Quick Reference For Choosing a Free Software License : Quick Reference For Choosing a Free Software License After the recent rant below this is good stuff. Also see this /. article and also this from Flow.

Airsnort: Open Source WEP cracker goes public - Of course, this was inevitable. The widely publicized WEP vulnerability has been rolled into an Open Source project. [kuro5hin.org] Damn, the world moves fast these days. When was the vulnerability discovered?

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NTL trials wireless broadband - The Register Aug 20 2001 9:16AM ET [ Internet Europe news] This one's actually quite curious. You have to have line of site access to an NTL transmitter, but then they're going to give you cable modem speed internet access over a wireless link. It's not 802.11b but seems to be some side effect of the opening up of spectrum in the last couple of years. It does provide another alternative to DSL and digging up the road.

Just added some pictures of this to the Feet Forwards web site. FF One-Offs and Home Builts : Jon Watkins - STV. Amazing KLX650 based device that has appeared in the USA. Appeared in Cycle World and MCN.

The Content Management Paradox - Governments are still spending public money to subsidise static web sites [Content Wire via NewsIsFree] Makes you wonder, doesn't it. And yet again you have to wonder just why "Content Management" software is so expensive.

There's a raging argument running round the software community about the differences and merits of the various software license models available. In particular, we have Microsoft, IBM, FSF, and others using inflammatory words like "Freedom", "un-American", "Viral" and so on when referring to the GPL. As a small developer who doesn't play at being a lawyer (even on the net), I'm confused. This site uses GPL code (Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Apache) on a BSD licensed OS (BSD Unix) and I do my development using several proprietary tools (MS WIn, dreamweaver etc).

I would like to be able to make money from using all this stuff, but I don't at the moment want to make money from selling the software. As I understand it, this is allowed by the licenses of everything I use. But I also harbour some dreams of making money from selling software, and I have done in the past. At this point, the license model of my tools becomes extremely important. Now I have a sort of rule of thumb about this. If I use a GPL tool to build it, there's no problem (eg GCC). But if I take GPL code and extend it, there is. So If I modify Drupal and add to it, I can't sell it. This also seems right. But there's a horrible grey area in the middle where sub-routines or sample code are concerned. It's not at all clear to me if I can use GPL libraries in a commercial software package. Can I just put in my license, "Some parts copyright GPL"? this is all made worse in that there is very little case law around this subject. And the license world is fragmenting as well with GPL, LGPL, BSD, and so on.

For all those software developers out there on the sidelines, we need a FAQ to explain this stuff. I've never seen one, but if you have, please tell me where it is.

ps. Seek and ye shall find. http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/FAQ.html is a pretty clear description of the issues and an explanation of why Netscape felt they had to create another license model for the Mozilla project.

UK dot.com victims to sue - Media Guardian Aug 17 2001 12:40PM ET [ Internet Europe news] So let's get this straight. A high profile analyst with an investment bank pumps not just one stock but lots of them. Maybe even some of the stocks that the investment bank has an interest in (though that would be wrong...). Then when the bottom begins to drop out of the market, the analyst continues to pump the stocks in the hope of turning the tide. Meanwhile some unsophisticated investors follow their advice and lose their shirt. And they want to sue the analyst, the analyst's company and anyone else who mkight still have some money? Well, Caveat Emptor, old son! Excuse me if I don't have a lot of sympathy.

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Thanks to Aaron, it's really easy to generate an RSS headline newsfeed from your Blogger.com powered blog. Full details and instructions here.

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A Frightened Boy, presented by Joel Veitch
What is this? There's more at http://www.b3ta.com/ Meme of the week. "blocky pictures dancing to foreign language soundtracks" viz, http://www.btinternet.com/~david.st/b3ta/ , http://www.yomgaille.com/bordel/un_lapin.html and most alarmingly of all: http://user.tninet.se/~prv247p/hatt/hatten.swf

E-currency firm joins list of has-Beenz - ZDNet Aug 16 2001 10:31PM ET [ Internet Europe news] Back in the summer of '99 I was wandering around the SOMA district of San Francisco to get a large Capuccino from Starbucks. It was between meetings with a web software company we were thinking of using. This areas pretty rough and being re-built and like most of the USA there were almost no people on the streets. I was accosted by a group of 3 kids on rollerblades who were handing out Beenz postcards that had some special offer. Bizarre marketing! I've still got my Beenz mousepad as well although I never actually used them. I think I did sign up once. Any Road Up. What's the best bit of marketing toy you ever got? I'm still wearing the free clothes from the conferences and I still use the laptop rucksack with the logo from Aeneid (that disappeard long ago). I even use the baseball cap with "Interland" on the front.

Talking Moose : MoosePoop: Rich Folks: Invest in Us Again! : MoosePoop: Rich Folks: Invest in Us Again! Another great rant from the Moose. Let's face it, it's the rich and greedy that have created the current IT recession...

Actually on that subject, I remember an idea from long ago that has just surfaced again. "The IT Industry makes a net loss". That is, it loses more money on the way down than it makes on the way up. Isn't there something wrong with this picture?

Quarterly Report from Moose Industries' CEO - Quarterly Report from Moose Industries' CEO [Talking Moose] This should be required reading for dotcoms (and conventional businesses) on the way down.

Plastic | "Now With MORE Genes!" -- Mystery DNA Found In GM Soya : But what I find consistently in these threads is a bias against caution. I find it just a little worrying that the GM industry is beta testing it's product in the same biosphere I live in.

News: Zap! ... and your PC's dead : With $500 and a trip to the hardware store, saboteurs can build a device capable of remotely disrupting computers, automobiles, medical equipment and nearly anything else dependent on electronics Now how can I get it in a car so I can zap the speed cameras?

Edd Dumbill - Edd Dumbill: "Perhaps some of the uneasiness is due to the fact that web services proponents have never demonstrated how to do any more than retrieve a stock quote." [Scripting News] Edd shame on you. And this from an O'Reilly contributor as well. But still some good points about the degradation of the word "Standard".

The Times : Tiny bull leads charge to micro medicine Japanese researchers have used nano machine tech to build a bull sculpture at the micrometre scale.