OpenLife

“The open-source model is a good way to produce software, as the example of Linux shows. Could the same collaborative approach now revitalise medical research too?”

Interesting article in Economist’s Technology Quarterly at http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2724420.

The Danish Open Source Vendors Association through chairman Morten Kjærsgaard is quoted in Computerword in this article: http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&ArticleID=24164.

I spent last weekend with my parents at their place in Lejre close to Roskilde helping my dad to set-up his new iMac. What a wonderful machine. I couldn’t help think that it is difficult to think about a more user-friendly computer for people who just want a computer for it to work.

Computerworld published 11 June 2004 my review of a new book “IT-boblen” by Peter Bjerge and Claus Thourhauge.

Download the review (in Danish) here.

Interesting article by Rafe Needleman on why service providers like LinkedIn, Orkut, Vonage; AOL Messenger etc. do not want to benefit from the network effect of letting their users interconnect.

Possibly? Read http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1083785108.html.

Interesting article in News.com by open source advocate Bruce Perens discussing the various attempts to kill open source by expensice law suits.

Bruce Perens argues: What we need is a one-stop, collective defense entity for open source–one that is well-capitalized and vendor neutral; one with funding primarily from enterprise users, rather than vendors with their conflicted interests; and one involved with most of the existing open-source legal defense efforts, so that it can handle cases economically and with the greatest possible expertise.

In Denmark the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has heralded the release of Microsoft’s XML schema for exchange of documents as an open standard for documents exchange with Danish public agencies and institutions. Among other issues this raises the question whether an open standard can be owned by a private company and - as is the case with Microsoft’s XML schema - patented.

My personal belief is that there is no reason why an open standard cannot be patented. The real test to whether the standard is not whether it is privately own or patented but whether it is released to other people’s use on a license that is open in an “open source way”. That means that the use of the standard should be free to everybody and that it should be alloved the make changes to it. But with such license terms who would want to patent the standard in the first place.

I am participating today Monday 1. June 2004 in a seminar on eBusiness and interoperability coordinated by CompTIA and sponsored by Microsoft Denmark. Admittedly, I feel a little bit schizophrenic participating in such meeting with my background as an open source advocate and co-founder of the Danish Open Source Vendor Association.

However, my clear impression is that everybody including Microsoft realize today that open source is here to stay and that it makes more sense - in particular also from a business point of view - to participate in a constructive dialogue instead of throwing mud at each other. I am not so naive, though, that I don’t see Microsoft’s role in the SCO-IBM lawsuit and possible in the recent smearing of Linus Torvalds and his role as the author of Linux.