First off, this guy is walking around handing out free fudge. Neat idea, but I can’t quite figure out why!

Bill Hilf from Microsoft spoke today. He started by saying “I guarantee you won’t agree with a lot of things I say today.”

Nat introduced him as “our man on the inside.”

Microsoft is submitting their Shared Source license for OSI approval. I don’t know if this means that MS will have to actually make any modifications.

New website today: http://www.microsoft.com/opensource.

Bill invited feedback from anyone at billhilf at microsoft dot com.

He got some fairly pointed questions from Nat about software patents. Bill said two things about that: 1) Microsoft flubbed the communication with the press and that their intent isn’t to sue, and 2) Microsoft is learning and he’s working to help them learn.

Rick Falkvinge from the Pirate Party

Funny and informative talk about why they’ve started a Pirate Party in Sweden.

Originally copyright only impacted public places, but now it impacts people’s private lives as well.

Copyright is protecting the entertainment industry — funded by luxury purchases — at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms.

“The Norwegian Liberal Party forked our platform into Norwegian”

www.piratpartiet.se/donate

“Political donations in Sweden are not regulated”, so you all can contributed

Steve Yegge (Google)

“Google will probably fire me for this talk”

Neither Steve’s mic nor his laptop appear to work… after his line about being fired, someone shouted “Google is very powerful!”

“A brand, in geek terms, is a pointer.”

GTE was, for a time, the most reviled brand in the US. Then they invested in improvements and ran commercials basically saying “we don’t suck anymore”, but nobody believed it.

“The single biggest branding problem in Open Source is the name ‘Open Source’.”