Moore's Scofflaws | Oxide Computer Company

Oxide Computer Company

The cloud you own. Hardware, with the software baked in, for running infrastructure at scale.

Tailoring Legal Protection for Computer Software

Peter S. Menell, Tailoring Legal Protection for Computer Software, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 39, No. 6 (Jul., 1987), pp. 1329-1372

Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp.

Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp., 714 F.2d 1240 (3d Cir. 1983), was the first time an appellate level court in the United States held that a computer's BIOS could be protected by copyright. As second impact, this ruling clarified that binary code, the machine-readable form of software and firmware, was copyrightable too and not only the human-readable source code form of software.[1][2]

Software Licenses and Workers' Rights

The open source ladder is leaning on the wrong wall.

CONTU Revisited: The Case against Copyright Protection for Computer Programs in Machine-Readable Form

Professor Samuelson casts a critical eye on the Final Report of the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) which recommended that copyright protection be extended to machine-readable versions of computer programs. CONTU appears to have misunderstood computer technology and misinterpreted copyright tradition in two significant respects. The Commission failed to take into account the historical importance of disclosure of the contents of protected works as a fundamental goal of both the copyright and patent laws. It also erroneously opined that the utilitarian character of a work was no bar to its copyrightability when both the statute and the case law make clear that utilitarian works are not copyrightable. Since computer programs in machine-readable form do not disclose their contents and are inherently utilitarian, copyright protection for them is inappropriate. Congress acted on CONTU's recommendation without understanding the significance of these conceptual flaws. Professor Samuelson recommends the creation of a new form of intellectual property law specifically designed for machine-readable programs.

CONTU Revisited: The Case Against Copyright Protection for Computer Programs in Machine-Readable Form

Professor Samuelson casts a critical eye on the Final Report of the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) which recommended that copyright protection be extended to machine-readable versions of computer programs. CONTU appears to have misunderstood computer technology and misinterpreted copyright tradition in two significant respects. The Commission failed to take into account the historical importance of disclosure of the contents of protected works as a fundamental goal of both the copyright and patent laws. It also erroneously opined that the utilitarian character of a work was no bar to its copyrightability when both the statute and the case law make clear that utilitarian works are not copyrightable. Since computer programs in machine-readable forms do not disclose their contents and are inherently utilitarian, copyright protection for them is inappropriate. Congress acted on CONTU's recommendation without understanding the significance of these conceptual flaws. Professor Samuelson recommends the creation of a new form of intellectual property law specifically designed for machine-readable programs.

Conway's Law | Laws of Software Engineering

Organizations design systems that mirror their own communication structure.

Open Source Power

We have to talk about open source licensing.

Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing | TechCrunch

New alternative category to 'closed source' could help companies monetize software in the open -- without going all-in on open source.

The Parity Public License

the free for open software license

Is Big Tech's AI Gamble Starting to Look Riskier? - Slashdot

The Washington Post looks at giant tech companies "feeding every available dollar into the cash-incinerating maw of AI machines." They warn "Tech superstars that once had oodles of cash left over at the end of each year are now flipping into the red..." [While optimists expect] huge corporate p...