The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released the third draft of the revised third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Some of the changes in the new draft, such as the increased clarification and legal language, or the housekeeping changes that reflect new aspects of the license are likely to be accepted. However, the license also includes a new approach to the controversial issue of lock-down technologies as well as more explicit language about patents, including language designed to prevent a re-occurrence of agreements such as the one that Novell entered into with Microsoft — all of which is apt to kindle heated debate as the revision process enters its final stages after fifteen months of intensive work.

Source: New GPLv3 draft takes new approach to patents, lock-down technologies

You may have heard about the Kathy Sierra case, which has been spreading in the blogosphere like wildfire for the past couple of days. In case you haven’t heard about the news, here’s a quick synopsis. Sierra, a prominent female blogger, decided to withdraw from participating in a workshop at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference and decided to stop writing on her blog because of the death threats and crude sexual comments that she has received in the course of four weeks.

This is one idea that has been brought up before and never flies very far,Baldy

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Source: Make Internet Better By Killing Anonymity