The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications, Inc. on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL). BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under GPL version 2.
Read more »BusyBox Developers File GPL Infringement Lawsuit Against Verizon Communications
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The GNU Affero GPL by Brett Smith
"We recently published the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. [...] This isn't a complete solution for bringing freedom to web services. Unfortunately, the current architecture that we use to build network applications is inherently unfriendly to users' freedom. Generally, all the code and data lives on someone else's server, under their control and out of yours. You can never be completely free in such an environment. However, AGPLv3 advances a vision of how freedom works in the computing environment of today and tomorrow..."
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Software Patents Coalition by Ben Klemens
"Our primary goal in this campaign is to reverse the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decision of 'In re Alappat'. Here, I will explain the history of what that ruling meant, and why that same history has shown us that it should be the focus of our campaign..."
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Search for embedded Linux patents
As an electrical engineer with an automotive background, when I think of Linux, I think of servers, PCs, supercomputers, and so forth. Embedded applications don't really come to mind when I consider Linux. However, Linux is used as an operating system for many phones, games, and other devices with embedded software.
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OpenISO.org Review of OOXML - Call For Participation
Norbert Bollow, founder of OpenISO.org, has just released the OpenISO.org Call For Participation for creating a "problem report" document about OOXML, that can help ISO/IEC national member bodies with evaluating whether the changes that will be decided at the OOXML "Ballot Resolution Meeting" (BRM) in February are sufficient to address OOXML's most serious problems.
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Ray Niro Offers $5,000 Bounty For Information On My Identity
I have never had a bounty on my head before (see also blog post here). And I can't imagine why Ray Niro would pay $5,000 to find out who I am. I emailed him to find out (from the corner internet cafe, heh). He didn't respond. Ray: if you up it to $50,000, can I collect the reward?
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MICROSOFT drops support for OOXML!
Multi-trade International Corporation for Research of Office Software Open Format Technologies (MICROSOFT) has announced their surprise decision, that they cease to support OOXML document format (Office Open XML), acknowledging at the same time, that the ANSI-developed & supported TXT format will be a better, universal, solution.
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FSF Releases GNU Affero General Public License Version 3
"The Free Software Foundation has published the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (GNU AGPLv3). This is a new license; it is based on version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3), but has an additional term to allow users who interact with the licensed software over a network to receive the source for that program. By publishing this license, the FSF aims to foster user and development communities around network-oriented free software..."
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ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words Chapter 2
This is the second chapter in a real-time eBook writing project I launched and explained last week. The following is one of a number of stage-setting chapters to follow. Comments, corrections and suggestions gratefully accepted. All Microsoft product names used below are registered trademarks of Microsoft.
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MPAA's University wiretapping product taken down for violating copyright
"...The GPL requires anyone who makes a program based on GPL'ed code has to release the source code for their program and license it under the GPL. The MPAA refused multiple requests to provide the sources for their spyware, so an Ubuntu developer sent a DMCA notice to the MPAA's ISP and demanded that the material be taken down as infringing."
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The Canadian DMCA: What You Can Do
With the Canadian version of the DMCA likely to be introduced within the next two weeks, there has a remarkable outpouring of interest from individual Canadians about what they can do to have their concerns heard.
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CC and GFDL interoperability
"Something significant has happened in the world of free licensing, Lessig has the details and a video. Apparently, an important step has been made towards interoperability between the license controlling Wikipedia articles (the GFDL v.1.2), and the CC license by-share-alike. (See also this post on the Creative Commons website)..."
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Meet the Original Patent Troll
Raymond Niro rarely looks for clients anymore. Instead, the charming, Chicago-based litigator hunts for patents. This unconventional strategy has made him rich and, in some circles anyway, infamous.
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Proprietors not as friendly to infringers as Free Software copyright holders
"...The GNU GPL is not an “open source” license except that the Open Source Initiative organization placed the GPL on a list of approved licenses. This is trivial in comparison to writing and maintaining the license.
Read more »ODF VS OOXML: Library support shootout
How well is ODF and OOXML supported in different languages? I started off by choosing six common languages used by application and Web developers, then I went and looked for what libraries are available for each document format
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