I would like to clarify quotes in two recent CBC articles by Peter Nowak: Copyright bill may spark battle over who owns what and Apple iPad hits Canada amid controversy.

In each it is suggested that I believe that the iPad should be illegal. What I said should be illegal is the application of non-owner locks to technology. I am not concerned with Apples technology, only radical changes to the law that legalize and/or legally protect a form of theft.

CBC news reporter Emily Chung interviewed a number of people in the community on the Canadian Government RFI on what they called "No Charge Licensed Software (NCLS)".

FACIL sent out press release (english press release, which includes a link to a translation of their court filing) that documents their launching of a case in Quebec Superior Court. The case is intended to end a loophole being used by the Quebec provincial government to award contracts to proprietary software suppliers without an adequate evaluation of all the options, including Free/Libre and Open Source Software options.

I was interviewed by Peter Nowak for CBC News last evening about the case. Even though I hadn't read the documents from FACIL yet, guessed which loophole they were trying to close.

Read full article on IT World Canada »

I was interviewed for a CHUT radio show called L'heure est au libre that airs from 11:00-11:30 on Mondays. The archive for the show aired Monday January 8, 2007 are online.

This October 30th, 2006 issue of the Hill Times includes 3 letters to the editor in response to Canadian Recording Industry Association lobbyist Barry Sookman's opinion piece titled "Copyright reform: let the light shine in". The last of these letters is from me, and ends by noting that "The letter-writer is policy coordinator for Canada's Association for Open Source".

Considering the matter of Toronto schools and access to FOSS, it was interesting to see this Information week article on Indiana switching more than 20,000 students to Linux.

An article in ITBusiness.ca by Sarah Lysecki discusses the Linux lab we reported earlier.

Ed Montgomery, a computer science teacher at Monarch Park Collegiate, said in an e-mail to ITBusiness.ca that he was given a note in May, telling him that the Linux lab would be dismantled and replaced with a Microsoft-based Classroom Migration Technology Initiative (CTMI) lab.
...
Montgomery sent a letter to The Canadian Association for Open Source (CLUE) last week asking for help. Russell McOrmond, an Internet consultant who is also a policy coordinator at CLUE, received the letter.

A newsforge article by Bruce Byfield includes:

We talked to representatives of two coalition members about the status of DRM in Canada: David Fewer, staff counsel at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Canada's leading legal technology law clinic, and Evan Leibovitch and Russell McOrmond of CLUE, an open source advocacy group.

Canadian open source community association looks beyond Linux - CLUE relaunches to tackle social policies around technology choices [ITBusiness.ca]