Announcements
Articles of interest
SFLC: Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices
The Software Freedom Law Center has taken a look at Microsoft's Windows 8 certification requirements for the ARM architecture (which require that the system be fully locked down) and is not amused. "The new policy betrays the cynicism of Microsoft's initial response to concerns over Windows 8's secure boot requirement. When kernel hacker Matthew Garrett expressed his concern that PCs shipped with Windows 8 might prevent the installation of GNU/Linux and other free operating systems, Microsoft's Tony Mangefeste replied, 'Microsoft’s philosophy is to provide customers with the best experience first, and allow them to make decisions themselves.' It is clear now that opportunism, not philosophy, is guiding Microsoft's secure boot policy."
Garrett: Why UEFI secure boot is difficult for Linux
On his blog, Matthew Garrett provides an update on the UEFI secure boot situation. Unlike what some have said, the Microsoft certification requirements for Windows 8 still place significant barriers in the way of installing Linux—even on x86 systems—which Garrett outlines. "I wrote about the technical details of supporting the UEFI secure boot specification with Linux. Despite me pretty clearly saying that this was ignoring issues of licensing and key distribution and the like, people are now using it to claim that Linux could support secure boot with minimal effort. In a sense, they're right. The technical implementation details are fairly straightforward. But they're not the difficult bit."
Web Protests Piracy Bills, and 2 Senators Change Course (New York Times)
The New York Times reports that Internet protests against anti-piracy legislation (SOPA and PIPA) are working. "Freshman Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, was first out of the starting gate Wednesday morning with his announcement that he would no longer back anti-Internet piracy legislation he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who heads the campaign operation for his party, quickly followed suit and urged Congress take more time to study the measure that had been set for a test vote next week."
Second batch of FOSDEM 2012 speaker interviews
The series of interviews with FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developer's European Meeting) speakers continues with:- Michael Meeks (LibreOffice)
- Carsten Munk (mobile Linux)
- Kir Kolyshkin (OpenVZ)
- Robert Dewar (commercial success)
- Carsten Haitzler (EFL).
Google Code-in 2011-2012 Concludes
The 2011-2012 Google Code-in has ended. "Over eight busy weeks, 545 high school (pre-university) students competed in the Google Code-in contest completing tasks for 18 open source projects. The Google Code-in contest is designed to introduce high school students to the world of open source software development by having them complete ‘bite sized’ tasks while gaining knowledge and earning prizes along the way."
New Books
Web Development Recipes--New from Pragmatic Bookshelf
The Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "Web Development Recipes" by Brian P. Hogan, Chris Warren, Mike Weber, Chris Johnson, and Aaron Godin.
Calls for Presentations
PGCon 2012 Call for Papers
PGCon 2012 will be held May 17-18, 2012 in Ottawa, Canada. The conference will be preceded by two days of tutorials taking place May 15-16. "If you are doing something interesting with PostgreSQL, please submit a proposal. You might be one of the backend hackers or work on a PostgreSQL related project and want to share your know-how with others. You might be developing an interesting system using PostgreSQL as the foundation. Perhaps you migrated from another database to PostgreSQL and would like to share details. These, and other stories are welcome. Both users and developers are encouraged to share their experiences." Proposals are due by January 29.
2nd CFP: Open64 Workshop at PLDI'12
The Open64 Workshop will take place June 15, 2012, in Beijing China. "Active Open64 researchers & developers from academia and industry will report their research projects, experimental results, and development experiences using the Open64 compiler. The workshop provides a forum for discussion of your findings and experiences with a broad range of Open64 researchers and developers." The call for proposals ends February 10.
Upcoming Events
SUSE Announces First Annual Enterprise Linux Conference
SUSE has announced the first annual SUSECon, to be held September 18-21, 2012, in Nuremberg, Germany. "SUSE will bring together from across the globe its seasoned and knowledgeable experts, its strong partnerships with industry-leading technology vendors, and its showcase of successful customers to deliver a comprehensive agenda that offers both business and technical advice for enterprise Linux practitioners. Content and activities will be announced throughout the year for the September 2012 event - which coincides with SUSE's twentieth anniversary, a milestone that will be reflected at the conference."
SuperCollider 2012 program announced
SuperCollider is an audio programming environment. April 12-19, 2012 musicians, artists and coders will meet in London, UK for a festival showcasing works created with SuperCollider.Events: January 19, 2012 to March 19, 2012
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| January 27 January 29 |
DebianMed Meeting Southport2012 | Southport, UK |
| January 31 February 2 |
Ubuntu Developer Week | #ubuntu-classroom, irc.freenode.net |
| February 4 February 5 |
Free and Open Source Developers Meeting | Brussels, Belgium |
| February 6 February 10 |
Linux on ARM: Linaro Connect Q1.12 | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| February 7 February 8 |
Open Source Now 2012 | Geneva, Switzerland |
| February 10 February 12 |
Linux Vacation / Eastern Europe Winter session 2012 | Minsk, Belarus |
| February 10 February 12 |
Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering | Oslo, Norway |
| February 13 February 14 |
Android Builder's Summit | Redwood Shores, CA, USA |
| February 15 February 17 |
2012 Embedded Linux Conference | Redwood Shores, CA, USA |
| February 16 February 17 |
Embedded Technology Conference 2012 | San José, Costa Rica |
| February 17 February 18 |
Red Hat, Fedora, JBoss Developer Conference | Brno, Czech Republic |
| February 24 February 25 |
PHP UK Conference 2012 | London, UK |
| February 27 March 2 |
ConFoo Web Techno Conference 2012 | Montreal, Canada |
| February 28 | Israeli Perl Workshop 2012 | Ramat Gan, Israel |
| March 2 March 4 |
Debian BSP in Cambridge | Cambridge, UK |
| March 2 March 4 |
BSP2012 - Moenchengladbach | Mönchengladbach, Germany |
| March 5 March 7 |
14. German Perl Workshop | Erlangen, Germany |
| March 6 March 10 |
CeBIT 2012 | Hannover, Germany |
| March 7 March 15 |
PyCon 2012 | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| March 10 March 11 |
Open Source Days 2012 | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| March 10 March 11 |
Debian BSP in Perth | Perth, Australia |
| March 16 March 17 |
Clojure/West | San Jose, CA, USA |
| March 17 March 18 |
Chemnitz Linux Days | Chemnitz, Germany |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol