Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

Sadly left the family - it's too tragic really; M.'s inimitable "I want come with you, stay at home !" rendeth the heart strings, despite it's abiguous solution.
Coach to Stanstead, Ryan-Air - the neon-yellow airline to somewhere that is not Rome: nice; read The Economist - caught up with the blog backlog. Tried to navigate the kernel's ATA power management code.
Enjoyed a great sermon on Church Fathers - D: Dante, from Daniel Harrel - fasincating - must read the Divine Comedy.
Boggled at the latest copyright-assignment idiocy (which it seems is sadly becoming fashionable again) - this time from Canonical: want to alienate and shrink your developer community - while persuing an elusive and unrealistic goal ? - try adding copyright assignment. Jonathan makes some excellent general points in his LWN article:
Agreements like Sun's ... are common when dealing with corporate-owned projects; they clearly prioritize control and the ability to take things proprietary over the creation of an independent development community. ... When developers contribute code to a project, they tend to get intangible rewards in return. So asking them to hand over ownership of the code as well might seem to be pushing things a little too far .... allowing a competitor to take code proprietary may well be beyond those limits .... Companies which demand such rights may find that their community projects are not as successful as they would like.
What is particularly strange is that many seem to demand copyright assignment, with the most tenuous of rationals, and for code they have no realistic chance of re-licensing for money anyway. Asking for assignment to an independant foundation is a tall enough, order, nevermind a for-profit company. Presumably a better solution is to pick a license that fits your preferred business model, and compete with other entrants by being better.
Landed; rather grotty, but cheap bus - with high volume Italian football commentary to Rome - waited for Thorsten while trying to unwind the Italian train system. It would be great if the ticket machines (like some German ones I've enjoyed) would print you timetables (or even just show the connection details).
Waited for Thorsten, then the ante-penultimate train to Orte, then a taxi to avoid an indefinite wait in the freezing cold. Out for a late dinner with Thorsten & Fridrich.

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Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

2009-11-01: Sunday.