Owv09 News & Articles

Liza Kindred of Lullabot (news, site) began her talk at the Open Web Vancouver conference on open source business with a video of Dr. Vandana Shiva discussing saving seeds to preserve the right of farmers to grow their crops the way they have for thousands of years. Dr. Shiva referred to this practice of preserving traditional knowledge as open seeds, and compared it to open source.

Her point was that by going into an open source business, you have the opportunity to do more than just make a profit. By playing well with others, you can do so much more.

When Angela @webchick Byron started writing a talk about women in open source for Open Web Vancouver 2009, she found the topic silly. In fact, she planned not to talk about that at all. There was no shortage of women. Instead, she would focus on recruiting people to projects.

Then she looked for data to support her theory. Except, she was in for a wee surprise.

On January 1, 2006, Rick Falkvinge set up a web page for the Swedish Pirate Party. He mentioned the address in a single chat room, and within 24 hours he had over the 2,000 signatures he needed for the party to participate in the upcoming election.

What do these pirates want? With such a name it can be hard to take the party seriously, but politicians are taking notice now and so should you. The Swedish Pirate Party now has a seat in the EU Parliament, two if the Treaty of Lisbon goes into affect, changing various aspects of how the EU's government works. And the party has spread far beyond the EU. It might even be in your own back yard.