Announcements
Brief items
Groklaw shutting down in May
Pamela Jones has announced that Groklaw will stop publishing articles on May 16. "I know a lot of you will be unhappy to hear it, so let me briefly explain, because my decision is made and it's firm. In a simple sentence, the reason is this: the crisis SCO initiated over Linux is over, and Linux won. SCO as we knew it is no more. There will be other battles, and there already are, because the same people that propped SCO up are still going to try to destroy Linux, but the battlefield has shifted, and I don't feel Groklaw is needed in the new battlefield the way it was in the SCO v. Linux wars." Pamela, you did great work; we hope your next project is as fruitful and satisfying.
Open Standards law approved in Portugal
The Portuguese Parliament has approved a law for the adoption of Open Standards on public IT systems.
Articles of interest
Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license (ars technica)
Ryan Paul reports that Nokia is transitioning Symbian away from an open source software model. "It's possible that Nokia has given up on using the open EPL license because moving the development in-house has made the boundary between the company's own proprietary bits and the underlying platform rather blurry. It's extremely unfortunate that this model will effectively prevent Nokia's Symbian code base from going off into the sunset as an open project that can be repurposed by the remaining Symbian enthusiasts. It's also disappointing that Nokia doesn't seem to care anymore. After spending hundreds of millions of euros and many years of effort to be able to distribute the code under the EPL, it seems absurd to throw it all away and revert to a license that imposes bizarre restrictions on source code access."
Project Harmony opens website (The H)
Project Harmony is a group focused on creating contributor agreements for free and open source software. The opening of its website is covered at The H. "Project Harmony positions itself as an organisation that will create a standard suite of language for contribution agreements both between individuals and between companies. A number of "alpha" level agreements are already available to review and the project is inviting feedback. The current phase of the review process runs until 6 May. To assist reviewers, there is also a guide to the agreements and FAQ pages on Harmony and the agreements themselves."
Randal: A Brief History of Harmony
Here's a first-person account of the Harmony Project as told by Allison Randal. "So, I started asking tough questions, and what I found was both better and worse than I expected. I found that no one at Canonical had a bizarre agenda to force copyright assignment on the world. I also found that Canonical had an interest in replacing their current contributor agreement with a Harmony one, and that 'success' for them was measured in community-driven, community-approved, and community-adopted agreements. All good. I also found that Harmony was pretty much stalled, all meetings on hold, waiting on a draft with some changes requested by the Harmony group (substantial changes, but shouldn't have taken terribly long). Not good."
The New Commodore 64, Updated With Its Old Exterior (New York Times)
The New York Times covers the return of the Commodore 64. "The new Commodore 64, which will begin shipping at the end of the month, has been souped up for the modern age. It comes with a 1.8 gigahertz dual-core processor, an optional Blu-ray player and built-in ethernet and HDMI ports. It runs the Linux operating system but the company says you can install Windows if you like. The new Commodore is priced between $250 to $900." (Thanks to Pete Link)
New Books
Two New Titles on Asterisk from O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media has released "Asterisk Cookbook", by Leif Madsen and Russell Bryant, and "Asterisk: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition", by Leif Madsen, Jim Van Meggelen and Russell Bryant.
Contests and Awards
Celebrating 20 Years of Linux: Video contest
The Linux Foundation has announced its annual Linux Foundation Video Contest. "The theme for this year's contest is dedicated to the 20th Anniversary of Linux, and Linus Torvalds will choose the winner among community favorites."
Calls for Presentations
DebConf11 registration and call for contributions
DebConf11 will take place in Banja Luka, in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina July 24-30, 2011. DebConf will be preceded by DebCamp, July 17-23, 2011. The call for participation is open until May 8, 2011, as is the sponsored registration deadline.1st Call For Papers, 18th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference 2011
The annual Tcl/Tk Conference (Tcl'2011) will be held in Manassas, Virgina, October 24-28, 2011. Abstracts and proposals are due by August 26, 2011.
Upcoming Events
2011 Red Hat Summit and JBoss World keynotes
Red Hat has announced the keynote speakers for Red Hat Summit and JBoss World. The conference will be held May 3-6, 2011 in Boston, MA.Events: April 21, 2011 to June 20, 2011
The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| April 25 April 26 |
WebKit Contributors Meeting | Cupertino, USA |
| April 26 April 29 |
OpenStack Conference and Design Summit | Santa Clara, CA, USA |
| April 28 April 29 |
Puppet Camp EU 2011: Amsterdam | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| April 29 | Ottawa IPv6 Summit 2011 | Ottawa, Canada |
| April 29 April 30 |
Professional IT Community Conference 2011 | New Brunswick, NJ, USA |
| April 30 May 1 |
LinuxFest Northwest | Bellingham, Washington, USA |
| May 3 May 6 |
Red Hat Summit and JBoss World 2011 | Boston, MA, USA |
| May 4 May 5 |
ASoC and Embedded ALSA Conference | Edinburgh, United Kingdom |
| May 5 May 7 |
Linuxwochen Österreich - Wien | Wien, Austria |
| May 6 May 8 |
Linux Audio Conference 2011 | Maynooth, Ireland |
| May 9 May 11 |
SambaXP | Göttingen, Germany |
| May 9 May 10 |
OpenCms Days 2011 Conference and Expo | Cologne, Germany |
| May 9 May 13 |
Linaro Development Summit | Budapest, Hungary |
| May 9 May 13 |
Ubuntu Developer Summit | Budapest, Hungary |
| May 10 May 13 |
Libre Graphics Meeting | Montreal, Canada |
| May 10 May 12 |
Solutions Linux Open Source 2011 | Paris, France |
| May 11 May 14 |
LinuxTag - International conference on Free Software and Open Source | Berlin, Germany |
| May 12 | NLUUG Spring Conference 2011 | ReeHorst, Ede, Netherlands |
| May 12 May 15 |
Pingwinaria 2011 - Polish Linux User Group Conference | Spala, Poland |
| May 12 May 14 |
Linuxwochen Österreich - Linz | Linz, Austria |
| May 16 May 19 |
PGCon - PostgreSQL Conference for Users and Developers | Ottawa, Canada |
| May 16 May 19 |
RailsConf 2011 | Baltimore, MD, USA |
| May 20 May 21 |
Linuxwochen Österreich - Eisenstadt | Eisenstadt, Austria |
| May 21 | UKUUG OpenTech 2011 | London, United Kingdom |
| May 23 May 25 |
MeeGo Conference San Francisco 2011 | San Francisco, USA |
| June 1 June 3 |
Workshop Python for High Performance and Scientific Computing | Tsukuba, Japan |
| June 1 | Informal meeting at IRILL on weaknesses of scripting languages | Paris, France |
| June 1 June 3 |
LinuxCon Japan 2011 | Yokohama, Japan |
| June 3 June 5 |
Open Help Conference | Cincinnati, OH, USA |
| June 6 June 10 |
DjangoCon Europe | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| June 10 June 12 |
Southeast LinuxFest | Spartanburg, SC, USA |
| June 13 June 15 |
Linux Symposium'2011 | Ottawa, Canada |
| June 15 June 17 |
2011 USENIX Annual Technical Conference | Portland, OR, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol