46592217
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
The world's blind have been trying to obtain the right to access books in other formats like Braille for 30 years, but the publishers have been fighting hard to stop that happening, claiming that copyright would be harmed if exceptions were made. Last month, the MPAA joined in, seeking to weaken even further the text of a proposed UN treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities. Now it seems it's the turn of computer companies to attack the blind. A Brussels-based corporate lobby group known as Business Europe has sent a letter to the European Commission opposing the treaty. What's interesting is some of the well-known computer companies in the Business Europe's Corporate Advisory and Support Group: Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. So the question is: do they support Business Europe and its attempt to block copyright exceptions for the blind? If they don't, they need to speak up against the move; if they do, we will know how much weight to put on future claims that they are compassionate, caring organisations...
18267720
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Vladimir Putin has signed an order calling for Russian federal authorities to move to GNU/Linux, and for the creation of "a single repository of free software used in the federal bodies of executive power". There have been a number of Russian projects to roll out free software, notably in the educational sector, but none so far has really taken off. With the backing of Putin, could this be the breakthrough free software has been waiting for?
18109600
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
After two years of leaks, the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) version 2 has been published [.pdf] — and it's a disaster for free software. Where EIF version 1 specified that patents in open standards should be "made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis", we now have "FRAND terms or on a royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software." Of course, that doesn't say *which* open source licence, and conveniently allows the GNU GPL to be excluded by terms that are incompatible with it. So the lobbyists won: I can't wait for Wikileaks or the new Brussels Leaks to tell us what happened behind the scenes when EIF v2 was being drawn up.
17586354
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
That's what Nikolai Pryanishnikov, president of Microsoft Russia, seems to think. Quoted in the context of continuing questions about Russia's plans to create its own national operating system based on GNU/Linux, Pryanishnikov said [via Google Translate]: "We must bear in mind that Linux is not a Russian OS and, moreover, is at the end of its life cycle." An off-the-cuff comment, or something more?