Is it ever acceptable for Linux distros to license codecs? Opinions range from "sure," to "never." No true-blooded supporter of FOSS wants to encourage proprietary codecs, but OS distributors need to make sure things work out of the box.

The plan to filter the internet for material refused classification under Australian law is legally flawed.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the Internet's perfect copying machine makes copyright largely irrelevant today: once a copy is online somewhere, it's impossible to take it down everywhere. Could the arrival of digital 3D printers like the open source RepRap do the same for patents, by making it possible for anyone to download and print off analogue objects?

OSI Board member, Simon Phipps, says Google's VP8 codec is "not currently open source" and it is possible that the licence would not pass the OSI

Michael Hall, former editor of Linux Today, pointed out a blog entry with an interesting take on the recent beating Apple has been taking in the press lately. It was a posting that made me sit back and re-evaluate some of my own views.

Carlo Piana seems to have just explained why attempts to work around software patents or use patent pools are probably a waste of time and genuinely good effort

With VP8, the promise from Google is a video codec on par with H.264 that will be available royalty-free. It's a good idea, but there might be a problem.

The Free Software Foundation has said it has approached Apple because a GPL2 licensed application, a port of GNU Go, is available from Apple's App Store