Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, has taken the BytesFree.org Pledge. Well… sort of. See for yourself:
Our software is GPL so anybody can determine what our file formats are like.
///mgm
Actually, this brings to mind an important set of points:
- You can have open formats with proprietary, closed software
- You can have closed formats with proprietary, closed software
- But you cannot have closed formats with Free Software
It will be awfully tough to convince any high-tech CEO to actually sign the BytesFree.org pledge, but as Marten notes, he doesn’t really have to. Is that a dodge? Yes, but it also happens to be true.
I don’t always like to make this point, because all too often open formats get lumped in with open source, and it could scare away some potential participants simply because they don’t want to open their code, although they’re fine with open formats. But it’s good to remind folks every now and then that, with Free Software, the artificial barriers to entry that we call closed formats simply cannot exist.
Tags: News,
mickos,
mysql,
open formats,
pledge
AB 1668 has long left us, so I’ve cleaned some aspects of BytesFree.org. The emphasis from now on will be information rights and political actions to carry forward the ideals. I have the structure in place for a voter information project, and the first info is making its way (read: data entry by me!) into the project. More coming later…
Tags: News
For the last couple of months, I’ve had the idea that there should be a place where interested persons can find info on what politicians and candidates have received donations from the MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft’s anti-ODF works, etc. I figure bytesfree.org is as good a place as any.
Fortunately, the data is out there and publicly accessible, but there are all sorts of challenges - the info is uneven, in disparate locations, and (perhaps ironically) in a variety of difficult-to-import formats. The long and short of it is that it’s a lot of grunt work: copying, pasting, massaging, and my personal favorite: data entry.
But keep your eye out for the BytesFree.org Voter Information Project - it will only get better from here.
Tags: Action,
contributions,
elections,
lobbyists,
politicians
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