writing to ms. boland
Ed Black of the Open Source and Industry Alliance has written Ms. Lois Boland a very nice and good letter about the recent statements about "open source."
Meanwhile, there's much reporting that Microsoft is behind the lobbying to kill the WIPO meeting. I don't know anything about that (for some reason, I've been removed from Mr. Gates' lobbying-strategy list). But it is useful to contrast the sophisticated, moderate, and well-informed work of Microsoft's GC, Brad Smith, about "open source" software, recently published in a Joint AEI/Brookings book.
In addition to Ed Black's letter, and perhaps letters from you, she might find Brad Smith's essay useful.
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Comments (4)
Excellent letter from Ed Black.....and the OSAIA....is there some sort of membership application, or somehow become involved ? I would be very interested, as I'm a consultant out in the trenches who advocates OSS.
After reading Mr. Black's letter, I had two words in my head: "Rock Solid" ... a true testament to the talent that exists in our community!
Smith's piece is an interesting read. He is correct that
the GPL is more restrictive than other free licenses, but
he totally neglected to mention the standard term for the
GPL's strategy -- copyleft.
His footnote about the effect on innovation of reducing
the strength of copyright is pretty strange, since it
tries to reduce innovation to the operation of one
particular market and then claim that increasing rather
than reducing regulation in that market will make it
more efficient.
I wonder if IBM's lobby machine is sending any letters to Ms. Boland. My guess is they are siding w/ M$ on this one.