Why Open Sourcing AnySIM is Bad for Apple

I seem to be one of the few people in the known universe that (a) does not have an iPhone and (b) does not want one. So I don't really care either way about this:

In an effort to keep up with Apple's changes at a faster speed, the iPhone Dev Team is considering open sourcing AnySIM, the free unlocking solution for the iPhone.

But I can tell you one thing: it will be very bad news for Apple if they do open source it. Why? Because this is a classic arms race between Apple and the hackers; opening up will mean that there are more of the latter, thinking more quickly and more creatively. Apple, on the other hand, will still be Apple, thinking its closed little thoughts. No contest.

What's the Opposite of Openness?

Not simply being closed, but something like this:

If I make a computer security mistake — in a book, for a consulting client, at BT — it’s a mistake. It might be expensive, but I learn from it and move on. As a criminal, a mistake likely means jail time — time I can’t spend earning my criminal living. For this reason, it’s hard to improve as a criminal. And this is why there are more criminal masterminds in the movies than in real life.

BTW, this interview with security god Bruce Schneier is just amazing - not least because it goes on for ever. Luckily, you just can't have too much of Brucie.

Can You Love Openness Just a Little Too Much?

News that Verizon Wireless will support Google's Android after all is obviously welcome:

In yet another sudden shift, Verizon Wireless plans to support Google's (GOOG) new software platform for cell phones and other mobile devices. Verizon Wireless had been one of several large cellular carriers withholding support from the Android initiative Google launched in early November.

But given the stunning U-turn Verizon Wireless made Nov. 27, announcing plans to allow a broader range of devices and services on its network, Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam says it now makes sense to get behind Android. "We're planning on using Android," McAdam tells BusinessWeek. "Android is an enabler of what we do."

But you've got to be a little sceptical when you hear stuff like this:

All the while, McAdam kept focus by carrying a crumpled piece of paper in his pocket with seven bullet points defining what an open-access policy would mean to Verizon Wireless. "The paper is all wrinkled and it's got coffee stains," he says.

Yeah, right. (Via TechCrunch.)

One Door Closes, Another Door Opens

So Germany has decided to live in the past:

Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest telephone company, can block buyers of Apple Inc.'s iPhone from using the handset on competitors' networks, a German court ruled, overturning an injunction won by Vodafone Group Plc.

The Regional Court of Hamburg said in a statement today that it lifted an injunction obtained by Vodafone that stopped Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile unit from selling the device only with exclusive contracts or software that restricted use on competitors' wireless systems.

But there is a long-term silver lining to this short-term cloud, as this analysis points out:

What might be the result of this? Hopefully Vodafone, and Verizon, will get a clue and offer more cooperation to Google’s Android, further opening their networks. They might also deliver a true Internet experience, rather than the walled garden of data services Verizon is noted for.

Spectrum Commons Catching On

I've written about the idea of treating radio spectrum as a commons - something owned by no one, but available for the use of all - subject to constraints on behaviour that might lead to a depletion of that resource, in this case through interference. It looks like the UK's Ofcom, which regulates this kind of stuff, is really getting in the commons groove:

Ofcom believes that, in general, application-specific spectrum allocations for licence-exempt devices result in inefficient utilisation and fragmentation of spectrum. Ofcom prefers the “spectrum commons” model, where a block of spectrum can be shared by as wide a range as possible of devices, subject to regulatory-defined mandatory constraints on radiated power profiles as functions of frequency, time, and space (i.e. politeness rules), in addition to standardised or proprietary polite protocols. We believe that this model would maximise the value derived from any spectrum set aside for licence-exempt uses.

Wow. Now if only the UK government could follow the same logic when it came to non-personal public data.... (Via openspectrum.info.)

Excessive Cubicle

I'm in favour of fun as much as the next clown, but the new book Eccentric Cubicle from O'Reilly seems to be forgetting a key aspect of the hacker world it aspires to engage with: economy - making less do more.

This book is a dream come true for you office-bound souls who are tech DIY enthusiasts, hobbyist engineers/designers, and Makers at heart. Imagine having your cubicle sport projects such as:

* A mechanical golfer
* Lucid dreaming induction device
* USB-powered bubble blower
* Fog machine
* A desktop guillotine

What are these but extremely wasteful uses of raw materials, and excessive burdens on the earth? A case of making more do less.

Remembering XBRL

Remember Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)? I'm one of those sad people that does, from during the dotcom 1.0 heyday of XML, when everything was being serialised and tagged. But I've not heard anything about it for ages - even the all-knowing Cover Pages on the subject seem stuck in a time-warp.

And yet things still seem to be bubbling away according to this post by Don Taspscott:

XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data and a critical element of the Web 2.0. It stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language and is one of a family of XML languages which are standardizing information handling, applications and communications on the web. Basically every entry in a report becomes an XML tag. XBRL is taking off for financial reporting — for example in Japan XBRL documents will be required for all reporting in April of next year and this is already the case in Korea. Among other benefits, anyone can examine Korean financial reports in the language of their choosing. Next week in the United States the XBRL consortium will release a taxonomy enabling any US company to transform its reporting to an XBRL format. XBRL is going mainstream.

Nice to know that XML schemas never die.

What Does This Mean for NetBeans?

NetBeans has always been something of a mystery to me. I'd always regarded it as the runner-up IDE for Java, after Eclipse. But it's clear that I'm behind the times:

Netbeans 6.1 will have plugin support for creating, editing, deploying to Apache HTTPD, running and even debugging PHP projects.

And according to the NetBeans site:

You get all the tools you need to create professional desktop, enterprise, web and mobile applications, in Java, C/C++ and even Ruby.

Add in PHP, and that's increasingly impressive, but it does beg the question: Do we really need another all-purpose IDE alongside Eclipse? Doesn't that just dissipate the effort? Answers on the back of a postcard. (Via Tim Bray.)

Copying Patent Stupidity

I thought patents were supposed to stop copying, and yet here we have the European Union trying to copy an American idea that has led almost total meltdown of the US patent system:

The core of the proposal is the creation of an European Judge Academy and a specialized Patent Court under the pillar of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Brigitte Zypries, the German minister of Justice, wants this court not to be lead by regularly appointed judges, but by so-called technical experts. She promises better examination of the technical substance of the patents in corresponding processes. These technical experts are basically just another name for Patent Agents who have passed the Judge Academy.

Essentially, this makes the same people who decide what patents should be granted the ones who decide whether that was the correct decision. Oh yeah, that's a good idea.

Mobile 2.0? I Hope Not....

Fabrizio Capobianco reckons today is a frabjous day:

1&1, the largest web hoster in the world, went live with a mobile email solution last week in Germany. They are using Funambol, integrated with OpenXchange. Open source on all levels...

Why is it the start of a revolution?

Because this not a carrier, though they are offering mobile email directly to their users. An ISP offering mobile messaging... The start of a big shift in this market, where you will get your email pushed to your phone directly from the company that "owns" your email. In 99.99% of the cases, that is not your mobile carrier...

I agree that this is big - unfortunately.

I say unfortunately because the company making this move is 1&1, from whom I have had some of the worst service ever. At one point, as a special concession, 1&1 agreed to upgrade my online storage to the level that everyone else was getting - as a long-standing customer, I was of course being penalised for my loyalty - but only if I *faxed* them a formal request. The idea of automatic upgrades, or even upgrades after a telephone request was just too much to ask, it seemed.

So while I applaud the move in theory, I would advise people to wait until companies with more respect for the customer get involved.

Wikipedia, Terrorism and the Sunlight of Openness

If this is all true, things are obviously going from bad to worse at Wikipedia:

Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia's core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site's top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.

Many suspected that such a list was in use, as the Wikipedia "ruling clique" grew increasingly concerned with banning editors for the most petty of reasons. But now that the list's existence is confirmed, the rank and file are on the verge of revolt.

Revealed after an uber-admin called "Durova" used it in an attempt to enforce the quixotic ban of a longtime contributor, this secret mailing list seems to undermine the site's famously egalitarian ethos. At the very least, the list allows the ruling clique to push its agenda without scrutiny from the community at large. But clearly, it has also been used to silence the voice of at least one person who was merely trying to improve the encyclopedia's content.

What struck me particularly was the following passage:

Durova then posted a notice to the site's public forum, insisting the ban was too important for discussion outside the purview of the Arbitration Committee, Wikipedia's Supreme Court. "Due to the nature of this investigation, our normal open discussion isn't really feasible," she said. "Please take to arbitration if you disagree with this decision."

Now, where have I heard that before? "This person is guilty: we can prove it, but doing so would reveal terrible states secrets, so you'll just have to trust us" - oh yes, I remember: it's the standard trope used to justify internment in Guantanamo, "extraordinary rendition" or simple kidnapping; it's the same trick that has been used by totalitarian governments the world over to justify repressive "anti-terror" laws that cannot be questioned, because doing so would aid the "enemy".

Not very good company for Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", to be keeping. The sunlight of openness would do a world of good here - and anywhere else power that claims to be democratic refuses to explain its actions to the people.

MPAA: The Biter Bit

Although I am a frequent critic of the more outrageous excesses of copyright, I don't deny it has its place, in moderation. For example, this blog is licensed thanks to copyright, and the whole of the GNU GPL is based on it. So it seems only right that the free software world should be able to avail itself of the really horrible DMCA to slap down violations of the GPL:

The MPAA's "University Toolkit" (a piece of monitoring software that universities are being asked to install on their networks to spy on students' communications) has been taken down, due to copyright violations. The Toolkit is based on the GPL-licensed Xubuntu operating system (a flavor of Linux). The GPL requires anyone who makes a program based on GPL'ed code has to release the source code for their program and license it under the GPL. The MPAA refused multiple requests to provide the sources for their spyware, so an Ubuntu developer sent a DMCA notice to the MPAA's ISP and demanded that the material be taken down as infringing.

A hit, a palpable hit.

What's also deeply ironic is that the MPAA choose to use Xubuntu in the first place, rather than intellectual monopoly-friendly Windows. When even your brothers-in-shame shun you, you know you've got problems.

Perens Goes Peripatetic

Bruce Perens has achieved the remarkable feat of being one of the leading figures in the open source world without ever becoming a fixture anywhere for very long. Apparently, he's off again:

I have left Sourcelabs, and am planning another start-up. Stanley is in 2nd grade now, which leaves me with time to be a CEO again.

It will be interesting to see where he lands.

Eben on Software Ecology

Eben Moglen is probably the most fluent and engaging speaker it has ever been my privilege to interview; proof of his enduring appeal can be found in the fact that I don't get tired reading yet more interviews with him, like this one, which includes the following suggestive passage:

One of the things that everybody now understands is that you can treat software as a renewable, natural resource. You can treat software like forest products or fish in the sea. If you build community, if you make broadly accessible the ability to create, then you can use your limited resources not on the creation or maintenance of anything, but on the editing of that which is already created elsewhere. We package them for your advantage, things you didn't have to make because you were given them by the bounty of nature.

And this one, too:

If you've become dependent on a commons, for whatever role in your business, then what you need is commons management. You don't strip mine the forest, you don't fish every fish out of the sea. And, in particular, you become interested in conservation and equality. You want the fish to remain in the sea and you don't want anybody else overfishing. So you get interested in how the fisheries are protected. What I do is to train forest rangers ... to work in a forest that some people love because it's free and other people love because it produces great trees cheaply. But both sides want the forest to exist pristine and undesecrated by greedy behavior by anybody else. Nobody wants to see the thing burn down for one group's profit. Everybody needs it. So whether you are IBM, which has one strategy about the commoditization of software, or you're Hewlett-Packard, which has another, whatever your particular relationship to that reality is, everybody's beginning to get it. In the 21st century economy, it isn't factories and it isn't people that make things -- it's communities.

The beauty of all this analysis is that the ideas flow both ways: if free software is a commons like the forests or the seas, then it follows that the forest and the seas share many characteristics of free software. Which is why you read about them all the time on this blog. (Via Linux Today.)

Slaying the Author-Side Fees Dragon

There is some long-living FUD abroad in the open access world: that the only way OA journals work is by charging authors - the "author-side fees" model. It exists, to be sure, but is far less widespread than many believe. And the reason for the longevity of that FUD is not hard to find: it serves the purposes of the traditional science publishers well, by frightening people with the prospect of paying to publish, rather than paying to read.

But the time has come to slay this particular dragon:

Now, can we please put to rest the myth/FUD/whatever that there is only one OA model, the author-side fees/PLoS model? While we're at it, let's have a few more closely related ideas go the way of the dodo: that OA journals discriminate against indigent authors (because they charge publication fees -- except that most of them don't); that OA journals will compromise on quality (in order to collect payment for manuscripts -- except that most of them don't); that if most journals went OA, universities would have to pay more in author-side fees (which, remember, most OA journals don't, but most non-OA journals do, charge) than they do now in subscription fees.

See also Peter Suber's earlier commentary on the same issue.

Stallman's Symbolic Victory

Slashdot points to an interesting list of first 100 registered domains. But I doubt whether even the most deep-dyed supporter of free software realises that it was the company behind the very first domain - Symbolics.com - that ultimately led to Richard Stallman to start his GNU project.

Symbolics was in competition with a company called LMI - Lisp Machine Incorporated - set up by a friend of Stallman. As its name implies, it was in the business of making computers running the Lisp programming language, as was Symbolics.

Unfortunately, Symbolics had most of the top LISP programmers, having recruited all Stallman's fellow hackers at MIT's AI Lab, and thereby destroying its community. All, that is, apart from Stallman, who set about single-handedly matching the work of Symbolics and its entire team of coders. This is what he told me for my book Rebel Code in 1999:

Looking back, Stallman says that this period beginning March 1982 saw "absolutely" the most intense coding he had ever done; it probably represents one of the most sustained bouts of one-person programming in history.

"In some ways it was very comfortable because I was doing almost nothing else," he says, "and I would go to sleep whenever I felt sleepy; when I woke up I would go back to coding; and when I felt sleepy again I'd go to sleep again. I had nothing like a daily schedule. I'd sleep probably for a few hours one and a half times a day, and it was wonderful; I felt more awake than I've ever felt. And I got a tremendous amount of work done [and] I did it tremendously efficiently." Although "it was exhilarating sometimes, sometimes it was terribly wearying. It was in some ways terribly lonesome, but I kept doing it [and] I wouldn't let anything stop me," he says."

His eventual failure to match Symbolics' work, which included a completely new system, proved a blessing disguise:

"I decided I didn't want to just continue punishing Symbolics forever. They destroyed my community; now I [wanted] to build something to replace it," he says. "I decided I would develop a free operating system, and in this way lay the foundation for a new community like the one that had been wiped out."

The rest, as they say, is history.

Will Microsoft Ever Learn This Trick Doesn't Work?

When you read this:

Perhaps more important than the overall numbers is the positive impact IE7 has made for our users. As you know, we focused a lot on improving security in IE7. We believe IE 7 is the safest Microsoft browser released to date. According to a vulnerability report published today, IE7 has fewer vulnerabilities than previous versions of IE over the same time period. What’s more, the report showed that IE7 had both fewer fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities in the first year than the other browsers we compared.

...you might not notice that the "vulnerability report" published at the imposing-sounding CSO site is written by a certain Jeff Jones, who, by an amazing coincidence:

is a Security Strategy Director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group.

So, Microsoft refers to a report that just happens to be written by one of its employees, but without mentioning that fact. Amazing how these things can just slip the mind, eh? (Via Mike Shaver.)

A Question of Open Chemistry

I've written about open science and open notebook science before, but here's an excellent round-up of open chemistry:

The next generation of professional chemists are far more likely to be in tune with web-based chemistry, treating blogs and social networking sites as professional tools in the same manner as email. For Open Chemistry advocates, the inevitable passage of time may be enough to usher in their revolution.

(Via Open Access News.)

Don't Steal This Book, Michael

The Kindle is a breakthrough device, in many ways analogous to the first iPod. Just as the iPod brought MP3 players to the masses, the Kindle will be the device that introduces ebooks to many people.

And while Apple sells lots of songs legally on iTunes, the vast majority of content on most iPods comes from home-ripped CDs or was obtained in violation of copyright laws. I expect the same thing with the Kindle. Users may buy a book or two on Kindle, but many users will simply steal the content they want to read.

Sorry, Michael, violating copyright laws is very different from "stealing", as you should know. Moreover, "home-ripped CDs" are not even violations of copyright laws in many jurisdictions (and shouldn't be in any, since it's clearly a fair use/fair dealing.) Confusing these facts simply plays into the hands of the copyright bullies.

Wikipedia Pays the Price

News that Wikipedia is to start paying illustrators might come as a shock to some:

The foundation that runs Wikipedia has finally agreed to pay contributors to the online encyclopedia a modest fee for their work. But it won’t pay the thousands of people who participate in creating the wiki pages — just artists who create “key illustrations” for the site.

The payments are made possible by a $20,000 donation from Philip Greenspun, who said he was moved to give the money because of his experience seeing technical books he had originally published online appear in print.

“In comparing the Web versions to the print versions, I noticed that the publishers’ main contribution to the quality of the books was in adding professionally drawn illustrations,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “It occurred to me that when the dust settled on the Wikipedia versus Britannica question, the likely conclusion would be ‘Wikipedia is more up to date; Britannica has better illustrations.’”

In fact, this is entirely in keeping with the open source model, where it is well established that hackers do the big, interesting bits for love, but you must pay for the tiny boring bits if you want the job finished. Indeed, this forms an important part of the service offered by open source companies, whose job is essentially rounding out the free offerings.

Good News out of Africa

Talking of trees, and preserving them, here's some unwonted good news from a country that sadly seems not to be awash in it:

The Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI) joins the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in announcing the creation of the new Sankuru Nature Reserve, a huge rainforest area harboring the endangered bonobo, a great ape most closely related to humans. Larger than the state of Massachusetts, the new reserve encompasses 11,803 square miles of tropical rainforest, extremely rich in biodiversity.

Trees and bonobos? What more do you want? Indeed, I felt compelled to rush off and give my widow's mite on the spot. You might like to do the same.

The Joy of Ratchetlessness

Irrespective of the relative merits of free and proprietary software, there is one aspect where free software wins hands down. Proprietary software is based on the ratchet principle: once you start using it, you are eventually forced to move up through the upgrades; free software has no such compulsion. This ratchet is bad enough for people using legitimate copies of proprietary software, but for those using unlicensed versions, it's even worse:

"At first when Microsoft officers visited us, they convinced us on the importance of operating on genuine software which we didn't object to, but the manner they are doing it cannot let us sustain our businesses," he said.

His dilemma started when Microsoft sent him a letter stating that they would want him to legalise his operating system. However , he says that his business is operating on Windows 2000, but then Microsoft asked them to upgrade to Windows XP. "After testing the Windows XP, we found that it was not suitable for us but they insisted that we must go that way," he claimed.

He welcomed legalising software on Windows 2000, to which Microsoft says they did not want to license what they don't support.

So what did this chap do? Yup:

he embraced Open Source. "At first I was hesitant but with what am experiencing, I wish I had gone Open Source long time ago. It did not cost me anything. I closed for two days and installed all the machines with the Open Source software" he says.

In this respect, proprietary software is a victim of its own business model - it simply must get more money out of forced upgrades. Free software, of course, can offer upgrades for free or even - revolutionary thought - simply let people use old software, and find support from like-minded people online. (Via FSDaily.)

Why I (Heart) Trees

I've expressed my undying love for trees before, particularly as a way of preserving our atmospheric commons, but I had no idea that they were this good:

'Every year, the expanding European forests remove a surprisingly large amount of carbon from the atmosphere,' the study's co-author Aapo Rautiainen stresses. 'According to rough estimates, their impact in reducing atmospheric carbon may well be twice that achieved by the use of renewable energy in Europe today.'

So what's the obvious lesson to learn from this? Why, that they should be included in calculations of carbon sinks - and that countries who plant more trees/don't cut down the ones they have should be rewarded in terms of carbon credits:

Under the Kyoto Protocol, countries currently do not get emission credits for increasing natural carbon sinks through forestry and agriculture. The Finnish researcher's suggest, however, that this might be a helpful tool. 'Policies that accelerate the expansion of our forest biomass not only represent a win-win for climate change and biodiversity, they also open up economic opportunities,' states Laura Saikku, the third author of the study. 'Land owners can benefit with new industries like forest-based bio-energy production. This could also help to reduce one of the main threats to sustained forest expansion - the need to open land to produce agricultural biofuels as alternatives to fossil fuels.'

Obvious, really.

Closing the Open Content Schism

Nowadays we are used to content being released under a Creative Commons licence, which has become the kind of de facto free licence for content. So it's rather curious that the biggest free content project of them all - Wikipedia - does not use such licences, but one from the FSF. The explanation is simple: at the time that Wikipedia got going, the only licence that was practical was the GNU Free Documentation Licence.

Hitherto, it's been impossible to reconcile these two, but that looks like it might finally be changing:

It is hereby resolved that:

* The [Wikimedia] Foundation requests that the GNU Free Documentation License be modified in the fashion proposed by the FSF to allow migration by mass collaborative projects to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license;
* Upon the announcement of that relicensing, the Foundation will initiate a process of community discussion and voting before making a final decision on relicensing.

Badgeware Comes in from the Cold

Has badgeware - software whose licences requires attribution to be displayed in all copies - gone legit? Roberto Galoppini seems to think so:

Badgeware is not only OSI approved, but it is also endorsed by the Free Software Foundation now, with its flagship license. The debate is over.