Simon Says...

Zombie Problem: Stop Dancing On The Grave

Simon Phipps — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:58:02 GMT

In a welcome move at the end of last week, Nick Clegg announced his opposition to the communications data bill (CDB). His article in the Telegraph listed five reasons why CDB went “too far” in its attempted legislation. Among those...

Hosting Companies Shouldn't Be Parasites

Simon Phipps — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:44:58 GMT

Hosting companies don't exactly have the friendliest of reputations. This was highlighted again for us by the recent attempted name grab against the Python community by a UK based hosting company. Which is why an open letter asking hosting companies...

Read Any Law Journals Lately?

Simon Phipps — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 07:58:20 GMT

Are you aware that among the large body of international law research there's some dedicated solely to the legal issues surrounding free and open source software? The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review covers topics ranging from licence...

Python Settles Trademark Dispute

Simon Phipps — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:18:17 GMT

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) have announced they have reached a settlement with POBox Hosting Ltd of the UK over their trademark application for the term 'Python' in connection with cloud hosting and their application for a figurative trademark incorporating...

Leveson Regulation To Impact Social Media?

Simon Phipps — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:45:49 GMT

Alec Muffett points out that the new Royal Charter being rushed through the UK Parliament includes some drafting that appears to drag blogs, Twitter and other social media into the penalty net. This is an extremely worrying development that needs rapid response...

Copyright: A Modest Proposal

Simon Phipps — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:13:46 GMT

Why is a song that I play digitally or a book I read electronically subject to extensive controls that are not considered appropriate to records or books? It's because they are subject to licenses that can't be applied by...

Python Trademark Filer Ignorant Of Python?

Simon Phipps — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 09:15:00 GMT

English: Python logo Deutsch: Python Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The Bat-Signal - or probably a snake-signal - hit the clouds last Friday, when the Python community appealed for help with challenging a trademark application. As Glyn explained in more detail, the...

Unitary Patent A Threat To Small Business

Simon Phipps — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:47:06 GMT

A short article in today's Independent on Sunday looks uncritically at the single European patent and thinks the new patent rules coming in Europe will help small business. The article seems to start from the idea that patents are good, thus...

CDB: Not Dead Yet

Simon Phipps — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:48:59 GMT

After the Joint Select Committee slammed the Home Office for the poor quality and unjustified over-reach of the Communications Data Bill (CDB) or Snoopers' Charter, things seemed to go very quiet. We heard a little from the Home Office...

Open Source Nexus You Can Visit

Simon Phipps — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 09:15:00 GMT

February each year may be gloomy and cold, but there's one guaranteed bright spot for software developers in the form of the Free and Open Source Developers' European Meeting - FOSDEM. Held in Brussels on the first weekend in February,...

WYWO Open Source: SoC, FOSDEM, Vert.x and more

Simon Phipps — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:31:23 GMT

Your While You Were Out guide to the open source links that have caught my eye in the last week. To get a flavour of the difference Google's Summer of Code can make to an open source project, take a...

WYWO: Digital Rights

Simon Phipps — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:37:29 GMT

A post-Christmas miscellany of things you may have missed: The Open Rights Group (ORG) reached its goal to hire a legal expert. This is an important step that allows them to intervene in UK legal issues and help set norms...

WYWO: Open Source

Simon Phipps — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:02:56 GMT

Your Christmas WYWO catch-up:Canonical announced Ubuntu Phone, a new distribution of Ubuntu aimed at mobile devices. It allows both native Linux applications and HTML 5 web-apps to be used on touch-screen devices. The visual design is as "gorgeous" as Canonical...

EU FRAND Report Signals Problems

Simon Phipps — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:13:44 GMT

You may recall I spotted a meeting happening in Brussels that looked as if it was a set-up job. I suspected its goal was to ensure that a report was produced which could be referenced in future discussions over EU...

Behind Bern's Open Source Policy

Simon Phipps — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:04:16 GMT

The city council of Bern, Switzerland's federal capital, decided this month to tell its ICT department that it should use open source wherever possible. This comes at a time when two German cities - Munich and Freiburg - have announced...

Snoopers Charter Report Summary

Simon Phipps — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:45:00 GMT

Technically-aware people throughout the UK should be thankful that the non-partisan Joint Select Committee of the houses of Lords and Commons investigating the draft Communications Data Bill have asked almost all the right questions and found it seriously wanting....

Intended To Fail?

Simon Phipps — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:30:00 GMT

We recently saw the news that the German city of Freiburg had decided to end its open source migration and instead switch to using Microsoft products again. The rationale provided seemed curious to me - after all, at the same...

Open Rights Group To Intervene in Speculative Invoicing Case

Simon Phipps — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:38:46 GMT

At an awards ceremony in London last week, the Open Rights Group (ORG) was award the Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year award jointly with mass messaging campaigner 38 Degrees for work on oversight of the proposed Snooper's Charter (the draft...

Does Rooting Your Phone Void Your Warranty?

Simon Phipps — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 09:31:04 GMT

There are plenty of ways to void the warranty on your new tablet or smartphone. But according to the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), “rooting” it (gaining super-user rights so that you can change any of the software in it)...

UK Gets Open Definitions Right

Simon Phipps — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:11:50 GMT

After a long and fractious consultation process that included the ugly sight of certain vendors interfering in the process, the UK government finally published its Open Standards Principles today. From tomorrow, all government software procurement must conform to these principles...

Rights? You have no right to your eBooks.

Simon Phipps — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:35:11 GMT

News spread quickly on the web today about the predicament faced by a woman in Norway, Linn, who has lost all access to the eBooks she legally purchased from Amazon. The story first emerged on a friend's blog, where a...

Rights? You have no right to your eBooks.

Simon Phipps — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:34:17 GMT

News spread quickly on the web today of the predicament faced by a woman in Norway, Linn, who has lost all access to the eBooks she legitimately purchased from Amazon. The story first emerged on a friend's blog, where a sequence...

Kicking Out Comic Sans

Simon Phipps — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:24:38 GMT

We know your secret, and you really don't need to be ashamed. We have seen the notices around the office, asking people to only take the folders they need, to give to your "fun run" and a thousand other informative...

Communications Data Bill: Their secrecy, your verdict

Simon Phipps — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:56:56 GMT

When the Communications Data Bill was open for public review, a number of organisations encouraged their members to write to the government about it. Unsurprisingly, many did. So many wrote comments that the clerk to the Joint Committee in the...

Oracle Claims MySQL IS Safe With Them

Simon Phipps — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 08:09:58 GMT

A month ago, members of the wider MySQL community complained that the patches to bug fixes included in the 5.5.27 release of MySQL came with no new test cases. As a blog post at MariaDB commented, "We had pretty strict...