in Chicago, IL. "I'm pleased to announce that that the Concurrency Workshop is back for another round and is better than ever. If you have been programming Python for awhile and want to take your skills up a notch, I think this may be of interest. Basically, we're going to take a in-depth look at concurrent programming idioms and library modules."
Calls for Presentations
Call for Talks - FOSDEM 2010 GNOME devroom
A call for talks has gone out for the FOSDEM 2010 GNOME devroom, submissions are due by January 8. "As for the last few years, we'll have a GNOME devroom next year at FOSDEM (6/7 feb in Brussels), and as always, we want *YOU* to give a talk about the cool project you are hacking on in this devroom During this week-end, we'll have half a day dedicated to GNOME specific talks, and on Sunday, we'll share the devroom with people hacking on other desktop environments and have talks about crossdesktop topics or talks about some GNOME specific topics, but which can be of interest to the other communities."
PostgreSQL Conference East 2010 Call for Papers
A call for papers has gone out for PostgreSQL Conference East, submissions are due by January 30. "The event this year is being held at Drexel University in Philadelphia from March 26th through 28th. Following previously successful United States PostgreSQL conferences, we will be hosting a series of 3-4 hour tutorials, 90 minute mini-tutorials, 45 minute talks, 5 minute lightning talks and a new 30 minute presentation time slot."
SCALE CFPs extended
The SCALE call for papers has been extended to December 24. "So far these prominent Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) experts are among those that have had presentations accepted: -- Aaron Seigo, "The Magic and Wonder of KDE4;" -- Bradley Kuhn, "Demystifying GPL Enforcement: Using the Law To Uphold Copyleft;" -- Ronald Minnich, "Ten million and One Penguins;" -- Akkana Peck, "Featherweight Linux: How to turn a netbook or older laptop into a Ferrari;" -- Pete Kronowitt, "The latest on Moblin;" -- Jeff Maier, "Tips and Techniques for Improving Embedded Linux Startup Time;" -- Tarus Balog, "So, You Think You Want to Start an Open Source Business?""
Upcoming Events
O'Reilly Media announces the First Global Ignite Week
O'Reilly Media has announced the First Global Ignite Week. "... a "worldwide distributed conference" of community-fueled Ignite events in more than 40 cities, from March 1-4, 2010. Upwards of 10,000 entrepreneurs, technologists, DIYers, local heroes, and creative professionals are expected to participate in cities including Seattle, Boston, New York, Nashville, Brussels, Paris, Sydney, and Bangalore. Igniters will gather in pubs, theaters, and other convivial venues for an evening that is a unique blend of networking, information, and fun, encapsulated in the Ignite motto: "Enlighten us, but make it quick." In talks that are exactly five minutes long, Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds--whether they're ready or not."
Events: December 24, 2009 to February 22, 2010
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| February 15 February 18 |
ARES 2010 Conference | Krakow, Poland |
| February 17 February 25 |
PyCon 2010 | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| February 19 February 21 |
SCALE 8x - 2010 Southern California Linux Expo | Los Angeles, USA |
| February 19 February 20 |
GNUnify | Pune, India |
| February 20 February 21 |
FOSSTER '10 | Amritapuri, India |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Event Reports
Review: Red Hat Virtual Experience 2009 (Montana Linux)
Scott Dowdle covers the Red Hat Virtual Experience. "Red Hat held the Red Hat Virtual Experience 2009 today and it was awesome. What was it? It was a completely online conference that offered everything you'd find at a traditional face-to-face show like the annual Red Hat Summit. I was hoping Red Hat would use this event to introduce / announce RHEV for Desktops but no such luck. I guess we'll have to continue to wait until January."
Miscellaneous
Potlatch/Openstreetmap going proprietary ? (Gnash)
The Gnash free Flash player site notes that Potlatch, the online editor from the OpenStreetMap project, will be going proprietary. "ActionScript 3 !? Wait, that means NO more access for free software users! What a pity, such an exemplar case of good open SWF practice (sources buildable with free software, binaries playable with free software) coming to an end."
Page editor: Forrest Cook