Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Stormy Peters: Changing roles
Stormy Peters has announced that she is leaving her position as the executive director of the GNOME Foundation. "I'm going to Mozilla to head up their developer engagement program, focused on the open web! As many of you know, I think we have a complete free and open source solution for the desktop but we still have a lot of work to do on the web. Many of us now depend on web applications that are not only not free but don't even let us download and protect our own data in reasonable ways. Working on developer engagement at Mozilla will let me dedicate more of my resources to making sure developers have the tools and knowledge they need to create applications on the open web."
GNOME Project Receives $15,000 for Accessibility Work
The GNOME Project has received two grants for a total of $15,000 from Mozilla and from the F123.org-Mais Diferenças partnership for accessibility work. "Mozilla has once again stepped up to support GNOME accessibility (a11y) work with a $10,000 grant. The F123-Mais Diferenças partnership has awarded a grant of $5,000 in total. This is the second accessibility grant that GNOME has received from Mozilla in the 2010 calendar year."
China Mobile Goes All in on Linux
Telecom operator China Mobile has joined the Linux Foundation, becoming the first Chinese enterprise to do so. "China Mobile is the world's largest telecom operator by market value. It also ranks as the largest carrier in the world in terms of customer base and the scale of its network, through which it provides mobile services including voice data, IP telephony and multimedia. China Mobile has recently been investing in Linux, in its OPhone mobile operating system, and has developed a cloud computing system based on open source software. Its membership in The Linux Foundation shows its further commitment to the Linux platform."
FSFE seeks to end non-free advertisements
The Free Software Foundation Europe started a campaign a month ago to get rid of advertisements for non-free software on public websites. Click below for a progress report. "But the FSFE won't stop with a list of institutions. In the coming weeks, FSFE will send letters to the institutions to draw their attention to their unfair advertising. In the name of the signatories of the petition, FSFE will ask the institutions to either remove any recommendation for non-free software from their website, or give a choice of several programs."
Commercial announcements
Band from Vienna publishes album produced with Free Software
The band XBloome from Vienna has announced their third album, "X marks the spot". "As maybe the first album ever, "X marks the spot" was produced exclusively using Free Software (Open Source) and without a professional studio or graphic designers. With this 'proof of concept' album, XBloome have debunked several prejudices about feasability, professionality and quality of free and self-made productions."
Articles of interest
Open vs closed source software: The quest for balance (Voxeu.org)
This article on Voxeu.org explores recent studies suggesting that open source (OSS) and proprietary software (CSS) strengthen each other and should co-exist. "Furthermore, von Engelhardt and Maurer (2010) provide an important clue to choosing this mix. They point out that the existence of CSS code increases OSS output and vice versa. To see why, consider an all-OSS world in which each company offers consumers exactly the same shared code as every other company. By definition no company can then compete by writing more OSS code than its rivals. This lack of competition suppresses code production for the same reason that cartels suppress output. Conversely, a wide range of generic models predict that software production should peak when roughly 15% to 20% of all companies adopt OSS methods." (Thanks to Alex Burr)
Community Rights and Community Wrongs (The Standards Blog)
Andy Updegrove argues that Free/Open Source licenses are not enough to protect free/open source projects. "As recent events have demonstrated, the powers of developers are limited when compared to the power of a Fortune 500 company, like Oracle, if that company does not care whether independent developers continue to support the projects that it acquired. What developers are now realizing is that the license-based action options of large and diverse pools of code contributors are difficult to pursue, and not necessarily very attractive."
Fork off: mass exodus from OOo as contributors join LibreOffice (ars technica)
Ars technica looks at the growing support for LibreOffice. "The OpenOffice.org (OOo) community has declared independence from Oracle as members have joined the LibreOffice project, a fork of the open source office suite. In an open letter published on the OOo mailing list, a group of over 30 contributors affirmed their intention to abandon Oracle's code base in favor of LibreOffice. They say that the fork's more inclusive environment and community-driven management offer a powerful opportunity to advance the software."
Resources
The Linux Foundation's compliance checklist
The Linux Foundation has announced the publication of a license compliance checklist for companies. "Companies can use the Self-Assessment Checklist confidentially to assess progress in implementing a rigorous open source compliance process. The checklist can help you prioritize process improvement efforts on the areas of greatest payoff. You can also use the checklist during supplier selection to assess a supplier's compliance practices and gauge the likely reliability of its open source disclosures." Registration is required to download the actual checklist.
Calls for Presentations
Linux Audio Conference - Call for Participation
The Linux Audio Conference 2011 will take place May 6-8, 2011 in Maynooth, Ireland. Paper-submission, call-for-music and registration are now open.PostgreSQL@FOSDEM 2011 - Call for talks
The PostgreSQL project will have a devroom at FOSDEM (February 5-6, 2011). "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." Submission deadline is December 20, 2010.
Upcoming Events
O'Reilly Announces Global Ignite Week 2011
O'Reilly Media has announced Global Ignite Week 2011. "From February 7-11, over 100 cities will host community-powered Ignite events attended by upwards of 12,000 technologists, entrepreneurs, DIYers, and creative professionals on at least six continents. Participating cities include Seattle, Boston, Phoenix, Mumbai, Manila, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Bristol, Sydney, and Wellington."
Events: November 11, 2010 to January 10, 2011
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 9 November 12 |
OpenStack Design Summit | San Antonio, TX, USA |
| November 11 | NLUUG Fall conference: Security | Ede, Netherlands |
| November 11 November 13 |
8th International Firebird Conference 2010 | Bremen, Germany |
| November 12 November 14 |
FOSSASIA | Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam |
| November 12 November 13 |
Japan Linux Conference | Tokyo, Japan |
| November 12 November 13 |
Mini-DebConf in Vietnam 2010 | Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam |
| November 13 November 14 |
OpenRheinRuhr | Oberhausen, Germany |
| November 15 November 17 |
MeeGo Conference 2010 | Dublin, Ireland |
| November 18 November 21 |
Piksel10 | Bergen, Norway |
| November 20 November 21 |
OpenFest - Bulgaria's biggest Free and Open Source conference | Sofia, Bulgaria |
| November 20 November 21 |
Kiwi PyCon 2010 | Waitangi, New Zealand |
| November 20 November 21 |
WineConf 2010 | Paris, France |
| November 23 November 26 |
DeepSec | Vienna, Austria |
| November 24 November 26 |
Open Source Developers' Conference | Melbourne, Australia |
| November 27 | Open Source Conference Shimane 2010 | Shimane, Japan |
| November 27 | 12. LinuxDay 2010 | Dornbirn, Austria |
| November 29 November 30 |
European OpenSource & Free Software Law Event | Torino, Italy |
| December 4 | London Perl Workshop 2010 | London, United Kingdom |
| December 6 December 8 |
PGDay Europe 2010 | Stuttgart, Germany |
| December 11 | Open Source Conference Fukuoka 2010 | Fukuoka, Japan |
| December 13 December 18 |
SciPy.in 2010 | Hyderabad, India |
| December 15 December 17 |
FOSS.IN/2010 | Bangalore, India |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol