OpenLife

Last week I attended the OSBC 2008. Again, this year the conference was worth travelling all the way from Copenhagen to San Francisco to be part of. Excellent speakers and a very well balanced programme.

In one of the more entertaining sesions, Microsoft top-lawyer Brad Smith took the podium and addressed a crowd of about 400 people that - to put it mildly - were not all that Microsoft friendly. Brad Smith did a good job and his appearance at OSBC shows clearly that Microsoft has realized that open source is here to stay.

Despite all the positive rethorics from Brad Smith and other good people, it still seems to me that Microsoft is not at all into open source yet let alone openness. In my opinion, Microsoft still does what every monopolist would do as a rational self interested economic actor. It will try fervently to maintain its monopoly rents as long as possible. No sweet talking from Microsoft should let anyone to believe it to be otherwise.

This applies in particular to governments. Do not believe the monopolist’s talk about changing its ways to become more open. First, believe this talk when you should solid proof by actions!

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bradsmith, osbc2008, microsoft

Niels Hartvig is a trailblazer. A few years ago, he released his popular CMS called Umbraco under a MIT open source license. This is not unique of cource. But he was the first developer (at least here in Denmark) to open source an application that runs on Microsoft’s .net platform.

Back then I introduced Niels to some good people at Microsoft Denmark that I knew. And they - being this case pragmatic business people, not Redmond instructed IT policy lobbyists - immediately warmed to the idea. In order to get more customers and developers to adopt the .net platform, in particular within the Danish SMB segment, Microsoft needed to show that applications were available and worked on the platform. Umbraco was heaven sent on a Danish SMB CMS market heavily populated by cost-efficient open source based CMS’ with lots of functionalities.

Today, Umbraco is a success story with respect to the mix of Microsoft and open source environments. Niels is used (hopefully not misused) as a posterchild to promote more intgration between open source and Microsoft applications and platforms.

Full disclosure: Umbraco is a client with Bender von Haller Dragsted

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nielshartvig, umbraco, mitlicense

If you don’t have anything else to do these days, read the Economist briefing: Economics and the rule of law - Order in the jungle.

In my younger days I spend a lot of time reading about the intersection of Law and Economics. I actually lectured as an associaite professor an the topic for four semesters at the Copnhagen University Law School.

The Economist briefing gives an excellent exposition of the (attempt to say something scientific about) the rule that the law plays for economic growth and success of different countries. There are interesting distinctions between the “thin” rule of law theory which emphasizes property right and stable legal instutions and “thick” rule of law that add the whole gamut of civil liberties and human rights.

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economist, ruleoflaw, lawandeconomics

Here are Vilhelm and Jens with probably some of the only real snow that we are going to see in Copenhagen this winther.

It is funny how you meet people that you knew from way back when you were young(er) and they look older (of course) but are exactly the same as way back then. I know Michael Hjalsted, who is now Sales Director, Unisys S&T, Nordic region, from when I was an active handball player in a youth team of Hellerup Idræts Klub (HIK), a suburban Copenhagen sportsclub. I haven’t seen Michael for maybe 15-20 years. Fortunately, he is still the same

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michaelhjalsted, hik, unisys

Two great conference coming up on my otherwise not so extensive or busy travelling schedule.

Just after the Easter break I will travel to San Francisco to attend the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC).

The about two months after I will return to San Francisco to attend Supernova 2008. This trip is arranged by the Danish eBusiness Association (FDIH).

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fdih, supernova2008, osbc2008

Impressive website about the extremely interesting American scientist Stanley Milgram.

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stanleymilgram, thomasblass

Vilhelm and I was out today in the wonderful sunshine to ride our bikes.

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gråbrødretorv

Here is an interesting article “Six Degrees of messaging” on how people connect via chat drawing on a comparison to the famous Stanley Milgram study.

What would make such study much more interesting would to see how people found each other via different messenger service such af Skype, Yahoo, Google and so forth and not just MSN Messenger. But I am even more puzzled about how people would connect by using search and maybe tags on mutual interests!

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sixdegrees, stanleymilgram, messenger

I fully endorse the petition by among others the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Open Rights Group (ORG) to oppose the EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy’s intention to extend the copyright term in sound recordings from 50 to 95 years retroactively.

Such extension makes absolutely no sense from an economic or democratic point of view. A lot of independant politicians and scientists agree on this. Read all the arguments here.
Here’s the petition:

Sign it here: http://www.soundcopyright.eu/petition

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soundcopyright