Has Microsoft Got a Job for You...

Since it's Monday morning, I thought I'd start the week gently, with a little humour, courtesy of a Microsoft job ad. After all, who could read the following without laughing?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Opening up the Black Box of Scientific Research

I've written before about the idea of applying openness/open source ideas to science, but here's an interesting new project that attempts to go much further:

our fundamental goal is to render transparent the black-box of scientific research by affording all individuals an opportunity to both access and participate directly in the scientific research process. To achieve this goal, we are working toward developing an entirely research-based scientific curriculum, and three additional resources (the discussion forum, research microfinance platform, and research log platform) which shall function to dynamically feed information to this curriculum - thereby ensuring the accuracy of the information contained within it, and its ability to maintain par with the course of scientific research.

In addition, each of these resources will also serve to increase the accessibility of the scientific research process for non-researchers by allowing individuals to (1) directly invest in research projects (via the research microfinance platform), (2) pose questions directly to researchers working at the cutting edge of scientific research (via the discussion forum), and (3) observe the progress of ongoing publicly-funded research (via the research log platform).

Not quite sure how this will scale, but anything whose "fundamental goal" is "to render transparent the black-box of scientific research" sounds good to me.

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A Modest Proposal: "How to Fix Capitalism"

"How to Fix Capitalism" is an insanely ambitious post that ranges over, well, just about everything concerned with business and all it touches. The following proposals give some hint of its deep wisdom:

# Abolish patents. They have not been proven to speed progress: the evidence seems to be to the contrary. They definitely increase costs, are an inefficient way of funding R & D and allow oligopolists to block competition.

# Reduce the copyright term to the optimal length suggested by research of about 15 years. It ought to be obvious that works produced in the reign of Queen Victoria should not be in copyright in the 21st century.

# Exclude works distributed with DRM from copyright to ensure that copyright works do fall into the public domain when the copyright expires.

# Reduce the copyright term on computer software to two years, and make copyright contingent on disclosing source code (so others can alter the software when it comes out of copyright).

This section also warmed the cockles of my collaborative heart:

by telling people that they are expected to be selfish, they become more selfish. Economics students become more selfish because they are repeatedly taught to expect that people are rational and selfish: the association between the two can only strengthen the effect.

Society is permeated, especially in business, politics and economics, with the idea that is people pursue their own interests, this will automatically lead to the best outcome, and that, therefore, people should be selfish. This cannot be fixed by endless incentives to align interests: life and business is too complex for that to work. A free market is not a substitute for integrity.

Just share it...

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The Copyright Ratchet Racket Explained

I and many others have noted how changes in copyright law only ever work in one direction: to *increase* copyright's term and to give greater powers to copyright holders. In effect, it's a ratchet. But until now, I've not seen a good explanation of what's driving all this (although I had a pretty good idea). The motor behind the ratchet (assuming such mixed metaphors are permitted) is harmonisation:

Simply put, “harmonization” is a concept whereby the intellectual property laws of different countries are made consistent, mostly to facilitate international trade and business. The concept of harmonization is not unusual; almost all the states and territories in this country are signatories to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a model law in the U.S. that makes consistent (or “harmonizes”) the law of contracts, sales, banking, and secured transactions. This allows firms in one state to reasonably, predictably, and consistently do business with firms in another state.

...

From a linguistic perspective, harmonization suggests a voluntary coordination that the parties to an agreement will be held to the same, core standards and will be working under the same rules. Ideally, each country’s intellectual property laws should have similar weight and effect where harmonization occurs.

But in reality, harmonization of intellectual property laws is different. The term has become a euphemism for the global, one-sided spread of United States’ intellectual property laws. One could argue that under the guise of harmonization, intellectual property law has become America’s chief 21st century export. In the harmonization model, U.S. intellectual property law effectively becomes the world’s de facto intellectual property law, effectively overriding the voluntary coordination principle that should be inherent through the Berne Convention.

This is a fantastic post, with useful links, that fleshes out the following basic argument:

The dismissal of voluntary coordination occurs because the U.S. leverages its economic power to force other countries to adopt U.S. copyright law in lieu of their own if the U.S. thinks the foreign country’s laws are insufficient to protect American intellectual property. It is a “carrot and stick” approach: If a foreign country wants to do business with the U.S. (or get U.S. support to enter into the World Trade Organization), it must adopt U.S. copyright standards and codify them into their statutes.

For most foreign countries, this quid pro quo has become the price of doing business with the U.S. On the other hand, it is unusual that the U.S. would agree to agree to another country’s intellectual property regimen: It doesn’t have to. Therefore, harmonization really is doublespeak for a worldwide adoption of the American intellectual property standard.

Indispensable reading for anyone who cares about the global copyright racket - and that should mean anyone who is online, since the tricks used to bolster copyright around the world will have a profound effect on ordinary users there, as the current UK Digital Economy bill makes all-too plain.

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Mandelson's Madness

The trajectory of the Digital Economy Bill has been extraordinary, constantly experiencing will-he-won't-he moments as successive consultations and comments and rumours have contradicted each other over whether “three strikes and you're out” would be part of the plan. Today, the Bill is finally published, but that particular element now looks almost mild compared to what is apparently coming...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Sir Tim: "Public Data is a Public Good"

The man - er, knight - himself comments on the opening up of the Ordnance Survey, and concludes with these thoughts:

Data is beginning to drive the Government’s websites. But without a consistent policy to make it available to others, without the use of open standards and unrestrictive licences for reuse, information stays compartmentalised and its full value is lost.

Openly available public data not only creates economic and social capital, it also creates bottom-up pressure to improve public services. Data is essential in enabling citizens to choose between public service providers. It helps them to compare their local services with services elsewhere. It enables all of us to lobby for improvement. Public data is a public good.

Yup, yup and yup. (Via Free Our Data.)

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Free Culture Forum: Getting it Together

As regular readers will know, I write a lot about the related areas of openness, freedom, transparency and the commons, but it's rare to find them literally coming together like this, in the Free Culture Forum:

Across the planet, people are recognizing the need for an international space to build and coordinate a common agenda for issues surrounding free culture and access to knowledge. The Free Culture Forum of Barcelona created one such space.

Bringing together key organizations and active voices in the free culture and knowledge space under a single roof, the Forum was a meeting point to sit and find answers to the pressing questions behind the present paradigm shift.

The Forum was an open space for drawing up proposals to present the position of civil society on the privatization of culture and access to knowledge. Participants debated the role of government in access to knowledge, on the creation and distribution of art and culture, and other areas.

The list of participants is impressive, and includes well-known names like the EFF, the P2P Foundation, the Knoweldge Ecology International, La Quadrature du Net, and many others. Even better is the extremely thorough charter; here's it's opening section:

We are in the midst of a revolution in the way that knowledge and culture are created, accessed and transformed. Citizens, artists and consumers are no longer powerless and isolated in the face of the content-providing industries: now individuals across many different spheres collaborate, participate and decide. Digital technology has bridged the gap, allowing ideas and knowledge to flow. It has done away with many of the geographic and technological barriers to sharing. It has provided new educational tools and stimulated new possibilities for forms of social, economic and political organisation. This revolution is comparable to the far reaching changes brought about as a result of the printing press.

In spite of these transformations, the entertainment industry, most communications service providers governments and international bodies still base the sources of their advantages and profits on control of content and tools and on managing scarcity. This leads to restrictions on citizens’ rights to education, access to information, culture, science and technology; freedom of expression; inviolability of communications and privacy. They put the protection of private interests above the public interest, holding back the development of society in general.

Today’s institutions, industries, structures or conventions will not survive into the future unless they adapt to these changes. Some, however, will alter and refine their methods in response to the new realities. And we need to take account of this.

That will all be pretty familiar to readers of this blog. There then follow an amazingly complete list of Things That We Need - which will also ring a few bells. Here are the areas covered:

Reverse Three-Step Test
Knowledge Commons and Public Domain
Defending access to Technological Infrastructures and Net Neutrality
Rights in digital context
Stimulating Creativity and Innovation
Access to works for persons with reading disabilities
Transparency

There's also an important section headed "Guidelines for Education and Access to Knowledge", which naturally considers open educational resources, and has this to say on free software, open standards and open formats:

Free/libre and Open Source Software allows people to study and learn concepts instead of black boxes, enables transparency of information processing, assures competition and innovation, provides independence from corporate interests and increases the autonomy of citizens.

The use of open standards and open formats is essential to ensure technical interoperability, provide a level playing field for competing vendors, enable seamless access to digital information and the availability of knowledge and social memory now and in the future. Thus we assert that:

* Educational entities should use Free/libre and Open Source Software as a learning tool, as a subject in itself and as the base for their IT infrastructure.
* All software developed in an educational environment and publicly funded must be released under a free license.
* Promote the use of Free/libre and Open Source Software in textbooks as an alternative to proprietary software to perform learning-related tasks such as numerical calculus, image editing, document composition, etc. where applicable.
* Develop, provide and promote free editing tools to elaborate and improve didactic materials.
* Technologies like Digital Rights Management must be refused to assure the permanent access to educational resources and enable lifelong learning.

All-in-all, this is an extraordinary document with which I find myself in pretty much total agreement. It's an great achievement, and will be a real reference point for everyone working in the fields of digital freedom, openness and transparency for years to come.

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Has Ordnance Survey Managed to Find a Clue?

This is better than I was expecting:

Speaking at a seminar on Smarter Government in Downing Street later today, attended by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, the Prime Minister will set out how the Government and Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national mapping agency, will open up its data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information.

The Government will consult on proposals to make data from Ordnance Survey freely available so it can be used for digital innovation and to support democratic accountability.

Specifically:

Data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries as well as postcode areas would be released for free re-use, including commercially. Mid-scale digital mapping information would also be released in the same way.

...

The highest-specification Ordnance Survey products and services – such as those used by property developers or the utility companies – would be charged for on a cost-reflective basis.

This suggests that people in government are gradually beginning to understand that they can give away much of their data - well, actually, *our* data - and still generate revenue by targetting particular remunerative sectors.

I was also interested to read this:

Freely available facts and figures are essential for driving improvements in public services. It puts information, and therefore power, in the hands of the public and the service providers to challenge or demand innovation in public services.

The Prime Minister has set out the importance of an open data policy as part of broader efforts to strengthen democracy – creating a culture in which Government information is accessible and useful to as many people as possible in order to increase transparency and accountability, improve public services and create new economic and social value.

Now, I'm not so naïve as to believe this signals a massive sea-change in the present UK government's attitude to open data, openness and transparency. But what's significant is that it clearly feels the need at least to mouth the words: that is, it's aware that it is not in Kansas any more, and that the Ordnance Survey in its current form won't be providing any maps for them....

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British Library's Bitter Digital Milestone

Oh look, the British Library thinks it has passed a milestone:

The British Library has added the 500,000th item to its long-term Digital Library System. The milestone item was a digitised copy of a newspaper originally published in 1864 and scanned as part of the Library's 19th Century British Library Newspapers project, which recently made more than 2 million pages of historic newspapers available online at http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/

In eight pages of densely-packed text, The Birmingham Daily Post dated Monday 19 December 1864 offers a vivid snapshot of life 145 years ago. Along with accounts of an 82-year-old man who died after falling out of bed and two men before the courts for bigamy, the paper also reports on President Lincoln recommending to the US congress the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, and 'a number of the worst "roughs" of the town' who pelted churchgoers with snowballs after several inches of snow had fallen.

The digitised newspaper joins hundreds of thousands of other items including e-journals, digital sound recordings, born-digital material received through voluntary deposit arrangements with publishers andmore than 65,000 19th century digitised books. The Digital Library System within which these items are now stored has been developed by the British Library to enable long term storage of the digital material that forms an increasing proportion of the nation's intellectual output.

Fab stuff...except:

To access the subscription-based articles in this database, you will need to first register as a user and then purchase either

* A 24-hour pass that provides you access to 100 articles over that period.
* A 7-day pass that provides you access to 200 articles over that period.

Cost?

a 24-hour pass for £6.99 allowing you to view up to 100 articles, or a seven-day pass with 200 article views for £9.99

That is: digitising content that is out of copyright, in the public domain, and then making us pay through the nose - us as in muggins public, which has kept the British Library going for two centuries thanks to our taxes, in case you'd forgotten - for the privilege of viewing it online.

Thanks a bunch, BL, for locking up "an increasing proportion of the nation's intellectual output" behind a paywall, where few will ever see it: that's what spreading knowledge is all about, isn't it? Great work from a quondam great institution, more millstone than milestone...

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Free Software for All Russian Schools in Jeopardy

I've written before about Russia's ambitious plan to install free software throughout its education system. Worrying news suggests that things are not going smoothly:

Президент РФ Дмитрий Медведев поручил разобраться с ситуацией с поставками в российские школы свободного программного обеспечения (СПО). С просьбой об этом к нему обратился глава IT-компании "Армада" Алексей Кузовкин, который считает, что программа поставок Linux в школы находится под угрозой срыва.

[Via Google Translate: President Dmitry Medvedev instructed to deal with the situation with supplies in Russia's school of free software (ACT). The request for this approached by the head of IT-companies "Armada" Alexei Kuzovkin, who believes that the program supplies Linux to schools is in jeopardy.]

Part of the problem is money:

В 2009 году планировалось установить СПО во всех школах страны, а с 1 января 2011 года — отказаться от закупок коммерческого ПО для школ за счет федерального бюджета. Но с начала года финансирование проекта было урезано в три раза, говорится в письме "Армады", а конкурс на внедрение СПО во все школы до сих пор не объявлен. 13 июля Министерство образования и науки приняло решение о разделе работ по проекту 2009 года на три лота. В письме "Армады" говорится, что это "неизбежно приведет к провалу всего проекта в результате размытия ответственности среди исполнителей".

[In 2009, planned to be installed in all ACT schools across the country, and from January 1st 2011 - refuse to purchase commercial software for schools at the expense of the federal budget. But from the beginning of the year funding for the project was pared down to three times, the letter says "Armada", a competition for the introduction of ACT in all the schools have not yet been announced. July 13 The Ministry of Education and Science has decided on the topic of the project in 2009 to three lot. The letter "Armada" states that it "will inevitably lead to failure of the project as a result of spreading responsibility among the performers.]

Another factor seems to be problems with the free software discs that were sent out:

Но опыт рассылки пакетов с СПО в этом году не удался (выполнял IBS), вспоминает один из участников рынка: "Данный пакет был разослан, но с ошибками, которые возникли при записи ПО на диски". Быстрый отказ от платного ПО вряд ли возможен, считает аналитик ИК "Финам" Татьяна Менькова. По ее мнению, прежде всего школьникам нужен будет достаточный объем различного прикладного софта, причем простого и понятного, а с этим у производителей СПО традиционно есть проблемы. Кроме того, скорее всего, придется платить за обновление операционной системы, за апдейт того же прикладного софта. "Достаточно много ресурсов потребуется на переобучение учителей, большинство из которых привыкли к Windows. Конечно, в перспективе нескольких лет это все равно будет в разы дешевле закупки решений от Microsoft, но есть и издержки для экономики. Так, на Linux приходится всего около 1% пользовательских ОС, то есть стране все-таки нужны специалисты, знающие Windows",— указывает Татьяна Менькова.

[But the experience of sending packets from the ACT this year was a failure (served IBS), recalls one of the market participants: "This package was sent, but with errors that occurred when recording to disk. Quick refusal to pay software is hardly possible, says analyst IK "Finam" Tatiana Menkova. In her opinion, first of all students will need an adequate amount of different software applications, with simple and understandable, and with that the producers ACT traditionally have problems. In addition, most likely have to pay for upgrading the operating system update for the same application software. "Quite a number of resources needed for retraining of teachers, most of whom are accustomed to Windows. Of course, in future years it will still be many times cheaper to purchase solutions from Microsoft, but there are costs to the economy. So, on Linux there are only about 1% custom operating system, that is, the country still in need of professionals who are familiar with Windows ", - points Tatiana Menkova.]

Finally, Microsoft has been up to its old tricks of offering special deals for its software: $30 per computer (it's not clear whether that's just for Windows XP, or includes Microsoft Office too):

Контракт на поставку лицензионного программного обеспечения в школы в течение 2007-2009 годов получил системный интегратор "Компьюлинк". Конкурс Рособразования под номером НП-17 подразумевал поставку в 60 тыс. российских школ (650-700 тыс. компьютеров) пакета лицензионного ПО в 2007-2009 годах. В пакет вошли: ОС Windows XP, Microsoft Office, словарь Abbyy Lingvo 12, антивирусное ПО Kaspersky Work Space Security, Adobe Photoshop CS3 и другие. Источник в Рособразовании знает, что Microsoft согласилась лицензировать ОС Windows на всех ПК примерно за $20 млн (около $30 за компьютер).

[The contract for the supply of licensed software in schools during 2007-2009 was the system integrator "Compulink". Competition Rosobrazovanie numbered NP-17 meant the supply of 60 thousand Russian schools (650-700 thousand computers) license software package in 2007-2009. The package includes: operating system Windows XP, Microsoft Office, dictionary Abbyy Lingvo 12, anti-virus software Kaspersky Work Space Security, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and more. A source at the Federal Agency of Education knows that Microsoft has agreed to license the Windows on all PCs for about $ 20 million (about $ 30 per computer).]

So has free software lost its big chance to form the minds of a generation? And has Russia condemned itself to years more dependence on Microsoft's products? Stay tuned for further instalments of this exciting Russian epic...

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The Economics of Ecosystems

The general area of the economics of ecosystems is something that I have been banging on about for while. Now we have a Web site and even a glorious PDF report on the subject:

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study is a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward.

Basically, we'd be mad - not just for environmental reasons, but economic ones too - not to look after our global commons. After all, it's the only one we've got....

The Embedded Market Beds Down with Linux

Never a dull moment in the embedded Linux market. First Intel acquires Wind River, now the slightly less well-known Cavium acquires MontaVista:

Cavium Networks, a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, wireless, storage and video applications, today announced that it is has signed a definitive agreement to acquire MontaVista Software for $50 million, comprised of approximately $16 million in cash and approximately $34 million in Cavium Networks common stock.

More interesting, perhaps, are the reason for the latest move:

Today embedded Linux is fast becoming the operating system of choice for hundreds of millions of devices ranging from very large carrier grade equipment to consumer electronics. Traditionally embedded devices used a proprietary OS or commercial real-time operating system. However, there is a major trend towards using embedded Linux. This rapid adoption of Linux in embedded networking, wireless, consumer electronics, mobile devices and storage is driving the demand for a high quality, commercial grade embedded Linux along with support for multi-core processors and embedded virtualization.

MontaVista Software is a leader in multi-core embedded Linux operating systems, virtualization, development tools and professional services with a broad array of Tier-1 customers. As the first commercial embedded Linux vendor, MontaVista provides the industry’s leading Carrier Grade Linux that has been widely adopted by industry leading companies that include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, NEC, Nokia-Siemens, NTT, Motorola, Samsung and many other Tier-1 vendors. MontaVista is also the innovation leader in the embedded Linux market segment with deployments in Tier-1 Consumer Electronics manufactures such as Sony, Samsung and Philips; MID and Mobile vendors such as NEC and Garmin; Industrial Automation vendors such as HP, Kyocera-Mita and Fuji Xerox and leading Automotive infotainment suppliers. One of MontaVista’s signature, high profile deployments includes Dell’s latest innovative enterprise notebook the Dell Latitude ON that uses MontaVista's Montabello software platform.

Note that this very positive assessement comes not from some open source fanboy (like me), but from a semiconductor company that has just plunked down $50 million on its bet. Against that background, there seems little doubt that Linux will soon become the de facto standard in the world of embedded systems.

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Brazil to Allow Private Copying and Mashups

I always said Brazil was a civilised country:

O MinC proporá que a cópia privada de qualquer tipo de obra digital seja permitida sem a autorização expressa ou remuneração ao titular para uso privado e desde que seja apenas um exemplar, além de permitir o uso do conteúdo original em outra mídia que não aquela que o consumidor comprou originalmente.

Na prática, quem comprou um DVD ou um CD poderá criar uma cópia de backup para uso próprio ou então poderá repassar o filme ou as músicas para o computador, trocando o suporte físico (como o disco plástico do CD ou DVD) pelo digital (esteja o arquivo em MP3, WMA e OGG ou AVI e MPEG).

...

A reforma prevê ainda "a utilização (...) de pequenos trechos de obras preexistentes, sempre que a utilização em si não seja o objetivo principal da obra nova e que não prejudique a exploração normal da obra reproduzida", dando respaldo legal à criação de mashups musicais ou visuais.

[Via Google Translate: The MinC propose that private copying of any digital work is permitted without the express permission or compensation to the owner for private use and provided that only one copy, and allows the use of original content in other media than the one that consumer originally purchased.

In practice, those who bought a DVD or CD can create a backup copy for personal use or you can pass on the movie or the music to your computer, changing the physical medium (such as the hard plastic of the CD or DVD) to digital (whether the file to MP3, WMA and OGG or AVI and MPEG).

...

The reform also provides for "(...) the use of short extracts from existing works, where the use itself is not the main purpose of new work and does not prejudice the normal exploitation of the work reproduced, giving legal backing to the creation of mashups music or visual.]

(Via Remixtures.)

The Next Bill Gates, or the Next Tim B-L?

On Twitter, I have just been followed by @nextbillgates, which is associated with the eponymous Web site:

Consider yourself to be an IT wizard – just like Bill Gates?

If the answer is yes, why not enter our brand new, national search to find the UK version of the next Bill Gates?

This is rather sad. If we're searching for an "IT wizard" to hold up as an example, why not look closer to home, and choose Sir Tim Berners-Lee? He not only invented the Web, he *gave it away*, as one of the most glorious acts of altruism we've seen in recent years, kick-starting technological, economic and social changes that are probably unmatched since the Industrial Revolution.

Isn't that something worth celebrating, and encouraging others to emulate? Or are we so mired in greedy materialism that we must instead hold up a man who not only accumulated a truly obscene amount of money by overcharging people for defective software through smart marketing, but is also founder of a company that was found to be a monopoly?

What kind of future do we really want: one based on taking, or one based on giving?

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Why SAP is a Sap

There's some interesting turbulence in the blogosphere about the following call from Dr. Vishal Sikka, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SAP:

To ensure the continued role of Java in driving economic growth, we believe it is essential to transition the stewardship of the language and platform into an authentically open body that is not dominated by an individual corporation. Java should be free of any encumbrances to permit fair competition between compatible implementations for the benefit of customers. By preserving the integrity of Java, the IT industry can ensure a vibrant developer community and continued innovation for enterprise software customers. This ensures the continued global economic success brought about through open innovation.

Matt Asay rightly calls him out on this:

Irony, thy name is SAP.

SAP, after all, is hardly the most open-source or open-process friendly company on the planet. Despite early involvement in Eclipse, some interaction with MySQL (MaxDB), and a new commitment to the Apache Software Foundation, SAP remains a firmly proprietary company.

Even Microsoft, which arguably has the most to lose from open source, has consistently and continually experimented with greater open-source involvement.

SAP? Not so much. In large part, SAP hasn't been forced to embrace open source because it hasn't been threatened by it. ERP (enterprise resource planning) is such a complex beast that it has remained largely impervious to open source (with the exception of open-source start-ups like Compiere and Openbravo, to which I'm an adviser).

Now, Dirk Riehle is stepping into the fray:

I don’t think that this is a fair critique. SAP has always provided the source code of its main business applications suite to user-customers as part of a commercial license, and users have always customized SAP’s business suite to their heart’s content. In fact, it is the only way to make it work for their needs.

That may well be the case, but I think it's irrelevant.

The real reason SAP's call is hypocritical is this document [.pdf], essentially a love-letter to software patents, submitted as an amicus curiae brief to the European Patent Office. Software patents are simply incompatible with free software, because they are government-granted monopolies designed to *stop* people sharing stuff. They also prevent hackers from writing new code because they represent an ever-present digital sword of Damocles hanging over them.

SAP simply cannot claim to be a true friend of openness while it also supports software patents in any jurisdiction, in any form - the same applies to other companies, too, I should note. They can share as much code as they like, but until they repudiate software patents - for example, by placing their patent portfolios in the public domain - that's little more than window-dressing.

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θαλασσα θαλασσα

Since I've been using the Web for over 15 years, it's not often that a site leaves me gob-smacked. But of all the sites I've seen recently, Marine Traffic is definitely one of the most amazing:

This web site is part of an academic, open, community-based project. It is dedicated in collecting and presenting data which are exploited in research areas, such as:

- Study of marine telecommunications in respect of efficiency and propagation parameters
- Simulation of vessel movements in order to contribute to the safety of navigation and to cope with critical incidents
- Interactive information systems design
- Design of databases providing real-time information
- Statistical processing of ports traffic with applications in operational research
- Design of models for the spotting of the origin of a pollution
- Design of efficient algorithms for sea path evaluation and for determining the estimated time of ship arrivals
- Correlation of the collected information with weather data
- Cooperation with Institutes dedicated in the protection of the environment

It provides free real-time information to the public, about ship movements and ports, mainly across the coast-lines of Europe and N.America. The project is currently hosted by the Department of Product and Systems Design Enginnering, University of the Aegean, Greece. The initial data collection is based on the Automatic Identification System (AIS). We are constantly looking for partners to take part in the community. They will have to install an AIS receiver and share the data of their area with us, in order to cover more areas and ports around the world.

Basically, then, it shows in *real-time* the positions of ships along major sea-lanes around the world. Hovering over their icons brings up information about that ship, including its speed and heading. Other pages have background data on ports and the ships. But the most amazing thing is just watching the shipping traffic gradually *move* in front of your eyes...

Free, open and gobsmacking: what more do you want? (Via Global Guerillas.)

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Microsoft's Biological Implants

Microsoft's up to its old tricks of offering pretty baubles to the innocent with The Microsoft Biology Foundation:

The bioinformatics community has developed a strong tradition of open development, code sharing, and cross-platform support, and a number of language-specific bioinformatics toolkits are now available. These toolkits serve as valuable nucleation points for the community, promoting the sharing of code and establishing de facto standards.

The Microsoft Biology Foundation (MBF) is a language-neutral bioinformatics toolkit built as an extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework. Currently it implements a range of parsers for common bioinformatics file formats; a range of algorithms for manipulating DNA, RNA, and protein sequences; and a set of connectors to biological Web services such as NCBI BLAST. MBF is available under an open source license, and executables, source code, demo applications, and documentation are freely downloadable from the link below.

Gotta love the segue from "strong tradition of open development, code sharing and cross-platform support" to "here, take these patent-encumbered .NET Framework toys to play with".

The point being, of course, that once you have dutifully installed the .NET framework, with all the patents that Microsoft claims on it, and become locked into it through use and habit, you are part of the Microsoft-controlled ecosystem. And there you are likely to stay, since Microsoft doesn't even pretend any of this stuff will be ported to other platforms.

For, under the misleading heading "Cross-platform and interoperability" it says:

MBF works well on the Windows operating system and with a range of Microsoft technologies.

Yeah? And what about non-Microsoft operating systems and technologies?

We plan to work with the developer community to take advantage of the extensibility of MBF and support an increasing range of Microsoft and non-Microsoft tools as the project develops.

Well, that's a complete irrelevance to being cross-platform: it just says it'll work with other stuff - big deal.

If I were a biologist I'd be insulted at this thinly-disguised attempt to implant such patent-encumbered software into the bioinformatics community, which has a long and glorious tradition of supporting free software that is truly free and truly cross-platform, and thus to enclose one of the most flourishing and vibrant software commons.

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ACTA's All-out Assault on the Internet

Michael Geist has some deeply disturbing details about what may well be in the Internet section of ACTA:

1. Baseline obligations inspired by Article 41 of the TRIPs which focuses on the enforcement of intellectual property.

2. A requirement to establish third-party liability for copyright infringement.

3. Restrictions on limitations to 3rd party liability (ie. limited safe harbour rules for ISPs). For example, in order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbour, they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content. Provisions are modeled under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, namely Article 18.10.30. They include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances. Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement.

4. Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements. For example, the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement specifies the permitted exceptions to anti-circumvention rules. These follow the DMCA model (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.) and do not include a fair use/fair dealing exception. Moreover, the free trade agreement clauses also include a requirement to ban the distribution of circumvention devices. The current draft does not include any obligation to ensure interoperability of DRM.

5. Rights Management provisions, also modeled on U.S. free trade treaty language.

This is nothing less than the copyright cartel's last stand against the Internet - a desperate attempt to lock down everything. As Geist observes:

it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty. These provisions involve copyright policy as no reasonable definition of counterfeiting would include these kinds of provisions.

That is, the Powers-that-Be *lied* to us, as usual. We must fight this, or we will be paying the consequences for years to come.

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WIPO Boss: ACTA Should be Open, Transparent

Wow:

On the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Gurry said that WIPO too did not know a great deal about the talks.

“Naturally we prefer open, transparent international processes to arrive at conclusions that are of concern to the whole world,” he said, citing WIPO’s role as an international, United Nations agency. And, he added, “IP is of concern to the whole world.”

If even the head of WIPO is saying ACTA needs to be drawn up as part of an open, transparent process, isn't it time for the relevant governments to listen?

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If a Sequoia Falls in the Forest...

...maybe somebody's listening:

Today, Sequoia Voting Systems officially introduced its latest revolutionary new offering – the Frontier Election System – the first transparent end-to-end election system including precinct and central count digital optical scan tabulators, a robust election management and ballot preparation system, and tally, tabulation, and reporting applications based on an open architecture with publicly disclosed source code developed specifically to meet current and future iterations of the federal Voting System Guidelines.


“Security through obfuscation and secrecy is not security,” said Eric D. Coomer, PhD, Vice President of Research and Product Development at Sequoia Voting Systems. “Fully disclosed source code is the path to true transparency and confidence in the voting process for all involved. Sequoia is proud to be the leader in providing the first publicly disclosed source code for a complete end-to-end election system from a leading supplier of voting systems and software. Sequoia’s Frontier Election System has been designed to comply with all the current Election Assistance Commission’s Voluntary Voting System Guidelines.”

As you may recall, Sequoia had previously been a big fan of precisely that "security through obfuscation and secrecy", so this is an astonishing turnaround. Kudos to them for finally seeing the light - its rivals will doubtless follow suit soon, because no one can be seen to be *against* transparency.

But even more kudos to all those people who fought the e-voting industry's attempts to shut them up and get on with murky business as usual. This will surely become a textbook example of how dogged and rigorous advocacy finally wins out.

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Biophysical Economics: A Different View

One of the things that I have felt for a while is that mainstream economics isn't really the best way to look at free software, or any of the other intellectual commons or - even more importantly - the environmental commons, since economics is really about consumption. And now, it seems, some academics are beginning to call into question basic assumptions about that consumerist, consumptive viewpoint:

The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?

A small but growing group of academics believe the latter is true, and they are out to prove it. These thinkers say that the neoclassical mantra of constant economic growth is ignoring the world's diminishing supply of energy at humanity's peril, failing to take account of the principle of net energy return on investment. They hope that a set of theories they call "biophysical economics" will improve upon neoclassical theory, or even replace it altogether.

Here's the heart of the problem:

Central to their argument is an understanding that the survival of all living creatures is limited by the concept of energy return on investment (EROI): that any living thing or living societies can survive only so long as they are capable of getting more net energy from any activity than they expend during the performance of that activity.

Great to see some new thinking in this area; I'm sure in time it will have knock-on consequences for the way we look at the commons, too.

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How Proprietary JAWS Bites the Blind

Here's a heart-warming tale of those kind people who make proprietary software, specifically of the piquantly-named company Freedom Scientific, which produces a program called JAWS:

JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader, a software program for visually impaired users, produced by the Blind and Low Vision Group at Freedom Scientific of St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Its purpose is to make personal computers using Microsoft Windows accessible to blind and visually impaired users. It accomplishes this by providing the user with access to the information displayed on the screen via text-to-speech or by means of a braille display and allows for comprehensive keyboard interaction with the computer.

Clearly, JAWS fulfils an important function for the visually impaired. One might presume it is a font of benevolence and altruism, doing its utmost to help a group of people who are already at a disadvantage. Maybe not, according to this petition:

Braille displays require a screen reader in order to work. Freedom Scientific has steadfastly refused to provide Braille display manufacturers with the driver development kit required to enable a particular Braille device to communicate with JAWS. Instead, the manufacturer must first pay an outrageous sum of money before support for the Braille device will be permitted. What's more, this charge to the Braille display manufacturer is not a one-time fee but is imposed annually.

Well, that doesn't sound very kind. So why on earth do people put up with this?

One might ask how Freedom Scientific can play the gatekeeper to its JAWS product where Braille driver support is concerned. The answer is simply and for no other reason because it can.

...

I for one am shocked, appalled, and amazed that Freedom Scientific would impose such limitations and restrictions not only upon its own customer base but also on those organizations which manufacture products that supplement the information that JAWS provides. This draconian and self-serving policy is not at all in keeping with the pro-Braille spirit exemplified by the Braille Readers are Leaders Initiative set into motion earlier this year by the National Federation of the Blind in honor of the Bicentennial celebration of Louis Braille. Instead of offering an additional opportunity to expand the usage of Braille, it stifles the ability of the blind consumer to choose the Braille display that will best meet his/her needs.

And the reason it can, of course, is because it is proprietary software, which means that nobody can route around the problem.

This episode shows once again why it is vital for such software to be open source so that there is no gatekeeper, and so that the community's needs come first, not the desire of a company to make as much money as possible regardless of the plight of the people it affects.

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UK Government Blows it on Lobbying

If you wanted proof that the UK government is still an enemy of transparency, try this:

The Government is grateful to the Public Administration Select Committee for its examination of lobbying in the UK, which is the first Parliamentary inquiry on the subject since 1991.

It is right that the Government remains alert for signs of improper influence over any aspect of our public life and the Committee's Report provides a helpful opportunity to look again at arrangements and to ensure that it has the right framework in place to ensure confidence in the way outside interests interact with government.

In responding to the Committee's recommendations, it is first important to set out the context of this inquiry. While the Committee's Report focuses mainly on the relationship between the lobbying industry and Government, it must be remembered that lobbying goes much wider than this. Lobbying is essentially the activity of those in a democracy making representations to government on issues of concern. The Government is committed to protecting this right from improper use while at the same time seeking to avoid any unnecessary regulation or restriction. As well as being essential to the health of our democracy, its free and proper exercise is an important feature of good government.

What this conveniently glosses over is the difference between "making representations to government on issues of concern" - which is what you and I as citizens do all the time, mostly by sending emails to MPs and ministers - and *lobbying*, which is now an entire industry of people employed to use every trick in the book, from the most to least subtle, to get what their clients want.

The first - making representations - is just what it seems: someone expressing their view and/or asking for action. Lobbying, by contrast, is your typical iceberg, with most of its intent invisible below the surface. That is why a lobbyists' register is needed - so that others can work out the iceberg. The UK government's refusal to countenance this - and the pathetic excuse it offers for doing so - are yet another blot on this administration's record as far as openness is concerned.

And if you're wondering why it is so obstinate, maybe this has something to do with it:

The Government agrees that any system of regulation, whether it is voluntary self-regulation or statutory regulation, requires a register of lobbyists to ensure that lobbying activity is transparent. The Government agrees with most of the elements for such a register outlined by the Committee.

However, the Government does not agree that such a register should include the private interests of Ministers and civil servants. This should not be a matter for a register of lobbyists. Ultimately, major decisions are taken by Ministers. Information about Ministers' relevant private interests is now published as well as information in the Registers of Members' and Peers' Interests. In addition, relevant interests' of departmental board members are also available publicly. However, the Government believes that the proposal for a Register of the private interests of civil servants would be a disproportionate requirement that would place a significant burden on departments and agencies while adding very little to the regulation of lobbying. Both Ministers and civil servants are already subject to clear standards of conduct for dealing with lobbyists.

But hang on a minute: if the argument is that such information is *already* made available, then there would be no *extra* burden in providing it to both authorities. It would only be information not already declared that might require effort - and that is precisely what should be made available. Yet more pathetic - and transparently false - logic from the UK government, which is still trying to keep us from scrutinising the engines of political power.

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The Utter Moral Bankruptcy of the DNA Database

This is staggering:

Detections using the national DNA database have fallen over the past two years despite the number of profiles increasing by 1m and its running costs doubling to £4.2m a year.

A report on the database covering the years 2007-09, published today, shows that crimes cleared up as a result of a match on the DNA database fell from 41,148 to 31,915 over the period. At the same time the number of DNA profiles on the database – already the largest in the world – rose from 4.6m to 5.6m. Duplicates mean that the police database now holds details of 4.89 million individuals.

That is, despite increasing the size to getting on for 10% of the UK population, the number of crimes cleared *fell* by over 25%. How pathetic is that? Not as pathetic as this statement from the truly Orwellian "National Policing Improvement Agency":

Nevertheless, Peter Neyroud, the head of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which hosts the DNA database, says in the report that it continues to provide the police with the most effective tool for the prevention and detection of crime since the development of fingerprint analysis more than a century ago.

Against the background that this "most effective tool for the prevention and detection of crime since the development of fingerprint analysis more than a century ago" is getting ever-less effective and more costly, and infringing on the rights of ever more people, this statement proves just one thing: that the British police are getting more and more incompetent, and have to rely on more and more Draconian laws and tools just to stop their already footling success rate dropping even more precipitously.

This is an utter scandal on so many levels, but above all because the UK government is continuing to foist this intrusive, disproportionate, racist and morally repugnant approach upon us when it's *own figures* demonstrate that it is failing more and more each year.

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Of Open Source and Open Government

One of the key figures in the open government in Australia - and indeed globally, given the paucity of such people - is Kate Lundy. She's been speaking at the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Conference 2009. Understandably, her talk was mostly about geospatial data, but there was also this nice section:

FOSS is like a living blueprint – a map if you will – for trust, sustainability and interoperability in the implementation of Gov 2.0 principles. FOSS principles and methodologies are the best case studies you can find for tried and proven online collaboration with constructive outcomes. FOSS applications provide reference implementations for pretty much anything, which government can build upon and customise. We have a lot to learn from FOSS methods and practices, and I would ask all of you to assist us, in government, to understand.

Would that more politicians were so perspicacious.

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