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Is the FOSS community divided?

roundup An expensive and ineffective patent regime is hampering the work of Australia's software community, a leading IT lawyer claimed yesterday.Jeremy Malcolm told participants at Linux.
Written by ZDNET Editors, Contributor
roundup An expensive and ineffective patent regime is hampering the work of Australia's software community, a leading IT lawyer claimed yesterday.

Jeremy Malcolm told participants at Linux.conf.au 2005 in Canberra that IP Australia is a weak link in the patent examination process.

Malcolm flays Aust patent authorities
IT lawyer Jeremy Malcolm -- who is also the manager of open source vendor Terminus Network Services -- says the poor quality of the patent examination process by IP Australia, combined with open-source developers' lack of funds to fight legal action, were serious flaws in the regime.
22 April 2005

Rift threatens FOSS community
Linux Australia's immediate past president reckons moderate open source developers are being pushed into "a refugee situation" between the 'free software' and 'commercial' hardliners.
22 April 2005

Tridgell speaks out in Bitkeeper war
Andrew Tridgell has made his first public comments on the dispute between himself and Linux originator Linus Torvalds over source code management for the Linux kernel, describing much of the coverage and commentary on the issue as "trivial and crazy".
21 April 2005

Feds stomp on Red Hat
A senior federal official has rebuked Linux vendor Red Hat over its criticism of the government's open-source software takeup rate, arguing a measured approach may be "the right thing to do".
19 April 2005

Aussie lawyer wants 'clearer' GPL
Australian open source lawyer Brendan Scott says the next version of the GNU General Public License should be made clearer and include legal terms relevant to jurisdictions like Australia.
19 April 2005

Favour us over proprietary software: OSS advocates
Federal politicians should dump their policy of procurement neutrality and actively encourage agencies to adopt open source software, OSS supporters claim.
19 April 2005

Microsoft cops standards attack
Microsoft Australia has come under fire from rival vendors and open-source advocates for keeping its Office document standards proprietary.
19 April 2005

Government agencies lagging on OSS: Red Hat
Linux software vendor Red Hat welcomed the release of the government's open-source software guide, but said Australian agencies were far behind other countries in aggressively adopting the platform.
18 April 2005

Ignore 'fads' when examining OSS: Govt
Federal government agencies must disregard any "novelty value" when assessing open-source software for procurement, according to a new guide.
18 April 2005

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