- Open Source breakthrough. Licensing deals binding to an extreme. You can be sued for copyright infringement even if the software is free.
- iPhone 3G gripes unheeded by Apple.
- USB 3.0 coming soon at 4.8 Gbps!!
- Cisco and Oracle spending a fortune on lobbyists.
- Text-messaging coming to regular phones.
- AT&T will spy on you and so will the UK government.
- News: blank DVD’s are cheap.
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Guess I’m confused. If a code is Open Source, then isn’t it free to use and modify? How can it be copyrighted then?
John,
In case you don’t hear it enough from your fans, Tech5 is one of my favorite podcasts. It’s the first thing I listen to.
With that said, I still don’t see the business model for utter nonsense like Twitter. Shouldn’t companies be in business to make money?
#1 Open Source is just another license.
The creator(s) still own the copyright, but choose to license it out for various uses at no fee. It is still entirely possible to break that license, and if you do so, you forfeit any rights to the source that the license gives you.
Since you no loger have those rights to the source, you’re now infringing on the underlying copyright.
People confuse open source with public domain. Under the Berne convention all original works are copyrighted the instant they are created, regardless of how the author chooses to distribute them. Being free may limit the amount of damages that can be collected, but certainly doesn’t negate the copyright.
Back in the 1980s (I think) France experimented with replacing printed phone books, with an online directory terminal. Just a small screen and keyboard. The added bonus was that people could use it to type messages to each other. But I believe their government got spooked by this, and shut it down (maybe they couldn’t spy on this system). So it’s not exactly a new idea for land lines to have texting. But what people don’t realize is that it’s far easier for the feds to monitor typed messages, than spoken ones. So are the telcos really thinking of helping their customers to communicate, or our paranoid government to spy?