Posts filed under 'News'
People keep asking me why I haven’t updated my blogs for so long – the reason is actually quite simple. I’m not ill, dead or have lost interest – the last few weeks have simply been rather busy and I haven’t found time to write the things I had been planning on writing next and I didn’t want to post anything else just to keep the sites updated.
Anyway, maybe I should give a quick update what I’m up to at the moment. Remember last year around this time I was at OM’s Global Orientation conference? Well, I am again now – in fact it’s starting today and I’m writing this sitting at the information desk, waiting for the first participants to arrive. I love these conferences, it always amazes me that after five years with OM I have gotten to know so many people and it’s great to see them coming together for an event like this one again. The next two or three days are going to be quite busy, after that I may be able to update some blogs – I have another sermon (about patience) that I would like to post here, as well as some thoughts about song lyrics that need to be posted over at ccmlyrics.com and a few new recipes for my german cooking site. So please bear with me – I’m still alive and I will be posting stuff again soon. Thanks for your patience!
Technorati : OM, conference, personal news
January 9th, 2007
Earlier this month a court in Germany ruled in favor of gpl-violations.org that D-Link had violated the GPL by including GPLed code in a hardware device without adhering to the terms of the GPL. Specifically, D-Link did not include a copy of the license with the device and did not make the parts of the source code that were GPL licensed available.
The full text of the decision is now available here for those of you that can read German and it is an interesting read. The court clarifies that licensing source code under the GPL does not mean the author of the code is waiving all his rights under copyright law. ยง4 of the GPL, that specifically prohibits distribution of the software in violation of the conditions set forth by the GPL, is fully valid under german law and D-Link thus had no right to distribute the device in question. D-Link had argued that the provisions of the GPL violate competition laws and cannot be enforced. The court stated that even if that was true (and it didn’t have to decide on that claim), then D-Link would have had no right at all to use the source code because an invalid license would also have voided the right to use it under its terms.
D-Link, in a statement that I find rather funny, said they are not going to appeal the ruling and praised themselves for not settling the case, so that now the GPL has been properly tested in court and can be relied on. They are certainly putting a good spin on their stubbornness 
.
Technorati : D-Link, GPL, Germany, copyright, court, license
September 22nd, 2006
Every couple of years, OM (the organization I work with) invites its longterm workers to a gathering, where we can have a few days of fellowship and teaching and are brought up to speed on the latest developments in the various ministries and so on. So I spent the last week at OM’s “International Forum” in a holiday park in the west of Germany, together with about 900 others who came together from all the ends of the earth. It was a great time and a truly international meeting – I really enjoyed seeing people again that I met in places like India and the US and of course a number of my colleagues from our office in the UK that I’m officially working with.
We had some great teaching by Dr. Steve Brady from the UK, who took us on a three part journey through Nehemiah 1 – 6 and did so in a remarkably funny and at the same time very profound way. There was also teaching on the first day by our founder and former director, George Verwer, and on the last day by our current director, Peter Maiden. I think Peter’s message was really good, but I had a headache and some difficulty following what he was saying… I guess I’ll have to listen to the recording to find out more.
After the teaching, we also had “business sessions”, in which the OM leadership presented the most pressing issues in the future of OM. I cannot go into detail here, so let me just say that we talked about the transformation of communities, the transformation of our marketing and the transformation of OM. I had expected the business part to be rather boring, but in fact it was very exciting and informative and I went back home with a much better understanding of where we are headed in the future.
The afternoons usually offered a choice of different sessions that I often didn’t go to… I instead used the time to read two books and relax a bit before we had another session in the evening in which we focused on various groups that OM works with. We talked about unreached majority groups, the marginalized, secular Europe, the next generation… there was more, but that’s what I can think of right now. Those sessions were very encouraging with lots of presentations by people actually involved in the work sharing their experience with us.
What else happened… well, the most significant thing probably was that we got hit by lightning on Sunday afternoon. Our internet bus (an internet cafe in a bus) was hit and suffered some damage, the most damage was to our TV truck, though, where quite a bit of expensive equipment was severely damaged. But at least nobody was injured and there was enough spare equipment to keep the conference going, even though the A/V team certainly had a busy afternoon replacing the sound desk and loads of cabling.
Now I’m back home, working from my living room office and already looking forward to meeting people again at the System Administrator training in Belgium in October… always one of the highlights of the year.
Technorati : International Forum, OM, christian, missions, people groups
August 26th, 2006
It’s taken a lot longer than I had initially hoped, but today I was finally able to launch ccmlyrics.com, with an initial article looking at the lyrics to “What if His people prayed?” by the Casting Crowns.
Originally, CCMLyrics had been planned as a lyrics search engine and a friend and I actually spent a lot of time developing a rather sophisticated search technology that worked really well. That was about four years ago… we then realized that there was no way for us to legally make these lyrics available from our site and as Christians we felt that we should be setting an example and not breaking the law. So the domain(s) lay dormant for a long time, until earlier this year I decided to transform it into a blog on lyrics instead. It’s still loosely based on the original design, but updated to work with modern blogging software (running WordPress like this site). I’m very happy that it’s finally online and so I hope that many of the regular visitors here will also visit ccmlyrics.com frequently – maybe add it to your RSS feeds now.
I guess this means that in the future, you will find christian music reviews over on the new site, although I may still link to them from here as well for your convenience.
Technorati : ccm, christian, launch, lyrics, music, search
July 26th, 2006
It looks like some larger companies are starting to see the light and realizing that DRM is more of a burden than it has benefit to both consumers and content providers. In a symbolic move, Yahoo are now offering a DRM-free personalized MP3 download – you may think about the artist and the song what you want, but at least it’s a step in the right direction and the reasons that Yahoo gives for this initiative show that they are in fact serious about this.
“The only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform.” – that’s a strong statement, especially coming from a technology company that could easily jump on the DRM bandwagon and do the exact same thing. But it looks like Yahoo have realized that DRM comes at a cost that is much higher than the potential benefit and so this recent move is a warning shot in the direction of the record labels that still seem to think of DRM as the best thing since sliced bread. Instead, Yahoo suggests that offering better features, personalization etc. and the option to play the music on whatever platform they want to their customers is what they would like to do to add value to music downloads. I couldn’t agree more. As Yahoo put it so nicely, “Un-DRM’d content is implicitly more valuable to a consumer”.
Of course the success of Indie-music sites like Emusic, which have been selling un-DRM’d MP3s with increasing success, is also starting to threaten a DRM based business model, so it only makes sense for Yahoo to put some pressure on the labels to be allowed to start doing the same thing. But regardless of their motives, the move for more DRM-free downloads is a step in the right direction and should ultimately provide consumers with more freedom of choice. And maybe our cultural heritage will in the end be a bit less threatened than it seems to be at the moment. And that’s good news indeed.
Technorati : DRM, MP3, Yahoo, freedom, record labels
July 21st, 2006
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