Hangout for experimental confirmation and demonstration of software, computing, and networking. The exercises don't always work out. The professor is a bumbler and the laboratory assistant is a skanky dufus.

Recent Items
 
Grounding Your Work's Usability
 
Like It Or Not, We're In This Together -- The Software Improvement Cycle
 
Demos - Catalogue - The Pro-Am Revolution
 
Self-Configuring Networks
 
Open Source Enterprise
 
Failure Is Your Friend
 
Encouraging Open-Source Development
 
Streamlining Software Upgrade
 
Trusting Wireless Routing
 
CNR Area Pisa Italiano

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Self-Publishing Boxed Sets

Slashdot | Supporting Community Projects.  This nice Slashdot item has me thinking about how nfoWare will be published, especially since it is a candidate for book (er, documentation) plus CD-ROM publishing, and all of the code will be open-source.

The LuLu home page has more information, as does the list of available items.  Many books have a substantial discount if obtained in electronic instead of paper form.  The entire presentation is fascinating and, in particular, completely straightforward and understandable.  This is an intriguing operation.

posted by orcmid at 11/8/2004 10:36:05 PM, rating data by NewsGator Online

How SCO Changed Our Awareness

eWeek: Does SCO Matter?.  This 2004-11-03 article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols summarizes how badly SCO is doing in its choices to pursue claims of Unix IP and contract violations.

The part that I find interesting is that the lawsuits have made corporate purchasers of software keenly aware of lurking IP and provenance issues in the software that it acquires (or licenses).  There are links to two companies that wouldn't exist had this not happened: OSRM and Black Duck Software.

OSRM is in the seminar and insurance business, but there is a section of their offerings on best practices that needs further investigation.

Black Duck Software is a bit more straightforward, providing compliance management support, and the confirmation of IP and related issues seems to be in their ballpark.  Although focus appears to be on companies that develop their own software using third-party and open-source components, it would seem that there is something that open-source developers could do to make this easier.  I am interested in trustworthiness arrangements for open-source, and one important aspect of trustworthiness is that something be legally safe to use, not merely secure.

I'll be following up on these.

posted by orcmid at 11/8/2004 10:27:38 PM, rating data by NewsGator Online