Topic: Open Source

A group of open source programmers reverse engineered Blizzard's Battle.net by analyzing the packets the player copies of the game shared with Blizzard's servers. Their work resulted in the bnetd project, which let anyone run their own Battle.net-like service. Blizzard sued, of course, and the district court found the open source programmers guilty of violating the End User License Agreement (EULA) as well as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. What does this mean for open-source programmers, technologists and consumers? [Ernest Miller's Law and IT series on IT Converations.]

On The Gillmor Gang, CEO Kim Polese explains what her new company, SpikeSource, is all about: making open source safe for IT by aggregating best-of-breed components. Kim believes this is part of a fundamental shift in the way the software industry works, and many Gang members agree.

At Medinfo 2004, Scott Mace talked with Timothy Cook, chair of the Open Source Working Group of the American Medical Informatics Associaton (AMIA). Health care, particularly primary care, stands to gain much from adopting open source software. Listen to Tim discuss the areas where open source will be adopted fastest, a recent award-willing project, privacy and security issues, and standards and interoperability concerns.

Fresh from a great presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, R0ml Lefkowitz joins The Gillmor Gang including guest Gang member, Michael Vizard, to discuss the corporate IT world. Will Windows XP SP2 allow Microsoft to claim its products are more secure? Why can't large organizations move away from IE? (Why should they care?) Why aren't more vertical applications available in open source? And why do vendors open-source their proprietary code such as Sun's plan to release Solaris 10?

The Gillmor Gang, August 8, 2004. Some of the Gang members report from Linux World. (Doc says it's too much about what the vendors are doing. [clip].) Our guests from RealNetworks discuss their plans to open source components of their Helix line of products. They're using two licenses: GPL for open source and a commercial license for manufacturers who can't be bound by the GPL. Jon Udell continues to explain the need for random-access players and supporting URLs [clip] and standards and why he thinks players will ultimately become authoring tools. Dana Gardner weighs in on why multimedia has yet to catch on in the corporate world.

Doc Searls was one of the highlights of Supernova this year. Always entertaining, he presented a number of case studies (the inside stories) in open source and DIY (do-it-yourself) IT that you won't get from the traditional vendor-centric press (who provide the outside stories). Doc has posted his slides from this presentation.

Novell used to be "The NetWare Company." Today, Novell is one of the most dynamic open source advocates and drivers on the planet. How did Novell manage this transformation and, more importantly, what is Novell doing to manage competing forces on the desktop (KDE vs. Gnome), foster open source innovation (OpenOffice, Mono, etc.), and generally push open source to the next level of adoption? In this keynote, the architect of Novell's open source strategy details the company's vision for open source on the desktop and server, and what it is doing to bring that vision to fruition.

Milton Ngan, Digital Operations Manager, Weta Digital Ltd.

Having spent the last six years overcoming challenge after challenge producing LOTR (Lord of the Rings), it has become apparent that there are other things than this project. We have accumulated a significant legacy of software and hardware technology during this journey. Now that we have reached our destination, there are new roads to travel. We have a unique opportunity to shed the dead weight and re-sharpen our tools based upon the lessons we have learned. At this crossroad, we also have a number of choices to make, Linux, OS X, or Windows? The choices are not easy for technical, political, and religious reasons. After experiencing the freedom and frustration with a predominantly open source platform, this is a troubling decision, especially when open source platforms are not looking so cost effective anymore. The show must go on, and it will.

One of the characteristics of diversity--in science, in technology, in biology, in culture, in software, or in children--is that the underlying programming tends to be open source, or connected in all directions. Freeman Dyson and George Dyson think in all directions, but each filters through a particular lens. Esther Dyson, also scheduled, was stuck in Texas and couldn't be there.

Starting with some of the key decisions in Debian project history that enabled success, Garbee applies his unique experience to explore how communities of developers and users working together accomplish amazing things. His examples range from building amateur satellites and breaking the SPECfp2000 record, to improving the technology literacy of hundreds of thousands of students and ordinary citizens in Spain and beyond.