Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
LSB Certification Bulletin - Year 2003 to date
The Linux Standards Base project presents an annual certification report. "As of Dec 19 2003 we are pleased to announce that the number of certified LSB Runtime systems has reached 30, with 19 of those certifications in year 2003 to date."
Mozilla Foundation Launches Holiday Donation Campaign (MozillaZine)
The Mozilla Foundation has launched a holiday donation program. "Supporters can donate either $25, $50 or $100 and receive free Mozilla gifts for themselves or their friends in return. A $25 donation entitles the giver to a free Mozilla 1.5 CD, $50 rewards him or her with a Mozilla CD annual subscription or a Mozilla T-Shirt and $100 bags the donor both a CD subscription and a T-Shirt."
Tis the season for giving (GnomeDesktop)
GnomeDesktop.org has posted a plea for donations for the GNOME Foundation. "You can help support the foundation's activities bringing GNOME to the developing world and subsidizing the participation of young developers and students in the GNOME Users and Developers European Conference(GUADEC) and the Summit."
Commercial announcements
E-commerce for Mom & Pop Shops
BLACKSUN networks, Inc. has announced the launch of a new E-commerce service aimed at making it quick and easy for small "Mom & Pop" businesses to build online stores using open source software.LinuxCertified Announces Debian Certified Laptop
LinuxCertified, Inc. has announced the release of its first Debian Certified Laptop. The LC2430 model was added to the line of LC2000 series laptops, with pre-configured Debian GNU/Linux.MAIT announces association with Linux Asia
MAIT has announced its association with Linux Asia. "MAIT, the apex body representing the hardware, training and R&D services sectors of the IT industry in the country, today announced an association with Linux Asia. Under this association, MAIT will be working alongwith EFY Group in organizing and promoting Linux Asia."
MandrakeMove LiveCD+USB Key is now available
MandrakeSoft has announced the release of MandrakeMove, a complete Linux desktop system that runs "on the fly" from a single bootable CD and uses a USB key to save personal data.Novell reasserts Unix copyright claim
Novell is back with a new press release claiming, once again, that it never transferred its Unix copyrights to SCO. The press release is brief, but points to a PDF file containing some correspondence between the two companies. The actual ownership of these copyright could well blow up into a court battle in its own right. Meanwhile, the existence of these claims is not going to help SCO's shakedown attempts.Novell has apparently put in a copyright registration covering the relevant Unix code; see this Groklaw article for the details.
Board of Directors changes at SCO
The SCO Group has announced some Board changes, including the abrupt resignation of Steve Cakebread ("due to personal time constraints"). As has been pointed out elsewhere, Mr. Cakebread is also Chief Financial Officer at Salesforce.com, a high-profile application service provider based on Linux. It seems entirely possible that Salesforce.com got a copy of that letter SCO sent out, and this is their response.
Resources
LDP Weekly News
The LDP Weekly News is out for December 17, 2003. Take a look to see the latest documentation changes.
Contests and Awards
Linux 2.6 Kernel Pool Results
The 2.6 Kernel Pool Results are now available. Steve Ratcliffe, Master Software Project Estimator, has most correctly estimated the release of the Linux version 2.6 kernel. On January 6, 2001 (within 4 hours of when the 2.6 kernel pool was opened), he entered a guess which was accurate within 15 hours. Check the results for some interesting statistics and submit your guess for the 2.8 pool.openMosix Wins 2003 Editor's Choice Award
openMosix has been awarded the 2003 OSDir.com Editor's Choice Award for Best of Linux. You can find the complete list of winners in this OSDir.com article.SCOX: Linux User Wins SCO Loss Pool
Don Marti reports that Linux user Rob Walker has won the SCO Loss Pool by correctly predicting The SCO Group's loss of $1.6 million for the quarter ended October 31, 2003.
Upcoming Events
Call for Submissions - LogOn Briefings 2004
A Call for Submissions has been posted for the LogOn Briefings Europe 2004 sessions, which will take place in various European cities in January, March, and May, 2004.Effective Security using Open Source Security Tools
Open Source Chicago is featuring a presentation by Bob Radvanovsky on Effective Security using Open Source Security Tools. The event will take place in Chicago, IL on January 22, 2004.EclipseCon 2004 Announced
Eclipse has announced EclipseCon 2004 will be held in Anaheim, CA on February 2-5, 2004. ""EclipseCon is the first event where the powerful ecosystem forming around Eclipse will come together to exchange experiences and chart the future of this key open technology," said Skip McGaughey, Chairperson of the Eclipse Board of Stewards. "This is an important event for many users that are considering making the choice to incorporate Eclipse based technology into commercial projects, research, instruction and general development efforts.""
IDG World Expo Brings LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2005 to Boston
IDG World Expo has announced that the East Coast LinuxWorld Conference & Expo will take place in Boston beginning in 2005. The Boston debut will be held February 14 - 17, 2005. The next LinuxWorld is still set for January 20 - 23, 2004 at the Javits Center in New York City.O'Reilly OSCON Call for Participation
A Call for Participation has gone out for the 2004 O'Reilly Open Source Convention, The event will take place in Portland, OR on July 26-30, 2004.Events: December 24, 2003 - February 19, 2004
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| January 12 - 13, 2004 | Linux.Conf.au Miniconfs | Adelaide, Australia |
| January 12 - 13, 2004 | EducationaLinux 2004 | Adelaide, Australia |
| January 14 - 17, 2004 | Linux.conf.au | Adelaide, Australia |
| January 20 - 23, 2004 | LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 | (Jacob K. Javits Convention Center)New York, New York |
| January 31 - February 1, 2004 | WineConf 2004 | (Court International Building)St. Paul, Minnesota |
| February 2 - 6, 2004 | EclipseCon 2004 | (Disneyland Hotel)Anaheim, CA |
| February 2 - 4, 2004 | Open Standards and Certification Conference | (San Diego Marriott Mission Valley)San Diego, CA |
| February 3 - 5, 2004 | Linux Solutions 2004 | Paris, France |
| February 9 - 12, 2004 | O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference(ETech) | (The Westin Horton Plaza)San Diego, CA |
Web sites
The PHP Community Site
The PHP Community Site has been formed as a location for PHP developers to congregate and share ideas. "PHP has one of the largest developer communities in the world, yet we have no community gathering place like those you can find for other languages (Perl has http://use.perl.org/, for example)."
Savannah.gnu.org back online
Some weeks after being taken down due to a security compromise, the GNU project's Savannah server is back online - sort of. Quite a few subsystems are still not operational; see this posting on the current situation and the changes that have been made. The remaining site functionality should come back in January. What is also needed, however, is a detailed explanation of how the system was compromised, and for how long.
Software announcements
This week's software announcements
Here are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
- Sorted alphabetically,
- Sorted by license.
Page editor: Forrest Cook