The meeting was recorded and is available online (though not part of the Software Garden podcast series). See the OSS SIG's wiki page about the meeting for links to the recordings.

Corporate attorneys will probably find both recordings of interest. There were several attorneys in attendence and there was a lot of give and take between the speakers and the audience. These weren't speeches as much as discussions in many ways.

This show is a discussion with attorney Stephen Gold of the firm Gordon and Glickson LLC in Chicago, IL. Steve has experience in both business law counseling and information technology matters. He advises some big companies as well as some smaller ones. We discuss how general corporate lawyers he has interacted with have been dealing with Open Source Software and in particular with software covered by the GPL. He also gives his opinion about certain controversial clauses in the GPL.

The issue of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' choice of open document formats is of interest to many in the Open Source and Open Formats world, and relates to licensing, so I mention it here.

In attendance at the meeting were Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance Eric Kriss and CIO of the Commonwealth Peter Quinn, as well as representatives from a wide variety of Council member software companies.

The meeting was recorded in its entirety by the Council and is available for download.

You will find a link to the recording on the Council's OSS SIG wiki on the "Open Format Meeting September 2005" page.

O'Reilly Media is a major publisher of computer books. It also hosts conferences on computer languages, Open Source, and Emerging Technologies. Tim discusses their policy for copying computer code examples in their books, their experience with copyable and online books and the effects of piracy, the value of the openness and the "architecture of participation", where there's value in the Open Source ecosystem, the balance between what you own and what you give away, and more.

Some related links:

• O'Reilly Policy on Re-Use of Code Examples from Books (2001)
• Tim's "Open Source Paradigm Shift" essay
• Tim's Blog, "O'Reilly Radar"

MySQL AB produces MySQL, a very popular database system that is released under a "dual license" approach that includes the GPL as well as a proprietary one. Marten discusses the differences between the two licenses and the issue of deciding which to use. He also talks about business models, ensuring ownership of copyrights in an Open Source project and in general, software patents, the fact that about 40% of MySQL's active installations are on Windows computers, various segmentations of their market with respect to different licenses, and whether an Open Source-based ISV can make a reasonable amount of money in the eyes of investors.

Some related links:

• MySQL Licensing Policy page
• MySQL Open Source License page
• Press Release: MySQL AB Celebrates European Parliament's Decision Against Software Patents

Read the PDF: Professional DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals (excerpt)

One of the events I'm participating in is for the Massachusetts Software Council's Open Source Special Interest Group. We are kicking off the SIG with a "summit" meeting on Friday, June 24th, at the Babson College Executive Conference Center in Wellesley, Massachusetts. There are three sessions and a lunch with a keynote by JBoss CEO Marc Fleury. The sessions are: Open Source Licensing, Open Source Business Models and Strategies, and a technical discussion about how to create a successful Open Source project. We'll have senior people in the thick of Open Source issues from Red Hat, IBM (Douglas Heintzman, executive chair of IBM's Open Source Steering Committee just confirmed), Novell and the Mono Project, JasperSoft, and others up on stage and I hope lots of interaction with people in the audience.

Check out the details on the Software Council website on the page for this event.

Seating is limited, so sign up in advance. The event is only $20 in advance and I'm giving out complimentary copies of the evaluation version of my "A Developer's Introduction to Copyright and Open Source" video (they normally go for $29.95). I'm going to try to get this recorded for podcasting, but I can't be sure that I'll be able to.

Larry has served as the general counsel and secretary of the Open Source Initiative, authored the book "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law", and advises Black Duck Software and SpikeSource, Inc. We discussed the "based upon" language in the GPL and derivative works for about 15 minutes, then indemnification, due diligence in mergers and acquisitions (Open Source and proprietary), audits, attorney/client privilege, the effects of Open Source and Open Standards on policies about patents, and more.

Some related links:

• Larry's book, " Open Source Licensing : Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law"
• Open Source Initiative

Joel has the perspective of one who worked for Microsoft back in the 1990's and develops and sells proprietary software today. We talked about developers keeping track of where their code comes from and watching out for GPL code that shouldn't be there, why developers who read Slashdot and Eric Raymond are more likely to be at least somewhat aware of copyright issues than their managers who don't, differences between Windows and Unix when it comes to combining code (especially back in the days when the GPL was written), access to Microsoft source code, economics of Open Source, and more.

Some related links:

• Joel's book, "Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity"
• Eric Raymond's book, "The Art of UNIX Programming"
• Joel's "Strategy Letter V"
• Joel's detailed explanation about not buying municipal bonds from retail brokers

You can learn about new "shows" by reading this weblog, or by subscribing to the podcast's RSS feed using software such as iPodder, iPodderX, Doppler, etc. A list of shows is also available on this page. The main Software Garden podcast page is www.softwaregarden.com/podcast.

The people I hope to interview are deeply involved in legal issues or software development. The first show is an interview with Commonwealth of Massachusetts Information Technology Division General Counsel Linda Hamel. For over 30 minutes she discusses her experience as a lawyer of the Commonwealth's move to encourage the use of Open Source in the mix of software they buy and commission. She talks about how government entities, like the State, have a different risk profile when it comes to Open Source than many commercial entities. She goes over some of her own learning experiences. Some of what she says fits in very nicely with the theories presented in another podcast (on ITConversations) of Geoffrey Moore's "Open Source Has Crossed the Chasm...Now What?" which describes situations when Open Source is the appropriate choice for companies. Linda ends with: "...[with respect to Open Source Licensing] the culture is reflected in the legal documents and if you don't understand the culture it's going to be very hard for you to understand the legal documents."

Linda has posted a lot of useful material on the ITD website, www.mass.gov/itd, especially in the "Policies, Standards & Legal" section.

Do you notice something wrong here? IBM is talking about Open STANDARDS, and the Reuters article talks about Open SOURCE. In fact, further into the Reuters article it says "Open standards is an approach to technology development in which inventors make the underlying progamming [sic] code publicly available for other developers to build on and extend. It contrasts with the proprietary, or closed development approach most major technology companies, led by Microsoft Corp., have used to maximize their control over products they build." Of course, that's wrong. That's a definition for Open Source, not Open Standards. There is confusion between the terms Open Standards and Open Source. Even Linux Today picked the article up with that headline.

I checked with an IBM PR person, and indeed, the agreement is about products that work with IBM technologies through Open Standards (of course, some of these technologies are implemented with Open Source, but not all, but the products being developed don't have to be Open Source).

The article's writer, Eric Auchard, certainly knows the difference. Apparently, somewhere along the way to publication as the article had links added and headlines written, the headline became "Open-Source" instead of "Open Standards", and then a paragraph defining Open Source got added, but with it now saying it was about Open Standards. Of course, since IBM talks about both, and Israel was basically closed to business around the Passover holiday, confusion was easy to happen. I understand this will probably be corrected (as news articles from a wire service frequently have always been).

For me this was yet another example of something I've been pointing out for some time: There is a lot of confusion about Open Source that comes from lack of knowledge. Precise terms matter. "Highway" "Driveway" -- what's the difference? They're both "ways". "Source", "Standards", they're both "Open" and have to do with software, whatever that is. No.

Make sure people really know and understand what you're talking about when you talk about Open Source or Open Standards. Many proprietary products support Open Standards quite well. Some Open Source does not. Open Standards does not mean Open Source.

This is one of the issues I bring up in my video. It's nice to see it was worth devoting time to. (By the way, the video is in duplication and should be ready for purchase next week.)