London Calling...

Spent the weekend in London, one of my very favorite cities in the world. The weather was so beautiful, lifting spirits after the terrible suicide bombings. I was staying at a hotel in Leicester Square, so got to see Johnny Depp slinking out of a silver SUV at the London Premier of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The park was redecorated as Oompa Loompa land...wonder what that cost?

And the very next day, met up for lunch with my good chum Zaheda Bhorat, who has just joined the open source team at Google! Fit in a quick visit to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Tate Modern for lunch. Very cool "guide" on a PDA for this show, which I'd heard about from some Americans who saw the show. A great example of rich content that could be repurposed on the web for education, IMHO.

Then spent a couple of hours chatting with some nice folks at the British Computer Society Open Source Special Interest Group about FOSS licensing and why the world doesn't need yet another license. I'm having this conversation far too often these days as open source spreads around the world. Understandable next stage of license proliferation, I suppose...since the first 5 years was all about North American projects wanting their own individual licenses...why not spend the next 5 years working through the individual license aspirations of every country or jurisdictional region? Most troubling to me is the apparent perception that OSI is only for North America. Obviously we need to work harder to point out the global participation on our board.

Comments

[Armin]

Coming over to lovely Swindon as well?

Swindon has to offer: The Magic Roundabout, a Railway Museum and, erm, not much else.

[james governor]

bah humbug. you should have dropped me a line! :-)

[Danese Cooper]

Swindon...humm...yes, I'm happy to visit Intel UK on my next trip. Gotta plan a free whole day, though. Also mean to go to Ipswich to visit British Telecom...(other direction, I know).