Wild Webmink

• Oracle v Google: Why?
  Excellent discussion by Stephen O’Grady together with pointers to other commentary that’s worth considering. No conclusions, of course, since the whole scenario still beggars belief.
• Software Patents Wiki: Oracle v. Google (2010, USA)
  Crowdsourcing the analysis of the patents deployed by Oracle against Android.

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• Why We Need To Abolish Software Patents
  “Patents make a lot of sense in many industries …. But in software these are just nuclear weapons in an arms race. They don’t foster innovation, they inhibit it.”
• Why software startups decide to patent … or not
  “The initial findings reported here … suggest that software entrepreneurs do not find persuasive the canonical story that patents provide strong incentives to invest in technology innovation.”
• Abolish Software Patents? Be Careful What You Wish For
  “the history of innovation in the IT industry is much less a story of the free flow of ideas than the free flow of labor.” — I don’t agree with Brian for a moment that we should accept the imposition of software patents in this sort of quid pro quo, but his warning to heed the risks of trade secrets and non-competes should be heeded.
• Sometimes It Isn’t Facebook’s Fault
  Just as in the early days of blogging people were keen to publicize examples of people “fired for blogging” when actually they were fired for something else but a blog was involved in learning about it, so we see stories that blame social media for things that are actually rooted in the world of atoms.

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• Oracle Details Upcoming Solaris 11 Release
  “We’re really getting our grip around building a mission critical operating system that includes technologies from openSolaris that we’ve been working on for some time as well as technologies that we’ve more recently developed. … Solaris 11 will be a superset of what is in openSolaris.” Sounds like the rumours that Oracle was no longer going to engage in open source development of Solaris were true. The best it seems we can hope for is an act-of-grace over-the-wall drop of some of the source code to Solaris 11 after it’s released.
• Paper Trails: The Benjy Davis Project: Free Album
  I really like this free album that Amazon US are providing as an introduction to the delights of the Benjy Davis Project. They have a great, laid-back surfer sound (think Jason Mraz or Jack Johnson) but with a band too. This will be worth paying for when it stops being free; as it is, it’s definitely worth your time to download it.
• Linux Foundation launches major open-source license compliance program
  The Linux Foundation has marshalled its considerable corporate resources and allies to create an impressive compliance program to address the problem that they face from community members enforcing the GPL with gusto.
• ForgeRock Joins Open Invention Network as Licensee
  As OIN transforms into a wider community of businesses supporting free and open source development, it becomes more and more a valuable asset to software freedom. I’m very pleased to have ForgeRock join this community so that we can bring more patent safety to the communities we serve.

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• The golden age of open source?
  Matthew Aslett describes what I called “the open source bubble” as open source 3.0 and agrees it’s ending in favour of what he calls “open source 4.0” or company-dominated (but not controlled) collaborative communities. He notes he’s adjusting his predictions in the light of the involvement of entities such as NASA who are not directly software vendors and describes this as the coming “golden age of open source”, citing examples. Certainly worth reading, and bound to stimulate conversations – “the King is dead, long live the King”.
• Following The Fleet
  Really excellent historical tour of north London in this article, following the course of the (now buried) River Fleet and observing the rich history that gathered along its banks over the centuries. I’m almost motivated enough to try following sections of this on one of those new Boris Bikes.

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• Copyright assignment – Once bitten, twice shy
  Excellent and thorough article about copyright assignment. If you are involved in the current, Canonical-sponsored Project Harmony, this is a must-read.
• Free MP3 Sampler: Peter Bradley Adams
  The sweet, beautiful and sad music that Eastmountainsouth produced turns out to live on in one half of the duo, Peter Bradley Adams. This three-track free sampler on Amazon.com MP3 store (which has started working for me again on my US account but sadly won’t work if you don’t has a US account & address) is gorgeous and well worth your time to download. And it did its job, I just bought “Traces”.

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• Its Official Software Will Be Unpatentable In NZ
  “Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced [on July 15] that he wouldn’t be modifying the proposed Patents Bill hence software will be unpatentable once the Bill passes into law.” — You may have already seen this news, but I’m posting it for two reasons. First, I still think it’s fantastic! second, this is from the NZ Computer Society, which unlike the British Computer Society is willing to take a stand on behalf of its members.
• There Are No Famous Programmers
  We all have days like this.
• StatusNet Raises New Round of Investment
  Congratulations to Evan and the team on this encouraging next step they’ve taken. I remain convinced that the StatusNet microblogging platform is going to be instrumental in the network-of-things revolution that’s just around the corner, so keep an eye on this software and company.

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