Showing posts with label bruce byfield. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bruce byfield. Show all posts

03 August 2007

Parallel Universes?

Now, where have I heard this before?

Free and open source software (FOSS) has roots in the ideals of academic freedom and the unimpeded exchange of information. In the last five years, the concepts have come full circle, with FOSS serving as a model for Open Access (OA), a movement within academia to promote unrestricted access to scholarly material for both researchers and the general public.

"The philosophy is so similar that when we saw the success that open source was having, it served as a guiding light to us," says Melissa Hagemann, program manager for Open Access initiatives at the Open Society Institute, a private foundation for promoting democratic and accessible reform at all levels of society. Not only the philosophy, but also the history, the need to generate new business models, the potential empowerment of users, the impact on developing nations, and resistance to the movement make OA a near twin of FOSS.

Oh, I remember:

The parallels between this movement - what has come to be known as “open access” – and open source are striking. For both, the ultimate wellspring is the Internet, and the new economics of sharing that it enabled. Just as the early code for the Internet was a kind of proto-open source, so the early documentation – the RFCs – offered an example of proto-open access. And for both their practitioners, it is recognition – not recompense – that drives them to participate.

Great minds obviously think alike - and Bruce does have some nice new quotations. Read both; contrast and compare.

25 January 2007

Brazil's Free Software Utopia

A great piece by Bruce Byfield, in which he peeks behind the mainstream media's traditional image of Brazilian free software:

According to the international media, Brazil is a leader in free and open source software (FOSS) adoption. The New York Times describes the country as "a tropical outpost of the free software movement," while BBC News claims that "Increasingly, Brazil's government ministries and state-run enterprises are abandoning Windows in favour of 'open-source' or 'free' software." However, FOSS advocates familiar with Brazil describe a less hopeful situation.

They talk about unsystematic support by the government, and a business atmosphere in which mention of FOSS is more about hype than understanding the underlying philosophy. They say violations of the GNU General Public License are commonplace. Some genuine FOSS adoption does happen, they say, but, too often, it is marred by inefficiency, and possibly widespread corruption.

We should have known: "utopia" means "no place".

29 December 2006

Free Software's Rottweiler

I've noted before that FSF is changing; Bruce Byfield has noticed too, and written a good summary of what the new FSF has done in 2006 - and what lies in store:

Looking ahead to 2007, [executive director of the FSF] Brown sees only more of the same activism for the FSF. Both the BadVista and Defective By Design campaigns will continue, and he suggests that other campaigns in the coming year will probably focus on hardware drivers for GNU/Linux and software patents.

"It's going to be a busy year," Brown predicts. "2006 was great, but 2007 is going to be huge."

I can't wait.