Announcements
Brief items
Raspberry Pi 3 is out
The Raspberry Pi 3 has been released and is on sale now for $35. "For Raspberry Pi 3, Broadcom have supported us with a new SoC, BCM2837. This retains the same basic architecture as its predecessors BCM2835 and BCM2836, so all those projects and tutorials which rely on the precise details of the Raspberry Pi hardware will continue to work. The 900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU complex has been replaced by a custom-hardened 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53. Combining a 33% increase in clock speed with various architectural enhancements, this provides a 50-60% increase in performance in 32-bit mode versus Raspberry Pi 2, or roughly a factor of ten over the original Raspberry Pi." (Thanks to Forrest Cook)
NetDev 1.1 slides now available
Slides from the talks at NetDev are available. Videos should be available soon.
Articles of interest
Free Software Supporter -- Issue 95, March 2016
This edition of the Free Software Foundation's monthly newsletter covers LibrePlanet, FSF's winter fundraiser, Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews Michael Zahniser, Defective By Design comments to the U.S. Copyright Office, Encryption: probably better than a box of chocolates, I Love Free Software Day 2016, and several other topics.FSFE Newsletter - March 2016
The Free Software Foundation Europe's monthly newsletter covers "I love Free Software" Day 2016, "No cloud" went viral, European Free Software Policy Meeting 2016, and more.Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to
Matthew Garrett digs into a Linux-running light bulb and is not impressed with what he finds. "The OS detection reported Linux, which wasn't hugely surprising - there was no GPL notice or source code included with the box, but I'm way past the point of shock at that. It also reported that there was a telnet daemon running. I connected and got a login prompt. And then I typed admin as the username and admin as the password and got a root prompt. So, there's that."
The Linux Foundation Partners with Women Who Code (Linux.com)
Linux.com reports that the Linux Foundation has partnered with Women Who Code (WWC) to provide free and discounted passes to Linux Foundation events for WWC members. "Women Who Code was created in 2011 and is best known for its weekly publication the CODE Review and free technical study groups, hack nights, career development, and speaking events featuring influential technology industry experts and investors. Their focus on education aligns with our goal to increase access to Linux and open source learning materials, helping to grow the Linux and open source talent pool, increases diversity in technology and provides the pathway to the most lucrative jobs in IT."
SFC: GPL Violations Related to Combining ZFS and Linux
The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has put out an analysis of the recently announced plans of Canonical to provide and support ZFS as part of Ubuntu 16.04. There are some license-compatibility questions within the community, but Canonical believes that it is within its rights to distribute the CDDLv1-licensed zfs.ko kernel module with the GPLv2-licensed kernel. SFC, however, disagrees: "We are sympathetic to Canonical's frustration in this desire to easily support more features for their users. However, as set out below, we have concluded that their distribution of zfs.ko violates the GPL. We have written this statement to answer, from the point of view of many key Linux copyright holders, the community questions that we've seen on this matter. Specifically, we provide our detailed analysis of the incompatibility between CDDLv1 and GPLv2 — and its potential impact on the trajectory of free software development — below. However, our conclusion is simple: Conservancy and the Linux copyright holders in the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers believe that distribution of ZFS binaries is a GPL violation and infringes Linux's copyright. We are also concerned that it may infringe Oracle's copyrights in ZFS. As such, we again ask Oracle to respect community norms against license proliferation and simply relicense its copyrights in ZFS under a GPLv2-compatible license."
SFLC: The Linux Kernel, CDDL and Related Issues
The Software Freedom Law Center weighs in on the ZFS controversy with a long and somewhat academic posting. The TL;DR is that it depends on what the kernel developers want. "No existing record conclusively or convincingly demonstrates whether the only relevant licensing community, the holders of kernel copyright, intends a literal or equitable interpretation of its license terms under present circumstances. As so often in the long history of our law, both literal and equitable postures of interpretation are completely tenable, and reasonable people in the relevant roles may justifiably disagree. The matter is smaller than that which divided the Pharisees from the Saducees, but from a legal theory point of view it is of the same fundamental kind."
Calls for Presentations
SciPy 2016: call for papers
SciPy 2016, the 15th annual Scientific Computing with Python conference, will be held July 11-17 in Austin, Texas. The deadline for tutorial proposals is March 21. Talks and posters may be proposed until March 25. Early-bird registration is open until May 22.CFP Deadlines: March 3, 2016 to May 2, 2016
The following listing of CFP deadlines is taken from the LWN.net CFP Calendar.
| Deadline | Event Dates | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| March 25 | July 11 July 17 |
SciPy 2016 | Austin, TX, USA |
| April 1 | May 26 | NLUUG - Spring conference 2016 | Bunnik, The Netherlands |
| April 2 | May 2 May 3 |
PyCon Israel 2016 | Tel Aviv, Israel |
| April 7 | April 8 April 10 |
mini Linux Audio Conference 2016 | Berlin, Germany |
| April 8 | August 2 August 5 |
Flock to Fedora | Krakow, Poland |
| April 15 | June 27 July 1 |
12th Netfilter Workshop | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| April 15 | June 22 June 26 |
openSUSE Conference 2016 | Nürnberg, Germany |
| April 24 | August 20 August 21 |
Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters | Taipei, Taiwan |
| April 26 | August 22 August 24 |
LinuxCon NA | Toronto, Canada |
| April 27 | August 12 August 14 |
GNOME Users and Developers European Conference | Karlsruhe, Germany |
| April 30 | June 11 | TÜBIX 2016 | Tübingen, Germany |
| April 30 | October 27 October 28 |
Rust Belt Rust | Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
| April 30 | August 25 August 26 |
The Prometheus conference | Berlin, Germany |
| May 1 | August 24 August 26 |
KVM Forum 2016 | Toronto, Canada |
If the CFP deadline for your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Upcoming Events
Events: March 3, 2016 to May 2, 2016
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| March 1 March 6 |
Internet Freedom Festival | Valencia, Spain |
| 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 |
PyCon SK 2016 | Bratislava, Slovakia |
| March 11 March 13 |
Zimowisko Linuksowe TLUG | Puck, Poland |
| 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 |
LibrePlanet | Boston, MA, USA |
| March 19 March 20 |
Chemnitzer Linux Tage 2016 | Chemnitz, Germany |
| March 23 | Make Open Source Software 2016 | Bucharest, Romania |
| March 29 March 31 |
Collaboration Summit | Lake Tahoe, CA, USA |
| April 1 | DevOps Italia | Bologna, Italy |
| April 4 April 8 |
OpenFabrics Alliance Workshop | Monterey, CA, USA |
| April 4 April 6 |
Web Audio Conference | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| April 4 April 6 |
Embedded Linux Conference | San Diego, CA, USA |
| April 4 April 6 |
OpenIoT Summit | San Diego, CA, USA |
| April 5 April 7 |
Lustre User Group 2016 | Portland, OR, USA |
| April 6 | PostgreSQL and PostGIS, Session #8 | Lyon, France |
| April 7 April 8 |
SRECon16 | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| April 8 April 10 |
mini Linux Audio Conference 2016 | Berlin, Germany |
| April 9 April 10 |
OSS Weekend | Bratislava, Slovakia |
| April 11 April 13 |
O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference | New York, NY, USA |
| April 15 April 17 |
PyCon Italia Sette | Firenze, Italia |
| April 15 April 17 |
Akademy-es 2016 | Madrid, Spain |
| April 15 April 18 |
Libre Graphics Meeting | London, UK |
| April 16 | 15. Augsburger Linux Info Tag | Augsburg, Germany |
| April 18 April 19 |
Linux Storage, Filesystem & Memory Management Summit | Raleigh, NC, USA |
| April 18 April 20 |
PostgreSQL Conference US 2016 | New York, NY, USA |
| April 20 April 21 |
Vault 2016 | Raleigh, NC, USA |
| April 21 April 24 |
GNOME.Asia Summit | Delhi, India |
| April 23 | DevCrowd 2016 | Szczecin, Poland |
| April 23 April 24 |
LinuxFest Northwest | Bellingham, WA, USA |
| April 25 April 27 |
Cuba International Free Software Conference | Havana, Cuba |
| April 25 April 29 |
OpenStack Summit | Austin, TX, USA |
| April 26 | Open Source Day 2016 | Warsaw, Poland |
| April 26 April 28 |
Open Source Data Center Conference | Berlin, Germany |
| April 28 April 30 |
Linuxwochen Wien 2016 | Vienna, Austria |
| April 28 May 1 |
Mini-DebCamp & DebConf | Vienna, Austria |
| April 30 | Linux Presentation Day 2016.1 | many cities, Germany |
| May 1 June 29 |
Open Source Innovation Spring | Paris, France |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol