News Bytes
By Deividson Luiz Okopnik and Howard Dyckoff
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Contents: |
Please submit your News Bytes items in plain text; other formats may be rejected without reading. [You have been warned!] A one- or two-paragraph summary plus a URL has a much higher chance of being published than an entire press release. Submit items to [email protected]. Deividson can also be reached via twitter.
News in General
Oracle Sues Google Over Android JVM Clone
In August, Oracle filed a lawsuit for copyright and patent infringement against Google focused on its Android operating system for smart phones. Android basically a mix of Linux and a Java VM clone, purportedly based on the Open Source Harmony project.
Android is growing rapidly and is set to over take Apple's iPhone sales. This also makes it a potential cash cow for Oracle which is seeking to realized profits from acquiring Sun last year.
Oracle accused Google of seven patents violations that Oracle claims it acquired with the M&A of Sun Microsystems. All these patents are part of the Java Intellectual Property that Sun built up over the last 20 years: These include:
- 6,125,447, "Protection domains to provide security in a computer
system";
- ,966,702, "Controlling access to a resource";
- 5,966,702, "Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging
class files";
- 7,426,720, "System and method for dynamic preloading of classes
through memory space cloning of a master runtime system process";
- 6,910,205, "Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual
and native machine instructions";
- 6,061,520, "Method and system for performing static
initialization";
- And RE38,104, "Method and apparatus for resolving data references
in generated code".
Martin Heller at InfoWorld blogs wrote: "...this suit is the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb on the open source movement." This is partly because Oracle is seeking triple damages and also because Oracle is demanding that all copies of Android be destroyed, which means erasing the OS of hundreds of millions of smart phones. If Google were to pay fees or cross-license Google patents - which may be the ultimate aim of the suit - Oracle could still sue Motorola, HTC, and other phone manufacturers. Or it could get agreements from OEMs to use only official Java Mobile software in the future. That alone could be worth billions to Oracle.
As a consequence of the law suit, the Illumos project, which maintains an Open Solaris distro, has closed its link to the Oracle repositories. Effectively, Illumos Solaris is forked from Oracle Solaris.
Conferences and Events
- Diskcon USA 2010
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September 9-10, 2010, HYATT Hotel, Santa Clara , CA
http://www.idema.org.
- Ohio Linuxfest 2010
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September 10-12, Ohio
http://www.ohiolinux.org/.
- Intel Developer Forum - IDF 2010
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September 13-15, Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
http://www.intel.com/idf/.
- Oracle Openworld 2010
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September 19-23, San Francisco, CA
http://www.oracle.com/us/openworld/.
- Brocade Conference 2010
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September 20-22, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, NV
http://www.brocade.com/conference2010.
- StarWest 2010
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September 26 - October 1st, San Diego, CA
http://www.sqe.com/starwest/.
- Identity Management 2010
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Sept 27-28, Washington, DC USA
http://events.oasis-open.org/home/IDM/2010.
- LinuxCon Japan 2010
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September 27-29, Roppongi Academy, Tokyo, Japan
http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-japan/.
- Mobilize! 2010
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September 30, Mission Bay Center, San Francisco, CA
http://events.gigaom.com/mobilize/10/.
- 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '10)
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October 4-6 2010, Vancouver BC, Canada
The 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '10) will take place October 4-6, 2010, in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Join us for OSDI '10, the premier forum for discussing the design, implementation, and implications of systems software. This year's program has been expanded to include 32 high-quality papers in areas including cloud storage, production networks, concurrency bugs, deterministic parallelism, as well as a poster session. Don't miss the opportunity to network with researchers and professionals from academic and industrial backgrounds to discuss innovative, exciting work in the systems area.
http://www.usenix.org/osdi10/lgb
- JUDCon 2010
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October 7-8 , Berlin, Germany
http://www.jboss.org/events/JUDCon.html.
- Silicon Valley Code Camp 2010
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October 9-10, Foothill College. Los Altos, CA
http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/.
- 17th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference (Tcl'2010)
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October 11-15, Hilton Suites, Oakbrook Terrace, Ill
http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2010/.
- Interop Enterprise Cloud Summit
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October 18-19, New York, NY
http://www.interop.com/newyork/conference/cloud-computing-summit.php.
- Interop NY Conference
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October 18-22, New York, NY
http://www.interop.com/newyork/.
- CSI Annual 2010
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October 26-29, Washington, D.C.
http://csiannual.com/.
- Linux Kernel Summit
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November 1-2, 2010. Hyatt Regency Cambridge, Cambridge, MA
http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linux-kernel-summit.
- ApacheCon North America 2010
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November 1-5, 2010. Westin Peachtree, Atlanta, GA
http://na.apachecon.com/c/acna2010/
- LISA '10 - Large Installation System Administration Conference
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November 7-12, San Jose, CA
http://usenix.com/events/.
- ARM Technology Conference
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November 9-11, Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
http://www.arm.com/about/events/12129.php.
Distro News
Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS released
In August, the Ubuntu team is proud to announced the released of Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, the first maintenance update to Ubuntu's 10.04 LTS release. This release includes updated server, desktop, and alternate installation CDs
This is the first maintenance release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2013 on desktops and April 2015 on servers.
Numerous updates have been integrated, and includes security patches and corrections for other high-impact bugs with a focus on maintaining stability andcompatibility with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
See http://www.ubuntu.com/usn for a full list of Ubuntu security fixes.
To download Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, or obtain CDs, visit: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Software and Product News
MongoDB 1.6 Released
MongoDB 1.6.0 is the fourth stable major release (even numbers are "stable" : 1.0, 1.2, 1.4) MongoDB 1.6 is a drop-in replacement for 1.4. To upgrade, simply shutdown mongod then restart with the new binaries.
The two key features that sets MongoDB 1.6 apart from previous releases are Sharding and Replica Sets.
The focus of the 1.6 release is scale-out. Sharding is now production-ready. The combination of sharding and replica sets allows one to build out horizontally scalable data storage clusters with no single points of failure.
Sharding is now production-ready, making MongoDB horizontally scalable, with no single point of failure. A single instance of mongod can now be upgraded to a distributed cluster with zero downtime. The new release includes documentation and a tutorials on Sharding.
Talkback: Discuss this article with The Answer Gang
Deividson Luiz Okopnik
![[BIO]](../gx/authors/dokopnik.jpg)
Deividson was born in União da Vitória, PR, Brazil, on 14/04/1984. He became interested in computing when he was still a kid, and started to code when he was 12 years old. He is a graduate in Information Systems and is finishing his specialization in Networks and Web Development. He codes in several languages, including C/C++/C#, PHP, Visual Basic, Object Pascal and others.
Deividson works in Porto União's Town Hall as a Computer Technician, and specializes in Web and Desktop system development, and Database/Network Maintenance.
Howard Dyckoff
Howard Dyckoff is a long term IT professional with primary experience at
Fortune 100 and 200 firms. Before his IT career, he worked for Aviation
Week and Space Technology magazine and before that used to edit SkyCom, a
newsletter for astronomers and rocketeers. He hails from the Republic of
Brooklyn [and Polytechnic Institute] and now, after several trips to
Himalayan mountain tops, resides in the SF Bay Area with a large book
collection and several pet rocks.
Howard maintains the Technology-Events blog at
blogspot.com from which he contributes the Events listing for Linux
Gazette. Visit the blog to preview some of the next month's NewsBytes
Events.
