Google has introduced the Nexus One and no matter what you think of the current hardware (HTC) and software (Android 2.1), the ground around the mobile business is starting to shake. The reason? The combination of unlocked service and open source software.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments today for and against patents for business methods. This category covers patents on software, so this is a huge case which has the potential to change the balance of power in our industry. In 1997 there were 974 applications, in 2008 there were 13,779 (with an 85% rejection rate over the past three years). I’ve always viewed software patents as ambiguous. Where do you draw the line between smart use of well known math techniques, and true innovation? So starting today the Supreme Court gets an opportunity to weigh in.
"To effectively achieve its missions, the Department of Defense must develop and update its software-based capabilities faster than ever, to anticipate new threats and respond to continuously changing requirements. The use of Open Source Software (OSS) can provide advantages in this regard...".
What would happen if the wireless network were more similar to the wired internet?
We’re moved (up). Our new address is 215 Second St. Second Floor, San Francisco. If you compare that to our previous address you may notice that it appears to be one floor up, and that’s exactly right. Our landlord (Birmingham Development) wanted to make a major upgrade to the building and did a terrific job. New everything – beautiful new server room, almost floor to ceiling windows so lots of light and fresh air, comfortable conference rooms. Overall a very positive change for us. For anyone travelling to San Francisco, we are very near Moscone Center and would welcome a visit.
Good debate at www.fossic.org, between advocates for GPL, BSD and EPL (Eclipse Public License). At the end of the debate, there were not a lot of new reasons to consider or dismiss any of them, but it was useful to revisit the arguments. A couple of the better statements: (1) if you are not redistributing code, we’re all BSD (2) business models (for software companies) largely follow licensing choices, and (3) the major impact of GPL is to create trust in a developer community.
The big VMware conference is happening down the street from us. It appears to be the first of the fall “big shows” at Moscone Center in San Francisco. You can tell because the restaurants are full for lunch again, hotel prices on Hotwire are up again etc. Good for the local economy, that’s for sure.
Couple of observations about our first patent award. First, it took almost five years; and second, its worth the wait. We have always known that CodeRank was important – and its terrific to get the confirmation that we were right. For those of you not familiar with that feature, it’s a lot like Page Rank from Google. The whole idea is that any type of search engine will probably generate more results than a human cares to plow through, and that it would be a very good thing if the results were ranked according to their usefulness before you looked at them.
The OSI approved the Socialtext Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) today. Details here. Interesting move...it gives the OSI stamp of approval to an open source license whose major new idea is a requirement to require users of an open source product to give attribution via display of a project logo (or I guess anything else they decide to require) on the user's GUI.
A couple of comments...
Some time ago I did a post and expressed my opinion regarding a possible outcome of the anti-DRM provisions of the GPL3 license. I got some feedback that made me think I was not clear enough.
My observation is this - the fewer restrictions that a piece of software has, the more "valuable" it becomes. The example I used was music. You can buy music that is unrestricted by DRM from iTunes, and it costs more.
