Wild Webmink

• News in (Very) Brief – Open Enterprise
  Despite all his instincts as a journalist telling him otherwise, Glyn is experimenting with link posts – take a look and give him feedback on how to do it better!
• TradeMark Policy – The Document Foundation Wiki
  Worth reviewing the trademark policy The Document Foundation are working on for LibreOffice.
• Free Valentine’s Day Playlist
  A playlist full of Valentines Day MP3 tracks for free from Amazon US.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ New Things

• On WebM again: freedom, quality, patents
  The arguments made against WebM video by H.264 advocates turn out to be at best wildly exaggerated and at worst baseless slander, according to this excellent (and data-backed) article by Carlo Daffara. It’s not about “sticking it to Apple” – it’s about genuinely escaping the insidious cartel that’s been created around H.264.
• OpenIDM Design Summit
  The OpenIDM Summit last week had some great content, which is now available on the event web site.
• Govt open-source group nears critical mass
  New group run by former South Australia government insider stands a good chance of making an impact on the adoption of open source in Australia.
• Learning from the open source movement
  Interesting article draws lessons for social enterprise in general from the experience of open source. I spoke a little about this in Brazil at Campus Party in connection with copyright reform.

Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »

• European Commission consults on the modernisation of the European Public Procurement Market
  The European Commission’s consultation is in progress until April. It would be very good indeed for as many open source advocates as possible to make positive proposals for change and to share stories of where procurement rules have caused a bias against software freedom, intentionally or otherwise.
• Rebooting OpenJDK Governance
  Time to remove OpenJDK from my list of affiliations. It will be interesting to see the new governance that IBM and Oracle have drawn up.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Rebooting Procurement

• Jenkins!
  By a massive margin (214 to 14) the Hudson community has decided to rename itself Jenkins and rehost on independent resources. I just hope Oracle decides to stay with the community and not try to keep a fork going.
• ODF Plugfest UK
  As well as the usual ODF testing opportunity, this event promises to have valuable open-source-in-government content as well.
• Introducing TED Books
  Interesting idea that I am sure will become more common. Pity it’s only on Kindle; I would have preferred an open format.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ New Moves

• Bookdarts bookmarks
  I have loved these paper-thin metal page markers ever since I first discovered them in the US over a decade ago. I’m delighted to find they are now available in the UK (and thus in plenty of Europe too) via Amazon. If you’d like me to send you one to try, just ask and I’ll mail one to you at the weekend.
• Open standards and the royalty problem
  Useful article from Brian about the language used in the European Interoperability Framework. The document is clearly confused and the result of diverse political pressures. On balance I think it’s a sign of progress, and that the language used indicates that terms applied to patents in standards must allow open source implementation, but there’s no doubt it could have been much clearer. Presumably it wasn’t clearer because the political cost of doing so was too high.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Darts and Royalties

• The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3
  Congratulations to the Document Foundation team who have just released the first full version of LibreOffice. The key improvements are largely invisible to the user – creating a new build system that’s more usable, tidying the code to make it easier for community members to participate, simplifying the Windows installer and more. But they provide a sound base for future development and make it easier for the community to grow far beyond what was possible with OpenOffice.org before.
• ACS:Law Can’t Take The Pressure, Quit Chasing File-Sharers

  “This scheme was simply an attempt … to get-rich-quick in an exploitative scheme where the vulnerable were targeted with unfounded accusations and demands for cash in settlement of claims which had no basis in law.”

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ One Launch, One Crash

• Oops: No copied Java code or weapons of mass destruction found in Android
  Ed Burnette takes a look at the allegation from a lobbyist that Google is guilty of copyright infringement in Android and finds it is at best trivial and not as advertised and at worst a dirty smear attempt.
• Brazil’s Copyright Reform: the tip of the iceberg?
  I commented on this situation in my talk at Campus Party yesterday.
• OSI and FSF Send Joint Position to Department of Justice
  Here’s the FSF’s announcement of the joint action with OSI.
• Simon Phipps on Rádio Software Livre
  I gave an interview at Campus Party. We discussed OSI and FSF, ForgeRock and copyright reform. In English and Portuguese.

Filed under: Links | 2 Comments »

• People’s Choice Award 2010 – opensource.com
  The OpenSource.Com website that Red Hat run is having a ballot to select the top contributor for 2010 – vote now!
• A Year After: The Open Source Projects
  Another where-are-they-now post from Eduardo now he’s left Oracle. This one documents many of Sun’s open source projects and there current state – probably the only such list on the web.
• Book on OpenAM – Indira’s blog
  Indira’s book on Open AM is released!

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Documenting History

• 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