One of the great strengths of open source is that it offers users choice. You don't like one solution? Choose another. You don't like any solution, write your own (or pay for someone else to do it). Thus it is that many categories have several alternative offerings, all of them admirable applications, and all of them with passionate supporters.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Because anyone can take Linux and use it as they wish without needing to ask permission (provided they comply with the licence), it ends up being used in lots of places that we rarely hear about. This contrasts with proprietary operating systems, which only get used if they are licensed directly, which means that the licensor always knows exactly what is going on - and can issue yet another boring press release accordingly.
On Open Enterprise blog.
You may have noticed there's a fair bit of interest in this cloud computing thing. You've probably also come across various articles suggesting this is the end of free software - and the world - as we know it, since cloud-based platforms render operating systems on servers and desktops largely moot.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Jamie Love has been one of the key people writing about and fighting the worst aspects of ACTA. He's just posed a good question on Twitter:Why haven't the EU civil society groups done more on patents in ACTA? It is quite possible to get patents out at this point.
He then followed up with this suggestion:Some type of a focused letter on footnote 2 would be very helpful, right now. This could go either way.
That footnote, by the way, says the following:For the purpose of this Agreement, Parties agree that patents do not fall within the scope of this Section.
"This section" is Section 2: Civil Enforcement, and so the suggestion seems to be that we push for that footnote to be accepted by all parties. So, what do people think, can we do something along these lines?
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The issue of Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing has cropped up quite a few times in these pages. The last time I wrote about the subject was just last week, when I noted that the Business Software Alliance was worried that the imminent European Interoperability Framework (EIF) might actually require truly open standards, and so was pushing for FRAND instead.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Of course you do - and here's your big chance. Dirk Riehle is not only the Professor for Open Source Software at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany orders these things better than we do), but he is also part of an expert council advising a “multilateral commission instituted by the German parliament to discuss and make recommendations on, well, Internet and digital society.”
On Open Enterprise blog.
You may recall the global excitement a year ago, when Gmail finally came out of beta - after an astonishing five years:
On Open Enterprise blog.
On the 13 April 1999, a press release appeared headed “Mindcraft study shows Windows NT server outperforms Linux.” The summary read: “Microsoft Windows NT server 2.5 times faster than Linux as a file server and 3.7 times faster as Web server.” One thing the press release failed to mention was the following, found in the study itself: “Mindcraft Inc. conducted the performance tests described in this report between March 10 and March 13, 1999. Microsoft Corporation sponsored the testing reported herein.”
On Open Enterprise blog.
I'm very sceptical about the concept of “cyber attacks”. Not that I doubt that computer systems and infrastructure are attacked: it's just their packaging as some super-duper new “threat” that I find suspicious. It smacks of bandwagon-jumping at best, and at worst looks like an attempt by greedy security companies to drum up yet more business.
On Open Enterprise blog.
I see that my old mates the Business Software Alliance are a tad concerned that the European Commission might do something sensible with the imminent European Interoperability Framework (EIF):
On Open Enterprise blog.
Most people have heard about the 18th-century inventor James Watt and his steam engine; not so many know about the way he used patents to stifle competition and throttle further development of the technology:
Watt’s patent was very broad in scope (covering all engines making use of the separate condenser and all engines using steam as a "working substance"). In other words, the patent had a very large blocking power. The enforcement of almost absolute control on the evolution of steam technology, using the wide scope of the patent, became a crucial component of Boulton and Watt’s business strategy.
On The H Open.
Yesterday I wrote about my experiences last week at the Open World Forum. As I noted, the two-day event closed with the presentation of the latest edition of the 2020 FLOSS Roadmap. Even though I'd not been to the Open World Forum before, I have written about the two previous versions of the Roadmap (still available.)
On Open Enterprise blog.
I've been writing about all kinds of openness and sharing on this blog nearly five years now. Before that, I had been covering free software for a further ten years. Although I touch on open hardware examples here, this has all largely been about *digital* sharing.
A key concern of mine has been how this will translate into the "real", aka analogue world. For digital sharing is relatively easy, and it's possible that without such low barriers to sharing, the kinds of behaviours that are becoming common online might not translate into the offline realm.
But it seems like my fears were misplaced:The results of Latitude Research and Shareable Magazine's The New Sharing Economy study released today indicate that online sharing does indeed seem to encourage people to share offline resources such as cars and bikes, largely because they are learning to trust each other online. And they're not just sharing to save money - an equal number of people say they share to make the world a better place.
More specifically: * Sharing online content is a good predictor that someone is likely to share offline too. 78% of participants felt that experiences they've had interacting with people online have made them more open to the idea of sharing with strangers. In fact, every study participant who shared content online also shared various things offline. Sharing entrepreneurs are already taking advantage of this by seeding their services in contextually relevant online communities. For instance, online kids clothing exchange thredUP build relationships with prominent mommy bloggers to speed their launch.
* 75% of participants predicted that their offline sharing will increase in the next 5 years. While fast growing, this new sector has lots of unmet demand. More than half of all participants either shared vehicles casually or expressed interest in doing so. Similarly, 62% of participants either share household items casually or expressed interest in doing so. There's also high interest in sharing of physical spaces for travel, storage, and work - even with complete strangers.
If confirmed by other research, this is really important. It says that global projects like free software and Wikipedia are not just isolated, geeky instances of collaboration, sharing and altruism: they feed into large-scale, personal and local activities that are inspired by them and their digital cousins (remember social networking is one of these).
I'm obviously not surprised, since I have been working on that assumption. I also have a rough sketch of a theory why this digital sharing might spill over into the analogue world.
As those of us deeply immersed in the cultures of openness and sharing know, engaging in these activities is almost literally effortless: it takes probably a few seconds to share a link, a thought or a picture. It might take a few minutes for a blog post, and a few hours for Wikipedia article, but the barriers are still low.
And the rewards are high. Even simple "thank yous" from complete strangers (on Twitter or identi.ca, say) are immensely gratifying. Indeed, I'd be willing to bet that there are some serious hormonal consequences of getting this kind of feedback. For they are sufficiently pleasant that you tend to carry on sharing, and probably more intensely, in part to get that special buzz they engender.
At this point, your brain is positively wired for the benefits of sharing. In which case, you are maybe more willing to overcome the necessarily greater obstacles to sharing in the analogue world. Perhaps the benefits of sharing there are even greater; but even if they are only the same as for the digital realm, they are probably enough for us sharing addicts to carry on. (I'm sure there's a PhD or two in all this stuff.)
Whether or not that is a correct analysis of what's happening at the deepest level within us, this latest research is really good news for sharing, and for humanity's future, which surely will depend on us learning how to share everything - not least the planet and its resources - better. In fact, it was such good news, I felt I really had to share it with you...
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A Microsoft researcher offers an interesting medical metaphor:Just as when an individual who is not vaccinated puts others’ health at risk, computers that are not protected or have been compromised with a bot put others at risk and pose a greater threat to society. In the physical world, international, national, and local health organizations identify, track and control the spread of disease which can include, where necessary, quarantining people to avoid the infection of others. Simply put, we need to improve and maintain the health of consumer devices connected to the Internet in order to avoid greater societal risk. To realize this vision, there are steps that can be taken by governments, the IT industry, Internet access providers, users and others to evaluate the health of consumer devices before granting them unfettered access to the Internet or other critical resources.
So, we're talking about computers "compromised with a bot": now, which ones might they be? Oh look, that would be almost exclusively Windows users. And why would that be? Because no matter how diligent users are in installing endless security updates to the Swiss cheese-like applications known as Windows, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office, there are always more critical bugs that pop out of the proverbial digital woodwork to lay them open to attack and subversion.
So, where does that leave us when it comes to "improving" and "maintaining" the "health of consumer devices connected to the Internet"? Well, it means that by Microsoft's own logic, the solution is for everyone to junk a system that is still insecure, despite promise after promise after promise that this just was some minor technical detail that Microsoft would fix in the next release.
For Windows has manifestly not been fixed; moreover, Windows will *not* be fixed, because it's just not a priority; Windows may even be *unfixable*. The only sane solution is for people to move to inherently safer (although certainly not perfect or impregnable) alternatives like GNU/Linux.
For a researcher at Microsoft to attempt to avoid this inevitable conclusion by pushing the blame for this endless series of security lapses onto end users this way, and to suggest they, rather than Microsoft, should be thrown into the outer darkness. is beyond pathetic. (Via @rlancefield.)
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Last week I went along to the Open World Forum in Paris. By that, I don't mean to imply I just bowled along there on the off-chance it might be a groovy place to be. I went there because I had been asked to chair a round-table discussion on the subject of “Open Democracy”, about which more anon (disclosure: the conference organisers paid the majority of my travel and hotel costs as a result).
On Open Enterprise blog.
The careers of few people have been so intertwined with the history of open source as that of Larry Augustin. He was even present when the term “open source” was coined, at a meeting at the offices of his GNU/Linux hardware company VA Linux, on 3 February 1998. Present were Eric Raymond, John “maddog” Hall, Sam Ockman (from the Silicon Valley Linux User Group) and Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute - and the person who actually came up with the name.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Last week I wrote a piece entitled “Are We Entering the Golden Age of Forks?” I concluded:
I predict we are going to see plenty more forks in the near future as the community starts to re-assert itself. I also think that this tendency will lead to more independent foundations being set up to oversee the development of free software
Little did I suspect that we would see this quite so soon:
On Open Enterprise blog.
Last week I went along to the grandly-named Westminster eForum Keynote Seminar on Open source software: in business, in government. The good news was that it offered one of the best line-ups of open source know-how in the UK I have come across. The bad news was that the seminar's venue was quite small and not even full: these people really deserved a much bigger audience. The poor turnout was a sad reflection of how far open source still has to go in this country in terms of mainstream recognition and interest.
On Open Enterprise blog.
I regard Matt Asay as one of the most perceptive commentators on the world of free software and related areas. So I was rather disappointed to read the following in one of his recent columns, which dealt with the BSA's highly dodgy claims about piracy:I don't mean to diminish the wrong nature of stealing software. Theft is theft and should be punished.
Here's what I wrote to him:It is very hard to steal software: unless you creep into a computer store and steal the boxes (do they still exist?). As you know, what really happens is that somebody makes a copy of software: that is not theft, of course, that is copyright infringement. If I make a copy of a piece of software, the original still exists, but there is now a copy that I have. I have stolen nothing - I've actually created something - but I *have* infringed on copyright.
But wait, you will say, when you make that perfect copy you are *effectively* stealing the money that you would have paid for a legal copy. Except that you yourself write: "$1 in "lost" licensed revenue would not magically become $1 in proprietary software sales if piracy were reduced. It's very likely that users would elect to spend their money elsewhere." Exactly: couldn't have put it better myself. You can't start talking about that money that wasn't spent as if it were real and concrete: it's not, it's notional.
Of course, it is probably true that some fraction of the people with pirated copies *would* have bought genuine ones had they not made the copy: so that is truly lost revenue. But it also probably true that pirated copies act as marketing samplers and encourage other people to buy legitimate copies that they wouldn't otherwise have bought – to get support, updates etc. (Indeed, in the world of music, there are half a dozen studies that suggest this is the case.) After all, giving away software for free is the basis of many businesses based around open source.
Calling copyright infringement "theft" really plays into the hands of organisations like the BSA that put out these deliberately misleading studies. "Theft" is an emotive word that biases the reader against the people involved. If you call it "copyright infringement", and note that copyright is a time-limited, state-granted *monopoly* - and I think everyone accepts that monopolies are generally bad things - then copyright infringement simply means infringing on a monopoly. That's a rather different emotional bundle, I think, and a better one to place in opposition to the BSA's manipulations.
Since Matt's reply to me was a private email, I won't quote it here, but essentially his answer was that artists can set the terms under which we access their works, whether or not they are reasonable terms, because ultimately it's their creation.
It's a good point, and so I'll try to explain here why I don't think it's correct.
In fact, artists manifestly don't have an absolute right to choose whatever terms they like under which their works are distributed. In many countries, for example, they are limited by the first-sale doctrine. This means they cannot impose the condition that their book or CD, say, once purchased, must never be sold on second-hand, or given away. So already there are limits to what they can demand.
This is accepted, presumably, because there is a broad consensus that this kind of limitation is not reasonable, and that artists should be obliged, by law if necessary, to give up what they might otherwise have seen as a natural “right”.
What this comes down to, then, is a question of what is generally accepted as reasonable. A big problem with digital copies is that we have never lived in a digital world before, so we have not yet established the social norms there that ultimately will allow laws to be framed to capture what is deemed fair.
Not allowing people to make personal copies and share them for non-commercial use is, I believe, exactly like not allowing people to sell their books second-hand, or to give them away (note that I am not extending this to intentional commercial-scale copyright infringement, which is almost by definition criminal because conducted with the specific aim of depriving creators of their sales.)
It is an unreasonable restriction that will, ultimately, I believe, be seen by the majority of society as such. Indeed, the fact that so many young and even not-so-young people share files today already suggests that we are moving to that point fast.
So, why do I think this is unfair? In many ways it is similar to the thinking behind allowing people to give away or sell books second-hand - and note that in the latter case actual money is involved, whereas it almost never is with personal file sharing, so the latter is actually *less* harmful than the situation in the analogue world. But I am more interested in the giving away of books, so I'll concentrate on that.
When we pass on a book to a friend, or just give it away to a charity shop, say, we are really passing on the experience of reading that book, and the knowledge to be gained from it. It is an intensely social act of generosity, a desire to share a pleasure with our fellow human beings. It allows us to manifest our best qualities, and it can also be an opportunity for us to contribute to the general improvement of society – for example, by passing on an educational book, or one that encourages readers to engage in some activity that is beneficial to all (recycling waste, or becoming more tolerant, say.)
So if we were forbidden from sharing our books with friends and strangers, the world would be a poorer place in many ways, since we lose all these opportunities for generosity and contributing, albeit indirectly, to society's progress. Indeed, it's interesting that many people are finding one of the biggest drawbacks of otherwise convenient e-books is that you often *can't* share them in this way: this makes them a far more lonely, and hence rather sadder pleasure.
Of course, there is one important difference between analogue goods like books and digital ones like music or texts. Whereas I can only share an analogue object with one person, digital artefacts can be copied endlessly, allowing me to multiply my generosity and the joy received from it hundreds, thousands or even millions of times.
Not being able to share digital files turns out to be far worse than not being able to share analogue ones like second-hand books in terms of the positive benefits foregone. Moreover, you don't even have to give up your original copy where digital artefacts are concerned, so there is no disincentive for you to share it; some might even say that the social benefits of doing so are so great, that you actually have a duty to share....
Society has already decided that being unable to share second-hand goods is an unreasonable condition for creators to impose. I believe that we will come to the same conclusion for the sharing of digital files, where the case for allowing such non-commercial, personal transfer is even stronger.
After all, this is not some abstract issue. Currently, billions of people in developing countries cannot access huge swathes of transformative, liberating knowledge because of copyright laws, or are denied life-saving medicines because of drug patents. Being able to share is literally a matter of life and death.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.
In July 1998, the Frenchman Gaël Duval released his new GNU/Linux distribution called Mandrake-Linux. It was a fork of Red Hat using the KDE desktop - something that Red Hat itself was unwilling to provide because at that time the underlying Qt libraries were not open source. In 2005, the company set up to develop Mandrake-Linux further, MandrakeSoft, purchased the Brazilian open source company Conectiva, and the resulting distribution of the combined forces was re-named Mandriva. And now Mandriva is returning to its roots as a fork by being forked, as a new distro called Mageia:
On Open Enterprise blog.
Remember IdeaStorm – “Where Your Ideas Reign” – Dell's brave venture into the scary world of crowdsourcing? Amazingly, it's still going, although it doesn't seem to be the hive of activity it once was. One of the reasons why IdeaStorm was so important was that it allowed people to voice one of their key requests to the company: to be able to buy GNU / Linux-based systems. To its credit, Dell listened, and started selling them.
On The H Open.
One of the biggest disgraces in this country is the way that computing is taught - or rather, the way it is not taught. I know as a parent from years of interaction with the school system at various levels that what passes for computer teaching is in fact little more than rote learning of where the Open command is on the menu in Word and Excel. That is, instead of teaching pupils how to use computers as a generic tool to solve their particular problems, it becomes instead a dull exercise in committing to memory various ritual Microsoft sequences to achieve one specific task.
On Open Enterprise blog.
One of the slightly depressing aspects of fighting intellectual monopolists is that they have lots of money. This means that they can fund their lobbyists around the world in multiple forums and at multiple levels. So, for example, we have the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is being negotiated behind closed doors by the representatives of rich and powerful nations. But we also have a threat at the European level that must be fought just as doggedly.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Well, it was bound to come one day, but it's still shocking:A group of senators want to hand the U.S. Department of Justice the power to shut down Web sites dedicated to the illegal sharing online of film, music, software, and other intellectual property.
"The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act will give the Department of Justice an expedited process for cracking down on these rogue Web sites regardless of whether the Web site's owner is located inside or outside of the United States," according to a statement from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and committee member Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah).
Under the proposed legislation, the Justice Department would file a civil action against accused pirate domain names. If the domain name resides in the U.S., the attorney general could then request that the court issue an order finding that the domain name in question is dedicated to infringing activities. The Justice Department would have the authority to serve the accused site's U.S.-based registrar with an order to shut down the site.
According to a staffer from Leahy's office, if the site resides outside the United States, the bill would authorize "the attorney general to serve the court order on other specified third parties, such as Internet service providers, payment processors, and online ad network providers."
So let's unpick that a little.
Once more, rather than fix their broken business models, the media and software industries want special "protection", with access to the most important medium to be turned off simply because it suits them. This places the maintenance of government-supported monopolies in a couple of sectors above things like the rights of hundreds of millions of users.
For note that this is effectively censorship by fiat: the Justice Department can apparently simply decide which sites are hosting infringing material, and have them shut down. Due process doesn't seem to enter into it, and if passed you can be sure this legislation will be used widely and abusively.
But there's worse: the US wants to arrogate these powers to itself even if the Web sites are outside its territory. Since much of the Internet's infrastructure is run from the US, that's a real threat. It's also the strongest argument so far why we need to decentralise the Internet further, and remove it from the influence of any one country - including the US.
There's another important aspect, too. One of the constant refrains during the ACTA negotiations is that the latter won't force the US, say, to introduce new laws. It looks like that will be true - because the US is introducing them anyway. But make no mistake, this kind of censorship lies at the hart of ACTA.
The choice is stark: intellectual monopolies or an open Internet - you can't have both....
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.
Wonderful post from a blind person about the effect of owning an iPhone:The other night, however, a very amazing thing happened. I downloaded an app called Color ID. It uses the iPhone’s camera, and speaks names of colors. It must use a table, because each color has an identifier made up of 6 hexadecimal digits. This puts the total at 16777216 colors, and I believe it. Some of them have very surreal names, such as Atomic Orange, Cosmic, Hippie Green, Opium, and Black-White. These names in combination with what feels like a rise in serotonin levels makes for a very psychedelic experience.
I have never experienced this before in my life. I can see some light and color, but just in blurs, and objects don’t really have a color, just light sources.
...
The next day, I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as “Horizon,” “Outer Space,” and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown. I watched the sun set, listening to the colors change as the sky darkened. The next night, I had a conversation with Mom about how the sky looked bluer tonight. Since I can see some light and color, I think hearing the color names can help nudge my perception, and enhance my visual experience. Amazing!
Indeed. (Via @segphault and @KatherineD.)
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