Actually, your download is not "free" if to gain access I have to trade my personal details so you can spam me.
— Simon Phipps (@webmink) December 9, 2012
Share this:
Filed under: Privacy, Tweets | 1 Comment »
It’s Not Free If It Cost My Liberty
Posted on December 10, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Filed under: Privacy, Tweets | 1 Comment »
Another Cat
Posted on December 9, 2012 by Simon Phipps
No Apologies
Posted on December 8, 2012 by Simon Phipps
“Sorry” is not enough in the days of the tabloids. There’s no way out; they will hound and pursue and compound and imply and demand and decry, treating confession as a spur to further vitriol, apology as a request for lynching and remorse as a spectacle for the baying crowd. Only the wanton and hard-hearted can survive; there’s no path out for those truly human. The threat to the compassionate is immense.
]
(Skip to +48s if it dosn’t happen automatically. This amazing track is from Karine Polwart’s album “This Earthly Spell” [UK|US] – Lyrics)
Filed under: Zeitgeist | 1 Comment »
German Lessons
Posted on December 7, 2012 by Simon Phipps
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
A Bad Loser
Posted on December 6, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Donald Trump seems to want us to think he’s an asset to Scotland. All the same, his behaviour there leaves many British people cold. His most recent outburst involved an uncontrolled verbal attack on a brand of scotch whisky because an award they sponsored honoured Michael Forbes, the man who refuses to sell his land to Trump to allow expansion of his golf resort. The Top Scot award was decided by public vote, not by the distiller or even the event promoter, so exactly why Trump thinks this is appropriate escapes me.
The golf resort in question is already a source of unhappiness for Scots. Trump bought a wild, beautiful Site of Special Scientific Interest and ruined it to create the original resort, as Karine Polwart beautifully illustrates in her song “Cover Your Eyes”:
[youtube http://youtu.be/ELeZmPDdFPE]If you can’t bring yourself to buy a few bottles of Glenfiddich to express your contempt for this attempted bullying, consider buying Karine’s fantastic album Traces instead (UK|US) – Karine and the album are both shortlisted for the BBC Folk Awards.
Filed under: Zeitgeist | Comments Off on A Bad Loser
MariaDB Foundation
Posted on December 5, 2012 by Simon Phipps
I was pleased yesterday to see the MariaDB community starting the process of creating a Foundation to host open collective governance for their community. I’ll be interviewing Monty on Monday in a live webcast at 5pm; watch my Google+ stream for the hangout. Meanwhile, I’ve written a short news item on InfoWorld about the Foundation.
Filed under: Governance, InfoWorld | Comments Off on MariaDB Foundation
Intended to Fail?
Posted on December 4, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Was Freiburg’s cancellation of its open source migration a foregone conclusion? With friends to support my terrible German, I tried to find out – see ComputerWorldUK for more.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK | Comments Off on Intended to Fail?
GitHub and Open Source Licenses
Posted on November 30, 2012 by Simon Phipps
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
Locked-In With Open Source?
Posted on November 27, 2012 by Simon Phipps
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?
MyGOSSCon Slides
Posted on November 27, 2012 by Simon Phipps
I gave a presentation yesterday in Malaysia on the forces driving change in open source; here are the slides.
Filed under: Open Source, Webmink | 1 Comment »
Wild Webmink 