Following up on the last post after some quick discussions with friends:
At this point, this is still merely a complaint- nothing has gone to trial, nor will it for some time. In fact, most cases which reach this stage still never go to trial- they settle before getting that far. Still, this case is notable [...]
Just read the complaint in the GPL violation lawsuit filed today on behalf of Busybox. Couple things jumped out at me:
This is exactly what you think it is: a very straightforward “you are distributing binaries without the source, which you are not licensed to do” case. Nothing complicated here; if the license is valid, Busybox [...]
About 10 minutes after I posted yesterday, I found a great picture that I wanted to use to illustrate the post, but I’d already posted and I was lazy. Thankfully, today Simon Phipps gave me a great excuse to post the image anyway. Simon says:
[Miguel is] the lure for someone else’s trap.
The image I [...]
… but all I can think about when I see things like this and this is ‘where is the patent grant?’ Not that a patent grant is always a necessity before implementing a technology, but it is nice, and does seem particularly useful when one is potentially making oneself a much bigger target for a [...]
Had a great time at Deblois’s show last night, and a great pre-show time too- walked the length of Central Park on a gorgeous night, and purely by accident stumbled on Caracas Arepa Bar, which is delicious.
Turns out Deblois is on youtube. Also, turns out that besides cdbaby, she’s also on emusic and itunes. Still [...]
Obviously interviews have kept me unable to think about the open services stuff over the past several days, but I’m still keeping an eye on my feed reader as time allows. Came across “Brad’s thoughts on the social graph” today- some interesting discussion on the identity/network problem, and how to solve it. This doesn’t seem [...]
“Free software… refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software…”
–Free Software Definition, emphasis mine
“closing the [ASP] loophole would infringe on certain peoples rights and he [Moglen] didn’t see any way to preserve everyone’s rights…”
– Eben Moglen, as paraphrased here
[The rest of this post is not based on any conversations with FSF/SFLC [...]
I’m obviously interested in what is going on at OSCON this year, since the overlap between web 2.0 and free/open software seems to be a major theme. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go, so I’m left lurking from afar.
John Eckman has some of the best notes I’ve found, at least on Eben’s talks- read his notes on [...]
One of the projects I’ve been working on is an attempt to make RHX’s licensing situation more transparent and understandable for users- explaining in plain english what is or isn’t open source, what basic permissions they have, where they can get source when it is available, etc. We have published much of the information, and [...]
