open source - Page number 61

The Economist is right on top of the story of the first fully synthetic life-form. For those of you who may have missed the announcement last week, Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith, the two American biologists who unravelled the first DNA sequence of a living organism (a bacterium) in 1995, have pushed the envelope again, demonstrating the first successful boot-up of a synthetic bacterium. » Read more

Every day I come to work, I get excited about the possibilities of the power of participation: to solve complex problems, to share knowledge, to bring people together. Opensource.com has been a great vehicle for me to learn and participate in a dialog about the power of open source principles–-especially when applied beyond software. » Read more

Even if you'd never heard of Facebook before this week (unlikely as that may seem to most of our readers), it's tough to avoid now. The privacy fiasco has even hit the cover of Time magazine.

And yet, I have to admit: Most of the news I hear about this, I hear via Facebook. That is to say, I haven't left yet. For all its wrongdoing, the fact remains that Facebook keeps me in touch with people I otherwise would lose track of. And I know I'm not alone in that. » 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

One of the most important aspects of the recent trial victory for Red Hat and Novell was a finding that the asserted patent claims were invalid.  This meant that the jury was persuaded by clear and convincing evidence that the patents were improperly granted.  Getting to this decision involved collaboration that demonstrated the power of open source to defend against patent aggression.

For the open source community, it's worth noting with pride that a substantial portion of the prior art used in the case was identified by community members. » Read more

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Prior Art Testimony - 2010-04-29

(...hint: it might not be what you expect!)

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Aaron Fulkerson, founder and CEO of MindTouch. Before founding the company in 2005, Fulkerson (and co-founder Steve Bjorg) worked in Microsoft's advanced strategies division. After leaving Microsoft, the duo recognized a growing need for a scalable, easy-to-use open source collaboration platform for business and focused their efforts on a pet project, Deki Wiki. Within three years, Deki Wiki was rated as one of the Top 5 OSS projects by SourceForge.net and ultimately grew to become the company known as MindTouch today. MindTouch offers a robust enterprise collaboration platform with more than 16 million users and 400,000 web visits each month.

» Read more

When Thomas Friedman enumerated 10 "flattening forces" in his book The World Is Flat, he declared that force #4, Open Source, was the most powerful and disruptive of all. New discoveries in nature suggest that Friedman's assessment may be more profound (and more consistent) than even he imagined.

» Read more

Red Hat and Novell stood up to a patent bully and got a favorable jury verdict in the IPI trial which invalidated some software patents that should never have been issued. It's hard to see how that's not a good thing for open source. It's also good that the particular battle has inspired discussion of the need for fundamental reform of the U.S. patent system. Red Hat has vigorously advocated such reform, and has taken strong positions on software patentability before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Bilski case and the European Patent Office. » Read more

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Morning transcript - 4/28/2010

Afternoon transcript - 4/28/2010

Those who've been waiting for the release of Moodle 2.0 are getting their open source just rewards this week.  The release, which has been met already with several delays, is a "beta preview" -- which is to say, not yet a stable release, but a functional template of what's in store for early adopters (note that Moodle HQ will be releasing weekly updates as the code matures as a series of beta previews leading up to the stable release¹).   » Read more

There's one major advantage to openness in business. Like the Billy Joel song says, it's just a matter of trust. 

Harvard Business Review's Peter Merholz recently highlighted several successful businesses modeled on trust—and, though he doesn't note it, openness. » Read more