Announcements
Brief items
The Document Foundation joins OpenDoc Society
The Document Foundation has become an organizational member of the OpenDoc Society. "OpenDoc Society brings together individuals and organizations with a stake or interest in the openness and future of documents, to learn from each other and share knowledge and best practices about core technologies, available tools, policy issues, transition strategies, legal aspects and of course the latest innovations."
New Report about Open Data for an Open Society
Marco Fioretti has announced the availability of the Open Data, Open Society report: "The report discusses the current and potential role, in a truly open society, of raw Public Sector Information (PSI) that is really open, that is fully accessible and reusable by everybody. The general characteristics of PSI and the conclusions are based on previous studies and on the analysis of current examples both from the European Union and the rest of the world. [...] The "Open Data, Open Society" project will continue with an online survey that will attempt to assess how many types of raw PSI are already released, in which formats and under which licenses, by the city and regional administration of the EU-15 countries. A final report will summarize and comment the results of the survey."
FSF: supporting Google's push for WebM
The Free Software Foundation has sent out a release stating its support for the WebM project. "We want the world to know that we also support WebM: with its developer-friendly patent license and free software reference implementation, it's a good choice to help ensure the Web fulfills its promise of providing a free way for the world to communicate."
Articles of interest
Google's dropping H.264 from Chrome a step backward for openness (ars technica)
Ars technica has a lengthy criticism of the removal of H.264 support from the Chrome browser. "Google is now building a community around WebM (similar to that around Theora), but it hasn't taken any steps to submit WebM to ISO, ITU, or SMPTE for formal open standardization. The company is preferring to keep it under its own sole control. For Google to claim that it is moving to 'open codecs' is quite absurd: H.264 is very much an open codec. WebM is not."
PS3 jailbreak prompts restraining order from Sony (CNet)
CNet covers Sony's DMCA suit against George Hotz, who figured out how to jailbreak the PS3 game console. "Sony is seeking the impoundment within the next 10 days of all circumvention technology that Hotz and his team employ. It also wants all mention of the circumvention removed from the Web, and has asked the court to force Hotz to ignore calls for help from others attempting to install packages on the console."
CES 2011: A Tale of an Android Onslaught (LinuxPlanet)
LinuxPlanet covers the array of Android devices seen at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. "While it seems every Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in recent memory has some theme that never really panned out (see 3-D TV), you might want to rethink the trend when it comes to Android. Google's Android attack was in full force at this year's edition with a vengeance. From smart phones to tablet devices of all sizes to Google TV, you couldn't travel the exhibit floor very far without bumping into something Android. For some companies, like Motorola, Android has fueled impressive comebacks. For others, like Sony, it's new territory."
Firefox 4 Beta 9 Gives Short Shrift to Linux Users (PCWorld)
PCWorld looks at the lack of hardware acceleration in the Linux version of the latest Firefox beta. ""We tried enabling OpenGL on Linux, and discovered that most Linux drivers are so disastrously buggy (think 'crash the X server at the drop of a hat, and paint incorrectly the rest of the time' buggy) that we had to disable it for now," wrote Mozilla developer Boris Zbarsky Friday in a comment on the Mozilla Hacks developer blog. "Heck, we're even disabling WebGL for most Linux drivers, last I checked.""
Phipps: Apple and Google and ODF
Simon Phipps notes that in Latvia (and other European countries) governments must accept documents in ODF format, and bemoans the lack of ODF support from Apple and Google. "So I remain surprised that neither Apple nor Google are taking ODF support seriously. Apple still don't support ODF in their applications (despite it being available in their TextEdit gadget on Mac OS X) or the iPhone or iPad, and the ODF support in Google Docs is so weak that documents I try to upload from LibreOffice are routinely rejected in ODF and yet accepted if I save the identical document in .doc format. It's ironic that the best proprietary ODF support right now is from Microsoft." (Thanks to Davide Del Vento)
Upstreaming your code - a primer
Armijn Hemel and Ralf Baechle have written an introduction to upstreaming code to the kernel. It's aimed at chip vendors, but should be applicable to other aspiring kernel hackers. "It is likely that the first submission to a Linux kernel developer of your code will not be accepted. This could be for various reasons: the code does not follow the coding style, code quality might not be as high as is expected, and so on. Do not see this as a rejection of your code, but as a first step for successful inclusion into the mainline kernel. Sometimes developers might react very terse, or seemingly irritated. Once again, do not see this as a rejection, but as a sign that you need to put in a little bit more effort."
New Books
Eloquent JavaScript--New from No Starch Press
No Starch Press has released "Eloquent JavaScript", by Marijn Haverbeke.Gimp 2.6 for Photographers--New from Rocky Nook
Rocky Nook has released "GIMP 2.6 for Photographers", by Klaus Goelker.Programming Python, 4th Edition--New from O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media has released "Programming Python, Fourth Edition", by Mark Lutz.Software Testing Foundations, Third Edition--New from Rocky Nook
Rocky Nook has released "Software Testing Foundations, Third Edition", by Andreas Spillner, Tilo Linz and Hans Schaefer.
Resources
Linux Foundation Monthly Newsletter: January 2011
The January edition of the Linux Foundation newsletter covers the 2011 Event Schedule, a new fellow, five new members, individual membership drive winners announced, Linux Powering Your Cell Phone Network: A Case Study, and more.
Contests and Awards
Voting for the 2010 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is Now Open
LinuxQuestions.org has announced that voting for the 2010 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is now open. "Awards will be given out in 31 categories this year, including Server Distribution of the Year, Desktop Distribution of the Year, Mobile Distribution of the Year, Browser of the Year, NoSQL Database of the Year and Open Source Web Framework of the Year. The polls will close on February 17th."
Calls for Presentations
Linux Plumbers' Conference 2011: Call for Tracks
The Linux Plumbers' Conference will take place in Santa Rosa, CA, September 7-9, 2011 and the program committee is looking for track proposals. "The ideal track proposal is focused enough to allow progress and attract the right participants, but also spans several components of the Linux technology stack and a set of problems that can specifically benefit from face to face discussion between the various teams involved."
NLUUG Spring Conference 2011
NLUUG will be holding their spring conference May 12, 2011. "We are looking for presentations to complete the program for our Spring Conference of 2011. We would like to receive abstracts on technical subjects (40 minutes time slots) and practical experiences (20 minutes) related to the theme "Open is Efficient". With these 20 minutes shorter presentations we hope to achieve that more people contribute to the conference." The proposal deadline is February 12.
Texas Linux Fest 2011 Call for Papers now open
Texas Linux Fest 2011 takes place April 2, in Austin, Texas. The call for papers is open until February 14.
Upcoming Events
The first set of FOSDEM interviews
FOSDEM (Brussels, February 5-6) has posted the first set of its traditional speaker interviews; featured this time are a certain LWN editor, Eben Moglen, James Turnbull, Boudewijn Rempt, and Gratien D'haese. Quoting Eben: "Currently, governments are very eager to control the Net, which is a disaster for freedom. Industry is responding to the mobile computing revolution by trying to lock down the devices people use in their daily lives. And powerful industrial players who make money by surveilling people and data-mining the resulting information are encouraging more people to give up their basic privacy for small, if not meaningless, benefits. All are large threats to freedom, and if our strategies worked against only one or two such threats, we could still fail."
LCA 2011 will be happening
The linux.conf.au 2011 team has announced that the event will happen as scheduled, despite the flooding in Brisbane which has left them with some problems to work out still. "At this stage the venue location is still to be confirmed as are a number of social events, though there are some backup plans in place."
LCA moves to a new venue
The venue for linux.conf.au, starting January 24 in Brisbane, has been moved to the Kelvin Grove campus of the Queensland University of Technology - a shift of about 4km. The current recommendation seems to be that attendees should keep their current hotel reservations and use the bus service to get to the venue. "We do ask you to be patient as we work through all the logistics - but the conference will go ahead and no miniconfs or conference streams will be canceled." One only hopes that the organizers have planned a big party after the event; they will certainly have earned it.
Events: January 27, 2011 to March 28, 2011
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| March 21 March 22 |
Embedded Technology Conference 2011 | San Jose, Costa Rica |
| March 22 March 24 |
OMG Workshop on Real-time, Embedded and Enterprise-Scale Time-Critical Systems | Washington, DC, USA |
| March 22 March 25 |
Frühjahrsfachgespräch | Weimar, Germany |
| March 22 March 24 |
UKUUG Spring 2011 Conference | Leeds, UK |
| March 22 March 25 |
PgEast PostgreSQL Conference | New York City, NY, USA |
| March 23 March 25 |
Palmetto Open Source Software Conference | Columbia, SC, USA |
| March 26 | 10. Augsburger Linux-Infotag 2011 | Augsburg, Germany |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol