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[News] Gordon Brown's Office is Violating Free/Open Source Laws

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UK government stole website theme

,----[ Quote ]
| NUMBER 10, the UK Prime Minister's website, is apparently built using a 
| design it nicked. 
`----

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/18/uk-government-stole-website

Number 10 and the Creative Commons

,----[ Quote ]
| I can only assume that Number 10 have requested, and received, permission of 
| the author to remove all traces of this license and attribution from their 
| Wordpress site. I have left a “contact us message” at the author’s website to 
| see if this is the case…   
| 
| [Update] Anthony Baggett, the theme’s author, has just confirmed that No 10 
| have not requested that the attribution be removed. That’s not playing fair 
| by my book.  
`----

http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2008/08/18/number-10-and-the-creative-commons/

More on Number 10’s website fiasco

,----[ Quote ]
| The original stylesheet4 is 612 lines in length and is 9234 bytes in size 
| (9KB). 
| 
| The modified stylesheet5 is 3826 lines long and weighs in at a frankly 
| astonishing 63724 bytes (63KB)! 
| 
| [...]
| 
| “If” the developers have modified the Wordpress engine, as is being suggested 
| as a possibility here, and then sold it to the Government, in my humble 
| understanding that means they have distributed their modifications. That 
| means those modifications must also be licensed under the GPL. I had a quick 
| look on New Media Maze’s web site and couldn’t find an area for software 
| downloads or mention of the GPL. That doesn’t say anything to be honest and 
| there might be nothing to this, but it would be interesting to find out a bit 
| more… Is there a real Wordpress guru who can look at the “footprint” of the 
| XHTML the site generates and tell if it is different? Or are there any other 
| ways to tell if it has been modified?         
| 
| Anyway, what a wheez this all is for us bloggers: It just isn’t Gordon’s year 
| is it… 
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http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2008/08/18/more-on-number-10/

RMS on Copyrights:

http://www.scms.waikato.ac.nz/docs/pdfs/Copyright_Lecture_DL_Flyer.pdf


Yesterday:

US presidential candidate is a pirate

,----[ Quote ]
| THE PRESUMED Republican US presidential candidate John McCain favours
| draconian copyright enforcement, except when his own election campaign uses
| other people's music.
`----

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/16/gop-presidential-candidate


The Brampton Factor: Analysts fail on open source

,----[ Quote ]
| For open source software to achieve its full potential, people's perceptions
| must change. Yet how can that happen when open source is so woefully
| neglected by analysts, asks Martin Brampton.
|
| [...]
|
| This gap leaves an opening for analysts, who should be relatively neutral
| about the success or failure of products or vendors, to stand back and form a
| view of the trends.
`----

http://management.silicon.com/itpro/0,39024675,39272474,00.htm


Related:

Lawmaker blasts U.K. government on Microsoft policy

,----[ Quote ]
| "A member of Parliament of the United Kingdom has launched a stinging
| attack on the U.K. government's IT strategy, saying that it has given
| Microsoft too much control.
|
| John Pugh, who is a member of Parliament, or MP, for Southport and a
| member of the Public Accounts Committee, was speaking in an
| adjournment debate on Tuesday that he had called. The aim of the
| debate, he said, was to explore the alternatives to using Microsoft
| software, including open source."
|
| [...]
`----

http://www.news.com/Lawmaker-blasts-U.K.-government-on-Microsoft-policy/2100-1012_3-6212721.html
http://tinyurl.com/2ashm2
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