Law

If you use open source, you have no respect for intellectual property. Or at least, that’s what the International Intellectual Property Alliance seems to think. According to this article, the lobbying group is asking the US Trade Representative to put Indonesia on its "Special 301 Priority Watch List,” in part because of its policy encouraging the adoption of open source software by government agencies. » Read more

The mashup and the meme aren't new, but there is an interesting video on YouTube about "stage 2" video mixes and their creative and social implications.  The narrator describes  how a group of friends in Brooklyn spent an afternoon creating a video tribute to a "stage 1" remix of 80's Brat Pack movies, which itself was an homage to those works.  A second group in San Francisco then made another video that was a recreation of the Brooklyn video. » Read more

Last Thursday the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) released its second issue on-line in HTML and PDF format. This was not on the front of Slashdot or The Register, but it was one of the more significant developments so far this year in Free Software governance.  IFOSS L. Rev. » Read more

We talk about open source a lot at Red Hat, but other interesting things come up. Last week I had a burrito with my colleague Jake Sullivan, who graduated not long ago from the University of North Carolina with a major in American history. Although I'd been working with Jake for more than a year, I had not got around to comparing notes with him about historians. I mentioned a couple of dark chapters of the Civil War that I thought needed deeper scholarship. Jake assured me that there was significant work already out there, and even provided me with a reading list. » Read more