It seems like Free Software advocates are actively criticising Creative Commons after Stallman has decreed that CC does not meet with the FS seal of approval. The criticisms seem to be centered on three main points: CC is not centered on ethical principles; some of the licences are not entirely Read more…
This is the story of Vores Øl (Our Beer), the world’s first open source beer. The beer is distributed using an Attribution-Share Alike Creative Commons licence. The recipe produces a 6% energetic beer (it uses Guarana), and according to the makers, it is very tasty and they have drank all Read more…
A light story for Sunday. I met some of the people involved during the OSS 2005 Conference, led by Roland Alton-Scheidl. They are also involved with Creative Commons Austria, and have decided to release open source water. The water comes from a source in Dornbirn, Austria, that has been exploited Read more…
More developments in the growing war between Creative Commons and Free Software. There has been an interesting debate in the iCommons list and other lists. The growing animosity between the FS and CC camps have come to a boil at the Copyright 2005 conference, where Richard Stallman launched a fierce Read more…
I am back from my conference spree in Italy, and I have brought back a good number of ideas. The OSS 2005 was particularly interesting, and I was struck by the presence of many industry representatives, and particularly by the presence of people from the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft and Read more…
I am at the OSS 2005 Conference in Genova, Italy. Internet connection is a bit sketchy, so I will not be able to blog this fully. I don’t see any other lawyers present, so I am getting a bit nervous. I am going to be presenting this paper, which is Read more…
A man in Utah knows who is to blame for all the evils of this world. It’s not Osama Bin Laden, it’s not North Korea, it’s not even George W. Bush. The blame lies at the feet of the open source movement. Yes, those evil people at Groklaw, Slashdot and Read more…
The case reported two days ago about the GPL has been settled, and Fortinet has agreed to comply with the GPL. This means that Fortinet’s software will be distributed with the GPL, the standard terms of agreement will be changed, and the source code will be offered upon request for Read more…
German courts continue to give credence to the GPL. A software company called Fortinet developed several security products, including firewall and anti-virus software. This was supposed to run on something they called “FortiOS”, which they claimed was their own operating system. The problem is that this operating system was actually Read more…
There are several links that I want to highlight about open source software in general. First there is the ongoing “A history of Free and Open Source by Peter H. Salus, who is serialising the book in Groklaw. Here is the introduction. Then there is a good article about the Read more…