Stock photo libraries: not always copyright-safe...

Sales shill tries to sell open-source developer his own open-source code.

I put things here so they are on the internet

The Syracuse University Libraries Licensing Principles report is written by members of the Syracuse University Libraries Licensing Committee and the Syracuse University Libraries.

Manifesto describing expectations for library collection vendors.

The Ethical Source movement is questioning the central assumptions of open source culture.

In my 2019 open source licenses year in review, I suggested that 2020 would see more adoption of licenses with a strong ethical focus.

Learn what open source licenses are, which one to choose, and why it matters.

In 1998, software engineer Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative — a global non-profit championing Open Source ideal — along with fellow advocate Eric S. Raymond. And for the past two decades, OSI has acted as an influential steward of the Open Source definition. As 2020 started though, Perens very publicly left the group,…

The terms 'open' and 'openness' are widely used across the current higher education environment particularly in the areas of repository services and scholarly communications. Open-access licensing and open-source licensing are two prevalent manifestations of open culture within higher education research environments. As theoretical ideals, open-licensing models aim at openness and academic freedom. But operating as they do within the context of global neoliberalism, to what extent are these models constructed by, sustained by, and co-opted by neoliberalism? In this paper, we interrogate the use of open-licensing within scholarly communications and within the larger societal context of neoliberalism. Through synthesis of various sources, we will examine how open access licensing models have been constrained by neoliberal or otherwise corporate agendas, how open access and open scholarship have been reframed within discourses of compliance, how open-source software models and software are co-opted by politico-economic forces, and how the language of 'openness' is widely misused in higher education and repository services circles to drive agendas that run counter to actually increasing openness. We will finish by suggesting ways to resist this trend and use open-licensing models to resist neoliberal agendas in open scholarship.

2019 was the most active year in open source licenses in a very, very long time, with news from China to Silicon Valley, from rawest capitalism to most thoughtful ethics.

Part of the library’s emerging framework for resource license negotiations was distributed to University Academic Senate in November, 2019. This post is a summary and explanation of ‘deal breakers’…

Addresses vendors' privacy obligations more generally.

Many e-commerce companies are appointing chief privacy officers to protect consumers, and advocates for privacy rights say they have big job ahead; privacy officers themselves describe their jobs as work in progress; Richard Purcell, chief privacy officer for Microsoft, says effort to weave data protection services into very fabric of corporate culture is paying off in recently announced features in Microsoft Internet Explorer browser software program, which enable users to determine just how much information about themselves they will release to Web sites they visit; DoubleClick, biggest Internet advertising company, has taken public beating from advocates for privacy rights; it now authorizes its privacy officer, Jules Polonetsky, to rip up contracts with companies that do not comply with DoubleClick's rules for protecting consumer privacy; DoubleClick is eager to build reputation as company that protects privacy; photo (M)

UPDATE 3/1/3019: T&F accepted our striking this entire section from our content agreement. So can you, at least in principle. Academic libraries acquire journals (and other kinds of content) on…

Open source licensing data quality varies across ecosystems, with issues stemming from a lack of data to conflicts between repositories and LICENSE files.