256129
submission
Down-with-the-patents writes:
As reported by Slashdot earlier, the US Patent and Trademark Office is collaborating with the Peer-to-Patent program to stop bad patents from issuing. Brigid Quinn, spokesperson for the USPTO explains the motivation of the USPTO to open a behind-closed-doors process to public. Groklaw's Pamela Jones admits "that when it comes to software, there is more knowledge outside of USPTO than inside it." While some of Jones' readers are stayong away away from the pilot program, to let the patent system collapse, Jones says that's a goal she understands but don't view as realistic. The project seems to doing pretty well with over a 1,000 active contributors and plans to replicate it in other Patent Offices starting with the UK Patent Office next year.
256115
submission
anoopdotk writes:
Meebo announcing- "Today, we're happy to report that we've taken the "pre-Alpha" tag off ... meebo is ready and available (and hopefully, much improved) on the iPhone. Just like normal meebo, there's no download required; you get chat history for all your buddies and their buddy icons, and your IM accounts are all in one place"
256111
submission
Donation-is-good writes:
Donations are crucial to Open Source projects. But tell that to a non-geek, who has been using Open Source software that just works. Convincing users to donate can be quite tricky as per this article which tries to convince users of Open Source software to donate to their favorite project. In addition to donations, there are several others methods different projects employ to support themselves financially like selling goodies, documentation, support, advertisement, etc. Developers from K3b, Sabayon Linux, Gentoo Linux and Elive Live CD, share the importance of donations and what factors motivate users to donate.
