Announcements
Articles of interest
Reddit interviews Richard Stallman
Reddit has posted an extensive interview with Richard Stallman. "The main shortcoming of Linux is at the level of device support. The obstacle there isn't a lack of ability among Linux developers, but rather the use of devices whose specs are secret. Finishing the HURD would not advance us at all in supporting these devices. The work that is needed is at the driver and firmware level. That's why our high priority task list includes items relating to free drivers, but not the HURD."
Oracle shuts down open source test servers (iTnews)
Here's a report on iTnews saying that Oracle has abruptly shut down a set of servers used to perform quality assurance on PostgreSQL releases. "Sun Microsystems - and for a short time its new owner Oracle - had provided three member servers to ensure PostgreSQL was stable on the Solaris operating system. The development of PostgreSQL had been supported by Sun - which contributed DTrace support, amongst other features to the database platform. At the start of July, Oracle shut down its three PostgreSQL build farm servers without warning, leaving the PostgreSQL community rushing to find replacements."
Legal Announcements
BusyBox and the GPL Prevail Again (Groklaw)
Groklaw has the latest ruling from Conservancy v. Best Buy. "One of the defendants was Westinghouse Digital Technologies, LLC, which refused to participate in discovery. It had applied for a kind of bankruptcy equivalent in California. Judge Shira Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York has now granted Software Freedom Conservancy, a wing of Software Freedom Law Center, triple damages ($90,000) for willful copyright infringement, lawyer's fees and costs ($47,865), an injunction against Westinghouse, and an order requiring Westinghouse to turn over all infringing equipment in its possession to the plaintiffs, to be donated to charity. So, presumably a lot of high-def TVs are on their way to charities." Given that the defendant is in bankruptcy, one should not hold one's breath waiting for those TVs, but, as the article points out, this ruling cannot fail to get the attention of the other defendants.
New Books
Free (as in Freedom) Debian Book In The Making
Roland Mas and Raphaël Hertzog have announced their intent to translate their French Debian administration book into English. "The resulting book will be published under a Debian Free Software Guidelines-compliant license if we manage to collect the 25000€ that will allow us to complete this translation in good conditions."
HTML5: Up and Running--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has released "HTML5: Up and Running" by Mark Pilgrim.Head First WordPress--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly has released "Head First WordPress", A Brain-Friendly Guide to Creating Your Own Custom WordPress Blog, by Jeff Siarto.
Resources
FSFE Newsletter August 2010
The Free Software Foundation Europe Newsletter for August 2010 is out. "The focus of this edition is Free Software in the public sector: on a national level within the United Kingdom, in the Italian region of Bozen, and in the Austrian city of Linz. We introduce a new definition and of mnemonic Open Standards, and invite you to participate in upcoming local Free Software events."
CE Linux Forum Newsletter: July 2010
The July issue of the CE Linux Forum Newsletter covers Embedded Linux Conference Europe Speakers, LinuxCon Japan Schedule, and the eLinux wiki Android Portal.
Education and Certification
LPI Launches Enterprise-level "Virtualization" Exam
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) has launched the "Virtualization and High Availability" exam elective for their LPIC-3 certification program. "Exam development for the LPI-304 "Virtualization and High Availability" included extensive consultation with industry, a global Job Task Analysis survey amongst IT professionals, and close to a hundred "beta" exams at a series of special events around the world. These "beta" exams were offered to qualified IT professionals in order to establish the psychometric data necessary to ensure exam questions and objectives were relevant and of the highest quality."
Meeting Minutes
Minutes from the Wesnoth licensing meeting
Developers working on Battle For Wesnoth recently held an IRC meeting to discuss the Apple App Store port and other situations which make GPL license compliance hard. "The point was generally agreed that this meeting was about where our boundaries are, and not specifically about Apple; other platforms we are considering present similar issues. Android (with AT&T's apparent removal of the 'allow third party apps' button) and PalmOS were specifically mentioned as imminent porting targets." Numerous proposals can be found in the minutes, but no decisions have yet been made.
Upcoming Events
Desktop summit scheduled for August, 2011
The GNOME and KDE projects have announced that they will be holding a joint desktop summit in Berlin in August, 2011. "The 2011 Desktop Summit will build on the first Summit's success. More than 1,000 contributors from more than 50 countries are expected to attend the 2011 event in Berlin. In addition to members of the GNOME and KDE development community, the conference will also attract many participants in the overall FLOSS community from local projects, organizations, and companies."
Events: August 12, 2010 to October 11, 2010
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| August 10 August 12 |
LinuxCon | Boston, USA |
| August 13 | Debian Day Costa Rica | Desamparados, Costa Rica |
| August 14 | Summercamp 2010 | Ottawa, Canada |
| August 14 August 15 |
Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters | Taipei, Taiwan |
| August 21 August 22 |
Free and Open Source Software Conference | St. Augustin, Germany |
| August 23 August 27 |
European DrupalCon | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| August 28 | PyTexas 2010 | Waco, TX, USA |
| August 31 September 3 |
OOoCon 2010 | Budapest, Hungary |
| August 31 September 1 |
LinuxCon Brazil 2010 | São Paulo, Brazil |
| September 6 September 9 |
Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Conference | Barcelona, Spain |
| September 7 September 9 |
DjangoCon US 2010 | Portland, OR, USA |
| September 8 September 10 |
CouchCamp: CouchDB summer camp | Petaluma, CA, United States |
| September 10 September 12 |
Ohio Linux Fest | Columbus, Ohio, USA |
| September 11 | Open Tech 2010 | London, UK |
| September 13 September 15 |
Open Source Singapore Pacific-Asia Conference | Sydney, Australia |
| September 16 September 18 |
X Developers' Summit | Toulouse, France |
| September 16 September 17 |
Magnolia-CMS | Basel, Switzerland |
| September 16 September 17 |
3rd International Conference FOSS Sea 2010 | Odessa, Ukraine |
| September 17 September 18 |
FrOSCamp | Zürich, Switzerland |
| September 17 September 19 |
Italian Debian/Ubuntu Community Conference 2010 | Perugia, Italy |
| September 18 September 19 |
WordCamp Portland | Portland, OR, USA |
| September 18 | Software Freedom Day 2010 | Everywhere, Everywhere |
| September 21 September 24 |
Linux-Kongress | Nürnberg, Germany |
| September 23 | Open Hardware Summit | New York, NY, USA |
| September 24 September 25 |
BruCON Security Conference 2010 | Brussels, Belgium |
| September 25 September 26 |
PyCon India 2010 | Bangalore, India |
| September 27 September 29 |
Japan Linux Symposium | Tokyo, Japan |
| September 27 September 28 |
Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems | Tokyo, Japan |
| September 29 | 3rd Firebird Conference - Moscow | Moscow, Russia |
| September 30 October 1 |
Open World Forum | Paris, France |
| October 1 October 2 |
Open Video Conference | New York, NY, USA |
| October 1 | Firebird Day Paris - La Cinémathèque Française | Paris, France |
| October 3 October 4 |
Foundations of Open Media Software 2010 | New York, NY, USA |
| October 4 October 5 |
IRILL days - where FOSS developers, researchers, and communities meet | Paris, France |
| October 7 October 9 |
Utah Open Source Conference | Salt Lake City, UT, USA |
| October 8 October 9 |
Free Culture Research Conference | Berlin, Germany |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol