DMCA = Destructive, Mean, Crazy, Asinine

A nice round-up of recent DMCA-related events that demonstrate what a bad law this is. Not so much for its intent, which was bad, as for its effects, which are worse.

MySQL: My, My, My

This post notes that the site www.mysql.com is now in the Alexa 500. Although Alexa is a deeply-flawed measure - it's biased against GNU/Linux systems for a start - it's a measure of sorts. But what is really fascinating is this comment:

Interestingly enough, there are tons of MySQL powered websites among the top 500 including Yahoo, Google, YouTube, WikiPedia, Amazon, Craigslist, AOL, Flickr, Mixi.jp, Friendster, The Facebook, LiveJournal, Digg, CNet, Weather.com, TypePad, Neopets, WebShots, Slashdot, GoDaddy, NetFlix, iStockPhoto, Travelocity, Lycos, PriceGrabber, FeedBurner, CitySearch, Evite and more.

It's not just Apache that's running the Web.

Five Stars for the Stern Report

WorldChanging has a splendid review of the Stern Report, giving it an unequivocable thumbs-up. It also pulls out a subtle but important facet: the report's ethics.

Actually, it's important to underscore that the ethics in this report are mostly not arcane -- even though those arcane aspects reflect, I think, a tectonic shift in economics that the Stern Review is helping to solidify. Climate change is forcing economists to think differently. In fact, I think climate change will one day be credited with having knocked some sense into the discipline of economics.

As I've noted many times on this blog, this kind of change is needed in order to understand and appreciate justly all the commons, not just that of the world's atmostphere.

The Creative Commons Ecosystem Up Close

Larry Lessig has a nice example of how CC materials can feed off each other in all sorts of creative ways. In this case, the result is the aptly-named "C-shirt".

Collaborative, Interactive, Open Music

One of the problems with open content is that it's hard to work on it collaboratively and interactively in real time, rather than simply sequentially. This is largely a question of tools: there just aren't any. Well, there weren't: it looks like netpd is a neat distributed open source solution. (Via Futurismic.)

Open Source Fabbers

People whose opinion I respect think that 3D printing machines, which allow you to "print" an object in layers, just as ordinary printers allow you to output images a dot at a time, are going to be big. As in enormous. So clearly it's important that such "fabbers", as they are also known, are available to all and sundry, to use in any way they want. Which also means, by implication, that we must have open source fabbers.

Happily, there's already such a project:

Fab@Home is a website dedicated to making and using fabbers - machines that can make almost anything, right on your desktop. This website provides an open source kit that lets you make your own simple fabber, and use it to print three dimensional objects. You can download and print various items, try out new materials, or upload and share your own projects. Advanced users can modify and improve the fabber itself.

Fabbers (a.k.a 3D Printers or rapid prototyping machines) are a relatively new form of manufacturing that builds 3D objects by carefuly depositing materials drop by drop, layer by layer. Slowly but surely, with the right set of materials and a geometric blueprint, you can fabricate complex objects that would normally take special resources, tools and skills if produced using conventional manufacturing techniques. A fabber can allow you explore new designs, email physical objects to other fabber owners, and most importantly - set your ideas free. Just like MP3s, iPods and the Internet have freed musical talent, we hope that blueprints and fabbers will democratize innovation.

While several commercial systems are available, their price range - tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands of dollars - is typically well beyond what an average home user can afford. Furthermore, commercial systems do not usually allow or encourage experimentation with new materials and processes. But more importantly, most - if not all - commercial system are geared towards making passive parts out of a single material. Our goal is to explore the potential of universal fabrication: Machines that can use multiple materials to fabricate complete, active systems.

Sounds positively, er, fab. (Via Open the Future.)

Saving the Academic Commons from Enclosure

Another thought-provoking piece from OnTheCommons, this time about the academic commons and the threats it faces:

One of our most valuable commons are universities: a special non-market system for generating reliable and valuable knowledge. This is precisely why so many businesses are trying to privatize the academic commons.

...

One way that academia can begin to fight back, I believe, is by developing a stronger, more coherent analysis for why its open sharing and collaboration represent a “value proposition.” The academic commons is at least as generative as the market, but you rarely hear that stated or explained. Until it is, administrators and even many professors are likely to see more value in cold, hard cash than in the norms and ethics of the academic commons.

50 Bits and Bobs about Open Source

Well, that's what I'd call it: the blog prefers "50 Open Source success stories in Business, Education, and Government". It's a bit of a ragbag, but an interesting one in places, and useful for giving to people who seem to think that Apache is open source's only success. (Via Digg.)

From eMusic to ewMusic

I thought these people were the good guys?

Intellectual Monopoly Manumission

It was a custom for Romans, in their wills, to free some of their slaves. Neil Gaiman's post about problems with intellectual monopolies after the death of a writer prompts me to suggest a similar manumission for their works. It would be simple to arrange and a fitting point at which to liberate creations. (Via Copyfight.)

The European Computer Driving What?

The European Computer Driving Licence is not a joke, despite its Monty Python-ish name. More to the point:

The ECDL Foundation will now include a module on the use of Sun's Star Office Writer, Calc and Base applications for word processing, spreadsheets and database work.

So, shame on me that I've never heard of it, and good on them for creeping out from under the Redmond shadow, albeit only a smidgeon.

Here's the Jot - Where's the Tittle?

So, Google has bought JotSpot, and adds wikis to its growing collection of office tools. Who's next?

A Triptych of Science Opens

Here's a man after my own heart:

I've never had an idea that couldn't be improved by sharing it with as many people as possible -- and I don't think anyone else has, either. That's why I have become interested in the various "Open" movements making increasing inroads into the practice of modern science. Here I will try to give a brief introduction to Open Access to research literature; in the second instalment I will look at ways in which the same concept of "openness" is being extended to encompass data as well as publications, and beyond that, what a fully Open practice of science might look like.

(Via Open Access News.)

DRM.info - not about Digital Rights Management

An entire site about Digital Rights Management sounds like some torture from the Spanish Inquisition. But the fact that DRM.info is not a site about Digital Rights Management but Digital Restrictions Management gives a clue as to why its rather more tolerable: it's not exactly for the idea.

It comes from the Free Software Foundation Europe, and is designed presumably to catalogue the deletorious effects of DRM, offering them up as a warning and stimulus to remedial action.

Larry, to (Verb)

An interesting post from Mr Carr, notable as much for its title - "Larrying Wikipedia" - as for the idea it encapsulates:

Why, in other words, hasn’t anyone done to Wikipedia what Larry Ellison last week did to RedHat?

An (Open) Source of Endorphins

Somewhat belatedly, scientists are localising the physical basis for the kind of altruism that lies at the heart of the opens:

They found that the part of the brain that was active when a person donated happened to be the brain's reward centre—the mesolimbic pathway, to give it its proper name—responsible for doling out the dopamine-mediated euphoria associated with sex, money, food and drugs. Thus the warm glow that accompanies charitable giving has a physiological basis.

Via Technocrat.

Cory's Big Idea

Cory Doctorow has given some details about a course he is running:

an undergrad class about DRM, EULAs, copyright, technology and control in the 21st century, called "Pwned: Is everyone on this campus a copyright criminal?"

No, wait, even if you can't stand the Cory.

The course itself is pretty conventional. But this, frankly, seems brilliant:

The main class assignment is to work through Wikipedia entries on subjects we cover in the class, in groups, identifying weak areas in the Wikipedia sections and improving them, then defending those improvements in the message-boards for the Wikipedia entries.

What if every university course did the same, tidying up Wikipedia entries that were sub-par? Think about it.

Stern but Fair

The conclusions of the Stern Review will not come as any surprise to readers of this blog:

The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response.

This Review has assessed a wide range of evidence on the impacts of climate change and on the economic costs, and has used a number of different techniques to assess costs and risks. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the Review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.

But as I commented before about a similar case, what makes this report so important is that it coming from the establishment, not from groups who would be expected to make statements like that above. It is also meticulous in detailing the situation. Kudos to the UK Government for commissioning it - and for making it freely available.

Despite its portentous message, I find its appearance - and of an increasing number of similar reports - strangely heartening: I can't help feeling that we are close to not one but two tipping points.

The first is catastrophic, when the earth's environmental system is so far out of kilter that it changes dramatically; the second is rather more positive - the moment when enough people get what is going on, and start doing something effective to avert or at least mitigate the effects of the first tipping point.

Maybe I'm just an incurable optimist, but I was particularly pleased to read this point:

The loss of natural forests around the world contributes more to global emissions each year than the transport sector. Curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way to reduce emissions; largescale international pilot programmes to explore the best ways to do this could get underway very quickly.

Halting deforestation seems a way not only to slow down global warming, but to address many other issues like species loss and even poverty. I say let's do it. Please?

From the Mist

The Citizendium project is nothing if not intriguing. The drip-feed of information about it doesn't hurt in terms of provoking interest. Here's the latest two installments from Dr. Sanger: Why Make Room for Experts in Web 2.0? and The Role of Content Brokers in the Era of Free Content. I've not had time to digest them yet, but Larry writes well and interestingly, so they're likely to be worth reading.

Googly Earthy Mashups

And talking of Google Earth mashups, here's a fascinating list of speculations about what might be coming or, at least, possible.

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.