Reading

Created
Thu, 19/05/2011 - 20:15

I'm grateful to Brian Proffitt for clarifying some of these confusions about Android licensing. In particular, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has cleared up the confusions that Edward J. Naughton keeps spreading regarding the GPL.

I noted that Naughton even commented on Proffitt's article; the comment spreads even more confusion about the GPL. In particular, Naughton claims that most BusyBox GPL violations are on unmodified versions of BusyBox. That's just absolutely false, if for no other reason that a binary is a modified version of the source code in the first place, and nearly all BusyBox GPL violations involve a binary-only version distributed without any source (nor an offer therefor).

Created
Wed, 18/05/2011 - 17:30

I just returned a few days ago to the USA after one week in Germany. I visited Göttingen for my keynote at Samba XP (which I already blogged about). Attending Samba XP was an excellent experience, and I thank SerNet for sponsoring my trip there. Since going full-time at Conservancy last year, I have been trying to visit the conferences of each of Conservancy's member projects. It will probably take me years to do this, but given that Samba is one of Conservancy's charter members, it's good that I have finally visited Samba's annual conference. It was even better that they asked me to give a keynote talk at Samba XP.

Created
Wed, 04/05/2011 - 06:30

Both RMS and I have been critical of Mono, which is an implementation of Microsoft's C# language infrastructure for GNU/Linux systems. (Until recently, at Novell, Miguel De Icaza has led a team of developers working on Mono.)

Most have probably heard that the Attachmate acquisition of Novell completed last week, and that reports of who will be fired because of the acquisition have begun to trickle. This evening, it's been reported that the developers working on Mono will be among those losing their jobs.

Created
Sat, 30/04/2011 - 09:59

Those of you that follow me on identi.ca already know that I caught a rhinovirus, and was very sick while at the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit (LCS). Unfortunately, the illness got worse since I “worked through” it while at LCS, and I was too sick to work the entire week afterward (the week of 2011-04-11).

I realized thereafter that, before the conference, I forgot to even mention online that I was speaking and chairing the legal track at LCS. I can't blame that on the illness, since I should have noted it on my blog the week before.

Created
Sat, 19/03/2011 - 06:52

I was hoping to avoid having to comment further on this problematic story. I figured a comment as a brief identi.ca statement was enough when it was just a story on the Register. But, it's now hit a major tech news outlet, and I feel that, given that I'm typically the first person everyone in the Free Software world comes to ask if something is a GPL violation, I'm going to get asked about this soon, so I might as well preempt the questions with a blog post, so I can answer any questions about it with this URL.

Created
Sun, 06/03/2011 - 02:10

I certainly deserve some of the blame, and for that I certainly apologize: the phrase “Open Core” has apparently become a slur word, used by those who wish to discredit the position of someone else without presenting facts. I've done my best when using the term to also give facts that backed up the claim, but even so, I finally abandoned the term back in November 2010, and I hope you will too.

Created
Tue, 01/03/2011 - 21:15

I've watched the game show, Jeopardy!, regularly since its Trebek-hosted relaunch on 1984-09-10. I even remember distinctly the Final Jeopardy question that night as This date is the first day of the new millennium. At the age of 11, I got the answer wrong, falling for the incorrect What is 2000-01-01?, but I recalled this memory eleven years ago during the debates regarding when the millennium turnover happened.

Created
Wed, 16/02/2011 - 00:52

In the USA, the deadline for comments on ACTA is today (Tuesday 15 February 2011) at 17:00 US/Eastern. It's absolutely imperative that every USA citizen submit a comment on this. The Free Software Foundation has details on how to do so.

ACTA is a dangerous international agreement that would establish additional criminal penalties, promulgate DMCA/EUCD-like legislation around the world, and otherwise extend copyright law into places it should not go. Copyright law is already much stronger than anyone needs.

Created
Mon, 24/01/2011 - 01:45

A while ago, I set up Git for a group privately sharing the same central repository. Specifically, this is a tutorial for those who would want to have a Git setup that is a little bit like a SVN repository: a central repository that has all the branches that matter published there in one repository. I found this file today floating in a directory of “thing I should publish at some point”, so I decided just to put it up, as every time I came across this file, it reminded me I should put this up and it's really morally wrong (IMO) to keep generally useful technical information private, even when it's only laziness that's causing it.

Created
Wed, 19/01/2011 - 00:15

I realized that I should start regularly noting here on my blog when the oggcast that I co-host with Karen Sandler is released. There are perhaps folks who want content from my blog but haven't subscribed to the RSS feed of the show, and thus might want to know when new episodes come out. If this annoys people reading this blog, please let me know via email or identica.

In particular, perhaps readers won't like that, in these posts (which are going to be written after the show), I'm likely to drift off into topics beyond what was talked about on the show, and there may be “spoilers” for the oggcast in them. Again, if this annoys you (or if you like it) please let me know.

Created
Wed, 20/10/2010 - 23:15

I was glad to read today that Sam Varghese is reporting that Mark Shuttleworth doesn't want Canonical, Ltd. to engage in business models that abuse proprietary relicensing powers in a negative way. I wrote below a brief open letter to Mark for him to read when he returns from UDS (since the article said he would handle this in detail upon his return from there). It's fortunate that there is a simple test to see if Mark's words are a genuine commitment for change by Canonical, Ltd. There's a simple action he can take to show if means to follow through on his statement:

Dear Mark,

Created
Mon, 04/10/2010 - 23:21

[ Crossposted from Conservancy's blog. ]

As can be seen in today's announcement, today is my first day as full-time Executive Director at the Software Freedom Conservancy. For four years, I have worked part-time on nights, weekends, and lunch times to keep Conservancy running and to implement and administer the services that Conservancy provides to its member projects. It's actual quite a relief to now have full-time attention available to carry out this important work.

Created
Thu, 30/09/2010 - 10:10

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

Lamaington Coin 2019 - Aussie Food Favourites

In 2019, The Royal Australian Mint issued a series of one-dollar coins featuring a range of Australian symbols on the reverse side.  It was promoted as the Great Aussie Coin Hunt. There were 26 coins in the series – one for each letter of the alphabet. Flip over from the image of an ageing Queen […]

Created
Thu, 30/09/2010 - 10:10

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

Foods for gut health

Created
Thu, 30/09/2010 - 10:09

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

Created
Thu, 30/09/2010 - 10:08

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

needles in strawberries

Created
Thu, 30/09/2010 - 10:08

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

From 1 July 2018, the two major supermarket chains planned to ban single-use plastic bags at the checkouts. On the same date new legislation came into effect in Western Australia and Queensland banning the bags for all supermarkets, takeaway stores, pharmacies, goods sold online and markets. Bans were already in place in Tasmania, South Australia, […]