Announcements
Brief items
Linux Foundation and Goodwill team up to provide free Linux training in Central Texas
The Linux Foundation and Goodwill are working together to bring free Linux training and certification to adult students in Texas. "The scholarship program will begin with The Goodwill Excel Center and the Goodwill Career and Technical Academy in Central Texas and is expected to expand to other communities in the future. The Goodwill Excel Center is the first free public charter high school for adults in Texas. Students age 17-50 have the opportunity to earn their high school diploma, complete an in-demand professional certification and begin post-secondary education. The Extended Learning Linux Foundation Scholarship Program created by Linux Foundation and Goodwill includes free access to the Intro to Linux (LFS101x) and Essentials of System Administration (LFS201) courses, and the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator exam at no cost. Hundreds of disadvantaged individuals from underserved communities and a variety of backgrounds are expected to enroll in the new program in the year ahead."
Articles of interest
Dutch consumer group sues Samsung over Android updates (OSNews)
OSNews reports that the Dutch consumer protection advocacy agency Consumentenbond has sued Samsung, demanding updates for its Android phones. "The Consumentenbond had been in talks with Samsung about this issue for a while now, but no positive outcome was reached, and as such, they saw no other option but to file suit. The Consumentenbond is demanding that Samsung provides two years of updates for all its Android devices, with the two-year period starting not at the date of market introduction of the device, but at the date of sale. This means that devices introduced one or even more years ago that are still being sold should still get two years' worth of updates starting today." (Thanks to Paolo Bonzini)
Garrett: Linux Foundation quietly drops community representation
On his blog, Matthew Garrett has noted that the Linux Foundation (LF) has dropped the community representatives to its board that were elected by the individual LF members. "The by-laws were amended to drop the clause that permitted individual members to elect any directors. Section 3.3(a) now says that no affiliate members may be involved in the election of directors, and section 5.3(d) still permits at-large directors but does not require them[2]. The old version of the bylaws are here - the only non-whitespace differences are in sections 3.3(a) and 5.3(d). These changes all happened shortly after Karen Sandler [executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy] announced that she planned to stand for the Linux Foundation board during a presentation last September [YouTube link]. A short time later, the "Individual membership" program was quietly renamed to the "Individual supporter" program and the promised benefit of being allowed to stand for and participate in board elections was dropped (compare the old page to the new one)." Garrett speculates that the GPL enforcement suit that the Software Freedom Conservancy is funding against VMware, which is an LF member, is ultimately behind the move. He also notes (the [2] above) that there is still a community representative from the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) that sits on the LF board.
New Books
Second Edition of the BIND DNS Administration Reference
Reed Media Services has published the second edition of the definitive "BIND DNS Administration Reference" book covering name server operations and DNS configuration using BIND.
Calls for Presentations
Call for Papers, PostgreSQL and PostGIS, Session #8
The 8th PostgreSQL Session will be held on April 6, 2016, in Lyon, France. The call for papers ends February 29. "Talks can be either: a case study, a Proof of Concept, a tutorial, a benchmark, a presentation of a new feature, etc. Of course, we're open to propositions on any other migration related topics (monitoring, hardware, replication, etc.) !"
2016 Linux Plumbers Conference Call for Microconferences
The 2016 Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) has announced its Call for Microconferences. LPC will be held in Santa Fe, NM, USA on November 2-4, co-located with the Kernel Summit. "A microconference is a collection of collaborative sessions focused on problems in a particular area of the Linux plumbing, which includes the kernel, libraries, utilities, UI, and so forth, but can also focus on cross-cutting concerns such as security, scaling, energy efficiency, or a particular use case. Good microconferences result in solutions to these problems and concerns, while the best microconferences result in patches that implement those solutions."
CFP Deadlines: January 21, 2016 to March 21, 2016
The following listing of CFP deadlines is taken from the LWN.net CFP Calendar.
| Deadline | Event Dates | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 22 | May 2 May 5 |
FOSS4G North America | Raleigh, NC, USA |
| January 22 | January 22 January 23 |
XenProject - Cloud Innovators Forum | Pasadena, CA, USA |
| January 24 | March 14 March 18 |
CeBIT 2016 Open Source Forum | Hannover, Germany |
| January 24 | March 11 March 13 |
PyCon SK 2016 | Bratislava, Slovakia |
| January 29 | April 20 April 21 |
Vault 2016 | Raleigh, NC, USA |
| February 1 | April 25 April 29 |
OpenStack Summit | Austin, TX, USA |
| February 1 | June 22 June 24 |
USENIX Annual Technical Conference | Denver, CO, USA |
| February 1 | April 4 April 8 |
OpenFabrics Alliance Workshop | Monterey, CA, USA |
| February 2 | March 29 March 31 |
Collaboration Summit | Lake Tahoe, CA, USA |
| February 5 | April 4 April 6 |
Embedded Linux Conference | San Diego, CA, USA |
| February 5 | April 4 April 6 |
OpenIoT Summit | San Diego, CA, USA |
| February 6 | February 12 February 14 |
Linux Vacation / Eastern Europe Winter Edition 2016 | Minsk, Belarus |
| February 8 | April 7 April 8 |
SRECon16 | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| February 10 | April 23 April 24 |
LinuxFest Northwest | Bellingham, WA, USA |
| February 12 | May 9 May 13 |
ApacheCon North America | Vancouver, Canada |
| February 15 | March 11 March 13 |
Zimowisko Linuksowe TLUG | Puck, Poland |
| February 23 | April 9 April 10 |
OSS Weekend | Bratislava, Slovakia |
| February 28 | April 6 | PostgreSQL and PostGIS, Session #8 | Lyon, France |
| February 28 | May 10 May 12 |
Samba eXPerience 2016 | Berlin, Germany |
| February 28 | April 18 April 19 |
Linux Storage, Filesystem & Memory Management Summit | Raleigh, NC, USA |
| February 28 | June 21 June 22 |
Deutsche OpenStack Tage | Köln, Deutschland |
| February 28 | June 24 June 25 |
Hong Kong Open Source Conference 2016 | Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| March 1 | April 23 | DevCrowd 2016 | Szczecin, Poland |
| March 6 | July 17 July 24 |
EuroPython 2016 | Bilbao, Spain |
| March 9 | June 1 June 2 |
Apache MesosCon | Denver, CO, USA |
| March 10 | May 14 May 15 |
Open Source Conference Albania | Tirana, Albania |
| March 12 | April 26 | Open Source Day 2016 | Warsaw, Poland |
| March 15 | April 28 May 1 |
Mini-DebCamp & DebConf | Vienna, Austria |
| March 20 | April 28 April 30 |
Linuxwochen Wien 2016 | Vienna, Austria |
If the CFP deadline for your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Upcoming Events
SCALE 14X: Event Updates
SCALE runs January 21-24 in Pasadena, CA. There will be a Game Night, a weakest geek contest, ham radio exams, and more.Events: January 21, 2016 to March 21, 2016
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| January 20 January 22 |
O'Reilly Design Conference 2016 | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| January 21 January 22 |
Ubuntu Summit | Pasadena, CA, USA |
| January 21 January 24 |
SCALE 14x - Southern California Linux Expo | Pasadena, CA, USA |
| January 22 January 23 |
XenProject - Cloud Innovators Forum | Pasadena, CA, USA |
| January 25 | Richard Stallman - "A Free Digital Society" | Stockholm, Sweden |
| January 30 January 31 |
Free and Open Source Developers Meeting | Brussels, Belgium |
| February 1 | Sysadmin Miniconf | Geelong, Australia |
| February 1 | MINIXCon 2016 | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| February 1 February 5 |
linux.conf.au | Geelong, Australia |
| February 5 February 7 |
DevConf.cz 2016 | Brno, Czech Republic |
| February 10 | The Block Chain Conference | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| February 10 February 12 |
netdev 1.1 | Seville, Spain |
| February 12 February 14 |
Linux Vacation / Eastern Europe Winter Edition 2016 | Minsk, Belarus |
| February 24 February 25 |
AGL Member's Meeting | Tokyo, Japan |
| February 27 | Open Source Days | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| March 1 March 6 |
Internet Freedom Festival | Valencia, Spain |
| March 1 | Icinga Camp Berlin | Berlin, Germany |
| March 8 March 10 |
Fluent 2016 | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| March 9 March 11 |
18th German Perl Workshop | Nürnberg, Germany |
| March 10 March 12 |
Studencki Festiwal Informatyczny (Students' Computer Science Festival) | Cracow, Poland |
| March 11 March 13 |
Zimowisko Linuksowe TLUG | Puck, Poland |
| March 11 March 13 |
PyCon SK 2016 | Bratislava, Slovakia |
| March 14 March 17 |
Open Networking Summit | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| March 14 March 18 |
CeBIT 2016 Open Source Forum | Hannover, Germany |
| March 16 March 17 |
Great Wide Open | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| March 18 March 20 |
FOSSASIA 2016 Singapore | Singapore, Singapore |
| March 19 March 20 |
Chemnitzer Linux Tage 2016 | Chemnitz, Germany |
| March 19 March 20 |
LibrePlanet | Boston, MA, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol