The Free Software Pact

As regular readers of these posts will have noticed, political issues are starting to impinge more and more on the world of free software and openness in general. I think that's the result of two trends.

One, is that politicians are starting to wake up to the fact that openness is hot, and are beginning to talk about it - not always sincerely - in the hope of looking vaguely trendy. The other is that supporters of free software and the rest are beginning to realise that the main obstacles to spreading openness are increasingly political, rather than technical. This means the fight must be taken to the politicians directly.

One way to do that is to write to MPs and MEPs, and that's also something that I've been advocating more frequently recently, as important legislation with an impact on openness comes before national and European parliaments. Clearly, though, it would be good to be able to bring free software and related areas to the attention of politicians in other ways. The recently-launched Free Software Pact is one possibility:

What is the Free Software Pact?

The Free Software Pact is a citizen initiative to coordinate a European scale campaign in favour of Free Software. We will provide material and software to any volunteer who want to contribute to the initiative.

What are the objectives of the Free Software Pact?

The Free Software Pact is a simple document with which candidates can inform the voting public that they favor the development and use of Free Software, and will protect it from possible threatening EU legislation. The Free Software Pact is also a tool for citizens who value Free Software to educate candidates about the importance of Free Software and why they should, if elected, protect the European Free Software community.

You can find the text of the Pact (in various languages and formats) here, although I can't see a version that politicians can sign online. Either it doesn't exist - which would be foolish, since it's by far the easiest way to sign - or else it's badly signposted on the site. Either way, it needs fixing.

The coordinator for the Free Software Pact in the UK is Mark Taylor, a familiar name to this blog, and one of the most selfless defenders of free software around. Getting him on board is an excellent start for this fledgling movement, and I wish him and it well in their efforts. You can contact him about the Pact at mtaylor@freesoftwarepact.eu.

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BECTA Rubbishes Almost the Entire UK Open Source Industry

On Open Enterprise blog.

A New Star in the UK Open Source Blogosphere

On Open Enterprise blog.

Can the BBC Trust Butter Some Parsnips?

The Open Source Consortium has prodded the BBC Trust into words, if not action:

The BBC Trust and the Open Source Consortium (OSC) have agreed the promotion of Microsoft by the BBC should end. After a meeting with the OSC, the BBC Trust restated its commitment to a platform agnostic solution for the iPlayer's catch-up service and agreed that the recently launched streaming service was only an interim solution.

The main credit for this should go to the OSC's indefatigable boss, who explained what remains to be done:

Mark Taylor, President of the Open Source Consortium, said: “We are pleased that the BBC Trust continues to engage with us and take our concerns seriously. The seven-day streaming service is elegant and attractive, and most importantly, can be used on any computer and most mobile devices without unnecessary concern with technology. Instead consumers can choose on the more important criteria of price and performance.

“However we remain concerned that the 30 day catch-up service is exclusively provided only for newer versions of Microsoft operating systems and are pleased that the BBC Trust continues to share our concern that iPlayer be made technology agnostic at the earliest opportunity.

“Thanks to the BBC Trust's intervention we met BBC management to outline how they could deliver an open iPlayer that would meet all rights holders concerns. We think it would be easily possible to use the BBC's existing, world leading Free Software solutions in an open iPlayer. We sincerely hope that the BBC will take this further."

This does matter, because if the catch-up service remains Windows only, it turns the BBC into a vector of Microsoft's DRM and products - hardly what the public broadcaster should be doing.

Moreover, fine words butter no parsnips: can we trust the BBC Trust to follow through on this? If they don't, at least we can be sure that the OSC will be there with a sharp stick goading them to do so.

Interview with OSC's Mark Taylor

On the Open Enterprise blog.

BBC: Bound to Be Beaten on iPlayer?

Interesting:

We met with Mark Taylor, President of the Open Source Consortium (OSC) last night, directly after his meeting with the BBC to discuss opening-up the iPlayer to run on more platforms than just the Microsoft browser.

It appears that the meetings were positive and boiled down to two points, the BBC feels they haven’t communicated their desires for iPlayer properly and that they want the iPlayer to run on an open platform.

That seems to offer some hope things are moving in the right direction. This, on the other hand, guarantees it:

Both Mark Taylor (OSC) and Becky Hogge (Open Rights Group) will be taking part in a discussion with the BBC to further discuss the iPlayer situation this Friday at 10am.

The BBC stands no chance against those two....

Update: Here's the OSC's official report on the meeting.

Groklaw Begins to Grok the iPlayer

I've written pretty extensively about the scandal that is the BBC iPlayer. The main man fighting the good fight here is the indispensable Mark Taylor, and it's good to see that Groklaw has caught up with him and the iPlayer saga in this interview. Do read it to learn the terrifying twists and turns in this sorry tale.

Westminster eForum: Sermon of the Day

No posting yesterday, since I was up at the Westminster eForum talking about open source (now, there's a surprise), along with a few core open-type people like Mark Taylor, Alan Cox and Becky Hogge. However, sadly few Westminster-type people were there whose ear could be bent; mostly it was just preaching to the choir. Here's my sermon:

I have had the privilege of writing about free software and open source for over 12 years now. I say privilege for at least two reasons.

First, the people I have met and interviewed in this world have been pretty extraordinary - and certainly very different in many respects from those I have encountered elsewhere in computing. In particular, they are driven by something that can only be called a passion for writing great programs, and a deeply-held belief that these should be made available as widely as possible.

The second reason my time covering this area has been such a privilege is that the ideas underpinning open source have turned out to be deep and far-reaching. This wasn't really clear a decade ago - certainly not to me - when the idea of writing software collaboratively across the Internet, and then giving it away, was so radical that many people thought it would either fizzle out completely, or remain a kind weird, beard-and-sandles niche.

But today, open source has entered the mainstream: most of the Internet runs on free software; companies like Google depend on it, and more and more governments are deploying it - well, outside the UK, at least. And as open source has become almost commonplace in certain sectors of computing, it has also become clear that this is not just about software. It is about a profound shift that is beginning to make its presence felt elsewhere.

For example, most people know of Wikipedia, which is created collaboratively across the Internet, and made freely available to all - in other words, an open source encyclopaedia. The fact that there are now over two million entries - and that's just the English-language version - shows just what that approach can achieve outside software.

Most people have heard of the Human Genome Project, but not many realise that the reason it succeeded - and prevented US companies from patenting huge swathes of our DNA - was that it was conducted collaboratively, across the Internet, and that its results were placed in the public domain immediately, as a matter of policy. In other words, it applied the open source methodology to genomics.

Less well-known, perhaps, is open access. Here the idea is that the scientific and academic research funded by the taxpayer should be freely available online for anyone to read, and for other scientists to use and to build on. Not an unreasonable wish, you would have thought, and yet one that is being fought fiercely by certain large - and highly-profitable - scientific publishers. The similarity of the idea to software collaboration is evident, and indeed the open access pioneers were directly inspired by open source.

There are other examples, but my allotted time is running out, and we can perhaps explore this area in the question and answer session - or indeed anytime afterwards (you can Google me for contact details). The main point I'd like to leave with you is this: that open source is not about computers, it's about people. It's about how we create, how we share, and how we live and work together in the age of the Internet.

So, far from being some minor technical issue, of interest only to a few anoraks, open source and the larger ideas behind it are, in fact, absolutely central to the way society, democracy and government will function in the 21st century. What we are discussing today is just the beginning.

The Penguin Goes to Redmond

Well, to Redmond Magazine, that is....

Becta: Must Try Harder

Despite Becta's fine words, that guardian of the free software spirit, Mark Taylor, wants more action:

"This is the perfect opportunity for Becta to reject accusations that it is in bed with big suppliers by offering serious support to Linux and open source software as valid alternatives.

"Becta's own evidence says it will save schools money, so let's see them provide at least equal opportunities for schools to buy open source software through their e-Learning Credits and the new Learning Platform Framework Agreements."

Go for 'em, Mark.

Brum to Blame

I wrote about the apparent failure of an open source desktop project in Birmingham a little while back: now it looks like it wasn't the software that's to blame. Here's what the inimitable and highly-knowledgeable Eddie Bleasdale has to say on the subject:

"It's an unbelievable cock-up... They decided to do it all themselves, without expertise in the area," he added, saying that a lack of skills in open source and secure desktops would undoubtedly have raised costs.

His view is backed up by another expert in this field:

Mark Taylor, whose Open Source Consortium also exited the project in the early stages, said: "I have no idea how anyone could spend half a million pounds on 200 desktops, running free software".

Quite.

Open Nanotech

Normally I wouldn't pay much attention to this story about producing mechanical components with industrial printers:

the company builds components by piling thin, patterned layers of ceramics, metals and other materials on top of each other and curing the individual layers as the structure takes shape.

These printed components, which consist of hundreds of layers, can also contain fully integrated moving parts, hinges or sealed air chambers.

What leant this otherwise routine piece of nanotech fluff some interest was a comment made last night by Alan Cox, for a long time de facto number 2 of the Linux kernel, and still very much a big cheese in the open source world (and a nice bloke too).

He was speaking at a question and answer session arranged by the British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group. Also present was Mark Taylor, founder and President of the Open Source Consortium, very plugged-in and switched-on, and a coder-turned-lawyer called Andrew Katz, whom I'd not met before.

Alan mentioned the idea of printing arbitrary objects one day, in exactly the manner described by the C|net piece above. I asked him whether he'd been talking with Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, who espouses similar ideas rather more fervently - indeed, he says that Project Gutenberg's open content is only the start of the the next industrial revolution, when everything - as in every kind of analogue object - will be downloadable and printable.

When two such different individuals have a blue-sky vision so similar, it makes you stop and think.

It's worth noting that open nanotech will have a huge advantage over proprietary versions, since the whole benefit from the technology will be putting together microscopic elements to build something useful. If each sub-part is proprietary and/or patented, it will be a legal minefield. If the elements are open and patent-free, the only limit is your imagination.