Announcements
Brief items
Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation
Just on the heels of its wireless driver being released in the staging tree of the 2.6.37 kernel, Broadcom has joined the Linux Foundation. "In September, Broadcom announced it had open sourced its drivers for selected Wi-Fi chipsets, a pivotal move that garnered applause throughout the Linux community. Since then, the driver has been integrated into the latest Linux kernel release 2.6.37 and, as a result, is actively being improved upon by the entire Linux community. Given its portfolio of semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, Broadcom is an important addition to The Linux Foundation."
A flood update from linux.conf.au
The linux.conf.au organizers have sent out an update on what effects, if any, the flooding in Brisbane will have on the conference. It's hard to say for sure, but it looks like LCA will happen as scheduled. "It would be a boost to morale and to our spirits, and a beginning to a return to normality if people who made plans to come to Brisbane stick to those plans, come to Brisbane, and enjoy what we hope will still be the best community-driven linux conf around."
Open Internet Apps Challenge
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is sponsoring a challenge for "researchers and software developers to engage in research and create apps that help consumers foster, measure, and protect Internet openness". Entries must consist of open source applications or research papers and will be judged on a variety of different criteria. Entries are due between February 1 and June 1 and winners will have their applications/research promoted by the FCC along with their expenses paid for a reception in Washington, DC. "
The Open Internet Challenge seeks to encourage the development of new, more effective applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with open Internet principles. These software tools could, for example, detect whether a broadband provider is interfering with DNS responses, application packet headers, or content." (Thanks to Charles E. Bermingham.)
UK review of the patent system
A review is underway in the UK to identify barriers to growth within the country's "intellectual property framework." The IP review team has issued a call for evidence seeking information on how well the current patent system is working (or not working). Evidence should be should be presented to the review team by March 1. (Thanks to Alan Cox)
Articles of interest
Villa: Changing Jobs
Luis Villa has left the Mozilla Corporation to work at the law firm of Greenberg, Traurig. "Mozilla has been terrific for me. Working with happy, dedicated, passionate people is always a joy, and I've learned a ton from my teammates in legal and from Mitchell. I particularly can't say enough good things about my boss, Harvey- he's been a tremendous mentor to me. And of course Mozilla is exactly the kind of job I went to law school to get- directly helping hackers ship world-class software. Leaving today was hard- I'll miss my coworkers, and I realized over the past few days that some of them may even miss me ;)" He adds that he will continue to work on the new MPL, which should be released soon.
LPI Community Corner: To Russia With Love
This edition of the community corner features Jon "maddog" Hall with some reflections on Linux in Russia, plus an LPIC-1 exam preparation screencast from PaulPaulito.com and a "Top Story" of 2010 poll.Inside Track: Oracle has Kicked Lustre to the Curb (InsideHPC)
InsideHPC has received an anonymous tip that Oracle has ceased development of Lustre. "We can look forward to more Limbo for a while, but what happens next with stewardship of Lustre? Will Oracle quietly kill it like they did with OpenSolaris? Will they set the legacy code base free like they did with Grid Engine? Or will they just cash in and sell it? Chances are that Lustre is being shopped around and we won't hear a peep from the Dark Tower until a sale is announced. That could be months, and that kind of prolonged uncertainty would not be good for the Lustre community." (Thanks to Chris Samuel)
PlayStation 3 hack - how it happened and what it means (The Guardian)
The Guardian looks at the implications of the recent PS3 hack. "Like many members of the hacker community, Fail0verflow is resolutely anti-piracy — its members bypass console security systems merely as an intellectual challenge, or to run their own operating systems and applications. Consequently, the group didn't itself reveal the key. However, days later hacker, George Hotz (also known as Geohot), previously responsible for opening the iPhone system to so-called "jailbreak" hacks, did released the required firmware package decrypter on his website. Although the current hack requires users to modify their PS3 to run homebrew apps (or use a PS3 'Jailbreak' dongle, which bypasses the security system on machines with older versions of the firmware), further developments may ensure that anyone with the relevant software tools and technical knowledge could produce applications that will run on any PS3. It would then effectively be an open system. And naturally, the floodgates that have prevented widescale piracy on the console for the last few years could be smashed to pieces."
New Books
Org Mode 7 manual - printed edition now available
"The Org Mode 7 Reference Manual - Organize your life with GNU Emacs" by Carsten Dominik and others is available from Network Theory Ltd.jQuery Pocket Reference--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media has released "jQuery Pocket Reference" by David Flanagan.Building Wireless Sensor Networks--New from O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media has released "Building Wireless Sensor Networks" by Robert Faludi.
Calls for Presentations
First KDE Conference in India - conf.kde.in
KDE-India will be holding conf.kde.in March 9-11, 2011 in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India. The Call for Participation is open until January 15.Linux Audio Conference 2011
The Linux Audio Conference (LAC) takes place in Maynooth, Ireland, May 6-8, 2011. The deadline for the call for papers has been extended until February 20.OpenStreetMap State of the Map 2011: call for papers (The H)
The H covers the OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference, taking place September 9-11 in Denver, Colorado. Tne call for papers is open until March 15.
Upcoming Events
The Linux Foundation's 2011 event schedule
The Linux Foundation has announced its events schedule for the coming year. There will be LinuxCon events in Yokohama, Vancouver, Prague (co-located with the Kernel Summit), and Sao Paulo, with a number of other conferences scheduled as well.Events: January 20, 2011 to March 21, 2011
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| February 2 February 3 |
Cloud Expo Europe | London, UK |
| February 5 February 6 |
FOSDEM 2011 | Brussels, Belgium |
| February 5 | Open Source Conference Kagawa 2011 | Takamatsu, Japan |
| February 7 February 11 |
Global Ignite Week 2011 | several, worldwide |
| February 11 February 12 |
Red Hat Developer Conference 2011 | Brno, Czech Republic |
| February 15 | 2012 Embedded Linux Conference | Redwood Shores, CA, USA |
| February 25 | Build an Open Source Cloud | Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| February 25 February 27 |
Southern California Linux Expo | Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| February 25 | Ubucon | Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| February 26 | Open Source Software in Education | Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| March 1 March 2 |
Linux Foundation End User Summit 2011 | Jersey City, NJ, USA |
| March 5 | Open Source Days 2011 Community Edition | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| March 7 March 10 |
Drupalcon Chicago | Chicago, IL, USA |
| March 9 March 11 |
ConFoo Conference | Montreal, Canada |
| March 9 March 11 |
conf.kde.in 2011 | Bangalore, India |
| March 11 March 13 |
PyCon 2011 | Atlanta, Georgia, USA |
| March 19 | Open Source Conference Oita 2011 | Oita, Japan |
| March 19 March 20 |
Chemnitzer Linux-Tage | Chemnitz, Germany |
| March 19 | OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan Mappers Symposium | Tokyo, Japan |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol