The Venezuelan Parliament is going to start discussing the draft legislation called “Ley de Infogobierno”, which will overhaul e-government and software procurement in the Venezuelan public sector. Although I am often sceptical about Chavez and his Venezuelan project, some aspects of the legislation are rather interesting. Here are some highlights. Read more…
The programme for the Unlocking IP Conference is now available online. This event will take place on Monday 10 – Tuesday 11 July 2006 at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. The programme looks quite impressive: Michael Geist, Brian Fitzgerald, Peter Drahos, Graham Greenleaf, Kathy Bowrey, Kimberlee Weatherall, Nic Read more…
It has been a good week for creativity based on open licences and Creative Commons. Firstly, there have been glowing reviews about the amazing creative display that encompasses the first “open” animation, a lovely little film called Elephants Dream (I know, it looks weird without the apostrophe). Then there is Read more…
The Daily Telegraph has published an article on why Firefox is stealing market share from Internet Explorer. Being a sticker-carrying Firefox evangelist (yes, I also own a Firefox t-shirt), I am surprised at the growing importance of the browser. I believe that people are finally realizing that IE is very Read more…
Amnesty International is starting a campaign in favour of freedom of expression online. The organisation claims that there is growing governmental control over blogs, chat rooms and websites where governments try to re-assert their control over cyberspace, and more importantly, about criticisms exercised in the vast virtual world. The best Read more…
I have been surprised by the coverage given to a small comment by a member of the EU Commission with regards to a question with regards to software patents. The full answer from the Commission can be found here. Most of the press reports are inaccurate, as usual. Yours truly Read more…
We have received this email from Hugh Hancock, forwarded by Prof. Hector MacQueen: Just thought you might be interested to hear about what I suspect is the largest Creative Commons project in Scotland, if not the UK as a whole. BloodSpell is an independent animated series, made using Machinima technology, Read more…
The Consortium for studying, evaluating, and supporting the introduction of Open Source software and Open Data Standards in the Public Administration (COSPA) has made available a series of documents and resource listings of open source, open data and open standards tools and projects in Europe. I’m in Spain this week Read more…
(Thanks to Jean-Pierre Wack for the link). This is a link to a conference taking place this week on synthetic biology. Arti Rai will from Duke’s Centre for he Public Domain will speak on “Synthetic Biology: Caught Between Property Right, the Public Domain, and the Commons”. It seems like this Read more…
One of the main arguments against software patents is that it reduces innovation and generates unnecessary litigation. Microsoft has been suffering considerably from software patent litigation, perhaps because they are the largest and juiciest target for patent trolls and for patent owners interested in reducing MS market power. Symantec is Read more…