Free Software Linux

Last week, a bill enabling the California Community Colleges to integrate open educational resources (OER) into its core curriculum was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger.

ccLearn has re-opened the search for a ccLearn counsel. Note that the job title has been changed from the previous search to better reflect our high priority for someone with relevant and reasonably deep experience in intellectual property and copyright law. Though we had many superlative candidates for our initial round, we found that no one person could be expected to have all of the qualifications we needed on all fronts; hence, we have decided to re-issue the call for applicants. If you or someone you know is interested, we strongly encourage you to apply!

Open source licenses get the force of copyright law, in a landmark decision that rules in favor of a train enthusiast who felt that commercial software vendors violated the license to the software he developed for model trains.

Professor Lawrence Lessig reports on a ruling that protects “open source licenses.” The opinion was rendered by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (they have the final say on US Intellectual Property disputes). The the provisions outlined by the Artistic License were upheld as legally binding. The precedent set here should also protect other open licenses (GPL, Creative Commons, BSD, etc). The case is a nice legal affirmation of the values we’ve all been putting into our free and openly licensed works for so long!

When it comes to copyright law, not knowing the rules can get you in a lot of hot water, but figuring out the rules can be just as frustrating. Luckily, the American Library Association has created a...

If you're a budding photographer who's never quite sure what your rights are when you're snapping pics, photography web site Photojojo's 10 legal commandments of photography should give you an idea...