WebMink - Slashdot User

Submission + - Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation unite against software patents (infoworld.com)

Submitted by WebMink on Friday February 28, 2014 @08:06AM

WebMink writes: In rare joint move, the OSI and FSF have joined with Eben Moglen's Software Freedom Law Center to file a U.S. Supreme Court briefing in the CLS vs Alice case. The brief asserts the basic arguments that processes are not patentable if they are implemented solely through computer software, and that the best test for whether a software-implemented invention is solely implemented through software is whether special apparatus or the transformation of matter have been presented as part of the claims (the "machine or transformation" test). They assert that finding software-only inventions unpatentable will not imperil the pace of software innovation, citing the overwhelming success of open source in the software industry as proof.

Submission + - Shuttleworth Agrees To FSF Demands For Edge Phone (infoworld.com)

Submitted by WebMink on Friday August 02, 2013 @12:48PM

WebMink writes: In an interview at OSCON, Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical spoke about the vision behind the Ubuntu Edge phone as a concept device to test features the mobile industry is too conservative to try. Notably, he agreed with the Free Software Foundation's demands that the device should carry no proprietary software and have Free drivers (transcript):
So what’s going to be in there? That’s all going to be free software?
Yes, we’ll ship this with Android and Ubuntu, no plans to put proprietary applications on it. We haven’t finalised the silicon selection so we’re looking at the next generation silicon from all major vendors. I would like to ship it with all Free drivers.

Submission + - Github Finally Agrees Public Repos Should Have Open Source Licenses (infoworld.com) 2

Submitted by WebMink on Monday July 15, 2013 @09:35PM

WebMink writes: After strong criticism last year, Github has finally accepted the view that public repositories with no open source license are a bad thing. Self-described as the "world's largest open source community," a significant number of GitHub projects come with no rights whatsoever for you to use their code in an open source project.

But from now on, creators of new repositories will have to pick from a small selection of OSI-approved licenses or explicitly opt for "no license". In Github's words, "please note that opting out of open source licenses doesn't mean you're opting out of copyright law."

Submission + - Oracle Quietly Switches BerkeleyDB To AGPL (infoworld.com)

Submitted by WebMink on Friday July 05, 2013 @09:07AM

WebMink writes: A discussion in the Debian community reveals that last month Oracle quietly disclosed a change for the embedded BerkeleyDB database from the quirky Sleepycat License to the Affero General Public License (AGPL) in future versions. AGPL is only compatible with GPLv3 and treats web deployment as a trigger to license compliance, so developers using BerkeleyDB will need to check their code is still legally licensed.

Even if they had made the switch in the interests of advancing software freedom it would be questionable to force so many developers into a new license compatibility crisis. But it seems likely their only motivation is to scare more people into buying proprietary licenses. Oracle are well within their rights, but developers are likely to treat this as a betrayal. As a poster in the Debian thread says, "Oracle move just sent the Berkeley DB to oblivion" because there are some great alternatives, like OpenLDAP's LMDB.

Submission + - Python Trademark Filer Ignorant Of Python? (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Tuesday February 19, 2013 @06:39AM

WebMink writes: "Is it possible that the CEO of the company that's trying to file a trademark on "Python" was unaware of Python's importance as a programming technology? That's what he claims — despite running a hosting company that's trying to break into cloud computing, where Python is used extensively. Still, he also regards the Python Software Foundation as a hostile American company and thinks that getting attention from half the world's geeks is a DDoS..."

Submission + - Does Microsoft have the best app store for open source developers? (infoworld.com) 2

Submitted by

WebMink

on Friday January 25, 2013 @12:50PM

WebMink writes: "Microsoft seems to have been in combat against the GNU GPL throughout the history of free and open source software. But that may be changing. They have recently updated the terms of use for software developers in their Windows Phone app store to allow any OSI-approved open source license — even the GPL. They include extraordinarily broad language that gives the open source license priority over their own license terms, saying:
if your Application or In-App Product includes FOSS, your license terms may conflict with the limitations set forth in Section 3 of the Standard Application License Terms, but only to the extent required by the FOSS that you use

Could it be that the most open source friendly app stores will be the ones run my Microsoft?"

Submission + - Half of GitHub Code Unsafe To Use (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Saturday December 01, 2012 @01:03PM

WebMink writes: "GitHub is a great open source hosting site, right? Wrong. There's no requirement that projects on GitHub provide any copyright license, let alone an open source one, so roughly half the projects on GitHub are "all rights reserved" — meaning you could well be violating copyright if you make any use of the code in them. And GitHub management seem just fine with this state of affairs, saying picking a license is too hard for ordinary developers. But if you're not going to give anyone permission to use your code, why post it on GitHub in the first place?"

Submission + - Research Proves Patent Trolls Harming The Economy (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Friday October 19, 2012 @08:36AM

WebMink writes: "It used to just be speculation, but the numbers are now in — patent trolls are costing America jobs and economic growth. Newly-published research using data commissioned by Congress shows big rises in patent troll activity over the last five years — from 22% to 40% of all patent suits filed, with 4 out of five litigants being patent trolls. Other papers show that jobs are being lost and startups threatened, while VC money is just making things worse by making startups waste money filing more patents. Worst of all, it's clear this is just the tip of the iceburg; there's evidence that unseen pre-lawsuit settlements with patent trolls represent a much larger threat than anything the research can easily measure.

At least there is a little good news though; the fact Congress commissioned research on patent trolls means there are legislators taking the problem seriously at last,"

Submission + - "New Statesman" Pirates Its Own Magazine (newstatesman.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Thursday October 18, 2012 @07:23AM

WebMink writes: "Knowing that its explosive special edition on China this week will be blocked by censorship, UK political magazine "New Statesmen" has taken the unusual step of posting its own torrents of the PDF of the Mandarin edition on the magazine. Looking at the content of the issue they are probably right to expect censorship — there's an article from the former newspaper editor Cheng Yizhong about media censorship, and Ai Weiwei interviews a member of the "50 cent party" — a commenter paid half a dollar every time he derails an online debate in China. "Essentially, these people are paid internet trolls; their job is to stop any meaningful discussion online about the government." The magazine asks us to share the PDF, .torrent file and magnet link widely, so where better than Slashdot?"

Submission + - Gates and others offer $150,000 to start open source community (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Friday September 21, 2012 @08:40AM

WebMink writes: "With an impending deadline for America's schools to satisfy new federal reporting requirements on academic achievement, a new alliance of state educators is creating a system of open source software to help schools gather and submit the data that the rules require. To get the whole thing started, the Gates Foundation and Carnegie are funding two $75,000 awards for the open source developers who create the in-school software. The winners could also become the lynchpins of a new industry in academic software."

Submission + - iPhone 5 Scorns Standards Promise To European Commission (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Friday September 14, 2012 @12:20PM

WebMink writes: "Back in 2009, Apple signed an agreement aimed at reducing electronic waste resulting from mobile phone accessories. But this week's launch of the iPhone 5 shows them reneging on that commitment. Instead of including a micro-USB connector on the iPhone, as they agreed to do along with the rest of the phone industry, they created yet another proprietary connector. At a stroke, they have junked earlier iPhone accessories, forced a new industry in Apple-only accessories to arise and broken their promise to the EC. It's a huge missed opportunity both for their customers and for the environment."

Submission + - Easy Fix For Software Patents Found In US Patent Act (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Friday September 14, 2012 @07:32AM

WebMink writes: "What if there was an easy, inexpensive way to bring software patents under control, that did not involve Congress, which applied retrospectively to all patents and which was already part of the US Patent Act? Stanford law professor Mark Lemley thinks he's found it. He asserts that the current runaway destruction being caused by software patents is just like previous problems with US patent law, and that Congress included language in the Patent Act of 1952 that can be invoked over software patents just like it fixed the earlier problems. All it will take is a future defendant in a patent trial using his read of a crucial section of the Patent Act in their defence to establish case law. Can it really be that easy?"

Submission + - OSI Refers Novell Patent Deal To Authorities (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Wednesday December 29, 2010 @11:41AM

WebMink writes: "Worried that the unholy alliance of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC — hardly known for their collaboration — is establishing a patent troll called CPTN to attack open source software, the Open Source Initiative has announced that they have referred the Novell deal over to the German competition authorities."

Submission + - Oracle Need A Clue As Brain Drain Accelerates (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by

The Contrarian

on Monday October 25, 2010 @10:00AM

The Contrarian writes: "Looks like Oracle is not suiting former Sun staff well, nor community members in the Java and OpenOffice.org communities. This weekend saw an unusually large number of rather public departures, with (among many others listed in the article) the VP running Solaris development quitting, the token academic on the JCP slamming the door behind him and top community leaders at OpenOffice.org nailing their resignations to the door after having the ex-Sun people slam the door in their face.

The best analysis comes from an unexpected place, with the marketing director of Eclipse — usually loyal defenders of their top-dollar-paying members — turning on Oracle and telling them to get a clue."

Submission + - "Free" H.264 a precursor to WebM patent war? (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by

webmink

on Monday August 30, 2010 @08:38PM

webmink writes: "MPEG LA seem unwilling to explain why they have extended their "free" H.264 streaming video policy now. This article usefully unpacks the history of MPEG LA and then suggests the obvious — it's all because of WebM — and the worrying — maybe it's preparing the ground for opening a third front in the patent war against Google."

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