Group items tagged

Licenses in open software have a double purpose: set conditions of use for end users and reflect the values of the community of developers working on open source model.

Firts post of my internet governance blog. Open source can be considered a positive externality, impacting on the spread of internet

Blog which writes about issues relating to open access media and links to actual open/free media. 

To achieve accesibility to open data it is necessary to overcome political and technical barriers

The Whitehouse released the code of the open platform developed for whitehouse.org, to encourage reviews and improvements to the platform

A summary of the history and actors involved in the development of open source

Another case in which intellectual property rights come into question. Apple is suing HTC for infringement of 20 Apple patents. It is interesting to note, that the majority of handsets which been specified in this case are powered by Google's Android operating system which is open source. I feel that corporations using open sources to power their products need to consider the potential repercussions. Although open source communities tend to operate with an ethic of contribution and collaborative innovation; it is inevitable that ideas and the products which stem from it will crossover from one realm to another, which in turn will lead to a figurative 'stepping on one another's toes' and ensuing law suits. In saying this, it is clear that whether or not it is open source product or not, that cases like this have almost become a symptom of the modern tech-business climate.

This article discusses a report which looks at the possibilities of applying an open source model & culture which has been associated with building and proliferating the Mozilla browser to the Obama administration's initiatives to be "more transparent, participatory and collaborative".  

A useful guide on the different types of licenses to share work as open source

A summary of Matt Mullenweg's talk  in "The Economist Innovation Conference", about Wordpress and the importance of people behind Open Source.

This article discusses how Open Source is beginning to overtake proprietary software in leading technological innovation. Open source can be monetised by capitalising on the value created around Open Source.

A transcript of a presentation given by Richard Stallman at the WSIS. He introduces in a fairly clear way the concept of free/open source software? He proceeds by explaining the concepts of freedom it relates to and how important this concept is in the developement of countries.

This is a surprise... I didn't know Microsoft had their own foundation for open code

Open Standards vs Cross Platform - it's starting to sound like politics. Confusing. Misleading. Impractical. Constrained.

A good discussion on Apple's view on Flash, following our class discussion on standards and the iPad not supporting Flash.

Came across this article the other day - basically saying that if Adobe wants to prove that Flash can run on iPhones without any major issues, they can simply use iPhones that have been "jailbroken" (meaning they've been hacked and any app can be downloaded - circumventing the App Store). Adobe could create a Flash app to run on the iPhones and prove its points about security and performance of Flash on mobile devices. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/may/18/apple-adobe-flash-player-solution

Interview with Jason Lanierm, an apparent "digital guru" who has changed his view of open culture to that which promotes a "digital maoism". He proposes that we need to pay people for the brain work that they do instead of encouraging them to be labourers of sorts. 

This is a blog posting discussing the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) which recently added Indonesia, Brazil and India to its 'Special 301 Watchlist' which marks nations as a threat to intellectual property for encouraging their government departments and companies to use open source software

Are we using facebook or is facebook using us?

EFA Board Member, Stephen Collins, spoke yesterday at an event at Parliament House hosted by the Menzies Research Centre in a debate with Tony McLellan of the Australian Christian Lobby. The audience was primarily members of the Australian Liberal Students Federation; young Liberals destined for jobs as political staffers and politicians.

There has been some controversy about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's comments in an online chat from 2006 that surfaced recently. He told a friend that Facebook users were dumb for trusting him and submitting private, personal information on his then-fledgling website. An initiative by four young programmers to counteract the negative effects that Facebook has had on privacy and the ability of users to control the data they put online is Diaspora. It is a decentralised, open source social network that wants to compete with centralised social networks that allow "spying for free". It will be interesting to see whether the initiative really takes off as a viable alternative to Facebook.

No, I don't agree that Internet Explorer is dead. However, there has been a significant progress in the adoption of alternative browsers, which is a healthy way to avoid a monopoly in browsers, which are the gate to internet for end users.  The decline in the use of IE thanks to the participation of open source browsers is acknowledged here.