Off with you, Blackboard!

The Software Freedom Law Center is going to contest Blackboard's ridiculous patent application. I have a personal interest in this particular battle. I worked for years at the Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center, as part of a development effort for group decision support systems. Quite frankly, every single thing Blackboard is claiming as part of its patent application is prior art. And all of it in the Electronic Information Exchange System. Check it out. [Those pages are old; EIES is now defunct, but its history lives on]

Get yerself a book

More an advertisement than a real blog post, I know, but because Benjamin Mako Hill has commented on this blog more than once, I thought I'd post a link to the competition being run by the Free Software magazine that has as one its prizes, a book by BMH.

Get stuck into it.

A tale of two acts

A decent quasi-technical newspiece on the importance of Sun's Java move.

And an article on the other end of the spectrum of decent acts, Microsoft's protection racket with Novell.

Sun GPLs Java!

In case you can't tell, Geek Gaucho is very happy that Sun has placed Java under the GPL. I agree with the spirit expressed - congratulations Sun! Read Cassia's linked piece as well (hmm..some glee in that blog post title, what?)

Also, here is a link to a video featuring some big-hitters commenting on the Sun decision (and you actually get to see RMS praising a corporation!)