OK, so it's the idea of free computing that Microsoft is trying to patent, rather than just free software. It's still doubly stupid. Stupid, because this is obvious, and hence non-patentable. Stupid, because it's not even novel (and hence non-patentable): it was tried during Dotcom 1.0, where it failed miserably. Make that triply stupid.
So far, the best answer to How can open source companies make money? seems to be that of providing services - typically training, support and general consultancy. There's another approach, involving dual licensing, but this is more problematic in some ways, and there's also evidence that it may only be a transitional approach on the way to a full service model.
Against this background, Irving Wladawsky-Berger has an interesting post on his blog about services, beginning with this observation:If you look at IBM's business last year, services revenues were roughly 55%, while systems (hardware) and software revenues were around 25% and 20% respectively. But services constituted around one-third of the company's profit, for a very simple reason. Systems and software products leverage technology assets and apply engineering principles to improve quality, scale-up capacity, and achieve higher productivity and profit margins. Services, on the other hand, have historically been significantly more labor-based, less prone to economies of scale, subject to higher quality variations, and generally less productive and profitable.
Services - and analyses of them - will clearly be moving to the foreground in years to come, and not just in open source. The latter will, however, be a trailblazer in this respect as in many others. Another reason for those outside the world of free software to pay close attention to it.
Many in the world of free software are aware that the Spanish region of Extremadura has been installing GNU/Linux in its schools. It has even created its own distribution called GNU/Linex. This project began many years ago - the roots go back to 1998 - and most people probably assumed it had all fizzled out.
Far from it. For the Extramadura government has now announced that it would be going even further:All the computers of the Junta of Extremadura (goverment state of Spain) will be running free software within a year. This project makes the Regional Government the first Public Administration to adopt standards upheld by international organizations, that favour "technological innovation and the reduction of user dependency.
The councillor for Infrastructures and Technological Development, Luis Millán de Vázquez de Miguel, met the press this Friday to inform about the agreements reached in the last board meeting of the Government held last June 25. In said meeting, it was agreed that all the computers of the Junta of Extremadura would have to be adapted to free software office tools and gnuLinEx (the local flavour of Debian GNU/Linux) within one year.
Thus, as from now on, all workers of the public administration must use open document formats (ISO/IEC DIS 26300) for their office applications for information and creating administrative processes, as well as PDF/A (Portable Document Format ISO 19005-1:2005) for Exchange Documents, when guaranteed unalterable visualization is required.
That is open source, and OpenDocument too.
But what's most interesting about this announcement is that it shows how mighty oaks can grow from small acorns: once organisations have tried free software and discovered how good it is, it becomes much easier to move on to larger-scale implementations. This, in its turn, shows that every open source project, now matter how small, is important.
It is a truism that if you believe in your product you welcome comparisons with the competition. After all, if you really are the best, you can only gain from that fact being made manifest.
So this delightful tale from PC Pro suggests that even Microsoft has no faith in its own products:There can be no doubt that Microsoft is afraid of the open-source movement. Last month, as part of the conditions for allowing us to include Office 2007 on the cover disc, Microsoft Corp - in many ways a company distinct from the far cuddlier and more approachable Microsoft UK - wouldn't allow us to put any open-source software onto the same disc.
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Microsoft specifically named OpenOffice.org as a program we couldn't include on the cover disc. That's an incredibly short-sighted move. The whole point about Office 2007 is what it offers over and above OpenOffice.org, that it allows you to create more sophisticated documents more quickly. If I was on the board of Microsoft Corp, I'd be demanding that magazines bundled both side by side so that people could make their own comparisons.
Obviously, the powers in Microsoft Towers aren't quite so confident of what the outcome might be. (Via SunMink.)
A couple of weeks back I wrote a piece for Linux Journal suggesting that top coders might start using some of their increasing influence outside computing to start talking directly with those in power in an attempt to change political agendas directly.
Now here's an interesting complementary suggestion: that supporters of free software should become consumer activists, and try to influence things from the bottom up.
In the early days of free software in business - say ten years ago - there was a natural tendency to think of it as a monolithic entity. But rather as chromatography can be used to separate out the constituent parts of an apparently uniform blob, so time gradually teases out the different elements that go to make up the rich and complex world of open source.
Thus we have projects like Apache and GNU/Linux, which are so much a part the mainstream now that it probably hard for most people to imagine that they were never part of it. Then there are the projects like MySQL and JBoss that are fast establishing themselves as second-generation leaders. Finally there is the new wave - the SugarCRMs, the JasperSofts and Alfrescos - that are coming through fast.
I found a nice representation of this evo-devo in a post on Matt Asay's blog, where it is attributed to Robin Vasan. I'm afraid I've never heard of him (I obviously lead a sheltered life), but I see from his bio that he's involved with Alfresco, as Matt is, so this is obviously the connection.
Aside from the graphic - which diverges in detail from my view of things, but is broadly the same - Matt's post contains several other interesting slides (and ideas) from his recent presentation at OSCON 2006. It's well worth taking a look at.
So Federated Media (John Battelle's new gig) has "launched a parenting “metaweblog” (at www.federatedmedia.net/parenting) that highlights the talented voices of the authors in its new Parenting federation."
The metaweblog - basically an aggregation of blog feeds on a given subject - is an inevitable development for blogs as they enter the mainstream. After all, it is hard work going out and finding all the blogs that interest you on a given subject: much easier to subscribe to one handy metaweblog feed and be done with it.
I mean, I ask you: next thing, they'll be asking us to think about what we read.
The line-up of cross-platform open source apps is pretty impressive, except in one area: Web design. Until now, all we've really had is Nvu, which is certainly very easy to use, but rather limited in terms of more advanced features.
But now here's Aptana, a "robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications". It's still early days yet, but judging by the screenshots, it looks promising. (Via Digg).
I've an article over on Linux Journal that looks at dual licensing. The issue of how you might make money out of open source software is important, not just to the coders but also to the users. If the former don't feel that they've received enough payback - of whatever kind - they are likely to move on, and the latter will then suffer.
So I was interested to see the news that everybody's favourite blue frog - Azureus - has taken some venture capital money to turn "legit", or at least corporate. There's no reason why this should have any downside for the free version: presumably they aim to produce paid-for, customised versions for content producers etc. In fact, it might even help educate the latter that BitTorrent is not synonymous with evil.
For a nation of rationalists, France's DADVSI law is a seriously irrational piece of legislation that guts not just fair use, but comprehensively clobbers free software. Read this explanation - and then weep. (via Boing Boing.)
This story about US legislation that will require schools to block MySpace and other social networking sites might not seem to have much to do with this blog. But the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) is symptomatic of a far-wider problem.
The story is basically old, ignorant politicians that are taking the opportunity to grandstand by supporting legislation full of high-sound principles - "protecting the children" and other such tosh - that in fact is highly pernicious.
Of course, banning access to social networking sites from schools will not "protect the children": on the contrary, it will expose them all the more. The children will simply access these sites from home, or friends' homes, where they will probably be completely unsupervised. At school, by contrast, they could be taught how to recognise trouble, and how to deal with it - educated, in other words.
The knee-jerk reaction to ban any novel technology that can be used for nefarious purposes is also symptomatic of politicians' lack of understanding and fear of the new - call it the Tubular Syndrome. DOPA is clearly block-headed, but it's not, alas, a unique example of political block-headedness.
Google has launched an open source code repository, called, with stunning originality, Google Code. This is particularly good news, because it not only signals Google's continuing efforts to boost open source - probably the best single way to attack Microsoft without seeming to - but also because it provides an alternative to the main code repository in use today, SourceForge.net.
Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against SourceForge. On the contrary, it has played a crucial role in the blossoming of free software, and we owe it a huge debt. But it represents a single point of failure that has been one of open source's greatest weaknesses: just imagine what would happen if SourceForge were to go down for a few days. The existence of an alternative, backed by Google, can only be good news in this respect.
If you need a quick but comprehensive introduction to ODF to give to relations/friends/colleagues/total strangers, you could do worse than this one by Sam Hiser. It concludes by noting:At one time the main interface for working with information in documents was the software application (an office suite or a text editor of some kind); now, the main interface is the document itself, and it won't matter what application you use. The OpenDocument Format is bringing the world from an application-centric model of computing to a document-centric model of computing. This means that creating new business processes will be as easy as typing a memo on a PC or working with a small connected device.
One idea gaining currency is that of creating a patchwork of free wireless Internet access points by leaving your WiFi network open for anyone to use. Of course, spoilsports have adduced all sorts of reasons why this might be a bad thing to do, but now, courtesy of those nice people at the RIAA, here's a reason why it might be a good move:For years, the RIAA has claimed that having the IP address of a computer that has shared unauthorized files is the equivalent of having the evidence of who was actually sharing files. That, of course, is false. The IP address simply can help you know who paid for the internet access, but not who was using what computer on a network. In fact, this even had some people suggesting that, if you want to win a lawsuit from the RIAA, you're best off opening up your WiFi network to neighbors. It seems like this strategy might actually be working.
I'd have expected this news about a new Emotion Incubator Group at the W3C to have been released on the 1st April:Emotion-oriented (or "affective") computing is gaining importance as interactive technological systems become more sophisticated. Representing the emotional states of a user or the emotional states to be simulated by a user interface requires a suitable representation format. Although several non-standard markup languages containing elements of emotion annotation have been proposed, none of these languages have undergone thorough scrutiny by emotion researchers, nor have they been designed for generality of use in a broad range of application areas.
Well done Andy Updegrove for spotting this: quiet day at the office, Andy?
I have been writing about the Internet since 1994, and about ICANN, the body that oversees the domain name system, since 1999. Unfortunately, in those seven years, ICANN has confirmed the fears of myself and many other observers about the stultifying effect it would have on the functioning of the Internet.
Given that ICANN was backed by the US Government, which is not known for its sensitivity to the views of others, especially mere foreigners, I had largely resigned myself to this sorry state of affairs. But miraculously, something seems to have happened:In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet.
Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organisation a more international body.
For me, the main thing to come out of this is the hope that ICANN might finally be forced to open up its totally inappropriate secrecy, and as a result that maybe - just maybe - it will start serving the Internet community in the way it was supposed to all those years ago.
Something called "Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval (CASPAR)" sounds like a typical money-wasting euro gravy-train. But the central problem it aims to address - "How can digitally encoded information still be understood and used in the future when the software, systems and everyday knowledge will have changed?" - is important, and becoming more so by the day.
Over long periods of time, you cannot hope to keep every wacky proprietary data format alive by storing copies of the relevant software: you'd also need to store old operating systems, software manuals etc. The only practical solution is to use open formats. For these, the information will be accessible long after the programs that created them have gone to the great data repository in the sky.
Alfresco, probably the leading open source enterprise content management company, has announced that it will support ODF. Not earth-shattering in itself, but a useful, incremental, step forward. (Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog.)
I've written about INSPIRE before, and now this depressing piece in The Guardian suggests that the twits in the UK Government are going to scupper it because of their feudal insistence on protecting inefficient and anachronistic "businesses" like the Ordnance Survey. Release the data and let a thousand businesses bloom, people.
The Guardian has a story entitled "The open source approach to education". It's about a report on the same from Futurelab, and while there's nothing really new there, it's nonetheless good to see the usual memes being spread about a bit in new contexts:It is also possible to conceive of young people or teachers working together as programmers to create new resources and tools that are of relevance to them in supporting their own learning. These approaches go beyond the traditional distinction between 'users' and 'producers' of educational resources, instead, they offer models of innovation in which these communities are intermingled, the notion of ownership is changed and the economical model of cost and reward is reworked. These new hybrid models of innovation that FLOSS exemplifies require us to ask what models of ownership we might need to develop; what mechanisms might need to be put in place to encourage exchange between sectors; what role users of educational resources might play in the creation of resources; and what business models would need developing to allow further exploration in this area.
Scalix has always been something of a showcase for how GNU/Linux can be used to run enterprise-level software. And yet, ironically, Scalix itself has been proprietary.
Until now.
Given that the company was successful with its earlier strategy, this move to a dual-licensing approach is an interesting comment on the even greater advantages of being open source, and not just running on it. (Via Linux-Watch.)
For all its corporate rapaciousness, Microsoft has always been scrupulous in keeping its partners happy: it knows that much of its immense strength derives from the huge Windows ecosystem it has created around itself. Indeed, whatever its manifest misdeeds in terms of abusing its monopoly position, it is arguable - and the company itself has made the argument - that through this vast network it has created far more wealth than any harm it is accused of.
Against this background, two recent moves are pretty astonishing. First, there is Zune, which as many commentators have observed, is unlikely to damage Apple so much as all those who signed up to the horribly-named "PlaysForSure" initiative to provide online music services based around Microsoft technologies.
And now, even more surprising, we have Microsoft's move into offering healthcare software. The actual figures involved are minuscule, but the signal it sends is immense. For it seems to suggest that in its growing desperation at the loss of market share in its traditional sectors - and with the threat of ever-greater losses in the future - the company has decided to break its golden rule to leave to third-parties vertical markets, while it supplies (at a handsome profit) all the infrastructural stuff.
I can't help seeing the hand of Ballmer in this, eager to make his own mark on what is still Bill Gates's company. It would be an obvious thing for a hard-nosed salesman to do - to carve up former partners in an attempt to grab slices of new pies. But I predict that the move will go down very badly with Microsoft's erstwhile supporters, already unnerved by the sword of Zune hanging over them, as they begin to wonder which sector will be next on the Microsoft hitlist.
In fact, I expect they're starting to feel as sick as a parrot.
I've been a little dismissive of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, but having read LWN.net's fascinating interview with Jim Getty, the Vice President of Software, I have become more impressed with what it is trying to do, and how it is trying to do it.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Indian Ministry of Education does not share my new-found enthusiasm. According to Heise Online:
The Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), the country's ministry of education, has rejected the suggestion made by the country's Planning Commission to take part in the "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC) program. In a letter sent to the Planning Commission last month Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee of the Ministry of Human Resource Development stated that the case for giving a computer to every single child was "pedagogically suspect." This the Indian daily The Hindu reports. "It may actually be detrimental to the growth of creative and analytical abilities of the child," the secretary added. Classrooms and teachers were more urgently needed than "fancy tools," the Education Secretary went on to say.
It's a fair point, and a concern that research will need to show is unfounded when the first deliveries of the laptops take place next year (assuming they do).
Further proof, if any were needed, that open source business operates under different rules. Here's a letter from CEO of Pervasive, a company set up to "with the goal of helping accelerate the transition from the traditional, high cost database licensing model to the open-source, high-value model", specifically to PostgreSQL. But something funny happened along the way:While we always knew that PostgreSQL is a solid product with advanced database capabilities and that it has a very real opportunity to shake up the high-end database market, we underestimated the high level of quality support and expertise already available within the PostgreSQL community. In this environment, we found that the opportunity for Pervasive Software to meaningfully increase adoption of PostgreSQL by providing an alternative source for support and services was quite limited.
In other words, the PostgreSQL community can look after itself, thank you very much. Just as can all other flourishing free software projects. Which is why, ultimately, they will prevail, because there are immune to the fads and fashions of the business world. (Via Matthew Aslett.)
Om Malik has a nice (if brief) piece on the rise and rise of the domestic penguin. I particularly liked this:The logic is simple – the other two players – Apple and Microsoft will have their own proprietary systems. Apple will not share them with anyone else, of course! Microsoft would as long as you play ball with their DRM system or some other lock-in. (And they are not to be taken lightly.)
This leaves CE makers, and start-ups with one option – Linux.
Time to put some herring in the 'fridge.
This isn't particularly new, but I've only just caught up with it (on Irving Wladawsky-Berger's blog). It's "Democratizing Innovation" by Eric Von Hippel, yet another book that draws inspiration from open source:The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products -- most notably in the free and open-source software movement -- but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.
Nor have I read it, but the basic idea sounds good, and Von Hippel is generally very sound - as evidenced by the fact that he has made the book freely available online under a CC licence.
The Semantic Web is a kind of intelligent Web, one that consists not just of contextless numbers and meaningless words but of data that means something:The Semantic Web is a web of data. There is lots of data we all use every day, and its not part of the web. I can see my bank statements on the web, and my photographs, and I can see my appointments in a calendar. But can I see my photos in a calendar to see what I was doing when I took them? Can I see bank statement lines in a calendar?
Why not? Because we don't have a web of data. Because data is controlled by applications, and each application keeps it to itself.
The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for interchange of data, where on the original Web we only had interchange of documents. Also it is about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.
Tim thinks it's going to be really big, which is good enough for me.
But to use all this richness, we're going to need tools, so it's good to seem some open source ones coming along. Doubly good, because they're from a company, Aduna, that has seen the free software light. (Via Enterprise Open Source Magazine.)
Why am I not suprised by this?“It appears as if the venture capital industry is slowly ratcheting up investment levels for the first time in four years, and these increases seem to be directed in a prudent manner,” Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association said in a press release. That might have been true, but the recent trend of big money investments shows that prudence might be giving away to old-fashioned avarice.
Om Malik makes clear why the next dotcom delirium is inevitable:Before they can go out and raise cash for new funds, many of the firms have to invest the remnant money from their circa 2000-2001 funds. Otherwise, Limited Partners might be asking them the difficult question: Why should I give you more cash when you are sitting on a pile already? A good example would be Oak Investment Partners, which raised $2.56 billion to become the largest venture capital fund ever.
In other words, there is simply too much greedy money in the system, some of it left over from the last VC feeding frenzy at the trough, which in the coming days absolutely must be spent, whether or not it makes sense. Did anyone say bubble?
When it comes to virtualisation, I still wonder what the fuss is about, since it all seems so, well, virtual. But even I have to admit this (warning: highly-level geekery) is seriously heavy:Xen, an open source virtual machine (VM) monitor, works with just about any Linux distribution. One useful feature for shops that care about high availability is Xen's ability to migrate virtual machines while they are running.
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With Xen and live migration, hardware can be replaced or upgraded without interruptions in service. Applications can be freed from the hardware they run on.
Metempsychosis, anyone?
Jay Rosen is the Richard Stallman of open source journalism: he has thought the ideas and pushed for the action. So anything he came up with would be interesting, but I think that his NewAssignment.Net idea is more than that. It is:In simplest terms, a way to fund high-quality, original reporting, in any medium, through donations to a non-profit called NewAssignment.Net.
The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable. The betting is that (some) people will donate to works they can see are going to be great because the open source methods allow for that glimpse ahead.
In this sense it’s not like donating to your local NPR station, because your local NPR station says, “thank you very much, our professionals will take it from here.” And they do that very well. New Assignment says: here’s the story so far. We’ve collected a lot of good information. Add your knowledge and make it better. Add money and make it happen. Work with us if you know things we don’t.
Do read the whole post: it's long, very detailed and very well thought-out.
I hope it works. But I fear it may not, because it sounds terribly similar to schemes during dotcom 1.0 that were designed to do the same for open source. That is, somebody - companies, usually - would put up money to get particular bugs fixed. Coders would then agree to fix the bugs for the money. It was a great idea, but all fizzled out somehow.
Maybe this will work better, because people will be more engaged about stories, especially if it touches their lives in some way. But in any case, it's worth trying, especially since Craig Newmark, of craigslist, has provided $10K to give it a whirl. (Via Searchblog.)
Mention wikis, and most people think of Wikipedia. But Wikipedia is a one-off, a unique, unrepeatable example of what a wiki can be. And so its well-aired growing pains are also pretty specific to what it is and what it's trying to do. They arise mostly from the lack of a strict organisational hierarchy that allows content to be perused and ultimately policed. Strikingly, just such a hierarchy is a salient feature of all the main open source projects, from Linux down.
As a consequence, this most uncorporate of tools might just flourish best precisely in the context of a company. Why? Because there the hierarchy is already in place - it doesn't even need to be articulated, it can simply be applied in the context of a wiki. Basically, this means that more junior members of the hierarchy have to watch what they say and do more than senior ones.
That doesn't imply that they should refrain from joining in: on the contrary. The wiki is a canvas on which to display their wit and wisdom to even the most senior echelons of the company, so it would be counter-productive to abstain entirely. But it does mean that the kind of puerile activities that some get up to on Wikipedia would be self-censored.
Against this background, it's interesting to see announcements from two companies offering corporate wiki products. JotSpot applies the wiki's collaborative method to traditional tools like documents and spreadsheets. I think that's a mistake, because the wiki isn't so much a way as a thing, contrary to popular wisdom. After all, collaboration is hardly a new idea; what's new is the specific form of the wikispace in which it happens. In that respect, I prefer Socialtext's approach, especially now that it has come out with an open source version.
The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) has released its response to the British Library's Content Strategy. It's a wonderful demonstration that they don't really know what is going to hit them:We believe that a shift towards the provision of online rather than physical access is appropriate. However, customer expectations of what is possible with online content are limited only by the capabilities of the technology, and not by realistic business considerations; at the extreme, every UK citizen might expect free online access, and unhindered re-use, at home or at work to everything in the Library’s collection, which would obviously destroy the market for publishers.
Obviously. Not.
Saying that online access will "obviously" destroy the market for publishers is akin to saying - as was said - that television will obviously kill the cinema, that the cinema will obviously kill the theatre etc. etc. Those who are the gatekeepers of older technologies always fear new ones that will reduce their powers. But what happens is that new technologies tend to create new opportunities even for the older ones they appear to threaten - at least to those who are open-minded enough.
Two classic examples: MP3s have created a huge demand for songs that are no longer in the catalogues, and P2P networks are full of videos of old television shows. Think how much money they owners of these materials could make if they decided to satisfy this demand themselves, instead of trying to stifle it.
It's the same with books. Providing online versions does not kill the need for books; indeed, it is likely to encourage people to buy more, for one very simple reason. The text that you read online is not the text you read in a book, even though the characters are similar: it lacks the physical experience of bookness. It is that - not the text - that book publishers are ultimately selling.
"Obviously", judging by the comments above, and by many others elsewhere, it's going to take a long hard battle to din this idea into the heads of those in the publishing industry. (Via Open Access News.)
Another reason why the system for registering domain names needs sorting out:For quite some time numerous European registrars have been complaining that the company Ovidio is registering .eu domain names en mass. Upon looking into the complaints Eurid's legal department came to the conclusion that Ovidio Ltd., Fausto Ltd. and Gabino Ltd. had been used as a cover by some 400 registrars to "warehouse" .eu domain names.
At least this time there may be some rapped knuckles. Ultimately, though, something more thoroughgoing is required to stop this persistent abuse.
I don't pretend to know anywhere near enough about the inner dynamics of the WTO to understand what the apparent failure of the "Doha Round" means, but I live in hope that it represents some fatal weakening of the WTO globally. Especially in the area of intellectual monopolies, I can't help feeling that the WTO is a 20th-century mechanism for solving a quintessentially 21st-century problem.
I'm a big fan of Wikipedia; I use it several times a day. But that does not mean I am blind to its manifest (and manifold) faults. It does mean that I want it to get better.
So I was particularly interested to read about the latest kerfuffle involving an entry that was edited inappropriately and the battles to get it rectified, because it involved Bernard Haisch, who is the president of the Digital Universe Foundation. Digital Universe is a major project that, among other things, will offer a test of whether it is possible to use wikis to organise knowledge in such a way as to enjoy all or most of Wikipedia's advantages without its most egregious disadvantages.
Haisch's measured complaint is well worth reading. But perhaps even more interesting is Larry Sanger's comments on the incident. As the co-founder and "chief organiser" of Wikipedia from 2000 to 2002, Sanger is uniquely well-placed to draw lessons from the saga. Now might be a good time for Wikipedia to phone home and take cognisance of Sanger's views.
I'm not keen on the term 'pirates' when applied to people who copy content; its one of those blatant attempts to pre-empt the debate by adopting a deliberately loaded terminology (rather like the idea of a 'war on terror'). My view is that pirates - the real ones - were a murderous and contemptible crew whose crimes are not even remotely comparable to those who transgress one-sided and disproportionate copyright laws, and therefore the two should never be associated.
But maybe I will need to re-visit my position. Although the reality behind pirates has not changed, the public perception probably has. And that's largely thanks to two films: Pirates of the Caribbean I and II. As a result of Johnny Depp's lovable rogue, equating those who infringe on copyright with pirates might actually make the former seem rather more admirable.
But there is something else interesting going on here. "Pirates", the film, is one of the most successful in recent times; and yet, as these figures show, it is also one of the most copied/'pirated' on the P2P networks. As noted by TechDirt, this goes to show in the most dramatic way possible, that despite what movie execs say, their films can "compete with free" -- and do pretty well. Whether it's offering something more convenient, offering moviegoers a better experience, or using free content as a jumping-off point to sell people other stuff, there's lots of ways movie studios and theaters can thrive in the face of file-sharing. But to do that, they've got to own up to the obvious, and quit blaming piracy instead of changing how they do business.
As the open meme sweeps through field after field, there is a tendency to assume that openness on its own is enough. But as this wise post by Pedro Beltrão about open science explains, there's something else you need if you are to get the full benefits of opening up: modularity.
Open source thrives because major tasks are split up into smaller ones, joined by clean interfaces. This enables tasks to be distributed, and sometimes performed in parallel. Competition operates at the level of the small tasks - the best solutions are chosen - rather than at the top level, which is how proprietary software typically works.
But as Beltrão points out, science is still encouraging competition at the topmost level - at the point when results are published - which leads to teams being scooped and work wasted. Far more sensible if the whole were split up into smaller tasks where competition can operate more fruitfully, and he has some practical suggestions about how that might be achieved.
Being of the older generation, I've never really gone wild over YouTube. But I recognise and salute its cultural importance, because it represents yet another instance of people's innate desire to share. But as this post by fellow old fogey John Battelle points out, YouTube has a big problem: the majority of its content is basically illegal according to current copyright laws.
So here we have a young people's phenomenon that is spreading like wildfire, and that is doomed once the Content Commissariat realise what's going on and decide to get their legal clubs out. In other words, it's Napster 2.0.
There is a great irony at the heart of the Internet. Free software and its characteristic distributed development method were made possible by the Internet. Similarly, many of the earliest free software programs - Sendmail, BIND etc. - helped create the Internet. And yet today, the knots of the Net's interconnections - the routers - are generally proprietary (and usually from Cisco).
So here's an idea: how about creating an open source router? Enter Vyatta, which is doing precisely that. It's been working on the idea for a while, and, according to GigaOM, is close to launching its first product.
Assuming they get it right, I don't see any reason why this shouldn't steadily chip away at Cisco's dominant market share, just as every other open alternative to commoditised products has done. As they do, expect other open source solutions to enter this market soon.
When will they ever learn?Unlike traditional forms of identification, the VeriChip can’t be lost, stolen, misplaced, or counterfeited.
That's what the human-implantable RFID VeriChip site says. And this is what happened at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) 6 conference:two presenters demonstrated the electronic equivalent of making a copy of an implanted RFID or radio frequency ID chip.
The point was to show just how easy it is to fool a detection device that purports to uniquely identify any individual.
So let's just do a quick recap: which technologies are available for establishing identity unambiguously these days?
Irises: nope
Faces: nope
Fingerprints: nope
DNA: nope
Implanted RFID: nope
So, tell me Mr Blair, how exactly you were going to implement this ID card system in a way that it can't be spoofed to hell?
Apparently, Benjamin Horst has succeeded in rustling up enough dosh to take out an ad for OpenOffice.org, along the lines of the big Firefox ad campaign. Well done, that man.
This is doubly good news. First, because OpenOffice.org will gain some useful publicity, and secondly, because it shows that the Firefox ad was not just a one-off. In this sense, these campaigns point the way for future open source marketing drives.
I knew that GoDaddy was evil, but this tie-up between the company and Google suggests that the latter is moving deep into the darkness too.
The scheme goes by the inglorious name of "CashParking": basically, it encourages scammers to register every possible domain name, and then load the home pages up with Google AdSense to generate some money from the poor individuals who wander there by mistake. As a result, it will reduce the overall attractiveness and value of the Web, and encourage even more of this behaviour. Typical parasitism, in other words.
Shame on you, Google: aren't your soaraway profits enough? (Via Searchblog.)
Here's a useful round-up of free software projects at the United Nations - there's more than you might think. Pity that this section is so mealy-mouthed:Most of the traditional software industry has its base in the developed world; there is concern that promoting FOSS could hurt this industry. From the developing countries' perspective, however, FOSS is a way to introduce competition in order to lower costs and expand options. The different views of the role of software in development have hindered the UN's ability to create a single coherent strategy for FOSS to apply to all member states.
Free software does not "hurt" the traditional industry, it merely brings a much-needed balance between users and suppliers. Business models may change, but as IBM and others have shown, there's plenty of money to be made under this new regime. To phrase it in terms of "hurt" gives succour to outdated and paternalistic practices that have no place in the new computing landscape.
This stuff is getting too easy.
First, find some ancient remains - Croatian Neanderthal bones are great. Next, sequence lots - at least 20 times coverage. Don't worry if all you're getting are tiny fragments with around 100 DNA letters, and the signal is vastly swamped by bacterial noise. Just bung the results into a computer, and tell it (a) to cancel out all bacterial genome sequences (b) to join up all the rest. Result: one Neanderthal genome.
There's just one problem:If the Neanderthal genome were fully recovered, it might in principle be possible to bring the species back from extinction by inserting the Neanderthal genome into a human egg and having volunteers bear Neanderthal infants. There would, however, be great technical and ethical barriers to any such venture.
Understatement of the Year, Number 369.
First cars, then trains, now planes. New Scientist is reporting that it is now possible to create almost an entire plane by "printing" the components:In rapid prototyping, a three-dimensional design for a part - a wing strut, say - is fed from a computer-aided design (CAD) system to a microwave-oven-sized chamber dubbed a 3D printer. Inside the chamber, a computer steers two finely focussed, powerful laser beams at a polymer or metal powder, sintering it and fusing it layer by layer to form complex, solid 3D shapes.
Two things are interesting here. First, this is precisely what Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, has been predicting for years. Indeed, he sees Project Gutenberg, which essentially lets you print your own books, as just the first, quite small step in the next industrial revolution, where physical objects will be printed routinely.
Secondly, note that the parts are printed under the control of a software program. So if the program and the data are open, this means that effectively the physical object will also be open. As usual, openness brings with it all the usual advantages of speed and lack of redundancy - you can re-use parts or parts of parts in other designs to create quickly entirely new objects.
The group behind the Adelphi Charter has apparently proposed that the UK Patent Office be replaced with an Office of Intellectual Property:The proposed new statutory body, the Office of Intellectual Property, with the suggested acronym OfIP, would cover all kinds of IP, including copyright and patents, and would have to report annually to the British Parliament on its activity, said John Howkins, director of the Creative Economy Forum, which put forward the proposal. The forum is a group of international IP experts - business, academics, non-governmental organisation representatives - interested in the creative economy.
An interesting idea, though I'm not wild about enshrining the term "intellectual property" in the title: how about the Office of Intellectual Monopolies? That's got a nice Orwellian ring about it.
Our bodies are open. That is, unless we are planning some criminal activity, we do not try to hide the basic physical facts about ourselves - our voice, our face, our eyes, our fingerprints. Unfortunately, these are precisely the characteristics that biometric ID schemes depend on for verification. This is tantamount to walking around with a large sign saying "my password is xxxx".
And this isn't just my opinion. Here's what one Bori Toth, biometric research and advisory lead at Deloitte & Touche, no less, has to say on the subject:Many people are trying to regard biometrics as secret but they aren't. Our faces and irises are visible and our voices are being recorded. Fingerprints and DNA are left everywhere we go and it's been proved that these are real threats.
So the use of precisely these spoofable biometrics is just one more reason to bin the whole idiotic ID card idea, which rather depends on them being foolproof. (Via Slashdot.)
Here's a good analysis and general round-up of why Microsoft's decision to produce an extremely spiffy and completely different interface for Office 2007 was as bad a move as a very bad move can be. For me, the killer quote is:OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office Currently Look More Similar Than Office 2003 and Office 2007
Training your users to go from Office 2003, or before, to OpenOffice.org, might be easier than teaching them the whole new Office 2007 system.
Just how easy is Microsoft trying to make the decision to jump to OpenOffice.org?
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