Robert Terry, the Senior Policy Adviser of the Wellcome Trust, has written a paper in PLoS stating that the Trust will require the publication of all work that is funded by them through open access journals. This is a great boost for the open access movement, because it means that Read more
Lawrence Rosen cannot be accused of being an outspoken attacker of open source. He is one of the main advisors for the OSI, and has written a very good book on open source licences. However, he has recently expressed some lingering concerns about this licensing scheme. He describes some problems Read more
eBay is thinking about opening its source code under some sort of open licence to allow faster development. eBay currently has a proprietary/closed code software developer’s kit(SDK) that they provide to programmers that want to create applications that interact with eBay’s interface and enhances its current use. Currently, 42% of Read more
John Swainson, the CEO for anti-virus and security products producer Computer Associates will announce a donation of some of its software patents to open source software developers. It will be good to see the shape that this offer takes. IBM’s offer took the shape of a legally binding non-assertion promise Read more
Software patents are a serious problem for open source developers according to Linus Torvalds and other open source superstars, despite IBM’s legally binding pledge not to enforce 500 software patents against OSS companies. This should not surprise anybody. With almost every single obvious element of software already patented in the Read more
In a similar move to IBM’s much talked about patent handout for OSS developers, Sun Systems are offering more than 1,600 patents that they own for open source developers in Solaris projects. Although many will complain that this is another PR exercise, it must be said that there seems to Read more
Firefox is increasing its market share in detriment of Internet Explorer, an increase that has been fueled by security fears in Microsoft products. Firefox is said to have taken 5% of the market, as opposed to a 1% during Mozilla times. I can say that I have noticed that Firefox Read more
(Registration required) IBM continues to champion the open source movement by allowing access to 500 software patents that it holds to open source developments. However, IBM is only allowing access to a minimal amount of its patents, as it was awarded more than 3,000 patents in 2004.
SCO’s website has been defaced by hackers for two days running. The website’s masthead was changed with a new banner that read “We own all your code – pay us all your money“. SCO has become the favourite target of software programmers around the world after its case against IBM Read more
Groklaw smugly reported this earlier. Steve Ballmer asked computer industry to create a computer worth $100 USD. A company called Solar PC has met the challenge with a small computer that runs Linux by using live CDs. BTW, aren’t Live CDs great? I have tested Knoppix and SUSE 9.2 recently. Read more