Nat Torkington asked recently Is “Open Source” Now Completely Meaningless. Certainly not; in fact, there are several reasons this label is still valid and important. I’m a pragmatist, so I’m not going to wave any flags or sing any anthems to argue this, just point out what has worked and continues to work. First of…

That seems to be the opinion of Stephen Walli in this blog posting. I just finished reading Made To Stick, a book recommended to me by my trendspotting wife Amy, and it’s quite obvious that Brent has both a command of the facts, an understanding of the context, and a gift for relating them in…

For some time, the term “Open Standard” has been gaining in market popularity. Unlike Open Source, which has had a…

There’s an idea that’s becoming increasingly popular here in Chapel Hill, and it’s expressed by one of two bumper stickers. The first is: Ignore Your Rights And They’ll Go Away The second is: No, You Can’t Have My Rights, I’m Still Using Them These apply equally well to the definition of Open Source software. For…

Three cheers for Alfresco for changing their license to the GPL. The first cheer is because they are shifting away from a license which, as a modified version of an OSI-approved license, was not, technically, Open Source as the OSI defines it. We all remember the days when high-flying technology companies reported “pro-forma” financials instead…

The Open Source Initiative is not the only organization with ideas about how to better understand, and thus develop and exploit software. At the opposite end of the spectrum seems to be The Progress and Freedom Foundation, and their Senior Fellow, James DeLong, who has just posted a new and thoroughly confusing article that appears…

The scientific community has developed theories that attempt to explain every phenomenon from Planck Scale (which is 1.616 x 10-35 m) to the size of the Universe (which is estimated to be at least 78 billion light years (or 7.38 x 1026 m). A minority group of people who demand to be called scientists have…

2006 was a pivotal year for Open Source. 2007 should be a banner year. In 2006, the OSI’s agenda was focused on the problem of license proliferation (defining it, addressing it, and solving it), the harmonization of the definitions of open standards and open source software, and the launch of the new, version 3.0 website,…

Dale Dougherty is giving his Make: presentation. Clearly, FOSS hackers are Make:rs. He referenced one of my favorite documents, the…

Greetings from Brussels, where EuroOSCON 2006 is in progress. Top of my OSI agenda is getting the new website launched….