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SCO has lost its legal battle to charge people for using other people’s work. You can read all about it at Groklaw. Briefly, SCO asserted that a) it owned Unix, b) Linux was illegally copied from Unix, and c) everyone using Linux therefore owed it licence fees. A few companies paid – most just ignored the demands. SCO sued some major Linux users including IBM, then Novell stood up and said we own Unix, SCO doesn’t, and we have no problem at all with Linux. SCO sued Novell and has just lost. It will therefore lose to IBM and the others in very short order as the basis of its claim has been overturned. SCO will be liable for the licence fees it has already collected, and possibly damages, not to mention huge legal fees. A longer and better description of the whole process is on Wikipedia.

This is important because SCO’s whole legal challenge has been seen as a deliberate and cynical attempt to scare people off open source. Proprietary software companies (you know who I mean) have been portraying the SCO action as a reason not to use Linux, after all, they say, how can you be sure you won’t be sued? They can’t do that any more.

The Internet has expanded, seemingly from nowhere, to become an essential part of modern living for people in developed countries over the space of only a decade or so. That’s faster than the telephone system was rolled out, faster than electric power, even faster than mobiles. What has driven this extraordinary growth? I give my ideas below, and as always there are some links at the end.

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Today I talked on Radio New Zealand National about digital copyright, and how Parliament could have decided to make iPods legal but now apparently isn’t going to.

The essential point here is that copyright is a form of monopoly granted by government to boost innovation, almost a property right, and that copyright holders will naturally lobby government to have their interests expanded so the worth of their property right increases. That doesn’t make it right. It’s all the rest of us who pay the price, and the continual expansion of copyright risks our whole culture and technology since everything original we do relies on work done by others.

Below the fold are my speaking notes for the radio, which I nearly stuck to, with as always some interesting links at the bottom.

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As someone who once spent a few hours wandering around the Tokyo subway, and who loves the Web, this appeals to my sense of cool :-)

Today on Radio New Zealand National I talked about supporting your own computer. A little time invested up front can save you a great deal of bafflement and frustration. And, when choosing a computer, consider ease of use!
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Back in May I talked about cryptography, which is the science of code making and code breaking. Although we tend to think of codes as a tool of war, they are utterly necessary to e-commerce on the Internet. As always, there are some links at the end.
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Today on Radio New Zealand National I talked about domain names on the Internet, where they came from, what they are, how you can get one and what you should pay for one. My notes are below the split, and as usual, there are some links at the end.

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On July 12th I talked on Radio New Zealand National about privacy and the impact of technology. The take-home message is that mass privacy invasion is very much a problem of the technological age and that there are sound reasons for trying to protect your privacy. My notes are below, and there are some links at the bottom of the page.

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Today on Radio New Zealand National I talked about the social effect the Internet is having on people wanting regain touch with old friends. The discussion covered Oldfriends, Facebook, and the dangers of looking up old lovers online. There’s a generation coming up now that knows it won’t lose touch with its friends – and there are plenty of older folk trying to find people they used to know.

As always, there are some links at the end.

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On 28th June 2007, I talked on Radio New Zealand National about the hype around the launch of Apple’s iPhone. The bottom line: there are outrageous amounts of hype, it’s a great-looking phone, and I’d love one!

My notes for the programme are below, and so are the links I gave out.

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