OSSummit North America is going to be weird – and I can’t wait

A few months ago I posted my initial impressions for a draft version of the…

Alan MacCormack published a new paper entitled A Developer Bill of Rights: What Open Source Developers Want in a Software License for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center. Whenever I see a statement of developer desiderata, I’m reminded of this timeless posting by One Laptop Per Child hacker extraordinaire Chris Blizzard:

The news outlets, radio waves, and blogosphere [1] and [2] continue to buzz with responses…

Note: this is just my opinion. The OSI board may have a different opinion if it speaks as a body. Microsoft is spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) with their latest anti-Linux patent campaign. If they had an actual, solid case of patent infringement, they would go to a judge, get an injunction against the distribution of Linux, and sell patent licenses for FreeBSD. The fact that they don’t, but are willing to sell patent licenses for an unnamed set of infringed patents, says that they have no legal case.

Rik van Riel posted an interesting insight this weekend about this important difference between those working under the constraints of the proprietary software model and those of us who use and develop open source software:

they *have* to target their development to work on marketable features, while we have more liberty to focus on things that provide our users with value — even if they are not glamorous enough to use in marketing material.

Two months ago I blogged about the best open source presentation ever?, which was remarkable because mostly when I read what other people have to say about open source, I’m much less charitable (for example, this about James DeLong’s latest paid product).