11676040
submission
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes:
Open source blogger Glyn Moody writes: "We are clearly near the end of the ACTA saga (Act IV?), and much has already been decided without any input from consumer organisations or ordinary people. It's partial because there is still no sign that the negotiators care about what ordinary citizens think – as opposed to the media companies, who are the driving force behind it; it's partial because ACTA remains a very nasty piece of work that threatens many vital aspects of not just the Internet but personal liberty."
11498776
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
The FSF has funded a new video, “Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system”, freely available (of course) in Ogg Theora format (what else?). It comes at time when a lot is happening in the world of patents. Recent work from leading academics has called into question their basis: "The work in this paper and that of many others, suggests that this traditionally-struck ‘devil’s bargain’ may not be beneficial." A judge struck down Myriad Genetics's patents on two genes because they involved a law of Nature, and were thus “improperly granted”. Meanwhile, the imminent Supreme Court ruling In re Bilski is widely expected to have negative knock-on effects for business method and software patents. Is the tide beginning to turn?
10966562
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
While it remains under threat in Europe, here's a big win for open source at the national level. The Italian Constitutional Court has approved a law in Piedmont giving preference to open source, ruling that it is not anti-competitive: "the Court ruled that the preference for Free Software is legitimate and complies with the principle of freedom of competition." Its reasoning was interesting: "It is not understandable how the the choice of a Public institution with regard to a feature, and not a product ... can be deemed as a breach of antitrust law. The concepts of Free Software and software whose code can be inspected do not refer to a particular technology, brand or product, but they rather express a legal feature". Would that same logic apply in other jurisdictions?
10933338
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
A battle for the soul of European IT is taking place behind closed doors in Brussels. At stake is the key Digital Agenda for Europe, due to be unveiled in a month's time. David Hammerstein, ex-Member of European Parliament for the Greens, tweeted last week: "SOS to everyone as sources confirm that Kroes is about to eliminate "open standards" policy from EU digital agenda; Kroes has been under intense lobbying pressure from Microsoft to get rid of interoperability and open source goals of EU." This is confirmed by the French magazine PC Inpact, which also managed to obtain a copy of the draft Digital Agenda. It's currently supportive of both open source and open standards — but for how much longer?
10577326
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Here's a problem for free software: most social networks are built using it, yet through their constant monitoring of users they do little to promote freedom. Eben Moglen, General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation for 13 years, and the legal brains behind several versions of the GNU GPL, thinks that the free software world needs to fix this with a major new hardware+software project. "The most attractive hardware is the ultra-small, ARM-based, plug it into the wall, wall-wart server. An object can be sold to people at a very low one-time price, and brought home and plugged into an electrical outlet and plugged into a wall jack for the Ethernet, and you're done. It comes up, it gets configured through your Web browser on whatever machine you want to have in the apartment with it, and it goes and fetches all your social networking data from all the social networking applications, closing all your accounts. It backs itself up in an encrypted way to your friends' plugs, so that everybody is secure in the way that would be best for them, by having their friends holding the secure version of their data." Could such a plan work, or is it simply too late to get people to give up their Facebook accounts, even for something that gives them more freedom?
10543326
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, has just published a piece called "Apple v. HTC: A Step Along the Path of Addressing IP Rights in Smartphones." In it, he notes that today's smartphones are all about the "software stack", not the "radio stack", and that "as the IP situation settles in this space and licensing takes off, we will see the patent royalties applicable to the smartphone software stack settle at a level that reflects the increasing importance software has as a portion of the overall value of the device. In the interim, though, we should expect continued activity." That "activity" obviously means lawsuits against those producing those software stacks, and Gutierrez seems to be hinting strongly that Microsoft intends to join in. So where does that leave all the Linux-based stacks such as the increasingly-popular Android? Is this just a clever way for Microsoft to start a patent war on Linux without appearing to do so?
9937978
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
According to OSOR.eu, "Vendor lock-in is forcing two municipalities in the Netherlands to stick to using proprietary office applications and other desktop software" when they planned to switch to open source. The problem seems to be that the links between the local government software and Microsoft's product are so tight that it's not possible simply to slot in free software as a replacement. Where that's the case, calls for "level playing-fields" for government procurement means preserving the status quo. So how can vendor lock-in be broken to allow for more competitive tendering? Could open source mandates be used as a kind of shock therapy to get things moving?
9616900
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
In the last few weeks the tech world has had a flood of big stories: Google's Buzz and its gigabit fibre network, Apple's iPad, Nexus One. But conspicuous by its absence in all this is Microsoft, which seems to have dropped out of the news completely. Perhaps this is the way its empire ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
9497748
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Once again, the British Library is working with Microsoft to encourage people to use proprietary technologies instead of open ones. This time, it's giving away some open source code aimed at academic researchers, but with the catch that this software needs Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET Framework and SharePoint to work. Do publicly-funded libraries have a duty to promote open formats and open source, or is this kind of approach acceptable?
9253814
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Facebook's release of HipHop for PHP to join its growing stable of open-sourced code underlines the fact that, along with Google, Facebook has become one of the most powerful demonstrations that free software now scales way beyond proprietary offerings. Is it even possible to build a top Internet site using traditional software, or will everyone follow Google and Facebook's lead of sharing much of their core code?
9189824
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Whether they think that the iPad is bad because it's closed, or great because it's just what people need to do "Real Work", many believe it will be a smash hit with the general public. If it is, maybe that's partly the fault of the open source community, which has consistently failed to come up with an attractive and easy-to-use system perceived to be as good as Windows — never mind better than the Mac. So could a runaway success for the locked-down iPad be the wake-up call free software needs — just as Firefox was for Microsoft?
8391452
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Most analyses of Google's Nexus One have concentrated on two angles: whether it will succeed in reshaping the mobile industry, and whether it's an iPhone-killer. But there's an incredibly significant statement on the official Google blog about what this device really is: "a convergence point for mobile technology, apps and the Internet". That is, this is not just a mobile phone, or even a "superphone" as Google calls it, but the long-awaited fusion of computing and communications, with the Internet as a kind of digital glue — a true "nexus" device that brings everything together in one portable system. Maybe Google has launched the Nexus One largely to spur other mobile manufacturers to bring out better — and cheaper — Android devices with these capabilities. The ultimate aim would be to get the billions of people around the world who currently have neither computer nor mobile online through such a low-cost "nexus" device — and clicking on those Google ads.
8167432
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival. Microsoft seems to feel otherwise judging by a new job ad on its site for a "Linux and Open Office Compete Lead". According to this, competing with *both* GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org is "one of the biggest issues that is top of mind" for no less a person than Steve Ballmer. Interestingly, a key part of this position is "engaging with Open Source communities and organizations" — which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to "engage" with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for it to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge.
8140752
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Today is the birthday of Linus. Just under 19 years ago, on the first day the shops in Helsinki were open after the holidays, Linus rushed out and spent all his Christmas and birthday money on his first PC: a DX33 80386, with 4 Megs of RAM, no co-processor, and a 40 Megabyte hard disc. Today, the kernel he wrote on that system powers 90% of the fastest supercomputers, and is starting to find its way into more and more smartphones — not to mention everything in between. What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?
7972480
submission
Glyn Moody writes:
Two years after its launch, Google's Linux-based Android platform is finally making its presence felt in the world of smartphones. Around 20,000 apps have been written for it: although well behind the iPhone's tally, that's significantly more than just a few months ago. But there's a problem: few of these Android apps are free software. Instead, we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack: open source underneath, and proprietary on top. If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem. So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?
