In a case originating from Northern California (Jacobsen v. Katzer), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the Artistic License, a type of open source license, contains enforceable terms. This is a potentially significant case for the open source community as it is one of the first clear holdings by a court that supports the use and enforceability of open source licensing.
Mark Shuttleworth wants to think so, he has reportedly set a goal: “our goal, very simply, is to make sure the Free software ecosystem can deliver a Mac OS-like experience, or an experience that will compete with the Mac OS. . . So Canonical will in fact launch an effort to try and spearhead that. And over a period of 2 years, really move the dial forward on the desktop experience.”
Here’s an interesting blog post on the method that Apache uses to govern its development process.
A short article on considerations in merger and acquisition situations can be found here.
A reminder that computer code used in open source projects can have several intellectual property rights associated with it: copyright (licensed under open source licenses), trade secrets (exposed by the source code and thus use not restricted), patents (usually licensed under open source licenses, if even relevant) and, finally, trademark — actually a reasonably powerful method of keeping control of open source projects. See this article at CNET News.com.
An article discussing the use of open source software for the Apple Macintosh: Open source: Are Macs the red-headed stepchild? – Network World
Apparently even lawyers use open source software! See this article on the use of open source software by Italian lawyers.
An interesting article on how Microsoft tactics push India toward Linux.
According to news reports, the SFLC has filed a couple more GPL-violation suits relating to open source firmware used in many embedded Linux devices.
Here is an interesting survey on which Linux distributions remain popular: Which Linux Distributions Are Dying?
