Elliotte Rusty Harold roundly Read more
Don’t get me wrong: I think that Stallman has contributed massively to the open-source movement. But Tim O’Reilly is right: he simply doesn’t get the problem that closed web services present. I think talking about open access to the data is missing the point too. Often I’ve no wish to access the raw data, and couldn’t understand if I did access it.
Do you bank online? How are you asked for your secret code? Three randomly placed digits of it, hmm? The reason for the randomness is that any malicious keylogging software can’t see your screen, just your keyboard: so even if it logged every time you banked online, the fraudster it reported back to could never guess the order of the numbers in your secret code and hence the code would be useless.
Lurking in a dry, legalistic and apparently quite specific page on the Drupal website, is the commendable result of a lot of hard work, both from the the Software Freedom Law Center and from the Drupal community.
Drupal.org have produced a Licensing FAQ to explain some of the subtler aspects of licensing under the GPL.
Inspired by the title of the relevant Slashdot article, to the tune of My Bonny:
Your mashup is probably legal.
Your mashup is probably sound.
Your mashup is probably legal,
So pass all that data around!Stuff here
Stuff there
And something mashed up in between (be-tween!)
Stuff here
Stuff there
And something mashed up in betweenYour mashup is probably legal;
You could monetize it as well!
But though I contend it's all legal,
Remember I-A-N-A-L![Repeat chorus]
Almost certainly no progress on those copious and comprehensive notes about BarCamp Oxford this side of Easter.
Beth Kanter advocates Creative Commons in the latest post on her blog about not-for-profit organizations and social media. She discusses how she's managed to introduce often quite recalcitrant nonprofit sub-sectors to the concept.
I can't comment on not-for-profits in general.
If you want any conveyancing done, I can recommend Loosemores Solicitors. In fact, I just did.
There was a post a month and a bit ago on Signal to Noise, recommending a lawyer from personal experience, and it prompted me at the time to make a mental note to do the same. My wife and I have recently managed to buy our first house, and the solicitors were probably the best part of the experience, aside from actually moving in and falling in love with the place.