Webmink In Draft

Things cooking in the Minkiverse. They move elsewhere when the oven pings.

Update: Graduated to the OSI Blog.

Read more...

Like me you may be surprised to see the suggestion from the IMCO Committee to change “free and open source software” in the CRA to “freeware and open source software” in an amendment from Karen Melchior MEP1. It's not a word I have heard much this decade, so I checked with her team and discovered this was an informed and intentional choice, not a misunderstanding (by them, at least).

A squirrel peeps over a log

Read more...

I just read a news story about how Chinese tech companies are threatening Europe by registering so many patents. Turns out it's in the context of “open standards” and is actually Chinese companies copying what European multinationals have done for years with patents embedded in standards. That Sword of Damocles cuts both ways.

The handles of three gigantic sword statues seen against a blue sky

Read more...

Update: This has now graduated to the OSI Blog.

Read more...

No, open source advocates are not engaged in “special pleading” to try to get open source given an unreasonable artificial market advantage in Europe, as some are alleging. From the very beginning I have heard people claiming that open source advocates are trying to get open source software per se excluded from the scope of regulation by the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Even now it seems people are still hearing this.

Facts Not Opinions slogan carved in stone above a door

Read more...

It's good news that the European Commission is now considering the value and needs of open source in its policy deliberations. What's less good is that it does so through the wrong lens. The Commission needs to extend its consultations, Expert Groups and other work to include and consider the fourth sector.

Read more...

Update: This post has graduated to the OSI Blog.

Read more...

Update: This has now graduated to the OSI Blog.

Read more...

Update: This has now graduated to the OSI Blog.

Read more...

Update: Graduated to the OSI Blog

Read more...