For all the debate and litigation around software patents, I thought that there was at least one point on which all sides could agree: the objective of the U.S. patent system is to stimulate innovation. A recent IP blog takes issue with that premise, and proposes an alternative objective: making money. The blog gives a distorted view of Red Hat's patent portfolio program in support of this argument. The argument is interesting, and suggests that there's still a steep hill to climb to get to a rational patent policy for software.
This article is based on a talk that Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Law Center gave at LinuxCon 2010.
Our software must be safe. It's in cars, voting machines, financial markets. And now it's in medical devices, which our very lives depend on.
Recently PepsiCo quietly bought the rights to blog about nutrition on a highly respected science blog network. Outraged bloggers and readers at ScienceBlogs said—well, things I can't repeat here—and dubbed the debacle PepsiGate.
As you may have guessed, the blog quickly vanished, but the resulting debate provides insight into some ethical considerations around the so-called new media: the world of online citizen-based journalism.
The idea of creating a free (as in free speech) and open cinema camera based on an Elphel 333 started in spring 2006 in the mind of a member of the DVinfo forum, who in March 2006 started a new thread called "High Definition with Elphel model 333 camera." A lot of people got involved, and the project grew and developed.
Five experienced technology journalists gathered to a standing-room only audience at LinuxCon Tuesday to discuss "Hype vs. Reality: Today's Linux Story from the Media's Perspective," moderated by Jennifer Cloer of the Linux Foundation.
The panel consisted of:
We asked opensource.com contributors for their recommendations for some can't-miss summer reading. Some books are new. Some are recent favorites. All offer examples of how the open source way is being employed in areas beyond technology. From coaching individuals to unite as a team, exploring the future of management, to delving deeper into the design process, these books can offer incredible insight and a great end to the summer. Enjoy.
The following article is largely based on a talk by Andy Pethan and Colin Zwiebel, "State of Open Data in Education," at the LinuxCon 2010 education mini-summit.
What happens when you open data?
Six months ago, the MTA in New York released a dataset under GTFS, a format for transporation timetables. Timetables themselves aren't very interesting. What is interesting is what you can do with the data.
In LinuxCon's education mini-summit, Bryant Patten of the National Center for Open Source and Education gave a presentation titled "Can open source save the world?" He noted a quote from Mary Lange, Educational Technology Resource Teacher at San Diego Unified School District. She says that we often assume students know how to use computers and that they are really good at it. But the truth is, they know how to use technology for personal reasons but not necessarily for education. They will say "I know how to do that," but when it comes to reality, they don't.
Find out where the opensource.com team will be August 2010 and if you know of an event and think we should be there--tell us about it.
By Harvey Anderson
Trademarks used for open source projects–like for the Mozilla Firefox browser–will often be misused. It can take the form of a website selling open source software that is normally distributed for free, using the trademark to promote other products and services, or using modified versions of the trademark. The problem is that these activities are deceptive, harm users, cause consumer confusion, and jeopardize the identity and meaning of the brand–not to mention being illegal.
Think about a public space. Maybe it’s a park, or a public library, but some physical space owned by government. We have different expectations about public spaces, and our freedoms in them, compared to private spaces.
Think about a place where civic happenings go on, where dialogue and delivery of services occur. What comes to mind for me is the (maybe nostalgic) notion of a bustling city hall. People go there to interact with government and each other, and accomplish something. In theory, at least.
Now, imagine this public space is virtual.
In 2000 the punk rock band NOFX released an album called Pump Up The Valuum. When I first heard the CD, I immediately took to the song "Dinosaurs Will Die." (Warning--contains explicit lyrics) Shortly thereafter I got into the open source movement, and I cannot count how many times the lyrics from that song have stuck out in my head.
This week, those smart folks over at IDEO launched a new project they are calling OpenIDEO. If you aren't familiar with IDEO yet, you should be—they are the poster children for design thinking specifically and 21st century innovation more generally.
Even as the U.S. economy recovers from a financial meltdown led by a number of white-collar Wall Street swindlers, critics of the public education system push for more “business” in the classroom: specifically the implementation of incentives and the hiring of CEOs for superintendents.
There's just one little problem. According to 40 plus years of academic research, incentives—and disincentives—don't normally work. And when they do, they often don't make people behave quite like their proponents anticipate.
When I hear people talk about how awesome their organizational culture is, I often find myself wondering what sort of “great” culture it is.
For me, great cultures fall into two categories: entitlement and mission-driven. Those “best places to work” lists don't usually make a distinction, but I do. Here is the difference:
Entitlement cultures
The surest sign of an entitlement culture? When someone tells you why they like their work, they give you an example of a benefit not related to the work itself. Some examples:
Anybody who reads knows the publishing industry has changed. We mourn over print media though we read happily from the strangely pleasant matte screen of the Kindle. We long for our thick summer magazines as we’re catching quick bites from PDAs and tiny laptops. Even people who love books--and I mean /love books/ in a way that’s perhaps a little strange--find themselves faced with new-media ways of doing old-creative things and opportunity where the new road leads.
The Rochester Institute of Technology is a technical university offering undergraduate and post-graduate programs including co-ops, internships, study abroad, and research opportunities to more than 16,000 students in Rochester, NY. One of RIT’s research and educational outreach efforts is the Laboratory for Technological Literacy, a group that focuses on issues of technology and information distribution.
It ain’t easy being open in today’s corporate environment. It’s even harder for an open company to stick to its knitting when it joins forces with a much larger, much more entrenched player in its industry. Is it possible for a small company to stay true to its more 21st century values if it hopes to reach the heights of its 20th century predecessors?
If you ask a software developer how to make money writing code, you'll usually get employment or selling applications as your answer. It's my opinion, however, that most are missing the boat and need to think of their skills as a marketable service.
The other answers, while not wrong, have to do with point of view.
Co-author: Bascha Harris
With the WWW2010 conference in Raleigh the first week of May, a slew of open source rock stars were in our hometown. Chris DiBona, Public Sector Engineering Manager at Google, was able to visit the Red Hat office and talk with us during his trip. The focus of his talk was the enormous culture of participation that companies like Google and Red Hat—and technologies like the Internet—attempt to embrace and extend, despite naysayers and proprietary business habits.
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