The great divide: open or free?
One of the great themes I've seen emerge in TalkBack has been a great divide on what should be the chief priority of open source.As we saw with Peter Brown, free is one priority.
Linux and Open Source
The latest news and views on all things Linux and open source by seasoned Unix and Linux user Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge PC operating system. SJVN covers networking, Linux, open source, and operating systems.
Paula Rooney
Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for more than two decades.
Latest Posts
WGA side-effect aims at Linux
WGA stands for the Windows Genuine Advantage program. It's pitched as an anti-piracy initiative.
Dvorak's cunning plan to kill Linux
John Dvorak hosted a roast for the launch of Microsoft Windows 1.0, nearly two decades ago, and has always had a soft spot in his heart for Big Green.
Midnight at the OASIS
Boycott OASIS? Paul Festa has the story. The leading e-business standards body faces a boycott based on its new intellectual property policy, which endorses the inclusion of technology requiring payment of royalties to its standards.
Crunch time
We have a fascinating story today, from CNet's Ed Frauenheim, saying software developers are suffering less "crunch time," and are volunteering open time to open source.Now I get the contradiction.
DRM and open source
There's an interesting discussion going on between KDE developers about putting DRM in open source applications -- in this case, KPDF, a PDF reader for KDE. On the one hand, KDE developers may not have a choice -- Adobe claims copyright over the PDF spec, and grants permission to implement it only if there are "reasonable efforts" to implement restrictions in PDF.
What can Brown do for you?
The remarks of new Free Software Foundation executive director Peter Brown on free vs. open source software last week certainly struck a nerve in TalkBack.
Don't call this blog open source
Peter Brown is the new executive director of the Free Software Foundation. In the first of what I hope will be many interviews with ZDNet, he asks that we change the name of this blog:Open Source is a term that was created to mask the ideals of Software Freedom established by Richard Stallman and incorporated into the terms of the GPL.
SCO may be delisted from Nasdaq
It doesn't look like 2005 is going to be a good year for SCO. The Salt Lake Tribune's Bob Mims reports that SCO may be delisted from the Nasdaq for missing filing deadlines.
Linuxworld's biggest headline
The biggest headline from LinuxWorld didn't come from IBM, or Novell, or even the Free Software Foundation.In my opinion it came from the Open Source Initiative(OSI), which said it plans to whittle the number of "open source licenses" from 50 to 3 in the next two months.