Open Data, Creative Destruction and Money

Nearly three years ago, I wrote an article exploring why at that time there were no billion-dollar companies (since then, Red Hat has finally broken through this barrier). Here's the key point:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Mozilla Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Commercial Spyware Company For Using Firefox Trademark And Code To Trick Users

Techdirt has written several times about the increasing tendency for governments around the world to turn to malware as a way of spying on people, without really thinking through the risks. One company that is starting to crop up more and more in this context is Gamma International, thanks to its FinFisher suite of spyware products, which includes FinSpy. A recent report by Citizenlab, entitled "For Their Eyes Only: The Commercialization of Digital Spying", has explored this field in some depth. Among its findings is the following: 

On Techdirt.

The Future of Commercial Open Source: Foundations

Remember MySQL? Most famous for being part of the LAMP stack, and thus powering the bulk of the innovative work done in the field of ecommerce for a decade or more, it's rather fallen off the radar recently. It's not hard to see why: Oracle's acquisition of Sun, which had earlier bought MySQL for the not inconsiderable sum of $1 billion, meant that one of the key hacker projects was now run by the archetypal big-business mogul, Larry Ellison. So it was natural that people were unsure about MySQL's future, and started looking for alternatives.

On Open Enterprise blog.

http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/04/italys-big-leap-forward-for-openness/index.htm

A few weeks ago, I wrote of the continuing progress on the central Gov.uk site, which is a showcase of open technologies, as well as being the place to start when interacting with central government in the UK. Looks like I'm not the only one who is impressed by their work, since the site has just been chosen as Design of the Year in the Design Museum's

On Open Enterprise blog.

Italy's Great Leap Forward for Openness?

Different countries are moving at different speeds in terms of governmental adoption of free software, open data and openness in general. I wrote a year ago about Iceland, which seemed to be making particularly rapid progress at the time. Now it looks like it's Italy's turn. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Please Help Save Open Source Seeds Now

Seeds have much in common with code.  Indeed, I wrote an entire book about how genomics parallels the world of software.  In particular, they suffer from the same problem: patents.  Patents give control over key technologies, which makes the corresponding commons even more valuable for the freedom it offers.

And alongside open source code, there are open source seeds.  These are those that have been developed over thousands of years by nameless farmers, and are owned by no one.  Anyone can sell them, or use them to develop new seeds.  They form part of humanity's greatest heritage.  And yet an ill-advised European regulation threats to consign open source seeds to the dustbin of history.

I've written a detailed explanation of what the issues are over on Techdirt.  Here I'd like to concentrate on what we can do about it.  Basically, we need to contact the European Commissioners before Monday, asking them not to take this step.  Here are their email addresses:

Viviane.Reding@ec.europa.eu, joaquin.almunia@ec.europa.eu, Siim.Kallas@ec.europa.eu, Neelie.Kroes@ec.europa.eu, Antonio.Tajani@ec.europa.eu, Maros.sefcovic@ec.europa.eu, Olli.Rehn@ec.europa.eu, Janez.Potocnik@ec.europa.eu, Andris.Piebalgs@ec.europa.eu, Michel.Barnier@ec.europa.eu, Androulla.Vassiliou@ec.europa.eu, Algirdas.semeta@ec.europa.eu, karel.de-gucht@ec.europa.eu, Maire.Geoghegan-Quinn@ec.europa.eu, Janusz.Lewandowski@ec.europa.eu, Maria.Damanaki@ec.europa.eu, Kristalina.Georgieva@ec.europa.eu, Johannes.Hahn@ec.europa.eu, Connie.Hedegaard@ec.europa.eu, stefan.Fule@ec.europa.eu, Laszlo.Andor@ec.europa.eu, Cecilia.Malmstrom@ec.europa.eu, Dacian.Ciolos@ec.europa.eu, Tonio.Borg@ec.europa.eu

I'm sorry for the extremely short notice, but I found out about this just a few weeks ago, and have been trying to get my head around what is really going on.  Basically, this would give control of Europe's food supply to the multinational giants like Monsanto, and ensure that our food is increasingly "owned" through the presence of patents.  That's insane for the reasons that I note below.

Here's what I've sent off:

I am writing to you to urge you to object to the regulation of the licensing and sale of seeds, which I believe you will consider next week. 

Although I appreciate that the impulse behind this was laudable enough – to ensure that plant material that is available in the EU is safe, and that problems can be tracked back to their source – the way it is being implemented seems fraught with problems. 

First, there is the huge bureaucratic burden that is being imposed upon seed suppliers. These will fall especially hard on small and medium-sized enterprises, a group that I know you are keen to promote.

Perhaps even worse, it will mean that thousands of ancient varieties that are unencumbered and in the public domain will never be registered or certified, and thus will fall out of use. That is a terrible loss of thousands of years of European culture – civilisation was built on seeds, which made cities and all that they bring possible. 

That will result in a loss of diversity at a time when European agriculture is facing unprecedented challenges thanks to climate change. The seed licensing proposals make it likely that fewer, less varied seeds will be used; this will make food supply in Europe far less resilient, and more vulnerable to diseases. It will also make European farmers dependent on a small group of large seed suppliers who will be able to exercise oligopoly power with all that this implies for pricing and control. 

Finally, these changes will result in tens of millions of ordinary citizens across Europe – the ones who delight in the simple pleasures of gardening – finding themselves limited in the seeds that they can buy and sow. At the very least this is likely to lead to an increasing disillusionment with the European project, something that we all would wish to avoid at a time when many are expressing their doubts on this score. 

In summary, I ask you to reject the regulation in its current form, and to insist that it be modified to allow Europe ancient seed heritage to be preserved and enjoyed by future generations, and to ensure that European agriculture remains strong and independent.   

 Please help if you can: this is important.

EU Proposal for (Nearly) Open Data [Update]

Update: Maël Brunet has pointed out that the press release I linked to below is from 2011; what was actually announced yesterday was that the EU Council's 'Coreper' committee (EU Committee of Member States' Permanent Representatives) has now endorsed the measures announced there. So, nothing has changed from what I wrote below, but another hurdle has been cleared in making the open data initiative happen. All that remains is for the European Parliament to agree, and the rules will come into force. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that any amendments will be included at this stage, so it looks like we only get "almost" open data....

On Open Enterprise blog.

OpenDaylight and the Future of Enterprise Software

Earlier this week, the Linux Foundation made an announcement about the oddly-named OpenDaylight project:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Mozilla and the Open Source Browser Bonanza

Even if you don't remember the birth of Mozilla 15 years ago, you are certainly benefitting from its consequences. For, back then, the company that invented the Web as a mass medium, Netscape, was in its death throes, and looked likely to take Web browser choice with it.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source: That's the Way to Do It

Although the use of open source by the UK government has an unhappy history (and one that certainly isn't finished), one ray of hope comes from Gov.uk, as I've noted before. The driving force behind that site is the Government Digital Service (GDS), and on its blog there's a particularly interesting post by Mike Bracken, who rejoices in the splendid title of "Executive Director of Digital in the Cabinet Office." 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Apple's Patent For Creating A Leak-Proof Data Pipe, And Why It's Doomed To Fail

In 2001, I published a history of free software, called "Rebel Code: Inside Linux and the Open Source Revolution." One of the people I interviewed for the book was Eben Moglen, for many years the General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and one of the main architects of the later versions of the GNU General Public License. He had the following interesting thoughts on the delivery of digital media: 

On Techdirt.

Reading the Google Reader Tea-leaves

If you were online late last night - and especially if you were on Twitter - you may have noted an enormous wave of pain and anger sweeping across the network. Here's what caused it:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Could Open Source Software Be Put Into The Public Domain Instead?

There are dozens of free software and open source licences -- many would argue rather too many. Different licenses impose different conditions. For example, the best-known and most widely-used is the GNU General Public License, which is designed to ensure that anyone building on GPL'd software and distributing it should make the modified program available under the same license. Others, such as the BSD license simply require the copyright and license notices to be included with any code that is used. 

On Techdirt.

France Considers Operating System-Level Filtering

Long-time readers will remember the appalling way in which the UK's Digital Economy Act was brought in - with no research, no debate, and no democracy. At its heart lies the infamous "three strikes" idea: if you are alleged - not proved, but merely alleged - to have shared files online on three occasions you will be subject to some punishment. Originally that was cutting off your hand, er, your Internet connection, but as the discussions over implementing this unjust and punitive law have dragged on, it's become less clear how it will actually work.

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK National Curriculum: A Level Playing-Field?

Just over a year ago, I reported on a remarkable speech by the UK Education Secretary Michael Gove that contained the following words:

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Government Fails Its First Big Procurement Test

As regular readers of Computerworld UK know, the UK government has repeatedly said that it wishes to move on from the past patterns of procurement that have seen the UK spending far more on IT than comparable governments elsewhere. For years the UK has been the IT industry's dream: a rich but gormless customer that believes everything it is told by suppliers, and happy to pay through the nose for projects that consistently fail to deliver, assuming they are even completed. Indeed, the UK government has become proverbial in the IT world for its inefficiency and incompetence in this area.

On Open Enterprise blog.

VLC Multimedia Player Shows Changing Open Source License Is Hard, But Possible

Licenses lie at the heart of open source -- and many other kinds of "open" too. That's because they are used to define the rights of users, and to ensure those rights are passed on -- that the intellectual commons is not enclosed. Their central importance explains in part the flamewars that erupt periodically over which license is "best" -- many people have very strong feelings on the subject. 

On Techdirt.

Taking open source foundations to the next level

Krita is a fine sketching and painting program, but few would claim that it is one of the big names in the open source world, such as Firefox or LibreOffice. That makes the following recent announcement noteworthy:

On The H Open.

We, the People; We, the Coders

It's generally accepted that one of the reasons Barack Obama was re-elected as US President last year was the superiority of the IT system his campaign team used. It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that it was built on open source foundations, as this fascinating article in The Verge explains:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Another Reason to Use Open Source: Sane Licensing

A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out how a decision in Norway involving cash registers emphasised one of the advantages of open source - its natural auditability. Here's another interesting situation that points out a further reason for choosing openness.

On Open Enterprise blog.