MySQL, YourSQL, OurSQL

The MySQL database is one of the better-kept secrets of the open source world. If you come across it, it's likely to be tucked discreetly away as part of the LAMP stack. So it's good to see a little limelight shed upon this interesting set-up.

As this Fortune piece makes clear, MySQL has succeeded in applying the distributed development model that lies at the heart of open source to an entire company built on the same: no mean achievement. Nicely-written feature, too. (Via Slashdot.)

Techdirt's Trademark Trenchancy

With customary insight, Techdirt has cut through some of the nonsense associated with trademarks:

It seems that so many trademark holders want to believe that a trademark gives them all rights to whatever they trademarked, rather than just the right to prevent confusion or misleading use of the trademark in specific areas. Perhaps we should stop thinking of trademarks as being intellectual property -- because they're not. Trademarks are really about consumer protection; keeping consumers from being tricked into believing something is associated with a company that it's not. When we call it intellectual property, people automatically jump to conclusions about the level of protection the law grants -- and that leads to numerous wasteful lawsuits.

Open Source Biomedical Research

I'm always on the look-out for new applications of the open source idea, so I was delighted to come across The Synaptic Link. The name - and mission - is explained as follows:

Biomedical science is indivisible. The physical and psychological barriers that divide scientific communities are ultimately artificial and counterproductive. We see online collaboration as a natural way to bridge these gaps and pool information that is currently too fragmented for anyone to use. An open, collaborative research community will find new ways to do science, answering questions that current institutions find difficult or impossible. The Synaptic Leap’s mission is to empower scientists to make the dream a reality.

There are some interesting links at the bottom of the page linked to above. (Via Nodalpoint.org.)

Internet Hunting in the Middle Kingdom

Bizarre social trend in China: is this our future? (via Slashdot.)

Worry, Larry, Worry

OK, it's a survey by an enterprise open source database company that - surprise, surprise - comes out with the result that oodles of enterprisey people can't wait to install an enterprise open source database. Nonetheless, when 50% of maybe a biased sample in maybe a biased survey say they are going to do something, it's indicative, if nothing else. Are you worried yet, Larry?

Google's Summer of Code-Love

I've been a bit ambivalent about Google and open source in the past (because they are). But this year's Summer of Code is starting to have a seriously beneficial impact on the state of OSS. In particular, it is addressing one of the key problems of open source: the reluctance of coders to fix some of the missing twiddly bits in projects.

The Font of all Free Beer?

Normally, I'm more of a free as in freedom man, but I have to say this collection of free as in beer fonts is impressive (all 9,800 of them), so I'll make an exception this time. (Via C|net.)

Digg these Groovy CC Hits, Man

A brilliantly obvious - and obviously brilliant idea: combine Digg with CC music to create a user-generated hit parade. Note, too, that you can't do this with your DRM'd stuff (hello, iTunes), because, for the latter, only those who already own the track can vote. CC Hits, by contrast, lets anyone vote on anything, and allows new music to bubble up the stack, rather than simply re-inforcing commercially-biased tastes. Cool. (Via Boing Boing.)

TCOs: Get the Other "Facts"

I'm not a big fan of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) studies. Their methodology is often dubious in the extreme: frequently, figures are given to a ludricous number of significant figures, even though they are trying to measure things that are hard to pin down even roughly, and then come up with an "answer". This is why Microsoft has placed them at the heart of its FUD campaign "Get the Facts" against GNU/Linux: it's so easy to get the result you want.

Still, it's useful to have some ammunition for the other side, and this report about a migration carried out in Bristol provides that. As the Guardian summarises:

Bristol calculated a five-year total cost of ownership of £670,010 for StarOffice, compared with £1,706,684 for Microsoft Office. This was despite budgeting half as much in implementation and support costs for Microsoft because many users were already on its systems.

The difference may turn out to be even greater, says IT strategy team leader Gavin Beckett. "We discovered that things were simpler than we thought they'd be," he says of the switch. "We always argued that a lot of the risk was perceived risk, rather than real risk."

Update: No TCOs here, happily, but 35,000 users have been moved to OpenOffice.org in Brazil according to this story.

Economics, Not Supersize

This article points out an interesting aspect of personal gluttony: that you actually lose, rather than save money, by choosing "supersize" portions, because of subsequent extra costs this choice implies.

This is further proof that we really need a new economics that takes into account these factors - just as we need a commons-based economics to factor the true cost of environmental destruction into things like wood, beef and soya.

Slashdotting the i's, Slashcrossing the t's

Far be it from me to slag off a fellow journo who probably had tight deadlines to deliver some tendentious copy, but this column is really way out of line. So out of line that I was going to waste my time rebutting it.

But what do I find? One of those relatively rare instances when the Slashdot crowd stay almost entirely on-topic, and provide incisive analyses and compelling arguments why the aforementioned piece is a load of wombat's. Go Slashdot, go.

Vive La France! Vive L'ODF!

As this post emphasises, they're only asking for comments at the moment - no decision has been made. But simply the idea that part of the French Government could be considering not just using but even mandating OpenDocument Format for document exchange is just astonishing. Even a couple of years of go, it would have been unthinkable.

So, even if nothing happens this time around - remember the firestorm a similar decision in Massachusetts provoked - it is further proof that something major has changed in the world of computing, and that more is about to change.

Microsoft "Borrows" OSS Security Approach

According to the story:

Microsoft is taking a page out of the open-source community's book where it comes to security. In Windows Vista Beta 2, released last week, the company included a feature called address space layout randomisation (ASLR), a method of foiling some classes of attack that has usually been associated with open-source projects.

Strange move, given that open source never innovates, as Microsoft likes to point out.

OA Un-Wired

There's a piece in this month's Wired about Harold Varmus. It begins

Last night, Harold Varmus appeared to me in a dream. Dressed in cycling garb, the Nobel laureate and former director of the National Institutes of Health was on a mission to rid the world of corks.

It's OK about Varmus, as far as it goes, but it completely misses the significance of open access (and downplays the role of Brown and Eisen).

Maybe I'm just bitter that I proposed an article on open access to Wired's editor, Chris Anderson, over a year ago, and he was completely uninterested. Several times.

Perhaps I should have put in something about corks.

Web Zwei Punkt Null

The old Web 2.0 meme is usually presented in American (and anglophone) terms, so it's good to find a whole series of interviews with German exponents of the art. Or, to put it another way:

mit den Gründern und Entwicklern deutschsprachiger Web 2.0 Dienste

The fact that I've never heard of any of them only confirms my thesis that I/we are too parochial. Just don't tell O'Reilly. (Via eHub.)

Think of the Children - Or Just Think

This would be funny if it weren't atrocious. The idea of presenting copyright dogma without any sense of balance - for example of copyright-free alternatives, and why they can function - is pure propaganda. So why is big media allowed to infect children's minds in this way, when anybody else would be rightly howled down?

Update: This just had to happen: your fearless Captain Copyright has been unmasked as - wait for it, yes - none other than Captain Copyright Infringer.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Red Hat's Mugshot

So, Red Hat is working on a trendy social networking site, called Mugshot. I can't really tell what on earth this is trying to do - either from the site itself, or from Ars Technica's explanation. Time will tell, I suppose.

Update: And now it's come up with something called 108.

No Growser for You

So Eric Schmidt has stated that there will be no Google browser: did anyone really think there would be? It would be a waste of resources for the company, and seriously weaken Firefox, which is doing very nicely as a growing threat to Internet Explorer.

Blogs? Search Me

Given the increasingly central role that blogs play in online life, it's curious that the blog search world is so primitive. Certainly, there's good old Technorati, but everyone knows that this continues to have growing pains. Google's blog search is a joke - and an ugly one - and the other attempts aren't much better.

So it's good to see Bloglines, which has become an indispensable part of my daily online addiction/work, come out with its own search capability. It's too early to tell how it will shape up, but competition is good. Are you listening, Dave?

Update 1: And here's another one: Gnoos. (Via TechCrunch.)

Update 2: And another: Rojo. (Also via TechCrunch.)

Credit Where Credit is Due

I missed this story earlier, but it's important because it addresses two key issues: deforestation and carbon emissions. Clearly, incentives need to be given to those who hold the commons - in this case rainforests - in trust for the rest of us.

If we reduce our deforestation, we should be compensated for these reductions, as are industrial countries.

Compensation for reductions is not ideal - compensation for holding and replanting would be better - but it's a start.

OA=OSS, Elsevier=Microsoft

You know you're on the right track when your enemies start adopting your (much-decried) methods. First there was Microsoft and its "Shared Source", a mickey-mouse version of open source, but without all the benefits. Now here's Elsevier, with its "sponsorship fee" that lets authors make their articles freely available - almost open access.

It's happening, people. (Via Scholarly Communication.)

Update: And like Microsoft, Elsevier has realised that it needs to bend ears in high places in order to keep a dying business model alive. (Via Open Access News.)

Hats Off for Ofcom

Ofcom (Office for Communications), the regulator for UK communications industries, is a grey and rather amorphous body. So it comes as something of a surprise to find that Ofcom is getting positively right-on when it comes to open spectrum - the unlicensed part of the electromagnetic spectrum that has given us things like WiFi, and which potentially could see a tremendous blossoming of ideas, given half the chance.

One step in the right direction is the latest report looking into whether it might be possible to increase the maximum permissible power used in parts of the unregulated spectrum - which would also permit new uses. (Via OpenSpectrum.info.)

The Hive Mind Buzzes - and Stings

The Bubble Generation Strategy Lab (there, and you thought it was just a blog) was recommended to me by Chinesepod's Ken Carroll. It's interesting stuff, but I must confess a certain ambivalence.

Clearly this Umair is a bright chap, it's just that occasionally I cannot understand a word he is saying - and this is not a problem I normally have with, well, much.

On the other hand, some of his postings are right on the button. To wit: this one, on the "New Bourgeoisie". Or is it just because he has the guts to criticise the otherwise untouchable la Dyson?

Shock! Horror! Macro Viruses for OSS

This explains why macros are generally a bad thing to use in word processors or spreadsheets (yes, I know they can be useful, too). It is also a warning to OSS activists not to hit the "OSS is immune to viruses" button: it may be true now, but it sure won't be in the future as OSS enters the mainstream. (Via LWN.net).

Open Nanotech

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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