Open Source Initiative

Alan MacCormack published a new paper entitled A Developer Bill of Rights: What Open Source Developers Want in a Software License for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center. Whenever I see a statement of developer desiderata, I'm reminded of this timeless posting by One Laptop Per Child hacker extraordinaire Chris Blizzard:

The news outlets, radio waves, and blogosphere [1] and [2] continue to buzz with responses to the FORTUNE magazine article where Microsoft claims that many popular Open Source software packages, including the Linux kernel, infringe some 235

Note: this is just my opinion. The OSI board may have a different opinion if it speaks as a body.

Microsoft is spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) with their latest anti-Linux patent campaign. If they had an actual, solid case of patent infringement, they would go to a judge, get an injunction against the distribution of Linux, and sell patent licenses for FreeBSD. The fact that they don't, but are willing to sell patent licenses for an unnamed set of infringed patents, says that they have no legal case.

Rik van Riel posted an interesting insight this weekend about this important difference between those working under the constraints of the proprietary software model and those of us who use and develop open source software:

they *have* to target their development to work on marketable features, while we have more liberty to focus on things that provide our users with value -- even if they are not glamorous enough to use in marketing material.

Two months ago I blogged about the best open source presentation ever?, which was remarkable because mostly when I read what other people have to say about open source, I'm much less charitable (for example, this about James DeLong's latest paid product).

On the just concluded Access to Knowledge Conference run by the Yale Law School Information Society Project, Open Source came out clear champion. Distinguished participants on this prestigious conference singles out the use of Free Software and Open Source as a key in Access to Knowledge (A2K)

http://research.yale.edu/isp/eventsa2k2.html

It is a privilege to be part of OSI. Look forward to great things ahead.

NCIS gets Open Source right! This is probably courtesy of Sean Murray, who is arguably geekier than the character he plays. In this episode, his character, McGee, says "I was looking for an address book, and I found Celestia, an open source astronomy program popular with space enthusiasts. It's supposed to be an accurate simulation but I found a star system which doesn't belong. The program is Open Source. That means you can adapt it to pretty much anything; education, games, you can store grocery lists, or in this case you can use it for a diary.

The European Union funded FLOSSCom research project is investigating Free / Libre Open Source software (FLOSS) communities as learning environments. They want to identify principles of FLOSS communities that could be transferred to (formal) educational settings (e.g. open culture, collaborative production, open and inclusive, values & volunteering, etc.). Their survey covers only a small part of their current research activities.

It was an overwhelming surprise to hear the Ghanaian minister of Communications - Mike Oquaye, give the government's full support to Open Source. This was at the opening ceremony of the FOSS media training in Accra. This event also made prime time news;

The speech is here

http://www.fossfa.net/fossfa