Wild Webmink

• Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality
  Important article from Tim Berners-Lee that needs to be brought to the attention of legislators globally. Key quote:

  Given the many ways the Web is crucial to our lives and our work, disconnection is a form of deprivation of liberty. Looking back to the Magna Carta, we should perhaps now affirm: “No person or organization shall be deprived of the ability to connect to others without due process of law and the presumption of innocence.”
• Attachmate Corporation to Acquire Novell, Inc.
  Looks like they plan to run SuSE as a business unit. The acquisition is partly facilitated by selling unidentified assets to Microsoft. Hopefully that won’t mean the UNIX copyrights, if SuSE is still a going concern – maybe it means WordPerfect, which would be a logical conclusion to the long-running legal fights between Microsoft and Novell.

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• WebID 1.0
  Interesting proposal for a lightweight mechanism for authenticated personal identity on the internet using existing web mechanisms.
• Does the TSA ever catch terrorists?
  “Does the TSA Ever Catch Terrorists? If they do, for some reason they won’t admit it.”

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• Government suppliers may be ordered to open up data
  I’ll believe it when I see it. The whole point of outsourcing in government contexts (and not just IT – think of military security in Iraq) is to push the dirty business of actually getting things done behind a contractual firewall where they can safely shelter under the cover of “commercially sensitive” and avoid being questioned.
• Re-tweeting the revolution
  “The war on terror is over. We lost.” — the weak-minded direct-causal thinking that’s driven the west’s entire response to the educated, layered and cunning strategy Bin Laden has been executing to destroy non-Islamic society has indeed led to the result Bin Laden wanted, as fear has overwhelmed justice and justice has overwhelmed mercy.

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• Should Companies That Use Open Source Software Pay a Tithe?
  They should certainly budget to obtain service and ensure they pay the companies and people that make the software upon which they depend, whether they need support or not. If they don’t, it might not get updated again. And I like the idea of budgeting a minimum amount for this. But I’m not so sure abstract “giving to the community” is a good idea. Experience shows that a community selectively paying community members to participate demotivates everyone else.
• Legal Attack on Internet Music Storage Threatens ‘Safe Harbor’ Rules for Online Businesses
  Another valuable EFF action, this time protecting “safe harbour” for service providers. Robust legal protection for common-carrier-status is a vital part of enabling innovation and growth.
• Indian Open Standards Policy Finalized
  The most important aspect of this is that India requires royalty-free (and not RAND) licensing for patents in standards.

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• Forking doesn’t work
  Michael Meeks points out one of the poorly recognised aspects of dual-license scenarios (including those where patents are licensed). The contract companies submit to in order to gain non-open-source access to the software may well (in my experience usually does) include clauses restricting the exercise of freedoms available under the open source license. That can mean losing the freedom to contribute to competing projects or the freedom to use the software in other contexts under the open source license rather than under the private agreement. 

  One of the unseen menaces to software freedom is bilateral (private) agreements that supersede apparent freedoms. That’s a great reason to oppose RAND as a way of licensing patents in standards by the way – RAND ensures the market is not transparent and open because it compels participants to engage in bilateral agreements that supersede software freedom.

• Red Hat tries the value argument for open source
  This is the sort of thing that makes me want to believe in synchronicity. My keynote in Bolzano at SFSCON just before Savio posted this story was about some of the benefits of open source that would be worth paying extra for.
• Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for OSX
  Good to see a solution being found. It’s by no means a perfect answer; I see that initially the support will be SoyLatte-style. It will clearly take some time to get the OpenJDK version to the level users expect. But at least the public campaigns had some effect.

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• Chatting with Eucalyptus Co-founder about OpenStack
  Great to see Eucalyptus exploring ways to engage with OpenStack – very positive trend. It’s the sign of a mind that has embraced open source and is looking for ways to make it work. There’s got to be something in OpenStack over which Eucalyptus can collaborate, given their close origins, and I sincerely hope they find it and flourish. Contrast with approaches to competition that prefer to bully and litigate.

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• Four Reasons To Pay Extra For Open Source
  My slides from today’s presentation in Bolzano, Italy. The core of the talk asserts that software freedom opens additional options for businesses which, if we weren’t pre-programmed by the price meaning of the word “free”, we would expect to pay a premium to obtain.
• Google Files Sizzling Answer to Oracle’s Amended Complaint and its Opposition to Motion to Dismiss
  Finally the filings are getting to the real heart of the issues. This Groklaw analysis is well worth reading.

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• Belgian Court recognises CC licences
  Important progress here for Creative Commons. The more case law that upholds CC licences the better.
• iFixit: The free repair manual
  Just love this site, full of good stuff. And what’s more: “We fund our mission of helping people fix things by selling useful service parts and tools.”
• Symbian Foundation to Transition to a Licensing Operation
  Even the “so long and thanks for all the fish” press release is spinworthy.
• Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook
  A look by danah boyd at “super-logoff” and “Facebook as inbox” strategies for managing reputation on Facebook by teens. Very interesting indeed.
• The Walking Dead: Tips for Survival After the Smartphone Zombie Apocalypse
  Look around you. The Undead are already everywhere.

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• EC lobs grenades at copyright’s Ancien Régime

  Kroes said she thought “the system has ended up giving a more prominent role to intermediaries than to artists”. She continued: “It irritates the public, who often cannot access what artists want to offer and leaves a vacuum which is served by illegal content, depriving the artists of their well-deserved remuneration.”

  Excellent summary here by Neelie Kroes of the actual problem with copyright law that needs root-and-branch reform – I hope Cameron’s advisers are listening to her rather than the industry lobbyists.

• BPI making misleading claims

  “This is very serious. We feel the BPI may have deliberately misled politicians and Ofcom when discussing how useful their evidence really is.”

• Open Core By The Numbers
  Interesting and useful statistics that deserve some closer study.

Apologies for the delay in posting links today – it was a problem at Delicious.

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• EPIC – EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of Body Scanner Program)
  EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a US group) has challenged the US government over the new body scanners in use over there. The combination of scanners irradiating and exposing travellers, the abusive and humiliating alternatives and the lack of any humanity on the party of the authorities means this is a symbol that the American public may finally have had enough. Let’s hope – looks like the immoral murdering scum they think they are targeting think it’s a good enough development that they are increasing their activity so as to give the TSA extra reasons for removing more dignity and liberty from travellers unchallenged.
• Java/DevJam 2011 at Fosdem – Call For Participation
  The CfP is open for the Free Java DevRoom at FOSDEM. Get some good quality submissions in there, space will be in great demand.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Challenging Intrusion