The intersection of universities and industry: tech transfer
According to Dr. Domonic Montisano of the UCSD’s technology transfer office, their goal is to get university research out to the public through the avenue of commercialization.
Could you scrap Microsoft Office applications?
IBM’s Lotus Symphony is a free-of-charge alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite, based on Sun’s open source OpenOffice software. It purports to remain compatible with Microsoft’s “.doc” format (and newer incarnations), while removing licensing costs (but, not of course, support costs, since people still need training, technical support still costs money, etc.). Now they’ve decided to walk the walk.
What does it mean to be in the public domain? Thoughts about the AP licensing scheme.
The AP has begin trying to license content through a payment scheme. Some of the content — as recently demonstrated by James Grimmelmann “purchasing” a Thomas Jefferson quote — is in the public domain. Does the AP have the right to sell/license this public-domain content? What does it mean to be in the public domain?
New law journal launches that focuses on open source
There’s a new law journal in town: “The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) is a collaborative legal publication aiming to increase knowledge and understanding among lawyers about Free and Open Source Software issues. Topics covered include copyright, licence implementation, licence interpretation, software patents, open standards, case law and statutory changes.”
WordPress and the GPL
Any WordPress theme is so entwined with the main WordPress code as to make it a “derivative work,” and thus subject to WordPress’ copyright and licensing (which is the GPL).
Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Against Zotero Dismissed
Image via Wikipedia Sean, a Zotero co-director, announced yesterday that the lawsuit filed by Thomson Reuters (makers of EndNote) was dismissed yesterday: …
"Everything is free" is not a business model
Image via CrunchBase Mike Masnick responds to the complaint of some people that providing “free” information, tools, and so on (open source, …
Copyright as Antidote to DRM
Image via Wikipedia Consider this idea: without copyright protection for digital media, we would have even more Digital Rights Management. Why? Because …
The Long Road to Open Access
An intriguing, far-ranging perspective on scholarly publishing that ties early 3rd century revolutions in scholarly publishing with modern trends towards open access …
Open Source, Open Access, and Open Transfer: Market Approaches to Research Bottlenecks
The Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property has accepted a paper I co-authored with Professor Robin Feldman of UC Hastings …
More Free and Open Source Law Resources
Concurring Opinions – More Free and Open Source Law Resources: Law.com has a good summary of the way projects seeking to make …
Should we fight the proprietary open source power?
Open Source | ZDNet.com – Should we fight the proprietary open source power?: Mr. Buzzword for February appears to be proprietary open …