Information Manager Journal

Watch those slippery uses of the term "open source"

David Berlind: "The SugarCRM Public License, the Socialtext Public License, the Scalix Public License, and the Zimbra Public License are not on the OSI's approved list." I didn't realize this when I interviewed SugarCRM earlier this year. I'll be on my toes from now on. It's a shame that these shenanigans are underway. Given the success of open source, it was probably inevitable. Kudos to David for raising the issue.

Keeping Linux a standard

While "vendor sports" journalism gets a renewed prominence, thanks to predatory open source moves by Oracle and Microsoft, I took my curiosity in a different direction and talked to Jim Zemlin, a guy charged by the industry with keeping Linux a standard. The result is my latest Opening Move podcast.

Audio of Sun Java GPL press conference

As someone who has been writing a book about open source, open standards and Java, I am relieved today to hear that Sun Microsystems decided to release a GPL implementation of Java. As Sun officials said, it isn't all things to all people, but nothing could be. Download JavaGPL_pressconf.mp3 to listen to an audio recording I made at the press conference following today's announcement in Santa Clara. (Sun posted audio and video of the announcement itself, but none from this press conference.) The main speaker is Rich Green, executive vice president of software at Sun. Also answering many questions is Chris Nadan, deputy general counsel for Sun. I got to ask a few  questions, touching on such issues as software indemnification by Sun, which still requires licensing the commercial version of Java instead of the newly-GPL'd OpenJDK.

The recording sounds pretty good, considering I just used the built-in microphone in my Dell Axim x51v Pocket PC. The secret was processing it through Gigavox's Levelator, a marvelous piece of audio processing software.

Krugle tweaks source code search

Ken Krugler is tweaking the way developers can search through source code on the Web. If you thought Google had a lock on this market, check out my latest Opening Move for my talk with Ken, recorded last month at Apachecon.

MIcrosoft to let loose the patent dogs?

Bruce Perens argues convincingly that today's Microsoft/Novell agreement (not a cross-licensing agreement, but something new to deal with open source) means Microsoft will now have political cover to launch patent infringement suits against numerous other open source communities. I think he's right. This is something totally different than the Open Specification Promise. It looks and smells more like Oracle's predatory Red Hat challenge last week. And maybe even the future of ODF itself is at stake, as long as it's not Novell's ODF. Sheesh.

Microsoft to *really* support ODF

This is more like it. "Microsoft and Novell have been focusing on ways to improve interoperability between office productivity applications. The two companies will now work together on ways for OpenOffice and Microsoft Office users to best share documents and both will take steps to make translators available to improve interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument Formats."

Presumably Office 2007 will soon allow users to save documents as ODF. The devil's in the details, I'm sure.