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We’ve spent a lot of time here talking about companies who don’t get it. Here’s a few who do. This week, InfoWorld gave out “people who get it” awards: the Bossies.
Selected by InfoWorld Test Center editors and reviewers, these first annual Bossies celebrate the best open source software available for the enterprise. From CRM and ERP to OSes and middleware to networking, storage, and security software, our 36 winners prove that if your business is willing and your IT staff is ready, there’s an open source solution that’s able.
So, perhaps drunk with relief, joy (and maybe even power) at the relative success of Bird Song…our anti-DRM experiment in participatory propaganda (24,000 youtube views as of this AM), we decided to taunt our favorite nemesis blogger, IT Conservative with a mean spirited email and a link to our cartoon.
And he (I think it’s a he…) hit back very hard:
IT Conservative: It’s a Bird, No it’s DRM… or Something?
The criticisms leveled are fair enough, and echoed in many of the comments…it’s still a little too abstract for some. Hopefully, we can improve on that in the future, although abstraction is nothing to fear, especially when you’re remixing metaphors the way we are.
Anyway, check out what IT Conservative has to say. Insightful, yet very mean.
IT Conservative: It’s a Bird, No it’s DRM… or Something?
Truth Happens wasn’t the only blog to notice that it was weird that that DOJ was weighing in on the Net Neutrality debate.
It’s explained, somewhat, here.
IP Democracy - Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at September 6, 2007 3:01 PM
What’s curious about the filing is that, first, it’s an ex parte, or late, submission in the FCC’s Inquiry on Broadband Practices, most commonly known as the FCC’s net neutrality proceeding. DOJ could have filed comments along with the rest of the world by July 16, the deadline for all submissions, but it didn’t. Why DOJ waited until now is an interesting, probably unanswerable question.
Secondly, the Justice Department issued a press release to announce the ex parte filing, which just seems…a little weird, given the nature of the filing. It feels almost like a PR move, or a public political positioning, and is not in keeping with the kind of dry, legalistic press releases DOJ usually issues (“Fujicolor Processing Pleads Guilty to Environmental Crime,” “Missouri Federal Court Permanently Bars Woman From Tax Return Preparation,” “Landmark Settlement Aims to Clean Up Raw Sewage Discharges in Allegheny County”).
So, the DOJ is arguably playing politics, not unsurprising in Washington, but not the usual behavior of the normally staid Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. The document, too, doesn’t read like the usual antitrust analysis. There is little dispassionate weighing of the arguments or rigorous analysis of the facts (a lot of facts are presented regarding how the Internet is flourishing without net neutrality but no real weighing of the arguments and data).
Inside the Mind of the Man Who Tried to Milk Linux
WN: You knew you’d be vilified?
McBride: In this particular case we’re talking about, I joined the company, and we had problems with our intellectual property…. I said we should protect our rights…. The former CEO said, if you do that, you will be vilified by the Linux community. The Linux community will attack you. You will be hated. Don’t go down that path.
Well that’s not a reason to not step up and defend your property. That’s not a reason to stand back and say, “I’m not going to fight.” We got attacked, vilified and we got branded as pariahs. When you pay 149 million dollars for a property, do you have the right to defend it or not? I think it’s a matter of principle. I think anybody in their right mind who was in my position would have done the same thing if they had half a backbone.
The whole thing is well worth reading. He has a lot to say.
Last week journalists converged on Sun Microsystems’ Silicon Valley campus for its first Asia-Pacific summit. Jonathan Schwartz talked about the company’s roadmap and the role of open source:
During the Q&A session at the summit, I asked if that makes open source simply a marketing and branding exercise, rather than a key part of Sun’s technology roadmap–to which Schwartz retorted: “What’s the difference?”
…
The problem, however, arises when some companies choose to focus their attention on the marketing component and, in the case of open source, neglect to contribute their share of technology development back to the community.
By the end of that article, I was reminded of a post from Matt Asay yesterday about a much smaller company, Zipidy, which makes an open source mobile solution for finding parking. Zipidy is a big fan of using open source to build their product. They use Leap JADE (an open source Java framework), JBoss, and MySQL. The CEO, Cosimo Sperais, said of the choice:
The major principle that drives our use of open source is speed. Things in open source happen faster and sooner than in proprietary software.
…
If you are doing cutting-edge technology, you will often find that no products - open source or proprietary - meet your needs 100%. But the difference is that with open source you can extend the product to fit your needs. In a proprietary world, you’re stuck with the vendor’s product, as well as its priorities and roadmap.
But Zipidy itself is not open source. To that, Sperais answers, “We’d like to gain market share before we further consider open sourcing our own technology.”
The open source community pays attention when you take without giving back. As Bob Walters, CEO of Untangle, put it in interview earlier this summer, if you’re going to talk the open source talk, you’ve also got to walk the open source walk.
This “Rubin” quoted is Rick Rubin.
Music exec says business model is ‘done’ | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
“Columbia is stuck in the dark ages,” Rubin told the Times. “I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today’s world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it’s going to be a declining business. This model is done.”
I sort of missed this when I was on vacation, but it’s still pretty funny a week and a half later.
Ouch.
Slashdot | Copyright Advocacy Group Violates Copyright
“Commercial scholarly publishers are beginning to get afraid of the open access movement. They’ve hired a high-priced consultant to help them sway public opinion in favor of copyright restrictions on taxpayer-funded research. Funny thing is, their own website contains several copyright violations. It seems they pulled their images directly from the Getty Images website — watermarks and all — without paying for their use.”
Can anyone tell me why the US Justice Department has anything to say about this? Since when does the US Justice Department weigh in on public policy discussions?
The article doesn’t mention the context in which these “comments” were offered, other than to mention that the Federal Communications Commission is studying the issue.
Feds OK fee for priority Web traffic - Yahoo! News
The Justice Department said imposing a Net Neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the “entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers,” the agency said in its filing.
Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.
The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.
“Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention,” the agency said in its filing.
UPDATE:
It appears that DOJ has put itself in the Net Neutrality debate because it is concerned about anti-trust issues.
Now, I really don’t understand.
This is from Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antitrust authorities at the Justice Department on Thursday warned regulators against imposing “network neutrality” regulations that would bar broadband Internet service companies from charging extra to some content providers.
In comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission, the department said some network neutrality proposals “could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans.”
“Regulators should be careful not to impose regulations that could limit consumer choice and investment in broadband facilities,” the department’s antitrust chief, Thomas Barnett, said in a statement.
Despite strong global support , Microsoft’s OOXML document format has failed to persuade the ISO that it is based on an open standard, because, well, it’s not.
They still have time to turn it around, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. Truth Happens.
Details:
ConsortiumInfo.org - Microsoft Fails to Gain Approval for OOXML
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Real Stream | Ogg Theora
Norwegian standards body implodes over OOXML controversy
Red Hat Sponsors Intellectual Property Symposium
Open Document Format made national standard in Sweden
Red Hat tops list of corporate Linux code contributors
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