IBM’s Lotus Symphony is a free-of-charge alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite, based on Sun’s open source OpenOffice software. It purports to remain compatible with Microsoft’s “.doc” format (and newer incarnations), while removing licensing costs (but, not of course, support costs, since people still need training, technical support still costs money, etc.). Now they’ve decided to walk the walk.
The AP has begin trying to license content through a payment scheme. Some of the content — as recently demonstrated by James Grimmelmann “purchasing” a Thomas Jefferson quote — is in the public domain. Does the AP have the right to sell/license this public-domain content? What does it mean to be in the public domain?
There’s a new law journal in town: “The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) is a collaborative legal publication aiming to increase knowledge and understanding among lawyers about Free and Open Source Software issues. Topics covered include copyright, licence implementation, licence interpretation, software patents, open standards, case law and statutory changes.”
Any WordPress theme is so entwined with the main WordPress code as to make it a “derivative work,” and thus subject to WordPress’ copyright and licensing (which is the GPL).
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Sean, a Zotero co-director, announced yesterday that the lawsuit filed by Thomson Reuters (makers of EndNote) was dismissed yesterday:
I’m delighted to announce that this morning the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit filed against Zotero by Thomson Reuters. The lawsuit had claimed that the Center for History and New Media “reverse-engineered” Thomson Reuters’s [...]
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Mike Masnick responds to the complaint of some people that providing “free” information, tools, and so on (open source, for example) is not a sustainable business model going forward because “everything is free” cannot work:
No one is suggesting any business model where “everything is free.” Everyone’s been focusing on ways to take some [...]
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Consider this idea: without copyright protection for digital media, we would have even more Digital Rights Management. Why? Because without it, recouping up-front investment without restricting distribution would be difficult or impossible. Since I often see a confluence of beliefs around those who hate DRM and those who hate copyright laws (I myself [...]
An intriguing, far-ranging perspective on scholarly publishing that ties early 3rd century revolutions in scholarly publishing with modern trends towards open access and digital archiving:
Instead of using the noble scroll, Origen decided to take advantage of the page structure of the humble codex. Dividing each of two facing pages into three columns each, he began [...]
The Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property has accepted a paper I co-authored with Professor Robin Feldman of UC Hastings School of Law. The name of the piece is Open Source, Open Access, and Open Transfer: Market Approaches to Research Bottlenecks. It should appear in full published form before the end of 2008.
The piece [...]
Concurring Opinions – More Free and Open Source Law Resources:
Law.com has a good summary of the way projects seeking to make opinions, statutes, and other legal materials free. The history of these efforts goes back to the early 90s, but the recent changes may the ones to threaten the big shots. According to the article [...]
Open Source | ZDNet.com – Should we fight the proprietary open source power?:
Mr. Buzzword for February appears to be proprietary open source.
This is an open source project which is owned or controlled by one company. Even though it may have a GPL license, you have no more power over it than a single voter in [...]
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