Online Polish Loses Some Of Its Polish

If it is to be true to its name, the World Wide Web ought to reflect the planet's full cultural and linguistic diversity. Currently, though, many sites and tools remain optimized for English and its character set, although that's gradually changing as other countries with different languages and writing systems come online in greater numbers. 

On Techdirt.

Why Was It Poland That Led The European Revolt Against ACTA?

In retrospect, it is now clear that the pivotal moment in the campaign against ACTA was last January, when thousands of people took to the streets in Poland despite the sub-zero temperatures there. A few weeks later, similar protests took place across the continent, especially in Eastern Europe, which then influenced politicians at all levels, culminating in the rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament on July 4. 

On Techdirt.

Poland Betrays Its Past, Moves Closer To Allowing Software Patents

Earlier this year, Poland played a crucial role in igniting street protests that pretty much stopped ACTA in its tracks. That's not the first time it has had a major impact on European tech policy. Half a decade earlier, it derailed a proposed EU software patent directive, which had sought to make software patentable in Europe -- something that Article 52 of the European Patent Convention had appeared to rule out. That led to a later vote in the European Parliament wheresoftware patents were decisively rejected.

On Techdirt.

Polish Government Funding 'Full Set Of Educational Materials' Available Under CC-BY

One of the fields that is ripe for disruption by open digital technologies and business models based on abundance is education. That's already starting to happening with growing successes in the areas of open access and free textbooks. Now here's a major win for open educational resources in Poland (via Slashdot): 

On Techdirt.

Is The US Meddling In Polish ACTA Voting?

With the immediate threat from SOPA/PIPA on hold, people have started to turn their attention to the long-running saga of ACTA. While it was being negotiated behind closed doors, few people knew about it, and protests against it were muted. Now that it has finally emerged into the open and begins its last dash towards the finishing line of ratification, the pace of anti-ACTA activism is beginning to pick up quickly. That's especially true in Europe, where everything hinges on the result of the European Parliament's vote on the treaty later this year. If it rejects it, ACTA is dead. 

On Techdirt.

How To Become A Scientific Author In Poland: Delete Part Of Someone Else's Article You Think Is Wrong

Copyrightgirl pointed us to a bizarre judgement from the Polish Supreme Court last year, which found that you can become co-author of a scientific text by deleting a few sentences that you believe to be incorrect: 

On Techdirt.

Trains of Thought...

I love travelling by train. In my youth, I bought Interail passes for many years, and basically lived on trains for a month, wending my way slowly around Europe. More recently, I spent 36 hours on a train travelling from Italy through Austria, Czech Republic, Poland and Belarus (don't get me started on how I was dragged out of my carriage at gunpoint, at 5 o'clock in the morning, because I didn't have a transit visa for Belarus...)

But the big daddy, of course, is the Trans Siberian Railway. And now, thanks to those kind, but troublingly pervasive people at Google, I/you can travel that amazing journey without leaving home:

Moscow-Vladivostok: virtual journey on Google Maps

The great Trans Siberian Railway, the pride of Russia, goes across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. The joint project of Google and the Russian Railways lets you take a trip along the famous route and see Baikal, Khekhtsirsky range, Barguzin mountains, Yenisei river and many other picturesque places of Russia without leaving your house. During the trip, you can enjoy Russian classic literature, brilliant images and fascinating stories about the most attractive sites on the route. Let's go!

And when they say Russian classic literature, they mean classic literature *in Russian*; indeed, it's worth hopping aboard just for that.

Хорошо!

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Happy Public Domain Day...

...er, yesterday:

It is January 1st, which means that this morning at midnight a batch more “life-plus” copyrights expired in those countries — most of them — where copyright expires at the end of the Nth year following the death of the author.

Yes, folks, it’s Public Domain Day! And it’s international! There are little Public Domain Day virtual commemorations going on in places like Poland and Switzerland. Spread the word!

In the life+50 universe, which constitute the largest cohort of countries, including Canada, which collectively have the majority of the world’s population, life-plus copyrights expired at midnight for those authors, or last-surviving of multiple authors, who died in 1958.

(Via Michael Hart.)

Free Software Adds Some Polish (Schools)

The Polish Ministry of National Education is advising schools and universities to use Open Source software. The recommendation comes at the end of a volunteer campaign to help schools switch to Open Source.

The Ministry recommended in a statement that schools and universities use OpenOffice. The application suite is sufficiently mature and advanced to be used for teaching and for office use in education and science institutes. "OpenOffice can successfully substitute proprietary applications and will result in significant savings on licenses."

Good to see someone has a clue.

Thinking the World of Firefox 3

On Open Enterprise blog.

Polishing the Firefox 3.0 Download Pledge

Pledging to download Firefox 3 tomorrow is clearly a totally pointless activity (yes, I've done it, anyway), and yet some interesting factoids can be gleaned from the relevant page.

For example, despite - or maybe because of - its dismal showing in overal installed base, the UK's pledges stand at a decent 54,000 currently. This compares fairly well with Germany (55,000), Italy (56,000) and France (69,000). The real surprise, for me at least, is Poland, currently on 90,000: impressive.

OOXML: Poland Refuses to Roll Over

More fat ladies who haven't sung:

Tomasz Bednarski (Mandriva Poland) wrote a letter to PKN president, Tomasz Schweitzer, in which he expressed his concerns about the Polish OOXML ratification process which Bednarski took part of, as a member of the technical committee 182.

...

So, it seems that the OOXML saga in Poland is far from over and there will be more proceedings in the nearest future, which we will pass to you as soon as we hear about them.

Poland: Not Just Plumbers

In the UK the Polish plumber has become a staple figure of merriment, if not fun (after all, nobody wants to make fun of someone as important as a plumber.) More generally, there are supposed to be around 600,000 recent Polish immigrants, more or less keeping the UK economy going. (As a corollary, the number of signs and job vacancies in Polish is also shooting up.)

Now it seems that Polish programmers are just as important globally:

Recently, I moderated an interesting panel held at Stanford university at the Hoover Insititution, on the subject of Poland's growing role in the global tech community. Over the past few years Dell, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, Motorola, Siemens, and others have opened engineering offices in Poland.