Announcements
Brief items
EFF: Trolling Effects - New Web Resource Launched to Shine Light on Patent Trolls
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of organizations and law schools have launched Trolling Effects, an online resource that aims to "unite and empower would-be victims of patent trolls through a crowdsourced database of demand letters and to serve as a clearinghouse of information on the troll epidemic."
FSF raising funds for the Replicant project
The Free Software Foundation has announced a fundraising effort for the Replicant project. "While most of Android is already free software, device manufacturers distribute the OS with some key nonfree parts. Those parts are in the layer of Android that communicates with the phone or tablet hardware, such as the WiFi and Bluetooth chips. In addition, every commonly available Android device comes pre-loaded with a variety of proprietary applications running on top of the operating system. Replicant seeks to provide all of the same functionality using only free software."
Videos from the GNU Tools Cauldron
Videos from the recently-concluded GNU Tools Cauldron event are now publicly available. Many topics are covered, including re-architecting GCC, data race detection in GDB, the impact of compiler options on energy consumption, and more.
Articles of interest
Ada Initiative - Progress in 2013
The Ada Initiative has a report on its progress during the first half of 2013. "2012 was a tipping point for women in open technology and culture. In 2013 the Ada Initiative has worked hard to build on that momentum, through the AdaCamp conference, Impostor Syndrome training, workshops, speeches, interviews in the mainstream media, and more. With your help, we're continuing to make a difference for women in open technology and culture. Thank you so much for your support of our work!"
FSFE objects to claims of 'predatory pricing' in Free Software
A coalition led by Microsoft has recently submitted an antitrust complaint to the European Commission claiming that the distribution of Free Software free of charge hurts competition. The Free Software Foundation Europe has written a letter to the European Commission's competition authorities refuting that claim. "In its letter, FSFE urges the Commission to consider the facts properly before accepting these allegations at face value. "Free Software is a boon for humankind. The only thing that it is dangerous to is Microsoft's hopelessly outdated, restrictive business model," says Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's president."
MIT's report on the Aaron Swartz case
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has released its report on its actions regarding the Aaron Swartz case; the conclusion is that MIT did nothing wrong. "However, the report says that MIT’s neutrality stance did not consider factors including 'that the defendant was an accomplished and well-known contributor to Internet technology'; that the law under which he was charged 'is a poorly drafted and questionable criminal law as applied to modern computing'; and that 'the United States was pursuing an overtly aggressive prosecution.' While MIT’s position 'may have been prudent,' the report says, 'it did not duly take into account the wider background' of policy issues 'in which MIT people have traditionally been passionate leaders.'"
New Books
OpenGL ES 2 for Android--New from Pragmatic Bookshelf
Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "OpenGL ES 2 for Android" by Kevin Brothaler.Rapid Android Development--New from Pragmatic Bookshelf
Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "Rapid Android Development" by Daniel Sauter.
Contests and Awards
The O’Reilly Open Source Awards
The recipients of the 2013 O’Reilly Open Source Awards have been announced. Awards go to Behdad Esfahbod (HarfBuzz), Jessica McKellar (Python Software Foundation), Limor Fried (Adafruit Industries), Valerie Aurora (Ada Initiative), Paul Fenwick (Perl), and Martin Michlmayr (Debian Project).
Calls for Presentations
CFP Deadlines: August 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013
The following listing of CFP deadlines is taken from the LWN.net CFP Calendar.
| Deadline | Event Dates | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 7 | September 12 September 14 |
SmartDevCon | Katowice, Poland |
| August 15 | August 22 August 25 |
GNU Hackers Meeting 2013 | Paris, France |
| August 18 | October 19 | Hong Kong Open Source Conference 2013 | Hong Kong, China |
| August 19 | September 20 September 22 |
PyCon UK 2013 | Coventry, UK |
| August 21 | October 23 | TracingSummit2013 | Edinburgh, UK |
| August 22 | September 25 September 27 |
LibreOffice Conference 2013 | Milan, Italy |
| August 30 | October 24 October 25 |
Xen Project Developer Summit | Edinburgh, UK |
| August 31 | October 26 October 27 |
T-DOSE Conference 2013 | Eindhoven, Netherlands |
| August 31 | September 24 September 25 |
Kernel Recipes 2013 | Paris, France |
| September 1 | November 18 November 21 |
2013 Linux Symposium | Ottawa, Canada |
| September 6 | October 4 October 5 |
Open Source Developers Conference France | Paris, France |
| September 15 | November 8 | PGConf.DE 2013 | Oberhausen, Germany |
| September 15 | December 27 December 30 |
30th Chaos Communication Congress | Hamburg, Germany |
| September 15 | November 15 November 16 |
Linux Informationstage Oldenburg | Oldenburg, Germany |
| September 15 | October 3 October 4 |
PyConZA 2013 | Cape Town, South Africa |
| September 15 | November 22 November 24 |
Python Conference Spain 2013 | Madrid, Spain |
| September 15 | February 1 February 2 |
FOSDEM 2014 | Brussels, Belgium |
| September 15 | April 11 April 13 |
PyCon 2014 | Montreal, Canada |
If the CFP deadline for your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Upcoming Events
DebConf13 preliminary schedule available
The schedule for DebConf13 (August 11-18 in Vaumarcus, Switzerland) has been posted. "DebConf13 talks will mostly happen in two rooms simultaneously, except for a few plenaries which will be presented in the main room with no parallel event. A third room will be available for discussion groups and ad-hoc sessions. As usual, we’ve tried to cluster related activities in sequence, even though it was not always possible."
PyWeek 17 in September
The Python Game Programming Challenge, PyWeek, will run its 17th challenge during the week of September 1-8, 2013. The PyWeek challenge invites entrants to write a game in one week from scratch either as an individual or in a team.Ohio LinuxFest Announces Kirk McKusick to be a keynote speaker
Ohio LinuxFest (September 13-15 in Columbus, Ohio) has announced that Kirk McKusick will be a keynote speaker. "Kirk McKusick is a longtime promoter of Free Software, particularly the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) of Unix. In the early days he shared an office with Bill Joy (later founder of Sun Microsystems), and is credited with designing the original Berkeley Fast File System (FFS). He implemented soft updates, an alternative approach to maintaining disk integrity after a crash or power outage, in FFS, and a revised version of UFS known as "UFS2", and is primarily responsible for creating the complementary features of filesystem snapshots and background fsck (file system check and repair)."
Events: August 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| July 31 August 4 |
OHM2013: Observe Hack Make | Geestmerambacht, the Netherlands |
| August 1 August 8 |
GUADEC 2013 | Brno, Czech Republic |
| August 3 August 4 |
COSCUP 2013 | Taipei, Taiwan |
| August 6 August 8 |
Military Open Source Summit | Charleston, SC, USA |
| August 7 August 11 |
Wikimania | Hong Kong, China |
| August 9 August 11 |
XDA:DevCon 2013 | Miami, FL, USA |
| August 9 August 13 |
PyCon Canada | Toronto, Canada |
| August 9 August 12 |
Flock - Fedora Contributor Conference | Charleston, SC, USA |
| August 11 August 18 |
DebConf13 | Vaumarcus, Switzerland |
| August 12 August 14 |
YAPC::Europe 2013 “Future Perl” | Kiev, Ukraine |
| August 16 August 18 |
PyTexas 2013 | College Station, TX, USA |
| August 22 August 25 |
GNU Hackers Meeting 2013 | Paris, France |
| August 23 August 24 |
Barcamp GR | Grand Rapids, MI, USA |
| August 24 August 25 |
Free and Open Source Software Conference | St.Augustin, Germany |
| August 30 September 1 |
Pycon India 2013 | Bangalore, India |
| September 3 September 5 |
GanetiCon | Athens, Greece |
| September 6 September 8 |
Kiwi PyCon 2013 | Auckland, New Zealand |
| September 6 September 8 |
State Of The Map 2013 | Birmingham, UK |
| September 10 September 11 |
Malaysia Open Source Conference 2013 | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
| September 12 September 14 |
SmartDevCon | Katowice, Poland |
| September 13 | CentOS Dojo and Community Day | London, UK |
| September 16 September 18 |
LinuxCon North America | New Orleans, LA, USA |
| September 16 September 18 |
CloudOpen | New Orleans, LA, USA |
| September 18 September 20 |
Linux Plumbers Conference | New Orleans, LA, USA |
| September 19 September 20 |
Linux Security Summit | New Orleans, LA, USA |
| September 19 September 20 |
Open Source Software for Business | Prato, Italy |
| September 19 September 20 |
UEFI Plugfest | New Orleans, LA, USA |
| September 20 September 22 |
PyCon UK 2013 | Coventry, UK |
| September 23 September 27 |
Tcl/Tk Conference | New Orleans, LA, USA |
| September 23 September 25 |
X Developer's Conference | Portland, OR, USA |
| September 24 September 26 |
OpenNebula Conf | Berlin, Germany |
| September 24 September 25 |
Kernel Recipes 2013 | Paris, France |
| September 25 September 27 |
LibreOffice Conference 2013 | Milan, Italy |
| September 26 September 29 |
EuroBSDcon | St Julian's area, Malta |
| September 27 September 29 |
GNU 30th anniversary | Cambridge, MA, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol