Many have already opined about the Oracle v. Google lawsuit filed last week. As you might expect, I'm not that worried about what company sues what company for some heap of cash; those sort of for-profit wranglings just aren't what concerns me. Rather, I'm focused on what this event means for the future of software freedom.

Some people seem to think that using only Open Source software and Open Standards for data in Public Administration is, if not sufficient, a big part of realizing Open Government. Personally, I am not so sure, and I also wonder if many non-geek citizens are really ready for Open Data and Open Government. Here is a summary of a talk I just gave on this topic. What do you think?

Canonical is also top class when it comes to spin. Any criticism levelled at the company is met by a much bigger reaction from its owner Mark Shuttleworth who not many dare to contradict.

When I optimistically downloaded the 690MB ISO file from Mandriva’s website, I had high hopes that this version would improve the steadily degrading once immensely popular GNU/Linux distribution.

Some of the best open source software (OSS) around is multiple platform. You can run the exact same software with the same look and feel (I can understand the look part but how do you feel a program? Do a Vulcan mind meld with it?) no matter what operating system you use.

[…] this does result in the paradoxical situation that the GNU GPL actually *depends* on copyright, an intellectual monopoly, in order to spread intellectual freedom. Moreover, it seems to doom free software into a kind of symbiosis with copyright, forcing it to remain a supporter of that monopoly, since without it, the approach used to make the GPL so powerful would not work.

Until a few years ago, hardly a day went by without an article being featured on Linux Today about how “the year of Linux” had arrived. Every Linux user with a blog was willing to bet, year after year, that this was finally going to be “the year of Linux.” This was going to be the year when the public got wise, quit paying the Microsoft tax and moved over to the obviously superior Linux.

Recently my blog attracted a lot of attention from readers who are more critical of FLOSS, and Linux in particular, than my regular readership. Naturally a long discussion erupted where critiques and defenses of various positions and opinions and how stuff works where flung to and fro.