Here’s an interesting post on High Earth Orbit about the usage and promotion of open source software for defense contracts. As a developer of open source tools, Andrew Turner of course brings up some “pros” for the government to push open source, but it’s the “cons” that are really interesting. A big “con” – the US government having something called “sovereign immunity” which apparently means something like it can’t be sued unless it consents to be sued. Hunh – the Republic of ScienceLogic-Land? Closing the loop here, a federal appeals court just boosted open-source software licenses by saying that any infringements can now get more severe remedies under copyright law (instead of contract law); here’s the case, Jacobsen v Katzer. But apparently not if it’s the US government?? Who knows more?

Does Linus Torvalds hate everyone except for developers? You have to check out this article on an email exchange he had with Network World this week, talking about how fed up he is with the “security circus”. Over the course of the exchange and some other comments from last month, he manages to blast security folk, OpenBSD (on security) in particular, vendors and PR people (of course). In the midst of the barrage of colorful language, it’s difficult to really get his point – which if you can dig it out, ends up being surprisingly sensible.

Sharon Taylor, Chief Architect of ITIL V3, recently wrote that with the release of the latest version of ITIL, BSM is now an ‘ITIL best practice.’ You say potato… “The distinction between IT and the business has blurred, and the language of IT has been replaced with the language of the business.”