nelson's blog

I never quite have understood why the mainstream press concentrates so much on what companies are doing. For example, see Jon Brodkin's NetWorld article, wherein he talks about nine open source companies to watch. Maybe they write more about companies with funding because they're the people more likely to buy advertising than nonprofit projects. Yes, I'm aware of the so-called wall between editorial and advertising, but that just says that editors can write whatever they want, even about advertisers.

Dilbert mentions Open Source today. Or, rather, his boss mentions it "because it's free." Which it is, but it's the freedom to run, modify, and share software that's important.

The Foundation for Economic Education publishes a journal called 'The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty'. They published this article in January:

Open-Source Software: Who Needs Intellectual Property? by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine

Note: this is just my opinion. The OSI board may have a different opinion if it speaks as a body.

Microsoft is spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) with their latest anti-Linux patent campaign. If they had an actual, solid case of patent infringement, they would go to a judge, get an injunction against the distribution of Linux, and sell patent licenses for FreeBSD. The fact that they don't, but are willing to sell patent licenses for an unnamed set of infringed patents, says that they have no legal case.

NCIS gets Open Source right! This is probably courtesy of Sean Murray, who is arguably geekier than the character he plays. In this episode, his character, McGee, says "I was looking for an address book, and I found Celestia, an open source astronomy program popular with space enthusiasts. It's supposed to be an accurate simulation but I found a star system which doesn't belong. The program is Open Source. That means you can adapt it to pretty much anything; education, games, you can store grocery lists, or in this case you can use it for a diary.

The European Union funded FLOSSCom research project is investigating Free / Libre Open Source software (FLOSS) communities as learning environments. They want to identify principles of FLOSS communities that could be transferred to (formal) educational settings (e.g. open culture, collaborative production, open and inclusive, values & volunteering, etc.). Their survey covers only a small part of their current research activities.

There's a Slashdot story today on Tech Sector Expansion Blunting U.S. Job Outsourcing. This is 100% predictable. In fact, I did predict it two years ago. When something becomes cheaper, and an industry uses for its products, the industry will in time reconfigure itself to use more of that thing. Lots of people don't see that because of the delay in the response. That is exactly why economics is a fruitful field of study. It teaches you to look beyond the black clouds for the sunshine to follow.

The License Proliferation Committee is an ad-hoc advisory committee to the board. Many people are concerned that there are too many licenses of limited value. Yet other people ar concerned that policy concerns will cause open source licenses to be disapproved. The committee's work has resulted in a recommendation to be published in draft form to the community at OSCON2006.