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• Project Harmony Considered Harmful

  Bradley Kuhn of the Software Conservancy is clearly opposed both to Project Harmony’s work products and sponsors.

  In short, Project Harmony is a design-flawed solution looking for a problem.

• Open Minded: Peace and Harmony between FOSS contributors and lawyers

  Stephen Walli of the Outercurve Foundation seems happy with the results.

  The Harmony Project is an attempt to provide some clarity to the discussion by creating a set of usable documents (with their guide, Creative Commons-style agreement generator, and FAQ) and the first version of the documents will be a stake in the ground to anchor debate for some time. I’ve great confidence that the agreements will continue to evolve with discussion and debate, and the core Harmony team should be applauded for their efforts to date.

• Harmony Agreements Reach 1.0

  Open source consultant Dave Neary has a view that I find it easy to share.

  Do you really need a CLA to achieve your objectives? Is it, in fact, harmful to some of what you want to achieve? At the end of the day, my position remains the same: the goal should not be to write a better CLA, it should be to figure out whether we can avoid one altogether, and figure out how to create and thrive in a vibrant developer community.

• The trouble with Harmony: Part 1

  The first part of the article by Richard Fontana of Red Hat.

  Despite my admiration, respect and affection for those who have been driving Harmony, I cannot endorse the product of their work. I believe Harmony is unnecessary, confusing, and potentially hazardous to open source and free software development.

• The trouble with Harmony: Part 2

  The second part of the article by Richard Fontana of Red Hat. Richard declares the whole Harmony project misguided.

  Formal contributor agreements, whether maximalist or minimalist, remain an uncommon phenomenon in open source. We are only beginning to learn what works, what fails, and what causes harm to open source community development. It is premature for us to unify, or harmonize, the ‘law’ of open source contribution policies. We are particularly not ready to declare victory for the perennially controversial maximalist approach, let alone Harmony’s new take on it.

• Harmony Agreements
  Here finally is the Harmony website complete with the release version of the agreements, largely hidden behind a form-driven wizard. I’d suggest you consider all forms the the CAA to be bad for your community, and only the first two variants of the CLA – with fixed and limited outbound licenses – to be usable (carefully) without harm assuming you have decided that some form of copyright accumulation is unavoidable.

(Footnote: This link post is the basis for Thursday’s Joining The Dots)

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Dis Harmony

• The Dropbox Blog – Changes to our policies (updated)
  Dropbox got lots of bad publicity when they first changed their terms of service and included a broad “all your work belongs to us” clause in it. But I’ve not seen any further coverage since they have clarified the ToS to say that they are only seeking sufficient rights to operate the service and do not seek any further rights. They actually responded rather quickly and deserve some congratulations.
• The rise, fall and reality of commercial open source
  I think I’d agree with Jay but phrase things differently. The benefits of open source are all the first derivatives of software freedom. As the market stabilises, we are seeing two effects.

  • The first is businesses valuing those first derivatives as a function of the freedoms that cause them.
  • The second is a shift in marketing to talk about those derived benefits, but usually somehow in the context of their cause.

  I believe we will actually see more, not less marketing of open source benefits; it’s just that it might not mention their origins so prominently. This, in fact, is the subject of my current conference keynote talk 🙂

Also:

• Did Colossal WWII Bombing Raids Alter Weather?
  If this is correct one might expect the weather around major hub airports to be measurably different from the weather beyond their impact radius.
• Aircraft punch holes in clouds, leave snow in their wake
  Actual snow being created seems quite surprising, although it seems more plausible in the light of the preceding article (and vice versa).

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Terms, Use and Clouds

• Shouldn’t Free Mean The Same Thing Whether Followed By ‘Culture’ Or ‘Software’?
  An excellent point being made here; if it is morally wrong to prevent someone expressing new software based on a previous work, why is it morally OK to prevent someone expressing a new song, picture, book or other creative work based on a previous work?
• Register for the LibreOffice Conference
  Registration for the LibreOffice Conference in Paris (Oct 12-15) is now open. See you there?
• How Many People Are In Space Right Now?
  Hope this site has a REST API.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Free vs Culture?

• USTR New Exclusive Right for Copyright Holders: Importation Provision in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA)
  USTR continues its covert mission to extend copyright and its control ever wider without any reference to the protection of culture or citizens. Giving corporations more unassailable rights is so obviously a problem that it’s no wonder they want this legislative gerrymandering kept secret.
• Data Protection Commissioner investigating Eircom’s “three strikes” system
  Will someone please show this to Ed Vaisey? If he asks any competent internet technologist he’ll hear that blocking systems and three-strikes rules, while sounding reasonable, are actually the path to the exploitation of citizens and the avoidance of due process by large publishing corporations of varying kinds. And we know how ethical they are.

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• News of the World axed by News International
  Most uncharacteristic behaviour by News International signals to the rest of their brands that they have to keep their immoral and unethical behaviour legal otherwise the people hired to replace them will get sacked.
• UK looks to US on piracy blocking
  Ed Vaizey’s views are outrageously uninformed if this report is correct.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Corporations and Power