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A recent blog posting at The Guardian about the US “Special 301” rules has generated deep concern around the global open source community. It points (via a blog posting by Edinburgh University law lecturer Andres Guadamuz) to this year’s recommendations from the controversially-named International Intellectual Property Alliance, which describes itself as “a private sector coalition……

You can read about it here and then decide for yourself whether to sign it as well.

If you distribute Open Source software containing encryption from the United States, you are subject to US export controls, yes. But are there any real restrictions? The only thing that the law requires you to do (for Open Source) is send an email to [email protected] with the URL. So why do SourceForge and Google impose…

Yesterday Matt Mullenweg announced the establishment of the WordPress Foundation. It’s goals, among others, are “to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software”. He further elaborates: The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the projects we support. People and…

I love stories of user-driven innovation. Here’s one I just discovered: the Magic Lantern firmware upgrade for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera. Trammel Hudson tells the story of his elegant and vital hacks: Magic Lantern introduction from Trammell Hudson on Vimeo. More awesomely, at 08:11 in the video (and here on the Wiki)…

This afternoon I heard this story on NPR. It’s not the first time OpenStreetMap was mentioned as an asset in the relief effort. It was also mentioned three days ago in a story sourced from the Associated Press. Open Source, open data, and open standards make it possible to not only optimize for the common…

On January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti 15 miles from its capital, Port-au-Prince. On January 14th, the Sahana team, based largely in Sri Lanka, launched its Haiti 2010 Disaster Relief Portal, including a Situation Map, an Organizations Registry, and an Activities Report. Sahana is a free and open source software disaster management…

“There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.“ – from the Commencement Address for Oberlin College given by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., June 1965, Oberlin Ohio

Thanks to Greg DeKoenigsberg, I now know about Gource. You should, too. Watch this movie, which speaks for itself: After watching how a few committed souls can build a vibrant, dynamic community, it reminds me a bit about the “Let’s Do It” campaign of 2008 in Estonia, in which a single visionary and a handful…

Marv Langston served as Department of Defense Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO), where he helped initiate the Global Information Grid, Public Key Infrastructure – Common Access Cards, and led the Defense Department Year 2000 transformation. Prior to that he held positions as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Navy for C4I, Navy’s first CIO, and Director of…