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Miguel de Icaza clarifies his comments regarding Microsoft’s handling of the open source community over the last 8 years. I find myself in complete agreement with him for once. Had Microsoft had the epiphany that open source was something it could instinctively adopt and harness at the start of the decade, the world today would be very different.
Instead, it finds itself with a history of toxic behaviour that no amount of attempted reconciliation will quickly clear, especially while the leadership that attacked the free and open source movement is still in place. I hear the job of figurehead for their open source work is proving hard to fill, and no wonder – who wants to step in as apologist for a decade of bad faith? The mistrust is deserved and most of us won’t be as wowed by technology into easy trust as Miguel has been.
Other news:
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Great behind-the-scenes observations from David Hammerstein.
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Exactly as forecast by Bill Gurley, this is the “Less Than Free” model in action and it is likely to be a real winner.
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Great source of free downloads of music by emerging artists. Worth bookmarking as the selection changes every eight weeks.
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This in-progress paper is excellent and is full of lovely clear explanations of the problems both with US copyright law and reform. It also includes great ideas on terminology, good thinking-tools and of course a decent approach for future copyright law. Well worth reading even if you’re not a lawyer.
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