Announcements

FSF: Three devices from Vikings GmbH now FSF-certified to respect your freedom

The Free Software Foundation has awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to three devices from Vikings GmbH: the Vikings D16 Mainboard, the Vikings X200 libre-friendly laptop, and the Vikings USB stereo sound adapter. "These are their first products to be awarded RYF certification. The Vikings D16 Mainboard is the first server or workstation mainboard certified by the FSF."

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VMware Becomes Linux Foundation Gold Member

The Linux Foundation has announced that VMware has become a Gold member. "VMware has been involved in open source for years, by contributing to existing open source projects as well as open sourcing some of the company’s own code. This includes significant participation in and contributions to Linux Foundation projects such as Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), Cloud Foundry and Open vSwitch, as well as other open source projects including OpenStack."

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Free Software Supporter Issue 107, March 2017

This month the Free Software Foundation's newsletter covers LibrePlanet, response to Tim Berners-Lee's defeatist post about DRM in Web standards, FSF Job Opportunity: Campaigns Manager, RMS on the road, what's a cryptovalentine?, a battle rages for the future of the Web, Replicant 6.0 development updates, and several other topics.

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DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open Web, not a defeat (Ars Technica)

Ars Technica argues that Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a framework that will allow the delivery of DRM-protected media through the browser, will be good for the web. "Moreover, a case could be made that EME will make it easier for content distributors to experiment with—and perhaps eventually switch to—DRM-free distribution. Under the current model, whether it be DRM-capable browser plugins or DRM-capable apps, a content distributor such as Netflix has no reason to experiment with unprotected content. Users of the site's services are already using a DRM-capable platform, and they're unlikely to even notice if one or two videos (for example, one of the Netflix-produced broadcasts like House of Cards or the forthcoming Arrested Development episodes) are unprotected. It wouldn't make a difference to them."

The Free Software Foundation has a different take on EME. "We have been fighting EME since 2013, and we will not back off because the W3C presents weak guidance as a fig leaf for DRM-using companies to hide their disrespect for users' rights. Companies can impose DRM without the W3C; but we should make them do it on their own, so it is seen for what it is—a subversion of the Web's principles—rather than normalize it or give it endorsement."

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FSFE: What happened in Munich

The Free Software Foundation Europe has put out a release providing its view of the decision in Munich to possibly back away from its free-software-based infrastructure. "Since this decision was reached, the majority of media have reported that a final call was made to halt LiMux and switch back to Microsoft software. This is, however, not an accurate representation of the outcome of the city council meeting. We studied the available documentation and our impression is that the last word has not been spoken."

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SCALE 15x Wraps

The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) team wraps up 15X. "Recapping, SCALE 15x was something of a mosaic. There were sessions and side conversations about virtual machines, microcontrollers, boot loaders, management tools … each a small, shiny, interesting bit. In later sessions and on the expo floor, you meet people who are assembling those shiny bits into a much bigger picture. DIY hardware boards are transformed into a clustered, auto-scaling container platform, for example."

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Arduino Playground -- new from No Starch Press

No Starch Press has released "Arduino Playground" by Warren Andrews.

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PyCon ZA 2017 - Call for Speakers

PyCon ZA will take place October 5-6 in Cape Town, South Africa. The call for participation includes talks, tutorials, demos, open spaces, and sprints.

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CFP Deadlines: March 9, 2017 to May 8, 2017

The following listing of CFP deadlines is taken from the LWN.net CFP Calendar.

Deadline	Event Dates	Event	Location
March 12	April 26	foss-north	Gothenburg, Sweden
March 15	May 13 May 14	Open Source Conference Albania 2017	Tirana, Albania
March 18	June 19 June 20	LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen China	Beijing, China
March 20	May 4 May 6	Linuxwochen Wien 2017	Wien, Austria
March 27	July 10 July 16	SciPy 2017	Austin, TX, USA
March 28	October 23 October 24	All Things Open	Raleigh, NC, USA
March 31	June 26 June 28	Deutsche Openstack Tage 2017	München, Germany
April 1	April 22	16. Augsburger Linux-Infotag 2017	Augsburg, Germany
April 2	August 18 August 20	State of the Map	Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima, Japan
April 10	August 13 August 18	DjangoCon US	Spokane, WA, USA
April 10	July 22 July 27	Akademy 2017	Almería, Spain
April 14	June 30	Swiss PGDay	Rapperswil, Switzerland
April 16	July 9 July 16	EuroPython 2017	Rimini, Italy
April 18	October 2 October 4	O'Reilly Velocity Conference	New York, NY, USA
April 20	April 28 April 29	Grazer Linuxtage 2017	Graz, Austria
April 20	May 17	Python Language Summit	Portland, OR, USA
April 23	July 28 August 2	GNOME Users And Developers European Conference 2017	Manchester, UK
April 28	September 21 September 22	International Workshop on OpenMP	Stony Brook, NY, USA
April 30	September 21 September 24	EuroBSDcon 2017	Paris, France
May 1	May 13 May 14	Linuxwochen Linz	Linz, Austria
May 1	October 5	Open Hardware Summit 2017	Denver, CO, USA
May 2	October 18 October 20	O'Reilly Velocity Conference	London, UK
May 5	June 5 June 7	coreboot Denver2017	Denver, CO, USA
May 6	September 13 September 15	Linux Plumbers Conference 2017	Los Angeles, CA, USA
May 6	September 11 September 14	Open Source Summit NA 2017	Los Angeles, CA, USA
May 7	August 3 August 8	PyCon Australia 2017	Melbourne, Australia

If the CFP deadline for your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.

EuroPython 2017: Official dates available

EuroPython will take place July 9-16 in Rimini, Italy. "Conference tickets will allow attending Beginners’ Day, keynotes, talks, trainings, poster sessions, interactive sessions, panels and sprints."

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Events: March 9, 2017 to May 8, 2017

The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.

Date(s)	Event	Location
March 6 March 10	Linaro Connect	Budapest, Hungary
March 10 March 12	conf.kde.in 2017	Guwahati, Assam, India
March 11 March 12	Chemnitzer Linux-Tage	Chemnitz, Germany
March 16 March 17	IoT Summit	Santa Clara, CA, USA
March 17 March 19	MiniDebConf Curitiba 2017	Curitiba, Brazil
March 17 March 19	FOSS Asia	Singapore, Singapore
March 18	Open Source Days Copenhagen	Copenhagen, Denmark
March 18 March 19	curl up - curl meeting 2017	Nuremberg, Germany
March 20 March 21	Linux Storage, Filesystem & Memory Management Summit	Cambridge, MA, USA
March 22 March 23	Vault	Cambridge, MA, USA
March 25 March 26	LibrePlanet 2017	Cambridge, MA, USA
March 28 March 31	PGConf US 2017	Jersey City, NJ, USA
April 3 April 7	DjangoCon Europe	Florence, Italy
April 3 April 4	Power Management and Scheduling in the Linux Kernel Summit	Pisa, Italy
April 3 April 6	‹Programming› 2017	Brussels, Belgium
April 3 April 6	Open Networking Summit	Santa Clara, CA, USA
April 5 April 6	Dataworks Summit	Munich, Germany
April 6 April 8	Netdev 2.1	Montreal, Canada
April 10 April 13	IXPUG Annual Spring Conference 2017	Cambridge, UK
April 17 April 20	Dockercon	Austin, TX, USA
April 21	Osmocom Conference 2017	Berlin, Germany
April 22	16. Augsburger Linux-Infotag 2017	Augsburg, Germany
April 26	foss-north	Gothenburg, Sweden
April 28 April 29	Grazer Linuxtage 2017	Graz, Austria
April 28 April 30	Penguicon	Southfield, MI, USA
May 2 May 4	3rd Check_MK Conference	Munich, Germany
May 2 May 4	samba eXPerience 2017	Goettingen, Germany
May 2 May 4	Red Hat Summit 2017	Boston, MA, USA
May 4 May 5	Lund LinuxCon	Lund, Sweden
May 4 May 6	Linuxwochen Wien 2017	Wien, Austria
May 6 May 7	LinuxFest Northwest	Bellingham, WA, USA
May 6 May 7	Community Leadership Summit 2017	Austin, TX, USA
May 6 May 7	Debian/Ubuntu Community Conference - Italy	Vicenza, Italy

If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.