Er, Yes, But What Do You *Do*?

More fascinating info on what exactly the increasingly-important foundations do - or, rather, what their directors do:

I get asked a lot what I do, exactly, as executive director of the GNOME Foundation.

First off, I want to say I'm really glad I work for an organization where people feel comfortable asking "what do you do?" It shows they care about the organization and are not afraid to ask tough questions. Have you ever asked your boss what they did, exactly?

Secondly, I have to admit that when I first got asked, that first day on the job at GUADEC, I wanted to go "I don't know!! What do you think I should be doing?" (I did ask the "What do you think I should be doing part" of a few people and I'm always interested in hearing anyone's answer to that question.)

Ok, so to the point, what do I do? I'm going to answer in three parts.

Ah, like Gaul.

Out of Africa Something New - and Bad

Despite the fact that South Africa is at the forefront of open source usage, it seems to be taking a very bad turn as far as open knowledge is concerned:

The Intellectual Property from Publicly Financed Research Bill was signed into law yesterday.

This stems from a mistaken belief that:

the best way to get research re-used for the benefit of the economy is to lock it down, and award a monopoly to one person, rather than opening it to everyone.

This could set South African research back seriously.

OLPC: Out; OLPH: In

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I've given up on One Laptop Per Child. Happily, I've now come across something to fill the meme-sized hole that leaves:

Gdium.Com is launching the One Laptop Per Hacker program.

Here is your opportunity to contribute to the Gdium revolution.

The Gdium Team is opening a site and a program centralizing all the developer centric resources for the Gdium.

The OLPH program is supporting developers, contributors, creative artists, and other innovators who wish to:

* Optimize, improve the OS, Human Interface and/or Application stack of an “education centric” netbook.
* Experiment with the look and feel
* Provide and disseminate their new application stacks
* Redesign the artwork
* modify the hardware or integrate some nifty gadgets.
* Experiment with the Gdium to support new vertical markets.

For a limited set of selected contributors the Gdium Team provides a set of materials and services, enabling them to get an early start on this machine.

Gdium, in case you were wondering (as I was), are creating the groovy Gdium Liberty, which rather idiosyncratically uses Mandriva (remember that?).

Trading Up to Open Source

One of the signs that the open source ecosystem is thriving is the appearance of solution serving vertical markets. Here's another one....

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Burney Collection: But, But, But...

The largest single online collection of English news media from the 17th and 18th centuries, the Burney Collection, is now available free of charge for the first time to Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils across the UK.

The Burney Collection offers unique insights into two centuries of history through access to over 1,270 newsbooks, newspapers, pamphlets and a variety of other news materials published in England, Ireland and Scotland, plus papers from British colonies in Asia and the Americas.

Digitised through a partnership between the National Science Foundation and the British Library then developed and hosted online by Gale/Cengage Learning4, the digital version of the Burney Collection has been purchased in perpetuity by JISC Collections on behalf of the UK academic and research community at a national level, following an open and transparent procurement process.

Well, that's jolly great...but: given that these are *public* collections, and have been digitised with *public* money, is it really too much to ask if hoi polloi like me might be granted a little bit of access to this great stuff?

UK Outsources Education IT to Microsoft - Again

Oh look, the UK government has effectively outsourced IT in education to Microsoft - again:

Schools minister Jim Knight, who was speaking at the opening of this year's Bett event at Olympia in London, said today that Microsoft has created something he described as a “re-investment fund”. The software maker will “commit to fund a foundation in support of the Home Access programme,” he said.

...

The Microsoft-funded foundation will develop and implement a programme of training and support for teachers, parents, as well as to help create "awareness" for the Home Office programme, said Knight.

Now, let me see: Microsoft is going to give money to raise awareness of free software, yes? Maybe not; which means, inevitably, that it will give money to raise awareness of its own products. Which means that open source will remains shut out of schools yet again.

Whatever it is paying into this "re-investment fund", it was certainly a good investment for Microsoft.

Al Jazeera Gets It, Most Media Companies Don't

Welcome the Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository

On this site you will find select broadcast quality footage that Al Jazeera has released under various Creative Commons licenses. Through Creative Commons licensing, you are able to legally share and reuse our footage.

What Al Jazeera understands is that you *want* people to copy and share your stuff: that's how you build influence. Locking content away is a sure method to *diminish* your role in the conversation. That's why most Western media companies are doomed to become irrelevant if they don't follow Al Jazeera's lead.

Craig Murray on the Death of Libel in the UK

Craig is in a triumphalist mood:

We have comprehensively blown wide apart the UK's infamously repressive libel laws. Up until now, these have routinely been used not to prevent untruth, but to hide truth on behalf of the ultra-rich. In so doing they have spawned a whole universe of massively wealthy lawyers devoid of any moral values, dedicated only to the service and pursuit of money.

...

But we are living now, so we put it free online, and published some copies privately. After just two days, a Google search on the precise phrase "The Catholic Orangemen of Togo" brings up 1,810 hits. A great many of these lead to a free download of the book. 23,000 copies of Murder in Samarkand have been sold so far, and most of those have been read by more than one person. But readership of The Catholic Orangemen looks likely to overtake in two weeks the readership that Murder in Samarkand achieved in two years.

If "The Catholic Orangemen of Togo" is anywhere near as good as the excellent "Murder in Samarkand" it certainly deserves that success.

As for "busting" the UK libel laws, I think it may be a little premature to declare victory; but actions like Craig's certainly help to undermine these anachronistic and deeply amoral laws. I wish him luck with his book - and his busting.

A Three-Dimensional Win for Free Software

Free software continues to fill in the missing bits:

A few months ago, SGI released a new version of the SGI Free License B. With that change, a lot of code used to provide 3D graphics on GNU/Linux systems was now free software. To make sure that all the code was free software, however, a few developers who worked on code released under a related license, the GLX Public License, needed to grant us permission to release their work under the new terms.

Earlier today I got great news from the X.Org project that they've obtained that permission from all the necessary developers. With that done, all of the code for 3D graphics originally released under one of SGI's licenses is now free software.

(Via Peter Rock.)

Qt Goes LGLP: the Trolltech Saga Attains Closure

There are few commercial programs whose history is more intertwined with the rise of free software than Nokia's Qt toolkit, originally created by the Norwegian company Trolltech. As one of the company's founders, Haarvard Nord, told me nearly ten years ago, when I was writing Rebel Code, Qt began life as a purely proprietary product, but with a free version specifically aimed at free software programmers...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Censorship = Destroying the Past

This is what censorship is about: destroying our memories.

According to multiple customers of Demon Internet - now owned by Brit telecom Thus - the London-based ISP is blocking access to all sites stored in the archive. When they query the Wayback Machine, hoping to retrieve archived pages, customers are met with generic "not found" error pages. But judging from their urls, these pages are generated by a web filter based on the blacklist compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation, a government-backed organization charged with policing online pornography.

Economising with Open Source

Here's an interesting sign of the times. High-profile economist Dean Baker calls for "Funding for the Development of Open Software" as part of a stimulus package:

the government can spend $2 billion a year to develop open source software. This money can be used to further develop and simplify open source operating systems such as Linux, as well other forms of free software. The payoffs from this spending would be enormous. Imagine that every computer buyer in the world would be able to get a computer for which the operating system was free, as was almost all the software that they would ever use.

This would surely save consumers an average of at least $200 per computer. With sales at close to 20 million a year, the savings in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development. Adding in the benefits (and presumably some contributions) from the rest of the world, we will be way ahead by going the route of publicly funded open software open software. The cost would be $2 billion a year.

The message is spreading.... (Via Slashdot.)

IT Lessons from the Thylacine's Genome

The thylacine is a near-mythic animal. A marsupial related to the kangaroo, it was wiped out early in the last century, surviving just long enough for a few specimens to be pickled in jars. As usual, mankind was responsible, hunting the animal to extinction. But not entirely:

Scientists have detailed a significant proportion of the genes found in the extinct Tasmanian "tiger".

The international team extracted the hereditary information from the hair of preserved animal remains held in Swedish and US museums.

The information has allowed scientists to confirm the tiger's evolutionary relationship to other marsupials.

The study, reported in the journal Genome Research, may also give pointers as to why some animals die out.

The two tigers examined had near-identical DNA, suggesting there was very little genetic diversity in the species when it went over the edge.

Although it was hunting that finally drove the Australian animal out of existence, its longevity as a species may already have been fatally compromised, the researchers believe.

So if *you* want to avoid the tragic fate of the thylacine, remember: avoid those Microsoft monocultures, wallow in the genetic diversity of the free software ecosystem.

Linus Gets Misty-Eyed Over the Sinclair QL

Apparently the Sinclair QL (remember the microdrives?) turned 25 yesterday (or thereabouts). One rather famous former owner was Linus; to begin with, he seems unimpressed by this historic moment:

when somebody sends me an email saying that the Sinclair QL turned 25 years old yesterday, and that I should mention it on my blog, I just went "hmm". Because while I had one and loved it, I have to say that I was so much happier with the PC I ended up replacing it with, and decided that I'll never use an odd-ball machine ever again.

But once you've leapt the Quantum Leap, you're never the same again, as Linus finally admits:

the email from Urs König (aka cowo) did end up festering in my mind and brought back fond memories. So here we are, twenty five years and one day later, and I'm writing a shout-out to the QL anyway. It was odd, and it was flaky to the point of being the only machine I had to do hardware surgery on to make stable and useful, but I guess I was at an impressionable age. And while I don't think there were many QL's that ever made it outside Britain, it was an interesting machine for its time.

I'm sure that made Sir Clive's day.

How Open Source Will Save Education

One of my favourite writers is John Robb; his book Brave New War is all about "open source warfare" - how the ideas behind open source software can, unfortunately, be applied with huge effectiveness to wreaking destruction.

Here's a good post about another little problem we have: the unsustainability of today's educational system. The solution? You guessed it: open source and open courseware, among other things:

The shift towards online education as the norm and in-person as the exception will arrive, however, the path is unclear. It is currently blocked by guilds/unions, inertia, credentialism, and romantic notions. Here's what could happen:

* Local governments cut costs. Nearly or officially bankrupt local governments, out of desperation, opt to reduce costs through online education (the single biggest line item in most local budgets). Drawing from online home schooling systems, the market for these systems explodes (growing at several thousand percent a year).

* Entrepreneurial innovation. As student populations at the collegiate level dwindle due to cost pressures, a major University (with a brand as good as MITs or Harvard), opts to offer full credentials to online student (at a tiny fraction of the cost of being in attendance). Ten million students enroll in the first year to attend Harvard's virtual world.

* Open source alternatives. Unable to afford in-person education, the lack of a major brand in the marketplace, and a job market in free fall stunts the growth of online education. As a result, a massive open source effort develops to develop virtual worlds and other online courseware that rivals the best Universities. The government is forced, over the objections of established institutions, to confer credentials to graduates that pass standardized tests (in fact, comparisons quickly show that these graduates are the equal and/or better than traditionally educated competitors). The business world embraces them.

Warning: only read the other posts on his blog if you are feeling strong. His analyses of the coming problems are frighteningly convincing. Let's hope he has a few more solutions too....

Free Software or Open Source? You Choose

“Free software” or “open source”? It's a perennial question that has provoked a thousand flame wars. Normally, the factions supporting each label and its assocated theoretical baggage manage to work alongside each other for the collective good with only a minimal amount of friction. But occasionally, the sparks begin to fly, and tempers rise. I think we're in for another bout of this particular fever.

On Open Enterprise blog.

SAP True to its Name

What is going through the mind of SAP? These people are *promoting* your products:

Business Objects claims that no one can use a Crystal Reports screenshot in a book without their approval. They sent letters to courseware vendors (including me) telling use that we need to get permission to use screenshots in our books. Most vendors ignored those letters and nothing more was said in the three years since. Now it appears that more letters are going out from SAP (who now owns Business Objects). I read one of the letters this past week and it talks about screenshots and adds a new warning about using SAP trademarks like the term “Crystal Reports”. The letter was very impressive, with majestic references to various sections of US copyright and trademark law. Sprinkled throughout the letter was the Latin incantation “inter alia” to make it seem almost pontifical. It sounded so ominous that it brought to mind the blustering Wizard of Oz (”ignore the little man behind the curtain”).

As I explained in 2005, using screenshots of a software product in a book is a “fair use” of a copyrighted work (see Sony vs Bleem). And there are also several clear cases to show that “nominal” use of a trademark word or phrase is fine for any purpose at all, so long as you are not claiming to be affiliated with or authorized by the trademark holder (see Volkswagen vs Church).

(Via Techdirt.)

Humanitarian FOSS Project

Here's an interesting group I'd not come across before:

The Humanitarian FOSS Project is a collaborative, community-building project that was started by a group of computing faculty and open source proponents at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Connecticut College. Our goal is to build a community of academic computing departments, IT corporations, and local and global humanitarian and community organizations dedicated to building and using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to benefit humanity.

...


Our project is part of the growing Humanitarian FOSS Community, a community that was inspired by the Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System, an IT system that was built to aid in the recovery effort following the December 2004 Asian Tsunami. During the past two years, with the help of IT professionals in Sri Lanka and at Accenture Corporation, our students have actively contributed to the Sahana project.

Our approach is not unlike the Habitat for Humanity project: Instead of helping communities build houses, our students help build free software systems that benefit communities. The NSF grant enables us to explore whether engaging students in the Humanitarian-FOSS enterprise will help undergraduates see that designing and building software is an exciting, creative, and (often) a socially beneficial activity.

(Via storming.)

Snowl 0.2 Takes Flight

As you may have noticed, messaging is pretty popular these days. An obvious place to read and send messages is the browser, the obvious way to do that is with a Firefox extension. Enter Snowl....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Google Running Short of Hackers?

How hard can it be porting Chrome to GNU/Linux? Hard, apparently:

The 2.0 version of the browser was released to developers and includes a number of new features including the begins of an extension strategy for the browser.

Senior Google staffers said, however, that Linux and Mac versions of the browser would only be made available later this year. CNet quotes Brian Rakowski, Chrome’s product manager, who said that the Mac and Linux versions of the browser were now at the “test shell” stage which meant that they could show web pages but are still in a very raw format.

Rakowski said that versions of Chrome for Linux and Mac would likely be made available by the middle of 2009.

Things getting a bit tough in the Googleplex, chaps?

Corporate IT Skills in an Open Source World

It's a given on this blog that open source is changing the world of computing. But what about the IT skills required to flourish in that world? Here's a thought-provoking blog post by Ian Smith, from the open source company Nuxeo, on what has changed since he first learned to program....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Keeping the Czechs in Check

Hm, looks like bad news from the Czech Republic:

Die tschechische EU-Ratspräsidentschaft hat sich für die kommenden sechs Monate auch auf den Gebieten der IKT und Bürgerrechte viel vorgenommen. Beim Schutz des "geistigen Eigentums" und der Neuordnung des EU-Telekommunikationsmarkts wollen die Tschechen auf der Vorarbeit der Franzosen aufbauen.

Die EU hat 2009 zum Europäischen Jahr der Kreativität ausgerufen. Dass es dabei auch um den Schutz des "geistigen Eigentums" geht, versteht sich von selbst.

So hat die tschechische EU-Ratspräsidentschaft in ihre Prioritätenliste für die kommenden sechs Monate unter dem Punkt "Entfernung von Handelsbarrieren" auch das umstrittene Anti-Piratierie-Abkommen ACTA aufgenommen, das derzeit hinter verschlossenen Türen von EU-Kommission, US-Unterhändlern und Vertretern weiterer wichtiger Industriestaaten ausgehandelt wird.

[Via Google Translate: The Czech EU presidency has opted for the next six months also in the areas of ICT and Citizens' lot. As regards the protection of "intellectual property" and the reorganization of the EU telecommunications market to the Czechs on the preparatory work of the French build.

The EU has 2009 at the European Year of Creativity exclaimed. That it will also ensure the protection of "intellectual property" goes, goes without saying

Thus, the Czech EU presidency in their list of priorities for the coming six months, under the item "Removal of trade barriers", the controversial anti-Piratierie ACTA agreement, which is currently behind closed doors of the EU Commission, U.S. negotiators and representatives of other major industrialized countries will be negotiated.]

And as if intellectual monopolies and ACTA weren't enough:

"Die tschechische Ratspräsidentschaft wird auf ihrer aktiven Kooperation mit der französischen Ratspräsidentschaft aufbauen", heißt es dazu im Arbeitsprogramm aus Prag. Man werde sich um einen Kompromiss zwischen den Positionen des Rats und des Parlaments bemühen. Nur Österreich und Dänemark hatten sich auf der Ratssitzung im November dafür ausgesprochen, Zusatz 138 in der Universaldienstrichtlinie zu behalten. Der französische Vorsitz sorgte dafür, dass der Zusatz in der endgültigen Fassung entfernt wurde.

["The Czech presidency is at its active cooperation with the French Presidency Building," puts it in the work program from Prague. It will be a compromise between the positions of the Council and Parliament endeavor. Only Austria and Denmark had to the Council meeting in November, called for additional 138 in the Universal Service Directive to keep. The French Presidency has ensured that the addition in the final version has been removed.]

And to round things off:

Weit oben auf der Agenda der tschechischen Ratspräsidentschaft steht auch das Thema Kinderschutz und Internet. Zu diesem Thema soll es informelle Ministertreffen in Prag geben; auch hier wollen sich die Tschechen eng an die Vorarbeit der französischen Regierung halten.

[High on the agenda of the Czech presidency is also the issue of child protection and the Internet. On this issue, should it informal ministerial meeting in Prague type; also want the Czechs closely the preparatory work of the French government hold.]

This could be bad, people: start preparing the pushback.

Should We Trash Windows Vista – or BadVista?

The world and their dog seems to be talking about Windows 7 at the moment. Ironically, in part that's because it's proving almost impossible to download the beta that has just been released: you can't help feeling that Microsoft has let this happen on purpose just to create a little demand. But while everyone is looking forward, I want to look back, at Windows Vista – more specifically, to the FSF's BadVista campaign.

On Linux Journal.

Why Outsourcing, not Open Sourcing?

James McGovern has a question (and another brilliant pic - where *does* he find them?):

Why do people outsource when they can open source? For example, if there are 250 P&C insurance companies in the US in which each may have their own claims administration system, why do they outsource individually to India instead of open sourcing the systems that are expensive but otherwise don't provide competitive advantage? Is it the lack of vision within the enterprise architecture crowd?

Microsoft and Artificial Scarcity

One of the themes of this blog is the relationship between scarcity and abundance. Here's a good example of how you make something artifically valuable by making it scarce:

Due to very heavy traffic we’re seeing as a result of interest in the Windows 7 Beta, we are adding some additional infrastructure support to the Microsoft.com properties before we post the public beta. We want to ensure customers have the best possible experience when downloading the beta, and I’ll be posting here again soon once the beta goes live. Stay tuned! We are excited that you are excited!

So either they're saying that they didn't expect Windows 7 beta to be popular and their infrastructure doesn't scale, or they've let this happen on purpose to generate a little buzz. In other words, in order to make Windows 7 desirable, first you make it unobtainable....