open source legal documents

Just got a note from the docracy folks. They’ve developed a new, US oriented, open source mobile privacy policy.

I’m quite intrigued by the whole notion of open source legal documents. As some readers of this blog may know, I am very much a fan of open source technology. That being said, I do wonder whether the application of open source models to legal documents will yield the same benefits as their application to code.

I suppose it should, but must admit I do have some doubts. For example, I don’t think that open source legal agreements will necessarily result in widespread adoption or create standards the way open source software does, for a variety of reasons – e.g. differences in each jurisdiction’s laws, variations in business models, or variations in risk tolerance for users.

Moreover, I’m not necessarily sure open source legal agreements that are freely available will supplant professional legal services, the way, for example, that Linux has (or at least has the possibility) of supplanting operating systems for which license fees are paid and no source is made available – like Windows.

Why? Because legal services are already provided in a manner similar to one open source business model – that of value added services. While I certainly wouldn’t mind trying to exploit my drafting work by licensing forms of agreements at $X dollars a pop, that’s not typically how legal services work. When someone asks me to help them create a  software license agreement, I’ll ask them various questions regarding their product, how they plan to license and distribute it, how they plan to charge for it, and so on, then take one or more existing precedents and start tailoring to their needs, charging by the hour to do that and perhaps to negotiate the terms from time to time. I don’t charge a license or usage fee for the use of the precedents, but rather only for the “value-add” services. It might be nice too, but if your competitors don’t (and I think most don’t) then it’s tough for you do so. Which is perhaps why legal services typically don’t scale quite as well as other industries.

Sorry, I digress. Anyway, my point was that this service model is quite similar to one approach to one open source business model – license the core product under an open source license, and sell value-add services, such as support, custom development, implementation services and the like – stuff that requires expertise for those that need it.

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that the concept of open source legal documents is bad (because it’s not), but rather that I can’t see it having the same impact on the legal services industry as open source code has had on the IT industry. But who knows.

google open sourcing vp8 codec

Interesting but perhaps not surprising news that Google will make the VP8 video codec open source. You can read in more detail by following the link but here’s a quick rundown: Many companies have decided to support H.264 for video streaming, including Google, Apple and Microsoft. Others, like Mozilla (the creator of Firefox), have not, as they are concerned about adopting, as a standard, proprietary technology that may one day require payment of royalties. Instead, they have chosen to support Ogg Theora, an open source codec based on a much earlier version of VP8. Making VP8 open source will remove this divide and will likely encourage the adoption of VP8 as a standard in place of either, as VP8 appears to be technically superior to both H.264 and Ogg Theora (which was developed from a much earlier iteration of VP8) and presumably would be free of potential licensing issues (and fees) associated with proprietary solutions such as H.264.

Perhaps not surprising given Google’s approach in mobile (i.e. the Android open source platform). Though it is worth noting that Google isn’t enchanted with all things open source, as evidenced by the hubbub about it and the Affero GPL a few years ago…

Apples and Oranges and Mobile Phones

This won’t be long and has no legal bent to it and you’ve probably already seen it elsewhere, but if you haven’t, you really should take a look.

When the iPod came out, I though “meh” – its OK. Not great. Just OK. Of course, as everyone knows, it did very well.

On the other hand, the new iPhone? Wow. Stunning. Remarkable. I can’t imagine how this thing will *not* fly off the shelves.

After all the particularly bad attempts at doing this in the past, finally, someone got it right.  Sure, its not absolute perfection, but it comes pretty close.
My humble opinion? Unless some major disaster happens with it (like it doesn’t work as described, or breaks when you drop it, etc.), iPhone will make the iPod look like a wee, tiny drop in the bucket.
Live from Macworld 2007: Steve Jobs keynote – Engadget