Larry Lessig is Susan B. Anthony

I think I was a surprised as anyone when I heard that Larry Lessig was stepping away from Creative Commons. It seemed like a sudden change of direction, because Lessig has been a vocal advocate for freedom and choice for so many years. But as I hear Lessig describe his journey from Creative Commons to … Continue reading Larry Lessig is Susan B. Anthony →

Spook Developer Speaks! An interview with Matthew Burton.

I had a chance to talk with Matthew Burton, the former intelligence analyst turned open source cause celebre who just launched a tool that helps frame and understand arguments with imperfect evidence. It's based on method called Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), which has been around for quite some time. Matthew and his friend Josh … Continue reading Spook Developer Speaks! An interview with Matthew Burton. →

International cooperation through open source

After patiently waiting for me to stop prattling about how useful open source can be to facilitate meaningful cooperation among parties, even when they're competitors, a colleague asked for examples of how open source has facilitated international cooperation. I started to respond, but stopped short. About three times. I could name all kinds of projects with … Continue reading International cooperation through open source →

How Linux, sandboxes and happy accidents can help a soldier.

Today, we announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is shooting for its 14th Common Criteria certification. My job means I get excited about Common Criteria certifications, which also means I'm unpopular at dinner parties. This certification, though, has me more excited than usual, because it means much more than a rubber stamp from a certification … Continue reading How Linux, sandboxes and happy accidents can help a soldier. →

Flatten PDFs almost painlessly.

I do a lot of presentations. When I export to PDF from OpenOffice, things usually work great. When I do these presentations online, though, the web tool will sometimes wreck the design: fonts get dropped, transparent backgrounds turn white... it's a mess. So I need a way of turning each page of the PDF into … Continue reading Flatten PDFs almost painlessly. →

Beautiful drop shadows now bow before me.

I got a lot of compliments on the design of the ignite session I did for Mil-OSS. Part of what made it work so well, I think, is the drop shadows, like you see here: For a long time, I did these using the Gimp. It's kind of a tedious process, especially if you are … Continue reading Beautiful drop shadows now bow before me. →

Fighting Forks

This is the ignite presentation I gave for the Mil-OSS WG2 conference today. It's a tremendous group of sandal-shod revolutionaries who want to bring open source and the US Department of Defense together. You can sign up for the mailing list here. If you use your imagination and insert a lot of stumbling, fumbling, and … Continue reading Fighting Forks →

Open Source Pork

The adorably named "Snort" project has been the mainstay of open source intrusion detection systems for as long as I can remember. The success of Snort and its commercial wing, SourceFire, is one of the early successes of open source, especially in security. On July 5th, the Open Information Security Foundation, a consortium of companies and … Continue reading Open Source Pork →

Open Source in Government: Who was first?

Brian Purchia of Burson-Marsteller has a post over on GovFresh about the value of open source to unions. His argument pivots on cost-savings. I think you could make a more expansive argument that includes risk mitigation and innovation, but describing the advantage to unions is an interesting angle I hadn't seen before. I noticed that … Continue reading Open Source in Government: Who was first? →

Google contacts in mutt and vim

I'm a long-time fan of the mutt email client. I've probably been using it for ten years. It's quick, text-based, and does precisely what I want. I've been using the vim text editor for even longer than that. In using mutt and vim, though, I surrender some of the convenience of a mail client like … Continue reading Google contacts in mutt and vim →