Look, the Dinosaurs Are Mating

Oh yeah. Pity about the asteroid, though....

ODF - Oh My Word

In the red corner:

So what about the OpenDocument Foundation? We fall into the middle area of trying to perfect the conversion to XML regardless of the fact that our two groups have the world caught between a rock and a hard place.

And in the blue corner:

The OpenDocument Foundation seems to try to clothe themselves in the mantle of the open source community and pontificate on how the big bad vendors treat interoperability. But are they speaking as a non-profit or as a vendor? Take their DaVinci plugin, for example. Where is the source code? Why isn't this open source? Are we to follow the Foundation's claim of 100% interoperability, based on blind faith, without seeing some proof in the form of working code? I've been working on document conversions and document file formats of one kind or another for almost 20 years. I've never seen 100% fidelity conversions of anything but trivial formats. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But we have nothing here, just white papers from two guys without a garage.

Ouch. Who would have thought document standards could be such fun?

The Genome Goes Read-Write

Good Craig:

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

...

Mr Venter said he had carried out an ethical review before completing the experiment. "We feel that this is good science," he said.

Bad Craig:

He has further heightened the controversy surrounding his potential breakthrough by applying for a patent for the synthetic bacterium.

The old dichotomy....

Why Free Flies - and Galileo Doesn't

Nice little piece by Charles Arthur in the Guardian today that pulls together a bunch of disparate stories (including my Alfresco profile from yesterday's edition of the same) to explain why giving stuff away makes economic sense. I particularly liked the following:

What I do find ironic though about the (very laudable) OpenStreetMap model is how it's acquired. The key element is Global Positioning Systems, aka GPS, aka sat-nav. GPS didn't just fall into the sky. It cost a lot of money to put it up there, and a fair bit to keep going - about $400m annually, including satellite updates.

But here's the thing about GPS: it's free to use, and in the short time that it's been available outside the military, its use has exploded. Figures for the value of the market are hard to come by, but EADS-Astrium estimates (in the graph at the end of the link) that this year it's worth about €40 billion. That's a hell of a multiplier on something that you give away for free, given a comparatively small investment.

Communia Communes with the Commons

Hopeful sign, here:

The COMMUNIA Thematic Network wants to place itself as the European point of reference for theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussion of existing and emerging issues to the public domain in the digital environment - as well as related topics including, but not limited, alternative forms of licensing for creative material; open access to scientific publications and research results; management of works whose authors are unknown (i.e. orphan works). The network will cover the whole geographical territory of the European Union as well as neighbouring and accessing countries; it will also build strategic relationships with third countries such as the United States, Brazil, etc, where similar policy discussion on the above topics ongoing.

The COMMUNIA project will base its 3-years long activity on a tight schedule of thematic workshops and conference (respectively, 3 and 1 per year) with the goal to maintain a strong link between all the participants and use face-to-face meetings as a source of material for the analytical and practical work of the project, including the production of a book; an academic journal; a "best practices" guide for European research and reference centres on the topics covered by COMMUNIA; a final strategic report containing policy guidelines that will help all the stakeholders - public and private, from the local to the European level - tacking the issues that the existence of a digital public domain have raised and will undoubtedly continue to raise.

The price? A million European bendy ones - and cheap at the price. (Via Creative Commons.)

SWIFTly Out of the Frying Pan...

...it seems:

The supervisory board of SWIFT has approved the plans for the restructuring of the systems architecture of the financial messaging network the outlines of which had been known for some time. The core of the realignment is the creation of a global data processing center in Switzerland.

And into the fire:

To this will be added a command-and-control center in Hong Kong.

So now it will be the Chinese eavesdropping on our financial transactions, not the Americans. Oh well, at least it reflects the world's coming New Order....

Full of Sound and Fury

I didn't comment on this piece from TechCrunch entitled "The inevitable march of recorded music towards free" since it largely recapitulates stuff that I've been wittering on about for ages (although it's good to see an A-lister joining the choir).

However, what is really interesting is the level of, er, wrong-headedness exhibited in the comments - about how copying digital files is "stealing" (infringement of an intellectual monopoly, actually), about how musicians never create without concrete financial incentives (oh yeah? Ask Schubert), how no one could make enough money from touring to make up for loss of income from CDs (apart from these musicians, that is) etc. etc.

If the readers of TechCrunch can be so ill informed, maybe this is going to take a little longer than I thought (or maybe TechCrunch readers are dafter than I thought....)

BT Learns It's Fun to Share with Fon

Interesting:

BT and FON have joined forces to create a Wi-Fi community that allows its members to connect for free in thousands of places around the UK and the world.

Two things strike me: that BT has effectively sanctioned the use of its data network for Fon connections - and hence validated the whole Fon idea; and that the (revolutionary) idea that everyone gains if everyone shares is being promoted by one of the largest and most traditional companies in the UK. We're making progress.

IBM Makes Good on Patent Bloop

Not something you see everyday - yet:

IBM has put into the public domain and withdrawn its application for patent number US2007/0162321 - Outsourcing of Services. This patent application covers analyzing work flows, skills, economic costs, etc. Here’s why we are withdrawing it — IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents. Even though the patent application in question was filed eight months before the policy took effect in September, 2006, had the policy been in place at the time, IBM would not have filed the application. We’re glad the community pointed this application out so IBM could take swift action.

CloudMade: Open Data on Cloud Nine

It's always good to see people who have given to the commons finding a way to make some dosh too. I've written before about the worthy OpenStreetMap, and now it seems that Steve Coast, the man behind it, has started a new outfit, Cloud Made, that aims to put it to commercial use. Alas, its Web site isn't very informative yet:

Building on our expertise in the fields of community mapping, open data and open systems we offer innovative solutions customised to your needs.

CloudMade approach problems differently.

Applying agile techniques to heavyweight problems, we can help you make the most of exciting new opportunities that commons based production methods offer.

Er, right.

Bit more info here, though:

ZXY, the company behind Cloudmade, is comprised of London-based entrepreneurs Nick Black and Steve Coast. They are two of the proprietors of Open Street Map (Steve launched the project and is on the board; Nick is a spokesperson; Both contribute to the map). ZXY is also behind geo-advertising company Mappam (Radar post). As two of the leaders of a large, open source project the pair will have to balance the needs of their business with the needs of the project -- luckily these will usually be in sync. OSM now gets over 1000 contributions a month (a huge milestone). I suspect that commercial deals will be viewed as validation by the community.

Indeed.

OpenCourseWare Meets YouTube

This was bound to happen:

YouTube is now an important teaching tool at UC Berkeley.

The school announced on Wednesday that it has begun posting entire course lectures on the Web's No.1 video-sharing site.

Berkeley officials claimed in a statement that the university is the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. The school said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available at youtube.com/ucberkeley.

Berkeley said it will continue to expand the offering. The topics of study found on YouTube included chemistry, physics, biology and even a lecture on search-engine technology given in 2005 by Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

US Patent Reform Slouches Towards Bethlehem

But at last it seems to be happening:

This case involved a guy who was trying to patent the concept of "mandatory arbitration involving legal documents." The USPTO denied the patent. After a failed appeal, the guy went to court, and CAFC is also saying that his concept does not deserve patent protection, with this being the key quote: "The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention typically creates a prima facie case of obviousness." In other words, simply taking a common process and automating it on a computer should be considered obvious -- and thus, not patentable. This doesn't rule out business model or software patents by any means -- but it at least suggests that the courts are beginning to recognize that the patent system has gone out of control. The court also specifically addresses its own earlier State Street decision, suggesting that people had been misinterpreting it to mean any business model was patentable -- when the USPTO and the courts should still be applying the same tests to see if the business models are patentable. It then notes that a business model on its own shouldn't be patentable unless it's tied to some sort of product, and then states: "It is thus clear that the present statute does not allow patents to be issued on particular business systems -- such as a particular type of arbitration -- that depend entirely on the use of mental processes."

DRM is *Really* Dead

As I said, but don't take my word for it, just ask Microsoft:

The Zune Marketplace online store has been restocked and redesigned to make it even easier for people to find what they are looking for. The Zune software has also been completely redesigned with a new look and feel and lots of helpful new features. In addition to offering more than 3 million songs, the updated version of Zune Marketplace will launch with thousands of music videos for sale and over 1,000 of the top audio and video podcasts available for free. Consumers will also be able to choose from a selection of more than 1 million digital rights management (DRM)-free MP3s, which can be played with Zune or any other digital media player.

(Via Boing Boing.)

How Europe Can Save the World

One of the things I've always admired about Richard Stallman is his belief that if you do the Right Thing, eventually you'll win everyone over. That's seems to be happening in software, but I've always been slightly sceptical that it might work elsewhere. I was wrong, it seems:

The European Union's drive to set standards has many causes—and a protectionist impulse within some governments (eg, France's) may be one. But though the EU is a big market, with almost half a billion consumers, neither size, nor zeal, nor sneaky protectionism explains why it is usurping America's role as a source of global standards.

...

If you manufacture globally, it is simpler to be bound by the toughest regulatory system in your supply chain. Self-regulation is also a harder sell when it comes to global trade, which involves trusting a long line of unknown participants from far-flung places (talk to parents who buy Chinese-made toys).

..

Obey EU rules or watch your markets “evaporating”, a computer industry lobbyist tells Mr Schapiro. “We've been hit by a tsunami,” says a big wheel from General Motors. American multinationals that spend money adjusting to European rules may lose their taste for lighter domestic regulations that may serve only to offer a competitive advantage to rivals that do not export. Mr Schapiro is a campaigner for tougher regulation of American business. Yet you do not have to share his taste for banning chemicals to agree with his prediction that American industry will want stricter standards to create a level playing-field at home.

What this says is that tough regulations in the EU plus globalisation work to spread high standards for business throughout the world. So how about the following?

If the EU brought in laws that imposed an environmental impact tax on every item sold in the EU - determined by working out the cost/damage to the environment caused by that single item, and calculated by the EU - then the above logic would imply that companies around the world, including the US and China, would have very strong incentives to minimise environmental damage.

Moreover, as the above quotation points out, global companies would also start pushing for such legislation to be enacted in their home markets in order to create a level playing-field with their local competitors. The greenness would flow from Europe across the world, without the need for a post-Kyoto treaty or anything similar.

C'mon Europe, time to save the world. (Via PlexNex.)

Plugging into the Enernet

The current system of highly-centralised power production is extremely vulnerable - be it to man-made or natural disasters - and a more decentralised approach, based on local generation of power, has many benefits. He's someone who has the right credentials to explore this line of thought: Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet:

There is a lot to be learned from building the Internet over the last four decades, and we should make that analogy and apply those lessons. The “Enernet” is what we are all building to meet the world’s need for cheap and clean energy. It will not happen overnight, and it will be hard to predict how the various technology will play out over time. For example, the Internet was built to network mainframe computers and now it connects mostly cell phones and PCs. That was a big surprise.

Also look at the lessons of standardized interfaces. For the Internet, it took some years to figure that out. Some of them didn’t emerge, like the web, until 1989. For the Enernet we can look to the methods of standardization and how we choose to organize this thing. Fuels, biofuels themselves, are a standard.

Well, maybe, but biofuels are not a panacea - not least because it's clear that done badly they can actually exacerbate environmental problems rather than ameliorating them.

wikiHow Shows How

Although the fashinable wiki turns up all over the place, it's rare to come across really good uses of the idea. One fine example is wikiHow:

wikiHow is a collaborative writing project aiming to build the world's largest how-to manual. Our mission is to provide free and useful instructions to help people solve the problems of everyday life. As of this minute, wikiHow contains 25,548 articles. New articles are created every day and the existing articles are gradually improved by volunteer contributors. In time we envision this huge how to manual providing free, unbiased, accurate instructions on almost every topic imaginable. Please join us by contributing a new page or editing a page that someone else started.

As this points out, wikiHow has now passed 25,000 articles - a small number compared to Wikipedia's millions, but nonetheless a good start. (Via Creative Commons.)

Rice's Digital University Press

I've written before about Rice University's Connexions platform and programme, which aims to make courseware freely available for all kinds of interesting re-use. But there's another side to Rice's re-invention of academic publishing:

Rice University has re-launched its university press as an all-digital operation. Using the open-source e-publishing platform Connexions, Rice University Press is returning from a decade-long hiatus to explore models of peer-reviewed scholarship for the 21st century. The technology offers authors a way to use multimedia — audio files, live hyperlinks or moving images — to craft dynamic scholarly arguments, and to publish on-demand original works in fields of study that are increasingly constrained by print publishing.

Rice's digital press operates just as a traditional press, up to a point. Manuscripts will be solicited, reviewed, edited and resubmitted for final approval by an editorial board of prominent scholars. But rather than waiting for months for a printer to make a bound book, Rice University Press's digital files will instead be run through Connexions for automatic formatting, indexing and population with high-resolution images, audio and video and Web links.

Users of Rice University Press titles are able to view the content online for free or, thanks to Connexions' partnership with on-demand printer QOOP, order printed books in every style from softbound black-and-white on inexpensive paper to leather-bound, full-color hardbacks on high-gloss paper.

Perhaps the best place to find out about why and how Rice is doing this is an interview with Charles Henry, publisher at Rice University Press (you might need to register to access this article, but it's free). (Via Open Access News.)

The Art of the Fork

I noted yesterday how useful the fork can be. But forking well is not easy. Here's an interesting example of how not to do it.

IBM recently made its Lotus Symphony office suite freely available (though not as free software so far as I can tell). That's good(-ish), since it supports ODF, and helps boost that standard. Less good is the fact that it is based on a fork of OpenOffice.org - or, more precisely, an old fork:

I grabbed the attention of a community software engineer, who had a quick peek under the bonnet and soon discovered this was a very old version 1.x release of OpenOffice.org, with a new user interface and a rebranding exercise to make it look like an IBM product. My colleague had a happy ten minutes testing which Easter eggs the IBM thought police had found, and which ones they hadn’t.

Forking code is all very well, but as Lotus Symphony shows, getting left behind by the main trunk is always a danger. (Via Kaj Kandler.)

It's Up to Us

Radiohead has a new album that you can download - and choose how much you pay. Alternatively, it has a CD version, two vinyl records, an enhanced CD, artwork, photos and lyrics, all supplied in a hardback book and slipcase for £40. Oh, and you get the download thrown in for free.

In other words, as I've said many times before, the digital is the marketing for the analogue, which is where you make your money (since it's currently hard to make perfect copies of analogue goods).

This is the future - it's just unevenly distributed. Let's hope people support this move and that the future spreads.

We 'Umbly Petition...

One of the novel options for companies introduced by open source is to release moribund apps in the hope that they might come to life again as free software. The two prime examples of this are Netscape Navigator, which begat Mozilla, which begat Firefox (somewhat painfully, it has to be said), and Blender, which begat, well, Blender.

Now those open sourcers are at it again, egging on the company MainConcept to turn over its unwanted MainActor video editing software to The People. Here's a petition for the same:

we, Open Source enthusiasts and non-linear editors, ask that MainConcept release most source code (if not all) of MainActor as Open Source so that the community can continue to support and improve it.

And who knew there was a self-styled group of "non-linear editors"? (Via PenguinWay.)

KompoZer: Recomposing Nvu

One of the critical apps in any software ecosystem is a web authoring system. Until recently, the main free software offering was Nvu, but things had gone rather quiet on this front. With the launch of KompoZer, "Nvu's unofficial bug-fix release", we find out why:

Why call it «KompoZer» instead of «Nvu»? Because « Nvu and the Nvu logo are trademarks of Linspire Inc. » As Linspire stopped the development of Nvu, there is no legal way to correct any bug in Nvu.

God bless forks. Let's hope this time the project receives enough support from the community to join the open source pantheon of serious apps. (Via Linux.com.)

That's the Way to Do It

Government won't make public data freely available? Simple: just stick it up online.

No Free FT, No Comment

FT.com, the Internet version of the Financial Times, is instituting a new model for free and paid content on its website. Starting tomorrow, users will be able to access content on FT.com for free up to a total of 30 views per month. After 30 days, they will need to purchase a subscription in order to access more content.

I'm not quite sure whether these 30 views apply to all content or just the old premium content. In either case, I predict that eventually the FT will realise that it needs to make all of its content free if it wants to get the most benefit from it, not least in terms of linkage.

OpenOffice.org Extends Itself

One of the great strengths of open source is its extensibility. This might be at the code level, or through self-standing extensions, as with Firefox. So it's really good news - if long overdue - that OpenOffice.org is doing something similar with a formal repository.

Spreading the Open Access Gospel

Now this is what I call commitment to the OA cause.