Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Eclipse Forms Independent Organization
The Eclipse Board of Stewards has announced Eclipse's reorganization into a not-for-profit corporation. Originally a consortium that formed when IBM released the Eclipse Platform into Open Source, Eclipse is now an independent body. All technology and source code provided to this fast-growing ecosystem will remain openly available and royalty-free.MontaVista has announced they are a founding member of the new Eclipse.
Eclipse Plugin Central Alliance Formed
The Eclipse Plugin Central Alliance has been formed. "At the Eclipse Conference in Anaheim, Innoopract, Instantiations, and Genuitec announced that they had formed an alliance to create Eclipse Plugin Central. According to Mark Johnson, VP Marketing and Business Development at Instantiations, "The mission of our alliance in forming Eclipse Plugin Central is to support the growth of the Eclipse community by helping developers locate, evaluate, and acquire plugins that can help them deliver their projects faster, better, and cheaper."
GRAMPS Bounty: GNOME-Print integration (GnomeDesktop)
GnomeDesktop.org mentions the need for somebody to help integrating gnome-print into the GRAMPS genealogy system. "We are looking for a person to step forward to claim the gnome-print integration into GRAMPS. This will use the GNOME print infrastructure to allow print preview and direct printing of reports, in addition to PostScript and PDF file generation." A $100 bounty has been offered for the task.
OSDL Announces First Chinese Member
The Beijing Co-Create Open Source Software Company, Ltd. has joined the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL).NTT joins OSDL
The Open Source Development Labs has sent out a press release announcing its newest member, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). "NTT, a telecommunications giant that oversees a group of more than 430 companies with 200,000 employees in Japan and around the world, is joining OSDL to accelerate the development of Linux for enterprise computing. NTT's research and development arm, NTT research laboratories, will take the lead for the firm on open source software development to strengthen Linux for use as a major platform for enterprise computing."
Open Hardware ARM SBC - 'Balloon' available
The Balloon is a new open-hardware ARM-based single board computer. "Aleph One announces the availability of the Balloon board, a small light low-power computer with a high-performance ARM processor and lots of memory. The complete design is available to all, free of charge."
Commercial announcements
Lindows loses in the Netherlands
Lindows.com has lost yet another court battle over the "Lindows" name; this time a preliminary injunction was given to Microsoft in the Netherlands. Lindows has responded with a typical press release: "The ruling will deny the Netherlands the cost-savings that desktop Linux currently offers to approximately 18 million people worldwide, leaving vulnerable and expensive Microsoft software as the only option for computer consumers in the Netherlands." Regardless of the justice of Microsoft's trademark claims, this attempt to portray Lindows as the only possible source of desktop Linux seems misplaced.
Lineox Enterprise Linux Support Partner Program
Lineox is assembling a list of Linux consultants who are able to support their product. "Lineox Enterprise Linux is sold without bundled support. This creates a business opportunity for companies and consultants who can offer support for Lineox Enterprise Linux. Lineox believes that free market will provide the best support network for our products."
Linux/QNX news
QNX Software Systems now supports Linux as a development platform. "QNX Software Systems today announced it is adding support for Linux development hosts to the QNX Momentics embedded development suite."
MySQL AB and Pearson Education Launch MySQL Press
The new MySQL Press collaboration has been announced. "MySQL Press, a collaboration between MySQL and Pearson Education, publishes and globally distributes books about the MySQL® database and related technologies. MySQL Press books have been extensively reviewed by MySQL AB, the company that develops and markets the MySQL database."
Novell/SUSE management changes
Novell has announced that Gerard Van Kemmel, president Novell-EMEA, will assume the role of chairman, Novell, EMEA. Also Richard Seibt, formerly chief executive officer, SUSE LINUX and president of Novell's SUSE LINUX business unit, will assume operating responsibility for Novell-EMEA and as such will be responsible for all day-to-day operations.SUSE R&D Vice President Markus Rex was named General Manager of Novell's SUSE LINUX Business Unit, in a separate announcement.
PJ gets a day job
Open Source Risk Management LLC has sent out a press release stating that it has hired Pamela Jones ("PJ"), the editor of Groklaw, as its Director of Research. OSRM sells products like indemnification insurance for users of open source software. Groklaw will continue as before. (PJ also occasionally writes for LWN; this week's Edition will include one of her articles).A new SCO 10-K
The SCO Group has filed its annual report with the SEC. There is a wealth of information about the company there for those with the time to dig. For example, one of the new risk factors reads: "Also, some of the more significant participants in the Linux industry have made efforts to ease Linux end users' concerns that their use of Linux may subject them to potential copyright infringement claims from us. For example, Hewlett-Packard and Novell have each established indemnification programs for qualified customers purchasing Linux-based products and services that may potentially become subject to a copyright infringement claims from us." Interestingly, in SCO's press releases, these offers were described as validating SCO's case...
There is a large set of other documents submitted as attachments to the 10-K; they include agreements with Morgan Keegan (which also gets a chunk of SCO's license revenue, acquisitions, etc.), Sun's stock options, etc.
SourceForge add subscription services
OSDN has announced the addition of a set of subscription services for SourceForge. The current SourceForge services will remain free; for $7/month or $39/year users can also get better searching, easier downloads, project monitoring, and some tech support.
New Books
"Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty" published
The book "Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty" has been published by Syngress Publishing.
Resources
LSB 2.0 available for Public Review
the Free Standards Group has announced the availability of version 2.0 of the Linux Standard Base. LSB 2.0 is up for public review for 30 days. "LSB 2.0 features the revision of the core specification to support modules that are built on the foundation of the core LSB. This will accommodate future growth, as Linux standards for different vertical markets, for example, are developed as extensions to the core LSB. LSB 2.0 also introduces an ABI for C++ -- a long-awaited feature. Further, LSB 2.0 incorporates updates to many of the specifications and implementations underlying the LSB, such as the Single Unix Specification."
Austin Group Status Report
The Austin Common Standards Revision Group (CSRG) has published their status report for January 31, 2004. "The Austin Common Standards Revision Group (CSRG) is a joint technical working group established to consider the matter of a common revision of ISO/IEC 9945-1, ISO/IEC 9945-2, IEEE Std 1003.1, IEEE Std 1003.2 and the appropriate parts of the Single UNIX Specification. Having completed the initial deliverable in late 2001, the group is presently working on maintenance activities."
POSIX manpages incorporated to Linux
The Linux Manual Pages Project now has access to new manual pages. "The IEEE and The Open Group have granted permission to the Linux Manual Pages Project to incorporate material from the joint IEEE 1003.1 POSIX standard and The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6."
What Should Governments Examine in Acquiring COTS Open Source Software?
David A. Wheeler has posted a presentation on governments and open source software. It's a short presentation, available in PDF format from the link given above.
Contests and Awards
Etnus TotalView Honored with LinuxWorld Magazine's Readers' Choice Award
Etnus has announced that its TotalView debugger has been honored with a LinuxWorld Magazine Readers' Choice Award.2004 World Record Attempt
The 2004 Chess World Record Attempt was held. "On January 30th 2004, ChessBrain became the first distributed network to play a game against a single human opponent." The game resulted in a tie. Thanks to Kim 'The Pirate' Christensen.
Upcoming Events
CMMR 2004 CFP
A call for papers has gone out for the 2nd International Symposium on Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval. The event will be held in Esbjerg, Denmark on May 26-29, 2004.Schedule for Mozilla Developers Meeting in Europe 4.0 Published (MozillaZine)
The European Mozilla Developers Meeting will be held in Brussels, Belgium on February 21 and 22, 2004.Linux-Day at Chemnitz
Linux-Day Chemnitz 2004 will be held on March 6 and 7, 2004 in Chemnitz, Germany (Saxony).AGNULA at FOSDEM 2004
Members of the AGNULA-IST (A GNU/Linux Audio distribution) project will be at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium on February 21 and 22, 2004.Sponsors announced for Desktop Linux Summit 2004
Red Hat, Seagate, Sun and Lindows have signed on as sponsors of the second annual Desktop Linux Summit 2004, to be held in April in San Diego, California.YAPC::Taipei::2004 - Call For Registration (use Perl)
Use Perl has announced that registration is open for the YAPC::Taipei conference.YAPC::Europe 2004
The YAPC::Europe 2004 Perl conference has been announced. The event will take place on September 15-17, 2004 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.PyCon DC 2004 Sprints CFP
A Call for Participation has gone out for the PyCon DC 2004 Sprints sessions. The Sprints will be held from March 20-23, 2004 in Washington, DC. "The Python Software Foundation is sponsoring four days of sprints before PyCon -- Saturday through Tuesday. We invite developers to attend the sprints. We will provide space and network connectivity for developers who want to work on open source projects."
Events: February 5 - April 1, 2004
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| February 5, 2004 | Linux Solutions 2004 | Paris, France |
| February 5 - 6, 2004 | EclipseCon 2004 | (Disneyland Hotel)Anaheim, CA |
| February 9 - 12, 2004 | O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference(ETech) | (The Westin Horton Plaza)San Diego, CA |
| February 20 - 22, 2004 | CodeCon 2004 | (Club NV)San Francisco, CA |
| February 20 - 24, 2004 | PaWS PHP and Web Standards UK 2004 | Manchester, UK |
| February 21 - 22, 2004 | Mozilla Developers Meeting in Europe 4.0 | Brussels, Belgium |
| February 21 - 22, 2004 | FOSDEM 2004 | (SOLBOSCH)Brussels, Belgium |
| February 23 - 27, 2004 | PostgreSQL Bootcamp | (Big Nerd Ranch, Inc.)Atlanta, GA |
| February 25 - 26, 2004 | UKUUG LISA/Winter Conference and Tutorial | (Lansdowne Campus, Bournemouth Univ.)Bournemouth, UK |
| February 27, 2004 | Mozilla Developer Day | Mountain View, CA |
| March 1 - 5, 2004 | PHP|Cruise | The Caribbean |
| March 5, 2004 | Perl Workshop 2004 | Amsterdam, the Netherlands |
| March 6 - 7, 2004 | Linux-Day Chemnitz | Chemnitz, Germany |
| March 15 - 17, 2004 | Open Source in Government Conference | (George Washington University)Washington, DC |
| March 16 - 17, 2004 | Open Source Business Conference 2004 | (The Westin St. Francis)San Francisco, CA |
| March 18 - 24, 2004 | CeBIT | (Hannover Exhibition Center)Hannover, Germany |
| March 21 - 26, 2004 | Novell BrainShare 2004 | Salt Lake City, Utah |
| March 24 - 26, 2004 | PyCon DC 2004 | Washington, D.C. |
| March 27 - 28, 2004 | Nordic Perl Workshop 2004 | (Symbion Science Park)Copenhagen, Denmark |
| March 27 - 28, 2004 | YAPC::Taipei::2004 | Taipei, Taiwan |
Web sites
Welcome to Gna!
Gna.org is a new code-hosting site that is similar to SourceForge and Savannah. "Gna! provides CVS Repositories, Download Area, Web Pages, Mailing-Lists and Trackers (Bugs, Task, Support Requests, Patches)."
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.
Miscellaneous
News from India
Linux World Magazine has ranked India's Rahul Chopra, Editor of 'Linux For You', as one of the world's top twenty Linux luminaries. He has been highlighted for his contribution to the area of Linux and open source software.Richard M Stallman met with the President of India to discuss the ethical issues related to the use of proprietary software.
Netcraft Starts www.sco.com Death Watch
Netcraft graphs the SCO web site's uptime to see if it will collapse under the impending DDoS attack. (Thanks to Don Marti)Also, many alert readers have pointed out this site in which Netcraft explains how SCO could defend against the DDoS.
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