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Uber’s been shut down again.
It seems as if city officials in Portland, Oregon take exception with the online car-for-hire service’s plans to take to their city’s streets without bothering with little things like acquiring taxi permits for their cars and drivers, proper liability insurance and vehicle inspections.
FOSS Week in Review
With colleagues like mine, you can rest assured everything is covered. From FOSS Force columnist Ken Starks’ friendship column this week to Christine Hall’s commentary on the contiuous battles free and open source software developers and advocates face, the week has been a very thoughtful and reflective one in the FOSS Force neighborhood.
Nevertheless, here are a couple of more FOSS morsels to wrap up the week:
There is no Dana… Over at OpenStack, a discussion initiated by Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph goes into the possibility of a logo for Zuul, OpenStack’s pipeline-oriented project gating and automation system. Because she gets asked during presentations, “What is the logo for Zuul?” Elizabeth has picked up the baton and gone to bat, to woefully mix sports metaphors, on behalf of the issue.
“[A]n open source contributor (and) artist friend” of Joseph’s has already put their artistic talent to work and come up with a logo, which was outlined in Joseph’s missive, and this likeable dragon would make an excellent choice.
After a few months of not hearing much from Microsoft, the company has been in the news a bit recently. First there was the brouhaha when it announced it was offering the .NET framework as open source. Then there were several big security problems with Windows, with one serious vulnerability going all the way back to Windows 95.
Although this would’ve been big news in the old days, the FOSS press has been relatively quiet about all this. There were a few articles about the .NET thing, with some writers pointing out that the MIT license which Redmond is using will offer no patent protection for Redmond owned .NET related patents, and the Windows security issues got next to no FOSS coverage at all.
My how times have changed.
A decade ago the open sourcing of any major program by Microsoft would have FOSS writers in a dither, even if released under the GPL. We would’ve been uber suspicious, certain that this was only the front end of a plan to end Linux and FOSS as we know it. As for the Windows security woes, we’d be rubbing our hands with glee, writing paragraph after paragraph on how much this proves the inferiority of Windows and the superiority of our beloved Linux. In those days, we had to take our good news wherever we could find it.
friend
noun
1. A person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
2. A person who gives assistance; patron; supporter: friends of the Boston Symphony.
3. A person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile: Who goes there? Friend or foe?
It would seem a simple thing, defining who and what a friend is. Deciding who is your friend is a fairly simple process.
Do I like that person?
Yes.
Does that person like me?
Allegedly.
Do we enjoy each other’s company?
Mostly.
Okay…then, I think we can safely assume that the two people cited above are friends.
Friendships have been forged since man decided to get up off his haunches and walk on two legs. Of course, back then deciding who was your friend had more to do with the amount of trust in mutuality. Could you go to sleep knowing that person will remain awake and alert to danger? Will that person share his food when you have none? Will that person help or protect you in times you are not able to help or protect yourself?
Those were weighty considerations and friendships were born more out of the ability to survive another sunset rather than if they made a good Spades partner.
People have become friends basically the same way for hundreds or thousands of years. But that all changed not too long ago. The method by which many people became friends happened with the flip of a switch…the switch that turned on the Internet.
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of November, 2014. 1. 32-bit Man in a 64-bit World by Larry…
FOSS Week in Review
Larry’s taking a much deserved day off, so I got elected to do this Week in Review. Glad to be back in the saddle.
Here’s hoping that all in the U.S. had an enjoyable Thanksgiving and that those of you who don’t live here managed to make it through all of the online articles on our quaint little holiday. As always, one thing leads to another. In this case, giving thanks for what we have morphs into the great Christmas shopping race, in which we make a grab for stuff we don’t yet own.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Google and the EU
While we in the States were dealing with family and turkey, the EU was busy working on preparing Google’s head for the platter. The European Parliament yesterday passed by a wide margin a non-binding resolution urging anti-trust regulators to break up the company. For those keeping score, the final vote was 384 yeas and 174 nays.
Yesterday also saw France and Germany seeking a review, from the European Competition Commission, of the EU’s rules to ensure that international Internet companies could be targeted in the olde world.
Google has been tangling with our friends across the pond since at least 2010 on a host of subjects, which include privacy issues, “right to be forgotten” rules, copyrights, tax questions and more. The resolution didn’t mention Google by name, but asked for the Commission to consider proposals to separate search engines from their other services.