Open Source Hardware: A Meme That Won't Die

Open source hardware is nice in theory, but currently self-contradictory in practice. The key thing about open source is that it's generated by code, and the code can be hacked. The same is true of open content, open data, open genomics and the rest. Until they come out with better fabbers whose underlying generative code is both available and hackable, we're doomed to pale imitations of true open source hardware.

In the meantime, Bug Labs has come up with a fun waystation on the road to that end goal:

BUG is a collection of easy-to-use, open source hardware modules, each capable of producing one or more Web services. These modules snap together physically and the services connect together logically to enable users to easily build, program and share innovative devices and applications. With BUG, we don't define the final products - you do.

Note that one key open source feature that you can reproduce in hardware is modularity, and indeed it's key to Bug's approach. And in a real sense, Bug has its heart in the right place:

BUGbase is the foundation of your BUG device. It's a fully programmable and "hackable" Linux computer, equipped with a fast CPU, 128MB RAM, built-in WiFi, rechargeable battery, USB, Ethernet, and a small LCD with button controls.

Steve Jobs as a Ratchet of Openness

Normally, I would hawk and spit at the mere mention of the iPhone, since it's not exactly an open platform. But here's a more measured analysis of what's going on:

This is, in other words, a one-way ratchet in the right direction. Every time a handset maker wrings increased openness out of one wireless carrier, and thereby produces a handset that's superior to what's already on the market, that device will set a new baseline for the capabilities a phone should have. And the other carriers will have little choice but to follow suit by allowing similar features on their own networks. It may take a long time, but de facto open networks will get here eventually.

Put this way, I suppose we can say that more generally Jobs has been a ratchet of openness - for example, there's no doubt that it was the iPod that paved the way for DRM-less music, even if, ironically, it has not itself eschewed DRM. Perhaps we need individuals like Jobs, who, though outside the open world, are important catalysts for change towards openness.

Thus Spake Yochai

I am still optimistic. It does seem that people have been opting for open systems when they have been available, and that has provided a strong market push against the efforts to close down the 'Net. Social practices, more prominently the widespread adoption of participation in peer production, social sites, and DIY media, are the strongest source of pushback. As people practice these freedoms, one hopes that they will continue to support them, politically, but most powerfully perhaps, with their buying power and the power to divert their attention to open platforms rather than closed. This, the fact that decentralized action innovates more quickly, and that people seem to crave the freedom and creativity that it gives them, is the most important force working in favor of our capturing and extending the value of an open network.

Sigh; my hero.

Letting Floggers Go Hang

This seems pretty unexceptionable, if a little hard to police consistently:

Under laws due to come into force at the beginning of next year, but likely to be delayed until April for the UK, companies posing as consumers on fake blogs, providing fake testimonies on consumer rating websites such as TripAdvisor, or writing fake book reviews on Amazon risk criminal or civil liability.

What's interesting is that blogging and its attendant problem of fake blogging - aka flogging - is considered important enough to warrant pan-European legislation of this kind. Gosh, we must be doing something right.

P2P'ers (Heart) CDs

Imagine:

A newly study commissioned by Industry Canada, which includes some of the most extensive surveying to date of the Canadian population on music purchasing habits, finds what many have long suspected (though CRIA has denied) - there is a positive correlation between peer-to-peer downloading and CD purchasing.

So tell me again why the music industry is pursuing the P2P crowd with such ferocity? Death wish, perhaps?

Credible, Moi?

"We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users."

So even though at least 1 per cent of people use GNU/Linux, according to most estimates, for some strange reason, 170,400 of those studiously avoid all interaction with BBC sites.

Yes, Ashley, that's really likely, isn't it? I mean, it's not that you're desperately trying to justify an unjustifiable course of action by clutching desperately at any old number you happen upon?

Update: Whilst observing the twisting in the wind on Ashley's blog (notice how suddenly he uses a conveniently smaller number - 12.2 million - for the BBC audience to reduce the GNU/Linux numbers here), I've just spotted this:

I have done a couple of interviews with silicon.com and our own BBC Backstage to try and move on the dialogue from why we needed to make the decisions we did, to where we go from here, and to how we intend moving forwards towards universal access to our content in the UK. These are intended to open more meaningful conversation based on a mutual understanding of the issues and practicalities we face.

This is pure Blair-speak (remember him?): whenever he was unable to win an argument by logic, he always invoked the "we need to move on" - which meant "I'm going to do it anyway". Ashley's use of the same trope explains a lot....

Browser Wars 2.0

Didn't we get all this sorted out a few years back?

Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich and Microsoft's Chris Wilson are trading heated rhetoric over the proposed next version of ECMAScript, better known as JavaScript.

This matters, of course, because JavaScript has become an indispensable part of Web 2.0 technologies.

Finding Your Way in the Open Geospatial World

It is clear that geospatial capabilities are going to be big, and this means the open source community needs to expand its work in this field. That's just been made easier by Autodesk, which:

recently announced plans to donate its coordinate system (CS) and map projection technology to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). The software, acquired from Mentor Software will help users to more easily support geographic coordinate conversions and allow accurate and precise geospatial analysis. This planned donation joins other previous Open Source donations by the company, including the web mapping MapGuide and the geospatial data access technology (FDO) software, both donated last year.

The rest of the interview offers some useful background to the kind of stuff that will be coming through, and how open source fits in.

Deconstructing the gPhone

One of the reasons I've been writing about Google's purportedly-imminent gPhone is because of its knock-on effect on the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem. Here's a Forbes feature exploring the same idea:

Industry efforts such as the Mobile Linux Initiative, however, would allow Google to move into mobile without pushing aside some potential partners. Of the three largest handset makers, both Motorola and Samsung have placed big bets on Linux-powered handsets, with Nokia trying out a smaller number of smart phones and tablets. Putting out an open-source collection of software would allow all three to integrate Google's services into its efforts.

This is an important point. When there are several competing systems, the best way to agree on a common standard is to adopt something completely different that offers the same competitive advantage to everyone. That's why companies have been lining up to back GNU/Linux, and junking their own, older Unix flavours (well, everyone except Sun).

Desperately Seeking Pamela

Groklaw's Pamela Jones is a true eminence grise of the area in the intellectual Venn diagram where computer technology and law intersect. And yet, as befits her eminent greyness, she's a shadowy figure - some have even gone so far as to claim that she does not exist.

Against that background, this interview is all-the-more welcome, not least because it contains insights from PJ such as the following:

What is so unique about IP and FOSS is that computers are a relatively recent thing. So is FOSS. So there are people still alive who remember very well the early days, the beginnings. That has implications for prior art searching, for example. It had implications in the SCO litigation, because when SCO made broad claims in the media, there were people saying, "That's not so. I was there. It was like this..."

Oh yeah: now, why didn't I think of that?

MySpace and Bebo Back OpenSocial: Oh My!

This open stuff is getting popular:

MySpace and Bebo, two of the world’s largest social networking sites, today joined a Google-led alliance that is promoting a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks.

As that nice Mr Schmidt explains:

“The most important principle about openness is that everyone is invited to join,” said Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive.

Got that, Facebook?

Crowdsourcing Sousveillance (Again)

I can't help feeling this will ultimately link with the story about wireless memory cards:

Software that turns groups of ordinary camera cellphones into a "smart" surveillance network has been developed by Swiss researchers. The team says it will release the software for programmers and users to experiment with.

Not least because:

The researchers plan to release Facet as an open-source project, allowing anyone to use or modify its code, and to experiment with networked camera phones running the software. "Because of the way we implemented it, the whole thing will run in Java on virtually any phone you want," Bolliger says. "It will be very nice to see what people come up with."

(Via The Inquirer.)

Long Live LibriVox

To my shame, I only discovered the wonderful LibriVox recently. Now it's passed a milestone in its short history:

Well, we did it. We just cataloged our 1,000th book, and for that a huge thank you must go out to everyone who has ever said or written the word LibriVox. Thank you first to the readers for lending their voices to something wonderful; to the Book Coordinators who pull things together; to the Meta Coordinators who get all this audio up on the net; to the Moderators who keep things running smoothly on our forum. And of course the other people: the proof listeners, the catalog development team, the web site designers and fixers, and all the forum volunteers of every stripe.

And more: to our listeners, and supporters, to Dan for keeping the servers running; to the Internet Archive for providing hosting for all our media, which makes it all possible; to Project Gutenberg (and other public domain projects) for liberating all this wonderful text onto the web.

And of course a big thank you to all our families and friends who live with our varying levels of LibriVox addiction.

Interesting to note that LibriVox feeds (in the nicest possible way) off Project Gutenberg, another great digital commons. Interesting, too, to see that they call LibriVox an "addiction"; that's what makes these projects so great: sheer, unadulterated dependancy.... (Via Michael Geist.)

Bring on the Fair Use Dolphins

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the unsatisfactory UGC Principles put together by media companies, particularly with regard to the exiguous recognition of fair use. Well, good news, chaps, those nice people at the EFF have put together a document *totally* about Fair Use Principles for User Generated Video Content:

Online video hosting services like YouTube are ushering in a new era of free expression online. By providing a home for “user-generated content” (UGC) on the Internet, these services enable creators to reach a global audience without having to depend on traditional intermediaries like television networks and movie studios. The result has been an explosion of creativity by ordinary people, who have enthusiastically embraced the opportunities created by these new technologies to express themselves in a remarkable variety of ways.

The life blood of much of this new creativity is fair use, the copyright doctrine that permits unauthorized uses of copyrighted material for transformative purposes. Creators naturally quote from and build upon the media that makes up our culture, yielding new works that comment on, parody, satirize, criticize, and pay tribute to the expressive works that have come before. These forms of free expression are among those protected by the fair use doctrine.

New video hosting services can also be abused, however. Copyright owners are legitimately concerned that a substantial number works posted to some UGC video sites are simply unauthorized, verbatim copies of their works. Some of these rightsholders have sued service providers, and many utilize the “notice-and-takedown” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove videos that they believe are infringing. At the same time, a broad consensus has emerged among major copyright owners that fair use must be accommodated even as steps are taken to address copyright infringement.

All good stuff, but the best bit is the following principle:

Informal “Dolphin Hotline”: Every system makes mistakes, and when fair use “dolphins” are caught in a net intended for infringing “tuna,” an escape mechanism must be available to them.

I don't think we're in Kansas any more.

Software Patents: Abolition Now!

One of the constant themes of this blog is the pernicious effect of software patents - both in countries where they exist, like the US, and even elsewhere, like the UK, where they don't, because of knock-on effects. So it's good to see that someone is finally getting to grips with the problem on the other side of the pond:

What could make the Free Software Foundation (FSF), proprietary software companies, and at least one venture capitalist into allies? The End Software Patents (ESP) coalition, a new organization poised to swing into action next month under the leadership of Ben Klemens.

The campaign currently has seed funding of a quarter million dollars from sources those associated with the group won't disclose, and hopes to augment that with donations from individuals and companies for a struggle that, to judge by the usual amount of time it takes to push major changes through the US Supreme Court, could take five years or more to complete.

I won't be holding my breath on this one, but it can only help raise awareness and - ultimately - lead to some sanity being brought into a seriously broken system.

Wireless Memory Card

Although this isn't directly concerned with open source, I predict a lot of clever open source coders will start hacking this system and doing interesting things with the idea:

Eye-Fi Inc., a company dedicated to helping people navigate, nurture and share their digital memories, today unveiled the Eye-Fi Card — the world’s first wireless SD memory card for digital cameras. The Eye-Fi Card uses home Wi-Fi networks to create an effortless and convenient way for users to send photographs directly from digital cameras to PCs, Macs and online photo and social networking sites.

(Via openspectrum.info.)

Beyond the gPhone: the gPC

On Thursday, WalMart begins selling the Everex Green gPC TC2502, a $198, low-power, Linux-based PC designed primarily for running Web 2.0 applications.

When users first fire up their gPC, they'll get a Mac-like desktop with a series of program icons "docked" across the bottom. The icons are bookmarks to popular and useful Web 2.0 services from Google and other vendors. There are icons for Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube, for example, as well as Meebo, Facebook, and Wikipedia. Sprinkled into the lineup are some non-Web-based apps, like Skype and Gimp, but the novice user won't know, initially, which are local applications and which are Web services.

There are two really interesting things here.

One, of course is the price, which would be impossible with Microsoft Windows. The second is the way the manufacturer is trying to create a machine whose software is based around Web apps. One important aspect of this approach is that it decouples user software from the underlying operating system. So the fact that this machine is running GNU/Linux is almost at the level of what BIOS it uses.

As Google fills out its SaaS vision, so we can expect more of these extremely lean machines, for equally lean prices - and increasingly lean times for Microsoft.

Update: Apparently, this is on older Windows machine, but with a leaner OS. Why?

“Windows Vista has its own market, but it’s not on the $200 end. Those experiences aren’t good. Our Vista Basic units were selling well at $498, but it was the highest return rate ever, because the client was so heavy” and overwhelmed the hardware capabilities. To Kim, the message is Windows needs the power of a premium machine.

And as The Innovator's Dilemma teaches us, the premium market is *always* cannabalised by the cheaper models as they gain more capabilities for the same cost.

SaaS in a (Jump)Box

One of the big benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS) is that you don't need to install or configure it. The downside is that it's "only" online. Well, how about this idea for getting the best of both worlds:

A JumpBox is a virtual appliance that bundles an entire server based application into a single pre-configured unit. With a JumpBox, you have quick and simple installation on a variety of virtualization platforms.

It has the virtues of SaaS simplicity, but with the power and control of a local installation. Of course, you can only do this with free software, otherwise those closed source types go ballistic over "illegal" downloads. Poor them for missing out on this very clever idea. (Via Read/WriteWeb.)

Whatever the Question, the Answer's GNU/Linux

It's interesting that whenever people try to come up with low-cost machines for developing countries, the answer is GNU/Linux. The OLPC/XO is the best-known example, but here's another one:

Rather than one inexpensive laptop per child, the answer being presented is a somewhat more powerful computer, with zero maintenance or moving parts, which can be shared by a number of children running free and open source software.

Of course, it's pretty obvious why: the cost of software is zero, which means there's no money there wasted on fat cats in Western countries. But there's another interesting angle:

Perhaps the oddest technical feature of the tablet-style PC is the fact that it runs an ARM-based RISC CPU, the Freescale i.mx31. The key reason for choosing this RISC CPU over a conventional x86 Intel or AMD processor was battery life. Morgan explained that this CPU's power envelope of just 3.5 watts made an 8-hour use possible. The other key reason was that this particular chip had strong video and graphics capabilities, which would be needed to show videos and animations in a classroom environment.

The downside is that it does not run the vast amount of x86 software out there.

The operating system is a cut down version of Debian Linux, recompiled for the ARM architecture, complete with most of the office and communications software expected in a GNU/Linux system.

Oh look: there's that wide platform support again: is this turning into one of open source's best-kept secrets? (Via Linux Today).

Loongson: GNU/Linux's Longshot

One of the under-appreciated strengths of GNU/Linux is its wide platform support. So what? you might sniff: the only platform that matters is Intel's. Well, yes - at the moment. But that could change courtesy of those nice people in the Middle Kingdom.

For Loongson - which readers will remember, is a Chinese chip company that has built a microprocessor surprisingly similar to one produced by MIPS - is hoping that Chinese government support will make its architecture rather important:

Once Loongson chips can meet basic demand, China plans buy them for its army, government offices, and public education. In addition, some local governments have been purchasing computers for China's rural areas to demonstrate the achievement of the "new country construction." It's estimated that China's rural areas will utilize at least 6 million computers in 2007 and 2008, giving Loongson a big boost in this arena.

Why is this good news for GNU/Linux? Because Loongson chips cannot run Windows - there is no MIPS port for XP or Vista. But there is already one for GNU/Linux, which is, amazingly enough, precisely the OS that those 6 million future machines (if they materialise) will be running. Hen hao.

Google's OpenSocial

Or should that be Open Social? - That's what a certain Marc Andreessen (now, where have I heard that name before?) calls it, and he should know:

My company, Ning, is participating in this week's launch of a new open web API called Open Social, which is being spearheaded by Google and joined by a wide range of partners including Google's own Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

* "Containers" -- social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and...

* "Apps" -- applications that want to be embedded within containers -- for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

This is the exact same concept as the Facebook platform, with two huge differences:

* With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a "container" -- "apps" can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.

* With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) -- those languages and APIs don't work anywhere other than Facebook -- and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container.

What this shows, for the nth time, is that the future history of computing is about the race towards openness, and that the company that opens up the most - as in totally - wins. Google seems to get that, even if there are still a few dark corners of its soul that could do with some sunlight.

GNU Voodoo Strikes Again

Everyone is waiting for some juicy lawsuit that will establish the validity of the GNU GPL once and for all. But the trouble is, those who fail to follow the rules of GPL keep on giving up before these things come to trial. Here's another one - the Monsoon case I wrote about a little while back:

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and Monsoon Multimedia today jointly announced that an agreement has been reached to dismiss the GPL enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox.

BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. One of the conditions of the GPL is that re-distributors of BusyBox are required to ensure that each downstream recipient is provided access to the source code of the program. Monsoon Multimedia uses BusyBox in its HAVA TV place-shifting devices.

As a result of the plaintiffs agreeing to dismiss the lawsuit and reinstate Monsoon Multimedia's rights to distribute BusyBox under the GPL, Monsoon Multimedia has agreed to appoint an Open Source Compliance Officer within its organization to monitor and ensure GPL compliance, to publish the source code for the version of BusyBox it previously distributed on its Web site, and to undertake substantial efforts to notify previous recipients of BusyBox from Monsoon Multimedia of their rights to the software under the GPL. The settlement also includes an undisclosed amount of financial consideration paid by Monsoon Multimedia to the plaintiffs.

That GNU voodoo is just too darn powerful, it seems.

Crowdsourcing the Language Ark

Samuel Johnson famously wrote an early English dictionary entirely on his own. But a far better approach today would be to write one collaboratively across the Internet, with people offering and refining definitions. And given the global nature of the Net, better make that a multilingual dictionary, too.

That's what LingoZ is trying to do. At the moment, the number of languages covered is relatively small; what I'd like to see is this widened to hundreds and then thousands of languages. As well as a useful resource in terms of translation, it could also play another important role: preserving the hundreds of languages faced with extinction as a kind of virtual ark. I'm not sure that LingoZ has the vision to do that, but somebody should. (Via eHub.)

Curling Up with Open Source

One of the heartening signs in the software industry is the continuing flow of donations to the free software commons. The latest to see the light is interesting because it's in a domain where open source code is fairly thin on the ground: Rich Internet Applications.

Curl, Inc. today announced its plans to release a significant body of code for the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform to the open source community. As the first step in its open source strategy, Curl will broaden its development platform and empower the Curl developer community by establishing a common repository of open source component libraries. As a result, developers will have all of the components required to support rapid development of enterprise-class RIAs. Curl's Open Source projects are provided under the Apache V2.0 License and hosted by SourceForge.

For tools like this, the benefits of open source are clear: people are able to try out your products much more easily, and the code can be freely passed around, growing the size of the user base for practically no cost. Indeed, the power of this kind of viral distribution is so great it's surprising there aren't more such releases. (Via 451 CAOS Theory.)

Put Me Down for X

One of the interesting ideas for replacing the current patent mess is to use a bidding system. People - or, more likely, governments - would pledge a certain amount of money for any company that developed a drug to do "Y", with the result placed in the public domain. Clearly, these sums would be relatively large, but still much less than the current system, which involves pharmaceutical companies taking out patents on drugs that cost hundreds of millions to develop, and then charging thousands of pounds per individual course, and billions cumulatively.

That's not going to happen any day soon in the world of drugs, given the latter's rather inflated ideas of its own worth (just how many copycat drugs for rectifying rich people's excesses do we need?). But it might just work in the world of free software, and Cofundos are giving it a whirl:

1 Somebody misses an open-source software tool or library for a specific purpose, a feature in an open-source software or a plugin for an existing software. He describes the project to develop the software.
2 Requirements-Engineering: Other people help enhancing the description of the project by adding specific requirements and comments.
3 Bidding: Users who also like the project and need the resulting software, bid a certain amount of money, which they will donate to the project performer after its successful completion.
4 Offering: Specialists who are capable to perform the project and to develop the respective software offer to realise the project for a certain amount of money and within a certain timeframe.
5 Call for competitive offers: As soon as the sum of the bid amount exceeds the money requested by the first offer, a call for competitive offers is started and lasts for three week.
6 Accepting an offer: After the three weeks call period for alternative offers is elapsed, all bidders are requested to vote about which offer to choose. Bidders votes are weighted by the amount of their bid. The specialist with the majority of the votes is selected to carry out the project.

Neat. And, even better:

All ideas and contributions on Cofundos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License. All project outcomes must be licensed under an OSI approved open-source license.

Also worth noting is that this could never work for closed source, since you cannot, by definition, add arbitrary functionality to such black boxes.

The only thing I'd say is that the sums on offer for new bits of code are currently rather low. This may well be lack of publicity - which is why I've giving some to what sounds like a fascinating attempt to think and do differently.

ODF - Nochmals "Ja, Danke"

Interesting:

In his words of welcome Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called ODF "a completely open and ISO-standardized format." It was thus an "excellent basis" for "a free exchange of knowledge and information in a time of globalization," he declared. This in turn was a necessary ingredient of the knowledge society, he averred. Within the Federal Government the Federal Foreign Office is considered the strongest proponent of free software. After having early on networked its foreign missions with the help of open-source programs and migrated its laptops to Linux and OpenOffice the Federal Foreign Office intends to extend its program of migration to all workstations of its diplomats by the middle of next year.

Microsoft Buys Open Source (Talent)

I predict we'll see much more of this:

Microsoft has hired the creator of the SubSonic tool set and plans to use SubSonic as a key part of an upcoming platform.

...

SubSonic will remain under the same MPL (Mozilla Public License) 1.1 license it always has and will remain as completely open source as it always has, he said. "Nothing will change at all," he said. "I'm just getting paid, essentially, to work on it."

Conery said he had been working under contract with Microsoft for about eight months before the company hired him.

He is not the first developer of open-source technology hired by Microsoft to boost its developer division. The company hired John Lam, a Ruby expert, and Jim Hugunin, who delivered an implementation of Python for .Net, among others.

This is a shrewd move for Microsoft, which is following in the footsteps of Google. As Chris DiBona told me recently:

Google has been very public in the fact that we have three primary languages, and that's C++, Java and Python. So as part of that we try to bring on staff people who are the world leaders in those projects - Josh Bloch and Neil Gafter for Java, Guido on Python, Ian Lance Taylor and Matt Austern. We do that because having those people on staff, those projects can continue to move forward, and that's good for us; and also our use of the projects informs the directions sometimes where these projects can go.

So, seeing Linux in an environment like Google informs the direction of Linux in a lot of ways, because you get to see it in an extremely high-load, high-availability environment that you don't really see that often, and you see it on commodity hardware here. So that's really good for the outside world that Andrew [Morton] gets to see that, and that Andrew can really code whatever he wants.

You can't buy love, but you can certainly buy influence.

Now We Are (HTML) 5

Remember HTML? It's (nearly) back:

This specification introduces features to HTML and the DOM that ease the authoring of Web-based applications. Additions include the context menus, a direct-mode graphics canvas, inline popup windows, and server-sent events.

(Via Heise Online.)

Willy Nilly, Ageing Rocker Gets With It

Sir Cliff Richard, Tony's bosom pal, was one of the leading, er, lights in the effort to extend the sound copyright to a mere 95 years, instead of the current 50. Happily, that failed, but it's nonetheless surprising to see the music of the said musical knight being used for a nice bit of innovative thinking from EMI, one of the few music companies that seems to get it:

Benefiting from one of the first new digital directions from the new owners of EMI, from today, his latest album Love, The Album, goes for sale via online pre-order at £7.99 - with the price dropping the more fans make the purchase. The collection has a floor minimum of £3.99 and, no matter when a customer pre-ordered, they'll only pay the lowest final price.

Old Fogies Grok Openness, OK?

The Telegraph is a bastion of, er, right-thinking people; it also has an age profile that is similarly to the right. So I was astonished to read this review of the dinky little Asus Eee PC (I want one, I want one), which says things like this:

Asus has kept the cost down by using open-source software – it runs a Linux operating system rather than Windows, although future versions will be available with Windows; uses OpenOffice (oppenoffice.org) for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations; and has the excellent Firefox web browser for surfing the internet.

...

Asus assures me that most peripherals, such as printers and iPods, will work fine, as long as you download the necessary Linux driver.

...

At just over £200, people may be weighing it up against other options, such as an entry-level "normal" laptop, compromising an element of portability for additional computing functionality. Dell's laptops, for example, start at around £329 if you opt for one running the Linux Ubuntu operating system, or £399 for one running Windows.

In other words, it treats GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and open source as, well, normal. If this kind of stuff is appearing in the Telegraph - and the retired colonels aren't choking on the kedgeree when they read it - we're truly making progress.

A Brief History of the Software Patent Mess

As fascinating video of former Red Hat General Counsel, Mark Webbink, explaining where software patents came from in the US, and how Microsoft suddenly became fond of them.

In the Digital Age, Analogue Makes the Money

Further hints that the way to make money with digital content is to go analogue:

Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

"For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release," said Matador's Patrick Amory. "The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music."

Yup, yup and yup.

Well and Truly Bug.gd

Here's an interesting application of Linus's Law: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". The site bug.gd puts up an error message, and hopes someone can explain what to do. The frightening thing is this fact from TechCrunch:

Bug.gd has been seeded with 60,000 error messages and solution from Microsoft

Microsoft has solved 60,000 error messages? So how many million are left?

Oh, Well Done, Microsoft

Look: little Johnny Microsoft is doing *ever* so well in his plucky attempt to catch up with that clever GNU/Linux chap:

Microsoft Corp has made progress in getting its Windows software to work on a low-cost laptop computer for poor children that currently runs on rival Linux software, an executive said on Thursday.

The world's largest software company is now working to adapt a basic version of Windows XP so it is compatible with the nonprofit One Laptop per Child Foundation's small green-and-white XO laptop.

"We're spending a nontrivial amount of money on it," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Will Poole said in an interview on Thursday."

But be warned:

"We remain hopeful with our progress to date, we still have significant work ahead to finalize our analysis and testing processes," he said. "At the end of the day, there's no guarantees."

So, just remember that: when you're dealing with Windows XP, there are no guarantees. Unlike with GNU/Linux, of course, since it runs rather nicely on the XO already. Now, which would *you* rather have?

Intellectual Monopolies Are No Privilege

We often call copyright a species of intellectual property, abbreviating it, “IP.” This brief paper suggests that we consider copyright as another sort of IP: an intellectual privilege.

When I first saw this idea, I thought it was wrong, but for the right reasons: "intellectual property" does not exist, but calling it "intellectual privilege" is not the way to flag that up. For the lay person, it makes it sound like it's a privilege to access it. Let's call them what they really are: intellectual monopolies - which nobody is going to mistake for something nice and cuddly.

Against this background, I was glad to see Mike Masnick, that bellwether of sound thinking on these issues, broadly in agreement with me:

I'd tend to side more with those who refer to it as an intellectual monopoly, as that's much more descriptive. Intellectual privilege, for all the niceness of retaining the "IP" designation, probably requires too much explanatory baggage.

Good News, Ulaanbaatar

For my one reader in Mongolia, good news:

President Nambaryn Enkhbayar of Mongolia announced today his commitment to provide every child in his nation with a connected laptop by the end of 2010.

As a first step toward making this a reality Professor Nicholas Negroponte, founding chairman of the non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and Mr. Nyamaa Enkhbold, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Mongolia, agreed to launch the OLPC initiative in Mongolia as early as January 2008 and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) thereof in the presence of President Enkhbayar.

In January, Mongolia and OLPC plan to launch a pilot project providing 20,000 units of the acclaimed XO laptops, to children ages 6 to 12 in the most remote parts of the country, as well as in the capital Ulaanbaatar.

I'll get me yurt....

It's a Fair Cop (But Society's To Blame)

Here's a heartening sign that the change of management at the top of the UK government (no names, no pack drill) is resulting in a little more rationality.

A few months ago, the government announced its intention of reining in the Freedom of Information Act by making it possible to refuse to give information on the basis that it would cost too much to do so (trust Tony to use tricks like this to get what he wanted.) Now that nice Mr Brown has killed this absurd idea:

In the consultation process, the majority of respondents opposed the proposed changes to the fees regulations. This was particularly the case with responses from media organisations, other non-governmental organisations and members of the public.

However, some public authorities, especially local authorities, welcomed the prospect of some relief from the administrative burden of the FOI Act.

Taking account of the range of responses received, the Government has decided to make no changes to the existing fees regulations.

It does intend, however, to deliver a package of measures to make better use of the existing provisions to improve the way FOI works and to meet the concerns particularly of local authorities.

The last par is still a bit worrying, but kudos to the government for actually *listening* to people when they were asked for their opinions.... (Via The Reg.)

High-Def, Low Interest

worrying about the high-def format war is a waste of time. And to be quite honest, I don't see these formats being around much longer anyway--movie downloads will quickly supplant media as the chosen form of entertainment once our Internet access speeds increase.

Quite. Part of the problem is that the manufacturers are more interested in "solving" the problem of copying than providing something that users want. No wonder the public doesn't really give a damn.

The Battle for the Soul of WHOIS

I am sufficiently long in the Internet tooth to remember the blissful days before ICANN existed. I say blissful, because from where I sit practically every change it has wrought has led to a degradation of the Internet's naming system: it is more driven by financial rather than technical concerns, more subject to lobbying, and generally more of a mess than it was ten years ago.

And now it looks like ICANN is up to yet more of the same, according to this post by Doc Searls about the battle for the soul of WHOIS (and doncha just the Beowulf references?):

Raise your hand if you use whois every day. Even if your hand isn't up, and you just regard whois as am essential sysadmin tool, this post is for you.

Because if you're interested in keeping whois working for the those it was made for in the first place, you need to visit the battlefield where whois' future is being determined right now. That is, you must be Beowulf to the Grendel that is the Intellectual Property Community. Worse, you must confront him in the vast cave that is ICANN.

Except ICANN is more like Grendel's cave, only a helluva lot bigger, and far more boring. It's easy for an outsider to be daunted by ICANN's labyrinthine bureaucracy, its complex processes, its mountain of documents, the galactic scale of its influence, the ecclesiology of its high-level gatherings and its near-countless topics of concern.

The real problem is summarised thus:

the intellectual property folks see whois as their enforcement database, and are working toward making that its primary purpose. Those two purposes are at odds, and that's what the debate is all about. Except so far the public comments have come mostly from just one side.

This is largely because of the completely opaque way in which ICANN operates. If I had my way, we'd get rid of it entirely, and start again; but given the vested interests at play, that's not exactly likely to happen.

"Open Source Does Not Mean Free": Huh?

Here's an interesting little to do:

Open Source does not mean Free: Why we are declaring a license for the community database

...

Very shortly you will notice an important change to our GPLv3 Resource site [at http://gpl3.palamida.com/]. This week's events have led to the decision to add a Creative Commons License (CCL) to the site to ensure that recent blatant plagiarism of our database contents by a newly launched GPLv3 site will be duly credited and/or cease. After two days of intense investigation, we have confirmed that most of our database has been copied directly – word for word and misspelling for misspelling, with very few original additions to our initial work. We feel that that this secondary site does a disservice to the open source community that has for many months diligently contributed data to our database, assisted in correcting discrepancies, and supported the accurate and timely tracking of GPLv2 and v3 conversations and conversions. It has always been the aim of Palamida to run our Resource Site like an open source project – encouraging collaboration, edits, transparency and commentary – so we understand that our data has always been free for re-distribution. However, we did not anticipate the entirety of our database being re-copied and re-packaged as original information without appropriately referencing Palamida as the source. We are disappointed to have to add any sort of copyright but have chosen an open source license in hopes of continuing the spirit of the resource.

Well, I hate to break it to you chaps, but if your original licence allowed the database to be copied (and I don't know if that's the case, but let's assume it is) it's a bit unfair to complain when someone, er, copies it. If you want credit - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to want - make sure the licence reflects that. If you don't want people to copy it, fine, but then it ain't "like an open source project".

Basically, sharing means sharing - and open source *does* mean free (subject to complying with the licence.) (Via C|net.)

O(A) Look: Now There's a Surprise

As I've mentioned, getting OA to US-funded research is proving incredibly difficult. Here's one reason why:

In a list of Sen. James Inhofe's top contributors for the 2001-2006 Senate election cycle, Opensecrets.Org identifies Reed Elsevier Inc. as his 11th largest contributor, with $13,250 in contributions. Opensecrets.Org notes:

The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Before he withdrew them, Sen. Inhofe was the sponsor of two amendments to delete or weaken the NIH Open Access Mandate in the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill.

I'm almost ashamed to have worked for Reed Elsevier long, long ago.

Open Source Mathematics

Suppose Jane is a well-known mathematician who announces she has proved a theorem. We probably will believe her, but she knows that she will be required to produce a proof if requested. However, suppose now Jane says a theorem is true based partly on the results of software. The closest we can reasonably hope to get to a rigorous proof (without new ideas) is the open inspection and ability to use all the computer code on which the result depends. If the program is proprietary, this is not possible. We have every right to be distrustful, not only due to a vague distrust of computers but because even the best programmers regularly make mistakes.

Seems pretty obvious, really: no open source, no transparency, no way of following the logic, no proof: QED.

And if you can't really believe closed source for maths or science, why should you believe it in business? How can you check an accountancy program, say, if you can't see the code? And don't even get me started on closed-source e-voting machines... (Via The Inquirer.)

Gawd Bless Project Gutenberg

I wrote recently about the tragedy of losing the IMSLM music score commons. Well, it looks like Mr Digital Commons himself, Michael Hart (he was the first, remember - Project Gutenberg began over a decade before GNU) has stepped in with a great offer to take it under his wing:

Project Gutenberg has volunteered to keep as much of the IMSLM Project online as is legally possible, including a few of the items that were demanded to be withdrawn, as well as, when legal, to provide a backup of the entire site, for when the legalities have finally been worked out.

This is a doubly good outcome: all that hard work is not lost, and it gets better infrastructure (and probably more access to legal advice.) (Via Slashdot.)

SA Adopts ODF

The club just got larger:

Open Document format (ODF) yesterday became an official standard for South African government communications.

The ODF standard is included in the government's Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) released yesterday.

In the foreword to the document, department of public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, says that "this updated version of MIOS contains an explicit definition of open standards as well as the inclusion of the ISO Open Document Format".

(Via tuxmachines.org.)

Amigo: Open Source's New Friend?

Fifteen of Europe’s leading companies and research establishments in mobile and home networking, software development, consumer electronics and domestic appliances have joined together in Amigo – an integrated project that will realize the full potential of home networking to improve people’s lives.

...

The Amigo project will further support interoperability between equipment and services within the networked home environment by using standard technology when possible and by making the basic middleware (components and infrastructure) and basic user services available as open source software together with architectural rules for everyone to use.

Interesting in itself, there are couple of other aspects that make it even more so.

First, this is a massively-funded EU jobbie:

Budget
Total cost: 24 MEuro
Funding: 13 MEuro

Secondly, the list of participants in this, er, open source project is also of note:

Project participants:
Philips Research - Philips Design - Philips Consumer Electronics (the Netherlands), Fagor (Spain), France Telecom (France), Fraunhofer IMS (Germany), Fraunhofer SIT (Germany), Ikerlan (Spain), INRIA (France), Italdesign Giugiaro (Italy), SingularLogic (Greece), Microsoft (Germany), Telin (the Netherlands), ICCS (Greece), Telefónica I+D (Spain), University of Paderborn (Germany), VTT (Finland)

Oh look, there's those nice open source people from Microsoft. Well, maybe not exactly open source, since at the bottom of this massive list of downloadable files, we have the following Microsoft EMIC Amigo License, which actually turns out to be a shared source licence, not open source.

Apparently:

The Microsoft EMIC Amigo License applies to the following components:
- Content Distribution Interface
- Data Store
- .NET Programming & Deployment Framework
- Security & Privacy (.NET version)

Now, life is too short for me to try to get my head around this massive project to work out whether these components are indispensable to the entire project, or just bits of it; but if they are, I'd like to suggest, ever so 'umbly, that our super-duper Amigo may be a friend but it ain't really open source. And even if they aren't, it's still a tad confusing that we have Microsoft with shared source lumped in rather sneakily with the open source stuff. (Via Heise News.)

The US Slouches Towards Open Access

Good news, America:

Tonight the Senate passed the Labor-HHS appropriations bill containing the provision to mandate OA at the NIH. More, the vote was a veto-proof 75-19.

Ah, yes, but the bad news?

Yes, this is big, even if we cleared this hurdle only to face a Bush veto.

It is extraordinary how difficult it is proving to give the US people access to the research they pay for.

SCO Zombie May Take a Few More Steps

The SCO saga may stagger on awhile:

SCO has gotten a $16 million bid from York Capital for its Unix business. Coupled with the $10 million line of credit York is ready to provide, it's money enough to keep SCO's litigation against Novell and IBM going and to underwrite its budding mobile interests, the company says. SCO's lawyers will be filing papers related to the bid this afternoon with the bankruptcy court in Delaware.

...

The deal SCO has cut with York would reportedly leave SCO with ownership of the litigation and what is being called the "core IP," apparently any IP necessary to the lawsuits. York, a $12 billion Manhattan firm known to buy small software companies with declining revenues and turn them around, would get a 20% interest in any licenses SCO's litigation produces. Say, if circumstances conspired to allow SCO to restart its hated SCOSource Linux licensing scheme. York would also get the right to license SCO's Unix source code and get control of its contracts with licensees. York is expected to invest in the business, which includes a bunch of sterling accounts, and attempt to grow it.

Haven't people got better things to do with their lives?

Funk That (Gutsy) Gibbon

Like half the world and their dog, I have upgraded my Ubuntu box to Gutsy Gibbon. Many things have been written about this (the finest probably being this utterly quintessential masterpiece by Rupert Goodwins - geek writing at its finest), but one point that hasn't really been hammered home enough, in my opinion, is the fact that the upgrade required precisely three clicks (in my case - YMMV).

Think about it. For "other" operating system, you not only have *pay* to upgrade, but you have to stick in discs and god knows what. With Ubuntu, you just issue your peremptory command "upgrade", and Ubuntu toddles off to the right repositories, and does it. Automatically. I mean, how much easier can it be?

I'm sure that once people experience this they will never go back to those "other" operating systems. And that's not even taking into account the similarly trivial way in which you can install tens of thousands of new programs with the same single click command.

So, just how good does Ubuntu have to get before people see the (brown) light?

A Taste(Book) of the Future of Publishing

Publishers continue to fret over their precious texts appearing online, worrying that there's no business model for them if the content is already "out there". Well, take a look at this for an alternative vision of publishing in the future:

TasteBook is a service that lets users take their favorite recipes from partner sites (starting with Epicurious) and create printed cookbooks that are delivered to them and/or friends. Users can add their own recipes as well, and customize the book with their name and other information. Blurb, which was recently in the news, is somewhat similar but does not focus on recipes.

I predict this will happen more and more, and publishers realise their job is about, well, publishing - producing objects with words in them. In other words, the money is in the analogue stuff - the digital you give away as promotion.

Another One Bites the GNU GPL Bullet

A little while back, I wrote a piece for Linux Journal about how GPLv3 would supplant GPLv2. Why? Because the GPL has gradually supplanted other licences, simply because it has become the de facto standard that everyone now understands (or thinks they do).

And look, here's another one, doing it for the same reason:

Dimdim calls itself the world's first free Web meeting service based on an open source platform. Users can share their desktops and files while chatting and videoconferencing with meeting participants. Dimdim was originally licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), but the possibility of a big deal with a university made Dimdim executives eventually change to the GNU General Public License (GPL) instead. By changing the software's license from the MPL to the GPL, "we are making it easier for the community to use our product," says Dimdim founder DD Ganguly.