I just wrote this as a comment on “Freedom to Tinker“:
Gerv’s 2008 Predictions:
G1) Someone will sue an open source company, organisation or individual of significant community visibility for patent infringement over a specified patent implemented in their open source software, in a USA jurisdiction. A large fuss will ensue.
G2) A commercial product (software or otherwise) will ship using OpenStreetMap as its primary data source.
G3) The first lawsuit will be brought against a product developer for violating one of the new parts of GPLv3 or LGPLv3. The plaintiff will win, either in court or by settlement.
G4) In at least one major Western democracy, it will be impossible for Joe Public to get an entirely unfiltered Internet feed just because he wants one.
G5) The unstoppable kingdom of Christ will continue to advance, like a seed growing in secret. (Hey, everyone includes an easy one, right? :-)
Someone remind me to look at these in early 2009…
From what I hear, the prevalence of Christianity is dropping by about 1% per year. Unless science and technology (areas where atheism is popular) suddenly start going backwards, that trend seems unlikely to slow down.
Amen!
Advance and increasing are not the same thing.
As more lose faith, the ones left will hold on stronger to what they believe.
Re G1, I hope so. Software patents are an awful idea, and they need a real airing in court.
Re G3, I’m surprised. How many lawsuits have been filed over GPL2 violations? I think there will be more violations of GPL3, but I think they’re just as likely to be settled out of court.
Re G4, I wonder if my country (the U.S. of A.) still counts as a major Western democracy.
“kingdom of Christ”…
No matter how vivid your fantasy is, it’s still a fantasy.
Re G1: Err How about Sun Microsystems being sued by NetApp when they open sourced ZFS?
James: it depends how you count. In 1900, there were around 650m Christians in the world. In 2000, there were around 2000m. That almost exactly matches population growth worldwide. Which means that, if the church is getting smaller in the West, then it’s getting larger in Africa, South America and China (for example).
Of course, if you are looking at a particular country, things may be wildly different in either direction, depending on which one you pick. Also, it’s worth noting that the advance of Christ’s kingdom is not easy to measure numerically. For example, how many Christians are there in China? It’s very hard to find out how many people would call themselves Christian, let alone how many actually are. Figures range from 50 to 130 million.
Q: http://www.gpl-violations.org/ has a list of quite a few :-)
Philip: Good call, I didn’t know about that. Although it seems from the Register article that the lawsuit was brewing even before ZFS was made open source by Sun.
Gerv, I’m not sure exactly how secret Christianity is these days. I think the cat’s out of the bag. :)
i believe christainity is on the increase in africa