I recently read the discussion on the GCC development mailing list related to GCC's transition to GPLv3. Despite generating 172 emails, the transition was quite smooth actually.

Slashdot linked this weekend to a Nokia position paper on the use of Ogg in the HTML5 proposal for the media elements. For those of us who have followed the HTML5 discussion for some time there is little new in the position paper, he is simply regurgitating the same arguments that Apple Safari people came up with.

HTML5 spec is expected to introduce new audio and video capabilities into the HTML language. However, it seems that Nokia and Apple have succeeded in removing Ogg Vorbis and Theora support from the current draft which decision has caused lots of heated political discussion. Some critics claim that the decision is mostly based on reluctance to back a standard that has no provision for including DRM, while others have mentioned potential patent uncertainties as the main reason not to back Ogg Vorbis and Theora.

LINUS CALLS GPLv3 "A FINE CHOICE" - is a title that InformationWeek could have used for their article. It would have been very selective quoting, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for InformationWeek.
Nor does pretending that old emails are new emails, or misrepresenting people.

Slashdot founder Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda recently announced a new Slashdot section dedicated to offtopic humor, memes, viral videos, and pictures. --It's at Idle.slashdot.org. He said it's been beta tested for the last few months but I've only heard about it today.

This is an article I wrote almost two years ago on what I predicted as the inevitable future of MS Windows. With recent events ( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/29/1425250 ) I see this approaching so I thought this might be an interesting read.

"...'Ogg' is a wrapper that ties together 'Theora' encoded video and 'Vorbis' encoded sound. Together, Ogg Theora+Vorbis give users a way to see movies on your computer. Ogg Vorbis+Theora are not known to be encumbered by any patents (the only applicable patent on Theora’s predecessor, called 'VP3', was licensed for everyone to use in any way they want).

The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review is seeking submissions for publication in 2010 and beyond. Potential contributors can review the author guidelines, download article templates in

Slashdot's front page contains slightly aggressive and grossly inaccurate GPL and open source FUD. An observation and rebuttal to it you can find here. (thanks for the headsup, Tracy).