Earlier this month, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) announced its existence. General coverage of the event stressed the Center's board of directors -- virtually a Who's Who of the legal experts on free and open source software (FOSS) -- its initial funding, and the increasing legal threats that loom behind its creation. Yet behind the facts of the news release is a larger story.

In helping to create the organization, Center director Eben Moglen, the framer of the GNU General Public License, is not just looking for a way to defend the FOSS communities against legal threats. Yet he is also looking beyond this potential need. By 2010, he hopes to see the SFLC become the center of a web of associations that will link FOSS projects, tech-savvy lawyers, and corporations, to everyone's mutual benefit.

Read the full thing here

For a free exhibit hall pass register with the promo code "FREE" or a discounted full access pass with "NEWSP".

For more info, or to download the source code, go to: http://zed.cbc.ca/opensource

Gurgaon, India – January 18, 2005: Daffodil Software, a leading database technology company, today announced the Open Source release of One$DB at SourceForge.net

The move to Open Source One$DB, is driven by the fact that Open Source products are more acceptable and flexible, as they can be understood better in terms of strengths and limitations and can be customized to suit specific requirements without any fear of vendor locking. We also feel that Open Source products become more mature due to the continuous involvement of a diverse community.

Canada's largest union, CUPE, switched their web site to Apache, MySQL and PHP a year or so ago and won a global contest for union web sites. This year, though they face a challenge from the Teamsters, who're running IIS.

Sure, you could check Netcraft to see what they're running. Or you could check this note at the bottom of their home page: Note: Due to high Internet virus activity, we are no longer accepting website feedback via email. Please send any web feedback via U.S. Mail to the address above.

Vote for the open source site.

Acknowledgement of blatant plug: I work for CUPE.

ZeD is online 24/7 and goes out on Canada's national CBC TV week-nights from 11:25 pm to 12:05.

A, "launch pad for independent creative expression that's slipped the leash of expectation," it's also a, "synapse-teasing space where the yin of the Web slips seamlessly into the yang of TV, and back again," it says.

ZeD features original live music, dance and spoken word performances by groundbreaking artists; frontline indie-culture reportage by a crew of cross-Canada video correspondents; chats with culture creators who are making a stir; and innovative short film, video, animation, music, words, performance, ideas and, visual art pieces from around the world.

And on January 6, the code base that powers zed.cbc.ca became available as open source under Apache License 2.0.

Read the full thing here

The BBC has created a network protocol testing platform written in Python and made it available as an open source application

The Kamaelia project, released on Tuesday, is designed to simplify the creation and testing of new protocols for large-scale media delivery systems. It was created by the BBC's research and development arm, based at Kingswood Warren in Surrey. Kamaelia is designed to allow easy large-scale testing of network protocols while they're being developed. It is written entirely in Python, and takes plug-ins to handle the specifics of the protocol under test.

Read the full thing here

Seneca College in Toronto will work with a local software developer to move a network management tool for Linux to the open source model.

Two-year-old Tenth Power Technologies Inc. announced the arrangement with Seneca that will see students at Canada’s largest college work on ongoing development of its LANUX software.

Dennis Bernhard, chief executive of Tenth Power, said his company primarily provides services and custom development to Linux users, and developed LANUX for its own use in managing clusters of Linux systems for two of its customers. He said the company -- whose core development team has been working together for about six years -- sees turning it into an open source product as a way of creating a community around the software. Tenth Power will make its money by offering custom development, support and other services related to LANUX.

Read the full thing here