OStatic

Last week the Canadian public media service, the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) became the first major North American broadcaster to distribute a DRM-free download of a primetime television show via BitTorrent. The download was not only DRM free, it didnﾒt contain any commercials or license based copy restrictions. In fact the CBC website proclaimed ﾓYou are free to download, share and burn this videoﾔ. This is how I like my media served.

Last week Novell released version 1.9 of the Mono open source .NET framework as well as a new IDE called Monodevelop. The newest version of Mono now supports a number of the advanced features found in Microsoftﾒs .NET 3.0 framework.

While Mono and Novell, which sponsors the project, have been much maligned by various factions within the open source community, the overall impact Mono could have on Microsoft and the open source community could in fact be large.

Last week Amazon announced a new web service called FWS (Fulfillment Web Service). FWS is an add-on to Amazonﾒs existing fulfillment system which allows any developer to interface directly with Amazonﾒs inventory management system using open APIs. This service allows you to programmatically print shipping labels for your inventory which you then send to Amazon. They store it until your app issues a shipment request at which point your web service call causes some human (or perhaps a robot) to pick and pack your product and then ship it out to your customer.

Late last month Microsoft received a tentative slap in the face when the ISO\IEC didnﾒt approve Microsoftﾒs OOXML (Open Office XML) format as an ISO standard. This came as a bit of a surprise to industry analysts as Microsoft has been lobbying hard to get its Office file format approved.

Late last year the head of the working group handling Microsoftﾒs application at the ISO accused the company of stacking his group and interfering in ISO business.

Despite continued infighting between the Free Software and Open Source communities, the OSI has blessed the new AGPLv3 license.

Late last week the AGPLv3 license (Affero GNU Public License) formally completed the OSIﾒs (Open Source Initiative) license review process. The AGPL license differs from the ubiquitous GPL license in a number of important ways, the biggest of which closes the so-called ﾓASP loophole.ﾔ