Thank you to Richard Stallman for getting back to me:
I expect that most of these licenses are incompatible with the GPL, but they said they would not recommend their licenses for software, so compatibility with the GPL should not really matter much in practice.
Well, if I point to enough stuff, I’m bound to help somebody. I’ve managed to point to two projects that might help Rick (the techno weenie) open source his homebrew RSS aggregator. Good luck, Rick.
Chris Sells, among others, has pointed out the release of DirectX 9.0:
DirectX 9.0 Release with .NET Support
I’m not much of a graphics programmer, but I know folks have been anxiously awaiting DX9, which includes MDX (Managed DirectX) the managed API to DirectX for .NET programmers. This release provides a bunch of non-.NET enhancements as well.
CNet:
Software maker Iona Technologies will seek to do an end run around Java application server companies with the release next year of a software integration server built around Web services technology.
Firebird 1.02, is available to download. 1.02 is a bugfix/maintenance release of the open source database program.
ksLogger is ‘yet another Java logging package’. 🙂 To be honest, I don’t even know what’s out there. But I do know that ksLogger is small (<10KB jar file) and has a couple of neato features. Let’s go through the features shall we?
Version 1.01 is out. Here are the changes:
There are three new methods for determining the current log level: isWarn(), isInfo(), and isDebug(). Each method returns true if the log level is greater than or equal to the desired level. For example, if the log level is currently set to INFO, then isWarn() and isInfo() will return true, and isDebug() will return false.
It looks to be pretty lightweight and only JDK/JRE >=1.3. Of course the defacto logging standard is Jakarta’s Log4J, but sometimes you’re looking for that lighter weight alternative solution.
Scott Johnson points to a PHP Eclipse plugin. File this under look into it later.
Early & Adopter Weblog: Windows .NET Server (WNS), why should you care?
Here are some major points, but the details on Sean & Scott’s weblog is great:
Well, the monkey part is mine, but it looks like lots of cool stuff going into WNS. I still need to get around to downloading RC2 so I can play with it.
Lawrence Lessig weighs in on CC for software licenses:
Matt Croydon wonders about how CC licenses will interact with software. The answer is that they won’t. We share RMS’s concern that there is a proliferation of licenses in software. Our view was that there was a dearth for other creative content. Thus we start outside the software world. For now, at least.
I’m going to take that as an authoritative answer. Unfortunately, CC licenses are already being applied to software. The cat’s out of the bag. What do we do now?
Decklin Foster sent me an email this morning:
The GPL says that you can’t add any additional restrictions when distributing a derived work. So, while “attribution + share alike” would be compatible, anything involving “no derivs” or “non-commercial” would be incompatible with the GPL. Even if the CC license allowed you to add more restrictive terms (I haven’t read it), you would still end up with something not legally distributable, because the GPL’ed parts would no longer give you permission to distribute them under the GPL.
The BSD/MIT license explicitly grants you the right to sublicence without stating any restrictions, so there is no problem here. (nb: while the BSD license is “attribution”, old-style 3-clause BSD license is “attribution + put my name on all your advertising materials”, which makes software licensed under such terms GPL-incompatible.) BSD-licensed software is GPL-compatible because (a) you can add any terms you want to the BSD’ed parts, and (b) the restrictions of the BSD license are a subset of those stated in the GPL.
Sam Ruby has made sure that the creativeCommons RSS 2.0 module validates.
Jon Udell: Nobody expects the spontaneous integration (Infoworld).
More licensing questions, this time from Alan James Salmoni at Advogato:
Will MS and the FSF allow me to mix GPL’d Python code with an instance of MS’s Internet Explorer? Help!!!
- Is it “safe” for me to release the program (whether under an open source or proprietary license) to the unsuspecting public, when the program will need to embed IE into it, but doesn’t include IE at all?
- Would the GPL allow me to embed an instance of IE within my program?
Don’t flame the messenger, and your best bet is probably to comment on the article.
Sam Gentile points to a few new bloggers that he is keeping track of:
I found two more new .NET Bloggers in my Referal logs to welcome to our community: Badre Narayanan and Jesse Ezell. Welcome and RSS-subscribed!
Clemens Vasters is keeping track of another blogger:
Welcome a new blogger on the block: Morten Abrahamsen! (Blog, RSS). Morten is a friend of mine who I met at one of my many visits to Norway last year.
Somehow I missed it yesterday, but Kenneth Hunt pointed to the R Project for Statistical Computing. It looks like a damn powerful little package. 
David Mertz at IBM DeveloperWorks covers SimPy, a Python simulation package:
The stochastic behavior of real-world systems is often difficult to understand or predict. Sometimes it is possible rigorously to demonstrate statistical properties of systems, such as average, worst-case, and best-case performance features. But at other times, pitfalls of concrete designs only become evident when you actually run (or simulate) a system. In this article, David takes a look at SimPy, a Python package that allows you to very easily create models of discrete event systems.
[via NewsForge]
That’s two autoreplies to two emails this evening: Richard Stallman and Dan Gillmor. I wonder how much spam they recieve in a day. Goodnight all.
Russ is dreaming about wireless again, this time about Bluetooth. I so need to check out BluetoothUnplugged.com when I get a chance