Easter round-up
Comments(3) This week British Telecom ate our SDSL line, meaning we’ve been without phones, email or internet for 2.5 days. Thank goodness for Broadband dongles, though part of me feels uneasy at how impossible it was to do much work without being able to quickly check things on the internet or consult with colleagues.
In the mean time though, there have been another set of interesting posts on my current topics of interest soap-boxes, namely file formats and the openness thereof, and open source business models. Most of them are from Mr Ramsey, but my boss makes a very good point here in response to the argument “who do I sue if things go wrong”? (Answer- no one, check that license before you click on “accept”). Really, if we want to make a change we have to keep banging away at these two issues.
Have a nice Easter everyone, and don’t eat too much chocolate…
Thanks for the links to Paul’s rants. As for the legal implications of open source vs. proprietary licencing, I’m no expert on this stuff (unlike you guys I’m sure), but I looked at some of the issues surrounding OS for my GIS MSc last year, and there was an interesting paper in IEEE Software vol.21(1) looking at how to manage the legal aspects of “Using open source software in product development: a primer” by Ruffin and Ebert, based on their experience of using OS at Alcatel. And you can get free access to Andrew St Laurent’s book “Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing” under the Creative Commons licence at http://oreilly.com/catalog/osfreesoft/book/. Open source books on using open source software, how post-modern is that?
Hi Chris
Thanks for the links- though I might have to buy a real paper copy of the O’Reilly book!
Jo
Paper? How very 20th century of you!