Home

patents

The Campaign to Boycott Trend Micro

Submitted by BrianNapoletano on 20 February, 2008 - 04:07
Posted in

The growing boycott of web security solutions corporation Trend Micro should be firm warning to the rest of the proprietary software industry: Trying to shipwreck the Free Software movement in the murky waters of software patent litigation is a good way to get bit in the ass by a Barracuda. Cheap metaphors aside, Barracuda Networks' decision to fight Trend Micro's seeming egregious patent claims against ClamAV may be indicative of a growing intolerance of certain proprietary software developers' attempts to use trivial or blatantly meaningless patent claims to strangle open innovation and development.

  • Read more
  • 638 reads
  • 1 attachment
  • Share/Save

What is Free Software?

Submitted by BrianNapoletano on 14 January, 2008 - 18:35
Posted in

Traditionally regarded as the specialized tools of hardcore programmers and the hacker 1337 (i.e. the hacker elites), Open-Source and Free Software1 seem to be at the threshold of a new stage of adoption.

  1. 1. While I sometimes appear to use the terms "Open-Source" and "Free Software" interchangeably, I do not consider the two equivalent. "Open-Source" means (when I use it) that the source code is readily available and that you may access it and modify it for your own use. "Free Software" means that the software is freely available to you, and you are free to do with it as you please (even sell it, if you like). While "Free Software" implies "Open-Source", "Open-Source" does not necessarily imply "Free". For a more thorough discussion of the topic, see Stallman's article, "Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source"" at the GNU Project.
Syndicate content