Wikipedia in Google Earth

As I've mentioned before, mashups are all about the underlying mesh. And what better mesh for knowledge than Google Earth? And what better to mash it with Wikipedia? Here you are, then. (Via Openpedia.org.)

Larry's Unbreakable Kite

What do you want if you are worth $18 billion and have the third-largest motor yacht in the world? Simple: revenge.

Oracle's Unbreakable Linux is about revenge - for the fact that Red Hat dared to snatch JBoss from under Larry Ellison's nose. It's a warning that you don't mess with lovely Larry. It's also a bit of kite-flying: maybe offering support for Red Hat is a viable business, though I can't see it myself. In any case, even if Unbreakable fails as a service, it's already succeeded as a punishment.

Update: Ha!

IBM Gets Open Source Religion - Seriously

A post on Bob Sutor's blog points to IBM's mega-site devoted to open source. Interesting enough, but even more interesting his comment on it:

It’s hard to think of any part of IBM’s business that is not now affected by open source

One of the first, but certainly not the last.

Learning about OpenLearn

I wrote some while back about the Open University's plans to offer its materials as open courseware. Its dedicated site, called OpenLearn, is now up and running, with lots of interesting content. The licence? - a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Mixed news on the UK patent front:

The Court of Appeal has ruled on two cases involving software patents today. It rejected one and unfortunately granted the other. It was hoped that the ruling would confirm that software development which relates only to new business logic does not have to worry about patent threats. As more and more companies in the United States get tied up in business method patent litigation, this decision should be a big worry for UK companies.

Full details here.

Viral Evolution

As a big fan of the explanatory power of Darwinian evolution - which, for those still concerned about its "theoretical" status, is basically just maths - I have to say I'm impressed by this story:

SpamThru takes the game to a new level, actually using an anti-virus engine against potential rivals.

Of course, this is precisely the same strategy that baby cuckoos use. Self-standing, evolving computer viruses living across the Net are getting ever closer....

DRM'ing It into People

One of the central problems with DRM is that it is hard to know how to fight back. Boycotting DRM'ed goods is all very well, but needs lots of people taking part to make an impact. This means that getting out the fact that many consumer products are Defective by Design is crucially important. Against this background, here's a clever idea: tagging DRM'ed products on Amazon. Fight force with cunning. (Via Boing Boing.)

Peer-Reviewed Wikis Are Like Buses...

...you wait for ages and then two come along at once.

First we had Citizendium, now here's Scholarpedia. The dynamics are slightly different, and it will be fascinating to watch their respective evolution. In particular, it will be great to see online Darwinism in action as these two and Wikipedia fight it out from their respective positions.

(Partial) Digital Freedom

Although this Digital Freedom Campaign is highly partial - in both sense of the word - in that it's totally US-centric as far as I can tell, the groups supporting it seem to be right ones. Whether its dinky Flash videos (grrr) make a fig of difference to what is, after all, a global problem, remains to be seen. (Via Open Access News.)

The Oracle Speaks

Oracle's announcement of its "unbreakable" GNU/Linux has provoked plenty of comment from around the blogosphere. I've not had a chance to mull it all over yet (not least because I've been up at the LinuxWorld show, where I spent some time talking to a man from Oracle....). In the meantime, you can find plenty of interesting analysis via Technorati.

Firefox 3.0, Firefox 4.0

Firefox 2.0 is so 2006....

NOC, NOC: Who's There?

To my eternal shame the UK is not exactly at the forefront of free software adoption, not least because Our Glorious Tone seems as dazzled by the business and intellectual achievements of Bill Gates as he is by the social and political ones of George W. Bush. But apparently we are to get our very own National Open Centre. I'm not holding my breath for massive open source uptake, but it's a start.

Bruce Schneier, the Man from BT???

Say it ain't true, Bruce:

Britain's BT Group has snapped up United States-based Counterpane Internet Security for a sum of more than $20 million as part of a continuing commitment to the security offering and overall growth of its Global Services business.

Counterpane provides managed network security services.

As part of the deal, Counterpane's founder, CTO and highly regarded security guru, Bruce Schneier, will join the BT payroll. Schneier will maintain his position as CTO within Counterpane, based in Mountain View, Calif.

Bruce Schneier, security god, meets BT, ex-monopolistic monster.

Ah, well, I suppose you deserve the dosh, if nothing else.

Harnad on Open Access and Open Source

The high priest of open access, Steve Harnard, has some thoughts on how open access and open source relate to each other - and how they don't. He also uses this analogy:

I am personally in favour of open-code pharmacology ("OP"): The formula for potential cures should not be kept secret, or prevented from being used to sell or even give away the medicine.

It does *not* follow from this, however, that if a commercial pharmaceutical company develops a non-OP cure for AIDS today that I will refuse to use it or promote it! Nor will I try to suppress or refuse to cooperate with OP research or OP researchers, while there are still diseases and patients, needing to be cured now.

The reason this is different from the situation with open source is that for the latter you (as in an idealised "you") always have the option of sitting down and writing some free code. You do not really have this possibility when it comes to inventing drugs.

Turkish and Pakistani Delight

It's all-too easy to forget that free software is a truly global phenomenon. So these stories, one from Turkey, the other from Pakistan, are a timely reminder of how much is happening beyond the glare of the anglophone media.

Both are about the public sector being encouraged to turn towards open source software. Both have interesting sites associated with them. In Turkey, there is the home-grown Pardus distribution, while in Pakistan there is an information site called FOSSFP: The Free and Open Source Software Movement.

Open Biology Meets Open Source Meets Open Access

Talking of titles, this one sounds pretty germane: Source Code for Biology and Medicine. Here's some more information:

Source Code for Biology and Medicine is a peer-reviewed open access, online journal that publishes articles on source code employed over a wide range of applications in biology and medicine. The aim of the journal is to publish source code for distribution and use in the public domain in order to advance biological and medical research. Through this dissemination, it may be possible to shorten the time required for solving certain computational problems for which there is limited source code availability or resources.

(Via nodalpoint.org.)

International Journal of the Commons

What a fab name for a journal. The sponsoring body

IASC is an association devoted to understanding and improving institutions for the management of environmental resources that are (or could be) held or used collectively. Many will refer to such resources and their systems of usage as "commons".

Given the subject-matter, it will come as no surprise that the new title will be adding to the commons that is open content. (Via Open Access News.)

Star(Office) Burst

Here's an interesting little Google map, showing where StarOffice is being used in academic institutions in Italy. OK, so it's a little recondite, but the point is there's a lot of StarOffice about. And as we know from Apple's history, if you get them young, you get them old.... (Via Erwin's StarOffice Tango.)

G8 vs. WIPO?

Here's a tiny little straw in the intellectual monopoly wind:

During their next meeting the G8 governments should engage those of the five newly industrialized countries the People's Republic of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico in talks about intellectual property, representatives of the German federal government elucidating the proposed agenda for the next G8 summit meeting in June said during a briefing while commenting on the latter's motto "Growth and Responsibility."

And why is that interesting? Well, because

Oliver Moldenhauer of Netzwerk Freies Wissen [Free Knowledge Network] told heise online that he thought the G8 summit was not the proper forum for discussing intellectual property rights. "The G8 are made up almost exclusively of rich industrial countries. The interest they have in this dialogue is likely to consist above all in putting pressure on the newly industrialized ones," he said. In the opinion of Mr. Moldenhauer other forums such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the World Health Organization (WHO) are better suited to the task.

And why has G8 suddenly gone off its darling WIPO? Well,

the industrialized countries suffered a setback at the WIPO General Assembly in September. The newly industrialized countries had countered calls for further harmonization by demanding that such harmonization go hand in hand with, for example, improvements in the quality of the process by which patents are granted and effective protection of traditional knowledge against possibly unfair exploitation by international companies.

Hm, maybe I need to change my views on WIPO....

Real Life: The Review

Talking of RL and SL, this extremely witty piece is deeper than you might think:

Volumes have already been written about real life, the most accessible and most widely accepted massively multiplayer online role-playing game to date. Featuring believable characters, plenty of lasting appeal, and a lot of challenge and variety, real life is absolutely recommendable to those who've grown weary of all the cookie-cutter games that have tried to emulate its popularity--or to just about anyone, really.

(Via Web 2.0 Blog Network.)

Unreal Mashups

This is getting seriously weird.

DestroyTV lets RLers watch an island in SL, using an embedded video camera (which is "in" both SL and RL). There are also screenshots (several thousand of them), over on Flickr, complete with a tag cloud. So which world are we in now?

Designing Business for an Open World

It's interesting to note the number of pamphlets that are being written as primers, explaining this wacky open stuff to "normal" people. Here's another one:

How do you do business with an illusive network that belongs to nobody? How do you work with talented people you are likely never to meet and who are not motivated by money? How can businesses learn to “take advantage of” innovation when it comes along in an open-platform world?

And on another level, are we seeing the beginning of the end for the existing business models based on hierarchy, planning and management, and pure competition?

We are in fact seeing a new level of change. What are the indicators? The rise of open-source development communities. The growth of an on-line knowledge commons. A shift of power to socially and technologically connected “smart mobs.” And many more.

Nothing new, but handy for the boss.

Law is a Real Problem in the Virtual World

If you think laws are a problem in the real world, wait until you start thinking about the virtual one. Here's what one person has decided:

I think that the entire range of common law rights needs to be viewed as applicable to virtual worlds -- property included.

Heavy stuff - but not something that we can avoid confronting as our second lives start to take on ever-more importance alongside our first ones.

Firefox: the Breakthrough

This is it. Just look at these dynamics:

The number of businesses allowing employees to download the Firefox Web browser soared this year, and at least one analyst believes the recently released Internet Explorer 7 could boost use of Firefox in companies.

Fully, 44 percent of businesses with 250 employees or more allow workers to download Mozilla Corp.'s open-source browser at the office, according to a survey conducted this year by JupiterResearch. Last year, only 26 percent of such businesses were willing to do the same.

So, we're through the crucial stage, where Firefox is only downloaded by enthusiasts, to that of corporate acceptance. That's good, but even better is the timing:

For many businesses, the move to Vista could take a year and a half or more, analysts say.

As a result, many people who get IE 7 at home through Microsoft's automatic update service will likely find IE6 lacking. Without the option of installing IE 7 at work, they are likely to turn to Firefox, Wilcox said.

Yee-ha, as they say.

GPLv3: What Richard Stallman Said

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.

Update

Richard Stallman has sent me a comment on Alan Cox's reply:

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.