Software patent law must be simplified if not completely abolished. The concept that a routine or function is somehow "intellectual property" is ridiculous. How many times have you had an idea and found out someone else had the same idea? Patents were designed to prevent stealing of ideas but two independent people creating the same idea are not stealing from each other.

Whatever the final text will be after the next negotiation rounds, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will remain an illegitimate agreement, by its elaboration process (beyond any democratic control) as well as its content (further strengthening of an outdated set of legislation).

Google engineer John Koleszar asked the open source community for help optimizing the VP8 codec for the WebM project, Google's open source project for watching video online. In soliciting help, Koleszar gave a sort of State of the Codec Address regarding VP8, it's functionality and the headway he and his fellow programmers have made since the WebM announcement at Google I/O 2010.

I was surfing around yesterday, I noticed that OpenSource.com has an article about building communities that work.

About two weeks ago, the FSF announced that it has taken action against the Apple App Store over their distribution of GNU Go. This has apparently set off some people like lefty and triggered a length and wide debate.

The thesis of Marcus Manfred Dapp offers an explanation of why software patents are bad for Europe (and for any other continent/country for that matter)

"Within the framework of the author’s copyright that protects literary and artistic works, a growing number of authors choose to make their works available to the public with contracts of a very specific type called free licences. These licences allow anyone to distribute or perform copies of the work.