Who gets to make money off WordPress? Dust-up brewing in the world of WordPress as theme author Chris Pearson and WordPress head honcho Matt Mullenweg battle out the question: Is a theme a 'derivative work'? [more inside]
posted by ao4047 on Jul 16, 2010 - 147 comments

To work around the proprietary whims of digital audio software developers and laptop processor limitations during the mid- and late-1990s, a small band of technically-minded people, including the electronic musician Blitter, pulled together in the late 1990s to engineer the open-source OPEN DSP EZ-Kit platform, a 16-bit computer designed entirely with a focus on low cost and extensible control and DSP arithmetic capabilities. While this project and similar commercial offerings never seemed to gain the critical mass needed to sustain long-term interest, perhaps the new Arduino hardware project from MIT's Processing hardware group may gain a foothold with Processing and Pure Data audio software hobbyists and artists alike, allowing the creative community to extend, enhance and share inventive uses of new technology. Arduino's use has already begun in fascinating museum installations around the world, and has become a part of this year's SONAR and Ars Electronica festivals.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 12, 2006 - 10 comments

Think tanks attack Open Source "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute’s attack on Linux is just the latest in a series of attacks on Open Source by think tanks.....

I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft. "
posted by troutfishing on Jun 25, 2004 - 54 comments

Build your own Howard Dean website! The Dean campaign has released web site "kits" under the GNU GPL and based on the Drupal codebase, which allow web-based communities to quickly and easily build their own sites to support Dean's campaign. Last night, he held a conference call with over 3,500 "house parties" and individuals to spread the word. If Dean gets the nomination, he'll have technology to thank for it. (yeah, via slashdot.)
posted by jpoulos on Sep 30, 2003 - 28 comments

Take your hands off the GPL and back away from the keyboard... New twist in the SCO vs. IBM and the rest of the known computing universe: it appears SCO's primary argument in their case will in fact be that the GPL is invalid, trumped by US federal copyright law. (Quote redirect from via Inquirer from Wall Street Journal). And apparently, I'm not alone in beginning to think there's merit to the "Microsoft's behind all this!" conspiracy theories, since these "coincidences" are really starting to pile up...
posted by JollyWanker on Aug 16, 2003 - 29 comments

Peru goes GNU. And I quote: "You may have heard about this if you watch the free software news, but I just want to repeat it for anyone who hasn't. The Peruvian government has introduced legislation requiring government offices to use free software; Microsoft is unhappy; and a member of the Peruvian Congress has written a response which I highly recommend reading, in which he explains in strong terms why it's out of the question for the government of a democratic nation to use proprietary software."
posted by BGM on May 2, 2002 - 21 comments

Let's stop wasting US$ 78 billion a year. Is software development really this inefficient? Aside from the main theme, there is also an interesting statement from a CIO towards the end of the article. "Those folks [involved in the open-source movement] are very knowledgeable, very good at what they do, and they're producing really great code," [...]
posted by HeikoH on Oct 20, 2001 - 5 comments

Political software licences? The GPL prevents commercial use. Should it also try to enforce human rights?
posted by andrew cooke on May 12, 2001 - 6 comments