Federalism is hard: to reassure small states that bigger ones won't clobber them and their interests, federalist agreements usually have some kind of non-proportional representation built into their articles, such as a senate or an assembly where it's "one state, one vote" instead of "one person, one vote" -- so each state gets as much say as any other, but the people who live in the bigger states have their votes diluted to a tiny fraction of the influence of the votes of people in the less populous states. Read the rest

The Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit that certifies open source licenses, has made an important policy statement about open standards. Read the rest