The second issue of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review has just been released.
Issue two is available without charge online at www.ifosslr.org and in PDF format at www.ifosslr.org/public/ifosslr-v1i2.pdf. There is also a call for papers for future issues so I invite all my P.T. readers to submit your articles.
Archive for: open standards
It is out again
January 28th, 2010, Tomasz RychlickiE-promulgation of Polish law
January 5th, 2010, Tomasz RychlickiThe Act of 10 September 2009 on amending the Law on the promulgation of normative acts and some other legal acts, Journal of Laws (Dziennik Ustaw) of 2009, No 190 item 1473, came into force on 1 January 2010. According to the amendments, the Journal of Laws and the Polish Monitor or normative acts and other legal acts contained in them, including judgments, are made available freely for inspection and to download in the form of an electronic document from the website of the Government Legislative Center.
The minister responsible for informatization will also determine, by a regulation, the technical requirements to be met by electronic documents addressed for the announcement, containing normative acts and other acts, including judgments, taking into account the need to preserve the unity of supplied electronic documents and their possible transformation for the issue of the official journal.
What about penguin’s rights
September 12th, 2009, Tomasz RychlickiI meant Tux of course. The answer is in the net.
Feel free to do whatever you see fit with the images, you are encouraged to integrate them into other designs that fit your need. Comments suggestions are also welcome, so please tell me what you think of these. I suggest that you look at some of the other images available with integrated text.
(…)
Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks.
tr@gnu:~$ fortune | cowsay -f tux
______________________________________
/ You will remember something that you \
\ should not have forgotten. /
--------------------------------------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/
Global patent system?
September 4th, 2009, Tomasz RychlickiIn my humble opinion, the idea of Microsoft’s lawyers is a mistake, or at least and very gently saying, slight mental aberration. My statement is as much insolent as it is to impose a vision of the law by a single corporation. But I have found more funny story. There is an article entitled “Spór o patenty, czyli Microsoft vs open-source“, in English “Dispute on patents or Microsoft vs open-source”. The author of this short piece has insightful findings regarding R. Stallman’s connections with GNU and FSF.
The GNU project founder Richard Stallman warns (…). In an article published on the Free Software Foundation website (nota bene, whose founder is also Stallman).
It is out now!
July 14th, 2009, Tomasz RychlickiMy dear readers. All P.T. readers. I would like to draw your attention to the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review. It is an absolutely free publication on legal aspects of free and open source software. The first issue is available for download (both HTML or PDF versions) directly from its website. There, you’ll find couple of interesting articles. In particular, I recommend Shane Coughlan’s and Andrew Martin Katz’s article titled “Introducing the Risk Grid“. I will also immodestly mention that from the very beginning I was involved in the creation of the IFOSS L. Rev. and I am currently a member of the editorial board. Of course, I invite everyone to write for his periodical. Please do not hesitate to submit your papers.
There is another “Polish theme” in the IFOSS L. Rev. Great logotype and covers for the journal were created pro bono by my good friend Tomasz Politański.
FLOSS in Quebec
August 28th, 2008, Tomasz RychlickiFACIL, a non-profit association, which promotes the collective appropriation of Free Software, contests the Quebec government purchasing methods for software used within public administrations. FACIL has filed a motion before the Quebec Superior Court in order to bring an end to these methods which the association believes not to be in the best interest of the Quebec government, but more importantly, not in accordance with the regulation for supply contracts, construction contracts and service contracts of government departments and public bodies
More details at www.facil.qc.ca website and in the article available at www.cbc.ca website.
I like this Penguin
August 12th, 2008, Tomasz RychlickiI found Sam Varghese’s article at itwire.com website. He wonders why lawyers do not like Linux. Well… I know his question is asked for the purpose of this article. I know why some lawyer really likes Linux. It wasn’t easy acquaintance if one has started it with Bash and Polish legal studies force you to memorize a lot of materials instead of teching legal research techniques and empirical approach to problems. I hope it will change soon. Besides, I’ve got great mentors and friends such as Marcin Sochacki and Rafał Połoński. Other lawyers like Linux because it’s “trendy” and you can always find clients for your law firm and promote yourself. Good luck leeches! Thanks God I know there are others who do it because hacking is fun and even a lawyer can be helpful sometimes.
Injunction?
August 11th, 2008, Tomasz RychlickiThe state of Massachusetts has asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order preventing three MIT students from giving a presentation on Sunday about hacking smartcards used in the Boston subway system.
You will read about the whole issue in article available at cnet.com website. the presentation is available at www-tech.mit.edu website, PDF file. As you may already know I fully support such actions. You may ask why? Because, for instance, I’d like to know as a potential consumer, that Apple had placed a hidden feature/switch in iPhone software that allows them to “secretly” delete installed applications. Read about that in the article available at itwire.com website.
Will the iPhone Dev Team now seek to delete this “kill switch” from future pwned versions of iPhone firmware, thus giving even more people a reason to pwn their iPhones?
Oh yes. Fu^H^HHack them all!
Skype gives up
May 9th, 2008, Tomasz RychlickiSkype has withdrawn the appeal against a judgment in the case LG München I, Az. 7 O 5245/07 – Welte/Skype, unpublished. Harald Welte has written more details.
The various arguments by Skype supporting their claim that the GPL is violating German anti-trust legislation as well as further claims aiming at the GPL being invalid or incompatible with German legislation were not further analyzed by the court.
The argument that GPL violates anti-trust law was already discussed before the US courts in the case Wallace v. IBM, 467 F.3d 1104 (7th Cir. 2006). Chief Judge Frank Hoover Easterbrook wrote explicitly:
The GPL and open-source software have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws.
According to series writer Matt Fraction, the battle between Tony Stark and new bad guy Ezekiel Stane is really just an allegory for the battle Bill Gates wages against smaller software providers every single day of his life:
“Zeke is a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist… He has absolutely no loyalty to any sort of law, creed, or credo. He doesn’t want to beat Tony Stark, he wants to make him obsolete. Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop. He’s the open source to Stark’s closed source oppressiveness.”
More details can be found in the article available at io9.com website. Well, what can I say? Good luck to Anthony Edward “Tony” Stark. I hope he will survive without such suprises as the blue screen of death.