Open Source Action (and more)

2011-05-20

Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

The programme is @AJStream, and it was exciting to see people I know--Biella Coleman--being interviewed, as well as to listen to an animated discussion on subjects near and dear.

2011-05-19

Inside Views: Brazil’s Copyright Reform: Schizophrenia? | Intellectual Property Watch

Immensely useful context regarding the shift in posture from Lula to his hand-picked successor, Dima Rousseff. When I saw her inaugural speech, I was cheered by her declaration, loud, clear, and welcomed by all there, that the future lay in, and that the government would promote ICT development. Given the history of the Lula regime's advocacy of open source, via Gilberto Gil's expansive vision and actions, I had the notion that this meant more not less endorsement of open source.

I was wrong. It seems really to have meant: Let's bring back neoliberalism and make our country a yet better market for big multinationals operating without real concern for local markets; and lets close the door to open knowledge, open technologies, open source.

Brazil’s Copyright Reform: Are We All Josef K.? | Intellectual Property Watch

How this affects OOo is not necessarily obvious. But a simple account is that if under Lula there was an open door, and even an invitation to open source and to the communities enabling and supporting them, under his successor and more to the point, under the new Minister of Culture, the approach has quite changed. Gilberto Gil, the former minister, understood the benefits--cultural, social, economic--of open source; if Juca Ferreira does, that is not evident at all, at least not in any positive way.

The result is--or could be, absent actual and effective protests by those most affected by the shift in posture, is that the resistance to open source is that much stronger, and the resurgence of neoliberalism shamelessly enabled.

2011-05-18

But what about the Novell effort on the office suite?

Attachmate's Brauckmann takes control of SUSE Linux • The Register

It's unclear: is Attachmate eliminating the effort or not? How crucial is it, as a revenue generator?

Microsoft welcomes CentOS Linux onto virtualized Windows • The Register

A fairly good analysis of the strategy MSFT is engaging in here with Linux. The interesting things is that CentOS is a community effort, not a corporate synthetic, a departure for MSFT, as Gavin points out. By supporting CentOS, MSFT secures its market, coming and going.

But how to persuade away from the MSFT lure? it' snot just about open source. It's about, now, the usual: business, to be sure, but also, and this is rather important, establishing a network able to work with a variety of vendor environments, and to consider, seriously, subsequent developments. For instance, what formats, what apps, what other opportunities will be wanted and developed?