Even though it's not really warranted because security is less of a problem with GNU/Linux but more importantly because we already have free software anti-virus solutions, McAfee is planning on jumping into the GNU/Linux market becuase of the growing number of MIDs running the Moblin Linux OS.

"So for non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important. But trust me, this is huge [...] In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses.

I have borrowed a headline from an earlier posting by Shane Schick to discuss something I saw this week. McAfee filed a report last month with the Securities and Exchange Commission that made a few statements about risks associated with their use of some Open Source software. These statements received quite a bit of media attention.

Choosing to release a piece of software under the terms of a free software license is an important step through which many programmers and writers first approach the free software community. However, the myriad of licenses available can sometimes confuse and disorient the user, sometimes making this first step much harder than it should be. Let's try and make things clearer.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) license compliance is a contentious topic. There are different perspectives about when and how license terms apply, about which licenses can be used together, and about how potential issues should be resolved. Veteran gpl-violations.org and FSFE contributors Armijn Hemel and Shane Coughlan examine the situation and what can be done to improve matters.

The big news in tech today is of course Intel buying McAfee, in a deal valued at about 7.7 billion dollars. I think this deal is all about mobile devices and mobile computing security. I think Intel has made a huge misstep here and the reason maybe they don't understand open source software.

An idea that is suggested every now and then is to look at software licensing and give it a kind of “Creative Commons” feel; that is, present the terms of the license in a pleasant and orderly way by means of icons. We’ll take the top 10 licenses and for each, label it with icons

"We’ve just added the seal you see at right to Creative Commons licenses that qualify as Free Culture Licenses according to the Definition of Free Cultural Works — Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike. Public domain is not a license, but is an acceptable copyright status for free cultural works according to the Definition.

What do all these licenses do for you? That's the 64 license question. Today I'm pondering if the current open source model is still valid or if it's outdated. Do we need licensing for open source software? Do we need the GPL, LGPL, APL and all the other licenses that plague...er, grace us? If your software is free and open source, why bother with a license at all?