links for 2007-09-06
September 6, 2007 General No Comments-
Interesting blog on Sun – the last paragraph shows how Wall Street views companies, in contrast to us normal people.(tags: sun wallstreet)
links for 2007-08-31
August 31, 2007 General 1 Comment-
OpenWengo as an alternative to Skype. Some questionable comments (“closed = weak”?) but we appreciate the support.
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Interesting FUD. The two biggest Linux companies don’t have huge revenues, but at least RedHat is growing fast, and has decent margins. “Microsoft is taking back server share”? Not by much according to Gartner, and Linux *revenue* grew 19%, and represents
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A report on the Gartner study that showed Windows market shippings growing by 2%. Not the end of the world, by any means. Plus – since when was market share the end goal?
links for 2007-08-27
August 27, 2007 General No Comments-
A rant about how proprietary software can’t be trusted and we should be questioning motives of Skype. Some interesting thoughts, but mostly rabble-rousing. Thanks for the compliments for the OpenWengo project, though!
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Counter-weight to the Free Software Magazine article – not particularly well articulated, but the general argument seems to be “Skype’s got more users, and I have no reason not to trust them, especially since the alternatives are nothing to call home abou
links for 2007-08-23
August 23, 2007 General No Comments-
Asterisk billing platform – must see if it provides a nice interface for account balances for softphones.
Patent licences and free software
August 23, 2007 freesoftware, General 7 Comments“Knowingly relying” means you have actual knowledge that, but for the patent license, your conveying the covered work in a country, or your recipient’s use of the covered work in a country, would infringe one or more identifiable patents in that country that you have reason to believe are valid.
(Updated) GPL v3, section 11
In certain domains, essential technologies are patented (specifically, audio & video codecs), so if you want to interoperate with existing technologies as free software, you need to have free software implementations of the patented technologies. And the patent holders typically aren’t very friendly and don’t make grants that cut off their revenue streams.
Some standards bodies (MPEG, IETF, ITU) standardise codecs which are legally encumbered, usually dictating that “Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” conditions must apply for implementations of the standard. However, these terms usually exclude free software implementations by requiring a patent fee, and are thus pretty unreasonable to me.
What if I deliberately write software which I know will infringe a patent, without a patent grant or licence, and release it under the GPL?
First, may I do so, under the terms of the GPL? I don’t see why not.
Second, if I do, what penalties am I leaving myself open to? A C&D letter? A hefty law-suit which will leave my family eating oatmeal out of garbage cans for the foreseeable future?
links for 2007-08-22
August 22, 2007 General 1 Comment-
Blog post mentioning OpenWengo – also mentions the firefox extension, which hasn’t been maintained in a while, and is definitely in a YMMV state.
links for 2007-08-02
August 2, 2007 General No Comments-
Advice to lawyers and businesspeople unfamiliar with free software licences.
Getting Subversion access
July 26, 2007 General 2 CommentsI remember the day that Michael Natterer (mitch) sent me a mail saying something to the effect of “I’m spending too much time committing your good patches, it’s time you got your own CVS access”. I was happy on so many levels. Happy because it meant that my work was being appreciated, that I was considered part of the team, and most of all because it showed that I was trusted.
That trust was tempered by the fact that the GIMP developers have a highly developed sense of code review – every commit which goes into the GIMP repository gets a good once-over from Sven, mitch and others, which keeps everyone honest.
But that day was still a key moment in my life as a free software developer. It is the first day I really truly felt like I was a part of the family.
Today, I just got my Subversion access for the OpenWengo svn repository. When I joined the company I said that I didn’t want the access because I was an employee, I wanted it because I’d earned it.
It took a while, partly because I haven’t been sending in many patches, partly because I had made a proposal some time ago for managing new committers which got delayed for a while, and so it was only revived a couple of weeks ago.
So today, along with another new committer Ludovico Cavedon, I finally feel like I’ve properly joined the OpenWengo family. Happiness 🙂
Sean Daniel, 4.1kg, 54cm, born 21:06 CEST 24/07/2007
July 24, 2007 home 20 Comments
Before…
Just after…
A little later
I’m delighted to share that Sean Daniel Neary, the newest member of the Neary family, was born at 21:06 French time today, a healthy 4.1 kg (that’s just over 9lb for you imperialists out there) and 54 cm tall. Mother and child are well.
