Announcements

Microsoft helping OpenStreetMap

Microsoft has announced that it will be contributing to the OpenStreetMap project. "As a Principal Architect for Bing Mobile, Steve will help develop better mapping experiences for our customers and partners, and lead efforts to engage with OpenStreetMap and other open source and open data projects. As a first step in this engagement, we plan to enable access to Bing's global orthorectified aerial imagery, as a backdrop of OSM editors. Also, Microsoft is working on new tools to better enable contributions to OSM." Here, "Steve" is Steve Coast, the founder of OpenStreetMap.

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Novell sold to Attachmate

Novell has announced the company's sale to Attachmate for $6.10/share. More ominously: "Novell also announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash, which cash payment is reflected in the merger consideration to be paid by Attachmate Corporation." Information on what the "certain intellectual property assets" are is scarce at the moment. (Thanks to Jeff Schroeder).

Update: Novell's 8K filing is available with a bit more information. The "certain intellectual property" is 882 patents. There is also an escape clause for Novell should somebody come along with an offer for the company that includes buying the patents.

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Attachmate Corporation Statement on openSUSE project

Attachmate has released a brief statement about its plans for SUSE and openSUSE. ""The openSUSE project is an important part of the SUSE business," commented Jeff Hawn, chairman and CEO of Attachmate Corporation. "As noted in the agreement announced today, Attachmate plans to operate SUSE as a stand-alone business unit after the transaction closes. If this transaction closes, then after closing, Attachmate Corporation anticipates no change to the relationship between the SUSE business and the openSUSE project as a result of this transaction.""

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OSADL Launches Real-Time Linux Quality Assurance Farm

The Open Source Automation Development Lab launched a quality assurance farm that contains a number of test racks with various desktop and embedded computer systems. "They are equipped with a candidate of the "Latest Stable" real-time Linux kernel and undergo continuous testing. All test results and configuration data of all systems are available online at osadl.org/QA. As far as we know, this is the first QA farm of its kind; we are convinced that it represents an important step towards a generally accepted and validated real-time operating system for the automation industry."

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Did Google Arm Its Own Enemies With Android? (HBR)

The Harvard Business Review thinks that Google is in trouble because handset vendors can change the default search engine on Android phones. "What's the endgame here? Well, with both handset manufacturers and networks increasingly becoming commoditized, each are desperate to find new sources of revenue. Between them, the most valuable thing they have is control over what goes on the phone right before it reaches the customer: what apps, and what search. This is exactly what Google needs to control as the future shifts to the mobile web."

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Markham: MPL2: GPL Compatibility?

Gervase Markham is running an unofficial survey on whether or not the Mozilla Public License v2 should be compatible with the GPL. "I personally believe that most or all groups who are currently licensing their software under the MPL (only) would not mind, or actively desire, GPL compatibility, and the new MPL should give them the opportunity to choose it. I think most free software developers see licensing as a pain, and license incompatibility as a double pain, and would much rather everything were upwardly compatible with everything else. To test this belief, and so we can appropriately publicize the new version of the MPL when it comes out, I am creating a list of MPLed projects. If you know of an MPLed project please add it to the list. And I want to hear from those projects as to whether they are opposed to, in favour of, or indifferent to, GPL compatibility for existing projects being put into MPL 2. Have a discussion on your mailing list and let me know the outcome."

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Call for Papers: Python for High Performance and Scientific Computing

There will be a workshop on using Python for High Performance and Scientific Computing as part of the International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS 2011). The workshop will be held in Tsukuba, Japan, June 1-3, 2011. The call for papers is open until January 10, 2011.

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Events: December 2, 2010 to January 31, 2011

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
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
January 16 January 22	PyPy Leysin Winter Sprint	Leysin, Switzerland
January 22	OrgCamp 2011	Paris, France
January 24 January 29	linux.conf.au 2011	Brisbane, Australia
January 27 January 28	Southwest Drupal Summit 2011	Houston, Texas, USA
January 27	Ubuntu Developer Day	Bangalore, India
January 29 January 31	FUDCon Tempe 2011	Tempe, Arizona, USA

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