How Publishers Have Fought Against the Treaty for the Blind

One of the most disgraceful manifestations of the callousness of copyright maximalists is their 30-year refusal to countenance any meaningful kind of exception for blind users to convert texts into readable forms. Here's the background:

Even in 2013, blind people and others living with a print disability such as those with dyslexia still have very limited access to books. Only some 7% of published books are ever made accessible (in formats such as Braille, audio and large print) in the richest countries, and less than 1% in poorer ones. This is a “book famine”.

And here's what Fred Schroeder, First Vice President of the World Blind Union, said about the current state of the negotiations to change that:

The purpose of this treaty is to ensure access to books for blind people and help end the “book famine” we face. WBU is alarmed that some of the negotiators have focused their efforts almost exclusively on crafting language around copyright protections that have nothing to do with the ability of authorized entities to produce books for the blind and visually impaired. The shift away from a treaty for the blind to a treaty focussed on rights holder protections has taken up precious negotiating time which should be directed at ensuring a treaty that makes it possible for materials to be shared internationally.

I was naturally interested to find out what the UK's publishers had been doing on this front, so I put in a FOI request to the UK government:

I would be grateful if you could please supply me with the following information. 

Emails, letters and any other written communications from the last six months, between the Publishers Association or representatives of UK publishers, and the Intellectual Property Office, on the subject of the WIPO treaty for the blind (formally, the "Treaty to facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities".)

You can find the full reply here; this is what KEI's Jamie Love wrote about the emails that were made available to me:

Overall, the emails deal extensively with publisher opposition to fair use (fair use is mentioned 40 times), and promotion of commercial availability and requests that the treaty include restrictive three-step test language (even while asserting that other treaties and agreements already mandate the three step test for all copyright exceptions). The emails also demonstrate the close cooperation and communication between the IPO and the publishers in the negotiations.

Although it's frustrating not to be able to see more, the emails provide a handy reminder just how much the UK government is willing to work with publishers to place obstacles in the way of the blind gaining access to even a fraction of the materials that sighted people are fortunate enough to access.

You would have thought that any caring human being would gladly support moves to alleviate the massive suffering this book famine causes to hundreds of millions of visually impaired people across the world, but apparently there are some who are immune to these feelings, because they regard preserving copyright's oppressive intellectual monopoly as far more important than helping the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged.

I find that desperately sad - and further proof of the harm that copyright inflicts on society as a whole, and particularly on the most vulnerable. 

Why There is no Kernel Hacker Sell-Out

As you may have noticed, posting to this blog was light last week, as in non-existent (OK, so you didn't notice.) This was because I was engaged in some serious geeking-out at the LCA2010 conference. One of the talks that I saw came from Jon Corbet, who gave a run-down on recent changes to the Linux kernel. A statistic that he mentioned along the way has garnered much comment: the fact that "75% of the code comes from people paid to do it.” In particular, some have leapt on this figure as proof that kernel coders have “sold out”, and that the famed altruistic impulse behind free software is dead. I think this is nonsense.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Do Top Hackers Have Too Much Money?

The announcement that one of MySQL's founders, Monty Widenius, was leaving Sun, was generally regarded as a pity, though no huge surprise, given the rumours that had been swirling since last year. But its impact was redoubled following the even more astonishing news that MySQL's boss, Marten Mickos, was also moving on; together, they inevitably sent shock-waves through the open source world. Most analysis has centred on the state of Sun, and whether these two high-profile departures mean that the MySQL acquisition was a mistake, or has already failed. But here, I'd like to look at a bigger question that these moves pose: do top hackers (and their managers) have too much money?

On Linux Journal.

MySQL's IPO: Hot News - or Maybe Not

Amazing news - MySQL is planning to go public:

after years of rumo(u)r the company is finally preparing to go public, joining a select group of open source vendors that have made it to the publicly traded markets.

Or maybe not quite so amazing, since Marten Mickos had already told me this last July during an interview for Linux Journal (page 74, January Issue, if you're interested, published in December 2006):

We're aiming for an IPO. We're actually aiming for an independent existence and to do that you need to do an IPO, but the IPO is not the aim, the IPO is just a step. People say: What is your exit plan? and we say that we're not going to exit.

Indian Summer of Code

I wrote earlier today about the fallacy of assuming that once you start offering money the spirit that informs the world of collaborative efforts like open content evaporates, leaving crass cupidity. It occurred to me afterwards, that we have already been here before.

Back in 1998, the first wave of open source IPOs hit. One of the main beneficiaries of the VA Linux IPO was Eric Raymond. As he wrote at the time:

A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly rich. ... VA had indeed gone out on NASDAQ -- and I had become worth approximately forty-one million dollars while I wasn't looking.

He then turns away from this typically self-centred story to examine (with characteristic insight) the wider implications of the IPOs that were happening:

Reporters often ask me these days if I think the open-source community will be corrupted by the influx of big money. I tell them what I believe, which is this: commercial demand for programmers has been so intense for so long that anyone who can be seriously distracted by money is already gone. Our community has been self-selected for caring about other things -- accomplishment, pride, artistic passion, and each other.

This is still true. As proof, witness the Season of KDE 2006:

As in 2005, KDE again was a participating organization in this years Google Summer of Code 2006. Many interesting and much needed project ideas were submitted and students from all over the world began to apply for them. The KDE project received more than 200 student applications. Sadly Google's capacities are not limitless and thus, only 24 students were selected to participate in Google's Summer of Code under the mentorship of the KDE project.

Driven by the urge not to let many good applications go to waste the KDE project decided to give many of the rejected students a chance to realize their ideas after all in the first Season of KDE. Since KDE does not have Google's financial capacities the students will not get paid for their efforts. Still it is a very good opportunity for students to get involved in KDE development while being mentored by an experienced KDE developer and as a result be an active part of the Free Software Community.

In other words, no Google moolah is flowing, but the aspirants coders are still coding - out of sheer hacker love. Kudos to the students for doing so, and to their mentors for giving their time. That's what this open stuff is all about.

The Curse of the Open Source IPO

There's a nice round-up of open source IPOs by Matthew Aslett. I'm not sure Trolltech really counts as a full open source company, but I'm probably being a bit harsh given its dual-licensing approach.

What's interesting about this trip down memory lane is that it makes clear just how painful the IPO experience has been for open source companies. A warning, surely, for those that come after.

Can Google Measure up to Technorati?

Google has acquired Measure Map, a service that tracks visitors and links to blogs. This is of double interest to me.

First, because like all that pathetic crew known to the wider world as bloggers, I am hopelessly addicted to learning who has visited and linked to my blog (this sad human need will surely form the basis of several killer business applications - if only I could think of them...).

This acquisition places another company offering similar services, Technorati, squarely in Google's sights. It also makes Technorati rather more desirable to Google's rivals - no names, no pack drill, but you know who you are. Which brings me neatly to the second reason why this move is of interest to me, since I have an interview with Technorati's founder and CEO, Dave Sifry, in the Guardian today, which touches on many of these points.

I first interviewed Dave some six years ago, when I was writing Rebel Code. At that time, he was riding the dotcom wave with his earlier company, Linuxcare. This had come up with the wizard idea of offering third-party support for all the main open source programs that were widely used in business at the time. As a result, it had mopped up just about every top hacker outside the Linux kernel - people like Andrew Tridgell, the creator of Samba, a program that allows GNU/Linux machines to interoperate with Windows networks by acting as a file and printer server.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Google will now be a competitor to Sifry's Technorati, since in two important respects Linuxcare anticipated a key Google practice: mopping up those hackers, and then encouraging them to work on ancillary projects on company time.

Sifry's explanation back in 2000 of the logic behind this approach throws some interesting light on Google's adoption of the idea:

Number one, it encourages us to get the best developers in the world. When you are actually telling people, hey, I want you to work on open source software while you're at work, , that is pretty unique. And then once you get some [of the best coders], you end up getting more. Because everybody wants to work with the best people. Number two is, the more good open source software that's out there, the more people who are using open source software [there are]. And guess what, that means the more people who are going to need the services of a company like Linuxcare. Number three, when you encourage people to work on open source software while they're at work, you end up getting leaders and teams of open source engineers who now work for your company. And then lastly, but by no means least, it's great PR.

It was good to talk to Dave again, because I found that he hadn't really changed from the lively, enthusiastic, generous individual I'd discovered those years ago. It was particularly good to find that success - as I say in my Guardian piece, Technorati is either going to be bought by someone for lots of money, or make lots of money with an IPO soon - hasn't changed any of that.

More conclusive proof, if any were needed, that free software really is good for the soul.