As the primary author of Kermit 95, I can tell you that there are no conspiracies here. There are three reasons that Kermit 95 cannot be open sourced: First, Columbia University is not the exclusive rights owner to significant portions of the code. Some of which was licensed from commercial entities that no longer exist. Other portions are licensed from parties that do exist but have not given their permission for the code to be released. Second, Kermit 95 is licensed for export by the U.S. government. It is not an open source product unlike C-Kermit and once classified it would need to be reclassified before it could be freely distributed. I doubt Columbia U. is willing to pay for the additional legal work to make the classification change. Finally, Kermit 95 is a publication not of Columbia University but of Manning Press, http://tinyurl.com/3bm486c, and I suspect that Columbia U. would have to compensate Manning Press for loss of future revenues and agree to purchase any stock still in inventory. Jeffrey Altman

I see no reason why any local station should be able to charge retransmission fees for their broadcast content. As far as I am concerned, cable companies should be required to provide free access to over the air broadcasts. It shouldn't matter to the local broadcast stations if I am watching their broadcasts over the airwaves, a cable connection or the Internet. They have selected a business model in which the broadcast channels get free use of the airwaves in exchange for the opportunity to broadcast their content to as many users as can view it. They make their money through advertising. If ABC, Fox, CBS, and NBC want cable revenues for their shows, then they can choose to broadcast the content on cable only channels.

You can follow the Freenode #gsoc IRC channel discussions. Google proposed an extension on Friday due to low turnout from North America and Europe. The determination will be made tomorrow but the overwhelming response to the extension proposal has been to support it.