The opening day of the 9th annual Ottawa Linux Symposium (OLS) began with Jonathan Corbet, of Linux Weekly News and his now familiar annual Linux Kernel Report, and wrapped up with a reception put on by Intel where they displayed hardware prototypes for upcoming products.

Recently, I attended a small symposium here in Texas, with just over 70 people attending: the inaugural "Texas Open Source Symposium" (TexasOSS). Although small, it was a pleasant conference. Topics ranged from 3D applications to business models, to introductions into the inner workings of the free software community process.

Microsoft was awarded more than 1,600 patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2007, placing it sixth on the list of biggest patent performers, according to IFI Patent Intelligence, which tracks patent awards. IBM, which tried but failed to patent outsourcing last year, won the patent count for the 16th straight year, with more than 3,100 patents.

"...You can still submit papers to the symposium. The deadline for paper submissions is February 4, 2009, and the program committee accepts both original contributions, including research papers and experience reports, as well as descriptions of work in progress. Again, see the symposium website for more details."

"Here are some news about the upcoming 1st European Lisp Symposium, that will take place in Bordeaux/France on May 22-23, 2008. First of all, registration is now open to everybody, and you can register for the symposium and the accompanying social event at the symposium website..." -- Call for papers: http://p-cos.blogspot.com/2007/12/european-lisp-symposium-2008-call-for....

At the Linux Foundation's annual LinuxCon event this week, Columbia University law professor and Software Freedom Law Center founder Eben Moglen explained that prospects for software patent reform are bleak and that the time has come for the free software community to start finding ways to solve its patent problems by using the patent system itself.

The Gentoo Linux project team will host its UK 2007 community conference on Saturday, July 14, at University College London. A wide range of topics will be covered, from clustering to KDE, a project spokesperson said on the distro Web site.

The Southern California Linux Expo is proud to announce the second annual Demonstrating Open-Source Health Care Solutions (DOHCS). The event will be held on February 8, 2008 in Los Angeles, California in conjunction with the Sixth Annual Southern California Linux Expo.

"The purpose of the European Lisp Symposium is to provide a forum for the discussion of all aspects of the design, implementation and application of any of the Lisp dialects. We encourage everyone interested in Lisp to participate..."