Wild Webmink

My essay asserting that open source projects aren’t about giving stuff away for free is now available from the Essays section.

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I had a request on Identica to make one of my essays available under a Creative Commons licence so it could be translated. I thought that was such a good idea I’ve now applied a Creative Commons licence to the whole Essays section. I’d welcome any translations and will gladly post them alongside the originals with attribution.

Sharp-eyed free-culture mavens will note I have used CC-BY-SA-NC. I’m actually perfectly happy for commercial uses, but past bad experience with a certain commercial user exploiting my work in a way I regarded as unethical have left me wanting to check each commercial use in advance. It’s entirely possible I can be talked out of this, but the distaste for that episode remains strong.

Filed under: Copyright, Webmink | Tagged: Essays | 3 Comments »

My essay unpacking the meaning of ‘free’ H.264 licensing is now available in the Essays section. It provides a case study in why apparently fair “Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” (RAND) terms for licensing patents in standards actually have the potential to be costly and obstructive for software developers and a barrier to software freedom.

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My essay explaining that software freedom means business value is now available from the Essays section.

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My essay on Community Escrow, one of the differentiating features of open source software, is now available in the Essays section.

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My essay on the open core business model is now available in the Essays section.

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My essay explaining why DRM (Digital Restriction Measures) are toxic to culture is now available in the Essays section.

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My essay on open source license compliance for end users is now available in the essays section.

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My classic (read: several years old) essay on Payment At The Point Of Value has finally made it on to the Essays page on this site. Now that community-centric open source is once again returning to centre stage, PPV is a relevant concept to understand the roles different community members play in relation to the software, and especially the different freedoms they are exploiting – beyond free-as-zero-price.

Filed under: Open Source | Tagged: Business Models, Essays, Motivation | Comments Off on ☂ Why Open Source Is Free

👁 Community Layers
My essay on Community Types is now available in the Essays section of the site. It defines what I mean by terms like “co-developer” and “deployer-developer” when I use them in conversation.

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