A Very British Takedown

Here's someone who will be looking for a new job, ultimately, I hope. But at least it sounds like he's a nice chap who deserves to get a good one when that day comes:

John Giacobbi, president of Web Sheriff, a British company that has protected music from such artists as Moby, The White Stripes and The Shins, said that not everyone in the sector takes such a hard-line approach to file sharing.

"We're trying to be more civil," Giacobbi said.

Spiffing, old chap, absolutely spiffing. And kudos.

DRM is Dead!

Amazon just killed it with Amazonmp3:

Our files are free of digital rights management (DRM) software, so you can burn your songs to CDs, play them on all your computers, and transfer them to all your devices. Songs are encoded at 256 kbps (learn more), which means you get high audio quality at a manageable file size.

DRM'd music just became unsellable.

Ecosystem Network Effects

One of the most heartening signs of maturity within the open source world - both literally and metaphorically - is the growing number of project tie-ups. The latest is Trolltech, which

has integrated Qt, its flagship C++ based cross-platform development framework, with the popular Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The C++ integration augments the integration currently available for Qt Jambi – a version of Qt for Java development.

This is a network effect, but writ large, at the ecosystem level.

Words of a Woz-Been

"There's always a group of people that wants to undo the forces of industry that have given us so much in terms of wealth, and there's always people who want things to be free," Wozniak said. "The open-source movement starts with those sort of people. But it still has such good points that have nothing to do with whether it's free or not. The idea of developing something and then making your solution known. Spread the information so the world can grow from it."

Hilarious and yet sad. (Via The Inquirer.)

SCO Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

One of the many pleasant knock-on effects of SCO's deliquescence has been some long-overdue crow-eating by high-profile critics of the open source position during that saga. Since I have rigorously vegetarian tendencies when it comes to partaking of that particular dish, I have to admire the, er, guts of Daniel Lyons, who has publicly swallowed his pride and admitted his errors (although, sadly, his potshots at "freetards" in his otherwise wonderful Fake Steve Jobs blog now stick in my craw, for some reason....)

Rob Enderle's case here is more complex. He has written a long and fascinating tale of how he came to do and say what he did and said, but ultimately refuses to apologise for either ("Dan Lyons, me and no apology ). For me, the key paragraph is the following:

Unlike Dan Lyons, who has recently said he was tricked by SCO, I was tricked both by SCO and some Linux supporters who, unintentionally through their nasty behavior and threats, made me see them as the criminals. Nothing I had done gave these people the right to attack my livelihood, threaten my life or the lives of my family, and I still view the folks who engaged in such behavior as criminals.

I too thoroughly repudiate those who, while claiming to be part of the open source community, made any such threats, which were unjustified and unforgivable. But I don't think the word "tricked" is appropriate here. These people did not "trick" Enderle into believing them to be sad sacks: they truly were. But that had nothing to do with the merits of SCO's case.

Aside from SCO's trickery, Enderle made an error of judgment in not believing people like Linus when he said there was no infringing code. The point is, if you examine Linus' track-record - to say nothing of his coding - it was simply inconceivable that large chunks of code had been filched. It was (just about) possible that small parts had been sneaked in by some less-than-scrupulous coders, but given the level of scrutiny the code undergoes, even that was highly unlikely.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fundamental difference between free software and black-box code: one is open - and can be examined by anyone, without signing NDAs - the other is not. The presumption should always be, then, that the former, unlike the latter, has nothing to hide, because it has nowhere to hide it.

Update: ESR says much the same, though with rather more force...

All 's Well That Ends Well

So Eben didn't get his lawsuit yet - but he does get another victory:

Monsoon Multimedia today announced efforts to fully comply with the GNU General Public License (GPL). Monsoon is in settlement negotiations with BusyBox to resolve the matter and intends to fully comply with all open-source software license requirements. Monsoon will make modified BusyBox source code publicly available on the company web-site at http://www.myhava.com in the coming weeks.

The Everex Effect

Following extensive product testing, Everex had taken the innovative step of including OpenOffice.org software on a range of PCs for sale through the WalMart chain. The eco-friendly range was launched in July, aimed at the US 'back to school' market, with a price tag of just $298.

Conference delegates watched a message from John Lin, General Manager, Everex: "On July 18th 2007, Everex launched its first 'Back to School' PC with OpenOffice.org 2.02 into WalMart stores throughout the United States. The response was fantastic. Not only did Everex receive rave reviews in the media, but consumer interest resulted in a three-fold increase in web traffic to everex.com. Feedback from WalMart was also very positive: they have requested all our future units include OpenOffice.org productivity software. Everex would like to thank everyone involved in OpenOffice.org for their help and support, and congratulations again for providing the world with such a wonderful product."

This is all it needs: for PC vendors to offer systems with OpenOffice.org, and ones identical in every respect except with Microsoft Office instead - for an extra $50 (I'm guessing how much they really pay for Office). Now, that might not seem like a huge saving, but it's big enough to drive millions of people to opt for OpenOffice.org.

PayPal Joins the List

One of the most effective ways of convincing sceptics that open source means business is to reel off some of the household names that depend on it: the Web, Google, Amazon, etc. Well, it seems that we can add another biggie: eBay.

PayPal runs thousands of Linux-based, single-rack-unit servers, which host the company's Web-presentation layer, middleware and user interface. Thompson says he quickly saw the economic, operational and development advantages of open source and Linux technology. He now sees no other way to do it.

(Via Matt Asay.)

Going a Bundle on Unbundling

I can't see this happening, but it's interesting that someone has even raised it:

This paper’s recommendation is that the European Commission should require all desktop and laptop computers sold within the EU to be sold without operating systems.

For two decades, Microsoft has enjoyed monopolistic power in the operating system market. The Competition Commissioner has signalled the desire to see more competition in this sector. Unbundling would foster a competitive market, increase consumer choice and reduce prices.

What Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi Knew

Nice to see algorithms getting some respect:

Algorithms, as closely guarded as state secrets, buy and sell stocks and mortgage-backed securities, sometimes with a dispassionate zeal that crashes markets. Algorithms promise to find the news that fits you, and even your perfect mate. You can’t visit Amazon.com without being confronted with a list of books and other products that the Great Algoritmi recommends.

Its intuitions, of course, are just calculations — given enough time they could be carried out with stones. But when so much data is processed so rapidly, the effect is oracular and almost opaque. Even with a peek at the cybernetic trade secrets, you probably couldn’t unwind the computations.

Maybe; but the point is, they are just calculations. Which is why the idea of patenting any of them - as raw algorithms, business methods, or software - is, er, patently ridiculous.

Eben Gets Busy Over BusyBox

One of the things that Eben Moglen has impressed on me when I've talked to him was that he - and Richard Stallman - have always preferred to negotiate settlements in cases of alleged breaches of the GNU GPL, rather than to rush to litigation. Hitherto, that's always worked, in the US at least. So it's extremely significant that Moglen's SFLC has decided to change tactics:

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, against Monsoon Multimedia, Inc. BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under GPL version 2.

One of the conditions of the GPL is that re-distributors of BusyBox are required to ensure that each downstream recipient is provided access to the source code of the program. On the company's own Web site, Monsoon Multimedia has publicly acknowledged that its products and firmware contain BusyBox. However, it has not provided any recipients with access to the underlying source code, as is required by the GPL.

Clearly something big is afoot, here. Perhaps Moglen thinks the time has come to establish the legal solidity of the GNU GPL once and for all, and that this is the case to do it with. It will certainly be fascinating to see how this plays out.

Let My Standards Go

It has always seemed something of irony to me that many key standards, essential pre-requisites for open technology, have often required payment before you can access them. Well, it seems that those produced by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will now be freely available:

Offering standards for free is a significant step for the standards community as well as the wider information and communication technologies (ICT) industry. Now, anyone with Internet access will be able to download one of over 3000 ITU-T Recommendations that underpin most of the world's ICT. The move further demonstrates ITU's commitment to bridging the digital divide by extending the results of its work to the global community.

(Via James Governor's Monkchips.)

eForum Follow-up

While I was at the Westminster eForum last week I had the pleasure of meeting Vic Keegan finally. Vic used to edit the Technology pages on the Guardian, and commissioned a number of features from me for it, but I'd never met up with him until now.

I was pleased to see that he drew on some of the stats mentioned at the forum for his column in today's Guardian, bemoaning the scandalous indifference of the present UK Government towards open source. This, in its turn, has provoked Alan Lord into a fine rant that draws together a number of related threads.

The Answer to Microsoft's Wrong Question

Here's an interesting question, posed by a Microsoft lawyer called Horatio Gutierrez to James Governor:

“If Microsoft can’t bundle an audio player with Windows, why can Nokia bundle a camera with a phone?”

It's interesting because it lays bare the fallacy at the heart of Microsoft's arguments against the current EU anti-trust action, which it claims are a brake on "innovation". It treats the addition of the Windows Media Player as if it were just another feature, like a camera added to a mobile. But it's not.

When Microsoft bundles WMP, it effectively establishes its own proprietary multimedia standards, because of Windows' dominance. When Nokia adds a camera, it is simply offering the same as everyone else - there are no new standards involved. This is what Microsoft conveniently forgets: that everything it produces is proprietary - and that this is problem here, just as it was with Internet Explorer.

To see this, consider the case of Microsoft bundling a standards-based media player - supporting MP3, and OGG, say. See? There's no problem - it's like adding, say, a standards-based camera to a phone. Just like Nokia does.

A Marriage Made in Geek Heaven

Long-time readers of this blog will now that I'm a big fan of Eclipse, and believe it to be potentially one of the top two or three open source projects ever. A further step towards that position has been taken with the release of the Eclipse PHP Development Tools project:

Eclipse PDT is a set of tools and frameworks that enhance the productivity of developers using PHP, a popular, general-purpose dynamic language that is especially suited for development of web applications and web services. This is the first Eclipse project that targets the large PHP developer community.

“Eclipse has long been enriched by the wide number of programming languages supported” says Mike Milinkovich, general director of the Eclipse organization. “The release of PDT 1.0 is great news as it will allow the estimated 4.5 million PHP developers to begin using Eclipse-based tools and greatly expand the entire Eclipse community.”

PHP developers using PDT will now be able to leverage the large ecosystem of over 1,400 Eclipse plugins. Many PHP developers use a number of different development languages, such as Java and C/C++. They also use development tools for tasks like source code management (SCM), testing, and profiling when building rich internet applications. PDT enables them to use Eclipse to integrate all of these tools into one single development environment.

The best IDE for probably the most popular Web scripting language: what's not to like?

My Kind of (Meta)Place

I'd noted the growing excitement around Raph Koster's new company, Areae, but even I was surprised by the scope of the vision his recently-revealed Metaplace displays:

Our motto is: build anything, play everything, from anywhere. Until now, virtual worlds have all worked like the closed online services from before the internet took off. They had custom clients talking to custom servers, and users couldn't do much of anything to change their experience. We're out to change all of that.

Metaplace is a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of giant custom clients and huge downloads, Metaplace lets you play the same game on any platform that reads our open client standard. We supply a suite of tools so you can make worlds, and we host servers for you so that anyone can connect and play. And the client could be anywhere on the Web.

And to do this, Koster is building on openness:

we also committed to an open markup standard for our network protocol - anyone can write a client for any platform they want. We decided to use Web standards for everything we could, which is why you can have a game world that is also a website, or use Web data to populate your world. The scripting language (we call it MetaScript, of course) is based on Lua. You get the idea - no "not invented here," no closed proprietary approaches.

The consequences of adopting this approach sound amazing:

We speak Web fluently. Every world is a web server, and every object has a URL. You can script an object so that it feeds RSS, XML, or HTML to a browser. This lets you do things like high score tables, objects that email you, player profile pages right on the player -- whatever you want. Every object can also browse the Web: a chat bot can chatter headlines from an RSS feed, a newspaper with real headlines can sit on your virtual desk, game data could come from real world data... you get the idea.

So I wasn't completely wrong when I wrote that his new project "sounds like a system of interconnected, perhaps standalone virtual worlds to me" - I just underestimated Koster's ambition.... (Via GigaOM.)

IBM's Symphony Bolsters the ODF Choir

Goodness knows why it has taken so long, but IBM finally seems to have woken up to the fact that throwing all its weight behind ODF is much better than vaguely supporting it:

I.B.M. plans to mount its most ambitious challenge in years to Microsoft’s dominance of personal computer software, by offering free programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

The company is announcing the desktop software, called I.B.M. Lotus Symphony, at an event today in New York. The programs will be available as free downloads from the I.B.M. Web site.

...

Its offerings are versions of open-source software developed in a consortium called OpenOffice.org. The original code traces its origins to a German company, Star Division, which Sun Microsystems bought in 1999. Sun later made the desktop software, now called StarOffice, an open-source project, in which work and code are freely shared.

I.B.M.’s engineers have been working with OpenOffice technology for some time. But last week, I.B.M. declared that it was formally joining the open-source group, had dedicated 35 full-time programmers to the project and would contribute code to the initiative.

This won't lead to any sudden change in OpenOffice.org's fortunes, but it will add to the growing pressure on Microsoft's Office suite. And as Firefox has shown, constant dripping does indeed wear away the stone.

OOo - Not Presently Supported

As expected, Google has added a presentation capability to its online apps:

Starting today, users can:

* Create and keep presentations in one place on the web that's accessible anytime, from any Internet connected computer.
* Manage, update and share presentations with colleagues by sending them a simple email invitation.
* Edit together online and in real-time, or contribute at different times to the same presentation on the web.
* Present and control slide shows for all viewers over the web, with no special setup required. Chat with viewers in real-time via integrated chat.
* Import existing presentations to get started quickly.
* Quickly publish presentations to the general public or individuals of their choice.

The bad - terrible - news is that Google's Presently (as I shall insist on calling it alongside Writely and Spreadly) does *not* support OpenOffice.org's Impress format. This is incredibly stupid, since it perpetuates the idea that Powerpoint is synonymous with presentations, and that there is no other option. Come on, Google, pull that corporate finger out, puh-lease.

Thunderbird Spreads its Wings

I was muttering darkly about Thunderbird's future, and the worrying attitude the Mozilla Foundation seemed to be taking to this key program. Happily, they have got their brains in gear again, and come up with the following wizard plan:

Mozilla today announced a new initiative to stimulate innovation in Internet mail and communications. Mozilla plans to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand. The new initiative also aims to nurture a robust developer ecosystem in order to drive improvements through open source and community innovation, in the tradition of the Firefox web browser.

...

Mozilla will provide US$3 million seed funding to establish this new company.

Millions of people around the world rely on Thunderbird as their primary mail application. Nothing will change for current Thunderbird users. Mozilla will continue to provide Thunderbird users with regular security and stability updates as it establishes its new initiative, and remains committed to the needs of Thunderbird users.

New York Times Sees the Light and Opens Up

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

...

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

A nice vindication for the "make money by giving it away" approach, and testimony to the power of the Web 2.0 world, driven as it by search engines and user-generated content. (Via Boing Boing.)

Of Cake and Eating It

The Canadian Recording Industry Association this week quietly filed documents in the Federal Court of Appeal that will likely shock many in the industry. CRIA, which spent more than 15 years lobbying for the creation of the private copying levy, is now fighting to eliminate the application of the levy on the Apple iPod since it believes that the Copyright Board of Canada's recent decision to allow a proposed tariff on iPods to proceed "broadens the scope of the private copying exception to avoid making illegal file sharers liable for infringement."

Given that CRIA's members collect millions from the private copying levy, the decision to oppose its expansion may come as a surprise. Yet the move reflects a reality that CRIA has previously been loath to acknowledge - the Copyright Board has developed jurisprudence that provides a strong argument that downloading music on peer-to-peer networks is lawful in Canada.

This is interesting, because it tacitly recognises that imposing a levy effectively gives permission for any kind of private copying - otherwise it would be a case of having your cake and eating it - which is why the CRIA is desperately backtracking.

But I'd turn this around, and say that this equation offers a way to solve all the messy legal squabbles over private copying. Provided the levy on recording media were small enough, it could be spread over everything - tapes, CD-Rs, hard discs, flash - and be a relatively painless way for users to gain the right, enshrined in law, to share and copy anything for private use.

DNA = Don't Need it All

A group of eminent lawyers and scientists is calling for anyone not convicted of a crime to have their details wiped from the DNA database.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics said it is "unjustified" to keep people on the National DNA Database when they have not been convicted of any offence.

Some four million DNA samples are on the police's database.

Good to see some sensible thinking in this area; pity the government won't take a blind bit of notice.

Give Me a "Y", Give Me a "Z": What Do You Get?

Yahimbra?

Yahoo is set to make yet another acquisition–this time of white-label open-source email provider Zimbra. Sources close to the deal said that the Internet portal will pay $350 million, considerably upwards of its most recent valuation, for the email and calendar provider.

The march of open source continues....

Enclosing the Agricultural Commons

Here's a nasty little threat brewing:

Government ministers have given their backing to a renewed campaign by farmers and industry to introduce genetically modified crops to the UK, the Guardian has learned.

They believe the public will now accept that the technology is vital to the development of higher-yield and hardier food for the world's increasing population and will help produce crops that can be used as biofuels in the fight against climate change.

"GM will come back to the UK; the question is how it comes back, not whether it's coming back," said a senior government source.

Now, I have nothing against genetically-modified organisms as such - after all, selective breeding has been producing modified organisms for the last few millennia. No, what concerns me is this:

The purpose of the crops primarily is to give intellectual property rights to biotech companies. They're fulfilling their purpose perfectly in those terms. But they're not really doing much for the farmer.

Exactly: it's about turning an open, commons-based domain, into a a closed, proprietary one. Not the way to go, and why this new attempt to foist GM crops on the public must fail.

EU: 2, Microsoft, 1

What's most interesting about the European Court of First Instance upholding the European Commission's main actions against Microsoft (striking down one) for abusing its dominant position is the depth of technological understanding it displays. For example, here are the comments on the interoperability issues that are problematic for Samba:

First, the Court confirms that the necessary degree of interoperability required by the Commission is well founded and that there is no inconsistency between that degree of interoperability and the remedy imposed by the Commission.

The Court then observes that the Commission defined interoperability information as a detailed technical description of certain rules of interconnection and interaction that can be used within Windows work group networks to deliver work group services. The Court notes that the Commission emphasised that Microsoft’s abusive refusal to supply concerned only the specifications of certain protocols and not the source code and that it was not its intention to order Microsoft to disclose its source code to its competitors.

The Court also considers that the aim pursued by the Commission is to remove the obstacle for Microsoft’s competitors represented by the insufficient degree of interoperability with the Windows domain architecture, in order to enable those competitors to offer work group server operating systems differing from Microsoft’s on important parameters. In that connection, the Court rejects Microsoft’s claims that the degree of interoperability required by the Commission is intended in reality to enable competing work group server operating systems to function in every respect like a Windows system and, accordingly, to enable Microsoft’s competitors to clone or reproduce its products.

As to the question of the intellectual property rights covering the communication protocols or the specifications, the Court considers that there is no need to adjudicate on that question in order to determine the case. It observes that in adopting the decision the Commission proceeded on the presumption that Microsoft could rely on such rights or, in other words, it considered that it was possible that the refusal at issue was a refusal to grant a licence to a third parties, thus opting for the solution which, according to the case-law, was the most favourable to Microsoft.

As regards the refusal to supply the interoperability information, the Court recalls that, according to the case-law, although undertakings are, as a rule, free to choose their business partners, in certain circumstances a refusal to supply on the part of a dominant undertaking may constitute an abuse of a dominant position. Before a refusal by the holder of an intellectual property right to license a third party to use a product can be characterised as an abuse of a dominant position, three conditions must be satisfied: the refusal must relate to a product or service indispensable to the exercise of an activity on a neighbouring market; the refusal must be of such a kind as to exclude any effective competition on that market; and the refusal must prevent the appearance of a new product for which there is potential consumer demand. Provided that such circumstances are satisfied, the refusal to grant a licence may constitute an abuse of a dominant position unless it is objectively justified.

It's impressive that m'luds grok the difference between the protocols and Microsoft's code that implements them. I half expected them to get their wigs in a twist and buy Microsoft's line that handing over the protocols was the same as handing over the code. Happily, the judges saw through this attempt at muddying the waters, and came out with a well-argued decision that looks likely to withstand Microsoft's inevitable appeal.