It was definitely worthwhile to head up to Portland for a couple of days (Sunday, then yesterday). Corey has already posted on both days, and we had pretty similar experiences.
What did I get out of Sunday, the FLOSS summit?
- The Eclipse Foundation is another c6, like Gentoo.
- Bank of America is worth checking out for groups that operate primarily online, because it has lots of things that most banks require you in person for.
- American lawyers may have a poor understanding on how to deal with IP issues in other countries. (Shocker, isn’t it?)
- We should think more about our trademarks.
- Why do non-coders get involved in FLOSS? Similar reasons: Building a résumé, changing lives, doing good deeds, belief in our goals.
- It’s easy to spend upwards of $15,000 registering trademarks internationally.
- Trademark infringement is just likely confusion as to the source of a product, not actual confusion.
- True statements are never trademark infringement; same goes for parody and editorial comment.
- Open source and trademark licenses don’t mesh well, because an open-source license cannot retain quality control over derivative works. Therefore, you can lose the trademark.
- The FSF’s interpretation of the GPL is not the gospel, regarding how a court would interpret it.
- It’s possible to create a new copyright on a compilation of works (a collective work), even if all the works are individually copyrighted. This means that if someone takes a large chunk of a GPL compilation and turns it proprietary, the actual code authors aren’t required to go after them.
- Private donations to a charitable organization can’t produce assets used for private gain.
How about yesterday?
- Read Corey’s post.
- Swik seems very cool; it’s sort of like freshmeat on crack — it’s a wiki that goes out and automatically finds all this info on any given open-source project, able to subscribe to feeds, etc. I talked to its creator yesterday — he said they were working on how to open source the actual code behind it, under which license, etc. Also, the next generation may heavily use Atom, since it can both read and write.
- ThoutReader could really help searching for that annoying paragraph you know you saw in one of the Gentoo docs, but you just can’t remember which one it was in. Or when you can’t even find the doc on the Gentoo site because you don’t remember which section it’s in, etc.
- Also met Pat Mochel, a very cool guy. He wrote sysfs, a lot of the new driver core, etc. I can’t find a blog for him, though. My fiancée and I are always on the lookout for other couples to hang out with, so I might have to give him a call since he’s right up in Portland.
- Corey, I’ve gotta admit I wasn’t really paying any attention to Linus’s pool game — I was too busy trying not to lose my own.
Striving for greatness 