As you may have heard, there's been a bit of a to-do over a new “Open Cloud Manifesto.” Here's the central idea:
The industry needs an objective, straightforward conversation about how this new computing paradigm will impact organizations, how it can be used with existing technologies, and the potential pitfalls of proprietary technologies that can lead to lock-in and limited choice....
Asterisk, a PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit, is one of open source best-kept secrets. As with many open source projects, there is a company has been set up to provide support, Digium. Here's its latest press release....
Well, the question as to how the great Microsoft vs. TomTom suit would finish has been answered:
Microsoft and TomTom announced on Monday that they have reached a settlement in their respective patent suits....
The new MAA Documentation System combines open-source technologies with deep social computing principles to create a truly innovative approach to museum documentation. The new MAA Documentation System shifts the age-old documentation principles of standardized description and information accumulation to multi-vocal and multi-source accounts and distributed documentation.
For the past few years, the MAA has been developing an open-source Documentation System. With over 20 years experience of developing its own Documentation Systems and Collections Management Systems, the MAA is just about to finish one of the most ambitious upgrades of its history. In fact, this system is the result of a complete re-think of its documentation practices. Thought the new system takes account of documentation standards, such as SPECTRUM, and newer developments such as CollectionSpace, it differs from the traditional approaches is several key respects.
I am writing to ask you as my representative to contact your colleagues on the IMCO and ITRE committees about crucial votes on the Telecoms Package, taking place in 31 March. At stake is nothing less than the future of the Internet in Europe. If amendments being supported by AT&T and others go through, the main driver of the Internet – and with it, online innovation – will be nullified.
This would be deeply ironic, since it was in Europe that the most important online innovation of all – the Web – was invented. In fact, no less a person than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor, has warned (at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144) that the loss of net neutrality – which is what some of the proposed amendments would lead to – would have made it impossible for him to have carried out his revolutionary work. If we wish Europe to remain in the forefront of digital innovation, it is vital that the net neutrality of the Internet be preserved.
This is a complex issue – I personally find it very difficult to navigate through the many conflicting options before the committees. Fortunately, others have already done the hard work, and boiled down the recommendations to the following.
For your colleagues on the IMCO committee, please urge then to:
Vote against the amendments authorizing “net discrimination” and guarantee it is not put in place, by :
rejecting amendements 136=137=138 pushed by AT&T (and the related recitals 116, 117=118)
voting for amendment 135 bringing protection against “net discrimination”
as a default, if the first ones were all rejected, vote for ams 139+141
Vote for positive protection of EU citizens' fundamental rights in amendments 72=146
Vote for protecting EU citizens' privacy by rejecting amendment 85 and voting for am. 150.
Similarly, for those on the IMRE committee, please ask them to:
Protect EU citizens fundamental rights and freedoms by voting for amendment 46=135 (first reading amendment 138).
Reject the notion of “lawful content” in amendment 45 for it is a major breach to the technical neutrality of the network, would turn operators into private judges, and open the door to “graduated response” (or “three strikes”) schemes of corporate police.
If you or your colleagues are interested in seeing the detailed analysis of all the amendments, it can be found here:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecoms_Package_2nd_Reading_ITRE_IMCO_Voting_List.
This is a critical series of votes for the Internet in Europe. At a time of great economic turmoil, the last thing we can afford is to throttle Europe's entrepreneurial spirit; for this reason, I hope that you will be able to convince your colleagues on the committees to vote as suggested above.
What was Richard Stallman's greatest achievement? Some might say it's Emacs, one of the most powerful and adaptable pieces of software ever written. Others might plump for gcc, an indispensable tool used by probably millions of hackers to write yet more free software. And then there is the entire GNU project, astonishing in its ambition to create a Unix-like operating system from scratch. But for me, his single most important hack was the creation of the GNU General Public Licence....
Not content with destroying the world’s economies, the banking industry is also bent on ruining us individually, it seems. Take a look at Verified By Visa. Allegedly this protects cardholders - by training them to expect a process in which there’s absolutely no way to know whether you are being phished or not. Even more astonishing is that this seen as a benefit!
...
Craziness. But it gets better - obviously not everyone is pre-enrolled in this stupid scheme, so they also allow for enrolment using the same inline scheme. Now the phishers have the opportunity to also get information that will allow them to identify themselves to the bank as you. Yes, Visa have provided a very nicely tailored and packaged identity theft scheme. But, best of all, rather like Chip and PIN, they push all blame for their failures on to the customer
PRS has now threatened a woman who plays classical music to her horses in her stable to keep them calm. She had been turning on the local classical music station, saying that it helped keep the horse calm -- but PRS is demanding £99 if she wants to keep providing such a "public performance." And it's not just a one-off. Apparently a bunch of stables have been receiving such calls.
The group seems to believe that playing music in almost any situation now constitutes a public performance and requires a licensing fee. You just know they're salivating over the opportunity to go after people playing music in their cars with the windows down.
The European Parliament, endorsing the Lambrinidis report and turning its back on all the amendments supported by the French government and defended by Jacques Toubon and Jean-Marie Cavada, has just rejected "graduated response" for the third time. France is definitely alone in the world with its kafkaesque administrative machinery, an expensive mechanism for arbitrary punishment.
The report of Eurodeputy Stavros Lambrinidis concerning the protection of individual liberties on the Internet has just been confirmed by the European parliament by an overwhelming vote of 481 to 252.
It stands in clear opposition to the French HADOPI law in "holding that illiteracy with computers will be the illiteracy of the 21st century; holding that guaranteeing Internet access to all citizens is the same as guaranteeing all citizens access to education and holding that such access must not be refused in punishment by governments or private organizations; holding that this access should not be used abusively for illegal activities; holding that attention must be paid to emerging questions such as network neutrality, interoperability, the global accessibility of all Internet nodes, and the use of open formats and standards."
The approval of the Lambrinidis report and the rejection of the French amendments is the third consecutive time that the European Parliament has rejected the French "graduated response", since the approval of the Bono amendment to the report on cultural industries and the well-known
Bono/Cohn-Bendit/Roithova Amendment 138.
Furthermore, all the amendments supported by the French government, notably those proposed by Eurodeputies Jacques Toubon and Jean-Marie Cavada, have been rejected. They were trying specifically to prevent measures related to graduated response, showing that the French government realizes that Europe is about to render the HADOPI law obsolete before it even comes to a vote.
In the first 71 paragraphs of the study, theoretical availability of patent information is confused with dissemination of patent information. Indeed, the study itself, belatedly, recognises the distinction between the theory of patent law and disclosure and the reality of accessing useful patent information in paragraph 72. Here the study states that availability of information does not always mean it is accessible in practical terms. Based on the figures provided in the study, in practical terms, accessibility of patent information is quite poor.
The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) is back for its fourth installment bringing together individuals and groups from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of discussions workshops..
This year the event will feature dedicated sessions on open knowledge and development and on the semantic web and open data. Plus there's the usual substantial allocation of 'Open Space' -- sessions, workshops and discussions proposed either via the CFP or on the day
One of the most controversial issues is that of the three-strikes strongly and continuously pushed by France in the EU Council. Although most of the dispositions introducing the graduate response system were rejected in first reading of the Telecom Package, there are still some alarming ones persisting. France is trying hard to get rid of Amendment 138 which seeks to protect users’ rights against the three-strikes sanctions and which, until now, has stopped the EU from applying the three-strikes policy. Also, some new amendments reintroduce the notion of lawful content, which will impose the obligation on ISPs to monitor content going through their networks.
The UK government is pushing for the “wikipedia amendments” (so-called because one of them has been created by cutting and pasting a text out of the wikipedia) in order to allow ISPs to make limited content offers. The UK amendments eliminate the text that gives users rights to access and distribute content, services and applications, replacing it with a text that says “there should be transparency of conditions under which services are provided, including information on the conditions to and/or use of applications and services, and of any traffic management policies.”
Six MEPs have taken text supplied by the American telecoms multi-national, AT&T, and pasted it directly into amendments tabled to the Universal Services directive in the Telecoms Package. The six are Syed Kamall , Erika Mann, Edit Herczog , Zita Pleštinská , Andreas Schwab , and Jacques Toubon .
AT&T and its partner Verizon, want the regulators in Europe to keep their hands-off new network technologies which will provide the capability for broadband providers to restrict or limit users access to the Internet. They have got together with a group of other telecoms companies to lobby on this issue. Their demands pose a threat to the neutrality of the network, and at another level, to millions of web businesses in Europe.
I was surprised and greatly disappointed to learn that you are proposing an amendment to the Telecoms Package that would have the consequence of destroying the network neutrality of the Internet – in many ways, its defining feature.
Your amendment 105, which requires network providers to inform users of restrictions and/or limitations on their communications services will allow companies to impose arbitrary blocks on Internet services; instead, we need to ensure that no such arbitrary restrictions are possible.
As the inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has pointed out when net neutrality was being debated in the US (http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144):
“When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.
I blogged on net neutrality before, and so did a lot of other people. ... Since then, some telecommunications companies spent a lot of money on public relations and TV ads, and the US House seems to have wavered from the path of preserving net neutrality. There has been some misinformation spread about. So here are some clarifications.
Net neutrality is this:
If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.
That's all. Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.
Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.
Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn't pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will
There have been suggestions that we don't need legislation because we haven't had it. These are nonsense, because in fact we have had net neutrality in the past -- it is only recently that real explicit threats have occurred.”
He concludes:
“Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.”
I'm afraid that what your amendment will do is to destroy that freedom. I am therefore asking you to withdraw your amendment, to preserve the freedom of the connection that allows new services to evolve, and innovations to be made without needing to ask permission of the companies providing the connection. Instead, the Internet needs net neutrality to be enshrined in law, and if possible, I would further request you and your colleagues to work towards this end.
With apologies for returning to the theme of patents, I'd like to direct your attention to a long and interesting piece that has appeared on the Digital Majority site asking a very important question: “Did Red Hat lobby for, or against software patents in Europe?”
The letter, of which I was a signatory, is focused on the change in the UK government’s position (from one of opposition to a term extension to, it appears, one of allowing an extension “perhaps to 70 years”). However, it is noteworthy that this is only one in a long line long line of well-nigh universal opposition among scholars to this proposal to extend copyright term.
For example, last April a joint letter was sent to the Commission signed by more than 30 of the most eminent European (and a few US) economists who have worked on intellectual property issues (including several Nobel prize winners, the Presidents of the EEA and RES, etc). The letter made very clear that term extension was considered to be a serious mistake (you can find a cached copy of this letter online here). More recently — only two weeks ago — the main European centres of IP law issued a statement (addendum) reiterating their concerns and calling for a rejection of the current proposal.
Despite this well-nigh universal opposition from IP experts the Commission put forward a proposal last July to extend term from 50 to 95 years (retrospectively as well as prospectively). That proposal is now in the final stages of its consideration by the European Parliament and Council. We can only hope that they will understand the basic point that an extension of the form proposed must inevitably to more harm than good to the welfare of the EU and should therefore be opposed.
Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.
However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.
Social networking sites like Facebook could be monitored by the UK government under proposals to make them keep details of users' contacts.
It is possible to release a Javascript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original. Current free browsers do not offer a facility to run your own modified version instead of the one delivered in the page. The effect is comparable to tivoization, although not quite so hard to overcome.
...
It is possible to release a Javascript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original. Current free browsers do not offer a facility to run your own modified version instead of the one delivered in the page.
we need to change free browsers to support freedom for users of pages with Javascript. First of all, browsers should be able to tell the user about nontrivial non-free Javascript programs, rather than running them. Perhaps NoScript could be adapted to do this.
Browser users also need a convenient facility to specify Javascript code to use instead of the Javascript in a certain page.
the economic rationale for patents is based on providing incentives in cases of market failure, disclosure of knowledge in the public domain, as well as technology transfer, commercialisation, and diffusion of knowledge. The “three step test for inclusion in the patent system” should therefore be based on demonstrated market failure to provide innovation, demonstrated positive disclosure from patenting, and effectiveness of the patent system in the area to disseminate knowledge. Software fails all three tests, for instance, as innovation in the IT industry has been dramatic before the introduction of patents, there is no disclosure value in software patents, and patents play no role in the diffusion of knowledge about software development.
It seems appropriate on Ada Lovelace Day to note the move of one of the best-known female champions of open source from Intel to the startup REvolution Computing....
Yesterday I was writing about the latest moves in the TomTom saga, and its involvement with the Open Invention Network patent commons. But beyond that specific case, patents – particularly software patents – really seem to be in the air at the moment....
as civilization collapses, we're going to see horrific scarcities, creating massive personal and collective stresses that will break both individuals (to the point of suicide, terrorism and murder) and nations (to the point of insurrection, civil war, and anarchy -- a hundred Afghanistans). We're going to see dreadful pandemic diseases and poverty and famine that will be utterly shattering, like the abject horror the world witnessed during the Irish potato famine where millions simply sat around, hopeless and increasingly gaunt, until they died an agonizing death alongside those they loved and couldn't save. We're going to see the kind of spiritual vacuum and decay that is eating Russia and the former Soviet republics alive today, with population and life expectancy plummeting, drug addiction at epidemic levels, and crime and gang violence out of control. It is nature's last and most reluctant way of restoring to sustainable populations species whose numbers and voraciousness have run amok.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.
Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.
Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let’s create new role models and make sure that whenever the question “Who are the leading women in tech?” is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.
The United States has unveiled an unlikely weapon in its battle against drugs gangs and illegal immigrants at the Texas-Mexico border - pub-goers in Australia.
The drinkers are the most far-flung of a sizeable army of hi-tech foot soldiers recruited to assist the border protection effort.
Anyone with an internet connection can now help to patrol the 1,254-mile frontier through a network of webcams set up to allow the public to monitor suspicious activity. Once logged in, the volunteers spend hours studying the landscape and are encouraged to email authorities when they see anyone on foot, in vehicles or aboard boats heading towards US territory from Mexico.
Major media companies are increasingly lobbying Google to elevate their expensive professional content within the search engine's undifferentiated slush of results.
Many publishers resent the criteria Google uses to pick top results, starting with the original PageRank formula that depended on how many links a page got. But crumbling ad revenue is lending their push more urgency; this is no time to show up on the third page of Google search results. And as publishers renew efforts to sell some content online, moreover, they're newly upset that Google's algorithm penalizes paid content.
OIN grants patent license to licensee
– All OIN patents and applications for all products
Licensee grants patent license to OIN
– All licensee patents and applications for the Linux System
Licensee grants license to other current and future licensees
– All licensee patents and applications for the Linux System
The Eco-Patent Commons is an initiative to create a collection of patents on technology that directly or indirectly protects the environment. The patents will be pledged by companies and other intellectual property rights holders and made available to anyone free of charge.
The 2003 SCO lawsuit, for those of you too young to recall, began as a modest request for $1 billion from IBM for allegedly “misusing and misappropriating SCO’s proprietary software” amongst other things....
A recurrent theme in these posts – and throughout Computerworld UK – has been the rise of vast, unnecessary and ultimately doomed databases in the UK.
But those stories have been largely sporadic and anecdotal; what has been lacking has been a consolidated, coherent and compelling analysis of what is going on in this area – what is wrong, and how we can fix it.
That analysis has just arrived in the form of the Database State report, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR).
Terrorism threatens the rights that all in this country should hold dear, including the most fundamental human right of all - the right to life. We know that terrorists will keep on trying to strike and that protecting Britain against this threat remains our most important job.
This government threatens the rights that all in this country should hold dear, including the most fundamental human right of all - freedom. We know that this government will keep on trying to strike and that protecting Britain against this threat remains your most important job.
Ричард Столлман. В 1990 году он объявил крестовый поход против компании Microsoft и ряда других китов компьютерного бизнеса. Он взламывал сайты, где предлагалось купить новое программное оборудование. И потом раздавал его народу бесплатно.
"Because this is a secret that has been leaked, everyone will be after it.”
“Every Australian will want to know what they were not they were considered so irresponsible to not leave alone.”
Guys said the leakage is proof that the list will be continually leaked if the Internet content filters are enforced, which he said will completely undermine its effectiveness.
Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has demonstrated a Linux-based humanoid robot that will perform in a fashion show next week. The HRP-4C runs the robotics-focused hard real-time ART-Linux distro, which was released this week for Linux 2.6xx under GPL.
The HRP-4C robot and the open-source ART-Linux distro (see more farther below) were developed by AIST's Human Robotics Group (HRG). ART (Advanced Real-Time) Linux has been used in a variety of humanoid robot prototypes from the Japanese government-backed HRG/AIST, says the group. The newest HRP-4C model announced earlier this week has been a hit on YouTube (see below). Designed to look like a young Japanese woman, the robot stands (and walks) about five feet, two inches (158 centimeters), and weighs about 95 pounds (43 kilograms).
"The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be."
Open Source is becoming a dominant development model in the software industy. The next generation of software developers, computer scientists, system administrators, analysts, and build engineers need to understand Open Source and must be able to work efficiently within Open Source communities.
This is a neutral collaboration point for professors, institutions, communities, and companies to come together and make the teaching of Open Source a global success.
...who is the secure-est browser of them all? The answer may surprise you...
One of the many disgraceful aspects about the disgraceful ID card programme is the reluctance of the UK government to make key documents available. For such a momentous change in the relationship of government to governed, it is critically important that a full debate about all the issues be conducted; but without key details of the scheme, that is made more difficult – which is presumably why the UK government has resisted the publication of the so-called “Gateway reviews” so long.
Finally, though, we have gained the right to see these somewhat outdated documents. Despite their age, and the unnecessary redactions, some useful new information has come to light, which more than justifies the long battle to gain access.
Critics of online media raise concerns about the ease with which gossip and unsubstantiated claims can be propagated on the Net. However, on the Net we have all learned to read with a grain of salt between our teeth, like Russians drinking tea through a sugar cube. The traditional media, to the contrary, commanded respect and imposed authority. It was precisely this respect and authority that made The New York Times' reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so instrumental in legitimating the lies that the Bush administration used to lead this country to war. Two weeks ago and then last Friday, The Washington Post was still allowing George Will to make false claims about the analysis of a scientific study of global sea ice levels without batting an eyelid, reflecting the long-standing obfuscation of the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change by newspapers that, in the name of balanced reporting, reported the controversy rather than the actual scientific consensus. On some of these, the greatest challenges of our time, newspapers have failed us. The question then, on the background of this mixed record is whether the system that will replace the mass mediated public sphere can do at least as well.
Like other information goods, the production model of news is shifting from an industrial model--be it the monopoly city paper, IBM in its monopoly heyday, or Microsoft, or Britannica--to a networked model that integrates a wider range of practices into the production system: market and nonmarket, large scale and small, for profit and nonprofit, organized and individual. We already see the early elements of how news reporting and opinion will be provided in the networked public sphere.
As the first German court, the Administrative Court of Wiesbaden has found the blanket recording of the entire population's telephone, mobile phone, e-mail and Internet usage (known as data retention) disproportionate.
The decision published today by the Working Group on Data Retention (decision of 27.02.2009, file 6 K 1045/08.WI) reads: "The court is of the opinion that data retention violates the fundamental right to privacy. It is not necessary in a democratic society. The individual does not provoke the interference but can be intimidated by the risks of abuse and the feeling of being under surveillance [...] The directive [on data retention] does not respect the principle of proportionality guaranteed in Article 8 ECHR, which is why it is invalid."
Last week, I wondered whether I'd gone back in time. Everywhere I went online – on news sites, blogs and Twitter – people were celebrating the 15th birthday of Linux, it seemed. “How is this possible?” I asked myself. “Since Linux was started in 1991, that must mean we are in 2006: have I fallen through a wormhole into the past?”
This was the third in a series. The first, designed to stiffen public resolve ahead of likely gas attacks and bombing raids, was printed in a run of more than a million and read: Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory. The second, identically styled, stated: Freedom Is In Peril.
The U.K. government is considering the mass surveillance and retention of all user communications on social-networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo.
Vernon Coaker the U.K. Home Office security minister, on Monday said the EU Data Retention Directive, under which Internet service providers must store communications data for 12 months, does not go far enough. Communications such as those on social-networking sites and via instant-messaging services could also be monitored, he said.
"Social-networking sites such as MySpace or Bebo are not covered by the directive," said Coaker, speaking at a meeting of the House of Commons Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee. "That is one reason why the government (is) looking at what we should do about the Intercept(ion) Modernisation Programme, because there are certain aspects of communications which are not covered by the directive."
The Home Office has admitted that it has been trying to force ISPs to subscribe to the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) blacklist, even though it doesn't know what the organisation does.
Speaking exclusively to Computer Shopper, a Home Office spokesman thought the IWF deletes illegal websites and doesn't look at the content they rate.
He also revealed that the government's measures to ensure that the IWF is blocking illegal content only consist of "meeting with the IWF fairly regularly for updates on how they're doing."
E-mail system of the Prime Minister's Office was under the grip of a computer virus for three months last year forcing officials to replace the software.
The technical glitch plagued the e-mail communication system of the PMO, which was based on the Microsoft Outlook Express, from February to April in 2008.
Although the extent of damage was uncertain, the PMO said that most of the e-mails addressed to it were not received.
The problem was detected only in late April after which the Microsoft Outlook Express email software was discontinued and replaced by another software - Squirrel mail.
Компания ALT Linux и OpenGO (Ventox Boundless Brasil) объявляют об открытии представительства ALT Linux в Бразилии.
Такой шаг со стороны ALT Linux обусловлен стремлением собрать вокруг репозитория Sisyphus максимально широкий круг разработчиков и является частью стратегии по расширению рынка за счет других стран.
Теперь продукты и услуги ALT Linux доступны и в Латинской Америке
Внимание к ALT Linux со стороны Латинской Америки наблюдается уже давно. Оно выражает как интерес к нашим продуктам и опыту внедрений с одной стороны, так и привлекательность открытой архитектуры с другой.
Вместе с португальской версией сайта, ALT Linux Brasil открывает свой интернет-магазин, в котором может будет купить локализованные для Латинской Америки дистрибутивы ALT Linux и услуги по технической поддержке дистрибутивов. Деятельность представительства будет ориентирована на работу с государственными учреждениями и учебными заведениями, а также с представителями бизнеса, которым будут оказываться услуги технической поддержки, внедрения и обучения.
Yesterday, I wrote about the launch of the open source company Cloudera. It's always hard to tell whether startups will flourish, but among the most critical factors for survival are the skills of the management team. The fact that less than three hours after I sent out some questions about Cloudera to Mike Olson, one of the company's founders, I had the answers back would seem to augur well in this respect.
Olson explains the background to the company, and to Hadoop, the software it is based on: what it does, and why business might want to use it; he talks about his company's services and business model, and why he thinks cloud computing is neither a threat nor an opportunity for open source.
ETNO is launching a new online content web site today, to raise awareness of attractive online offers put on the market by its members throughout Europe to download music, films or watch TV. ETNO members believe that offering a wide choice of online services is the best way to promote a legitimate use of the Internet and fight against illicit file-sharing.
"The rapidly growing choice of legitimate online content services illustrates the increasing cooperation between e-communications providers and content owners in order to respond to consumer demand for price-worthy, secure and user-friendly services”, says Michael Bartholomew, ETNO Director.
The new ETNO web site gives a non-exhaustive overview of services available including IP TV, video on demand or music downloads, offered by ETNO members through different platforms and devices to meet user’s demands.
"User-demand for content is the basis of our actions. ETNO members develop and promote business models for content online offers, including music, films and TV. This list will of course need to be continuously updated,” says Patrik Hiselius, TeliaSonera, Chair of ETNO’s Content Working Group.
Increasing choice of legitimate content online and raising awareness among users are the best instruments to fight against illicit file sharing.
“Illicit file sharing represents a major burden for all stakeholders, including internet service providers. Education is key. Users should not be unreasonably criminalised or stigmatised. Through this new web site, ETNO members show their commitment to play their part and cooperate with rightsholders under the existing legal framework, in a scenario where choice and availability for the consumer, and rights and privacy for the citizen are all fully guaranteed”, added Bartholomew.
ETNO calls on policy makers and stakeholders to work together in order to ensure the wide availability of legitimate content offerings and to enable new creative market-driven business models to emerge.
Sometime during Monday 16th March 2009 OpenStreetMap gained it’s 100,000′th registered user account!
“The move to open source software has not been as fast as we would have liked, but we are now entering a new era. In the past, open source deployments were mostly spontaneous and ad-hoc. We now have a more systematic approach.” In years past many government departments pursued their own open source migrations, usually in isolation from one another, and with varying degrees of success.
...
Now, says Webb, the State IT Agency (Sita) is assuming the role of paving the way for OSS migration by finalising standards and conducting pilot projects to make it easier for all to implement open source software successfully. ... Webb also says that Sita expects all government department websites to be running on open source software “very soon”.
Looking at the example here and reading Pablo’s Blog I share Glyn Moody’s concern. They show a chunk of custom XML which gets embedded in a word document. This custom XML is an insidious trick in my opinion as it makes documents non-interoperable. As soon as you use custom XML via Word 2007 you are guaranteeing that information will be lost when you share documents with OpenOffice.org users and potentially users of earlier versions of Word.
In conclusion I offer this: I would consider getting our team working with Microsoft (actually I’m actively courting them as they are doing some good work in the eResearch space) but it would be on the basis that:
* The product (eg a document) of the code must be interoperable with open software. In our case this means Word must produce stuff that can be used in and round tripped with OpenOffice.org and with earlier versions, and Mac versions of Microsoft’s products. (This is not as simple as it could be when we have to deal with stuff like Sun refusing to implement import and preservation for data stored in Word fields as used by applications like EndNote.)
The NLM add-in is an odd one here, as on one level it does qualify in that it spits out XML, but the intent is to create Word-only authoring so that rules it out – not that we have been asked to work on that project other than to comment, I am merely using it as an example.
* The code must be open source and as portable as possible. Of course if it is interface code it will only work with Microsoft’s toll-access software but at least others can read the code and re-implement elsewhere. If it’s not interface code then it must be written in a portable language and/or framework.
As I've noted before, you can tell open source has entered the mainstream when political parties try to outbid each other in establishing their open credentials. Further evidence of this trend now comes from India, where The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the largest opposition party, has released its “IT vision”, document which includes a healthy chunk of openness....
the newspaper industry is in the same death spiral as the recording industry, without the lawbreaking that’s commonly blamed for the recording industry’s troubles. And it seems to me that this poses a philosophical challenge to DeLong’s theory that the problem is a lack of respect for “property rights.” The decline of the newspapers is clearly a story of technological progress producing increased competition and entrepreneurship—precisely the sort of thing libertarians normally celebrate. The news business has gotten far more competitive over the last decade, and we’re now seeing a normal shake-out where the least efficient firms go out of business.
I think the fact that this is happening in an industry without a piracy problem should give us second thoughts about blaming the decline of other copyright industries on BitTorrent. The newspaper example suggests that even if we could completely shut down peer-to-peer networks, we should still expect the recording industry to decline over time as consumers gravitate toward more efficient and convenient sources of music. Piracy obviously accelerates the process, but the underlying problem is simply this: the recording industry’s core competence, pressing 1s and 0s on plastic disks and shipping them to retail stores, is rapidly becoming pointless, just as the newspaper industry’s core competence of pressing ink on newsprint and dropping them on doorsteps is becoming obsolete. Not surprisingly, when a technology becomes obsolete, firms who specialize in exploiting that technology go out of business.
So finally, free culture is nothing more than, and nothing less than, mankind’s natural propensity to communicate, collaborate and share. It is not a fad, it goes much deeper. Characterising it in narrow terms as a politically motivated cult, or as a commercially damaging movement is missing the big picture, for these things are not of its essence. It first and foremost is a technology-facilitated extension of our normal modes of behaviour — and this is why it is inevitable, profound and unstoppable.
Creating a business around free software is hardly a new idea: Cygnus Solutions, based around Stallman's GCC, was set up in 1989. But here's one with a trendy twist: a company based on the open source *cloud computing* app Hadoop, an Apache Project...
Open Data has come a long way in the last 2-3 years. In 2006 the term was rarely used - I badgered SPARC and they generously created a set up a mailing list. I also started a page on Wikipedia in 2006 so it’s 2-and-a-half years old.
* Science rests on data. Without complete data, science is flawed.
* Many of todays global challenges require scientific data. Climate, Health, Agriculture…
* Scientists are funded to do research and to make the results available to everyone. This includes the data. Funders expect this. So does the world.
* The means of dissemination of data are cheap and universal. There is no technical reason why all the data in all the chemistry research in the world should not be published into the cloud. It’s small compared with movies…
* Data needs cleaning, flitering, repurposing, re-using. The more people who have access to this, the better the data and the better the science.
I was fortunate enough to spend last Thursday with a group of LAMP engineers who have some experience with Windows Server and IIS, and who are based in Japan.
The three - Kimio Tanaka, the president of Museum IN Cloud; Junpei Hosoda, the president of Yokohama System Development; and Hajime Taira, with Hewlett-Packard Japan - won a competition organized by impress IT and designed to get competitive LAMP engineers to increase the volume of technical information around PHP/IIS and application compatibility. The competition was titled "Install Maniax 2008".
A total of 100 engineers were chosen to compete and seeded with Dell server hardware and the Windows Web Server 2008 operating system. They were then required to deploy Windows Server/IIS and make the Web Server accessible from the Internet. They also had to run popular PHP/Perl applications on IIS and publish technical documentation on how to configure those applications to run on IIS.
The three winners were chosen based on the number of ported applications on IIS, with the prize being a trip to Redmond. A total of 71 applications out of the targeted 75 were ported onto IIS, of which 47 were newly ported to IIS, and related new "how to" documents were published to the Internet. Some 24 applications were also ported onto IIS based on existing "how to" documents.
Although Tim Berners-Lee made his “Information Management” proposal back in March 1989, the key moment for what became the World Wide Web was October 1994, when the start-up Mosaic Communications – later known as Netscape – released its browser, optimised for PC users and dial-up modems....
На сайте Минкомсвязи РФ опубликованы проекты документов, посвященных переходу органов государственной власти на свободное программное обеспечение. В документе «Методические рекомендации по разработке и приобретению программного обеспечения для использования в органах государственной власти и бюджетных учреждениях» имеется рекомендация органам госвласти и бюджетным учреждениям отдавать предпочтение свободному ПО при выборе программных средств, за исключением случаев, когда СПО не обладает необходимой функциональностью.
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Также опубликован проект плана перехода органов государственной власти и бюджетных учреждений на использование свободного программного обеспечения. Проект включает ряд действий, необходимых для поэтапного внедрения СПО в российские госструктуры, включающий обучение государственных служащих, проведение пилотных проектов по внедрению СПО, поддержку разработки свободного ПО в России.
John Wilbanks, VP of Science for Creative Commons, gave O'Reilly Media an exclusive sneak preview of a joint announcement that they will be making with Microsoft later today at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.
According to John, who talked to us shortly after getting off a plane from Brazil, Microsoft will be releasing, under an open source license, Word plugins that will allow scientists to mark up their papers with scientific entities directly.
"The scientific culture is not one, traditionally, where you have hyperlinks," Wilbanks told us. "You have citations. And you don't want to do cross-references of hyperlinks between papers, you want to do links directly to the gene sequences in the database."
Wilbanks says that Science Commons has been working for several years to build up a library of these scientific entities. "What Microsoft has done is to build plugins that work essentially the same way you'd use spell check, they can check for the words in their paper that have hyperlinks in our open knowledge base, and then mark them up."
Wilbanks said that Word is, in his experience, the dominant publishing system used in the life sciences, although tools like LaTex are popular in disciplines such as chemistry or physics. And even then, he says it's probably the place that most people prepare drafts. "almost everything I see when I have to peer review is in a .doc format."
Not surprisingly, given the nature of this blog, I'm pretty favourably disposed towards Google's Linux-based Android platform, even though I don't possess the only phone currently using it, T-Mobile's G1. But it's hard to tell just how well it's doing against the iPhone, say. If any one knows, it's T-Mobile, so I was interested to receive this morning some tantalising tidbits from Richard Warmsley, head of Internet and Entertainment at T-Mobile UK.
Public funds pay vast majority of the academic research; the results should therefore be public. Inexpensive electronic publishing should make this possible. But private publishing companies still own these results, and restrict access to them by charging exorbitant fees. In the case of academic journals, publishing companies are making huge profits by requiring publicly funded universities to pay very high subscription fees on behalf of students and academics.
We, the citizens, through the state, pay for the production of academic books and research papers twice, first through salaries and research grants, and second through the purchase of books and journal subscriptions. This is how the the most fundamental principles of academia, to study and to share its findings, are obstructed, and its operation is made far more expensive and cumbersome. Good news is that this has been partially recognised and Research Councils UK (RCUK) has pushed hard (2005) in the direction of both mandatory self archiving (2006) of all research outputs and open access in general.
When it comes to books, the argument, however, isn't as simple and as straight forwad as in the case of Guardian's campaign Free Our Data - whose name we're reusing. Nor has it been problematised widely, like it has been in the case of journals and RCUK recommendations. Significant contribution of editors, subeditors, proofreaders and other working on texts being produced (wages) and personal gain of authors of best selling works (share of sales) complicates the issue. In short, open access and self-archiving of publicly funded books, whose importance for social sciences and humanities is enormous (unlike in physics and maths) is yet to be widely discussed and there aren't immidiately obvious solutions visible. That is, unless we treat books, as we think we should, as just another form of research output - both when funded directly by one of RCUK councils, or by the individual universities.
The independent Power of Information Task Force published its report on 2 March. The report contained 25 challenging recommendations to government aimed at improving the use of information in this new world. The Task Force's work has been recognised internationally as providing a cutting-edge vision, with examples of what modern public service delivery might be.
The Government welcomes the task force’s vision, accepts its overall messages and will be responding on the detailed recommendations shortly. We are already taking steps to implement this vision and in 2009 we will seek to deliver the following:
Open information. To have an effective voice, people need to be able to understand what is going on in their public services. Government will publish information about public services in ways that are easy to find,easy to use, and easy to re-use, and will unlock data, where appropriate, through the work of the Office of Public Sector Information.
Open innovation. We will promote innovation in online public services to respond to changing expectations. The Government will seek to build on the early success of innovate.direct.gov.uk by building such innovation into the culture of public services and public sector websites.
Open discussion. We will promote greater engagement with the public through more interactive online consultation and collaboration. We will also empower professionals to be active on online peer-support networks in their area of work.
Open feedback. Most importantly, the public should be able to have a fair say about their services. The Government will publish best practice in engaging with the public in large numbers online, drawing on the experience of the www.showusabetterway.com competition and the www.londonsummit.gov.uk, as well as leading private sector examples like www.ideastorm.com.
On March 3, 2009, the National Assembly's Committee on Culture, Sports, Tourism, Broadcasting & Communications (CCSTB&C) passed a bill to revise the Copyright Law. The bill includes the so called, "three strikes out" or "graduated response" provision.
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The provision gives authority to order ISP to send warning letters to the users, delete or stop transmission of illegal reproductions, suspend or terminate the accounts of the users, or close the bulletine boards to the Ministry. It also gives power to order information and telecommunication service providers to block connections to their information and telecommunication network of such ISPs.
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The modified bill will be up for vote in April, and it is most likely that the bill pass in the National Assembly and come into force in April.
I would like to introduce Mark Stone, who will be a regular contributor to Port 25 going forward. Mark has a long association with open source.
He did his first Linux install in 1994 and, in the fifteen years since, has served as O'Reilly's executive editor for open source, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Linux Technology, publisher for the web arm of SourceForge's open source evangelism efforts, and later Director of Developer Relations for SourceForge.
During that time he helped Microsoft launch its first two open source projects on SourceForge.net. He has also co-edited two of the foundational books on open source: Open Sources and Open Sources 2.0.
At SourceForge, and as an independent consultant, he has worked with technology companies large and small to help them formulate their community engagement strategy around open source.
He has most recently been working at Microsoft to help identify and support community projects that advance open source on the Windows platform.
The Guardian today launched Open Platform, a service that will allow partners to reuse guardian.co.uk content and data for free and weave it "into the fabric of the internet".
Open Platform launched with two separate content-sharing services, which will allow users to build their own applications in return for carrying Guardian advertising.
A content application programming interface (API) will smooth the way for web developers to build applications and services using Guardian content, while a Data Store will contain datasets curated by Guardian editors and open for others to use.
The Guardian is positioning its Open Platform as a commercial venture, requiring partners to carry its advertising as part of its terms and conditions, while BBC Backstage states clearly that its proposition is for individual developers designers and not for "big corporates".
If you're a fan of free data flow into and out of the government, Vivek Kundra seems like an ally. But we can't rest on our laurels. Now is exactly the time when lobbying for particular data and documents to be made accessible could be most effective.
Data.gov is coming: Let's help build it.
We've established this wiki to help focus attention on valuable data resources that need to be made more accessible or usable. Do you know of a legacy dataset in danger of being lost? How about a set of Excel (or — shudder — Lotus 1-2-3) spreadsheets that would work better in another format? Data locked up in PDF's?
This is your place to report where government data is locked up by design, neglect or misapplication of technology. We want you to point out the government data that you need or would like to have. Get involved!
Based on what you contribute here, we'll follow up with government agencies to see what their plans are for that data — and track the results of the emerging era of Data.gov.
With your help, we can combine the best of new social media and old-school journalism to get more of the data we've already paid for in our hands.