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 Read more
Teoma is a new search engine that follows a similar idea to that of Google Scholar, it tries to filter searches to give sources that have certain authority. It does this by producing searches that are linked to by pages Read more
This is an excellent rant from Ed Felten’s blog Freedom to Tinker, where he asks something that has been on my mind recently. Why is Hollywood complaining about the evils of movie downloading, when profits are at its highest levels Read more
A Norwegian student has been found guilty of copyright infringement and has been told that he has to pay the music industry the equivalent of £8,000 for hosting a site called napster.no. As its counterpart in the United States, the Read more
The RIAA continues its strategy of suing P2P users by initiating lawsuits against 717 users of the Kazaa, eDonkey and Limeware P2P networks. Will this strategy work? I will conduct a survey of users tonight and get back to you Read more
eXeem is a new P2P application that was created in the wake of the shutting down of the SuprNova bitorrent website. This new technology marries the speed and capabilities of Bitorrent with the relative anonymity and decentralization of P2P. However, Read more
Yesterday we brought you news about the devilish new McAfee patent. PantentNews has pointed out that the patent also claims to trace IP and then “displaying a world map with an illustration of the trace thereon utilizing the firewall.” Wait Read more
Slashdot reports that anti-virus developer Mcafee has been granted U.S. Patent 6,839,852 for monitoring network traffic with a firewall. The patent is for: A system, method and computer program product are provided for tracing a traffic event utilizing a firewall. 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 Read more
Poland has saved Europe once more from the proposed software patent directive. The item was to be viewed as an A-item in the Agriculture and Fisheries agenda, but Poland has once more opposed its inclusion there. The official Polish statement Read more