Denise Howell is a seasoned appellate and intellectual property litigator based in Los Angeles. Denise writes one of the first and most popular law-related blogs, Bag and Baggage, coined the term "blawg" and helped pioneer podcasting for lawyers. Microcontent obsessed since 2001, she is frequently quoted in the media on legal issues involving intellectual property and technology law. "Sound Policy" is Denise's show at IT Conversations, and it's also what she hopes results from the briefs she submits to court. Email Denise at dhowell@gmail.com.
Dennis Kennedy is a computer lawyer and legal technology expert based in St. Louis, Missouri. An award-winning author, a frequent speaker and a widely-read blogger, he has more than 300 publications on legal, technology and Internet topics, many of which are collected in his e-books. Dennis has been described as someone who knows almost every rock song in existence and, more importantly, how they apply to technology and law. Email Dennis at his gmail address.
Tom Mighell is Senior Counsel and Litigation Technology Support Coordinator at Cowles & Thompson in Dallas. He has published the Internet Legal Research Weekly newsletter since 2000 and blogged about the Internet and legal technology at Inter Alia since August of 2002. With Tom's singing, Ernie on guitar and Dennis' encylopedic knowledge of rock music, we may have the beginnings of a good band, if this whole blog thing doesn't work out. Email Tom at tmighell@swbell.net.
Marty Schwimmer left a partnership in the largest trademark practice in the world and founded Schwimmer Mitchell, a full-service IP micro-boutique in Westchester County, New York, where he represents owners of famous and not yet famous trademarks. He founded The Trademark Blog, the first IP law blog and the one with the most pictures. He is the first to come in and the last to leave in his firm. Email Marty at marty@schwimmerlegal.com.
Ernest Svenson practices law with a mid-sized law firm in New Orleans, specializing in business-related lawsuits. Most of his practice takes place in federal court, especially the Eastern District. He is best known for his weblog Ernie the Attorney, which he started as an experiment. Like many experiments it got out of control. Nevertheless, he continues to practice law and, occasionally,
to seek enlightenment. Email Ernest at esvenson@gmail.com.
About this blog
Between Lawyers provides just-in-time group commentary on the issues
raised when technology, culture and the law intersect. We take you
behind the firewalls and conference room doors to show you how
experienced lawyers deal with these issues and help you prepare for
the new challenges we all face. For more, see our introductory post.
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Open Source software and, as a result, the Open Source licenses.
There's a lot to think about in the land of Open Source these days, much discussion, and much discussiion to come. And there is much rethinking.
This is a discussion that readers of this blog should be following and, where it makes sense, contributing to.
First, consider carefully the discussion opened by Tim O'Reilly's recent post "Open Source Licenses Are Obsolete," which, not surprisingly, has generated some controversy and discussion. However, O'Reilly raises several key points, one of which has been discussed for a while - how do software license models, including Open Source licenses, work in a world that is moving toward "software as a service" models?
At the same time, work on a major revision of the General Public license continues. The current draft of version 3 of the GPL is here. John Paczkowski's humorously titled post is a good intro to the GPL revision, covering Linus Torvald's objections and giving some good links.
I've written about the Open Source licenses in what I hope is a practical and understandable way (links here).
The Open Source licenses, Open Source software and the Open Source philosophy and community may well be the most significant and influential area of technology today. It's a subject that you must educate yourself about.
Just out this week, Socialtext Open: "Socialtext Open is released under a standard open source license, and contains all of Socialtext's enterprise grade code aside from enterprise management and enterprise integration tools."
Wikis at work,
BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP Ramp SOA Spec Efforts: "The group also has setup what they call a 'vendor-neutral Web site, designed as a wiki' they will use to collaborate, communicate and gain feedback from developers. There's a place for news, white papers, public specifications and access to information on early deployments."
Draft of New Version 3 of General Public License Now Available
The biggest news in the world of Open Source licenses these days is that, after 15 years, the GNU General Public License is being revised from version 2 to version 3. THIS IS IMPORTANT. The current draft, more information, rationales for changes and areas to comment and discuss the changes are all available at the GPLv3 site.
From the home page:
The core legal mechanism of the GNU GPL is that of copyleft, which requires modified versions of GPL'd software to be GPL'd themselves. Copyleft is essential for preventing the enclosure of the free software commons, today as it was in 1991. But today's environment is more complex and diverse; thus, a fully effective copyleft calls for additional legal measures. Devising these measures is complicated by another aspect of our success: the worldwide adoption of free software principles. We hope and expect that contributors to GPLv3 will come from all over the globe, and from every developer, distributor, and user constituency.
Bookmark the site and follow and/or join the discussion.
Andrew Sullivan writes about a Stephen Hayes article on terrorist training camps in Saddam's Iraq. In the Hayes article, we learn that of approximately two million seized documents, only 50.000 have been translated and analyzed in the last few years, causing growing levels of exasperation in the U.S. government and intelligence community.
It goes without saying that this state of affairs again raises the "are we safer now?" question and, if you read the entire article, you'll wonder where priorities really lie in the current bureaucratic approaches.
HOWEVER . . .
In the middle of Hayes' article comes one of the most intriguing, even innovative ideas we are likely to see in the field of intelligence analysis.
Consider this quote:
Following several weeks of debate, a consensus has emerged: The vast majority of the 2 million captured documents should be released publicly as soon as possible.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has convened several meetings in recent weeks to discuss the Pentagon's role in expediting the release of this information. According to several sources familiar with his thinking, Rumsfeld is pushing aggressively for a massive dump of the captured documents. "He has a sense that public vetting of this information is likely to be as good an astringent as any other process we could develop," says Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita.
Fascinating stuff. Surely putting thousands of eyes onto these documents must be better that storing them in boxes. It would also be interesting to see what cutting-edge scanning and analytical tools used in electronic discovery could do with these materials.
I encourage you to read the article and draw your own conclusions. I find this story quite troubling and think that it would be a good idea to "open source" this material rather than to keep it in closed boxes. A public debate over the issue would also be worthwhile. Consider this approach in contrast to John Robb's recent comments on the problems of isolated decision-making.
Denise Howell
Dennis M. Kennedy
Tom Mighell
Marty Schwimmer
Ernest Svenson
