Later last year rumours of this nonsense started appearing in the tech press so instead of writing a grumpy blog post I e-mailed the community council and said they needed to nip it in the bud and state that no licence is needed to make a derivative distribution. Time passed, at some point Canonical changed their licence policy to be called an Intellectual property rights policy and be much more vague about any licences needed for binary packages. Now the community council have put out a Statement on Canonical Package Licensing which is also extremely vague and generally apologetic for Canonical doing this.

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arstechnica.com: Despite the rise in the number of patent trolls launching lawsuits affecting open source software, there are some glimmers of hope. The America Invents Act that was signed into law in September 2011 has provided new ways to prevent the issuance of over-broad software patents that could fuel future lawsuits.

fsf.org: The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today joined eighteen other activist and advocacy organizations in challenging the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of telecommunications in the United States with a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

groklaw.net: SCO was ordered by the judge, the Hon. David Nuffer, to tell him what claims it believes survived SCO's massive loss to Novell, in order to go forward in SCO v. IBM, and it has now done so.

groklaw.net: The Hon. David Nuffer has ruled on the SCO v. IBM motions, granting SCO's motion for reconsideration and reopening the case, which IBM did not object to. Judge Nuffer apologizes to the parties for the error in his previous order refusing to reopen the case.

mybroadband.co.za: Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth has taken the South African government to court to have the country’s exchange control system declared unconstitutional.

h-online.com: Opera's multi-million dollar lawsuit against a former employee who, it claimed, had leaked trade secrets to Mozilla has been settled. Details of the settlement are, however, confidential.

arstechnica.com: A Spanish group that represents open source software users has accused Microsoft of using an "obstruction mechanism" to prevent buyers of Windows 8 computers from installing Linux-based operating systems.

Also: Ultimate PC security requires UEFI

computerworlduk.com: The Python Software Foundation (PSF) have announced they have reached a settlement with POBox Hosting Ltd of the UK over their trademark application for the term 'Python' in connection with cloud hosting.

lawandlifesiliconvalley.com: The year 2012 had many important FOSS legal developments which reflects the continued increase in FOSS use. Continuing the tradition of looking back over top ten legal developments in FOSS my selection of the top ten issues for 2012 are as follows:

techeye.net: A row has erupted between two Linux distributors with one of them accusing the other of breaching the GPL.

datamation.com: Red Hat is the most successful pure play open source company on the planet, generating over $1 billion in revenue a year. Its success is rooted in a strong legal basis and understanding of how open source software works.

h-online.com: IPFire, the hardened Linux distribution for firewall appliances, was recently updated to IPFire 2.11 Core update 61 and along with the enhancements, the developers announced that they are ending support for the Reiser4 filesystem

zdnet.com: Microsoft's latest patent licensing deal isn't like its recent Android/Chrome OS arrangements. It is with a service provider running Linux boxes in its own datacenters.

mercurynews.com: A jury in the civil wrongful death trial of convicted wife killer Hans Reiser has awarded his children $60 million in damages for the loss of their mother.

• In his defense, Hans Reiser likens himself to Moses
• Hans Reiser: "Could It Be Moral To Kill?"
• Hans Reiser attacks slain wife's character

wired.com: Four years after being convicted of killing his wife, Linux guru Hans Reiser returns Monday to court, this time to defend himself from a wrongful-death suit brought by his two children.

• BOOM! BOOM! Out Go The Lights on Oracle v Google
• Ah! The Morning After...
• Roundup: Oracle API Claims Defeated

itworld.com: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is touting a victory in a copyright lawsuit that had the potential to shut down the database that all Linux and UNIX-based platforms and many time-based applications use to keep track of the ever-changing global timezones.

wired.com: As Oracle and HP’s lawsuit over the doomed Itanium chip drags on like some Dickensian subplot, it’s time to introduce two new characters: Microsoft and Red Hat.