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.

Patron the Freedom Task Force of the FSFE, yesterday a new review, the International Free and Open Source Law Review, or IFOSS L. Rev, has been announced and published.

It is a "peer reviewed" publication, whose aim is to offer a sound and detached vision of the legal and social phenomenon of Free Software. It hosts voices from people with legal, economical and on-the-field background. The review is governed in a non partisan way by an editorial committee of fifteen members that partly rotate at each issue. I have been in the panel for the first issue, and possibly will serve as a member for the second one.

Any contribution is welcome and will be passed through an impartial evaluation by the international standard and practices.

Andy Updegrove has published his own take on the Rambus case, which he was following more closing from an US perspective. Andy is a leading authority when it comes to the law in the standards world, and beyond. We have had the opportunity to discuss this case earlier on, and I find his insight very valuable.

A nicely written, clear and solid article on software development in the Free (Open Source) Software distributed model. Which is one of the possible development models (roughly, the Bazaar).

Definitely worth a mention. Have a look at the article How Open Source Software Can Save the ICT Industry One Trillion Dollars per Year., by Micael Tiemann (Creative Commons by 2.5, I believe, but check with the author). Some further notes at http://www.opensource.org/node/384 .

Fossology is a Free Software application initially developed internally by HP to inspect and audit Free (Open Source) Software and then made a separate project and released under the GNU GPL license. Yesterday it turned 1.0, claiming to be zillion times as fast as the previous version. More from the release of the Fossology people.

In the FTF, we receive all sort of complaints about violations of the GNU GPL and various other licenses. It takes quite a long to the people responding to those inquiries to get everything in good place to properly take actions, whatever this be. The same happens at GPL Violations. In a common effort to simplify the reporting of violations, the FTF and GPL Violations have published a guide that should be the first point of reference for all those who spot problems and try to help.

Ever wondered how GPL violations and the other guys in pursue of violations of the Free Software licenses find out who is an infringer?

A very detailed document made by Armijn Hemel of Loohuis Consulting, "The GPL compliance engineering guide", provides an insight and a lot of information. But this is serious stuff, kids, don't try at home unless you are very well trained, of age, and anyway do it at your own risk!