FOSS - Page number 8

Eben Moglen's keynote address at LinuxCon last week, "Doing What it Takes: Current Legal Issues in Defending FOSS," called for a strategic shift in the free software movement. Moglen, the founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and one of the principal drafters of the GPLv3, said the economy of sharing and the economy of ownership are not mutually hostile, but mutually reinforcing, then outlined three steps for ensuring the continued coexistence between the free software and business communities. » Read more

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. » Read more

On 16 June Project Harmony had its first official meeting in Boston, and we're planning another in London on 1st July at Canonical's offices.  Its initial goal is to avoid proliferation in contribution agreements across FOSS software projects where those organisations chose to work with contribution agreements.

A Canonical instigated project, being led by their General Counsel, Project Harmony is open to all interested parties to join. It presently involves a group of industry interested parties, from companies, projects and those with personal interests in FOSS. » Read more

Proponents of getting students involved as contributors in open source projects often cite the benefits of having a portfolio and a stellar network of references for job or even school applications. What some don't know is that there are scholarships specifically geared towards open source contributors - and that, for those who want to encourage more young people to get involved in FOSS, these scholarships are quite easy to set up and administer. » Read more

The Open Your World Forum is scheduled for Thursday, May 27th, beginning at 8:45 a.m. EDT.  Bookmark this page for the latest information on the day's schedule, speakers, and presentation topics.  Be sure to register for the event if you haven't already done so. » Read more

Over the last few years, open source adoption has been growing within India's education system. Five years ago, the South Indian state of Kerala, pioneered open source in schools with its famous IT@Schools project, that now covers three million students from the 5th-10 standards, involves 200,000 teachers across 4071 schools. Since then, other Indian states like Karnataka, Gujarat, Assam, West Bengal and others have made open source a key part of their school education initiatives. » Read more

There is a fairly common perception among FOSS hackers that there is no community of FOSS lawyers. Scratch the surface, though, and it turns out that- despite our handicaps- the FOSS legal community is there and growing. Since this question recently came up in the context of Mozilla's decision to revise the MPL, I thought it might be a good time to talk about this community here at opensource.com. » Read more

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

Users of free and open source software (“FOSS”) have little to gain and much to fear from the patent system. The patent system poses two major threats to users: First, the software itself can be burdened or extinguished altogether by “software patents', that is, claims over basic techniques used in computer programs or common features of programs. Second, the use of computers to perform basic business functions traditionally performed in other ways, can be monopolized as a result of patents on computer enabled “business methods”. » Read more