If being right were all that mattered in Washington, Jimmy Carter would have served two terms.

The leaders of the open source movement are those people and companies who give the most to it before they try to take anything out of it. This is a fact that has been dawning very slowly in the industry, where many "mixed source" offerings have gone nowhere, and lost their chance to catch on.

Precursor is a good candidate for this. It exited the independent research business in January, and said that it would instead provide "its high value research to a more limited number of clients."

Its name is letterboxing. And the fact it’s not being done more is the rip-off. Every year, at the Academy Awards, speakers go on-and-on about how "the movies are better in the theater." Why? Because of the aspect ratio. Movies seen at the movies are wide-screen. TVs are narrower. Of course, there is a solution, […]

The fall of Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), which went Chapter 11 today, has many lessons, including a vital one for open source. SGI rose to prominence as the maker of a "graphics supercomputer," and led Hollywood’s digital revolution in the 1980s. It was a very important company, led by Jim Clark, who later founded Netscape. […]

Assuming network neutrality fails in the Congress, with Verizon and AT&T favoring specific Web sites (like Yahoo’s) over others, some of their chief rivals are ready: AOL has struck up a deal with Clearwire to co-brand its wireless broadband system (which uses licensed frequencies, as opposed to WiFi). Clearwire, which is slower than DSL and […]

Open source is not seen as a political philosophy because the issues followed by those who understand it are seen as "geek" issues. (That’s Adam Smith to the right.) These are some of the issues I’m talking about: Copyright fairness Defining networking at the edges rather than at the center. Opening up more unlicensed spectrum […]

Everyone knows that blogs are open source journalism. The out-of-pocket cost for me to offer this to you is minimal. Its economic value to me is based on how many of you read it. Every blogger is a publisher as well as an editor, subject to both sets of ethics by the requirements of the […]

G. Pascal Zachary, after a multi-decade career with Big Media, has emerged confused. At John Dvorak’s Uncensored site he urges journalists to embrace their biases, and to state them up-front. He calls this "a new ethos of journalism." He thinks he’s saying something new. He’s not. He’s saying something quite old. Here is what he’s […]

This week I have many of the thoughts you have been reading here for a week, only in a condensed, early version. (I usually write my columns a week ahead of time.) Please consider subscribing to A-Clue.com. Subscribe here. Always free. When I first agreed to do an open source blog at ZDNet my beat […]