Simon Says...

A New OSI

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:17:19 GMT

OSI is changing, and you can help! I spoke at FOSDEM in Brussels on Saturday, on behalf of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) where I serve as a director. My noon keynote ("A New OSI For A New Decade") covered...

ACTA's Back

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:18:35 GMT

Now that the US bills SOPA and PIPA have been put on ice, attention has returned to their parent, an international treaty called ACTA. I've written extensively about ACTA before, but in summary it is an international treaty that has...

Insecurity By Obscurity

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:46:33 GMT

This week saw a surprising and shocking announcement by Symantec. According to ComputerWorld's Gregg Keizer: Symantec this week took the highly unusual step of telling users of its pcAnywhere remote access software to disable or uninstall the software while it...

Insecurity By Obscurity

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:46:33 GMT

e-books: You Can't Take It With You

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:22:49 GMT

There's a big market for digital books, but I think they're being sold badly, almost to the point of dishonesty. I think it's time the way their vendors talk about them was changed. First some illustrations: My father just finished...

Why SOPA and PIPA are bad for open source

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:13:53 GMT

The widespread internet blackout yesterday in protest at unbalanced legislation being rushed through the US Congress was dramatic and notable. I did have some questions though on why it was important to the open source community. The way the laws...

Coming to FOSDEM?

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:00:00 GMT

One of the most important events of the year for Europe's open source software developers is the Free and Open Source Developers' European Meeting - FOSDEM. It's held annually at the start of February in Brussels, and this year's instance...

Can Mozilla Unify Open Source?

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:46:28 GMT

This week saw a quiet landmark in the history of the open source movement with the formal release of version two of the Mozilla Public License (MPLv2) and its approval as an official open source license. While to many it...

Governing By Consent

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:17:41 GMT

The news in the UK on Boxing Day (Dec 26) - traditionally the day when country folk go hunting foxes - cast an interesting light on the concept of "governing by consent", one I hope we'll see the government carry...

Last Minute Gift Ideas

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:30:59 GMT

Stuck for a Christmas gift for someone you love? Why not give them the gift of software freedom? Go grab a CD image of some great open source software - like LibreOffice or Ubuntu for example - then burn it...

Why Java Isn't Dead On Ubuntu

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:28:05 GMT

There has been a certain amount of upset finally surfacing as a result of the decision Oracle took over the summer to discontinue packaging Java for Linux under the Distro License for Java. Quite a lot of people commenting on...

The New Digital Divides

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:43:24 GMT

The EU is worried that too many people have no internet access, and that's a valid concern that does indeed need attention. But it doesn't go far enough. I was particularly struck by a blog by Danica Radovanovic over at...

Open Source Trust Abused

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:30:00 GMT

The matter has been a unhealed wound for more than six months, but this week the problem that C|Net's Download.Com website has been perpetrating leapt into high profile with a complaint from the developers of NMap and others. The download.com...

Koha and Why We Need Foundations

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:32:12 GMT

A debate is raging around the value of non-profit Foundations to open source. In the face of well-informed criticism by Mike Rogers of Apache's reluctance to embrace modern distributed source management for new projects such as CouchDB, PhoneGap and OpenOffice,...

Let The Bible Go Free!

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:54:07 GMT

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group has an interesting take on the symbolic gesture by the current UK government of sending a King James Bible to every school in England. In a letter to the Guardian, Jim notes that:...

Investment Protection With Open Source

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:30:00 GMT

I have heard it said that companies don't want open source because they want the security of a relationship with a big business. But this outlook reflects misunderstandings of the real values of open source. I believe it to be...

Open Source Nurtures Innovation

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:30:00 GMT

With his usual rigour, Stephen O'Grady considers whether open source is innovative over on his blog. As ever, his view - that "innovation is a function of incentive, not the software development model" - is worth understanding and accepting, but...

Still Crippled By "Free"

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:30:00 GMT

The recent release of the Open Source Procurement Toolkit by the Cabinet Office has been interesting and encouraging, even if it did stir in me a certain scepticism that things will be different this time round. Under both Labour and...

Open Source News

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Several items of open source news this week that are worth looking at: Cabinet Office issues guidance on open sourceGlynn's comments are worth reading, but the background here is that the lip-service that both Labour and Conservative governments have given...

Ecclesiastes and Pornography

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:09:09 GMT

Watching an interesting TED Talk by Amber Case, I was reminded of a long-term guiding principle I have followed when faced with novelty. It's an old idea that's embedded deep in many traditions. The pithy summary says "there's nothing new...

Enabling By Removing Obstructions

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:59:16 GMT

Good evening. It's a pleasure to be back in the Ile de France, especially with so many old friends. In my days at Sun Microsystems, I was privileged to be able to work with many remarkable people - including the...

LibreOffice Is One

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:02:44 GMT

Once in the mists of time, I was the head of open source at Sun Microsystems. One of my chief delights in that role was the OpenOffice.org project. I attended the Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Monterey, California in 2000...

Should You Donate To Open Source Projects?

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:01:33 GMT

A project in which I'm involved, in the middle of a time of change, recently received an enquiry from a member of its user community. The enquirer was pleased with the software, concerned about the changes and wanted to provide...

Open Core MySQL

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:43:27 GMT

Oracle has finally done what the business management at MySQL had been asymptotically approaching for years. It’s taking MySQL open core. It’s interesting to read the views of the founder of MySQL (as well as the comments). Monty says: What...

How Many Open Source Foundations Do We Need?

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT

Imagine you’re starting something new with a group of acquaintances. You join with them to do some new, brilliant and concrete thing. You all trust each other, know how to work together and have the resources to make that thing...