Favorite The news that the European Commission’s competition directorate (DG COMP) has decided not to conduct a full antitrust investigation into the Alliance for Open Media’s (AOM) licensing policy is to be welcomed, especially for the AV1 CODEC specification (successor to the VP9 CODEC and intended to allow royalty-free, high-quality video streaming). It seems

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Shared by voicesofopensource May 23, 2023

Favorite The ClearlyDefined project was invited to give an update as part of the OpenChain webinar series. I had the opportunity to share with this global community the project’s mission: to create a global database of licensing metadata for every Open Source software component ever published. This was a great

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Shared by voicesofopensource May 18, 2023

Favorite One of the proposals in the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is that European standards bodies should develop suitable standards that help simplify conformance. Bert Hubert explains how this might work in his extensive CRA explainer. There’s a crucial issue here for Open Source. EU policy experts say not to

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Shared by voicesofopensource May 16, 2023

Favorite What might happen if the uncertainty persists around who is held responsible under the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)? The global Open Source community is averse to legal risks and generally lacks access to counsel, so it’s very possible offers of source code will simply be withdrawn rather than seeking

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Shared by voicesofopensource May 11, 2023

Favorite This year’s Maintainer Month feels different given what’s happening with the European Cyber Resilience Act. Their role is under more pressure than usual and yet, it’s often misunderstood.  Open Source maintainers are the cornerstone of collaborative software development. They dedicate their time and expertise to ensure the smooth functioning

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Shared by voicesofopensource May 10, 2023

Favorite Building a healthy Open Source community is much more than just choosing an Open Source license for the project. It involves creating a contributing guide, adopting a code of conduct, and establishing an open governance structure that allows all members to actively participate in and contribute to the project.

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Shared by voicesofopensource May 9, 2023

Favorite (This post is taken from a speech given remotely at LLW 2023 by OSI Executive director Stefano Maffulli) The conference program places two talks back to back titled “The goals of Open Source AI” followed by “The goals of a Free Software AI”… But to me, the distinction between

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Shared by voicesofopensource May 4, 2023

Favorite Powerful Artificial Intelligence technology is pressing more questions on Open Source and society every day. AI is contributing to important breakthroughs and we’re only beginning to see the potential for innovation it can bring to fields such as climate, health, agriculture and mobility (to name just a few). Recently

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Shared by voicesofopensource April 20, 2023

Favorite As Lessig observed in his 1999 book “CODE, and other laws of cyberspace”, a citizen’s practical experience of the law and of society today is through the software that implements the written law. All the computer code that governs our lives and liberty should be open to public scrutiny in

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Shared by voicesofopensource April 19, 2023

Favorite Despite a 25-year history, Open Source is still misunderstood or misrepresented. I still read about developers, a cohort you’d expect to know better, arguing whether software licensed with the GNU GPL is Open Source because “one cannot resell it” (hint: the GNU GPL doesn’t prevent users from selling software.)

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Shared by voicesofopensource April 14, 2023