Carlo Piana :: Law is Freedom ::

The Free Software Foundation Europe is the facilitator of a legal network comprising hundreds of experts from private practice, corporations, universities around the world. One of the Special interest groups has spent almost one year producing a document explaining how differently licensed software programs and libraries can and cannot mixed to make or not to make a derivative of each other.

The result is what we call "the linking document". It might not be perfect, but it's a valid platform for discussion around a topic that provide headache to many players in the field. To find a comparable discussion, albeit controversial and limited to the GNU licenses,  one should redress to the FSF's FAQ.

Some clarity at last.

Ifosslr Volume 2, issue 1, is out with an article of mine on a recent case on which the Italian Constitutional Court has ruled in favour of giving preference to Free Software in Public Administration. Here is the Abstract

Today we celebrate the Document Freedom Day 2010. Documents strive to be free.

Hugo Roy asked my thoughts about the recent case of Google's employees being convicted in Italy for a video that has been online a few months on Google Video (now YouTube).

I have already said so by and large, microblogged extensively on that. My opinion is that the decision is a shame for my Country.

With today's press release, FSFE cheers the advent of the browser choice ballot screen, a facility that would notify users that Freedom is within reach. Windows (TM) users will be presented with a graphic interface within MS Internet Explorer whereby they can choose to install an additional web browser, including the most successful and innovative Free Software one, Mozilla Firefox. 

URL shorteners are "cloud" services that do basically one thing: they take a long URL (such a web address) and transform it into a short one. They became popular with the explosion of microblogging facilities like Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook et al.

Today "@AndyC", who is a UK person that posts a lot on Identi.ca, ranted about URL shorteners, and about a new one called ow.ly. He wondered what in heaven could be their business model, and I discovered some not-so-good things. That ignited me to write a little bit about them, hoping to receive more feedback and provide more reasoning later.

The programme of the SFScon 2009 has been published.

South Tyrol Free Software Conference 2009

The SFScon of the 13th November 2009 -  the South Tyrol Free Software Conference - is an International Conference on Free Software, which is held annually in South Tyrol. This years topic of the SFScon is: "Free Software: For Innovative Business!".