Open Source Archive

The leaders of several major open-source projects have joined George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute. Read the report at BusinessWeek.

Open-source software is indeed vulnerable to claims of patent infringement. But lawyer Steven Frank says that doesn't mean the legal floodgates are about to open.

"The plethora of Free Software applications available today, none working perfectly, is a problem which stands in the way of major adoption of Linux on the desktop. In order to conquer the desktop, we have to stand united." Read the controversial editorial at Freshmeat, by Marius Andreiana.

The GPL is a wonderful license for community works, for the basic reason that it starts out with the premise that the point is the source code. The program, someone is trying to make. Not the programmer, not the programmer's company, or the programmer's pay check. What it basically says is that there is no way for one to act as a stop-gap to the flow of code development and the organic way that code tends to build upon itself.

"For years, hardware companies struggled under pressure from the forces of commoditization, as widespread popularity of standardized operating systems forced them into withering competition, the end result of which was a phenomenal reduction in hardware prices. Today, the shoe is on the other foot, as software is commoditized by the appearance of free (as in cost) open-source software. Constructed through the joint effort of thousands of programmers around the world, its low cost serves as a strong challenge to proprietary software companies' business models." Read the editorial at ZDNews.

Red Hat and Intel have settled a licensing hiccup that threatened to prevent the Linux company from contributing to Intel's open-source project--a reminder of the frictions that can arise between the commercial tech world and the open-source community.

As the open-source movement is gains momentum, the debate over its future heats up. Can this loosely-formed coalition be able to withstand the pressure of Microsoft and other big companies that live off proprietary software? Read about it at ZDNet.

"The U.S. Defense Department should think twice before embracing open-source software, a trade association is advising. The Initiative for Software Choice, which counts Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Intel among its backers, said in comments filed Tuesday that the department should "avoid crafting needless and potentially detrimental IT policy to promote the use" of open-source software." Read the report at News.com. At a time that countries like Germany and Japan begin to invest in OSS/GPL, Microsoft tries to hold US back. Are the Group's worries justified? Discuss.

"Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal." Read RMS' editorial at NewsForge.

HP has fired Bruce Perens - the leading Open Source evangelist and former Debian project lead - for Microsoft-baiting, he says. "It came after a long, long warning," Perens told the New York Times. "The thing that I did that was most hazardous for HP is the Microsoft-baiting I tend to do."

"A company selling proprietary software to third parties will never open its code if the company has a competitor. It will never release its software under the GNU GPL. If you consider open code a benefit to society, you may want to propagate open-code legislation or otherwise try to stimulate new competition in the marketplace." A draft of this article has been stirring up much debate on the Free Software law mailing list, but this is the first time it's been published at a web site.

"There are subtle lessons about freedom in the GPL, but you'll never find them by just reading the license. Instead, you'll have to read between the lines (so to speak) and try to see what can't be seen. Furthermore, these lessons, despite being deceptively simple, could have a profound impact on human freedom if only people understood them. In a sense, software freedom can be seen as a metaphor for human freedom." Read the editorial at Advogato. Update: Checking out my email this morning, I found a submission about another new article on Free Software.

"It all boils down to these two extremes: RMS wants software freedom regardless of user satisfaction, and Miguel de Icaza wants user satisfaction regardless of whether the principles of the GPL are violated. Everyone else in the GNOME project is somewhere in between, spanning the gap." Read the report at NewsForge.

"Attacks by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on the GNU General Public License, under which much open source and free software is distributed, have been driven by a fear that the GPL creates a domain of software that Microsoft cannot privatize and control, according to GPL founder Richard Stallman." Read the report at ZDNews.