Queen of the Blawgs: Groklaw
One of the most active blogs related to law and technology is Groklaw, which was started by paralegal Pamela Jones (P.J.) to explore blogging and the law. Along came a little lawsuit called SCO v. IBM, and everything changed. Now Groklaw is nearly singular in focus, posting documents from all the legal actions in which SCO is currently involved, including SCO v. Novell, SCO v. DaimlerChrysler, SCO v. AutoZone, and Red Hat v. SCO. The site is an incredible archive of official court documents, frequently commented on by P.J. to help readers who might not be familiar with the legal wrangling involved.
The SCO case is important on many levels, the first being the obvious impact on Linux and free/open source software. But Groklaw also addresses issues related to the GNU Public License (GPL), general impacts on intellectual property, and the future of IP in an OSS world where litigation is likely to become a more prevalent weapon.
Looking beyond the SCO case, which will end one day, Groklaw contributors have begun to chronicle a complete history of the UNIX operating system, including milestone contributions. As Linux moves forward as a more robust, enterprise-level operating system, a resource like that could go a long way toward ensuring the unencumbered advancement of Linux for some time to come.