27 May 2008
Drupal: Big in Afghanistan?
I love statisitcs about open source - not least because they are still quite thin on the ground. Here's some fascinating stuff from Drupal, the free content management system: statistics on user demographics, including each country's current rank and percentage market share. Here are the main figures:
United States 1 (33.12%)
India 2 (5.68%)
United Kingdom 3 (5.14%)
Afghanistan 4 (4.64%)
Now, India as a growing market I can understand, but Afghanistan about to overtake the UK? Hmm, interesting....
26 May 2008
GNU/Linux and the Digital Textbook
Even though the Altaic family is one of my faves, Korean is still a long way down the list, so I can't do any proper research into what exactly is going on here:
The government-led Korean digital textbook project will adopt Linux. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Korea announced their decision to choose the open software for digital textbook, the key project for the government's digital education policy.
The digital textbook provides the contents of conventional textbooks, reference books, workbooks and terminologies in the form of video files, animations and virtual reality. It is the main learning material for students with various interactive features that cater for the needs of learners with different levels of capability.
This is certainly tantalising:The Ministry of Knowledge Economy says, "If the National Education Information System established in 2006 contributed to the expansion of Linux in the server area, the digital textbook project will bring PC-based open software into wider use."
Why Open Source Will Triumph
This is why the traditional software development model is doomed:Recently, I wrote a review of the note-taking application Tomboy. Though I find Tomboy exceptionally useful, I had a minor issue with the inability to create new notebooks from within a note. Within hours of the review appearing on Linux.com, Boyd Timothy, one of the app's developers mentioned in the article's comments that my idea had merit and said he would add the feature to an upcoming build. True to his word, he did. This is a shining example of one of the most valued yet sometimes overlooked features of open source software: it really is for the people, by the people.
The Healthiest Kind of Commons
Creating a commons is all about sharing, and there can be few areas where sharing is more mutually beneficial than health. After all, everyone aspires to good health, and the best way to get that is to pool what we know. Surprisingly, that doesn't happen as much as it could at the moment, because antiquated ways of looking at medical knowledge - shaped by pharmaceutical companies - try to enclose as much of the commons as possible.
Happily, others are fighting that tendency. Here's the latest manifestation, called the Health Commons, from the same bunch of idealistic nutters that brought you the Science Commons:Health Commons is a coalition of parties interested in changing the way basic science is translated into the understanding and improvement of human health. Coalition members agree to share data, knowledge, and services under standardized terms and conditions by committing to a set of common technologies, digital information standards, research materials, contracts, workflows, and software. These commitments ensure that knowledge, data, materials and tools can move seamlessly from partner to partner across the entire drug discovery chain. They enable participants to offer standardized services, ranging from simple molecular assays to complex drug synthesis solutions, that others can discover in directories and integrate into their own processes to expedite development — or assemble like LEGO blocks to create new services.
The Health Commons is too complex for any one organization or company to create. It requires a coalition of partners across the spectrum. It is also too complex for public, private, or non-profit organizations alone - reinventing therapy development for the networked world requires, from the beginning, a commitment to public-private partnership. Only through a public-private partnership can the key infrastructure of the Commons be created: the investments in the public domain of information and materials will only be realized if that public domain is served by a private set of systems integrators and materials, tools and service providers motivated by profit. And in turn, the long-term success of the private sector depends on a growing, robust, and self-replenishing public domain of data, research tools, and open source software.
Good to see open source being mentioned explicitly here: it does, indeed, form the basis of all these commons efforts, because it provides a completely flexible infrastructure that is also completely free.
23 May 2008
Caught in the ACTA
Politicians remain the ultimate dinosaurs in terms of openness: ideally, the rich and powerful would like to make their cosy deals - often aimed at that dangerous openness - behind closed doors. Stuff like this, served up by the indispensable WikiLeaks:
US multi-lateral intellectual property trade agreement proposal, "Discussion Paper on a Possible anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [ACTA]", circa October 2007.
The title is deceptive.
The agreement covers the copying of information or ideas in a wide variety of contexts. For example page 3, paragraph one is a "Pirate Bay killer" clause designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of copyrighted information exchange on the internet.
The document details provisions of a proposed plurilateral trade agreement that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. If adopted, a treaty of this form would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime imposing new cooperation requirements upon internet service providers, including perfunctory disclosure of customer information, as well as measures restricting the use of online privacy tools.
The proposal also specifies a plan to encourage developing nations to accept the legal regime.
This secret agreement, drawn up without any public discussion or oversight, would basically impose all of the worst aspects of US intellectual monopolies on everyone in sight - starting with willing stooges like the UK, and progressing to the unwilling but powerless.
Funding the Musical Commons
One of the huge benefits of openness and sharing is that it divides up tasks into smaller, less onerous pieces: everyone contributes a little, but gets the lot. Here's an interesting application of that idea to funding the creation of a musical commons:
Musopen has been around for a couple of years but has recently rolled out a new version of its web site, added freely-downloadable sheet music, and raised enough cash to professionally record the entire set of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and place them in the public domain.
One of the site's innovative features is its bidding system, in which users can pledge contributions toward specific pieces. When they necessary amount is raised, a professional musician is hired to perform, say, Bach's Goldberg Variations (currently the top request). Most of the money used to fund the Beethoven Sonatas was also raised from users in small increments, with a $5 average contribution. While individuals can spend that same money purchasing their own copies of such works, a donation to Musopen helps fund a musical commons that makes the pieces available worldwide and for any application.
22 May 2008
Of Books, Sharing and the First Sale Doctrine
Here's a short but poignant meditation on the centrality of sharing to the joy of books:
Ultimately, I do not much care whether these books are paper or made of some other less organic substance, whether substrates and electrons, or plastic polymers. Instead what matters is that we are able to share books with each other; in return for the gift of spreading delight, a wait of days and the cost of media rate shipping are very modest penalties.
Whatever digital (ebook) books look like in the future, if they do not embody the right to share, in an unrestricted and platform independent manner, they will be poorer things.
This is called the first sale doctrine. It's part of why people love books -- a love built from sharing. It's what makes libraries possible. A world where content is licensed, and sold with restrictions on use, is a world less full of enthusiastic readers; less full of love.
To any publisher who sees the wisdom of DRM: don't.
(Via The Patry Copyright Blog.)
Why Copyright Maximalism is Daft, Part 57487
Thousands of teenagers are facing uncertainty over their exams after a GCSE music paper was found to have some of the answers on the back.
And why might that be, pray? Because:all exam papers had a copyright statement dealing with source material on the back page and that this particular one had more detail than usual in a music paper.
21 May 2008
Putting the Public Domain in the Public Eye
The public domain - that strange, no man's land "owned" by no one - doesn't really get the respect it deserves, partly because there's nobody fighting for it. So this new project to study the public domain in Europe is welcome, particular because of insightful comments like these:A rich public domain has the potential to stimulate the further development of the information society. The development of the World Wide Web and the ability to digitise almost all text, image, sound and audio-visual material knowledge has resulted in an explosion of the citizen’s ability to store, and more importantly, share access to that information and knowledge. Public domain material has a considerable potential for re-use – both by citizens for information, education and entertainment, and for new creative expressions that build on Europe’ s rich culture.
As well as the public domain itself, the study will also cover material that, although copyright protected, is generally available for all. The study will investigate the various voluntary sharing schemes which copyright holders use to grant broad rights to enable use and re-use of their creations. These include the various flavours of Creative Commons or the GNU Free
Documentation Licence.
Interestingly, there's a strong British representation on the team. (Via Open Access News.)
Cornish: No Longer Clotted
As a big fan of all things Cornish - from Polzeath to Kelly's ice cream - I was delighted to read that Cornish the language has just got a big boost:
For hundreds of years a band of scholars have fought to get the Cornish language recognised and revived in Britain, but they hit upon a major stumbling block when no-one could agree on how it should be written.
Now, after more than two years of passionate negotiations, the different factions have finally streamlined the many versions of their language to create a new Standard Written Form.
The resolution means the path has been cleared for Cornish to get official acceptance and funding, with support from the EU. It will be used in education, on brochures, pamphlets and on street signs.
Cornish street signs: what bliss. (Via The Reg.)
Towards Open Politics
One of the central challenges of the modern age is how we can use all the shiny technology we have developed to make democracy work better - specifically, by making it more open and transparent. This post has some comments on interesting suggestions.
20 May 2008
Opening Up the Commons
Well, it's a start:The Commons' members' estimates committee agreed last night it would not appeal against a ruling by the high court ordering publication of the detailed expenses of 14 prominent MPs.
I particularly liked this:
The three high court judges left little room for an appeal: "We have no doubt that the public interest is at stake. We are not here dealing with idle gossip, or public curiosity about what in truth are trivialities. The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs' salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers."
Indeed, and not only...
19 May 2008
Microsoft's Seven-Year Plan: Procrastinate
Here's a droll little piece in which Microsoft's open source watcher, Sam Ramji opines that the company will have just about cobbled together an open source strategy by 2015.
Think about it: seven more years of MS perfidy, contradictions, misunderstandings, backtracking and general faffing around the idea of openness. Sounds great to me....
16 May 2008
Open Source Identity Management
I don't claim to follow the detailed ins and outs of this story about the release of the Italian electronic identity cards specs, but the conclusions seems clear enough:
So what will the gained freedom bring us and the citizens who have an Italian eID in their pockets? Here is my take on foreseeing the future: In a relatively short time, support for the Italian eID card will be added to OpenSC and thus provide multi-platform middleware for Firefox browers, for Virtual Private Networks and Secure Shell, and for other applications. Also commercial players will be able to support the eID in their operating systems, or on their devices (e.g., set top boxes).
I also hope that this positive development can find value as an experience that demonstrates the benefits of openness: The community can amplify resource and thus achieve what a single player (mostly a government) simply cannot even hope to do. So let us work on making this a reality and from time to time remind that it is openness that made this all happen.
It's also not clear to me whether eIDs are better than bog-standard, worse-than=useless ID cards or not....
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