SunMink

Simon Phipps's other Weblog
(a WebMink in the Sun)

It may be an advertising stunt, but the videos are great and it embodies the idea central to open source that people contribute readily to thinks they get a kick out of.

"But to suggest that taking ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding, or that cannabis is safer than alcohol and tobacco - however true that may be - is to say the unsayable in the political drugs debate" -- The UK has a government that would rather appear OK to the Daily Mail reader than actually do what's right according to the experts advising them. It's true in the case of drugs, and it's true in the case of the internet and downloads. Watching Labour erode its core of support as it desperately tries to win over the Conservatives' heartland.

Good list, although I disagree with a few of thee choices which seem to prioritise simplicity over safety (for example, there's no way I will use Empathy for IM without OTR).

Carlo Piana (Europe's answer to Eben Moglen) once again delivers a clear analysis, this time showing how Amazon's announcement of hosted MySQL in the cloud punches a hole in Stallman's argument against the Oracle acquisition. Looking forward to hearing from Stallman both why Carlo is wrong and why dual-license is good for software freedom.

Finally Flickr has a serious competitior.

Indeed, my experience of late is that there are very few voices without a vested interest who are against.

Really great visualisation.

Stephen O'Grady's new initiative to build a good, old-fashioned, answering-questions-in-public Frequently Asked Questions hub for the Free and Open Source Community.

This has been a long time cooking, but finally allows the US Defence Department to proceed with clear guidance, ending much of the FUD that the vested interests have used to keep it at bay. DoD consulted very widely and did the politics carefully so I believe this is a landmark moment for the FOSS movement.

I noted on Twitter how many of the people I know have gravitated towards following roughly twice the Dunbar Number. This article considers the matter in greater depth and includes a number of interesting references.

That's MySQL in the cloud as a web service. This is exactly the sort of thing that creates demand for service at the point of deployment and drives the open source ecosystem. I hope those declaring the future of MySQL gloomy are paying close attention here; it seems that open source makes this sort of thing possible and it's hard to see who could stop it.

OpenSolaris has a new web site, built using XWiki.

Matthew Aslett makes a bid to become the definitive index of community comment on the MySQL dimension of Oracle's attempt to buy Sun.

Brian Aker thinks dual licensing (or what Richard Stallman calls "selling exceptions") is bad for open source. I tend to agree with him.

I do hope the folks filing narrowly-focussed letters at the EU are paying attention to this stuff.

Useful insights from Tim O'Reilly including details of the software stack. The White House runs MySQL...

The power of open source is that, when one door closes, anyone can open another one.

The inner voice every marketing campaign needs in sub-titles.

As you might expect, Stephen O'Grady has come up with a near-definitive Q & A on the issues surrounding the EU obstruction of the Oracle acquisition of Sun. My only (tiny) criticism is that he doesn't cover the consequences of the EU deciding to block the acquisition.

Another unexpected position that is well worth reading and which I'm sure the orchestrated campaign against Oracle will dismiss with a hand-wave.

Well worth reading this detailed counterpoint to the campaign being professionally run against MySQL.

Fascinating to see Stallman admit that the GPL does not guarantee software freedom. Nothing new to see in this letter, which (unlike the article from Carlo Piana) fails to confront the consequences of its action.

This issue is devoted to explaining open source to government standards people. It's a fine effort, well worth passing on to your favourite legislator's researcher.

"Europeans and North Americans come at the commerce of FOSS differently, Europeans want to make a business from free software while not loosing its fundamental ethos while North Americans want to maximize the business exploitation of open source software and keep its nature, if it benefits them." -- Another analysis might be that the American approach sees open source as a "natural resource to be exploited" whereas the European approach sees software freedom as a resource to be cultivated in order to yield opportunity.

"According to Matt, we should be thanking IBM for doing this: to my mind, IBM should be thanking the community for the contribution that has enabled it to recoup its investment so quickly" - reinforcing the point that every participant in an open source community is there out of self-interest of some kind, and that's not a bad thing.

"For those who are trying to run an open source business, it is clear that pragmatism, rather than puritanical beliefs, is key to business growth." -- Yes, but sometimes there is a spark in those "puritanical beliefs" that embodies truth that should not be wantonly discarded just becuase a Puritan is involved. (The appallingly-named Gartner piece linked from this article is worth reading by the way.)

Data from 451 suggesting that business models that go with the grain of software freedom (rather than cutting across it by attempting to retain company control) are coming to favour in the commercial open source space.

Powerful arguments from an unexpected source (Carlo is one of the leading software freedom lawyers in Europe).

What Tim said. I still believe that blogging creates no risk for a company that does not already exist becuase of their ethics or hiring process. The presence of Draconian public discourse rules should telegraph to you that the company itself is not to be trusted. Tim says: "If the government’s allegations are true, they ... were allegedly leaking Sun quarterlies from inside the IBM-Sun acquisition due-diligence process!"

"The government of the Maldives has held its first underwater cabinet meeting to attract international attention to the dangers of global warming."

Bradley Kuhn's analysis reflects the same conclusions I've reached myself about corporate-aggregated copyright. That's not to say it automatically disqualifies a project as non-Free, but it's the reason I included "diverse copyright ownership" as a criterion on the proposed open source scorecard. As a side-note, Given Bradley's critique of the GPL as "just a tool", surely it's time to see that open source is not the enemy of software freedom and to finally cut the antagonistic rhetoric.

"Operating system: Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista (Apple Mac and Apple Mac PC Emulators are not supported)." To pass the UK driving test you are expected to be a Microsoft customer.

My cat has her own web site.

It's hard to have much sympathy for a man who made a million from Sun's misfortune while thousands of employees were losing huge chunks of their life savings.

These are a great idea for kids - pity there aren't adult sizes too. (Apologies about the canned music - the player is centre-bottom on the page. It is at least relevant - the company is owned by a musician from Journey, whose music is playing on the page).

Looks like an interesting BarCamp. In particular I know my friend Henry Story will be there, wanting to discuss social network interoperability - so that for example I don't have to persuade all my friends on Facebook to join TripIt to find out when we're near each other.

Another fine opportunity to get ODF interoperating as well as possible between different implementations. Great to see Microsoft participating too.

Groklaw has a round-up of the amicus briefs to the US Supreme Court in regard to the Bilski patent case. This cse is fundamental to US case law concerning software patents, and if the SCOTUS upholds the decision of the lower court to nullify the Bilski case law there's every chance of fundamental reform for method and software patents in the US. The Microsoft/Phillips brief is especially interesting, complete with a new way to define software patents so that the loss of the Bilski case doesn't mess up their world domination plans.

Seems I made the top 50 this year!

Jeremy Allison argues that Mono is dangerous to free software distributions and should be relegated to the "restricted" repositories along with other software with unsafe licensing and/or patent contexts. He makes rational arguments, avoids emotion and thus when he is inevitably dismissed with a hand-wave by the Monomaniacs like the rest of us it will be especially telling.

I can understand the challenges, but I can usually cope with Glaswegian. Now, Ulster Irish is another matter.

The work done by legal firm Carter-Ruck on behalf of their client Trafigura will (hopefully) go down in the annals of viral marketing history. Great analysis.

Because of course in a democracy, "wider consultation" means "sharing with a select elite", doesn't it? Presumably it's secret because there's stuff in there that the originators don't want certain activists to be able to see. Presumably its intent to make culture the proprietary property of a few, under existing business models, and use criminal sanctions to keep it that way. And presumably the originators don't want public discussion until there's sufficient binding political agreement to make it irreversible. Which, presumably, is the antithesis of every freedom we hold dear.

A case study in why we need a clearer universal scorecard for businesses to document their open source credentials.

I think Trafigura is about to discover how badly their legal advisers served them. In the age of social media, the fastest way to draw the spotlight to your issue is to try to suppress it. And the full text of the report they are trying to suppress is already on Wikileaks.