Including design and UX in a true community project is a challenging matter of balance because of the motivational model behind open source projects.   According to The Cathedral…

In this fourth episode of Shane Martin Coughlan‘s, “The Faces of Open Source Law,” we continue our introductions to the vibrant open source community, through discussions with some of it’s…

Open source adoption continues to grow as companies seek not only higher quality software, lower costs, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in, but also leverage the power of community investment and collective intellect to drive innovation.

This is the third episode from the series in Shane Martin Coughlan‘s, “The Faces of Open Source Law,” that puts a face to the vibrant open source community, and the…

Former CIA Director and U.S. Ambassador James Woolsey recently issued a New York Times op/ed piece with open source stalwart, GNU Bash creator, and technology lead for OSI Affiliate Member NAVO/CAVO, Brian Fox, to call on politicians to expedite efforts toward open source election systems. Director Woolsey was blunt about the need for Microsoft and others to cease and desist lobbying efforts against the open source voting community and commended the open source momentum toward securing the elections.

  Having watched a fair number of people attempting to engage both the Open Source Initiative’s licensing evaluation community and the Apache Software Foundation’s legal affairs committee, here are some…

This is the second episode from the series, “The Faces of Open Source Law,” by Shane Martin Coughlan. The series puts a face to the vibrant open source community, and…

Should you donate money to the open source projects you use? Or is there a better way to help?

Your business most likely depends on open source software. But are you playing your part to make sure it will still be there in the future? For that to happen, the projects where it is both maintained and improved need to flourish.

A few weeks ago we learned about some great work underway by Shane Martin Coughlan: putting a face to the vibrant open source community, and the fascinating discussions happening within…

Open Source and Public Domain are frequently confused. Here’s why it’s a mistake to treat the two terms as synonyms.

Plenty of people assume that public domain software must be open source. While it may be free software within your specific context, it is incorrect to treat public domain software as open source or indeed as globally free software. That’s not a legal opinion (I’m not a lawyer so only entitled to layman’s opinions) but rather an observation that an open source user or developer cannot safely include public domain source code in a project.

You feel slighted by a comment on a mailing list, or a forum post has failed to be moderated live. How should you react? A recent exchange on a user…

Individual judgment about the presence of software freedom in a license is not the same as community consensus expressed through OSI approval.

Does it really matter if a copyright license is OSI Approved or not? Surely if it looks like it meets the benchmark that’s all that matters? I think that’s the wrong answer, and that OSI license approval is the crucial innovation that’s driven the open source revolution.