So the Free Culture Foundation has launched. That sounds good, but I can't really tell from the site what it's doing: the philosophy section contain essays that taken together are hardly coherent. Freedom is good, but not when it leads to confusion. Perhaps something will emerge with time.
It's hard to tell whether it's because RMS has changed, or whether the world has changed, but something is new here: RMS is starting to engage with politicians at the highest levels.
For example, a few months back I wrote about his meeting with Ségolène Royal - who, as I and many others predicted, is now officially a candidate for the French Presidential elections.
Now here's RMS hobnobbing with Rafael Correa, the new president of Ecuador. I had to laugh at this description:
Stallman spoke for almost 20 minutes, without Correa saying anything, just listening.
So some things remain the same.
In any case, the result seems good:When Stallman finished speaking, there were a few questions, and a short conversations where the two of them were in agreement on everything, and Correa asked his advisers if Ecuador should migrate to free software. They said yes, and everyone, including Stallman, left the meeting with a broad smile on their faces.
(Via Linux and Open Source Blog.)
I came across this story on LWN.net:The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software, today filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court arguing against the patenting of software.
In the case Microsoft v. AT&T, the Supreme Court will decide whether U.S. patents can apply to software that is copied and distributed overseas. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized patent court known for allowing patents on software and business methods, originally decided in favor of AT&T, expanding the international reach of U.S. software patents.
Well, to coin a phrase, I bloody well hope not.
But aside from the worrying implications of this kind of extra-territoriality, and the fact that the Software Freedom Law Center is supporting Microsoft in this case, I found the following statement from the amicus brief a little odd:One could not send or receive e-mail, surf the World Wide Web, perform a Google search or take advantage of many of the other benefits offered by the Internet without Free and Open Source Software, which also includes the Linux operating system that is today’s strongest competitor to Petitioner’s Windows operating system.
Er, sorry Eben, that wouldn't be the GNU/Linux operating system, by any chance? You remember, the one that Richard can get a little funny about when he sees it described as the Linux operating system...?
Sir John Sulston is one of my heroes, right up there with RMS. Indeed, Sulston can reasonably be called the RMS of genomics (or maybe RMS is the Sulston of software). More than anyone else, it was Sulston who fought for and won the free availability of the human genome's digital code. Without him, I suspect that the company that once seemed set to become the Microsoft of molecular biology, Celera, would "own" the human genome, with all the appalling things that this implies.
I mention this because there was short piece by him in the FT recently. It's an edited extract from a talk he gave; the editing and extraction are not very well done, and it certainly doesn't do justice to the man or his ideas. For that, you should read his book The Common Thread - significantly, subtitled "A Story of Science, Ethics and the Human Genome".
Great literature it ain't, but it fair bristles with the same sense of mission and moral imperatives that makes RMS's stuff such fun to read. If RMS is St IGNUcius, perhaps Sulston is St Johnomics.
I've written elsewhere about my pleasant surprise at Sun choosing the GNU GPL for Java. But an obvious question that follows on from that news is: which GPL? B
This is a highly political question, with no easy answer. And yet Simon Phipps, Mr Open Source at Sun, has given a good 'un:the very first question Richard asked me about OpenJDK was "GPL v2 or later" or "GPL v2 only"? I explained that Sun could not in good faith commit to using a license sight-unseen for such an important code-base. It's used on 4 billion devices, there are more than 5 million developers dependent on it for their living, and the risk - however slight - that the GPL v3 might prove harmful to them can't be taken. So while we are very positive about the GPL v3, committing to using it when it's not finished does not seem responsible stewardship. I hope we can use it, but I can't express that hope by committing in advance. So for now, the Java platform will be licensed under just the GPL v2.
Sounds fair enough to me.
More than anyone else, Richard Stallman is driving the GPLv3 debate (although Eben Moglen is clearly another crucially important figure). What follows is a transcript of a short interview that took place on 6 October, 2006. In it, RMS talked about the issues that lie behind the GPLv3, and gave his thoughts on the concerns expressed by the Linux coders, some of which were raised in the posting below.
Could you give a little background to the drafting of the GNU GPLv3?
The purpose of the GNU GPL is to defend for all users the freedoms that define free software. It doesn't make sense in terms of open source. It's the result of implementing the philosophy of free software in the most strong way that we can. So all the version of the GPL have prevented middlemen from restricting subsequent users by changing the licence. Some free software licences permit that, for example the X11 licence permits that. The various BSD licences permit that. But the GPL was specifically designed not to permit that - you cannot add restrictions making the program non free.
Now, what we didn't have 15 years ago was the threat of making the program effectively non free by technical restrictions placed around it. That's what Tivoisation is. Tivoisation means taking a free program and distributing a binary of it, and also providing the source, because the GPL requires that. But when the user changes the source code and compiles it and then tries to install the changed program he discovers that that's impossible because the machine is designed not to let him.
The result of this is that freedom number 1, the freedom to study the source code and change it so the program does what you want, has become a sham. Tivoisation is essentially a way to formally comply with the requirement, but not in substance.
So we've come to the conclusion that this is more than just a minor issue. That this will be common, probably the usual case, if we don't do something to stop it. And therefore we've decided to do what is necessary so that our software will not be Tivoised. Our purpose is to deliver freedom to the user.
Why do you think there has been such an outcry in some quarters recently?
I don't know. A few people are upset.
A few people including most of the key kernel coders...
Their business. That's their program and they can decide whether to use this licence.
Seems clear they will stick with GPLv2?
I hope not, but if they do it's up to them.
If that happens, is that going to cause any problems for GNU?
It won't cause any problems for us, only for the public. The problem it will cause is Tivoisation. It will cause the problem that users don't have the freedoms that they should have. And that's a very big problem, but it's not a problem specifically for us, it's a problem for everyone. The problem is that many people will get machines in which Linux has been Tivoised. Which means that for practical purposes it won't be free for them.
If that happens, would you put more effort into the Hurd?
I don't think so, and the reason is that wouldn't achieve much unless we convinced everyone to switch to the Hurd from Linux, and that isn't too likely. The Hurd still has some technical problems, and who knows if it would ever become a competitor. But suppose somebody wanted to Tivoise, and he had available the Hurd and Linux to choose from, and Linux permits Tivoisation and the Hurd doesn't: the solution would be to use Linux.
Some people make the argument that if GPLv3 is applied to Linux, companies might simply adopt a different operating system for their products.
I don't think so.
You don't think they might use BSD or Windows?
They might, who knows? I don't think it's very likely, but the main point is it's no use giving up on a fight because you might lose, not when the fight is for something very important like freedom.
Is there anything you can do to assuage concerns of the kernel coders without giving up your principles?
I don't know. If they would just speak with us. we can explore that possibility.
Are they not doing that?
Basically no. Just recently we have had a couple of communications with them, not yet reaching the stage of being entirely civil in tone, but at least it's a start. We've been inviting them to talk with us since before we started publishing drafts, but they have not for the most part taken up that offer. In general they've made statements to the public instead of to us. And some of them are based on misunderstandings of the draft and of our intention. They're talking to each other not to us. But it's not too late for them to start if they wish to talk to us.
Is there scope to rephrase the clause that deals with Tivoisation?
We can rephrase it in a lot of different ways. We just recently decided on a change, which is that the requirement for keys would no longer work by calling them part of the corresponding source. This is a change in the details, but the substance is the same, the aim is the same - to change that would be giving up.
The two philosophies of free software and open source in some cases lead to similar conduct - in fact, in many cases. That's why it was so easy for the people who support open source to apply their label to what we're doing. Because if you're participating in a free software project it usually doesn't matter whether your goal is to give users freedom and to establish freedom in cyberspace or just have powerful and reliable software, because either way you could do the same things. And there's no need for people to ask each other: What's your philosophy, why do you want to contribute to this project? - they just start contributing, and they work on making the software better, and they focus on that.
But there are cases where these two different philosophies lead to different results. For instance, some people have proposed what they call “open source DRM” - DRM meaning “digital restrictions management”. This is a plan to develop software to put in machines that will restrict users, and then publish the source code of this. The idea is that programmers around the world will work together making that software do its job better, that is, restrict the user more inescapably, more reliably, more powerfully. Although the source code of this software will be published, they plan to use Tivoisation to make sure that the users can't escape from their power.
Now, if your goal is to give the users freedom, restricting the users through open source is no more tolerable than restricting the users any other way, because the users have to have the freedom.
Have you tried talking to TiVo about this?
No.
You don't think it might be useful?
No, not really. And the reason is they're just the first example. If it were only that one company that were the problem, we probably wouldn't pay attention because it would be a small problem. But the idea is floating around, and there are many different plans to use it.
Couldn't you help TiVo do what they want to do with free software?
They initially did. This Tivoisation was not in the first TiVo box. The point is, it's pressure from Hollywood. And the best way to have a chance of negotiating something with those who are under the pressure is first to set up counter pressure.
The problem being that a hacked version of TiVo could circumvent any DRM?
Exactly. And the point is, DRM itself is evil. Restricting the user's freedom in other ways so that the user cannot change the software and get rid of DRM makes the software effectively not free for that user. So we have these two philosophies, and here they make a big difference. You can imagine open source DRM, and if all you care about are the philosophical values of open source, you might think it's great. If you only want software to be powerful and reliable, you might tend to apply that to software whose purpose is to go in somebody's machine and restrict it, and you might think, “Sure I'll help you make that powerful and reliable.” But if you believe in free software, and you think that the user whose machine it is should be in control of what that machine does and not somebody else, then the aim of that project becomes wrong in itself. Free software DRM makes no sense - it's a contradiction in terms.
Are you worried about the prospect of GPL projects forking?
It can happen. But again, there's no use not fighting, there's no use surrendering to this threat. It's too dangerous.
Are there any other points you'd like to make?
There are people who seem to imagine that some disaster will happen because some programs in the GNU/Linux system are using GPLv3 and some are using GPLv2, but in fact there are many programs with other licences in the system as well, and there's no problem there at all.
There are many people who would like to come across some disastrous flaw in GPLv3. If one person says he's found it, the others repeat it without stopping to make sure it is for real, because they consider it the answer to their prayers.
But you think they'll work together without problems?
I know they will, because these programs are separate programs, and the licence of one has no effect on the licence of another.
Now, I wish that everyone would switch to GPLv3 because that would give the strongest possible front to resist Tivoisation and ensure the freedom of the users. But I know that not everybody will participate, nonetheless we have to try to defend the freedom.
Happy hacking.
While I addressed the topic you proposed--version 3 of the GNU General Public License--Alan Cox chose instead to present a misleading picture of the history of GNU and Linux.
The GNU/Linux system comes out of the effort that I began in 1983 to develop a complete free Unix-like system called GNU. GNU is the only operating system that was developed specifically to respect computer users' freedom. Since our goal was to achieve freedom as soon as possible, we utilized the scattered existing free software packages that would fit. That still left most of the components for us to write. In those years, we of the GNU Project systematically developed the essential components of this system, plus many other desirable components, ranging from libraries to text editors to games.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed a kernel called Linux--initially not free software, but he freed it in 1992. At that time, the GNU system was complete except for a kernel. The combination of Linux and the GNU system was the first complete free operating system. That combination is GNU/Linux.
Cox says that Linux is not part of the GNU Project. That is true--of the kernel, Linux, that he and Torvalds have worked on. But the combined system that Cox calls "Linux" is more our work than his.
When Cox says that "FSF-copyrighted code is a minority in [GNU/Linux]", that too is misleading; he knows that just a fraction of the GNU packages' code is copyright FSF. What part do GNU packages compose in the whole system? Many are just as essential as Linux is.
In 1995, GNU packages were 28% of the system, while Linux was 3%. 28% is less than half, so that was a minority; but it is a lot more than 3%. Nowadays, after thousands of other groups have added to the system, both the GNU and Linux percentages are smaller than before; but no other project has contributed as much as the GNU Project.
Calling the combined system GNU/Linux is right because it gives the GNU Project credit for its work, but there are things more important than credit -- your freedom, for example. It is no accident that the GNU GPL existed before Linux was begun. We wrote the GPL to protect the freedom of the users of GNU, and we are revising it today so that it will protect against newer technical methods of denying that freedom. When you think about GPL issues, this is the background for them.
If the developers of Linux disagree with that goal, they are entitled to their views. They are entitled to cite their important work--Linux, the kernel--to be listened to more, but they should respect our right to cite the GNU system in the same way.
See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html for more explanation.
The philosophical schism between open source and free software is well known, but there's another interesting split emerging between free software and the Creative Commons movement. This isn't exactly new, but as the open content movement begins to gain momentum, it's an issue that people are starting to worry about.
If you want a good introduction to the basics of the dispute, Intellectual Property Watch has a useful report from the recent Wizards of OS 4 conference, where these tensions were exposed.
Squirreling away prior art in an attempt to stave off software patents sounds like a jolly sensible idea. But that old curmudgeon, Richard Stallman, points out some very cogent reasons why in fact this isn't such a jolly sensible idea. Essentially, the only solution to software patents is to abolish them.
Jay Rosen is the Richard Stallman of open source journalism: he has thought the ideas and pushed for the action. So anything he came up with would be interesting, but I think that his NewAssignment.Net idea is more than that. It is:In simplest terms, a way to fund high-quality, original reporting, in any medium, through donations to a non-profit called NewAssignment.Net.
The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable. The betting is that (some) people will donate to works they can see are going to be great because the open source methods allow for that glimpse ahead.
In this sense it’s not like donating to your local NPR station, because your local NPR station says, “thank you very much, our professionals will take it from here.” And they do that very well. New Assignment says: here’s the story so far. We’ve collected a lot of good information. Add your knowledge and make it better. Add money and make it happen. Work with us if you know things we don’t.
Do read the whole post: it's long, very detailed and very well thought-out.
I hope it works. But I fear it may not, because it sounds terribly similar to schemes during dotcom 1.0 that were designed to do the same for open source. That is, somebody - companies, usually - would put up money to get particular bugs fixed. Coders would then agree to fix the bugs for the money. It was a great idea, but all fizzled out somehow.
Maybe this will work better, because people will be more engaged about stories, especially if it touches their lives in some way. But in any case, it's worth trying, especially since Craig Newmark, of craigslist, has provided $10K to give it a whirl. (Via Searchblog.)
If you've ever wondered what makes hackers (not crackers) tick, you can relax: somebody has now submitted a doctoral thesis on the subject (in German) to give us an academically-rigorous answer.
It has as its title "Fun and software development: on the motivation of open source programmers," and includes, in an appendix, an email from RMS, whom the doctorand unwisely addressed as an "open source developer". To which Stallman inevitably (and rightly) replied:Thank you, but I do not consider myself an ’open source developer’, and I don’t like my work to be described as ’open source’.
My work is free software (freie Software, logiciel libre).
One result, noted by Heise Online, is particularly striking:Only about half the programming work is thus undertaken by the developers in their free time; for 42 percent (in temporal terms) of their engagement with open source the programmers are being remunerated -- an astonishingly large percentage. On this point the author of the dissertation Benno Luthiger Stoll remarks that this figure is likely to be even higher when the big picture is taken into account: The developers most likely to be paid are those working for large open-source projects; projects that in many cases have their own project infrastructure, he notes. Those active open-source programmers questioned, however, had come from Sourceforge, Savannah and Berlios, which in general tended to host less elaborate projects, he adds.
Happily, it also seems that When compared with some 110 developers working for Swiss software companies, those engaged in open-source projects were seen to have more fun.
But maybe Swiss software companies are particularly boring.
There's a fine flurry of activity in the blogosphere at the moment, dissecting the relationship - and occasional antagonism - between two great buzzphrases: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0.
Both draw on the older SaaS idea - that software is provided as a service across the network, with the twist that the software services are now merely components of a larger, composite application - a mashup of sorts.
But what seems to be overlooked by many is that all these ideas were first explored by free software. Or rather open source, since it was Linus who really refined them: Stallman may have come up with the idea of free software, but the defining development methodology evolved in Linus' Helsinki bedroom.
Indeed, it was the isolation of that bedroom, where the Internet was the only connection to the growing band of hackers that rallied around the Linux kernel, that helped drive that evolution.
Linus had to make it as easy as possible for others to join in: this led to a highly modular structure, which allows coders to work on just those areas that interested them. It also makes the code better, because the modules are simplified, and the interfaces between them are well defined.
It allows people to work in parallel, both in terms of different modules, and even on the same module. In the latter case, a kind of Darwinian selection is employed to choose among the various solutions. Moreover, the Net-based open source development structure is flat, almost without hierarchies - archetypal social software à la Web 2.0.
There's a piece in the Guardian about OpenStreetMap's Isle of Wight effort. I was struck by this wonderful quotation:
The weekend drew around 40 people. By Monday, OpenStreetMap's founder Steve Coast estimated that more than 90% of the island's roads had been recorded. When asked if volunteers used OS [Ordnance Survey] maps, Coast says: "No. It's a taboo." Someone who did pull out an OS map was told to put it away immediately.
Which is precisely analogous to Richard Stallman's attitude when he started GNU, his project to create a benevolent Doppelgänger of the Unix operating system. This is what he told me for Rebel Code:"I certainly never looked at the source code of Unix. Never. I once accidentally saw a file, and when I realised it was part of Unix source code, I stopped looking at it." The reason was simple: The source code "was a trade secret, and I didn't want to be accused of stealing that trade secret," he says. "I condemn trade secrecy, I think it's an immoral practice, but for the project to succeed, I had to work within the immoral laws that existed."
An interesting story in The New York Times about the courtroom battle between the EU and Microsoft. It makes beautifully clear how one human story trumps any number of dry legal expositions, however detailed and cogent the evidence they present.
Certainly, it was a shrewd move wheeling out Andrew Tridgell. I had the pleasure of interviewing Tridge for my book Rebel Code, and his boyish enthusiasm for hacking positively beamed through the conversation, undiminished by the journey from his native Australia. Indeed, he presents a fascinating contrast to some of the other bigs of the free software world, for example the driven and messianic Stallman or the sardonic and by nature rather shy Linus.
A few weeks ago I interviewed Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg. As I wrote in the article that resulted, there are close similarities between him and Richard Stallman. Both have conducted a single-minded - not to say lonely - campaign for their respective projects, both have achieved miracles, and both are, er, colourful characters.
In the course of my discussions with him, I recommended that he start blogging. He has been a prolific and fascinating wordsmith for decades, but I thought that the medium of the blog would allow him to reach out to new audiences.
So I was intrigued to receive an email from him recently in which he spoke about a new introduction to his blog. As you will see, this is an interesting interpretation of the blog format - a kind of retro 70s ASCII blog.
But don't let that put you off. What Hart has to say is interesting and important. Indeed, I think he will go down in history as a highly significant figure. Even if he has unconventional ideas on blogging - and on much else.
Digital Rights Management - or Digital Restrictions Management as Richard Stallman likes to call it - is a hot topic at the moment. It figured largely in an interview I did with the FSF's Eben Moglen, which appeared in the Guardian last week. Here's the long version of what he had to say on DRM:In the year 2006, the home is some real estate with appliances in it. In the year 2016, the home is a digital entertainment and data processing network with some real estate wrapped around it.
The basic question then is, who has the keys to your home? You or the people who deliver movies and pizza? The world that they are thinking about is a world in which they have the keys to your home because the computers that constitute the entertainment and data processing network which is your home work for them, rather than for you.
If you go to a commercial MIS director and you say, Mr VP, I want to put some computers inside your walls, inside your VPN, on which you don't have root, and you can't be sure what's running there. But people outside your enterprise can be absolutely certain what software is running on that device, and they can make it do whatever they think necessary. How do you feel about that? He says, No, thank you. And if we say to him, OK, how about then if we do that instead in your children's house? He says, No, thank there either.
That's what this is about for us. User's rights have no more deep meaning than who controls the computer your kid uses at night when he comes home. Who does that computer work for? Who controls what information goes in and out on that machine? Who controls who's allowed to snoop, about what? Who controls who's allowed to keep tabs, about what? Who controls who's allowed to install and change software there? Those are the question which actually determine who controls the home in 2016.
This stuff seems far away now because, unless you manage computer security for a business, you aren't fully aware of what it is to have computers you don't control part of your network. But 10 years from now, everybody will know.
Against this background, discussions about whether Sun's open source DRM solution DReaM - derived from "DRM/everywhere available", apparently - seem utterly moot. Designing open source DRM is a bit like making armaments in an energy-efficient fashion: it rather misses the point.
DRM serves one purpose, and one purpose only: to control users. It is predicated on the assumption that most people - not just a few - are criminals ready to rip off a company's crown jewels - its "IP" - at a moment's notice unless the equivalent of titanium steel bars are soldered all over the place.
I simply do not accept this. I believe that most people are honest, and the dishonest ones will find other ways to get round DRM (like stealing somebody's money to pay for it).
I believe that I am justified in making a copy of a CD, or a DVD, or a book provided it is for my own use: what that use is, is no business of the company that sold it to me. What I cannot do is make a copy that I sell to someone else for their use: clearly that takes away something from the producers. But if I make a backup copy of a DVD, or a second copy of a CD to play in the car, nobody loses anything, so I am morally quite justified in this course of action.
Until the music and film industries address the fundamental moral issues - and realise that the vast majority of their customers are decent, honest human beings, not crypto-criminals - the DRM debate will proceed on a false basis, and inevitably be largely vacuous. DRM is simply the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
There's a well-written commentary on C|Net that makes what looks like a neat historical parallel between Savonarola and Richard Stallman; in particular, it wants us to consider the GPL 3 as some modern-day equivalent of a Bonfire of the Vanities, in which precious objects were consigned to the flames at the behest of the dangerous and deranged Savonarola.
It's a clever comparison, but it suffers from a problem common to all clever comparisons: they are just metaphors, not cast-iron mathematical isomorphisms.
For example, I could just as easily set up a parallel between Stallman and St. Francis of Assisi: both renounced worldy goods, both devoted themselves to the poor, both clashed with the authorities on numerous occasions, and both produced several iterations of their basic tenets. And St. Francis never destroyed, as Savonarola did: rather, he is remembered for restoring ruined churches - just as Stallman has restored the ruined churches of software.
In fact, Stallman is neither Savonarola nor St. Francis, but his own, very special kind of holy man: St. IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs.
Another great site revealed by Open Access News and the indefatigable Peter Suber: IP Watch. Intellectual property - the very term is hated by people like Richard Stallman - is one of those areas that can make your toes curl just at the thought of the mind-numbing subtleties and complexities involved. But make no mistake: this is an area that matters, and more than ever as the analogue and digital worlds are becoming fuzzy at the edges, and people are tempted to apply old analogue rules to new digital creations.
This lends one story on IP Watch a particular importance, since it deals with the thorny area of balancing rights of digital access and protection. What makes the story particularly interesting is that it reports on a "side event" of a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) meeting.
Now, this may not seem like a big deal, but traditionally WIPO has been all about protecting the intellectual property rights of big content "owners" - record companies, the film industry, etc. So the idea that there could be some discussion about the other side of the coin - access rights - even at a non-official meeting, was a tiny but momentous step.
The end of the journey, which promises to be both long and arduous, is a recognition that access is just as important as protection, that the open approach is as valid as the proprietary one. Although this might seem milk and water stuff to long-time proponents of free software and related movements, it would be truly revolutionary if WIPO ever reached such a point.
Indeed, I would go so far as to predict that WIPO will be one of the last bastions to fall when it comes to recognising that a fresh wind is blowing through the world of intellectual domains - and that these domains might just be commons rather than property as WIPO's own name so prominently and problematically assumes.
One of the most important facets of the blog world is the rapid and intelligent dialogue it allows. A case in point is the interview that appeared on Richard Poynder's blog "Open and Shut?". As you might guess from its title, this is a kindred spirit to the present site, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in following the latest developments in the open access and circumjacent domains.
The interview is a fairly specialist one, and concerns the some open access nitty-gritty. But what caught my attention was the response to points made there by Stevan Harnad in his own blog, which has the rather lumbering title "Publishing Reform, University Self-Publishing and Open Access" but the wonderful sub-title "Open Access Archivangelism". This is rather appropriate since if anyone has the right to be called the Archivangelist of Open Access, it is Harnad, who is probably the nearest thing that the movement has to Richard Stallman (also known as Saint IGNUcius).
In his response to the interview, Harnad comments on a point made in the Poynder interview about moving from the Eprints to a hosted system called bepress. Eprints is open access archiving software that not only proudly sports GNU in its name, but runs principally on GNU/Linux (with the odd bit of Solaris and MacOS X thrown in for good measure), but notes "There are no plans for a version to run under Microsoft Windows." Defiantly open access and open source: how right-on can you get?
Patents are boring - but important. They are the chokepoint for much intellectual activity - especially the kind discussed in these pages - so anything that can be done to loosen their grip on the free interchange of ideas is welcome.
Against this background, the announcement by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that it has "created a partnership with the open source community to ensure that patent examiners have access to all available prior art relating to software code during the patent examination process" is an encouraging step, since software patents are some of the most problematic of all (see Richard Stallman's brilliant explanation of why). However, this is a statement of intent, rather than a concrete move, and it remains to be seen what practical effect it will have on stemming the flood of trivial or downright bad patents being granted by the USPTO.
Meanwhile, the USPTO has upheld Microsoft's patent on the File Allocation Table (FAT) storage technology. This is bad news: it represents both a direct defeat for the open source world, which sought to overturn it, and a sword of Damocles that henceforth will hang over the entire free software movement. The danger is that Microsoft will demand royalties - maybe even "reasonable and non-discriminatory" ones - that will be impossible for free software projects that use the FAT technology to pay.
Update: On the other hand, maybe it's not over yet...(who said patents were boring?)
Update 2: For a view on the USPTO initiative from inside one of the companies helping to make it happen - IBM - see this excellent post by Irving Wladawsky-Berger. Anyone who's read my Rebel Code will know that he was the man who essentially turned Big Blue onto GNU/Linux. This means that he is someone with his finger on the pulse, and that his blog is well worth following.
As Lawrence Lessig famously noted, Code is Law. Which means that Code is Politics, too, since laws are drawn up by politicians. But the intimate relationship between code and politics is becoming manifest in a rather different context (pity about the yellow on black text).
The issue here is about the software used in voting machines. Since, one day, all voting will be carried with such machines (unless we decide to go back to using ostraca), now is the time to consider why free access to the code that runs them is indispensable for political transparency.
It comes down to this: if you are dealing with a black box, you can have absolutely no faith in the results it produces. It might just make them up or - worse - change them subtly, or perhaps be pre-programmed to crash if a particular party gets too many votes, requiring a complete re-run, with knock-on effects on voting patterns.
If you have the source code you can run it and examine what it does with various voting inputs, and check that it has no nefarious sub-routines. However, even this is not enough for full confidence in the voting machine: paper audits are also indispensable for checking on the consistency of the outputs, and allowing for the ultimate fall-back - counting by hand.
Still, this is a clear instance of where, in a literal rather than metaphorical sense, closed source jeopardises the very basis of democracy. Looks like RMS was right.
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