The thaw in the Deep South is in full swing; even these icicles have dripped away from the office window now.
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Thaw
Posted on January 22, 2013 by Simon Phipps
Governance Lessons from Vert.x
Posted on January 21, 2013 by Simon Phipps
The open discussion that the Vert.x community ended up having because of Tim Fox’s original announcement and the ripples it caused has produced fruit, in the shape of a proposal to join Eclipse. During the journey, there was a helpful exploration of the options open to a community like theirs – my summary is on InfoWorld.
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Snowy Branches
Posted on January 19, 2013 by Simon Phipps
Snowy Branches, originally uploaded by webmink.
Snow is something of a novelty where we live, despite being in England. The mildness that results from being on the coast seems somehow magnified by the rivers and the shape of the landscape, with the result that snow almost never settles here. To make the most of the novelty, we took an evening walk and enjoyed the brightness present even at a cloudy dusk.
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FOSS WYWO Week 2
Posted on January 17, 2013 by Simon Phipps
My weekly FOSS link roundup on ComputerWorld UK for those not following me on Twitter.
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About The Java Flaw
Posted on January 16, 2013 by Simon Phipps
Finding the missing details of the zero-day exploit that made the US government tell people to disable Java in the browser was hard. There were plenty of people echoing the advice and commenting on it, but no-one much explaining the problem and in particular why the US government didn’t rescind its advice when Oracle quickly patched the problem. So I went digging; the results are in InfoWorld.
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An Open Source Take-Over
Posted on January 11, 2013 by Simon Phipps
By poaching the key developer from VMware, Red Hat has made a chess move derived from extensive experience of open source. It’s gained control over future development of the Vert.x project, triggered a move to independent governance, and negatively framed VMware. This is the 21st-century equivalent of a hostile takeover, as played by experts. Read the full story on InfoWorld.
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WYWOA
Posted on January 11, 2013 by Simon Phipps
(While You Were Out, Again)
Today I have a roundup of the digital rights stories that caught my eye over the break, on ComputerWorldUK.
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See You At FOSDEM?
Posted on January 10, 2013 by Simon Phipps
I’ll once again be attending Europe’s most important open source developer event, FOSDEM, I’m honoured to have had two talks accepted this year. Both are on Saturday afternoon:
- Should We Embrace App Stores? (15:00 in the Legal Issues DevRoom)
Most open source projects have chosen to build versions of their code for a variety of platforms. This helps the advance of software freedom, since people are frequently exposed to the reality for the first time when they try open source software on a platform where it’s otherwise absent.But in the case of platforms gated by app stores, the common wisdom appears to be to disrupt access to open source software by exercising the copyright holders’ right to object to conflicts with the license they have used.
Is this the right approach? Should we be waiving our objections to app store terms so that software freedom is promoted on them? Or is it vital to object on principle in every case? - A New OSI For A New Era (17:50 in the Free Java DevRoom)
This talk will consider trends in open source governance, the work under way to refactor the Open Source Initiative for this new phase in open source, and asks how the Java community should be reacting to these changes.
I’m currently planning to arrive in Brussels Friday February 1st and depart Monday February 4th. If you would like to meet, please let me know!
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WYWO
Posted on January 10, 2013 by Simon Phipps
I’m going to experiment with a new (to me) format in ComputerWorld; a “while you were out” round-up of the most interesting links I’ve tweeted in the last seven days. The first is up today, for open source – let’s see how well it works.
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Beating A Dead FRAND
Posted on January 8, 2013 by Simon Phipps
Of course FRAND terms are incompatible with software freedom, even if you can find a project that has devised a construct to allow it to attempt to accommodate that incompatibility. When a standard includes patents that are not automatically licensed to all implementers — on “Restriction Free” (RF) terms — that means a standard may require permission to be implemented. Requiring explicit permission to act is anathema to software freedom.
Read more on ComputerWorldUK.
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