Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
EU IP enforcement directive advances
The European Parliament's Legal Affairs committee has voted in favor of the draft "intellectual property enforcement" directive. This directive, which we looked at last August, would add a number of DMCA-like provisions to European law. The full Parliament will take up the directive starting on March 8. Now is the time for Europeans to make themselves heard on this issue; the software patent fight has shown that activism can make a difference. Click below for details from FFII.AGNULA Libre Music Project launched
The AGNULA team has launched the Libre Music project, a.k.a. the muzik project. "One of the objectives of the AGNULA-IST project is help spreading sensibility on the topics of Libre Software, with specific attention paid to audio/video applications and content distribution."
AIST and Free Standards Group Release Multilingual C Library
The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) of Japan and the Free Standards Group have announced the release of a new library for the multilingualization of software written in the C programming language. The library, known as m17n, has been released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).Austin Group Minutes of the Feb 26 2004 Teleconference
The minutes are available from the Austin Group's Teleconference of February 26, 2004.Another Netfilter GPL enforcement
The Netfilter/iptables project has announced another successful GPL compliance action - this one is against Fujitsu-Siemens. The company will release source for its AP-600RP wireless router and make donations to Linux-Kongress and the Free Software Foundation Europe.Netfilter/iptables leader Harald Welte has sent us an article giving some details about how the project is going about enforcing its license and why it is taking a rather different approach than the FSF has. Click below (no subscription required) for the details.
Announcing the KDE Quality Team (KDE.News)
KDE.News has an announcement for the new KDE Quality Team Project. "The KDE Community is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Team Project, a community of contributors who will serve as a gateway between developers and users in the KDE Project, and as a new way for people to begin contributing."
You can read more about the project on NewsForge.
www.python.org needs YOU!
The folks at www.python.org have sent out a request for volunteer help. "The team that administers www.python.org is looking for additional maintainers, both to keep the text updated and to create automated solutions that require less human interaction."
Commercial announcements
Introduction to Databases with MySQL
MySQL AB will be conducting three instances of a course entitled Introduction to Databases with MySQL. The course will be held in Washington DC, Stockholm, and San Francisco in April, May, and June. "This course covers the fundamentals of SQL and relational databases, using MySQL as a teaching tool."
SCO sells a license
The SCO Group has announced that it has found a taker for its "Linux license." The company is EV1Servers.Net, a Houston-based hosting provider. No terms have been disclosed, of course. For what it's worth, EV1Servers.Net was featured in a Microsoft case study last September claiming that Windows servers can be deployed faster than the Linux-based variety.XNotesPlus Version 3.6 is available
Version 3.6.0 of XNotesPlus, a Personal Information Manager for the Linux and Unix desktop with PalmOS connectivity, is available.
New Books
Syngress Releases "Ethereal Packet Sniffing"
Syngress Publishing, Inc. has published the book Ethereal Packet Sniffing by Angela D. Orebaugh and Gilbert Ramirez.
Resources
LDP Weekly News
Here's the weekly report from the Linux Documentation Project, where you'll find out what's happening in the world of Linux documentation.LinuxFocus March/April 2004 issue
The LinuxFocus issue for March 2004 is out; with a look at the XFree86 license and several other articles.PEAR HTML_QuickForm Getting Started Guide
Keith Edmunds has published the PEAR HTML_QuickForm Getting Started Guide, which is available online.Threads for LSB 2.0
The LSB-VSTHlite1.0 Beta Release is available. "This release is targeted for use with LSB version 2.x testing and certification. There are a number of bug fixes and configuration changes over previous releases. The test suite takes 30 minutes to configure install and run."
Surveys
Nine Out Of Ten Linux Developers Refute Scos Linux Lawsuit (Evans Data Corp.)
Evans Data Corporation has released the results of a survey of Linux users concerning the SCO lawsuit. "More than 90% of Linux developers dont believe the SCO/Linux lawsuit has any merit, according to the Spring 2004 Linux Development Survey from Evans Data Corporation. Three percent "absolutely" believe the lawsuit has merit, a further 5% think it "probably" has merit but more than half answered "absolutely not"." The survey also looks into the expanding use of the Eclipse development platform and Java on Linux.
Upcoming Events
Rally against EU IP Directive
The European Union "Intellectual Property Rights Directive" is coming up for a vote soon. A rally has been set for March 8 in Strasbourg to protest this directive and to call attention to the threat it presents. Click below for the details and a discussion of why this directive should be defeated.PIM Team at Chemnitzer Linux-Tag 2004 (KDE.News)
KDE.News previews the KDE PIM team's involvement at Chemnitzer Linux-Tag 2004 in Germany. "The PIM meeting will be used to discuss integration of groupware servers into the KDE PIM Framework and working on other features listed on the feature plan, which will eventually trigger the release cycle for the pending KDE PIM 3.3 release."
European Firebird-Conference 2004
The 2004 European Firebird Conference will be held in Fulda, Germany on May 16-18, 2004.Open Source Business Conference speakers announced
The Open Source Business Conference (San Francisco, March 16 and 17) has sent out a press release listing the people who will be speaking at the event. The list includes executives from HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, VERITAS, and others, but the more interesting list is found in the fine print at the bottom: Clayton Christensen, Larry Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, and Eben Moglen.Ottawa Linux Symposium paper submissions open
The 2004 Ottawa Linux Symposium paper submission site is now open. The window for submissions is short - the deadline is March 15 - so if you would like to speak at OLS this year, now is the time to get a proposal together. See the call for papers for more information.International PHP Conference 2004 Spring Edition
The Spring 2004 International PHP Conference will be held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on May 3-5, 2004.YAPC::Europe::2004 Call for Papers! (use Perl)
A call for papers has gone out for YAPC::Europe. "They're looking for mostly 20 minute talks, and suggesting that those who want to speak for longer should split their talk into two parts. There will still be room for lightning talks, but they're going to ask for those later."
Perl training courses in Brisbane and Sydney
Two Perl training courses will be held in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia in April, 2004.Events: March 4 - April 29, 2004
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| March 4 - 5, 2004 | PHP|Cruise | The Caribbean |
| March 4 - 5, 2004 | Linux Automation Konferenz | Hannover, Germany |
| 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 25 - 26, 2004 | Open Source Forum 2004 | (The Sydney Marriott Hotel)Sydney, Australia |
| March 27 - 28, 2004 | Nordic Perl Workshop 2004 | (Symbion Science Park)Copenhagen, Denmark |
| March 27 - 28, 2004 | YAPC::Taipei::2004 | Taipei, Taiwan |
| April 5 - 7, 2004 | Samba eXPerience 2004 | (Hotel Freizeit In)Göttingen, Germany |
| April 13 - 15, 2004 | Real World Linux 2004 Conference & Expo | (Metro Toronto Convention Centre)Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| April 14 - 16, 2004 | MySQL Users Conference and Expo 2004 | (Peabody Hotel Orlando)Orlando, FL |
| April 14 - 17, 2004 | ACCU Spring Conference 2004 | (Randolph Hotel)Oxford, England |
| April 20 - 21, 2004 | LinuxUser & Developer Expo | (Olympia)London, England |
| April 22 - 23, 2004 | 2004 Desktop Linux Summit | (Del Mar Fairgrounds)San Diego, California |
| April 26 - 27, 2004 | Digital Media Project Traditional Rights and Usages Workshop | Los Angeles, CA |
| April 29 - May 2, 2004 | 2nd Linux Audio Developers Conference | (Institute for Music and Acoustics)Karlsruhe, Germany |
Event Reports
Slides from Brendan Eich's Mozilla Futures Talk (MozillaZine)
The slides from Brendan Eich's Mozilla Developer Day talk on Mozilla Futures are available. "In the presentation, the Mozilla Foundation's Chief Architect outlined Mozilla's strengths and weaknesses and described a future strategy plan. Proposals include accelerating work on integrating SVG, implementing support for more scripting and programming languages (such as JavaScript 2, Python and Perl 5), creating a XUL builder plug-in for the Eclipse platform, improving native widget and desktop integration and setting up a new developer.mozilla.org site with programmer documentation."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference Wrap-up
O'Reilly has sent out some wrap-up coverage of their 2004 Emerging Technology Conference.
Web sites
The GNOME Chinese User Portal goes live (GnomeDesktop)
GnomeDesktop.org has an announcement for a new Chinese GNOME portal site. "This site is designed for both end users and software developers of GNOME and dedicated to improve GNOME by addressing and solving issues related to Chinese processing."
The KDE Wiki Has Moved (KDE.News)
KDE.News reports on the move of the KDE Wiki. "Luciash D' Being (aka luci) has announced the successful completion of the move of the KDE Wiki to the KDE Dot News server. With the move, KDE Wiki gains not only more computing resources, but also a new domain name in the form of wiki.kdenews.org."
Community Driven Geolocation Service
hostip.info is a new site that allows you to look up the physical location of an IP address. "It is running on Linux, releases all the data under GPL, and has a cool (IMHO :-) animation once the city's located (needs java)".
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.
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