FLOSS News

Anyone reading this old enough to remember that line from the BBC TV Sitcom “Citizen Smith“? I think I have just seen it in action.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the leading intellectual property court in the US -- has delivered a major victory to the Free and Open Source Software (“FOSS”) movement by explicitly holding, for the first time, that FOSS licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief.

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Source: www.civicactions.com

Just came across yet another excellent post from Alex Russell of the Dojo project (and foundation): “The Price of Anonymity: Our Principles?”

Russell uses the occasion of some nasty comments in Digg on a Caryl Shaw article for PC gamer (and a series of presentations at OSCON a few weeks back) to reflect on the issue of sexism in free and open source software communities. Ultimately, the issue is really about what kinds of communities we want to be building. As he notes:

Ask average computer users what FOSS is about, and, if they've even heard of it, they'll probably say something about the source code being publicly available.

Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/Philosophy/GNU_Linux_Source_Code_and_Human_Rights

"Just think about it for a moment. About 20 years ago you got specifications for pretty much every piece of hardware you bought. You were given exact instructions on how to use the hardware you just bought, not only how to install it. Things have changed since then.

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Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/Why_are_hardware_manufcaturers_keeping_specs_to_themselves

If you have kids and want to get them to do other things on the computer besides watching Drake and Josh or playing video games, institute an embargo and have them start drawing with a great free program Tux Paint.

Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/Kids_Let_Them_Create_Art_on_Your_Computer_with_Tux_Paint