☞ Unexpected Findings

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Filed under: Links | 2 Comments »

☝ Procurement and Indemnity

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Legacy procurement rules that insist on indemnity from open source subscription suppliers are an unnecessary barrier to open source adoption.

Read about this on ComputerWorldUK

Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Open Source | Tagged: , | Comments Off on ☝ Procurement and Indemnity

✈ Speaking at Campus Party Brasil on Saturday

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Simon Phipps

I’ve reached São Paulo ready to speak at Campus Party tomorrow after Steve Wozniak in the evening. Here’s the abstract for the talk:

Lessons for copyright reform from open source software

The open source revolution started because hackers wanted the freedom to work together to make great software. But it’s grown up and become the key source of innovation in the software industry. Open source software has unique business value that’s simply not available from proprietary software, and allows ways of creating software that would be impossible if the copyright wasn’t freely licensed.
With Brazil reaching a turning point in copyright reform, what lessons can be drawn from the success of the open source movement? This talk will look at the history and social context of open source, identify some of the unique business benefits and suggests lessons on copyright and patents that can be applied to other sections of society.

All suggestions welcome for what I should actually say 🙂

Filed under: Open Source | Tagged: | Comments Off on ✈ Speaking at Campus Party Brasil on Saturday

☝ OSI and FSF Collaborate In DoJ Referral

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Before Christmas I reported that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) had written to the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) asking them to investigate the acquisition of Novell assets by the CPTN Group as a possibly anti-competitive move by CPTN’s four members. I described that move as “unprecedented” because it was the first time OSI had chosen to intervene in a competitive situation on behalf of the open source community it represents.

Today, another unprecedented action was provoked by the same situation.

Continue reading on ComputerWorldUK

Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Patents | Comments Off on ☝ OSI and FSF Collaborate In DoJ Referral

☞ Documenting History

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Documenting History

☞ Uses Of Power

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Simon Phipps
  • On the map
    Interesting slide show illustrating the power of OpenStreetMap to overcome political bias that prevents the real world being documented.

  • Legal Thuggery, or Law as Transaction Cost
    "Asserting rights where you have none, and implying the threat of litigation behind them, may well be an ethical violation."

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Uses Of Power

☆ Apple and Google and ODF

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Simon Phipps

I’m in Latvia today speaking at the Latvian Open Technology Association annual conference – my slides are online. The speaker before me was from the government and made an important announcement; that from now on, all government departments in Latvia must accept documents in ODF.

It’s not just Latvia. Moves like this are in progress across Europe as public administrations seek to ensure citizens can engage with government without being forced to pay for the means to do so. All the same, many citizens will want to use software other than LibreOffice to edit ODF documents.

So I remain surprised that neither Apple nor Google are taking ODF support seriously. Apple still don’t support ODF in their applications (despite it being available in their TextEdit gadget on Mac OS X) or the iPhone or iPad, and the ODF support in Google Docs is so weak that documents I try to upload from LibreOffice are routinely rejected in ODF and yet accepted if I save the identical document in .doc format. It’s ironic that the best proprietary ODF support right now is from Microsoft.

Filed under: ODF | 10 Comments »

Ⓕ OpenIDM Design Summit Announced

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Simon Phipps

One of the key control points in enterprise software is the provisioning or IDM software. It’s the point all the threads of directory, authentication, authorisation and provisioning come together and it’s the part that the proprietary vendors are least willing to surrender to that great deposer of control points, community-based open source software.

When ForgeRock (where I work) got started, some companies who had been promised an open source IDM by a vendor who then reneged on the promise asked if we’d join them building one. After about nine months collaborative work, the result was the OpenIDM project, for which ForgeRock announced support back in October.

That wasn’t the end of the process of course, and the pace is being maintained. I’m delighted to see that the emerging community is organising an OpenIDM Design Summit in two weeks in Oslo (January 26-27), both as a meeting point for the developers building it and as a meeting for the developers and businesses deploying it (mainly in Scandinavia at the moment, but the meeting will be in English). ForgeRock is providing the facilities and the agenda looks very interesting.

Filed under: ForgeRock, Identity, Open Source, Technology | Comments Off on Ⓕ OpenIDM Design Summit Announced

☞ Weekend Game

Posted on January 15, 2011 by Simon Phipps
  • "Word²" by Massively Fun
    This game is massively multiplayer Scrabble on an infinite board. It plays in the browser smoothly, and I'm finding it utterly compelling.

Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »

☞ Indemnity

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Simon Phipps
  • A Walled Wide Web for Nervous Autocrats
    I have been making the core point that this good WSJ article makes in my discussions with governments all over the world for the last six years, and it always makes an impression.

    It also transfers to the commercial world. The reason you need contractual indemnity when you procure proprietary software is you have no other way to attempt to protect yourself against careless or malicious infringement of the rights you or others can reasonably expect to be protected. With open source, as long as there’s a sufficiently diverse community around the software the best assurance you can get comes from them, and indemnity adds nothing.

Also:

  • Is the removal of H.264 from Chrome a step backward for openness?
    Excellent claim-by-claim takedown of the the rubbish people have been spouting against Google for deciding to omit H.264 video from Chrome’s HTML5 support.

  • Chrome Experiments – Home
    Very interesting gallery of (mainly HTML5) sample web applications. Shows just what can be achieved without ever going near Flash or Java. The new WebGL section on the site is jaw-dropping – you’ll need to run Chrome with a command-line switch to enable the experimental WebGL support though.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Indemnity

« Previous Page — Next Page »

  • Sponsor

    Meshed Insights - Open Source Management Consulting

  • TwitterMink

  • FlickrMink

    Valbonne Winter SunsetPXL_20251116_111501279PXL_20251116_111408325
    More Photos

  • Top Mink

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 283 other subscribers
  • Document Foundation Member

  • Legalese

    All views expressed on this blog are those of Simon Phipps and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other entity, including current and former employers and clients. See my full disclosure of interests.

    © 2010-23, Simon Phipps. All rights reserved, all wrongs righted. Unless otherwise credited all photographs, videos and other media are included in this statement. Some photographs are available for licensing via iStockPhoto. To contact the author, please use the e-mail form.