Marriage Made in Hell: FOI+DRM

This is not as it's supposed to be:

Secretive management at Southampton University are undermining the spirit of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, if not necessarily contravening the letter.

Reg reader and founder of website publicwhip, Francis Irving, draws our attention to a fairly innocuous request to the University requesting details of the "total amount received by the purchase of printer credit at the University of Southampton for the academic years 2006/7, 2007/08 and 2008/09".

Hardly earth-shattering information. The author of the request, Adam Richardson, was therefore very surprised to receive back from the University – about a month later than the law suggests – a copy-protected PDF document, which requires the recipient to swear that they are indeed the person who made the FOI request before viewing the rest of the document.

...

In addition to these technological barriers, the University also adds an "Intellectual Property Rights Notice" which would appear to be a direct contravention of the law in this area. They claim to "reserve all intellectual property rights" in respect of material provided under the FOI request. The material may not be further used without the "written permission of the University".

They're claiming what? - intellectual monopolies on the facts? Talk about being true to the spirit of the law....

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A Victory (of Sorts) for e-Petitions

It's easy to be cynical about 10 Downing Street's e-petitions (I should know). But here's a case where it might even have done some good.

Thank you for your e-petition, which asks that The National Archives convert its electronic records to Open Document Format rather than Microsoft Open XML Format, in order to make them accessible to users.

The National Archives is committed to preserving electronic records that are both authentic, and easily accessible by users. Wherever possible, records are made available online in a format which can be accessed using any standard web browser. Electronic records transferred to The National Archives are always preserved in their native format; if the native format is not suitable for online access then a separate ‘presentation’ version is created. No single format can address the diversity of electronic records held by The National Archives. At present, documents transferred in Microsoft Office formats are converted to Portable Document Format for online access. PDF is an international standard (ISO 32000-1: 2008) and is supported by all major browsers, either natively or via freely available plug-ins. The National Archives does not currently plan to convert any records to Microsoft Office Open XML format.

It's the last bit that's important: there were rumours circulating that some dark deal was being done to lock up the Archives in OOXML. For the moment we seem safe....

Why Kindle Must Support ODF

I'm not a Kindle user. In part, because it's not available in the UK, but also because it seems too closed in terms of its overall architecture. But it's clearly winning fans - and I think that's going to be a problem.

Why that might be is revealed by this interesting posting:

Reading .DOC and (some) .PDF files. This part of the Kindle's function turns out to be much more important than I anticipated.

Mine can't be the only line of work that involves an endless stream of material to read, often arriving as Word .DOC or Adobe .PDF files. I resist printing them out, and I resent the additional hours of sitting in front a computer screen to read them.

By moving them instead to the Kindle, (a) I have them all in one place, (b) I avoid lugging around, or forgetting, that much additional paper, and (c) I have them in a much nicer form for reading than the computer itself.

I think this is right: I, too, would be tempted by a very lightweight system with a high-quality screen specifically designed for reading electronic texts. But as the writer notes, Kindle is great for two main formats: .doc and PDFs. As far as I am aware, there is no support for ODF. Assuming Kindle catches on, that's going to be an increasing problem for those of us pushing ODF.

Maybe time to start a campaign for ODF support on the Kindle....

OOXML? For Pete's Sake, No

Peter Murray-Rust is one of the key figures in the world of open data and open science, and deserves a lot of the credit for making these issues more visible. Here's an interesting post in which he points out that PDF files are not ideal from an archiving viewpoint:

I should make it clear that I am not religiously opposed to PDF, just to the present incarnation of PDF and the mindset that it engenders in publishers, repositarians, and readers. (Authors generally do not use PDF).

He then discusses in detail what the problems are and what solutions might be. Then he drops this clanger:

I’m not asking for XML. I’m asking for either XHTML or Word (or OOXML)

Word? OOXML??? Come on, Peter, you want open formats and you're willing to accept one of the most botched "standards" around, knocked up for purely political reasons, that includes gobs of proprietary elements and is probably impossible for anyone other than Microsoft to implement? *That's* open? I don't think so....

XHTML by all means, and if you want a document format the clear choice is ODF - a tight and widely-implemented standard. Anything but OOXML.

Norway's Beautiful Plumage...

...openness:

Regjeringa har vedteke at all informasjon på statlege nettsider skal vere tilgjengeleg i dei opne dokumentformata HTML, PDF eller ODF. Tida der offentlege dokument berre var tilgjengelege i Microsofts Word-format vil med det gå mot slutten.

I particularly liked the last sentence, which is basically a gratuitous kick where it hurts for Microsoft. (Via The Open Sourcerer.)

Wikipedia Goes Open...

OpenDocument, that is:

The third stage, planned for mid-2008, will be the addition of the OpenDocument format for word processors to the list of export formats. "Imagine that you want to use a set of wiki articles in the classroom. By supporting the OpenDocument format, we will make it easy for educators to customize and remix content before printing and distributing it from any desktop computer," Sue Gardner explained.

The first stage, in case you were wondering,

is a public beta test running on WikiEducator.org of functionality for remixing collections of wiki pages and downloading them in the PDF format.

while the second stage is

the deployment of the technology on the projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, including Wikipedia. At this point, users will also be given the option to order printed copies of wiki content directly from PediaPress.com. "The integration into Wikipedia will be a milestone for print-on-demand technology. Users will literally be empowered to print their own encyclopedias", according to Heiko Hees, product manager at PediaPress.com.

Hmm, well, maybe: I think the amount of work involved might make buying an encyclopaedia rather more attractive.... (Via Open Access News.)

Feel Free to Squeak

I don't know much about the open source programming language Squeak, but it does sound rather cool:

Squeak is a highly portable, open-source Smalltalk with powerful multimedia facilities. Squeak is the vehicle for a wide range of projects from educational platforms to commercial web application development.

...

Squeak stands alone as a practical environment in which a developer, researcher, professor, or motivated student can examine source code for every part of the system, including graphics primitives and the virtual machine itself. One can make changes immediately and without needing to see or deal with any language other than Smalltalk.

Our diverse and very active community includes teachers, students, business application developers, researchers, music performers, interactive media artists, web developers and many others. Those individuals use Squeak for a wide variety of computing tasks, ranging from child education to innovative research in computer science, or the creation of advanced dynamic web sites using the highly acclaimed continuation based Seaside framework.

Squeak runs bit-identical images across its entire portability base, greatly facilitating collaboration in diverse environments. Any image file will run on any interpreter even if it was saved on completely different hardware, with a completely different OS (or no OS at all!).

Now, though, it seems there is no excuse not to find out more:

To help more people get familiar with Squeak's very powerful programming environment, the new book Squeak by Example is now being made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. It's intended for both students and developers and guides readers through the Squeak language and development environment by means of a series of examples and exercises. This is very useful to those who wish to become more familiar with the Croquet programming environment. You can either download the PDF for free, or you can buy a softcover copy from lulu.com.

What a classic combination: CC digital download, or an analogue version from Lulu.com.

Update 1: Alas, it seems you can't squeak freely - see comment below.

Update 2: Or maybe you can - see other comments below.

GNU PDF Project

Around ten years ago I fought a fierce battle to get people to use HTML instead of PDF files, which I saw as part of a move to close the Web by making it less transparent.

You may have noticed that I lost.

Now, even the GNU project is joining in:

The goal of the GNU PDF project is to develop and provide a free, high-quality and fully functional set of libraries and programs that implement the PDF file format, and associated technologies.

...

PDF has become the de-facto standard for documentation sharing in the industry.

Almost all enterprises uses PDF documents to communicate all kinds of information: manuals, design documents, presentations, etc, even if it is originally composed with OpenOffice, LaTeX or some other word processor.

Almost all enterprises use proprietary tools to compose, read and manipulate PDF files. Thus, the workers of these enterprises are forced to use proprietary programs.

I still think HTML, suitably developed, would be a better solution. (Via LXer.)

Stil Rather Crode (Anagram)

I'm as keen as the next son of Albion to support Brit high-tech startups, but it's jolly hard when they insist on wedding themselves to the past rather than embracing the future. Take edocr (durable little meme, that), a new rival to Scribd:

www.edocr.com allows business documents such as press releases, white papers, case studies, product updates, brochures, analyst reports, etc (any .doc and .pdf) to be interacted within the business community.

Hey, chaps, every heard of ODF? Google has, Apple has: seems to be getting quite popular. Maybe time to, er, read around the subject a bit...? (Via TechCrunch.)

Learning from the Encyclopedia of Life

One of the great trends online is to pool data to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. The Encyclopedia of Life is one example, but on a splendidly ambitious scale:

an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.

Highly laudable, not least the last part. But I can't help feeling that something has gone wrong in the realisation of this grand project.

The opening page of the website is a huge image that takes a while to load even with a decent broadband connection, and which conveys absolutely nothing (it's a nice picture taken from space of the Earth from mesopotamia to poor oppressed Tibet: and?). The home page has a video on it (why?), and all the demo pages are PDFs (er, isn't this supposed to be a website - you know, groovy HTML stuff?). slow to load, presumably because they are over-coded.

All-in-all, then, a superb idea, but one that clearly needs a lot of tweaking - to say nothing of slimming down - if it is to be really useful.

Google Supports ODF

Well, it already does with its online office suite, but now it lets you search for ODF files and displays converted online:

In addition to HTML files, Google indexes other file types like: PDFs, Microsoft Office files, Shockwave Flash files and more. Google offers you the option to read the HTML (or text) version of the cached file, in case you don't have an application that opens the file.

Google added OpenDocument format to the list of supported documents.

The post has interesting numbers of how many files types are currently found: not many for ODF, currently. It will be interesting to see how things change with time. (Via Bob Sutor.)

The Openness Spreads...to Adobe's PDF

One campaign I have fought over the years has been for people to dump proprietary PDF files and use open HTML instead.

Clearly, I lost that one, but as time goes by, it's becoming less of a problem as Adobe moves PDF closer to being a totally open standard like HTML. Here's the latest news:

Most people know that PDF is already a standard so why do this now? This event is very subtle yet very significant. PDF will go from being an open standard/specification and defacto standard to a full blown du jure standard. The difference will not affect implementers much given PDF has been a published open standard for years. There are some important distinctions however. First – others will have a clearly documented process for contributing to the future of the PDF specification. That process also clearly documents the path for others to contribute their own Intellectual property for consideration in future versions of the standard. Perhaps Adobe could have set up some open standards process within the company but this would be merely duplicating the open standards process, which we felt was the proper home for PDF. Second, it helps cement the full PDF specification as the umbrella specification for all the other PDF standards under the ISO umbrella such as PDF/A, PDF/X and PDF/E. The move also helps realize the dreams of a fully open web as the web evolves (what some are calling Web 2.0), built upon truly open standards, technologies and protocols.

(Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog.)

Be Asked, and Ye Shall Receive

Here's an interesting Ars Technica story about Microsoft being forced to do the right thing - and benefitting from it - with its rival to PDF, called XPS:

Microsoft had previously indicated that its XPS technology would be licensed "royalty-free" to developers, and the company also promised a so-called "covenant not to sue" provision for businesses working on XPS print support, scanning technologies, and certain graphics display technologies.

However, at the behest of the EU, Microsoft is now taking matters a step further. A company spokesperson told Ars Technica that Microsoft "agreed to submit our new fixed-layout document format—the XML Paper Specification—to a standards-setting organization, and to revise the licensing terms on which the specification is made available to other software developers."

Microsoft is looking again at its license in order to make it compatible with open source licenses, which means that the "covenant not to sue" will likely be extended to cover any intellectual property dispute stemming from the simple use or incorporation of XPS. The end result is that using XPS may be considerably more attractive for developers now that the EU has apparently expressed concerns over the license.

The moral: open up, and you reap the benefits.

Eclipse - the Magazine

I know, I know, magazines are so twentieth century. This one is different - it's a PDF magazine (OK, so that's worse). But at least it's entirely devoted to the world's favourite IDE: Eclipse. As a result, it tells you rather more than you might want to know, but it's good for skimming. (Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog.)

Going the Extremadura Mile

Many in the world of free software are aware that the Spanish region of Extremadura has been installing GNU/Linux in its schools. It has even created its own distribution called GNU/Linex. This project began many years ago - the roots go back to 1998 - and most people probably assumed it had all fizzled out.

Far from it. For the Extramadura government has now announced that it would be going even further:

All the computers of the Junta of Extremadura (goverment state of Spain) will be running free software within a year. This project makes the Regional Government the first Public Administration to adopt standards upheld by international organizations, that favour "technological innovation and the reduction of user dependency.

The councillor for Infrastructures and Technological Development, Luis Millán de Vázquez de Miguel, met the press this Friday to inform about the agreements reached in the last board meeting of the Government held last June 25. In said meeting, it was agreed that all the computers of the Junta of Extremadura would have to be adapted to free software office tools and gnuLinEx (the local flavour of Debian GNU/Linux) within one year.

Thus, as from now on, all workers of the public administration must use open document formats (ISO/IEC DIS 26300) for their office applications for information and creating administrative processes, as well as PDF/A (Portable Document Format ISO 19005-1:2005) for Exchange Documents, when guaranteed unalterable visualization is required.

That is open source, and OpenDocument too.

But what's most interesting about this announcement is that it shows how mighty oaks can grow from small acorns: once organisations have tried free software and discovered how good it is, it becomes much easier to move on to larger-scale implementations. This, in its turn, shows that every open source project, now matter how small, is important.

A Third of a Million eBooks - Free

I have been rather remiss in not pointing out that the World eBook Fair started last Tuesday. In celebration of the 35th anniversary of the founding of Project Gutenberg:

The World eBook Fair welcomes you to absolutely free access to a variety of eBook unparalleled by any other source. 1/3 million eBooks await you for personal use, all free of charge for the month from July 4 - August 4, 2006, and then 1/2 million eBooks in 2007, 3/4 million in 2008, and ONE million in 2009.

You can either just bung in a search term on the home page given above, or - probably better - go to the full listing of the constituent collections.

I have to say these are pretty impressive. As well as practically every Western classic you could think (already well-covered by Project Gutenberg) there's some interestingly specialist stuff here: for example, Asian classics (don't miss "Response to a Question on the Five Degenerations of the Eon of Strife" - in Tibetan, of course), seriously deep ancient middle eastern texts (Egyptian, Sumerian etc.), tens of thousands of multilingual editions, 8,000 English poems and sheet music.

It's true that these are not all completely open content: many exist in new "editions" which are copyrighted. They also tend to be PDF files, and some scans from books are not very accurate. But it would be churlish to dwell on these deficiencies (none of which applies to the original Project Gutenberg, which is completely open, in the public domain and highly accurate): get downloading and enjoy.

Beyond Open Source - The Talk

I mentioned a little while back that I'd been asked to give a talk at the Open Source and Sustainability conference in Oxford. This has now taken place, both I and my audience survived, and the talk is available online (as a PDF, I'm afraid). It's about open source, open genomics and open content.

Now there's a surprise.

Boons and Banes of Firefox and Thunderbird

Among the many boons of Firefox and Thunderbird are the powerful keyboard shortcuts; among the banes - trying to remember them.

Now you don't have to. Thanks to the selfless work of Leslie Franke, you can download two indispensable cheatsheets, which conveniently fit all the main commands on one page each. There's one for Firefox and another for Thunderbird; both are available as HTML or PDF. Thanks, Leslie.