Announcements

Fedora Summer Coding 2010 - now with more time

The Fedora Project has extended the deadlines for Summer Coding 2010. "We have pushed back the first part of the Summer Coding 2010 schedule. There wasn't enough time to find sponsors. Now there is more time for mentors and students to generate ideas and write up good proposals, while people like you and me look for more sponsors." The deadlines have been extended by one month.

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FSF recommends CiviCRM

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced that CiviCRM has earned its recommendation as a fully featured donor and contact management system for nonprofits. "The FSF had highlighted the need for a free software solution in this area as part of its High Priority Projects campaign. With this announcement, the FSF will also be adopting CiviCRM for its own use, and actively encouraging other nonprofit organizations to do the same."

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Synaptics Gesture Suite Linux for TouchPads

Synaptics has announced Synaptics Gesture Suite Linux (SGS-L), which offers multi-touch support. "SGS-L was developed from analyzing the most common workflows, from entertainment activities such as viewing photos and listening to music, to productivity activities such as accessing emails and presentations. The result is an enhanced usability model that makes it intuitive for consumers to easily understand and discover features, resulting in a better user experience."

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The SEC to require filings in Python?

As seen in this ITWorld article, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently contemplating new rules for disclosure around the offering of asset-backed securities. The proposal, a monster PDF file, reads: "We are proposing to require the filing of a computer program (the 'waterfall computer program,' as defined in the proposed rule) of the contractual cash flow provisions of the securities in the form of downloadable source code in Python, a commonly used computer programming language that is open source and interpretive." There are all kinds of interesting implications, including effects on the language, security, and more.

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Linux Graybeards? Yes, But Also A Wisdom Circle (InformationWeek)

InformationWeek reports from the kernel panel discussion at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. "Andrew Morton, a key aide to Linux lead developer Linus Torvalds and often referred to as the 'Colonel of the kernel,' put the issue equally bluntly: 'Yes, we're getting older, and we're getting more tired. I don't see people jumping with enthusiasm to work on things the way that I used to.' But he added that meant the developers in the kernel process had gained deep knowledge of the code they're working with and are willing to tackle greater complexity in making additions."

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Aaron Seigo on the Future of KDE (Datamation)

Bruce Byfield talks with Aaron Seigo about the future of KDE. "According to Seigo, the large-scale changes that began two years ago with the release of KDE 4.0 are mostly complete now. "We've reached the stage with the 4.4 release that happened in January where we've got this nice feature set on the desktop and we have applications available for it and some nice refinements in the look and feel. That's where we are. But where are we going? That's always the difficult question. Once you've arrived at a place,what are you going to aim for?" Seigo's answer to his own question is that KDE is currently moving in three directions: adding functionality to the desktop in both small features and within specific applications, extending the concept of the social desktop, and the introduction of KDE on to every possible hardware platform. Each is a small story in itself."

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Oracle presents "much faster" MySQL beta (The H)

The H looks at Oracle's plans for MySQL. "Oracle presented a beta of what it called a "much faster" MySQL at the O'Reilly MySQL Conference and insists it will be continuing to invest in the open source database. Oracle's Chief Corporate Architect, Edward Screven, presented the beta version of MySQL 5.5 which will now use InnoDB as its default storage engine, saying that the switch offers a 200% performance improvement and over ten times faster recovery times. He assured the audience that despite the switch to Oracle's InnoDB, Oracle will be maintaining the pluggable storage engine architecture and that the company would continue to ship the same code base in the community and enterprise editions." (Thanks to Raji Ramsharma)

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You Can't Control Linux (CIO Update)

Sean Michael Kerner covers a Collaboration Summit keynote by Dan Frye, vice president of open system development at IBM. "For IBM, one of the hardest lessons it had to learn was one about control. Mainly, there is none. "There is nothing that we can do to control individuals or communities, and if you try, you make thing worse," Frye told the audience. "What you need is influence. It goes back to the most important lesson, which is to give back to the community and develop expertise. You'll find that if your developers are working with a community, that over time they'll develop influence and that influence will allow you to get things done.""

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Python support in GNOME gets a boost from hackfest (ars technica)

Ryan Paul reports on the Python GNOME hackfest. "Some GNOME developers have gathered in Boston for a Python GNOME hackfest that is hosted by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The primary goals behind the hackfest include establishing a strategy for delivering Python 3.0 compatibility for the GNOME platform and advancing the Python GObject introspection project."

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Where's the Summer of Documentation? (OStatic)

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier looks at the missing elements from Summer of Code. "I bring up documentation, but really the problem that I see is that the Summer programs are simply too code- and developer-centric. Projects and companies in this space should also be thinking about involving translators, user interface designers, artists, and other disciplines in their projects. Not only because it would help these projects be more well-rounded and address areas outside of just developing code, but because it would also provide a wonderful opportunity for cross-pollination. Students who are pursuing other fields of study would provide an opportunity to inform and enthuse ambassadors for open source who move in different circles. It would do open source projects worlds of good to have articulate and interested participants who could carry open source ideals to their peers in other disciplines."

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Announcing the 2010 We're Linux Video Winners (Linux.com)

Linux.com has announced the winners of this year's We're Linux Video Contest. First place: Go Linux, Second place: Create Something Unique, and Third place: Linux: Free Your Computer.

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Best Object Databases Lecture Notes Award 2010.

ODBMS.ORG has announced that it will issue the "Best Object Databases Lecture Notes" Award 2010, "for the most complete and up to date lecture notes on Object Databases, that have been, or have strong potential to be, instrumental to the teaching of theory and practice in the field of object database systems." Submissions will be accepted until June 4, 2010.

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Libre Graphics Meeting 2010

Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) takes place May 27-30, 2010 in Brussels, Belgium. The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2010.

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Call for Presentations for the Flash Memory Summit

The Flash Memory Summit takes place August 17-19, 2010 in Santa Clara, California. The call for proposals is open until May 7, 2010.

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KVM Forum 2010: Call for Papers

This year's KVM Forum takes place August 9-10, 2010 (colocated with LinuxCon) in Boston, Massachusetts. Abstracts are due by May 14, 2010.

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LAC 2010 program is online

The program for Linux Audio Conference 2010 has been posted. LAC 2010 takes place May 1-4, 2010 in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

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LAC 2010 live stream coverage

The Linux Audio Conference 2010 will have live streaming coverage of all the paper presentations and selected workshops. "for remote participants, there is an IRC channel called #lac2010 on irc.freenode.net, which serves as a backchannel for your questions and comments, hangout for conference chatter, and helpdesk for any streaming troubles you might encounter."

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Events: April 29, 2010 to June 28, 2010

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
April 25 April 29	Interop Las Vegas	Las Vegas, NV, USA
April 28 April 29	Xen Summit North America at AMD	Sunnyvale, CA, USA
April 29	Patents and Free and Open Source Software	Boulder, CO, USA
May 1 May 2	OggCamp	Liverpool, England
May 1 May 4	Linux Audio Conference	Utrecht, NL
May 1 May 2	Devops Down Under	Sydney, Australia
May 3 May 7	SambaXP 2010	Göttingen, Germany
May 3 May 6	Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco	San Francisco, CA, USA
May 6	NLUUG spring conference: System Administration	Ede, The Netherlands
May 7 May 9	Pycon Italy	Firenze, Italy
May 7 May 8	Professional IT Community Conference	New Brunswick, NJ, USA
May 10 May 14	Ubuntu Developer Summit	Brussels, Belgium
May 17 May 21	Fourth African Conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons	Accra, Ghana
May 18 May 21	PostgreSQL Conference for Users and Developers	Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
May 24 May 25	Netbook Summit	San Francisco, CA, USA
May 24 May 30	Plone Symposium East 2010	State College, PA, USA
May 24 May 26	DjangoCon Europe	Berlin, Germany
May 27 May 30	Libre Graphics Meeting	Brussels, Belgium
June 1 June 4	Open Source Bridge	Portland, Oregon, USA
June 3 June 4	Athens IT Security Conference	Athens, Greece
June 7 June 10	RailsConf 2010	Baltimore, MD, USA
June 7 June 9	German Perl Workshop 2010	Schorndorf, Germany
June 9 June 12	LinuxTag	Berlin, Germany
June 9 June 11	PyCon Asia Pacific 2010	Singapore, Singapore
June 10 June 11	Mini-DebConf at LinuxTag 2010	Berlin, Germany
June 12 June 13	SouthEast Linux Fest	Spartanburg, SC, USA
June 15 June 16	Middle East and Africa Open Source Software Technology Forum	Cairo, Egypt
June 19	FOSSCon	Rochester, New York, USA
June 21 June 25	Semantic Technology Conference 2010	San Francisco, CA, USA
June 22 June 25	Red Hat Summit	Boston, USA
June 23 June 24	Open Source Data Center Conference 2010	Nuremberg, Germany
June 26 June 27	PyCon Australia	Sydney, Australia

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

Film: "Patent absurdity"

For anybody who is not yet convinced about the fundamental nature of software patents: Patent Absurdity is a 30-minute film containing interviews with Karen Sandler, Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and others. It is available in Ogg Theora format, naturally.

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