Announcements
Brief items
Court rejects AVM's claims opposing third party modifications of GPL software
The gpl-violations.org web site has the news that the court ruled against AVM in its bid to restrict Cybits (and anyone else) from modifying the GPL-covered code in home routers. "Although the written reasoning of the decision is not available yet, it is clear that the court rejected AVM's claims according to which no third party shall be permitted to alter their products' firmware, even if the GNU GPL components are concerned. Thus, Cybits or anyone else may perform such modifications. Furthermore, under the judgement, Cybits is not prohibited from distributing its software that assists users in making and installing modifications to GNU GPL licensed software (Linux kernel used in the Fritz!Box device)." LWN recently covered a talk about the case.
FSFE: Swedish activist receives Nordic Free Software Award 2011
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports that Erik Josefsson is the winner of the Nordic Free Software Award 2011. "From a career as a professional double-bass player, Josefsson gradually moved to full-time activism for freedom in the information society. He founded the Swedish Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII Sweden) in 2004. Listed among Sweden's 30 most influential people during the European debate about software patents in 2005, Josefsson is among Europe's foremost defenders of software freedom."
Articles of interest
W3C privacy workgroup issues first draft of Do Not Track standard (ars technica)
Ars technica reports on the availability of W3C's first draft of a Web standard that addresses online privacy. "Mozilla originally introduced the DNT setting in Firefox 4 earlier this year. The feature consists of a simple HTTP header flag that can be toggled through the browser's preference dialog. The flag tells website operators and advertisers that the user wants to opt out of invasive tracking and other similar practices that have become pervasive with the rise of behavioral advertising. Of course, the mechanism just indicates a preference and doesn't actively block tracking activity. The success and efficacy of the DNT header is predicated on voluntary compliance from the Internet advertisers that will have to take steps to implement support for the feature."
EFF: Hollywood's new war on software freedom and Internet innovation
Here's a release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the latest bit of silliness from the US Legislative branch. "No longer content to just blacklist entries in the Domain Name System, this version targets software developers and distributors as well. It allows the Attorney General (doing Hollywood or trademark holders' bidding) to go after more or less anyone who provides or offers a product or service that could be used to get around DNS blacklisting orders. This language is clearly aimed at Mozilla, which took a principled stand in refusing to assist the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to censor the domain name system, but we are also concerned that it could affect the open source community, internet innovation, and software freedom more broadly". US citizens who are concerned about this bill might want to consider communicating those concerns to their congresscritters.
Barnes & Noble Exposes Microsoft's "Trivial" Patents and Strategy Against Android (Groklaw)
Barnes & Noble has started speaking out about its experience with the patent system in a big way; Groklaw has the full set of documents. "Instead of focusing on innovation and the development of new products for consumers, Microsoft has decided to invest its efforts into driving open source developers from the mobile operating systems market. Through the use of offensive licensing agreements and the demand for unreasonable licensing fees, Microsoft is hindering creativity in the mobile operating systems market."
Hughes: Introducing the ColorHug open source colorimeter
For everybody who has been thinking that they need to color-calibrate their monitors, but who have not gotten around to getting access to a colorimeter: Richard Hughes has announced the "ColorHug". "This is hardware that measures the colors shown on the screen and creates a color profile. Existing hardware is proprietary and 100% closed, and my hardware is open source. It has a GPL bootloader, GPL firmware image and GPL hardware schematics and PCBs. It's faster than the proprietary hardware, and more importantly a lot cheaper." He is currently seeking enough pre-orders to make an initial run of the hardware. (See this article to learn more about color profiles and how Linux systems can use them). (Thanks to Paul Wise).
New Books
Making Embedded Systems--New from O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media has released "Making Embedded Systems" by Elecia White.New Programmer's Survival Manual--New from Pragmatic Bookshelf
Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "New Programmer's Survival Manual" by Josh Carter.
Calls for Presentations
FOSDEM 2012: 2nd call for talks
FOSDEM 2012 will take place February 4-5, 2012 in Brussels, Belgium. The deadline for submissions is December 22, 2011. This announcement is solicting talks for the two cross-distribution devrooms. "Acceptable sessions can be any wide range of things, including talks, BoF sessions, and round tables. Note that for BoFs and round table sessions, the submitter will be considered the 'speaker', who will be expected to introduce the subject and serve as moderator."
Upcoming Events
The Linux Foundation Announces Program for Automotive Linux Summit
The Linux Foundation has announced the program for the Automotive Linux Summit taking place November 28, 2011 in Yokohama, Japan. "This one-day event is packed with six keynote presentations from major car manufacturers and the Linux kernel community. It also includes 15 breakout sessions, which will cover best practices for Linux in automotive, HTML5 technology in cars, compliance, and In-Vehicle-Infotainment, among other topics."
SCALE: Design Contest winners named
The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) team has announced the winner of the design contest. The winning design, by Brian Beck, will be featured on t-shirts, attendee bags, and other conference materials. Brian will get a free pass to SCALE 10X including airfare and a three-night stay at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport. SCALE 10X takes place January 20-22, 2012.Events: November 24, 2011 to January 23, 2012
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 24 | verinice.XP | Berlin, Germany |
| November 28 | Automotive Linux Summit 2011 | Yokohama, Japan |
| December 2 December 4 |
Debian Hildesheim Bug Squashing Party | Hildesheim, Germany |
| December 2 December 4 |
Open Hard- and Software Workshop | Munich, Germany |
| December 4 December 9 |
LISA 11: 25th Large Installation System Administration Conference | Boston, MA, USA |
| December 4 December 7 |
SciPy.in 2011 | Mumbai, India |
| December 27 December 30 |
28th Chaos Communication Congress | Berlin, Germany |
| January 12 January 13 |
Open Source World Conference 2012 | Granada, Spain |
| January 13 January 15 |
Fedora User and Developer Conference, North America | Blacksburg, VA, USA |
| January 16 January 20 |
linux.conf.au 2012 | Ballarat, Australia |
| January 20 January 22 |
Wikipedia & MediaWiki hackathon & workshops | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| January 20 January 22 |
SCALE 10x - Southern California Linux Expo | Los Angeles, CA, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol