So That's Why They Call the Company SAP

SAP AG will not be impacted by open source ERP software, chief executive Henning Kagermann is adamant.

Despite evidence of open source creep, Kagermann thinks it is still a database and OS-level model. He tackled the rise of open source in a recent interview with ComputerWire.

“It is an option for operating systems and databases but not at the business application level,” he said. “There are no open source ERP products that are any good for the high end, although it could be argued that they could be developed for the low end.”

So writes Angela Eager - who, parenthetically, used to work for me: wotcha, Angela.

Poor old SAP: the fact that proprietary software vendors in every market - including operating systems and databases - have said precisely the same thing when challenged by open source from below seems not to have penetrated the poor chap's skull. ERP is not special (and open source ERP is flourishing.)

So let's say it in easy-to-understand terms: you cannot defend yourself from low-end creep by pinning your hopes on up-market products. Try reading The Innovator's Dilemma to find out why.

Last Chance to Save the BBC from DRM

Today is the deadline for submitting a response to the BBC's plans for on-demand services. Full story here.

Openness, Surveillance and Privacy

Previous posts have noted that there is an inherent tension between openness and privacy. That tension is even more acute in the case of surveillance, which goes beyond consensual openness. Despite this, there is relatively little public debate around these issues; instead, as has been remarked, the UK is effectively sleepwalking into a surveillance society.

Against this depresseing background, the new report from the Royal Academy of Engineering, entitled Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance Challenges of Technological Change, is particularly welcome.

This is not least because it offers a depth of knowledge about the technological issues involved that is rarely encountered (these are engineers, remember). But it is also notable for its even-handedness and sensible suggestions. For example:

In this scenario, disconnection technologies are widely used in a co-ordinated manner: personal data is routinely encrypted and managed in a secure fashion, so co-ordinated connectivity does not threaten it and even substantial processing resources are not a day-to-day threat. This leads to Little Sisters who, by themselves, watch over only a fragment of a person's identity, but when co-ordinated can reveal all.

It would be possible to devise a store loyalty card which incorporated a computer chip that could perform the same functions as an ID card, but without giving away the real name of its owner. Someone might choose a loyalty card in the name of their favourite celebrity, even with the celebrity's picture on the front. If they were to use that card to logon to Internet sites, the fact that they are not really the film star whose name they have used would be irrelevant for most applications, and the privacy of the consumer would be maintained. However, if they did something they should not, such as posting abusive messages in a chat room, law enforcement agencies might then ask Little Sister (ie, the company that runs the loyalty card scheme, in this case) who the person really is, and Little Sister will tell them. In this
scenario, government departments are just more Little Sisters, sharing parts of the picture without immediate access to the whole.

This approach exploits both mathematics and economics. If it is technically possible to find out who has done what - for example when a crime has been committed - but cryptography makes it economically prohibitive to monitor people continuously on a large scale, then a reasonable privacy settlement can be achieved.

This approach suggests a interesting way of balancing the opposing requirements for privacy and accountability.

Recommended reading. (Via the Open Rights Group.)

HP's Dirty Secret

Recently HP has been dropping hints about its deep love for GNU/Linux:

Hewlett-Packard is closing custom deals for thousands of desktop PCs running Linux, which has the company assessing the possibility of offering factory-loaded Linux systems, an HP executive said.

But HP giveth, and HP taketh away:

Laura Breeden bought a new Compaq Presario C304NR notebook in January. She bought it because she wanted to get rid of Windows and all the malware that surrounds it and move to Linux, and her old laptop lacked the memory and power to run Ubuntu Edgy. The salespeople assured her that the C304NR was "Linux ready." But they didn't tell her that running Linux would void her warranty.

Until recently, she's been happy with it, and with Ubuntu Edgy. But a couple of weeks ago she began having keyboard problems. The keyboard is misbehaving when she begins to type quickly: keys are sticking and the space bar does not always respond when pressed.

When she called Compaq -- the unit comes with a one-year warranty on the hardware -- they asked what operating system she was running. When she told them Linux, they said, "Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux."

Not much love there, then.

Mumbai Police Outlaw Non-Microsoft Products

Microsoft getting help from the Mumbai constabulary? Seems a little extreme....

The Mumbai Police has come up with regulations for Cyber Cafes. Clause 14 of this regulation requires Cyber Cafes to have "Microsoft Open License Agreement."

BuyaBand, SellaBand

At last - someone is trying a new business model for digital music:

For the first time fans and Artists can be in business together. Therefore each Artist issues 5,000 so called Parts. Parts cost $10 (plus transaction costs) each. Together Believers have to raise $50,000 to get their Artist of choice in the studio. At any point before your Artist has reached the Goal of $50,000, you can withdraw your Parts and pick a different Artist. You can even get your money back. It's your music. It's your choice.

Once your Artist has raised $50,000 SellaBand will assign an experienced A&R-person to this project. Together with a top Producer, your Artist will record a CD in a state-of-the-art Studio. During the process you will get an exclusive sneak preview of this exciting process.

...

The music on the CD will be given away as free downloads on our download portal. All advertising revenues generated on SellaBand will be shared equally between you, the other Believers, the Artist and SellaBand. The amount of money you and the band will get paid depends on the advertising revenues and the market-share your band gains on our download portal.

In some ways this is like vanity publishing: people pay to be published. The differences are that fans pay for publication - micro-patronage - published items are given away (because content has zero marginal cost), and money is made from advertising (the Web 2.0 way). I can see this working, provided the main company Sellaband isn't taking such a big cut from the ad revenue that it is perceived as a free rider on the work and money of others.

At least it's founders seem to have the right background, as well as an interesting idea. Here's hoping. (Via OpenBusiness.)

Anyone for Croquet?

A little while back I wrote about the Qwaq virtual world system. This is based on the open source Croquet code, which has just released version 1.0 of its SDK. Qwaq and HP have also helped set up the Croquet Consortium to support the development of the software.

A Small Comeuppance for Enclosing a Commons

The governing board of the Smithsonian Institution announced Monday that it had accepted the resignation of its top official, Lawrence M. Small, after an internal audit showing that the museum complex had paid for his routine use of lavish perks like chauffeured cars, private jets, top-rated hotels and catered meals.

But aside from claiming interesting expenses like “chandelier cleaning and pool heaters” at his home, Mr Small will be of most interest to readers of this blog for

a recent deal with Showtime, the cable channel. In that deal, the Smithsonian agreed to restrict access to its archives and scientists, which critics said violated its public status.

In other words, Mr Small was enclosing a commons. Nice to see that he's received his comeuppance, however, er, small it might be. (Via Boing Boing.)

Zimbra's World Wide Desktop

Zimbra is part of a new generation of open source enterprise apps that are really starting to be taken seriously by companies. The original Zimbra is basically an Ajax-based Web client, but now Zimbra has come out with Zimbra Desktop, that lets you work collaboratively even offline.

I predict this is going to become the next big thing with the current collection of web apps. The only problem is that there's going to be lots of duplication, as each desktop sets up its own offline Web server on the user's computer. So how about if all the open source companies got together and standardised on a single piece of code that all their apps could use?

The Big IP Lies

Most of this is just legal posturing, but the following paragraph is noteworthy:

Intellectual property is worth $650 billion a year to the U.S. economy. Not only does intellectual property drive our exports, it's a key part of what distinguishes developed economies from developing ones. Protecting intellectual property spurs investment and thereby the creation of new technologies and creative entertainment. This creates jobs and benefits consumers. Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws.

This equation of intellectual monopolies with civilisation is insulting in the extreme. As this blog has noted, IP maximalists - mostly in the US, but from Europe, too - are trying to stuff their monopolies down the throats of many developing nations, with disastrous effects on national and local economies, on people's lives and on entire cultures. Civilisation, my foot, this is pure neo-colonialism.

But of course the real scream is the last statement: "Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws". What, like the free software both use, which employs copyright to subvert traditional intellectual monopolies, or like the millions of user-created videos that are added to the content commons for the sheer joy of creating and sharing?

Sad.

Print Has Heard the Music of Time

look at the difference in how each industry has reacted. The music industry continued to try and sue everyone it can in order to enforce a status quo that no longer exists. The news industry has perhaps resigned itself to the fact that they will have to operate with less revenues for the foreseeable future. But they are at least slowly coming to grips with that future and are still struggling to find sensible solutions. Imagine the cultural impact if media corporations started suing Internet users for reading news off of "unauthorized" websites.

For music, the writing is on the wall.

India's Intellectual Commons

Here's an interesting perspective from India on intellectual monopolies:

The term "intellectual property" reduces knowledge into a tangible product. In international trade negotiations, when India negotiates on the basis of the term "intellectual property," we implicitly accept that intellect can be reduced to property and all that remains is to dot the i's and cross the t's. We buy into the rhetoric that without the "propertization" of knowledge, there will be no innovation. And in doing so, we ignore our own history where astonishing innovations flourished over thousands of years. In accepting the term "intellectual property," we implicitly accept a playing field that is dominated by the commercial traditions of the West, rather than the spiritual traditions of the East.

End of a (Print) Era

Wow:

Another storied print magazine is coming to an end in print, and the focus is shifting to online and events: InfoWorld, the weekly magazine owned by IDG, is closing down, and the announcement will come Monday morning, paidContent.org has confirmed.

When I was a cub computing reporter (or thereabouts) on a long-forgotten title called Practical Computing in the 1980s, reading the thick pages of Infoworld was a weekly ritual for me. And now its been blown to bits - literally.

Fab M'Lud: Sanity Breaks Out in UK Court

This is such a good judgment by the Court of Apeal:

General ideas and structures behind computer games and programs can be copied as long as the source code and graphics are not, the UK's Court of Appeal has ruled.

The judgment upholds an earlier High Court ruling in a case involving three computer games simulating pool. Under UK copyright law and EU Directives, the court ruled that the ideas behind the games cannot be protected by copyright, because copyright does not protect general ideas.

"Merely making a program which will emulate another but which in no way involves copying the program code or any of the program's graphics is legitimate," said Lord Justice Jacob, who gave the Court's ruling.

This really gets to the heart of what a program is - code - and where the originality lies - in the details of its coding, which is protected by copyright, not patent law.

Fab, M'Lud.

Given Enough Eyeballs...

...all attempts at burying politically embarrassing information are shallow:

A time-honored Washington practice of trying to extinguish, pre-empt, or redirect news coverage by dumping stacks of previously secret government documents on the press may be in for some changes after a headlong collision with hundreds of liberal Web loggers in the wee hours of yesterday morning.

On Monday night, the Justice Department delivered to Congress more than 3,000 pages of e-mails, memos, and other records about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. The handover came so late that many news organizations had to scramble to try to skim a few headlines from the files before latenight deadlines.

Despite the late hour, readers of a liberal Web site, tpmmuckraker.com, tackled the task with gusto. They quickly began grabbing 50-page chunks of the scanned documents from a House of Representatives Internet server, analyzing them and excerpting them. The first post about the Department of Justice records hit the left-leaning news and commentary site at 1:04 a.m. Within half an hour, there were 50 summaries posted by readers gleaning the documents. By 4:30 a.m., more than 220 postings were up detailing various aspects of the files.

Ah, there's nothing like a bit of distributed activity early in the morning - open politics at its finest. (Via Boing Boing.)

Now We Can Really Re-Joyce

I wrote about this case before. It seems that the forces of light have prevailed:

Last June we sued the Estate of James Joyce to establish the right of Stanford Professor Carol Shloss to use copyrighted materials in connection with her scholarly biography of Lucia Joyce. Shloss suffered more than ten years of threats and intimidation by Stephen James Joyce, who purported to prohibit her from quoting from anything that James or Lucia Joyce ever wrote for any purpose. As a result of these threats, significant portions of source material were deleted from Shloss's book, Lucia Joyce: To Dance In The Wake.

In the lawsuits we filed against the Estate and against Stephen Joyce individually, we asked the Court to remove the threat of liability by declaring Shloss's right to publish those deleted materials on a website designed to supplement the book. After the trying to have the case dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the Estate gave up the fight. Joyce and the Estate have now entered into a settlement agreement enforceable by the Court that prohibits them from enforcing any of their copyrights against Shloss in connection with the publication of the supplement, whether in electronic or printed form.

(Via Lessig Blog.)

Firefox Hits a Fourth

That is, Firefox now has nearly 25% of the European browser market according to XiTiMonitor. The figures for the rest of the world are not quite so impressive, but it seems clear that Europe is leading the way here. And as it does so, the global importance of serving Firefox users will rise, and so will the tendency to use it elsewhere.

XitiMonitor also has some other interesting graphs showing the rate of uptake of Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7. From this, it seems clear that Firefox users are upgrading faster than Internet Explorer users, as you might expect since the former are probably more tech-savvy than the latter. (Via Quoi9.)

Clowning Around

Although I am not a great user of YouTube, I know a significant cultural/market shift when I see one. NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker and News Corp. COO Peter Chernin clearly do not. Try these choice quotes from a media call about their rival to YouTube as reported by Michael Arrington:

Zucker is now on. Talking about importance of “significant IP protection” as a primary goal.

...

Chernin: this will be the largest advertising platform on earth.

So let me get this right. The primary goal of what Google has dubbed "Clown Co." is not serving customers are anything rash like that, it's "significant IP protection"; and what those lucky customers are going to get as a result of that primary goal is "the largest advertising platform on earth".

Well, that should be popular.

Virtual World, Real Blood

How's this for proof that virtual worlds can have real-world consequences?

An online game operator has demanded that banned players donate blood to be allowed back into the game. Moliyo, which runs a 3D massively multiplayer online game in China, made the demand after banning 120,000 players who attempted to hack the game.

More than 100 players had already signed up to exchange half a litre (1 pint) of blood for game accounts. The company has also offered free accounts to ordinary players who give blood.

(Via Virtual Economy Research Network.)

US and NATO Declare War on Net Neutrality

Here's a very stupid idea in the making:

Representatives of the US government have demanded that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) come up with a solution for prioritizing certain data within government networks and at the interfaces to other networks. Representatives of the US Department of Defense and of the National Communications System (NCS), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, are seeking to ensure that certain items of information can even in an emergency be guaranteed to arrive. This presupposes appropriate identification mechanisms in the servers. At the IETF meeting in Prague Antonio Desimone of the US Department of Defense said that the switch to a "global grid" raised a number of issues, such as how delivery of a specific e-mail could be ensured within a defined period of time. What was needed was a prioritizing of data, one that also took in emergency and catastrophe scenarios.

"Some calls are more important than other calls, some chats more important than others or a certain content within a chat session may have priority," Mr. Desimone explained.

Why's it stupid? Well, it essentially kills net neutrality, and at the behest of the soldiers. If they want their own super-duper networks, let them build it, rather than attempt to steal the toys everyone else is sharing. And another reason this is asking for trouble is the following:

He said he was especially worried that prioritization might in reality not be confined to authorized persons. Should confinement fail script kids and hackers might find ways to use "priority bits" for their purposes, he observed.

"Might find ways"? Might???

OpenDocument Format: the Monograph

One of the great things about all things open, is that their documentation is nearly always freely available. A case in point is this monograph on ODF, which can be downloaded in its entirety, or chapter-by-chapter. It's all about choice.... (Via GotzeBlogged.)

Virtual Dosh: A Taxing Question

Here's the latest contribution to the (academic) debate about whether and in what circumstances virtual dosh should be taxed:

Although it seems intuitively the case that the person who auctions virtual property online for a living should be taxed on his or her earnings, or even that the player who occasionally sells a valuable item for real money should be taxed on the profits of those sales, what of the player who only accumulates items or virtual currency within a virtual world? Should the person whose avatar7 discovers or wins an item of value be taxed on the value of that item? And should a person who trades an item in-game with another player (for an item or virtual currency) be taxed on any increase in value of the item relinquished?

(Via Terra Nova.)

We Forbid You to Mention This Post

Well, this is going to work, isn't it?

Malaysia's traditional media has been ordered not to mention, quote or pursue stories exposed by bloggers and online news sites, which are emerging as a powerful new media force.

A security ministry circular dated March 13 told top editors of a dozen mainstream newspapers and five television stations that they must not "give any consideration whatsoever" to anti-government material posted online.

Ironically the circular, issued by the ministry's secretary general, was first exposed by the independent online magazine Malaysiakini.com on Saturday.

Further proof of the power - and importance - of blogs, especially in countries with a supine press. Come to think of it, they're also pretty important in countries with even a mostly-supine press - as in, everywhere. (Via Smart Mobs.)

Fresh Thoughts on DRM

One of the problems with the DRM battle is that it tends to get into a rut: the same old arguments for and against are trotted out. For those of us who care, it's a necessary price to pay for telling it as it is, but for onlookers, it's just plain boring.

That's what makes this piece, which reports on the recent conference "Copyright, DRM Technologies, and Consumer Protection", at UC Berkeley, quite simply the most interesting writing on DRM that I've come across for ages: as well as explaining the old arguments well, it includes a couple of new thoughts:

One good point a few panelists made is that successful DRM is likely to weaken the user's privacy. All DRM prevents computers and media devices from sharing files freely with each other. But in order to merely curb freedom, rather than end it entirely, DRM must identify which files can be shared and which can't, and which methods of sharing are permissible. The more sophisticated this process of determination becomes, the more it is necessary for devices to analyze information about the files in complex ways. The burden of this analysis will often be too great to implement in typical consumer electronics — so instead the data will be sent to an online server, which will figure out your rights and tell the client device what to do. But step back and consider where this is going: devices all over your house, sending information about your viewing and listening habits to a central server. Is this data certain to be subpoena-able someday? You bet. It probably already is.

Another point (made by Peter Swire among others) was the computer security implications of running DRM. The code in a DRM system must be a black box: it cannot be open source, because if the user could understand and change it, she could disable it and copy her files without restriction. But if the code is opaque, it cannot be examined for security flaws — and in fact, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to even attempt such an examination in most circumstances. Basically, you have to run this code, for even if you are technically capable of modifying it, doing so would be illegal. (In response to this situation, Jim Blandy proposed a new slogan: "It's my computer, damn it!")

I believe that now is a critical moment in the fight against DRM: if we don't scotch the snake soon, it will turn into a hydra. To win, we need to convince "ordinary" people that DRM is mad, bad and dangerous to use; the points raised above could well prove important additions to the anti-DRM armoury.

Learning about Open Educational Resources

Major European studies on open source are two a penny these days (and that's good), but some of the other opens have yet to achieve this level of recognition. So the appearance of major EU report on Open Educational Resources from the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project is particularly welcome.

At present a world-wide movement is developing which promotes unencumbered open access to digital resources such as content and software-based tools to be used as a means of promoting education and lifelong learning. This movement forms part of a broader wave of initiatives that actively promote the “Commons” such as natural resources, public spaces, cultural heritage and access to knowledge that are understood to be part of, and to be preserved for, the common good of society. (cf. Tomales Bay Institute, 2006)

With reference to the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation justifies their investment in OER as follows: “At the heart of the movement toward Open Educational Resources is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and re-use knowledge. OER are the parts of that knowledge that comprise the fundamental components of education – content and tools for teaching, learning and research.”

Since the beginning of 2006, the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project has explored how Open Educational Resources (OER) can make a difference in teaching and learning. Our initial findings show that OER do play an important role in teaching and learning, but that it is crucial to also promote innovation and change in educational practices. The resources we are talking about are seen only as a means to an end, and are utilised to help people acquire the competences, knowledge and skills needed to participate successfully within the political, economic, social and cultural realms of society.

Despite its title, it covers a very wide area, including open courseware, open access and even open source. It's probably the best single introduction to open educational resources around today - and it's free, as it should be. (Via Open Access News.)