Announcements
Brief items
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones
Canonical's much-hyped January 2 announcement is the availability of a version of the Ubuntu distribution for mobile phones; it will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show starting January 7. "Your phone is more immersive, the screen is less cluttered, and you flow naturally from app to app with edge magic. The phone becomes a full PC and thin client when docked. Ubuntu delivers a magical phone that is faster to run, faster to use and fits perfectly into the Ubuntu family." There is no word about uptake by any handset manufacturers.
Petition: promote the use of free software in US schools
The US Whitehouse.gov site has a petition to promote the use of free software in schools. "Each year our educational system wastes billions of dollars for the purchase and support of proprietary operating systems and application software in our schools. The software is rigid and inflexible, opaque in its design and mysterious to our children. We advocate and propose the gradual replacement of privately owned software with restrictive licensing in favor of open source alternatives with GPL type licenses. In as much as possible we should have our students using software that complies with the definition of free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation." Registration is required to sign the petition. (Thanks to Davide Del Vento)
Articles of interest
Free Software Supporter -- Issue 57, December 2012
This edition of the Free Software Foundation's newsletter covers a Gnu bearing gifts, an interview with Kovid Goyal of Calibre, Bradley Kuhn on *Oracle v. Google*, new GNU releases, and several other topics.FSFE: Fellowship interview with Anna Morris
The Free Software Foundation Europe talks with Anna Morris, co-founder of the FLOSSIE conference for women in Free Software, Manchester Fellowship Group Deputy Coordinator, and Co-Director of Ethical Pets Ltd. "Perhaps most importantly, the learning and subsequent freedom that I have achieved is also down to Free software (and the community surrounding it). Free Software challenges you to learn: to do for yourself, to be fearlessly independent when it comes to your tech. In the past few years I have taken pride in watching my skill base catchup with and overtake that of my proprietary-loving peers, even some paid professionals, simply by having a free and curious mindset. Free software frees you in many ways."
The H Year: 2012's Wins, Fails and Mehs
The H rates some highlights of 2012. "Win – The Linux community’s reboots Secure Boot – Microsoft’s requirement that OEMs start using UEFI’s Secure Boot function had caused much concern within the Linux community, but when that had died down, developers at Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical and the Linux Foundation worked on a range of solutions for Linux distributions, large and small, to use if they wanted to boot on a machine with Secure Boot enabled and a user not capable of disabling it. Good ideas and information was exchanged, code was written and answers were found; that's how things should work."
Upcoming Events
SCALE 11X: Discounts, UpSCALE and more
The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) will take place February 22-24, 2013 in Los Angeles, CA. Early bird registration ends January 8. The call for UpSCALE (short) talks is still open. There will be 'SCALE: The Next Generation', a "youth driven" conference and that call for papers is open.Events: January 4, 2013 to March 5, 2013
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| January 18 January 20 |
FUDCon:Lawrence 2013 | Lawrence, Kansas, USA |
| January 18 January 19 |
Columbus Python Workshop | Columbus, OH, USA |
| January 20 | Berlin Open Source Meetup | Berlin, Germany |
| January 28 February 2 |
Linux.conf.au 2013 | Canberra, Australia |
| February 2 February 3 |
Free and Open Source software Developers' European Meeting | Brussels, Belgium |
| February 15 February 17 |
Linux Vacation / Eastern Europe 2013 Winter Edition | Minsk, Belarus |
| February 18 February 19 |
Android Builders Summit | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| February 20 February 22 |
Embedded Linux Conference | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| February 22 February 24 |
Southern California Linux Expo | Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| February 22 February 24 |
FOSSMeet 2013 | Calicut, India |
| February 22 February 24 |
Mini DebConf at FOSSMeet 2013 | Calicut, India |
| February 23 February 24 |
DevConf.cz 2013 | Brno, Czech Republic |
| February 25 March 1 |
ConFoo | Montreal, Canada |
| February 26 March 1 |
GUUG Spring Conference 2013 | Frankfurt, Germany |
| February 26 February 28 |
ApacheCon NA 2013 | Portland, Oregon, USA |
| February 26 February 28 |
O’Reilly Strata Conference | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| March 4 March 8 |
LCA13: Linaro Connect Asia | Hong Kong, China |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol