Project Canvas Will be *Linux* Based

I've been pretty sceptical - and critical - of the BBC's TV over IP efforts, including Project Canvas:

Project Canvas is a proposed partnership between Arqiva, the BBC, BT, C4, Channel Five, ITV and Talk Talk to build an open internet-connected TV platform, subject to BBC Trust approval.

The partners intend to form a venture to promote the platform to consumers and the content, service and developer community.

Like the UK's current free-to-air brands Freeview and Freesat - a consumer brand (not canvas) will be created, and licensed to device manufacturers, and internet service providers owners who meet the specifications.

‘Canvas compliant’ devices (eg set-top boxes), built to a common technical standard, would provide seamless access to a range of third-party services through a common, simple, user experience.

That's despite - or maybe even *because* - it proclaims itself as "open":

A technology project to build an open, internet-connected TV platform

As well as a lack of standards in the internet-connected TV market, there is no open platform. This creates two main problems:

* The UK's current free to air TV platforms Freeview and Freesat have been unable to evolve and keep pace with technical innovation in the consumer electronics industry. While some internet services are emerging on some commercially-owned/ pay-TV platforms - these platforms are working to their own (proprietary) closed standards. A fragmented market is emerging, which could put internet-connected TV out of the reach of consumers who don't want to subscribe to pay-TV.
* The internet services need to have a commercial relationship with the TV platform to obtain a route to the shared screen. This, combined with a fragmented market of varying standards, is slowing the development of internet-connected TV services.

Project Canvas intends to build, run and promote a platform that solves both problems: providing an upgrade for free-to-air TV, and an open platform of scale that will bring a wide range of internet services to the shared screen.

We all know how debased the term "open" has become, so frankly I expected the worst when the technical details were released. Looks like I was wrong [.pdf]:

Linux has been selected as the Operating System for the Device.

Linux has been ported to run on a large number of silicon products, and is currently supported by the vast majority of hardware and software vendors in the connected television ecosystem. Porting to new hardware is a relatively simple due to the architecture of the kernel and the features that it supports. The Linux environment provides the following functionality as a basis for the development and operation of the Device software:

• Multi-processing.
• Real-time constraints and priority-based scheduling.
• Dynamic memory management.
• A robust security model.
• A mature and full-featured IP stack.

Linux is deployed on millions of PCs and consumer electronics devices, and the skills to develop and optimise for it are common in the industry. In addition, a wide range of open source products have been developed for, or ported to Linux.

It's pretty amazing to read this panegyric to Linux: it shows just how far Linux has come, and how it is taking over the embedded world.

Even though content will be "protected" - from you, the user, that is - which means the platform can't really be regarded as totally open, the Project Canvas designers and managers still deserve kudos for opting for Linux, and for publicly extolling its virtues in this way.

Update: I haven't really made clear why that's a good thing, so here are some thoughts.

Obviously, this is not a pure free software project: it's a walled garden with DRM. But there are still advantages for open source.

For example, assuming this project doesn't crash and burn, I expect it will influence similar moves elsewhere in the world, which may be encouraged to use Linux too. Even if that doesn't happen, its use by Project Canvas will increase the profile of Linux, and also the demand for people who are skilled in this area (thus probably helping to drive up salaries of Linux coders.) More generally, the Linux ecosystem will grow as a result of this choice, even if there are non-free elements higher up the stack. Correspondingly, non-free solutions will lose market share and developer mind-share.

And finally, having Linux at the heart of the Project Canvas project will surely make it easier to root...

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Perfidious Albania

I've been very lucky in my travels. I've visited many of the obvious places, and quite a few of the less obvious ones, including exotica like Fiji, Samarkand and the Kashmir Valley. But one place I've never made it to is Albania.

Partly as a result of this failure - and partly for reasons to do with hearing about the country's wonderfully-named King Zog back in my schooldays - Albania has always fascinated me. So when the chance came up to combine two of the things I love doing - travelling and talking about free software - I was naturally delighted. Of course, there was no money involved, but travelling and accommodation expenses were covered, so I just needed to put together a presentation to "pay" for the trip.

This I duly did, leading with what I thought was a rather clever segue. For despite my impressions of Albania as a mysterious and exotic land, it turns out that not only does its population speak an Indo-European language - which is thus related to English (I knew that) - but that the very name "Albania" may have the same roots as my local "Albion" (which was news to me). This sharing of a common heritage let me lead very naturally into my main topic of sharing in the context of free software and beyond.

And thus it was, yesterday, just a few days before the conference this weekend, with my presentation - complete with witty segue - all ready to go, that I heard from the organisers that despite several emails assuring me to the contrary, they didn't have any money for my travel, and so wouldn't be paying for my flight tomorrow evening.

Which was a real pity, since I'd already bought the non-refundable ticket, after being assured - in writing - that I would be re-imbursed when I got there. The person who I had been dealing with kindly offered to pay for this out of his own pocket, but that obviously wouldn't have been fair on him: it was for the conference to find the money, not individuals.

Moreover, since the conference still seemed to have plenty of money to pay for other speakers at the conference (some of whom were coming from very far-flung - and hence expensive - parts), I could only assume that my talk wasn't really that crucial to the proceedings, and wouldn't really be missed if I didn't turn up.

I'd still love to visit Albania, which sounds a fascinating and fast-evolving place, but I don't think I'll be giving any talks while I'm there...

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Welcome to the Civic Commons

One of the core reasons why sharing works is that it spreads the effort, and avoids the constant re-invention of the wheel. One area that seems made for this kind of sharing is government IT: after all, the problems faced are essentially the same, so a piece of software built for one entity might well be usable - or adaptable - for another.

That's the key idea behind the new Civic Commons:

Government entities at all levels face substantial and similiar IT challenges, but today, each must take them on independently. Why can’t they share their technology, eliminating redundancy, fostering innovation, and cutting costs? We think they can. Civic Commons helps government agencies work together.

Why not indeed?

Moreover, by bringing together all the pieces, it may be possible to create something approaching a "complete" solution for government bodies - a "civic stack":

The "civic stack" is a shared body of software and protocols for civic entities, built on open standards. A primary goal of Civic Commons is to make it easy for jurisdictions at all levels to deploy compatible software. Pooling resources into a shared civic stack reduces costs and avoids duplicated effort; equally importantly, it helps make civic IT expertise more cumulative and portable across jurisdictions, for civil servants, for citizens, and for vendors.

Civic Commons is currently identifying and pulling together key elements of the civic stack. If you work in civic IT and would like to suggest a technology or category for the civic stack, please let us know. As we survey what's being used in production, we will adjust this list to emphasize proven technologies that have been deployed in multiple jurisdictions.

It's still early days for all this stuff, but the idea seems so right it must succeed...surely?

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Why ACTA is Not a Victimless Treaty

The best thing I have read about the current brouhaha surrounding Craiglist's shutdown of its “Adult Services” section is danah boyd's post "How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers, and Other Abusive Scumbags". If you're at all interested in the issue, I strongly recommend it.

One paragraph struck me in particular:

During the height of the moral panic over sexual predators on MySpace, I had the fortune of spending a lot of time with a few FBI folks and talking to a whole lot of local law enforcement. I learned a scary reality about criminal activity online. Folks in law enforcement know about a lot more criminal activity than they have the time to pursue. Sure, they focus on the Big players, going after the massive collectors of child pornography who are most likely to be sex offenders than spending time on the small-time abusers. But it was the medium-time criminals that gnawed at them. They were desperate for more resources so that they could train more law enforcers, pursue more cases, and help more victims. The Internet had made it a lot easier for them to find criminals, but that didn’t make their jobs any easier because they were now aware of how many more victims they were unable to help. Most law enforcement in this area are really there because they want to help people and it kills them when they can’t help everyone.

Now, think about what this is saying: that the FBI could help many more victims of these appalling crimes, but can't, simply because they don't have the resources to do so. Now, consider the effects of ACTA, which will add a whole new set of responsibilities that the FBI and others will be required to shoulder.

To be sure, there may be some increase in funding, but the way these things usually work is that politicians grandstand about all the amazing laws/treaties they have pushed through, but omit to mention that they don't fully fund them (because that would mean tax rises or cuts elsewhere).

That leaves the FBI and others being stretched even more thinly, forced to pursue counterfeits of varying seriousness. But worst of all, if the current ACTA text is any indication, they will be forced to spend time trying to stop file sharing, an impossible and hence pointless task.

Worst of all, because all that time could have been used to help victims of all those other, rather more serious crimes like child pornography, which the FBI says it knows about, but can't deal with. In the face of that continuing and unnecessary suffering, tell me again why ACTA is so important?

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Is it Time to Take Your (Android) Tablets?

However much I dislike Apple's obsession with control - the very antithesis of openness - I have to admit that its iPad is an important artefact. I think the tablet is on its way to becoming an important adjunct to other kinds of computing - ideal for sofa-top consumption, say. It will also be perfect for many business and industrial uses (I'm sure it won't be long until we see rugged versions of the form factor.)

On Open Enterprise blog.

Taking Openness to the Next Level

Yesterday I wrote about one particular issue with standards: the fact that the associated patent licensing (if applicable) can shut out free software completely. But it's clear that the problems go much deeper: the entire standards-making process is conducted in a way that is often the antithesis of openness. That's not just bad for free software, it also means that the standards themselves suffer, as do many potential participants who are unable to contribute as fully as they otherwise might. Here's an interesting attempt to rectify many of those problems by drawing on the manifest success of the open source approach:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Access Meets Open Archaeology

How could I resist OA meets OA thanks to OA?

The OA Library has been developed by Oxford Archaeology in order to allow us to distribute grey literature client reports and other documents to wider audiences. Oxford Archaeology is committed to a policy of Open Access to archaeological data; this website allows us to disseminate material as widely as possible.

And all towards the greater good of open archaeology...

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ACTA: Please Do What Simon Says...

I was about to write a long and passionate post imploring you to contact your MEPs one last time in order to get them to sign up to the important Written Declaration on ACTA. But I find that my fellow blogger Simon Phipps has already put together pretty much that post:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory...Ain't

One of the inescapable facts of free software is that it involves a lot of law - far more than innocent hackers might expect when they settle down for a light bit of coding.

That's in part because it is built on the foundation of licences like the GNU GPL, which depend upon copyright for their efficacy (although that doesn't mean that free software couldn't survive without copyright - see my earlier discussion of this point with Richard Stallman.)

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Value of Clear Code is Clear

Here's an interesting move in the highly important area of climate science:

We are pleased to announce the creation of the Climate Code Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organisation founded by David Jones, Nick Barnes, and Philippa Davey to promote public understanding of climate science. The Foundation will continue work on the Clear Climate Code project, and also related activities, encouraging climate scientists to improve and publish their software.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Directgov Review - No Time to Lose

One of the heartening trends that I've noted in recent years is a gradually opening up of government around the world - in both directions. As well as making more data available, the UK government too is also beginning to realise that the public wants - and can - help by providing input on the things that affect and matter to them.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Truth about Fakes (and Piracy)

Here's a fascinating item:

A new EU-funded report has declared that it is OK to buy fake designer goods.

The study, co-written by a Home Office adviser, says consumers benefit from the market for knock-off designer clothes at knock-down prices.

It also rejects the complaints of designer companies, claiming that losses to the industry as a result of counterfeiting are vastly exaggerated – because most of those who buy fakes would never pay for the real thing – and finding that the rip-off goods can actually promote their brands.

The report adds that the police should not waste their time trying to stop the bootleggers.

It disputes claims that the counterfeiting of luxury brands is funding terrorism and organised crime, and argues there is little public appetite for tough law enforcement measures as consumers enjoy the bargains offered by the illegal trade, which has been estimated to be worth £1.3 billion in the UK.

Professor David Wall, who co-authored the report and advises the government on crime, said the real cost to the industry from counterfeiting could be one-fifth of previously calculated figures.

There are a number of interesting points here.

First, is the obvious one of what the research claims about the difference between the real threat of fakes and the, er, fake threat that the industry likes to proclaim.

Secondly, there is the similarity between what is going on here and what the content industries claim about the extent and damage of piracy.

But in many ways the most striking thing about this story, which effectively declares fake goods to be socially acceptable these days, is its provenance. It appeared not in some lefty rag, but in the The Daily Telegaph, not known for its whacky, pinko leanings.

My reading of this is that whatever the industries concerned might say about how awful, deceptive and damaging fakes and piracy are to the economy, ordinary people - and the newspapers that try to mirror their views - know that the true picture is rather different. It also means that ACTA is even more wrong-headed than even I thought.

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Mahara: Who'd Have Thought?

One of the things that warms the cockles of my heart is the widening ripple of open source. Starting, as it did, with core system software, it is now moving ever further into more specialised areas. Take Mahara, for example:

an open source e-portfolio system with a flexible display framework. Mahara, meaning 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Māori, is user centred environment with a permissions framework that enables different views of an e-portfolio to be easily managed. Mahara also features a weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities.

This is part of the power of free software: however good it is today, it will be *even* better tomorrow, because old programs are never discontinued (even if they are no longer actively supported).

Don't you just love monotonicity?

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Could this Lawsuit Undermine the GNU GPL?

As I've noted before, it's pretty well established that the GNU GPL stands up in the courts: gone are the days when detractors of copyleft could claim it would “never work”. But the GPL is still under attack, only in more subtle ways, so the open source world can't just sit back and relax.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Foreworld as Foretaste

I'm am currently staggering to the end of Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, loving every minute of this impossible, wandering, hyperbolic, anachronistic, shaggy-dog story. So I was naturally delighted to see that he (along with a band of fellow creators) is not only working on yet another huge, outrageously-ambitious epic, The Mongoliad, but one that pushes story-telling in new directions by using technology:

Our story unfolds in weekly installments over the course of a year. We've planned out a true epic—the last great epic of the middle ages, in fact--and written a fine chunk of the tale, but much depends on you. We’re hoping you’ll ultimately interact with our artists and writers and share in the story’s creation.

When we can, we'll include extra tidbits of art, video, music and history. Those extras will be made available to premium subscribers, an excellent value--less than the price of a hardback book for a year's worth of story and mixed-media entertainment. We’ll soon be taking subscriptions for app delivery to some of the most popular mobile devices and are working hard to add more.

The user-editable Foreworld 'Pedia is the ultimate repository of all information about our world. Some of it coincides with the world you know. Some does not. We welcome your additions.

I was particularly heartened to find the following intelligent approach to DRM - or lack of it:

We put in a lot of effort on an ongoing basis to ensure that the best value our fans can get out of our stuff is by participating interactively with us and each other, and enjoying our interwoven content in context, in the way it was meant to be enjoyed. So, we think that if people take our content without our permission, their experience will be suboptimal, and given our modest prices, we think most people will be happy to pay us, thereby enabling this experiment to keep evolving. That said, the bits that can be copied and pasted and put into a torrent are still going to be fun, and people are going to end up redistributing those bits without our permission and against our wishes. However, we still don't use DRM.

The reasoning is absolutely spot-on:

The biggest reason is that DRM is futile, and we don't like to waste our time doing things that aren't going to be effective, and which are just going to annoy our legit supporters. Our concentration is on providing great experiences and great customer service to our customers, and we trust that those people who really appreciate what we are doing will become our customers. Because it's part of our ethos to be constantly producing and expanding and improving our work, the pirated content people may find elsewhere online will be static and out-of-date copies; we think that when people find this stuff it may give them a taste of what the full experience is like; hopefully, that taste will be enough that they'll want more, and in seeking out more, will become happy (and paying) customers of ours. We like that.

That is, piracy isn't a real problem if you *out-innovate* the pirates, making your paid-for offering better than their free one. Indeed, if you do, pirated copies become like tasters, encouraging people to upgrade and pay for the full, latest version. Similarly, by the sound of it, part of the strength of this project will be the interweaving of other elements into the text - again, something that pirates can't offer.

But I think this is slightly off the mark:

However, we don't believe that pirates are doing us any favors, and our not using DRM is not an invitation to cadge our stuff. Because of the way intellectual property law in this country (and most other jurisdictions) works, we are obligated to defend our copyrights, trademarks, and other IP--otherwise we lose them: if we find piracy we will try to stop it; if we find unauthorized use of our IP at commercial scale and/or commercial intent, we will come after it with vigor, because we have to.

That may be true for trademarks, but not, I think, for copyright: it's not something you have to "defend". Still, quibbles, aside, I'm looking forward to seeing what Stephenson and his fellow creators get up to here. I also hope that this new Foreworld proves something of a foretaste of future extended novels - not least in terms of dropping DRM.

As for reading it, well, I have the small matter of The Baroque Cycle to finish first: I may be gone some time...

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Ukraine to Create is Own GNU/Linux Distro

I've been writing for a while about Russia's on-off idea of creating its own GNU/Linux distro. It looks like Ukraine is following suit. Via Google Translate:

its purpose is to optimize the expenditure of budgetary funds and the solution using unlicensed software in state bodies.

According to estimates from officials, the savings of switching apparatus to free software can be 87%.

Among the expected outcomes of the program - improving the legal framework of research on creation and use of open software infrastructure for its development, creation and dissemination, and coordination of state infrastructure using open source software in the bodies derzhvlady, a basic set of localized distribution, adapted to the needs of public authorities.

Let's hope it doesn't get so bogged down as the Russian one.

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What Paul Allen and Larry Ellison Have in Common

At first sight, this extraordinary legal action against most of the digital world's leading lights might seem one of a kind:

Interval Licensing LLC ("Interval"), a Paul G. Allen company, filed a complaint today in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington against major internet search and e-commerce companies alleging that they have infringed on four patents held by Interval. The eleven defendants are AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Don't be Neutral about Net Neutrality

A little while ago, I noted that Ofcom was seeking input on the subject of Net neutrality. I also promised to post my own submission, which I've included below.

Ofcom has put together a very useful discussion paper [.pdf], and invites comments via an online form. Alternatively, you can send comments directly to traffic.management@ofcom.org.uk. In either case, responses need to be in by 9 September.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Oracle Scorns Open Source: How to Respond?

This was bound to happen, of course. Things were going too well. At a time when Google is activating 200,000 Android phones a day, and Android has overtaken the iPhone in terms of US market share, Oracle decided to drop the bomb:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Greed vs. Survival: Which Prevails?

The global environmental catastrophe that we all face is, of course, a typical tragedy of the (analogue) commons. Resources that are held in common like the atmosphere, or water, or fisheries are exploited for short-term gain by powerful players able to push to the front.

But it's often hard to grasp these tragedies because of their vast scale; what we need is something smaller, more human in dimension that pits personal gain against common weal to make obvious what should be the outcome of that struggle if we want to survive as a species. Something like this:

It's hard to imagine a more agriculturally vibrant place than Russia's Pavlovsk Experiment Station near St. Petersburg. The "station," part of the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry, really isn't a laboratory at all — it's a global seed vault holding tens of thousands of living, growing plants. As USA Today recently reported, "there are apples from 35 countries, 1,000 varieties of strawberries from 40 countries, black currants from 30 countries, plums from 12 countries and multiple other crops."

And what do they propose to do with that wonder of the seeds commons? This:

Last year, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development transferred the rights to two of Vavilov Research Institute's tracts of land to the Russian Federal Fund of Residential Real Estate. A Russian court will likely rule on Wednesday whether developers can move forward with development plans for the land. If real estate developers succeed, all those thousands of varieties of crops — 90 percent of which are not found anywhere else in the world — will be bulldozed to make way for luxury homes.

In fact:

The fate of the collection at the Pavlovsk Experimental Station, which includes more than 70 hectares planted with 5,500 different varieties of apples, pears, cherries, and numerous berry species -- most of which occur nowhere else on Earth and were developed over hundreds of years by farmers in northern Europe, Scandinavia and Russia -- was decided in Russia's Supreme Arbitration Court at 10:30 AM, Moscow time.

The result? Send in the bulldozers: who cares about the future of food?

If the proposal seems utterly outrageous, the reasoning behind it is utterly insulting:

the property developers argue that because the station contains a "priceless collection", no monetary value can be assigned to it and so it is worthless. In another nod to Kafka, the government's federal fund of residential real estate development has argued that the collection was never registered and thus does not officially exist.

What's particularly galling is that the sums involved are quite small:

the developer, the Housing Development Foundation, would pay 92 million rubles (more than USD $3 million) to acquire a special, five-year leasing license on the 70 hectares. After that five-year period, they'd have the opportunity to own the land outright.

Surely, then, this would be a great way for one of those high-profile modern philanthropists - hello, Bill Gates - to do something amazingly powerful for the world at minimal effective cost to their foundations.

Failing that, little people like you and mean can send a couple of tweets, and sign a petition. That's not much, but sadly it's all we can do to prevent this all-too graspable tragedy of the commons.

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Linux Foundation Makes Enterprise Open Source Boring

In the early days of free software, the struggle was just to get companies to try this new and rather unconventional approach, without worrying too much about how that happened. That typically meant programs entering by the back door, surreptitiously installed by in-house engineers who understood the virtues of the stuff - and that it was easier to ask for forgiveness after the event than for permission before.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Saga of Git: Lightning does Strike Twice

Every now and then, a shiver runs through the Linux community as people realise afresh that the entire edifice has a single point of failure: Linus Torvalds. These episodes usually manifest themselves as concerns about the scalability of said individual – whether he can continue to oversee and manage the amazing distributed development model as it grows ever bigger and more ambitious. To counter those fears it is probably worth looking at what happened as a result of the first – and by far the most frightening - “Linus does not scale” episode, not least because it led to multiple positive outcomes.

On The H Open.

The Dead Microsoft Sketch

The first time I was really impressed by Microsoft was back in the 1980s. I was being given a private demonstration of a hot new program for the Macintosh. I was struck not just by the beta's cool new graphical interface - a clear advance on existing DOS programs like 1-2-3 - but also by the infectious enthusiasm of the Microsoftie showing me around the beta. The program, as you've probably guessed, was Excel; the person doing the demo was Bill Gates.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Google About to Sell the Internet Down the River?

Net neutrality is turning from a boring, irrelevant issue that few people thought about much into one of the key issues for today's Internet. Sadly, that's because a few powerful industry groups in the US have started spending lots of money to bolster their weakening positions in a shifting world, and that means obscure technicalities like Net neutrality become collateral damage in the collective stampede to get to the feeding troughs.

On Open Enterprise blog.

El Pueblo Unido...

Videos are proving to be a key element in ensuring that policing is fair and honest, as recent events in the UK have demonstrated. But there's a subtlety here that I hadn't realised until reading this:

More worrying is the way in which CCTV is being used by the police. Demonstrator Jake Smith was charged with two counts of violent disorder. These charges were later dropped when Smith's solicitor, Matt Foot, viewed the original CCTV footage and discovered that the police video had been edited to show events out of sequence, at one point implying another man was Smith while omitting footage showing Smith being assaulted by a police officer without provocation.

Considering the potential for abuse of power, the control that the police have had over the use of CCTV is frightening. Foot warns, "We should be both curious and suspicious about how the police use CCTV footage in these cases."

Foot's concern extends to how police have dictated the use of their edited material. Solicitors representing the protesters were told to sign an undertaking by the Met that prevented them sharing their police videos with anyone but their client. This stopped defence solicitors working together to establish a wider picture of the protests and their context. This worked hand in hand with the decision to charge all the protesters individually rather than collectively.

The first point is obvious enough: those charged with offences need to be able to see the *full* video footage that includes the parts used by the police. But the second is just as important: in order to obtain a full, rounded picture of what *really* happened - or a good approximation thereto - people must be able to pool video resources. Both of these need to be enshrined as explicit rights if we are to nip in the bud the tendency for the Boys in Blue to get selective in their editing, and for true justice to be done.

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