Wild Webmink

Why did Munich succeed but Freiburg fail in their open source migrations  Following up from my look at the situation in Freiburg, I tried to distil the differences between the two into a straightforward narrative for InfoWorld today.

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on German Lessons

Are you at risk if you use code from GitHub? There’s a lot of code shared on GitHub. But surprisingly, much of it is “all rights reserved”, meaning despite being public you have no specific rights to use it. GitHub don’t require projects to apply a copyright license of any kind, let alone an open source license that would give you the right to use, study, improve and share the code. I dig in to the issue in today’s InfoWorld column.

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on GitHub and Open Source Licenses

You can be if it’s not really open source. While open source forms a part of many proprietary solutions, the term “open source” should only be used to describe software whose full source code is made available under an OSI-approved license, commercial or not. I discovered to my surprise at a recent conference that there are still vendors who want to deceive people into thinking proprietary solutions can be open source, so I’ve written about the issue in InfoWorld this week.

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on Locked-In With Open Source?

Not a title that you might expect to see, but Richard Stallman has indeed posted a pragmatic proposal for dealing with software patents – to limit enforceability of patents against software running on a general-purpose computer. Based on my experiences fighting the Software Patent Directive in Europe, I believe his proposal will face stiff opposition from the telecoms and consumer electronics industries, so I’ve a modified proposal – limit enforcement of patents on software only to cases where it’s implementing a standard which includes patents declared during standardisation.

The full discussion is on InfoWorld – take a look and tell me what I’m missing,

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on Finessing Stallman’s Pragmatism

And nothing more. My experience at Sun showed me that, when you use downloads as a metric for project success, you’re missing the point and perhaps trying to distract people from other truths. I explain in my InfoWorld column today.

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on Downloads Prove There Are Downloaders

Maybe it’s just a lustful fling, but for now, the only laptop in my life is my 3G Chromebook. Read about it on InfoWorld.

Filed under: InfoWorld | 6 Comments »

Academic research about the problem of patent trolls has finally started to flow, and the findings are just as grim as all our instincts suggested. In my article for InfoWorld Open Sources this week, I look at some of the evidence and summarise it to save you the reading.

All the same, the research paper from Lex Machina is worth reading in full. It puts solid numbers on what previously was dismissed as biased surmise, as well as coining an excellent term for the companies causing the problem – “patent monetization entities” – that will allow confrontation of the issues without the dismissal as rabble-rouser that comes from saying “patent troll”. All a fine preparation for the event at Santa Clara University on November 16 on Solutions To The Software Patent Problem.

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on Patent Troll Research Round-Up

News of government support for open source in the US and EU this week is great. But at the same time, software patents are stifling innovation and the same administrations are doing nothing about it – even permitting supposed “reforms” that just make things worse. My column in InfoWorld this week takes a closer look.

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on But What About Patents?

You’ll never guess who’s bankrolling open source. In my column in InfoWorld this week, I look at an initiative to get some crucial software written for America’s schools. Wisely, the Council of Chief State School Officers is making the infrastructure, toolkit and client software all open source so that states can collaborate rather than each expensively creating their own systems.

What will come as a surprise to some is who’s bankrolling the creation of this new open source community. The Gates Foundation (along with Carnegie) are funding two $75,000 awards to seed the community. The winners of the awards stand to become the leaders in a rich new open source software market. An upcoming code camp in Boston offers the chance to get in at the start.

Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on Surprising Sponsor