I’ve posted an article in a few places commenting briefly on the implications of Github, Google and others (but notably not SourceForge) deciding not to offer downloads as a service to open source projects. My instinct tells me this is a warning sign; I’d be interested in your views.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Zeitgeist | Tagged: Downloads | 1 Comment »
In InfoWorld this week, I’ve reprised my views about contributor agreements. The trigger for this was seeing Oracle erroneously change the license for the MySQL man pages from GPL to something nasty. Once they were told, they fixed the error (which had been public for two months), but the fact their build system even has an option for proprietary relicensing that can be accidentally enabled is cause for thought.
Why can they do that? Contributor agreements have given them ownership of all the copyrights, including for things they didn’t make. With those copyrights comes the power to change the license without asking anyone (even by accident). In an age of OpenStack, Eclipse and Apache, why should we still have important open source projects under the control of unaccountable entities?
Filed under: InfoWorld | Tagged: Community, Contributor Agreements, MySQL | 3 Comments »
The government clearly wishes to be seen to be doing something about the issues of children viewing pornography and of child pornography. To this end they have called a summit, to be chaired by Culture Secretary Maria Miller and attended by major Internet service providers. But the invite list conspicuously omits anyone representing actual citizens, the people creating and using the internet who would actually be affected.
Since the proposals will materially harm the Internet for everyone in Britain, that’s quite an oversight. That’s like only inviting postmen to a summit about hate mail.
Read more in ComputerWorldUK.
Filed under: Censorship, ComputerWorldUK | Tagged: Maria Miller | 1 Comment »
My article in InfoWorld this week rounded up the news of the White House initiative to deal with patent trolls and repeated some proposals I’ve made before on other reforms we could make to relieve some of the pain of the dysfunction while we wait for root-and-branch reform of the patent system.
The White House initiative is good and encouraging, but it’s a source for some concern. There are actually plenty of giant corporations who have found they can monetise their vast patent portfolios effectively. The careful construction of the White House proposals suggests to me that they don’t intend to take action against the behaviour of those corporations.
Their tactics are a lot like those of patent trolls. They approach innovators, demonstrate the magnitude of their patent portfolios, assert there is sure to be a conflict and then demand payment of tribute (euphemistically described as “cross licensing”, as if their victims have something to offer in fair exchange). This is all done under cover of NDA-imposed secrecy from the beginning, and those who dare say they are being shaken down — as TomTom did for example — are punished for their temerity. As a consequence of the NDAs and the out-of court settlements there are no public traces – the perfect shake-down.
This is just as chilling to innovation as the actions of non-practicing entity trolls. In some ways, it’s worse. Its perpetrators also use their patent portfolios to chill fair competition, acting in a way that surely should be considered a form of anti-trust when they take vast swathes of vaguely-described “invention” and attempt to apply it to their competitors to lock them out of markets or tax their profits. Preventing direct copying of actual, concrete inventions would be fair enough. That’s not what we’re talking about here though. We’re talking about attempts to control use of gestures, ideas and even rectangles.
So as we congratulate the White House for taking action against trolls, even going to the extent of creating cute animated graphics to promote their efforts, let’s not give their corporate advisors a free pass. Patents on pure software are abuse waiting to happen and they need to be eliminated. The worthy White House actions against trolls should not distract us from that goal.
Filed under: InfoWorld, Patents | Tagged: Cross-licensing, Patent, White House | 1 Comment »
On FLOSS Weekly this week, Jono Bacon told us all about the Ubuntu Phone. I’ve summarised the most interesting points on InfoWorld today, but the key take-away for me was they are focussing on the carriers and handset vendors yet don’t appear to have a strong plan to build a developer marketplace around the device. As Sir Humphrey would say, that’s a brave choice.
Filed under: InfoWorld | Tagged: Canonical, FLOSS Weekly, Mobile, Ubuntu | Comments Off on Can Ubuntu Phone Succeed?
Amazingly, the debate about when we will see the “year of the Linux desktop” is still active. Maybe it’s software Stockholm Syndrome making us all love our captor, but the focus on desktop applications, coupled with the idealistic expectation that Windows will be displaced, has led many to overlook or even dismiss the way Linux actually has taken over the desktop.
We were expecting it to displace Windows; instead, it has displaced the Windows desktop application, powered the reinvention of the mobile market, and in the process done more for us all than the revolution we expected could ever have delivered. Read about it on InfoWorld.
Filed under: InfoWorld | Tagged: Linux | Comments Off on Stockholm Syndrome Stopping Seeing How Linux Has Won?
I’m pleased Nick Clegg has blocked the Communications Data Bill, but if we’re to avoid the same zombie bill coming back in the night for our brains we need to fill the vacuum it leaves. I explain more on ComputerWorldUK today.
Filed under: Communications Data Bill, ComputerWorldUK | Comments Off on Beware Zombie Legislation
On its first anniversary, I remain convinced that the motivation for Microsoft’s wholly-owned open source & open standards subsidiary is primarily to isolate Microsoft from the open source community. I explain in InfoWorld.
Filed under: InfoWorld | 1 Comment »
In my InfoWorld column today I consider the recent news that Java 8 is going to be substantially delayed because Oracle’s development staff have had to focus on security issues. I wonder if fully and inclusively engaging the community – especially with a proper security team like other open source communities use to great effect – would help avoid similar delays in the future?
Filed under: InfoWorld | Tagged: Java, Oracle | Comments Off on Time For A Security Team For OpenJDK
(Just making sure that you can find everything I write with a single subscription!)
This open letter from the director of Bytemark Hosting is a call for other hosting companies to help financially support the development of a new free email client. It asserts that by supporting this particular project the industry as a whole can progress, becoming better able to compete with propriety software giants.
The principle seems valid enough, if you want a project to succeed, adding value to your own product, you need to give that project your support. Hopefully hosting companies will see this call, respond, and take its underlying principle on board. Read more in today’s CWUK article.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK | Comments Off on Free Software Needs Support
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