☝ Fixing The Chilling Effect of Trademarks

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Brazil’s new License for Trademarks (Licença Pública de Marca, or LPM) adds additional rights on top of those delivered by open source. It ensures that any trademarks used in the software can be freely used by the community and means that control of trademarks can’t be used to chill the ability to exercise the four freedoms. Is the answer to trademark conflicts like we’ve seen around Hudson and LibreOffice?

Continue reading at ComputerWorldUK

Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Trademarks | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Ⓕ Another RockStar at ForgeRock

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Simon Phipps

You’ll recall that ForgeRock (where I work) launched the OpenIDM project back in October. One of the key control points in enterprise software is the provisioning or IDM software. It’s the point all the threads of directory, authentication, authorisation and provisioning come together and it’s the part that the proprietary vendors are least willing to surrender to that great deposer of control points, community-based open source software.

It’s already stimulated a great deal of interest and we already have a number of customers for it. We realised it needs a great engineer to act as ForgeRock’s lead architect for OpenIDM. So I am delighted to say that, starting today, Andreas Egloff is joining ForgeRock as Chief Architect, OpenIDM. Andi headed up OpenESB development at Sun and was the force behind the Fuji project that was creating its successor. His skills in identity management in general and in identity oriented enterprise middleware will be crucial in helping the OpenIDM project evolve quickly yet with architectural integrity.

Having Andi join the team rounds out an amazing first year wonderfully – welcome, Andi!

Filed under: ForgeRock | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

☝ Procurement and Indemnity

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Legacy procurement rules that insist on indemnity from open source subscription suppliers are an unnecessary barrier to open source adoption.

Read about this on ComputerWorldUK

Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Open Source | Tagged: , | Comments Off on ☝ Procurement and Indemnity

☝ OSI and FSF Collaborate In DoJ Referral

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Before Christmas I reported that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) had written to the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) asking them to investigate the acquisition of Novell assets by the CPTN Group as a possibly anti-competitive move by CPTN’s four members. I described that move as “unprecedented” because it was the first time OSI had chosen to intervene in a competitive situation on behalf of the open source community it represents.

Today, another unprecedented action was provoked by the same situation.

Continue reading on ComputerWorldUK

Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Patents | Comments Off on ☝ OSI and FSF Collaborate In DoJ Referral

Ⓕ OpenIDM Design Summit Announced

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Simon Phipps

One of the key control points in enterprise software is the provisioning or IDM software. It’s the point all the threads of directory, authentication, authorisation and provisioning come together and it’s the part that the proprietary vendors are least willing to surrender to that great deposer of control points, community-based open source software.

When ForgeRock (where I work) got started, some companies who had been promised an open source IDM by a vendor who then reneged on the promise asked if we’d join them building one. After about nine months collaborative work, the result was the OpenIDM project, for which ForgeRock announced support back in October.

That wasn’t the end of the process of course, and the pace is being maintained. I’m delighted to see that the emerging community is organising an OpenIDM Design Summit in two weeks in Oslo (January 26-27), both as a meeting point for the developers building it and as a meeting for the developers and businesses deploying it (mainly in Scandinavia at the moment, but the meeting will be in English). ForgeRock is providing the facilities and the agenda looks very interesting.

Filed under: ForgeRock, Identity, Open Source, Technology | Comments Off on Ⓕ OpenIDM Design Summit Announced

☝ Google, Chrome and H.264 – Far From Hypocritical

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Simon Phipps

When Google announced yesterday that they were withdrawing from their Chrome browser embedded support in the HTML5 <video> tag for the H.264 encoding standard, there was immediate reaction. While some of it was either badly informed views by people who can’t handle indirect causality or astroturf trolling by competitors, some of it was well-observed. For example, when they said:

“Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable
open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources
directed towards completely open codec technologies.”

they indicated that a motivation was to only use “completely open” technologies in Chrome. Yet they did not mention Adobe’s proprietary Flash system, designed for embedded media programming yet definitely not “completely open” even by Adobe’s special definitions of the word.

Continue reading on ComputerWorldUK…

Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Standards | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

☂ Copyrights vs Human Rights

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Simon Phipps

My article on how human rights trump copyrights is now available in the Essays section. It has also been republished at OpenSource.Com.

Filed under: ACTA, Copyright, Issues, Webmink | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

☆ Giving Up Yahoo

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Simon Phipps

NO YAHOO!Yahoo Messenger is the only IM network I use where I am bothered daily by spam-porn-bots attempting to add me to their contact lists. Some days there are as many as 10 requests waiting when I log in. I don’t know what it is about Yahoo that makes their service so scummy, but it’s not stopping and I’m tired of it.

I don’t remember the last time anyone I actually wanted to talk with used Yahoo Messenger, so this blog posting is a request to anyone who knows me and uses Yahoo Messenger to make sure you have an account on something else – pretty much anything else, actually 🙂 – so we can stay in touch. I plan to remove Y! from Pidgin, Adium and the rest on Tuesday.

Filed under: Webmink | 2 Comments »

☆ 2010 in review

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Simon Phipps

Auto posting: The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 95,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 4 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 321 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 292 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 17mb. That’s about 6 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was March 9th with 4,143 views. The most popular post that day was ✍ Last Day At Sun.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, blogs.sun.com, planet.opensolaris.org, blogs.computerworlduk.com, and news.ycombinator.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for wild webmink, liberte egalite fraternite, vote, happy birthday copyright, and bcs egm.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

✍ Last Day At Sun March 2010
130 comments

2

★ OpenSolaris Governing Board Resigns August 2010
12 comments

3

About The Author November 2009

4

✭ Is the “Open Source Bubble” Over? August 2010
2 comments

5

✍ When Reptiles Attack: Has IBM Tired Of FOSS? April 2010
15 comments

Filed under: Webmink | Comments Off on ☆ 2010 in review

☆ Crossing Over

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Simon Phipps
Deer wading across the Tuolmne River in Yosemite National Park

2010 was a year of change for me, with many things I’m glad are past and with the roots of new things I am looking forward to exploring and growing. For 2011 I am full of hope:

  • that we will see successful new ways of doing business while promoting everybody’s freedoms;
  • that we’ll see the community of software-freedom-loving communities flourish and find new unity of purpose;
  • that we’ll see the emergence of a realization in our political leaders worldwide that the internet offers new opportunities for liberty rather than a threat.

My goal for the year is to do all I can to make those hopes real, both in my own life and in the wider community. I wish every reader here a very happy new year, full of hope, and look forward to working with you

Filed under: Webmink, Zeitgeist | 3 Comments »

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    All views expressed on this blog are those of Simon Phipps and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other entity, including current and former employers and clients. See my full disclosure of interests.

    © 2010-23, Simon Phipps. All rights reserved, all wrongs righted. Unless otherwise credited all photographs, videos and other media are included in this statement. Some photographs are available for licensing via iStockPhoto. To contact the author, please use the e-mail form.