It's not every day that a Microsoft executive as highly placed as senior vice president, corporate secretary and general counsel Brad Smith shows up at an open source conference, but he made an appearance at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco this week. I enjoyed the title of InfoWorld's summary of his visit: Microsot's Brad Smith Tries to Make Nice with Open Source Community.

Given what an ardent critic of Microsoft I can be, it might be surprising that the Open Source Business Conference will feature a keynote from Brad Smith, Microsoft's General Counsel. I invited Brad to take our "footnote" slot that Clay Christensen, Eben Moglen, Geoffrey Moore, and others have held. It's our prime slot, and Brad will fill it well.

"... 'There's one little jewel tucked away in Microsoft's press release, that helps to shed some light on why this massive change of heart may have come about: «While we do not believe there are currently any legal requirements that would dictate which rendering mode must be chosen as the default for a given browser, this step clearly removes this question as a POTENTIAL LEGAL AND REGULATORY ISSUE,» said Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel.' Ah ha! It all becomes clear, now..." -- (emphasis mine)

- attack on Free Software and the GNU GPL – the AVM case
- FSFE Internal: An era ends, others start – the team evolution
- how the European Commission got contract signed with Microsoft without caring about alternatives
- help us in Strasbourg!

The Free Software Foundation's (FSF) Free Software Licensing and Compliance Lab held a public question and answer session in an IRC meeting last night. The meeting was conducted by Brett Smith, the licensing compliance engineer at the FSF.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is an organization that does a lot of behind-the-scenes things, mostly policy and legal, which can be a little hard to see at times. Of course we are always happy to support Free Software projects manage the legal and organizational aspects of, um, projecthood.

Microsoft turn to free software? That’ll be the day. Some have suggested that Microsoft might embrace free software and thus resolve the present conflict. That actually would be a terrific strategy for them, but I don’t think that Microsoft is smart enough to do it.

In the second Free Gamer interview - over 2 years since the first with grumbel - serial Free game developer Steven Carlyle-Smith (UK) aka Me_Programmer Games was kind enough to take the time to reply in detail to my questions about his development activities. Steve has created a plethora of Free games over the years.

"My name is Shane Coughlan and and I work for Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), a non-profit, non-governmental organisation with offices in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Sweden. You may remember me from my last FSFE update on this blog on the Freedom Task Force, which is the FSFE's legal training project which I coordinate.