OOoCon in China?

The OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon) is an

annual gathering is where representatives of all the community projects meet to celebrate and learn from the achievements of the past twelve months, and discuss how to meet the challenges of the next twelve.

Hardly stuff to get excited about, you might think, but apparently not:

I was only 50% out yesterday when I expected four bids to host the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference this year (OOoCon 2008). It’s felt like every time I looked in my inbox today, there was another entry waiting. With an hour to go before the final deadline of midnight UTC, I’m heading off to bed with a total of six bids received:

* Amsterdam, The Netherlands
* Beijing, China
* Bratislava, Slovakia
* Budapest, Hungary
* Dundalk, Ireland
* Orvieto, Italy

Spot the odd one out. The appearance of Beijing is particularly interesting, because it's still not really clear how well open source is doing in China. Maybe this is a hint that there's more interest than you might think.

Asus Eeek PC?

I'm a big fan of the Asus Eee PC, but it seems that someone was a smidge careless with the software that runs by default:

Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to root.

EU to Clobber MS Over OOXML Vote - Allegedly

There's a story zooming around the blogosphere that the EU smells something rotten in the state of Denmark - or rather in a few countries - where the committees voting on OOXML ballooned suddenly with pro-Microsoft people.

What's annoying is that there's been no official confirmation of the story, and the original source, the Wall Street Journal, has a paywall, so you can't find out the details.

Not exactly very open.

Saving Limbu from Linguistic Limbo

There's a fair amount of acrimony flying around the OLPC XO machine at the moment, which is a pity. Because the real story is stuff like this old but still important post that I came across recently:

The development team at OLPC Nepal have been working hard on developing various learning activities for children using the XO. A significant area in which they have been making progress has been in creating activities to help children learn their local dialect.

The first dialect to be setup for use on the XO is Limbu. This is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by more than 300,000 people in eastern Nepal as well as parts of Myanmar, Bhutan and India.

This is a really exciting development and is a positive counter to concerns that the OLPC project will only serve to homogenise indigenous cultures. In fact, the project may aid the long term preservation and viability of minority dialects and culture which are no longer part of the curriculum in the traditional school teaching models.

I always was a sucker for those Tibeto-Burman languages....

Top 50 Open Source Alternatives

Top n lists are two-a-penny in the world of computing, and collections of open source alternatives to proprietary are pretty common. This one has the virtue of offering a paragraph on each, so you have a better chance of deciding if something's worth following up.

The same site has some other lists that may be of interest: Top 25 GNU/Linux Games, and an intriguing list of "brave" hosting companies that won't (it is claimed) dump you when the going gets a smidge tough.

DRM For Libraries?

This is a very bad precedent:

the BPL [Boston Public Library] has launched a new service powered by a company called OverDrive. The system gives BPL patrons access to books, music, and movies online -- but only if they use a Microsoft DRM system.

There are lots of problems with the introduction of this system: it bars access to users of GNU/Linux and MacOS and creates a dependence on a single technology vendor for access. These are important issues, certainly. The worst problem, however, is much more fundamental.

By adopting a DRM system for library content, the BPL is giving OverDrive, copyright holders, and Microsoft the ability to decide what, when, and how its patrons can and cannot read, listen, and watch these parts of the BPL collection. They are giving these companies veto power over the BPL's own ability to access this data -- both now and in the future. Cryptographically, BPL is quite literally handing over the keys to their collection. In the process, they are not only providing a disservice to their patrons. They are providing a disservice to themselves.

Libraries should be about opening people's minds, not closing off their collections.

Time to Get Incensed about the 2011 Census?

US authorities will not be able to see data covering all UK households even if a US defence giant wins the contract to run the 2011 census, a minister says.

The US Patriot Act allows personal data held by companies in the US to be made available to intelligence agencies.

But Treasury Minister Angela Eagle told MPs the government had received legal assurances this would not happen if Lockheed Martin wins the census bid.

Oh, that's alright then - if they really gave "legal assurances".

The fact the US telecom companies have been spying on US citizens illegally because they were told to do so by the US government doesn't have any bearing here, does it? I mean, if Lockheed Martin were *ordered* by the US government to hand over all the census data, they'd just refuse, wouldn't they? They'd have to: after all, they have given those legal assurances.

And if by any chance you were still a teensy-weensy bit nervous about the security of all that intimate information about yourself and your family - because, well, you know, the UK government has had one or two little mishaps with data recently - Angela Eagle has some reassuring words:

she was "pretty confident" there would be robust safeguards on the security of data.

Update: ORG's Becky Hogge points out a useful site called Census Alert that tells you what you can do to thwart this gross insult to the national intelligence.

No Download iPlayer for GNU/Linux in 2008

The BBC will launch a download version of its iPlayer online video service for Apple Mac users by the end of 2008.

But no mention of GNU/Linux obviously means we won't be seeing one this year....

And somebody should tell Mark Thompson about platform-independent technologies:

He wrote: "Were we to choose to not develop any systems or services until they could be received by every single individual licence-fee payer, our capacity for development and innovation - in the interest of serving those who fund our services - would be severely limited."

Welcome to the Spectrum Commons

Dana Blankenhorn gets it:

When the history of this era is written, it will be seen that one of the biggest bi-partisan mistakes was to treat spectrum as property rather than a commons.

Billions have been earned off the spectrum, first by the government, then by those who won the auctions. But the spectrum has been under-utilized and it has been over-priced.

Open Source Airbus

I always knew that that the A380 Airbus was cool:

An Airbus aircraft has a working life of up to 30 years. On-board hardware and software needs to be maintained, updated and adapted to new specifications for the same amount of time. However, 30 years is an eternity in the short-lived software industry. Which software vendor can nowadays guarantee that their tools will still be usable and meet all the relevant requirements in 2030? And the production path from system specifications to tested control programs and the hardware to run them on requires many tools.

Led by aircraft manufacturer Airbus, several companies located in the French Aerospace Valley close to Toulouse have, therefore, formed a consortium and initiated the TOPCASED Open Source project to create the necessary system development tools. TOPCASED is an acronym for Toolkit in Open source for Critical Applications & Systems Development.

OpenID - and Openness - Is Winning

I am very happy to be able to say that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo are joining the OpenID Foundation (on whose board I sit.) It marks the end of a lot of hard work by all parties involved, as well as -- at least for me personally -- the hope that we will be able to get a decentralized federated single sign-on technology across the internet.

Nearly there....

Australia: The New Commons Hero

One of the surprising - and heartening - recent developments in the environmental world has been the transformation of Australia into a real commons hero. Not just in terms of signing the Kyoto Protocol, but also in taking a very active part in revealing the reality of the scandalously callous and egotistical behaviour of the Japanese whalers.

The latest result of this new position is a truly shocking video that shows the death-throes of two Minke whales, almost certainly a mother and her calf. Be warned: this is literally revolting in its capture of the slow suffering inflicted by the Japanese.

But appalling as it is, it is a valuable document in the fight against this totally senseless slaughter and the Japanese government's cynical portrayal of such butchery as "science". The Australian government and people should be proud of their work in attempting to defend this fragile commons. (Via The Times.)

Copyright Laws: What a Load of Rubbish

Unbelievable:

If you came across a trash can filled with lawfully made compact discs and DVDs that the copyright owner had authorized to be put in that trash can and then thrown away because it didn’t want to pay the postage to have them returned, do you think you could be criminally prosecuted for selling those copies, and would you think that the copyright owners would be entitled to restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act? If you answered no to these questions, you would be wrong according to the Eighth Circuit.

Open Enterprise Interview: Javier Soltero

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Dead Code Worth Open Sourcing?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Running the Internet - All of It - on GNU/Linux

Everyone knows that Google uses hundreds of thousands of commodity PCs running GNU/Linux to power its services. Well, IBM wants to go one further: running everything - the entire Internet, for example - on an Blue Gene/P supercomputer running GNU/Linux:

In this paper we described the vision and exploration of Project Kittyhawk, an ongoing effort at IBM Research which explores the construction of a next-generation compute platform capable of simultaneously hosting many web-scale workloads. At scales of potentially millions of connected computers, efficient provisioning, powering, cooling, and management are paramount.

...

To test our hypothesis, we are prototyping a stack consisting of a network-enabled firmware layer to bootstrap nodes, the L4 hypervisor for partitioning and security enforcement, Linux as a standard operating system, and an efficient software pack-
aging and provisioning system. An important aspect is that while these building blocks allow us to run a large variety of standard workloads, none of these components are required and therefore can be replaced as necessary to accommodate many diverse workloads. This flexibility, efficiency, and unprecedented scale makes Blue Gene a powerhouse for running computation at Internet scale.

(Via The Reg.)

Dissing OOXML

On Open Enterprise blog.

Michael Geist on a Misleading Microsoft

The Hill Times this week includes an astonishingly misleading and factually incorrect article on Canadian copyright written by Microsoft.

So says Canadian Copyright Crusader Michael Geist.

Why is that interesting? Because it shows that Microsoft regards copyright as within its purview. Which also indicates why people in the open source world need to stand up for copyright rights around the world: it's all connected.

I've Got a Little Brown(Book)

On Open Enterprise blog.

UN University Launches OpenCourseWare

It seems a no-brainer that the United Nations University (yes, it exists) should make available its courses for the world and her dog to use - and now it has:

The United Nations University OpenCourseWare Portal makes course material used by the university's Research & Training Centres and Programmes available on the web free of charge to anyone. With the opening of the site, the UNU joins a select group of over one hundred leading universities from around the world committed to supporting the growth of free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials.

Initially the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal offers open access to about a dozen courses developed by three of the university's centres (in Canada, Macao, and the Netherlands) and the Tokyo-based UNU Media Studio. Expressing his support for this initiative, UNU Rector Konrad Osterwalder said, "This signifies our commitment to broadening access to high-quality educational materials and will contribute to the United Nations University's core mission, which seeks to further the generation and sharing of knowledge in order to strengthen individual and institutional capacities to resolve pressing global problems."

The topics currently covered include e-governance, economic development and innovation, mangrove biodiversity and integrated watershed management. More courses are in production and in 2008, additional UNU units will participate in this initiative which promotes open sharing and global benefits for self-learners and educators.

Ah, yes, mangroves. (Via Open Access News.)

The Most Important Fish You've Never Heard Of

The Menhaden:

The only remaining significant checks on the phytoplankton that cause algal blooms and dead zones are those menhaden schools, and they are now threatened by the ravages of unrestrained industrial fishing. By the end of the twentieth century, the population and range of Atlantic menhaden had virtually collapsed. The estimated number of sexually mature adult fish had crashed to less than 13 percent of what it had been four decades earlier. Although northern New England had once been the scene of the largest menhaden fishery, adult fish had not been sighted north of Cape Cod since 1993.

Marine biologist Sara Gottlieb, author of a groundbreaking study on menhaden's filtering capability, compares their role with the human liver's: "Just as your body needs its liver to filter out toxins, ecosystems also need those natural filters." Overfishing menhaden, she says, "is just like removing your liver."

If a healthy person needs a fully functioning liver, consider someone whose body is subjected to unusual amounts of toxins -- just like our Atlantic and Gulf coasts. If menhaden are the liver of these waters, should we continue to allow huge chunks to be cut out each year, cooked into industrial oils, and ground up to be fed to chickens, pigs, and pets? Menhaden have managed to survive centuries of relentless natural and human predation. But now there are ominous signs that we may have pushed our most important fish to the brink of an ecological catastrophe.

Menhaden are therefore a commons - something owned by all, and in this case, needed by all. Just for a change, human greed is destroying that commons. And once again, there will be a heavy price to pay.

Submarines Ahoy

I've not been following the details of the US Patent Reform Act, but this sounds worrying:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation supports the Patent Reform Act of 2007, but the group does worry that the law in its present state could reform the EFF's Patent Busting Project right out of existence.

The EFF has sent a letter to Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) outlining its problems with the Patent Reform Act (the bill has already passed the House). Under the bill's current language, patents will be subject to a post-grant review process, but the current reexamination system would be scrapped.

The post-grant review system would allow nonprofits like the EFF to challenge bum patents for only 12 months after they are issued. In the EFF's view, this isn't nearly enough time to become aware of dodgy patents and the impact they will have on the tech community at large. The group would prefer to retain the current reexamination system and simply add post-grant review to the process.

In particular, this would seem to encourage "submarine patents" - those which aren't used for a while, and then sprung on an unsuspecting world. By which time, of course, it would be too late to challenge.

As the EFF points out:

The public has a right to defend itself against patents that should never have been granted, and organizations like EFF exist to assist in this process. Reexamination proceedings are essential for us to continue this work.

The Free University

You mean....they don't do this now?

Vision

* An institution to address the needs of the knowledge society
* Universities as the intellectual, cultural, and innovative infrastructure of society
* Like public roads & parks, their product should be free

The Free University

* Open access to research publications & proceedings
* Open access to research data
* Open educational resources
* Free & open source software
* Open access to library holdings
* Open standards & file formats
* Socially responsible patent policies

Approving the AGPL: Funambol to the Rescue

On Open Enterprise blog.

Of Sharing and Salience

Here's an elegant meditation on the past, present and future of media production, written by Mark Pesce, one of the pioneers of VRML. This section on sharing (naturally) caught my attention:

In order to illustrate the transformation that has completely overtaken us, let’s consider a hypothetical fifteen year-old boy, home after a day at school. He is multi-tasking: texting his friends, posting messages on Bebo, chatting away on IM, surfing the web, doing a bit of homework, and probably taking in some entertainment. That might be coming from a television, somewhere in the background, or it might be coming from the Web browser right in front of him. (Actually, it’s probably both simultaneously.) This teenager has a limited suite of selections available on the telly – even with satellite or cable, there won’t be more than a few hundred choices on offer, and he’s probably settled for something that, while not incredibly satisfying, is good enough to play in the background.

Meanwhile, on his laptop, he’s viewing a whole series of YouTube videos that he’s received from his friends; they’ve found these videos in their own wanderings, and immediately forwarded them along, knowing that he’ll enjoy them. He views them, and laughs, he forwards them along to other friends, who will laugh, and forward them along to other friends, and so on. Sharing is an essential quality of all of the media this fifteen year-old has ever known. In his eyes, if it can’t be shared, a piece of media loses most of its value. If it can’t be forwarded along, it’s broken.

Pesce then introduces what I think will become a key concept in this space, that of "salience":

All the marketing dollars in the world can foster some brand awareness, but no amount of money will inspire that fifteen year old to forward something along – because his social standing hangs in the balance. If he passes along something lame, he’ll lose social standing with his peers. This factors into every decision he makes, from the brand of runners he wears, to the television series he chooses to watch. Because of the hyperabundance of media – something he takes as a given, not as an incredibly recent development – all of his media decisions are weighed against the values and tastes of his social network, rather than against a scarcity of choices.

This means that the true value of media in the 21st century is entirely personal, and based upon the salience, that is, the importance, of that media to the individual and that individual’s social network.

Highly recommended (Via P2P Foundation.)