July 16, 2003
An iPod offer
Here’s the deal, if you could redesign Ben Hammersley’s site (and work across LazyWeb and Book of Blog), and if your design is the best among others, he would buy you an iPod.
It’s a cool idea to bring brilliant design to your blog.
AOL laid off 50 Mozilla Hackers
AOL, mother company of Netscape, cut the remaining Netscape staffs who working on Mozilla web browser. Is this something related to the Microsoft’s settlement with AOL months ago? Then AOL suddenly found it isn’t justified to support the development of Mozilla?
The laid-off is sad for the people involved, there are still jobs out there for these smart people and some would continue the commitment towards Mozilla development. The impact would be more on the Mozilla group, because Netscape isn’t paying developers to develop Mozilla anymore. According to CNet News
The layoffs come as the loose Mozilla.org group, which had overseen the open-source development efforts of the Mozilla browser, transforms itself into a nonprofit foundation. The foundation is funded in large part by a $2 million donation from AOL and $300,000 from Lotus founder Mitch Kapor.
Mitchell Baker, who will be president of the new Mozilla Foundation, said the group would use part of its seed funding to hire “a core group of people,” which would include project managers and “key technical contributors” to the open-source project. Some of those people are expected to come from Netscape’s ranks. A broad group of independent volunteers and staffers at other companies are expected to continue working on the open-source browser effort, however.
It’s time to cut the link between Netscape and Mozilla, it’s time for some group to stand up and promote Mozilla for end user (which the role Netscape used to play).
Impact of Price Control?
[via Aisehman] What’s the impact if Malaysia government insist to appy Price Control Act on CD, VCD, DVD and computer softwares? As this The Straits Times news pointed out, our government might be in breach of WTO agreement on intellectual property rights:
Lawyers also argue that by forcing copyright owners to lower prices, the government could be in breach of a World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement on intellectual property rights.
The agreement makes it clear that no signatory should do anything that would ‘unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holder’.
The Straits Times understands that the United States is looking into whether Malaysia is breaching its commitments under WTO or any other agreement by making CDs and VCDs price-controlled items.
And software vendor like Microsoft and BSA are worried about the price control would open a back door to Singapore and Thailand users. As
it is perfectly legal for consumers to buy licensed software from abroad for use in their home countries.
MDC compiled the feedback of local companies which related to digital product and voice out a “No”. The local legal experts have the same worry :
Meanwhile, legal experts said that the imposition of price controls in certain cases could contravene Malaysia’s obligations under international trade agreements to which the country has acceded.
These include the Asean Free Trade Agreement (Afta), and those related to Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
“Price control is normally used to control prices of essential items such as meat and vegetables,” said Benjamin J. Thompson, an intellectual property (IP) lawyer with law firm Sharizat, Rashid and Lee.
“This is the first time it’s being applied to digital products.”
May be our government would like to do it our own way, but please do more analysis before making decision.