Category Archives: good code

Barbara van Schewick has a fantastic new paper about the economics of network neutrality. As she nicely demonstrates, there is a severe threat of discrimination without network neutrality regulation, and that discrimination will reduce application-level innovation. van Schewick’s work is not funded by any of the special interests involved in this issue — nor is it sponsored by the “independent” think tanks that are funded by the special interests involved in this issue.

Grab the pdf here. Continue reading →

songs from the commons
on MondoGlobo.net

Lisa Rein, who helped us frame and get Creative Commons going, has launched series on “Songs from the Commons” — this week on my favorite topic, copyright term. Continue reading →

Try^d’s first album is now up: title – Public Domain. Available through Opsound and on their site. Continue reading →

The name confused me at first, but only because of blind US-centrism. “OpenCongress” is a site for researchers studying “how methodologies derived from Free/Libre and Open Source Software [FLOSS] production can be deployed by those working in the area of art, visual culture and cultural production in general.” Continue reading →

I’m about half-way through this new OECD report about scientific publishing. I don’t believe it is out on the OECD site, so consider this an advance copy. Continue reading →

Guest blogger Cass Sunstein was on NPR’s Fresh Air (the one show I’d cheat to get on) about his new book, Radicals in Robes. He didn’t want me to mention it, but I don’t listen (to him; I listen to NPR).

UPDATE: Apparently, while Senator Hatch has had a chance to read Cass’s book, Judge Robert’s has not. Continue reading →

From the Free Software Foundation, an opportunity to learn more about the GPL:

“The GPL is employed by tens of thousands of software projects aroundthe world, of which the Free Software Foundation’s GNU system is a tiny fraction. The GNU system, when combined with Linus Torvalds’Linux—which has evolved into a flexible, highly-portable,industry-leading operating system kernel—along with Samba, MySQL, and other GPL’d programs, offers superior reliability and adaptability to Microsoft’s operating systems, at nominal cost. GPL’d software runs on or is embedded in devices ranging from cellphones, PDAs and home networking appliances to mainframes and supercomputing clusters. Independent software developers around the world, as well as every large corporate IT buyer and seller, and a surprisingly large proportion of individual users, interact with the GPL.”

– Richard Stallman, FSF President; and Eben Moglen, FSF General Counsel

Whether your business or its clients deal first-hand with free
software or not, it has become a part of the environment that is
impossible to ignore.

The nonprofit Free Software Foundation, in association with Columbia
Law School, is offering a one-day seminar on the GPL and Legal Aspects
of Free Software Development at Columbia Law School in New York City,
NY on Wednesday, September 28, 2005.

As the GPL continues to consolidate its position as the copyleft
license of choice, it becomes ever more important that lawyers,
executives, and engineers become knowledgeable of the license. The
Free Software Foundation will shortly be releasing a draft of GPLv3,
and is making available this legal seminar to help educate on the key
issues of software development and license compliance.

The seminar will be led by Daniel Ravicher, Senior Counsel to the FSF
and Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation; Eben Moglen,
General Counsel to the FSF and Executive Director of the Software
Freedom Law Center; and David Turner, the FSF’s lead GPL Compliance
Engineer.

The cost per person is $500 if you register before September 1, or
$600 if you register on or after September 1. Breakfast and lunch will
be provided. Further information about the course schedule, and
registration instructions, can be found here.

For attorneys, the seminar will almost certainly count for CLE credits
in the state of New York, and possibly other states as well. We are
awaiting final approval, and will announce the number of approved
credits when we get it.

Continue reading →

Andy Kessler’s got a great piece on the eco-politics of muni wifi. Continue reading →

There’s a fascinating and important battle going on in Lafayette, LA. Citizens are pushing a referendum to permit the Lafayette Utility System to sell bonds to fund a project to “expand its existing fiber-optic network in Lafayette to everyone in the city.” The move is being fought by the telcos — who would rather bring much more expensive DSL and cable to everyone in the city. John St. Julien and Mike Stagg have been blogging the fight. There’s a great website explaining it. And today they’ve announced the winners in the “Fiber Film Festival,” a film contest run to explain the benefits of fiber.
The theorists, of course, who live life in theory-land, object. In theory-land, all this stuff should be provided by the market. In theory-land, the government should stay away. And I’m quite sure, in theory-land, there’s lots of cheap, fast broadband available to everyone. Yet most of us don’t live in theory-land. And some of those unlucky real world people living in Lafayette have a good shot at getting something that the rest of us real world sorts only dream about — cheap, fast broadband access.
Good luck with the referendum, Lafayette. Your example might well bring the rest of us down from the clouds of theory-land. Continue reading →

JD Lasica’s fantastic book, Darknet, has now been published. It is a wonderful collection of stories and analysis around new media issues. He says some nice things about me in the book (some at least) so I won’t go on about it. But his publisher has allowed him to prime the reading with some mini-chapters. Continue reading →