Blake Ross On Microsoft's Great Culpability

There's a fine interview with Blake Ross, one of the prime movers behind Firefox, from Seattle PI. Mostly it's just sensible stuff - which augurs well for Ross's start-up, whatever it is - but it contains one insight about the consequences of Microsoft's persistent non-development of Internet Explorer that bears quoting:

The truth is I think Microsoft is very directly responsible for spyware and adware and the pop-up ads in general that proliferated across the Web after they abandoned their product. I mean, this is the world's most-used software application ever ... and I just think it's irresponsible for a company to abandon it simply because they can't find a financial incentive to continue development on it.

(Via Slashdot.)

A Phlock of Photobuckets

The Flock browser is an interesting idea - a re-imagining of the Firefox engine for a Web 2.0 world. Of course, if you don't like that world, you won't like Flock, since it lives and breathes blogs and photo-sharing. It's the latter fact that makes it particularly suitable for customisations, such as this one from Photobucket (but shouldn't they have re-named it Phlock?).

I have never used Photobucket (I believe it's one of those young people's sites), but I'm glad to see Flock getting some deals. Innovation is always welcome, and it would be good to see Flock establish itself as an alternative to the vanilla Firefox. (Via TechCrunch.)

Wine is Not the Only Fruit

Many people have heared about Wine - which describes itself as follows:

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.

Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available.

Less well-known, though is FreeDOS, which does something similar for MS-DOS. This project has been going for ages (there's a good history here), and now it seems almost done. Quite whether the world needs an MS-DOS clone is another matter, but it's good to see it reaching fruition.

Fine Microsoft? Fine: But It's Pointless

According to The New York Times, the EU is about to thump Microsoft to the tune of a couple of million a day. I say: quite right, too. As I've written before, Microsoft just keeps playing the same old games of delay, dilatoriness and deceit. It deserves a severe corporate smacking.

But I have to add: fining Microsoft at this level will not make one jot of difference - it can't even feel a million dollars. Make it a billion a day, and maybe then it will notice.

As a result, it will not change its behaviour - which consists of taking the regulation game to the wire - nor will it change the marketplace. The only thing that will do that is if the EU - and other governments - back open source seriously to provide a counter-balance to Microsoft's otherwise unbridled power.

Plugging Away at ODF Plug-ins

According to this article, there are plenty of people beavering away on plug-ins for Microsoft Office to allow users to open and save files in the ODF format. But the interesting bit is this comment from Gary Edwards, one of the top people in the ODF world:

other developers, such as Gary Edwards, head of the OpenDocument Foundation, said he demonstrated his plug-ins to officials last week.

"They've been incredibly systematic, throwing hard stuff at us," he said, noting that his plug-in enables Microsoft Office to open a 16,000-row spreadsheet saved in the ODF format in 31 seconds. Opening the spreadsheet in Excel takes 43 seconds, he said.

Despite Microsoft's concerns that the rise of ODF could prove problematic for Office in the marketplace, Edwards said Microsoft was very helpful with his development efforts. Microsoft has "the best third-party developer model," he said. "They gave us what we needed, and it works beautifully."

Hm: I wonder what Microsoft are up to here? Could it be that they are resigned to ODF compatibility becoming a common requirement, and therefore accept the need to support it?

My Old Dutch

From the fine people that brought us Rembrandt van Rijn and Joost van den Vondel, now some sensible thoughts on the iniquitous EU directive proposing the criminalisation of all violations of intellectual monopolies - copyright, patents, trademarks, the lot. As the article linked to explains, this would entail an expansion of police activities in this area and a major shift of power towards big business.

Of Blogs and Bears

Things are getting seriously dotcom dotty in the world of blogs, with silly money flowing rather too easily into blogs whose long-term potential is not clear. Good, then, to see that arch-cynic Nick "Old Nick" Denton take the opportunity to play the contrarian, cutting staff and putting some blogs up for sale.

Tuning in to the University Channel

Open courseware is an exciting application of openness in the educational context, that is about distributing courseware. The University Channel is an extension of this, in that it provides a selection of video and audio recordings of lectures that are freely available under a CC licence. (Via Creative Commons blog.)

NeoOffice Lets Mac Users Choose the Red Pill

One of the great strengths of open source is its ability to offer cross-platform solutions. As a result, users can switch between Windows and GNU/Linux, or Macintosh and GNU/Linux (as seems to be happening increasingly).

This makes NeoOffice, a port of OpenOffice.org to the Macintosh platform, a key part of the free office suite's strength and appeal. It's good, then, to see NeoOffice 2.0 on its way. (Via LXer and MacDailyNews.)

Carnival of the Bioinformaticians

A little while back I wrote about the blog-form of carnivals. At the time, Pedro Beltrão said he was about to start a new one, devoted to bioinformatics, and here it is, Bio::Blogs, with its very own Web sit. I really must write something for the next one.

The Economics of Security

In his lastest Wired column, Bruce S. is writing about a subject particularly dear to my heart: the economics of security. He was lucky enough to go up to the fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security at Cambridge: I had hoped to go, but a sudden influx of work prevented me.

My own interest in this area was sparked by a talk that Ross Anderson, now a professor at Cambridge, gave down in London. I vaguely knew Ross at university, when both of us had rather more hair than we do now. Since this was 30 years ago, it's not suprising that he didn't remember me when I introduced myself at the London talk, pointing out that the last time I had seen him was in Whewell's Court: he stared at me as if I was completely bonkers. Ah well.

Schneier gives a good summary of what this whole area is about, and why it is so important:

We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: The people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of failure.

When you start looking, economic considerations are everywhere in computer security. Hospitals' medical-records systems provide comprehensive billing-management features for the administrators who specify them, but are not so good at protecting patients' privacy. Automated teller machines suffered from fraud in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, where poor regulation left banks without sufficient incentive to secure their systems, and allowed them to pass the cost of fraud along to their customers. And one reason the internet is insecure is that liability for attacks is so diffuse.

Read the whole column, and then, if you are feeling strong, try Ross's seminal essay on the subject: "Why Information Security Is Hard -- An Economic Perspective".

Will RFID Go Phut?

Many people have expressed concerns about the privacy implications of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. But until now, RFID proponents have tended to ignore these issues, claiming that benefits outweigh the risks. However, now that the US Government seems to be worried too, the RFID community may find selling those benefits rather harder. (Via Openspectrum.info.)

Eclipse Advances by Backing Up

Eclipse began life as a Java development platform at IBM that was meant to, er, eclipse Sun's NetBeans tools. Today, it is turning into a kind of total development environment for everything. The latest proof of this is Aperi, an open source project for managing storage devices and the networks on which they reside.

Update: The Reg has some good detailed analysis here.

The Monster Arrives

Bruce - the other Bruce - says: "We've warned you for a decade". More precisely:

Now the monster has finally arrived: attacks against Open Source developers by patent holders, big and small. One is a lawsuit against Red Hat for the use of the principle of Object Relational Mapping used in Hibernate, a popular component of enterprise Java applications everywhere. The other attack is on an individual Open Source developer for his model railroad software.

Bruce has been known to annoy people both within and without the open source community, but there's no doubting his credentials. Read the rest of his article for the full details of what's happening and what the larger threats are.

Haugland on ODF and Tube Tops

With postings like this, how can Microsoft Office ever hope to prevail?

SCOing, SCOing, SCOne

IANAL, but it seems to me that this judgement, lovingly typed in by Pamela Jones at Groklaw, is a pretty serious blow to SCO's case against IBM. And it wasn't looking very healthy before.

The real killer seems to me to be the following passage, brilliant and witty at the same time:

SCO’s arguments are akin to SCO telling IBM sorry we are not going to tell you what you did wrong because you already know. SCO received substantial code from IBM pursuant to the court’s orders as mentioned supra. Further, SCO brought this action against IBM and under the Federal Rules, and the court’s orders, SCO was required to disclose in detail what it feels IBM misappropriated. Given the amount of code that SCO has received in discovery the court finds it inexcusable that SCO is in essence still not placing all the details on the table. Certainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that “you know what you stole I’m not telling.” Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus’ entire inventory and say “its in there somewhere, you figure it out.”

Hard to believe that people were seriously talking about the SCO lawsuit as the end of Openness As We Know It.

UK Gets Open Access Brownie Points

Stevan Harnad, the OA Archivangelist himself, has given the UK a Bravo! for the Research Council UK's decision to let individual funding councils decide for themselves whether or not to mandate OA self-archiving. As he says:

Although we had rather hoped for a more concerted consensus from Research Councils UK (RCUK), nevertheless, with three out of the eight councils mandating Open Access Self-Archiving, one strongly encouraging it, and four not yet decided, that is still enough to restore the UK's commanding lead in worldwide OA Policy today.

(Via Open Access News.)

Pootling Away

As I've pointed out before, one of free software's great strengths is that it can serve smaller markets that proprietary systems can't be bothered with. So it's good to find that there is some free software specifically designed to help with the process of translating the wordy bits of programs into new languages.

The overall project is known by the dull moniker of translate.sourceforge.net, but is redeemed by the splendidly-named Pootle portal to facilitate the process. More about Pootle and related projects at Wordforge can be found here.

LiMux Läuft

The City of Munich's decision to migrate to free software was one of the banner victories of the open source world. For this reason, a lot of people - no names, no packdrill, Steve - have a vested interest in seeing it fail, preferably dramatically.

And certainly, things have not gone entirely smoothly for the LiMux project: for example, there was the business about European software patents that slowed things down. But things are still moving: as the deputy Lady Mayor of Munich put it: "LiMux läuft" - LiMux is running (in all senses).

Now, there's more sniping, this time in the Senate administration of Berlin (a little inter-city rivalry, or something more?). Anyway, Munich is resolute in its defence of the project, and Heise Online has a good summary of the current state of play there.

Checking Out Google Checkout

I've not used Google Checkout, launched today, in anger yet, but I've no reason to think that it won't do what it says on the tin. There are, however, a couple of things that strike me.

The first is pretty obvious: by adding this facility to let signed-up Googlers - people who probably already use Gmail and Google a lot - pay by using this system, the company is going to know even more about what you are doing, potentially at least.

Even if the company never joins the dots together, we've already seen that the US Government wants to get its mitts on all that yummy data for its own nefarious purposes. Similarly, lawyers are bound to try to gain access to all kinds of incriminating evidence this cross-linked data will provide.

Secondly, and less obviously, perhaps, is he fact that Google is entering even further into Microsoft territory here. As the press release puts it:

Google Checkout helps merchants streamline the checkout process and also works with Google's advertising program, AdWords, so merchants can attract more customers and increase sales. The Google Checkout icon on AdWords advertisements makes it easier for shoppers to find Google Checkout stores when they search. Once shoppers buy with Google Checkout, AdWords advertisers can also process all or a portion of their sales for free. For every $1 merchants spend on AdWords, they can process $10 in sales through Google Checkout at no charge.

In other words, Google is using the power that it has gained through the success of AdWords to help cross-promote the acceptance of Google Checkout. When Microsoft does this kind of thing, the world squawks: perhaps it's time to do the same with Google.

Update: Om Malik has some interesting thoughts on what this all means.

Use, Re-use and Abuse

A PLoS blog post provides some examples of the Creative Commons' Attribution Licence being used in anger. The idea here, of course, is that you are free to re-use material licensed in this way - if you give proper attribution. The blog lists a few examples of saints who do - and one sinner who doesn't.

Naming and shaming is an important way to police this kind of (ab)use, and should be a routine part of the way the Attribution Licence is used.

Why Open WiFi Security Isn't a Problem

In a study of almost 2,500 access points in Indianapolis, presented at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security at the University of Cambridge on Monday, researchers found that 46 percent were not running any form of encryption.

But the article this comes from goes on to quote several sensible comments on this fact, including one from the ever-dependable Bruce:

security expert Bruce Schneier argued that as long as people's devices were secure, having a secured network was unnecessary.

"I have a completely open Wi-Fi network," Schneier told ZDNet UK. "Firstly, I don't care if my neighbors are using my network. Secondly, I've protected my computers. Thirdly, it's polite. When people come over they can use it."

There are also wise words from Microsoft's chief privacy adviser for Europe, Caspar Bowden:

"If you do want to secure your network, look at end-to-end solutions rather than some of the dodgy crypto around like WEP," Bowden said. "There's only one thing worse than no security, and that's a false sense of security," he added.

Amen to that.

More Kudos to Auntie

Another sign that at least some people at the BBC get it.

There's a good post by Paul Mason about user-generated versions of sporting events (I gather there's something of the kind going on somewhere at the moment). He points out that all sorts of content are starting to turn up on YouTube. I was particularly struck by this paragraph:

Other spin-off coverage is the rise of the montage-to-music genre of football imagery to make a point. This excellent lament by a S Korea fan of their trouncing by Switzerland is a case in point....though because it is composed of copyright images you will have to click thru to it rather than running it on this site...

This treads a fine line: it doesn't directly take on the copyright thugs, but it certainly doesn't condemn what's going on either. Obviously, a high-profile institution like the BBC has to be careful, but this sensible, moderate approach augurs well for the future. (Via TechDirt.)

Welcome to the CodePlex

Talking of chasing tail-lights, I see that Microsoft has followed up shared source, its not-quite-open-source initiative with the CodePlex, a kind of milk-and-water SourceForge. (Via Matthew Aslett.)

Horror vs. Horror: A Study in Contrasts

As TechDirt notes, it's rather curious that not one but two articles about Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures should appear almost simultaneously. One is in BusinessWeek Online, and the other in Fortune.

Both tell the frightening story of Intellectual Ventures (IV) that I've commented on before. What's interesting here is the study in contrasts that the two features offer. It's worth reading both, just to make your flesh creep.

The Fortune piece is better, because it has a real nugget:

Microsoft confirms to FORTUNE that it is putting $76 million into IV: $36 million as an equity investment and $40 million for the right to use IV's inventions, with an option to invest an additional $40 million later.

This is an important fact, because it shows why Intellectual Ventures is likely to become the twofold bane of the open source world - because patents are problematic in general, and because it will be convenient for Myhrvold's ex-boss.

Any Port in a Hurricane

Microsoft has a guilty secret: Windows runs on very hardware platforms. GNU/Linux, by contrast, is a port monster: if it's digital, someone, somewhere, has probably done a port. But even I was impressed to find that GNU/Linux has been ported to a hurricane simulator....

SuSE on a Stick

Computer Weekly (disclaimer: in a parallel universe, I used to write for this a lot) reports on a SUSE Linux Enterprise training course contained on a portable USB drive.

What's most interesting about this is that it presages a future when everything is on a stick - Knoppix DVDs, the complete works of Telemann, everything that we now buy on CDs and transfer to a hard disc. In fact, one day, people will laugh at the idea of putting valuable data on thin discs coated in magnetic powder spinning at high speeds - rather as we do at the idea of mercury delay lines. (via LWN.net.)

Taiwan Gets Ready

Here's an interesting twist on government requirements:

The Central Trust of China, Taiwan's government procurement agency, has commissioned the Taipei Computer Association (TCA) to ensure that bids from PC vendors include equipment that are compatible with Linux.

Now, at the moment this only requires hardware to be certified as compatible; but there's little point mandating this particular kind of hardware if you're never going to use it....

Ain't That the Trout

A lovely story told by Solveig Haugland that provides insight into the real reason people don't all switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, and how to overcome it. (Fab artwork, too.)

RMS on DRM

Groklaw has a short interview with RMS. Nothing really new, but the following is well put:

this is an interesting example of the difference between Free Software and Open Source. Some people promote what they call "Open Source DRM". Now, recall the difference in fundamental values between Free Software and Open Source. In Free Software, our values are freedom and community. We want to be part of a community of free people. Whereas, in Open Source, they talk about making powerful, reliable software and they promote a development model. Now, for us, the question of how a program is developed is a secondary issue. I mean, if some models work better than others, fine -- use them. But that's not what's really important to Free Software, to people who value -- who support the Free Software movement and value freedom.

So, there are people who say that they could apply that development model to developing software designed to restrict us. And maybe it's true; maybe if people study and share and collaborate in developing software designed to take away our freedom, it might become more powerful and reliable in taking away our freedom. But that's a bad thing. That's evil. It's -- in spirit, it's similar to collaborative development of a virus. If something is evil, we don't want it to be done well. We want it to be done as badly as possible.

(Via Slashdot.)

Microsoft's WinFS: Not Pining for the Fjords

"Chasing tail-lights": that's all free software ever does, according to Microsoftie Jim Allchin. Open source never innovates, you see, it only copies. Unlike Microsoft, the paradigmatic Great Innovator.

Take WinFS. A truly interesting idea, for reasons this Microsoft introduction makes plain (no, really). It was announced as part of the great, innovative vision for Longhorn/Vista, but as the note at the top of the page in the previous link warns:

UPDATE: In spite of what may be stated in this content, "WinFS" is not a feature that will come with the Longhorn operating system. However, "WinFS" will be available on the Windows platform at some future date, which is why this article continues to be provided for your information.

Ah, well, never mind. At least that innovative feature will be available on the Windows platform at some future date.

Or maybe not. This blog posting by the WinFS team essentially says WinFS is not deceased, it is merely pining for the fjords. Most of those commenting are unimpressed by this innovative way of looking at things.

This one is representative:

Wow. Talk about spin.

I'm normally a pretty strong supporter of MS, but I don't hesitate to lay into them when they deserves it. This blog posting is pure spin. WinFS is dead.

Or to put it another way:

This WinFS is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late WinFS. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace, if you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This is an ex-WinFS!

Maybe Microsoft could chase open source's tail-lights instead - if it bought some binoculars....

Update: Jack Schofield has written a good history of the rise and fall of WinFS.

Not With a Bang But a Whimper

Could Paul Maritz be the emblematic man of early 21st century computing? I know, I know, it seems unlikely at first sight, but remember that Maritz was one of the archetypal Mr Microsofts during the latter's heyday. He was also part of a vast wave of defections as it became clear which way the wind was blowing.

Which is what makes his new company, PI Corporation, particularly interesting. Its premise?

The PC and the "GUI" interface of the 1980’s and 1990’s made it possible for tens of millions of people to author and manage documents. But with the spread of the Internet, the number of items of information users need to deal with has increased dramatically. The established metaphors and tools for dealing with this mass of information are starting to creak and groan. Just look at the average persons “inbox”.

We're routinely dealing with thousands of items of personal information - documents, email messages, web pages, calendar items, contacts, pictures, etc. The folder, desktop and drag-and-drop metaphors are no longer up to the task.

and

we believe that users should have their PI always available to them, wherever they are and whatever device they are using.

PI accomplishes this allowing information to be replicated across machines and devices, freeing the user from being dependent on a single device.

Sounds to me like Paul has rather gone off Windows and PCs. Instead, he seems to like Net-based distributed architectures. Note, too, how Windows and GNU/Linux are mentioned in the same breath, as are IE and Firefox - because the end-user platform doesn't really matter anymore.

Maybe he's on to something.

Publishing in the Age of Openness

OpenBusiness has an interesting interview with one of the Economist's technology corresponents. He has some sensible things to say, for example on copyright:

What is needed is balance, and clearly we need to redraw the scales in favor of encouraging the new creativity that technology enables — with an open-business approach in mind. Only a fool would stand against the crashing tides. It’s hard to see the protections granted to incumbent content industries as anything other than anachronistic privileges and economic protectionism. It certainly doesn’t help matters that they’re suing everyone and lobbying legislatures to strengthen their rights, even though it holds back incredible public creativity.

and on peer production:

Online, with no physical space constraints, entries can expand indefinitely. Take that, and add to it that peer-production tends to be cumulative, and the result is there is a tendency for things to grow, but little editing function to condense it into a more useful form. There is a great value not just in completeness but being concise — maps are drawn at scale rather than actual size for a reason.

Self, note: be concise.

Openness and Randomness

A wonderful dotty Tory story.

The Conservatives in the European Parliament are worried about the INSPIRE directive. As you may recall, this will allow public access to geospatical data.

Good thing, you might say. Not according to the Euro-Tory Geoffrey Van Orden:

I am very concerned that, in spite of Conservative opposition (not supported by the wider EPP-ED Group), the Parliament has passed amendments that allow for unlimited public access to certain spatial data including oceanographic survey data.

From this it would be possible to identify trends in sea areas that are being surveyed and the timescales involved. Analysis of such information over time could lead to conclusions about naval patrol routes. This has clear implications for the safety of Royal Navy vessels, including the nuclear deterrent force.

So from this we may deduce that naval patrol routes are completely predictable - if they were random, they'd be no problem. But since there are plenty of people who already have access to geospatial mapping data - the Americans,the Russians, the Chinese (presumably) - this also means that they know exactly where Her Majesty's Ships are (including the nuclear deterrent force.)

So, Geoff, rather than complaining about the openness of this geospatial data, wouldn't it be better to campaign for the Royal Navy to introduce a little randomness into its routes?

Genome, Transcriptome, Proteome...Variome?

It's early days yet, but somebody's hoping to put together a database of all human gene variations, dubbed the "Human Variome Project". One intriguing comment:

The HVP also needs an estimated US$60 million over five years - and it is not yet clear where that money will come from, though web giant Google has said it is interested in providing some funds

Whoops, there's that Googling the genome meme again....

Uncommon Nonsense on the iCommons

Originally I was going to leave this article on iCommons and the global digital commons alone, since it doesn't really deserve Margaret's "oxygen of publicity", but upon re-reading parts of it, I feel that some of the crasser assertions shouldn't go unchallenged.

For example:

The Creative Commons project is a curiously inverted attempt to use a private property regime to reproduce a "common" (understood, for me at least, as a non-owned culturally shared space of culture, knowledge or ideas). Put another way, Creative Commons seems to be attempting to create a shared public resource through a clever bit of tweaking of copyright, without the messy and difficult problems of educating citizens to the important of a public domain (or "common" good).

Well, actually it's just doing what Stallman did with the GNU GPL 20 years ago: if you understand the GPL, you understand what the Creative Commons is trying to do, and how.

Or:

In one way this raises questions about to what extent national states' sovereign control of their intellectual property law can be transcended in this way. It raises important questions about how this project might be perceived as a threat to the national interest of any single state. Will governments be happy to watch their cultural products seep away into an American founded "common" or will they legislate to make Creative Commons type projects illegal or regulated?

The idea of the commons is well-nigh universal concept that has only been lost in recent years; moreover, by definition, it's for everyone: it doesn't take away, it gives. "[I]ntellectual property law", on the other hand, of whatever "sovereign nation", nearly always takes away, because it simply defines the intellectual monopolies it grants.

Or even:

There may also be concern from a western perspective about the leaking out of protective national spheres of certain technologies and knowledges (issues raised by encryption software or GNU /Linux giving a technological boon to software development skills in China, for example).

I'm speechless: so we're worried about all those nasty furriners getting all this dangerous high-techy stuff like encryption (which they have already) or even - Heaven forfend! - that these Chinese devils might learn to program.

There, I knew I shouldn't have given it that blast of oxygen.

ODF: the Belgian Domino Falls

And another one:

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is to be the standard format for exchanging documents within the government, according to a proposal that is expected to be approved by Belgium's Council of Ministers on Friday. The plan increases the pressure from governments worldwide on Microsoft to embrace open standards.

Update: And maybe India too, one day?

Open Source History and Wikipedia

At times it seems that discussions about Wikipedia generate more heat than light. Even the supposedly objective comparison of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica made by Nature has descended into an ugly scholars' brawl. So it is something of a surprise - and a blissfully pleasant one at that - to come across a discussion of Wikipedia that is insightful, fair, well-written and downright fascinating.

The essay in question is called "Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past", and it's written by Roy Rosenzweig, Professor of History and New Media at George Mason University.

The essay is long, but it is well-worth reading all the way through its detailed comparison of Wikipedia and conventional reference works (there's a fine summary at the The Institute for the Future of the Book if you really need it). One of its shrewdest observations is the following:

Overall, writing is the Achilles’ heel of Wikipedia. Committees rarely write well, and Wikipedia entries often have a choppy quality that results from the stringing together of sentences or paragraphs written by different people. Some Wikipedians contribute their services as editors and polish the prose of different articles. But they seem less numerous than other types of volunteers. Few truly gifted writers volunteer for Wikipedia.

This piece stands as simply the best writing on Wikipedia yet. (Via Openpedia.org.)

Just Do It, Larry

Larry Ellison has been teasing about coming out with his own GNU/Linux distribution for a while, and he's at it again. This time, he makes a good point:

Observing that Linux is free to anybody and that the current Linux distributions don't own their IP, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said that Oracle could just go and take Linux, and support it better than anyone else and become the "number one distributor."

Do it, Larry, just do it: at best, you might just succeed; at worst, it will be an educational process for you.

The Case of Felten's Felt Collar

Ed Felten is one of the original geek heroes, for reasons this TechDirt post explains. Such a hero, it seems, that he's high on the content industry's hit-list as the Man Who Knew Too Much. Now they are trying to re-write history and cast him in a different light, as Tim Lee has spotted.

The revisionism comes from one of those institutes whose name is entirely made up of misleadingly neutral terms - "Policy Innovation", in this case. This is generally a clear sign that it is anything but neutral, and usually funded by those with vested interests in the field it covers.

I can't find any information on the site about where the money comes from: maybe it's done out of pure love of intellectual monopolies and unbridled capitalism.

The Geek God Who Didn't Matter

Some nicely provocative journalism from Business 2.0. Alongside the dull and entirely predictable list of "50 people who matter" is the infinitely more interesting "10 people who don't matter". And who should we find amongst them but that nice Mr. Torvalds.

And in a way, it's true. As I wrote in Rebel Code five years ago:

Linus is unique because he was able to serve as a focal point for ... advances to come together to create a complete methodology that is now central to the continuing success of the open source movement and that offers the first plausible alternative to the current - and creaking model of software development. But Linus is also replaceable because of this methodology, which allows programming and architectural decisions to be relegated to specialised circles of experts; and thanks to this methodology even his leadership style - that of power wielded in subservience to the user base - can be distributed more widely.

Why the Open Management Consortium Matters

You wouldn't expect something with as grey a name as the Open Management Consortium (OMC) to be hugely important. True, it deals with a crucial area, that of systems and network management. But the real interest lies elsewhere.

For probably the first time, an extensive group of open source companies are consciously joining together to address a new market. To the six original members of the group, many others are being added. Most of these, it is true, are quite small, but some are increasingly well-known names in their own right - for example, Hyperic, which only recently converted to open source.

These moves matter because they suggest that open source is passing to the next level, where individual companies stop acting alone and start working together to offer complete solutions that are otherwise only available from established proprietary behemoths. I predict that this "OMC model" will become increasingly widespread in the world of open source enterprise software.

Redeeming Flash with Fjax

I hate Flash. But just suppose it were possible to use it for something else, other than mindless, TV-style animations.

Enter Fjax. Ignore the buzzword overload - "Fjax is the lightweight, cross-browser, rapid-development methodology for Ajax-style web 2.0 development" - and you find its real purpose is to redeem Flash:

Fjax, short for Flash/JavaScript/and Asynchronous XML, is about using Flash as an invisible parsing engine to seamlessly deliver XML-based pure (x)HTML content interactively to browsers, all on the client-side. The kicker is that Fjax typically weighs in at a tenth of the size of normal Ajax solutions.

Keeping it simple (the http://www.fjax.net website runs on less than 65 lines of Fjax code - weighing only 4 total kilobytes!) means quick, light-weight code that is easily editable. Since the XML parsing happens in Flash, 90% of the redundant browser-specific code in a typical Ajax application completely disappears! And unlike the other Flash and Ajax integration projects out there, the outcome of Fjax is not Flash and (x)HTML, but a pure (x)HTML experience (which could contain an integrated visual Flash experience, but that isn’t required).

Using Flash to produce ordinary, non-Flash Web content more efficiently: utterly brilliant. God knows what their business model is, though. (Via eHub.)

PLoS Blog Blogs on Bloggers

I was giving the PLoS bloggers some grief over the absence of any postings about the financial situation there - not so much because I think the latter is serious (I don't - I'm with Jan Velterop on this), more that one of the great things about blogs is that they permit very rapid responses.

Chris Surridge Mark Patterson has now addressed this issue. Several other posts show that he his colleague, Chris Surridge, is keeping a close eye on the blogosphere, and beginning to respond more quickly to comments on other blogs. Given the path that PLoS ONE seems to be taking, this kind of awareness and interaction will be absolutely crucial to its success.

It's also good to see some technical details of PLoS ONE emerging - and that everything is resolutely open source.

Novell in Trobell

As Oscar Wilde might have said, "To lose one CxO may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness."

The news that both the CEO and CFO have been booted out at Novell is a Bad Sign. Much as I cheered Novell's decision to jump on the open source bandwagon, in my heart of hearts, I feared that it was going to end in tears.

Remember, Novell refused to adopt TCP/IP for many years, as it tried to defend its proprietary IPX/SPX. Just how wrong can you be?

Stolen's a Strong Word, a Wrong Word

Interesting point in this Computerworld blog posting:

If you read way down to the bottom of a Wall Street Journal interview with Bill Gates that ran yesterday, you'll discover that the Microsoft executive admitted to watching pirated movies on the Internet.

Unfortunately, Wall Street Journal is subscribers only. But the key exchange was the following:

WSJ: But those were stolen, correct?

Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.

Yes, stolen is a strong word - and the wrong word. Nobody lost anything when Gates viewed those YouTube videos. On the contrary, those who produced that content gained something hugely valuable: the attention of the richest man in the world. Gates was actually giving, not taking, and he was right not to accept the WSJ's simplistic description.

This exchange alone shows why most thinking about copyright and its so-called infringement is wrong-headed, and why this whole area needs to be re-thought in the light for the digital age. Alas, the blog posting's analysis gets it completely the wrong way round. (Via Digg.)

Dzongkhalinux - a Himalayan Operating System

Somehow I missed this post on LWN.net about the launch of Dzongkhalinux. Dzongkha, in case you are wondering, is the national language of Bhutan, and a language from the Sino-Tibetan family. As the article explains:

Recent laws in the country have enforced the use of the national language in all official events and all official communication. Therefore, even though all the (free for everybody) education system is bilingual in English/Dzongkha, it is very important for the country to be able to use the Dzongkha language on computers.

After a quite deceptive attempt with Microsoft to include support for Dzongkha in Microsoft operating systems ($523,000 have been thrown in this attempt), the Ministry of Information and Communication launched the DzongkhaLinux project 2.5 years ago.

And it's not just a truly Himalayan operating system (in all senses), since the project has also produced

a complete set of Dzongkha-localised applications, namely the Gnome environment, the OpenOffice suite, the Mozilla web browser, the Evolution mail reader and GAIM as instant messaging application.

This illustrates a number of points.

First, that Microsoft just doesn't care about smaller markets. Second, that open source really is about giving users the freedom to do what they need to do. And third, that there are good open source applications covering all the main areas these days.

There's more about the project here, and even a glimpse of a suitably monkish Tux, swathed in scarlet robes; there's the same information on the Bhutan-based Department of Information Technology site (just love that URL - http://www.dit.gov.bt/), but the connection's understandably slow, and probably best left clear.

There doesn't seem to be a direct link to the Bhutanese distro (again, probably just as well in terms of leaving the connection free); I suppose while I'm waiting for a torrent, I could always start learning Dzongkha....

Hot Under the Collar

A fascinating piece about the insane way air-conditioning has become an indispensable part of people's lives. This is mostly in the U.S., but the economic and social dynamics that are driving what happens there will soon apply in places like China and India.

One terrible irony: thanks to global warming, people are using more air-conditioning; which burns more fuel; which causes more global warming....

Shining Light on Eclipse

I've noted before the importance of Eclipse, "open source's best-kept secret". Here's something useful: an IBM recommended online reading list to get up to speed on the subject. (Via LXer).

Royal Society Wises Up - a Bit

A little while back I wrote in fairly unflattering terms about the Royal Society's attitude to open access. Things seem to have shifted somewhat since then:

The Royal Society today (21 June 2006) launched a trial of an open access' journal service, which will allow people to read new scientific papers free of charge immediately after they are published on the web. The new service offers authors the opportunity to pay a fee to have their paper made freely available on the web immediately if it is accepted for publication by any Royal Society journal. The first paper to be published under the new service appears on the Royal Society's website today.

That's good, although the pricing structure is sufficiently high as to discourage most people from taking this option. And despite what the press release says, I can't find the first OA article on the Web site: I've looked moderately hard, and after 13 years of Web-life, I'm not unskilled at finding stuff online.

So the move is probably more useful for pro-OA propaganda purposes than anything else; in particular, it may help some of the other important decisions that are due to be made on mandating open access, for example, those in the UK and Europe. (Via Open Access News.)