Guus Bosman

Sasha's presentation in Finland went quite well. After the conference she stayed a few more days in Helsinki for sightseeing, and then went to Bulgaria.

She's now in in the summerhouse with her parents (it's very hot in Perushtitsa) and enjoying a well deserved break after a long study year.

I bought an expensive bottle of water, $2.50 for a liter. It's Fiji, imported from the Fiji islands in the Pacific and it tastes just like the water we get from our water cooler.

I bought it because I like the bottle -- it's strong and has the right size. I used to drink from a huge glass at work in the Netherlands but I starting using these bottles in Arlington.

I should really get a plastic bottle that is not made of PET though; it's more healthy in the long run. Even better, I should get a big glass!

This afternoon the I sold beer with the Jaycees in the Durham Bulls Stadium. It's Father's Day and the weather was great so it was a busy afternoon. One of the six types of beer we sold was "Pabst Blue Ribbon", a beer I had never heard of.

I went shopping after the game I saw cans of 'PBR' in Whole Foods. When I told the cashier I bought it because I was curious she said hesitantly: "well, eh, it's a very light beer. It's the cheapest beer we have. It's the indy-rock beverage of choice". She asked me where I was from and when I answered "Holland, the Netherlands" she said "well, at least it will be a cultural experience for you".

She was right -- the beer was very watery and I switched to drinking water after a few sips. Still, it was nice to try it out. Last night I went out with friends from Argentina and we had a very nice Micro Brew beer in On Top Of The Hill. It's called Swim Test Saison, "A French Belgian style beer flavored with spices and East Kent Golden hops". It really tasted good, unlike "Belgium style" beers in the supermarket, and we enjoyed it in the outside seating area of the restaurant, overlooking the main street of Chapel Hill.

Tonight I attended a lecture by Sapna Kumar, a faculty fellow at Duke University Law School.

The lecture was organized by TriLUG, the Triangle Linux User Group at Red Hat in Raleigh. Before the meeting Larry and I had dinner and later a cup of coffee with Donald K. Rosenberg, author of a book on Open Source licenses.

The topic of Ms. Kumar's lecture was v3 of the GNU Public License (GPL), a popular open source license, and the relationship between patents and open source software.

Ms. Kumar gave a good talk on the new provisions and new aspects of the GPLv3, insightful and brought with a sense of humor. She gave an excellent overview of the recent developments around software patents and how they relate to GPLv3. She took a lot of questions from the audience.