nelson's blog

EWeek's Jason Brooks has one (print) page to dispel 10 myths about Open Source. He does an excellent job!

I submitted this to slashdot, and put it on my open source blog.

During this morning's Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR's Scott Simon
reflected on the progress of the One Laptop Per Child XO project

QNX is claiming that effective today, they will "open" the "source" code to its QNX embedded product.

RMS is leading people off on his own path again. He's saying that if people want to keep their freedom they better not follow Torvalds. While it's great that RMS doesn't compromise his principles, the principle that he isn't compromising isn't necessary. RMS constantly tells us that it is the word "Free" which is important. This says to me that he feels that the experience of freedom -- that actual freedom -- is not important. Only the name is important, not the thing.

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.