[ Thanks to George
Mitchell for this link. ]
While Red Hat may have made a few headlines working to soften
UCITA’s impact on open source developers and companies, Dan
Gillmore is taking a slightly less compromising tone: “This is one
bloodsucker that should be dispatched once and for all.”
So far, only Virginia and Maryland have passed UCITA.
The legislation has gone nowhere in California, the most populous
state — partly, no doubt, because of the strong opposition of Bill
Lockyer, the state’s attorney general. California was one of the
states that signed an anti-UCITA letter when it was being drafted.But the industry doesn’t quit easily when it wants to pick our
pockets and increase its control. To the dismay of Lockyer and some
of his other anti-UCITA colleagues, Microsoft and other backers of
the legislation have been working to persuade the attorneys general
of Kansas and Oklahoma to buy into a modified form of the law.
Kansas’ attorney general, Carla J. Stovall, is current president of
the National Association of Attorneys General, and her Oklahoma
counterpart, Drew Edmondson, is president-elect.Miller and the other opponents are still right about UCITA. This
is one bloodsucker that should be dispatched once and for all.