Policy Observatory

We live in an increasingly software-defined world, a trend which has both good and bad aspects. The recent revelation that Volkswagen has been selling cars that have been explicitly built to defeat emissions tests highlights one of the bad ones: software control makes the incorporation (and hiding) of antifeatures easy.

The article offers analyses into DRM, open software and the Internet of Things.

Ten years ago this week, five public companies launched a novel, pioneering, and seldom heralded project that was one of the first patent defense alliances.

The consortium, known as the Open Invention Network, is dedicated to protecting a mode of collaborative invention. Specifically, it tries to safeguard the Linux open-source software ecosystem—software that’s written collaboratively and distributed for free—from patent licensing demands and lawsuits from any aggressor.