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Comment Locked OS more dangerous than bells and whistles (Score 1) 416

I don't care if the phone makers want to rebirth the shareware market of the early '90s; eventually people will get tired of paying per feature and expect the good ones to be rolled into the core functionality of the OS or the larger applications they use, ala winzip.

What worries me about android is how all the phones they sell with it still need to be jail broken before you can make use of the freedoms in the free operating system. Surely that's a greater threat to your control over the software in your life than the fact that people are also willing to sell you closed software.

Linux Business

Submission + - Slashdot comments as job application (idealist.org)

foregather writes: As if karma wasn't enough reward, there are now new and potentially lucrative rewards for your slashdot comments. The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), known for their Legal Guide to free software, anti-patent work, and GPL enforcement suits has just posted a job opening encouraging people to include "links to slashdot profiles or other public comment histories" along with the traditional resume and cover letter.

What do you think, are slashdot comments a good test for "Project Liaison and Media Relations" positions?

Comment dot-communism? read it's manifesto (from 2003) (Score 1) 554

Eben Moglen wrote a much more interesting take on this six years ago called "The dotCommunist Manifesto" http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/dcm.html that is still worth reading. Though maybe read ""Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought" http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html instead.

Books

Submission + - Universal e-book DRM exploit discovered! (bkrpr.org)

foregather writes: The book ripper project has a piece up about how paper is the universal form of book DRM, and how methods of digitizing paper are the universal DRM work around for e-books. While light hearted it's argument is sound and they provide a very useful context for the discussion of other e-book DRM schemes.

Comment SFLC says: Settled, But Not Over Yet (Score 3, Informative) 273

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/mar/30/settled-not-over-yet/

Today's settlement between Microsoft and TomTom ends one phase of the community's response to Microsoft patent aggression, and begins another. On the basis of the information we have, we have no reason to believe that TomTom's settlement agreement with Microsoft violates the license on the kernel, Linux, or any other free software used in its products. The settlement neither implies that Microsoft patents are valid nor that TomTom's products were or are infringing.

The FAT filesystem patents on which Microsoft sued are now and have always been invalid patents in our professional opinion. SFLC remains committed to protecting the interests of our clients and the community. We will act forcefully to protect all users and developers of free software against further intimidation or interference from these patents.

SFLC, working with the Open Invention Network and the Linux Foundation, is pleased to participate in a coordinated, carefully graduated response on behalf of all the community's members to ongoing anti-competitive Microsoft conduct. We believe in strength through unity, and we think our community's unity in the face of these threats has helped to bring about Microsoft's quick settlement on all issues with TomTom.

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