Interesting weekend for, erm, stuff like that.
Some guy has released "the first open source board game": he has licensed it under the Creative Commons, and invites people to "patch" it to make it better: Dugi [via]
On a similar note, Microsoft have opened the XML schemas for the Microsoft Office document formats - see the Slashdot discussion. My two cents: I'm glad about this. It means they're showing willing. However, I'm cynical enough to believe that they're only doing this to win government contracts (a lot of governments stipulate "open standards" rather than "open source"). Their licensing doesn't seem to be GPL compatible, which is unsurprising because they hate it with a passion that is almost irrational. (See Update below).
Finally, Bill Gates was interviewed by the BBC in two parts: first and second. The reason I'm putting it up is that I want to point out how he avoids the question in the second part about whether he actually ever thought that he was being anti-competitive. It's astonishing. He literally refuses to answer the question, twice, and finally, when the interviewer says, basically, "Goddammit, Bill, WERE YOU EVER ANTI-COMPETITIVE?", he mumbles something about how rocking the computer industry is, without any reference to Microsoft at all.
Update: I couldn't resist posting this link: The BBC reports: some doodles were found on a podium, and thought to be by Tony Blair. Handwriting experts said they indicated a lack of leadership, and all sorts of nasty things. But as it turns out, the doodles belonged to Bill Gates...
Update: Slashdot has posted a new story: Microsoft hasn't really opened its standards.
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