Announcements

Google to buy Motorola mobility

Google has announced that it is acquiring Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. "The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business." The press release says nothing about mobile-related patents, but that's obviously a big part of what's going on here.

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MPL 2.0-rc1

The first release candidate for version 2.0 of the Mozilla Public License is now available for comment. "We've had a lot of useful feedback throughout this process, both from professional lawyers and passionate non-lawyers, but we're still seeking to write the best license we can. That means we still want even more participation and commentary from both the Mozilla community and the broader community of MPL and FLOSS users." There are some FAQ files available for those wanting information on what has changed.

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SPI board and officer elections

Software in the Public Interest (SPI) has announced the results of the recent board and officer elections. The current directors are: Bdale Garbee, Joerg Jaspert, Jonathan McDowell, Michael Schultheiss, Clint Adams, Robert Brockway, Joshua D. Drake, Jimmy Kaplowitz, and Martin Zobel-Helas.

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The mobile patent mess may get worse

The "Unwired View" site has come to a worrisome conclusion based on Motorola's quarterly earnings call and a conference keynote by CEO Sanjay Jha: Motorola may start demanding patent royalties from other Android handset makers. "The discussion above was solely about Android, and how Motorola can differentiate from other players who are already doing better - like HTC and Samsung. One of the key points to win against competition, according to Sanjay Jha, are Motorola's patents. Used not only defensively - to avoid paying royalties on its Android handsets, but also offensively. To collect royalties from other Android device makers." Needless to say, that would not help the situation.

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Tablet and smartphone run on Android-based Grid OS (Linux Devices)

Linux Devices reviews the upcoming tablet and phone offerings from Fusion Garage. "Grid OS is also hyped for its 'predictive intelligence' features based on the Semantic Web, the contextual World Wide Web extension set that has been championed by WWW inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The predictive software anticipates 'user needs for actions and information' with features like intelligent notifications. The latter offer time-based suggestions, such as 'restaurant recommendations near a user's GPS-determined lunch location,' says the company."

Comments (8 posted)

Non-profit Group Releases Open Source Mesh WiFi Network Software (Hot HardWare)

Hot HardWare reports that Geeks Without Frontiers has released open source software based on the 802.11s WiFi standard that lets Linux machines be their own WiFi network. "Geeks claims that the mesh networks created by open80211s will be highly secure. It uses strong authentication to allow only authorized individuals entry and encryption, to keep prying eyes from seeing the traffic."

Comments (7 posted)

Nokia's MeeGo-powered N9 not coming to the UK or US (The H)

The H has a report on the limited availability of the Nokia N9. "According to Nokia's N9 "Check Availability" page, the MeeGo phone will be making an appearance in Europe in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland. Outside Europe, the device is due to appear in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam." (Thanks to Felix Braun)

Comments (21 posted)

PyCon Ireland: Call for Papers and Volunteers for Beginner's Track

PyCon Ireland will take place October 8-9, 2011 in Dublin. The call for proposals is still open and volunteers are needed to help out with the beginner's track.

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PyCon 2012 Call for Proposals

PyCon 2012 will be held in Santa Clara, California, March 7-15. Proposals will be accepted through October 12, 2011.

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openSUSE Conference 2011

The third openSUSE Conference (osc11) will take place September 11-14, 2011 in Nuremberg, Germany. "Under the motto RWX³ all Free and Open Source Software enthusiasts are invited to come together for four days to learn, hack and to have a lot of fun. The program will cover a variety topics with an emphasis on interaction between participants. The event is free of charge and open to anyone!"

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Events: August 25, 2011 to October 24, 2011

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

Date(s)	Event	Location
August 22 August 26	8th Netfilter Workshop	Freiburg, Germany
August 25 August 28	EuroSciPy	Paris, France
August 25 August 28	GNU Hackers Meeting	Paris, France
August 26	Dynamic Language Conference 2011	Edinburgh, United-Kingdom
August 27 August 28	Kiwi PyCon 2011	Wellington, New Zealand
August 27	PyCon Japan 2011	Tokyo, Japan
August 27	SC2011 - Software Developers Haven	Ottawa, ON, Canada
August 30 September 1	Military Open Source Software (MIL-OSS) WG3 Conference	Atlanta, GA, USA
September 6 September 8	Conference on Domain-Specific Languages	Bordeaux, France
September 7 September 9	Linux Plumbers' Conference	Santa Rosa, CA, USA
September 8	Linux Security Summit 2011	Santa Rosa, CA, USA
September 8 September 9	Italian Perl Workshop 2011	Turin, Italy
September 8 September 9	Lua Workshop 2011	Frick, Switzerland
September 9 September 11	State of the Map 2011	Denver, Colorado, USA
September 9 September 11	Ohio LinuxFest 2011	Columbus, OH, USA
September 10 September 11	PyTexas 2011	College Station, Texas, USA
September 10 September 11	SugarCamp Paris 2011 - "Fix Sugar Documentation!"	Paris, France
September 11 September 14	openSUSE Conference	Nuremberg, Germany
September 12 September 14	X.Org Developers' Conference	Chicago, Illinois, USA
September 14 September 16	Postgres Open	Chicago, IL, USA
September 14 September 16	GNU Radio Conference 2011	Philadelphia, PA, USA
September 15	Open Hardware Summit	New York, NY, USA
September 16	LLVM European User Group Meeting	London, United Kingdom
September 16 September 18	Creative Commons Global Summit 2011	Warsaw, Poland
September 16 September 18	Pycon India 2011	Pune, India
September 18 September 20	Strange Loop	St. Louis, MO, USA
September 19 September 22	BruCON 2011	Brussels, Belgium
September 22 September 25	Pycon Poland 2011	Kielce, Poland
September 23 September 24	Open Source Developers Conference France 2011	Paris, France
September 23 September 24	PyCon Argentina 2011	Buenos Aires, Argentina
September 24 September 25	PyCon UK 2011	Coventry, UK
September 27 September 30	PostgreSQL Conference West	San Jose, CA, USA
September 27 September 29	Nagios World Conference North America 2011	Saint Paul, MN, USA
September 29 October 1	Python Brasil [7]	São Paulo, Brazil
September 30 October 3	Fedora Users and Developers Conference: Milan 2011	Milan, Italy
October 1 October 2	WineConf 2011	Minneapolis, MN, USA
October 1 October 2	Big Android BBQ	Austin, TX, USA
October 3 October 5	OpenStack "Essex" Design Summit	Boston, MA, USA
October 4 October 9	PyCon DE	Leipzig, Germany
October 6 October 9	EuroBSDCon 2011	Netherlands
October 7 October 9	Linux Autumn 2011	Kielce, Poland
October 7 October 10	Open Source Week 2011	Malang, Indonesia
October 8 October 9	PyCon Ireland 2011	Dublin, Ireland
October 8 October 9	Pittsburgh Perl Workshop 2011	Pittsburgh, PA, USA
October 8	PHP North West Conference	Manchester, UK
October 8 October 10	GNOME "Boston" Fall Summit 2011	Montreal, QC, Canada
October 8	FLOSSUK / UKUUG's 2011 Unconference	Manchester, UK
October 9 October 11	Android Open	San Francisco, CA, USA
October 11	PLUG Talk: Rusty Russell	Perth, Australia
October 12 October 15	LibreOffice Conference	Paris, France
October 14 October 16	MediaWiki Hackathon New Orleans	New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
October 14	Workshop Packaging BlankOn	Jakarta , Indonesia
October 15	Packaging Debian Class BlankOn	Surabaya, Indonesia
October 17 October 18	PyCon Finland 2011	Turku, Finland
October 18 October 21	PostgreSQL Conference Europe	Amsterdam, The Netherlands
October 19 October 21	13th German Perl Workshop	Frankfurt/Main, Germany
October 19 October 21	Latinoware 2011	Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil
October 20 October 22	13th Real-Time Linux Workshop	Prague, Czech Republic
October 21 October 23	PHPCon Poland 2011	Kielce, Poland
October 21	PG-Day Denver 2011	Denver, CO, USA
October 23 October 25	Kernel Summit	Prague, Czech Republic

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