We're Turning 18 in 30 Days
ON 2006-11-07 (i.e. 18 years ago as of next month) a site that looks like this was born:
The site was born when I was finishing my Ph.D. thesis and had plenty of spare time for advocacy, activism, journalism (as a job), and a role at Netscape.com (I was curating technical news there).
30 days from now (a Thursday) the site turns 18:
The above whois information is immutable (for registry, not renewal) and affirms our age. As a reminder, we registered techrights.org in 2010 when Novell was going out of existence (takeover and gradual scuttling of remaining assets). The domain name change was only a formality; nothing else had really changed.
In some ways, not much has changed since then because IBM took over Red Hat and just like SUSE and Canonical it is acting a bit like a Microsoft vassal, including when it comes to software patents (many of the things we said in 2006 are still wholly applicable). Moreover, software patents continue to exist, albeit in the US they're harder to enforce in courts owing to 35 U.S.C. § 101 (more so after Alice at SCOTUS), even if the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recklessly grants such patents.
10 years ago, in the summer of 2014, we started focusing on the EPO, including its (mal)practice of granting European software patents - i.e. patents which are both illegal and undesirable.
In some ways, this site is still 'young' and it has expanded to more protocols to remain relevant, accessible, and effective. I'm still young enough and healthy enough to do this for another 18 years.
Next month we'll do a small party for the anniversary of the site; we already bought some kits, decorations, and foods. █