Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
OpenOffice.org announces Summer Internship Programme
The OpenOffice.org Community has announced the launch of its Summer Internship Programme. "Students from all over the world are invited to take their first steps in OpenOffice.org development. A cash bounty up to 3.500 EUR per enhancement or bug fix is available. Participants will benefit by learning from experienced mentors from the worldwide community, gaining valueable skills -- not to mention the opportunity of coding for millions of users worldwide."
Articles of interest
Doctorow: Saying information wants to be free does more harm than good (guardian.co.uk)
Over at guardian.co.uk, Cory Doctorow thinks it's time that we kill off a "slogan" that's being used against us by media and other companies. "'Information wants to be free' (IWTBF hereafter) is half of Stewart Brand's famous aphorism, first uttered at the Hackers Conference in Marin County, California (where else?), in 1984: 'On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.'"
EFF: Web Browsers Leave 'Fingerprints' Behind as You Surf the Net
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that most web browsers have unique signatures that create identifiable "fingerprints". "The findings were the result of an experiment EFF conducted with volunteers who visited http://panopticlick.eff.org/. The website anonymously logged the configuration and version information from each participant's operating system, browser, and browser plug-ins -- information that websites routinely access each time you visit -- and compared that information to a database of configurations collected from almost a million other visitors. EFF found that 84% of the configuration combinations were unique and identifiable, creating unique and identifiable browser "fingerprints." Browsers with Adobe Flash or Java plug-ins installed were 94% unique and trackable."
Kees Cook: yay for barriers
In the comments following a recent LWN article there was a bit of fuss over an Ubuntu developer filing a bug report in the Fedora bugzilla. Kees Cook, the aforementioned developer, responds to the critics. "The bug was, from my perspective, a serious issue. Since I'd managed to reproduce it in another distro, it was my duty as a Free Software developer to report it to them. And, in what I felt was an unambiguous gesture, I made sure to include the link to the upstream kernel bug. Reproducing it in Ubuntu, in Fedora, and with a stock kernel had me confident that it was an upstream issue. While Ted did correctly suspect the issue was upstream, I really didn't want to just open an upstream bug and have it be ignored. I wanted some additional proof of reproduction, which I got when I tested it on Fedora."
Linuxcare returns with focus in the cloud (ComputerWorld)
ComputerWorld reports that Linuxcare is back, once again under the control of original founder Arthur Tyde. "This time around, instead of offering general-purpose Linux and open-source software support, Linuxcare is all about providing affordable services for companies migrating to open-source cloud computing."
Laprévote: About Mandriva's current situation
Mandriva CEO Arnaud Laprévote addresses rumors that Mandriva is for sale. "Mandriva has always been involved in investment and aquisition processes. Over the past years, Mandriva bought Edge-IT, Conectiva and Linbox FAS. Today, Mandriva is in takeover talks with various investors. These discussions concerning new investments in Mandriva are not new, they have happened all throughout the life of the company, and there are still going on today. We want to stress out the fact that Mandriva has not been bought by anybody."
Mueller: The DPL and the 'Fair Troll' business model
Florian Mueller ponders the defensive patent license (which was covered here in April) as a potential force for long-term good. "The key thing about a Fair Troll is that he would have to make that patent irrevocably available to all members of the DPL pool on DPL terms. So a Fair Troll would only attack companies outside the DPL pool. Those could again eliminate or at least greatly reduce the problem by joining the DPL when they get attacked. A Fair Troll would have to leave peaceful people alone but would have to pursue all others relentlessly. In fact, the better the Fair Troll does his job, the more he will contribute to the DPL cause and the more attractive it will be for community members to work with him."
Tobias Rundström: What ever happened to XMMS.ORG?
Tobias Rundström reports XMMS.ORG has been sold to a possible phisher and should not be trusted for source code any longer. "Over the years XMMS development stagnated to a very slow pace and 4Front didnt really make that much noise either. That all changed a couple of weeks ago when the XMMS.org webserver admin received a email from 4Front CEO Dev Mazumdar, stating that he had sold the domain to a company and wanted a full webpage dump. Needless to say, that was pretty surprising! We immediately responded that we where interested in taking over the domain instead, since a lot of us where still actively using it for email and personal webspace. The reply was We invested a lot of money into XMMS development, which is an interesting reply on all accounts. Quickly after that the domain was moved and we barely had time to move all our accounts away from the addresses, Dev told us that we should just use xmms.se and xmms2.org instead."
Legal Announcements
HTC sues Apple for patent infringement
HTC has returned Apple's favor and filed a patent infringement suit seeking to halt imports and sales of iPhones, iPads, and iPods in the US. The press release says that five patents are involved, but we do not, yet, have a list of what those patents are. (Thanks to Keith Edmunds).
New Books
Hackers--New from O'Reilly
"Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution--25th Anniversary Edition" has been released by O'Reilly.
Resources
Linux Foundation Monthly Newsletter: May
The Linux Foundation newsletter for May 2010 covers * Keynote Speakers Confirmed for LinuxCon North America, * LinuxCon and Torvalds Go to Brazil, * Individual Members Spotlighted in New Linux.com Series, * Linux Foundation Appoints Directors in China and Taiwan, * Linux.com Store T-shirt Contest Voting Underway, * ServInt Joins The Linux Foundation, * The Linux Foundation in the News, and * Upcoming Training Courses from The Linux Foundation.
Interviews
Keynote Speaker at Akademy 2010: Aaron Seigo Interview (KDE.News)
KDE.News has an interview with Aaron Seigo. "These days I am the lead developer and designer for Plasma, which is a set of projects aimed at creating both a component system designed for creating amazing primary user interfaces (those things you see when you log in or first turn on a device) quickly and easily as well as creating a set of such user interfaces for the desktop, netbook, tablet, mobile and eventually media center profiles. Outside of that work, I spend a fair amount of time on community related issues: where are working well together? Where aren't we? Why? The challenge is to find good answers that fit naturally within the culture of KDE."
Contests and Awards
BIND 10 Mascot Contest
The Internet Systems Consortium is holding a contest to find a mascot for BIND. "Linux has Tux, the penguin, BSD has its Daemon, ISC's user community deserves its own little creature to learn to love, just as love for BIND grows. Participation is easy. Submit your entry through the form below, review and accept the contest rules and you're in! Make sure to get your image in before June 11, 2010."
Education and Certification
Learn Linux, 101: Debian package management (developerWorks)
IBM developerWorks has an article on Debian package management. "Learn how to install, upgrade, and manage packages on your Linux system. This article focuses on the Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, which is the package management system used by Debian and distributions derived from Debian, such as Ubuntu. You can use the material in this article to study for the LPI 101 exam for Linux system administrator certification, or just to explore the best ways to add new software and keep your system current."
Learn Linux, 101: RPM and YUM package management (developerWorks)
IBM developerWorks has an article on RPM and YUM package management. "Learn how to install, upgrade and manage packages on your Linux system. This article focuses on the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) developed by Red Hat, as well as the Yellowdog Updater Modified (YUM) originally developed to manage Red Hat Linux systems at Duke University's Physics department. You can use the material in this article to study for the LPI 101 exam for Linux system administrator certification, or just to explore the best ways to add new software and keep your system current."
Calls for Presentations
Desktop Summit 2011 Extends Deadline for Call for Hosts
The KDE and GNOME communities are looking for a host for the Desktop Summit 2011. The Call for Hosts will be open until June 9, 2010.Magnolia-CMS Conference 2010, Call for Papers
The Magnolia-CMS Conference 2010 will be held in Basel, Switzerland, September 16-17 2010. The call for papers is open until June 13, 2010. "The Magnolia Conference draws current and potential Magnolia users, partners, and community contributors from all over the globe, to meet and learn about open source, standards-based Java CMS. Through expert instruction, hands-on tutorials, case studies, and presentations, attendees will gain the knowledge they need to rapidly build open source content management solutions with Magnolia."
Piksel10 :: open Call for PROJECTS
Piksel is an international event for artists and developers working with free and open source technologies in artistic practice. It takes place in Bergen, Norway, November 18-21, 2010. The call for projects is open until June 1, 2010.Call for Papers: Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems (S3) 2010
The Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems (S3) takes place in Tokyo, Japan, September 27-28, 2010. The call for papers is open until July 30, 2010. "The Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems (S3) is a forum for discussion of topics relating to computer systems and languages that are able to bootstrap, implement, modify, and maintain themselves. One property of these systems is that their implementation is based on small but powerful abstractions; examples include (amongst others) Squeak/Smalltalk, COLA, Klein/Self, PyPy/Python, Rubinius/Ruby, and Lisp. Such systems are the engines of their own replacement, giving researchers and developers great power to experiment with, and explore future directions from within, their own small language kernels."
Upcoming Events
Linux Foundation Announces LinuxCon Brazil
The Linux Foundation has announced a new conference: LinuxCon Brazil, to be held August 31 - September 1 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Confirmed speakers include Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton. Oh, and some guy named Jonathan Corbet, too. "Brazil has long been recognized as one of the fastest growing countries for Linux adoption. The Brazilian government was one of the first to subsidize Linux-based PCs for its citizens with PC Conectado, a tax-free computer initiative launched in 2003. Nearly a decade later, Linux is accelerating both in its enterprise adoption and its functionality around the globe. Brazil's active and knowledgeable community of Linux users, developers and enterprise executives bring an important perspective to the development process and to the future of Linux."
Events: May 27, 2010 to July 26, 2010
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| May 24 May 30 |
Plone Symposium East 2010 | State College, PA, USA |
| 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 |
| June 28 July 3 |
SciPy 2010 | Austin, TX, USA |
| July 1 July 4 |
Linux Vacation / Eastern Europe | Grodno, Belarus |
| July 3 July 10 |
Akademy | Tampere, Finland |
| July 6 July 9 |
Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems | Brussels, Belgium |
| July 6 July 11 |
11th Libre Software Meeting / Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre | Bordeaux, France |
| July 9 July 11 |
State Of The Map 2010 | Girona, Spain |
| July 12 July 16 |
Ottawa Linux Symposium | Ottawa, Canada |
| July 15 July 17 |
FUDCon | Santiago, Chile |
| July 17 July 24 |
EuroPython 2010: The European Python Conference | Birmingham, United Kingdom |
| July 17 July 18 |
Community Leadership Summit 2010 | Portland, OR, USA |
| July 19 July 23 |
O'Reilly Open Source Convention | Portland, Oregon, USA |
| July 21 July 24 |
11th International Free Software Forum | Porto Alegre, Brazil |
| July 22 July 23 |
ArchCon 2010 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| July 22 July 25 |
Haxo-Green SummerCamp 2010 | Dudelange, Luxembourg |
| July 24 July 30 |
Gnome Users And Developers European Conference | The Hague, The Netherlands |
| July 25 July 31 |
Debian Camp @ DebConf10 | New York City, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Audio and Video programs
Ubuntu Developer Summit Audio Recordings
Audio recordings from the Ubuntu Developer Summit are available. "http://uds.ubuntu.com/audio/uds-m has the audio files in Ogg Vorbis format for download. There are separate sub-directories for each day from Monday through Friday, and the files are timestamped and named based on the rooms that sessions happened in."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol