The KDE4 Release Event is looming larger in my calendar. I don’t even have a role anywhere in the official programma, but I can tell already that it’s going to be three very very busy days.

There have been several more Release Parties announced, usually through blogs. Toulouse is a happening place the weekend after the main event, for instance. Mumbai is, as well. A tip of my virtual hat to Pradeepto and all of the other KDE hackers down that way. I saw Kushal got a KDE SVN account just the other day. And I am reminded that I promised someone from India a KDE T-Shirt while I was at LinuxTag, and like a complete moron forgot about it. Until it just bubbled up in my brain again. Drop me a note, eh.

Clicking onwards from Pradeepto’s blog shows me that the fonts I have installed on FreeBSD are in need of updates, because I get distressingly many squares instead of glyphs when I get to amachu’s blog (which contains other kinds of cool news on the spread of Free Software across the world). Not that I would be able to read the glyphs if they were there, but I feel they still ought to be visible.

Back to the main event: one of the talks is by Paul Adams on ways to do research on and with Open Source software. It is an outgrowth of the SQO-OSS project. Folk interested in, for instance, code coverage metrics (talking to you , Brad) might want to pop by. There will certainly also be a SQO-OSS BoF somewhere on the two open community days. If you’re not at the KDE4 Release Event, there will also be a Research Room at FOSDEM, just like last year, run by Jesus and Israel from Universidad Rej Juan Carlos. So lots of opportunity to put on your academic Free Software hat.