Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing-- Licensing is a major part of what open source and free software are all about, and it's one of the most complicated areas of law. This concise guide focuses on annotated licenses, offering an in-depth explanation of your licensing options, how they compare and interoperate, and how license choices affect project possibilities. If you're an open source/free software developer, this book is an absolute necessity, bridging the gap between the open source vision and the practical implications of its legal underpinnings. Sample Chapter 2, The MIT, BSD, Apache, and Academic Free Licenses, is available free online.
The O'Reilly Open Source Convention is the community gathering for open source advocates, strategists, programmers, developers, and technical staff. Learn the latest in open source software: Apache, Perl 6, PHP, XML, MySQL, Python, Ruby, Linux, Java, and more. This year's convention will take place July 26-30 in Portland, OR.
10.3 Reasons Why You Need to Buy Two eMacs. Today MyMac.com -- Gazing ahead, it’s all one-piece new iMacs, which are mostly unknown and untouched. Looking over your shoulder, a mountain of eMacs awaits your next purchase. How about a two-for-one deal? Let’s do the math. Basic eMacs cost $800 each. Add AppleCare service plans and shipping or tax and the price is a cool thousand bucks per computer. Throw in extra memory and your grand total for two shiny new eMacs cruises into the $2200 range. That’s a lot of money, but you’re getting a lot of computer(s). What’s up, Nemo, you ask. Is that Arizona sun finally frying your bald head into incoherence? Perhaps, but let’s work through our “10.3 reasons” list.
Journalism
Matters-- In this audio transcript from a recent
segment on KQED's "Forum," Michael Krasny talks to Dan Gillmor and
Orville Schell about the current state of broadcast journalism given
CBS's recent admission of mistakes. Dan addresses how important the
Internet has become with respect to news, the impact of blogs on
mainstream media, and other topics covered in his recently released We the Media:
Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.
Splitting Books Open-- While technical publishers strive to adapt to new media and formats, online efforts at self-education by computer users are becoming a form of true grassroots documentation. O'Reilly editor Andy Oram discusses the strengths and weaknesses of traditional books and community-based documentation, and suggests how they may converge.
Wireless Security and the Open1X Project-- Open1X is an open source project focusing on network
security. The wireless adoption of this technology is referred to as
802.1X. Matthew Gast went to the University of Utah to talk about it
with Chris Hessing and Terry Simmons, who are intent on bringing
standards-based wireless security to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows
clients. Matthew is the author of 802.11 Wireless
Networks: The Definitive Guide.
OpenOffice.org XML Essentials--Online--OpenOffice.org XML Essentials introduces you to the XML that serves as the native internal format of OpenOffice.org, an open source, cross-platform office suite. The book is available online in its entirety under the GNU Free Documentation License. It's a work in progress and comments are welcome. Find the book through O'Reilly's Open Books Project.
Open Source Content Management with Plone-- When you're tired of being asked to make tiny changes to your web sites--changes that users could easily make themselves--it's time to consider a content management system (CMS). If you're a Python or Zope fan, Brad Bollenbach suggests that you try Plone, a powerful and easy-to-use CMS. You'll find O'Reilly's books and articles on Python at python.oreilly.com.
The GNU Free Documentation Licenses-- The principles that apply to open source licenses also apply to licenses for documentation and works other than software. In this article, Andrew St. Laurent looks at the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), reviewing it section by section and raising some minor problems and ambiguities in definitions. Andrew is the author of Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing.
Open Source Security: Still a Myth-- Open source may have many benefits over closed systems, but don't count security among them--yet. This article by John Viega looks at why open source software may currently be less secure than its commercial counterparts. John is a coauthor of Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++.
Ernest Miller on What's Wrong with the Induce Act-- U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch has sponsored a bill before Congress called the Induce Act, which would leave people who haven't directly infringed copyright, but who provide tools or
support for people who do infringe copyright, to be open to lawsuits
for the infringement. Ernest Miller talks to Richard Koman about what's
wrong with the Induce Act and its potentially debilitating impact on
technological innovation, in this article on the Policy DevCenter.
Book Review: Just a Geek-- In this Applelust book review, Dr. Neale Monks
discusses Wil Wheaton's three distinct writing styles: the informal and
intimate autobiographical mode that carries through most of his book;
his early, often bullish, and entertaining weblogs, which he
deconstructs in Just a Geek; and the wistful, subtly detailed
recollections of his youth, essays that lead the reviewer to suggest,
"Wheaton could easily become the Garrison Keillor of Generation X."
Check out the poet of geeks: Just a Geek.
Ruby on Rails Project-- Rails is a new open source web-application framework that provides everything needed to build real-world applications, using fewer lines of code than other development environments. It's a full-stack framework, so all layers are built to work seamlessly together and you can use a single language from top to bottom. Everything from templates to control flow to business logic is written in Ruby. For more on Ruby, see the upcoming book by the Pragmatic Programmers, contributors to the Rails Identity Project, Programming Ruby, 2nd Edition.
