OSS Watch Summary

OSS Watch Summary

Free Technology Academy opens its doors to students
The Free Technology Academy (FTA), which consists of an advanced virtual campus with course modules that can be followed entirely online, has just opened registration for its first two courses. 'The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards' and 'The GNU/Linux Operating System' will start in January 2010.

Microsoft to open source the .NET Micro Framework
Microsoft has announced the release of version 4.0 of the .NET Micro Framework, and also that it is open sourcing the product and making it available under the Apache 2.0 licence, which is already being used by the community within the embedded space.

OSS Watch's November newsletter published
OSS Watch's newsletter for November sees us continue our focus on community through an interview with Jono Bacon, the community manager for Ubuntu and author of a new book The Art of Community. We can often be heard encouraging others to engage with their communities, and are therefore delighted to bring you a new case study, contributed by our own community, on ATutor, an open source learning environment. We also want to tell you about two workshops that we are running in parallel on 7 December 2009, one focussing on community, the other on open innovation. Do come along, we'd love to see you there!

Japan Linux Symposium videos available
The Japan Linux Symposium has been deemed a success by many who attended the October show in Tokyo, Japan. This newest Linux Foundation event in Asia Pacific brought together developers, managers, executives, students and end users from Japan, Korea, China and many international countries. The event featured noted Linux and open source rock stars from around the world, including a keynote interview with Linus Torvalds, conducted by LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin.

OSS Watch's video channel on YouTube is now live!
Four short fragments from video interviews with open source leaders recorded at ApacheCon 2009 have been uploaded to the OSS Watch video channel on YouTube, with the full interviews to follow soon. The channel will feature video interviews with key open source software stakeholders and recorded events organised or attended by the OSS Watch team.

Firefox celebrates anniversary with 25% browser market share
Five years after its launch, Mozilla's Firefox holds the no. 2 spot in browser market share. It has more than 330 million users around the world, accounting for 25 per cent of the market. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, currently the market leader, holds 63.26 per cent, while Safari, Chrome and Opera hold the next three spots, with 4.39, 3.89 and 2.32 per cent, respectively, according to Net Applications.

BCS event - Public Funds in the UK: Open Source for Document and Content Management? – London, 7 January 2010
The British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding a one day event to consider "Public Funds in the UK: Open Source for Document and Content Management? " on Thursday 7 January 2010 at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA. This event aims to examine the challenges of web and document management in the public sector, and the part that open source can play. Mark Elkins is interested in hearing from people who would be interested in speaking at this event as well as those interested in attending.