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1339739 story

TWiki.net Kicks Out All TWiki Contributors 194

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @11:14AM from the what-does-that-mean dept.

David Gerard noted an interesting story going down with a relatively minor project that has interesting implications for any Open Source project. He writes "Ten years ago, Peter Thoeny started the TWiki wiki engine. It attracted many contributors at twiki.org. About a year ago, Thoeny founded the startup twiki.net. On 27th October, twiki.net locked all the other contributors out of twiki.org in an event Thoeny called 'the twiki.org relaunch.' Here's the IRC meeting log. All the other core developers have now moved to a new project, NextWiki. Is it a sensible move for a venture capital firm that depends on a healthy Open Source community to lock it out?"

2291165 comment

Comment Re:Mod parent down (Score 1) 517

by morganew on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @10:37AM (#24496485) Attached to: IBM Granted "Paper-or-Plastic?" Patent

Actually, it's not cruel. Although his language is abusive, his intention has some merit.

Studies by the National Science Foundation and others have shown that a disproportionate number of the really questionable patents have had the same examiners.

POPA, the Union that represents examiners, and the executives at the USPTO need to feel more pressure when it comes to correcting the mistakes of individual examiners or their managers.

RIght now, the system skews towards rewarding the examiner who approves a patent, rather than an examiner how gives final judgment against approval.

Anecdotally, it appears that some examiners are even more ready to approve patents than the rest of their colleagues, and public pressure to 'call them out' might be a useful tool for both the Union and Administration to find a resolution to a few bad, or at least misguided, apples.

It's worth noting that IBM is the largest patenter for the USPTO, and as such has incredible influence there. For all their Open Source marketing speak, they continue to pursue absurd patents and to collect royalties off of software patents.

For IBM to file for a patent like this demonstrates that either they are monumentally duplicitous in their intent with regards to method/software patents, or that they are a company where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

594430 submission

Submission + - IBM tried patenting bathroom use, USPTO decries

Submitted by

morganew

on Thursday March 27, 2008 @12:40PM

morganew writes: " Ars Technica reports USPTO Chief Jon Dudas singled out an attempted IBM bathroom patent as a sign of current submissions from industry. Dudas, speaking before the Tech Policy Summit, said the USPTO is getting overworked by companies like IBM submitting unworthy applications. But the larger question raised here may be: Should IBM be patenting software at all? IBM makes billions licensing patents, including software patents, yet supports anti-software patent voices like the FSF. WIll the "Real" IBM please stand up?"

1485273 story

Evolving ODF Environment: Spotlight on SoftMaker 75

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday July 05, 2006 @06:17PM from the odf-avalanche dept.

Andy Updegrove writes "In this fourth in-depth interview focusing on ODF-compliant office productivity suites, I interview Dr. Martin Sommer, of Germany's SoftMaker Software. Most people know about OpenOffice, StarOffice, and KOffice, the ODF poster child software suites. But there are also other products available as well, including this one, which bundles word processing and spreadsheet capabilities (with more modules on the way), runs on both Windows, Linux and mobile platforms, is designed for home users, is available on-line, is localized in many languages - and is dirt cheap, besides. It's also been selected by AMD for use in connection with its ambitious "50x15" plan, which hopes to connect 50% of the world population to the Internet by 2015. This interview series amply demonstrates how a useful standard - in this case ODF - can rapidly lead to the evolution of a rich and growing environment of compliant products, providing customers with variety, choice, price competition, and proprietary as well as open source product alternatives - in stark contrast to the situation that has prevailed in office suite software for the last many years."

1480815 story

Bruce Perens on the Status of Open Source 241

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday April 08, 2006 @03:46PM from the executive-summary dept.

Lars Lehtonen writes to tell us that Bruce Perens has posted the text of his LinuxWorld press conference. In his talk he takes a look at many of the hot topics surrounding the open source community including ODF, NTP vs RIM, and GPLv3. From the article: "It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."

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