Copyleft Currents

Google launched GO, a programming language it describes as fast, safe, expressive, concurrent, and garbage-collected.   

GO is general purpose programming language alternative to languages like C, intended to address C’s lack of “garbage collection” — which means eliminating unnecessary memory usage during the running of programs.  “Safe” means fewer cases of memory errors.  In contrast, a language like C allows very direct access to computer memory, but if you make a mistake in doing this, you get very bad programmatic results (like crashing).  “Concurrent” means the ability to run many procedures at a time, which in turn causes memory management problems in languages like C.  “Expressive” means, generally, the ability to accomplish tasks with less code.  C, in contrast, while very powerful, tends to be more long and formulaic than “high level” languages like PERL.

The GO compiler is open source — released under a BSD-style license.

 

 

Here is the document from the DoD Chief Information Office webpage.

The New York Times reports some mudslinging in the battle between Oracle and the EU over the EU’s objections to the Sun acquisition.  The controversy has centered on industry concentration that might arise from Oracle’s control of MySQL in addition to its other database products.

Interesting how-to on finding GPL compliance problems in consumer electronic devices from Armijn Hemel.

 

Interesting post urging moderation in reporting and acting on GPL violations.  It’s great to hear this coming from an influential source like SFLC.  Most violations really are ad hoc oversights or the result of companies not sufficiently developing their own open source policies or educating their engineers about those policies.  Most offenders who find out about a GPL violation do try to address it in good faith.  Free software is about cooperation, not gotchas. 

Firefox is five years old.  They grow up so fast…it seems like yesterday we were doing the trademark clearance.  Many happy returns of the day!

Qualcomm announced the launch of its Qualcomm Innovation Center.

Droid, a Verizon/Motorola Android phone, launched this week.  This article describes some of the Android phones currently on the market.

In late September, the press announced that a French court had enforced the GPL.  Cour d’Appel de Paris, Pôle 5, Chambre 10, no: 294, issued on 16 September 2009).  ArsTechnica said, “The Free Software Foundation France (FSF France) is jubilant about a recent court ruling that has affirmed the validity of the open source GNU General Public License (GPL) under French copyright law. This successful GPL enforcement effort will send a strong message about the importance of open source license compliance to the French software industry.”

The reporting of this case noted that it was remarkable that a licensee — not a licensor — had enforced the terms of GPL.  However, although FSF France was involved, the case was not a GPL enforcement claim; it was a breach of contract claim.  The decision mentions the GPL a few times, mostly in connection with whether the contract allowed delivery of GPL software. 

For a useful and clarifying explanation (and a translation of the relevant part of the decision) see Martin von Willebrand’s Blog.