Recent Posts

Am I “It”?

Yesterday I was blog-tagged by Stephen Walli. Does the fact that he tagged for other people mean that I’m not “it”? Oh well…the topic is one that interests me, and I think he started the ball rolling in an interesting direction, so I figure I’ll add my thoughts.

For my money, the three ways that open source can benefit one’s business (presuming you are in the business of open source) is:

Microsoft’s patent FUD

Note: this is just my opinion. The OSI board may have a different opinion if it speaks as a body.

Microsoft is spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) with their latest anti-Linux patent campaign. If they had an actual, solid case of patent infringement, they would go to a judge, get an injunction against the distribution of Linux, and sell patent licenses for FreeBSD. The fact that they don’t, but are willing to sell patent licenses for an unnamed set of infringed patents, says that they have no legal case.

Riel’s Law of Innovation

Rik van Riel posted an interesting insight this weekend about this important difference between those working under the constraints of the proprietary software model and those of us who use and develop open source software:

they *have* to target their development to work on
marketable features, while we have more liberty to
focus on things that provide our users with value
— even if they are not glamorous enough to use
in marketing material.

NCIS gets Open Source right!

NCIS gets Open Source right! This is probably courtesy of Sean Murray, who is arguably geekier than the character he plays. In this episode, his character, McGee, says “I was…