Just Say "No"....

...to 42 days. (Via Boing Boing.)

A Survey of Open Source Surveys

One sign of the health of open source these days is the number of surveys saying how healthy it is. For example, here's one from Actuate:

The figures show that Europe leads the way in its preference for open source platforms, particularly in the deployment of new applications, and replacement of outdated systems, with France and Germany at the forefront....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Egosurf - in the Past

This is too good an offer to pass up: search through Google's index as it was in January 2001. Spooky. (Via Google Blogoscoped.)

The Second Life of Philip Rosedale

Last week I chatted to the founder of Second Life, Philip Rosedale. He was telling me how happy he was that he'd found a new CEO to take over the day-to-day running of Linden Lab. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? Except that in this case, I believe him....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Viva España Libre!

Most people know that the Estremadura region in Spain is a pacesetter in terms of deploying free software, but here's a handy map that shows how it and everyone else is doing in that country.

In the Blue Corner: Decentralisation...

Here's an interesting emergent meme:

An incoming Conservative government would decentralise health service computing and extend competition between suppliers, according to a plan released at its party conference.

The party's NHS Improvement Plan, released on 29 September 2008 by shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley, says the party will replace "Labour's centrally determined and unresponsive national IT system".

"Conservatives for decentralisation, Labour for centralisation": hmmm, might just work.

Openness is the Solution to the (Double) Subprime Crisis

As I listen to all this talk of lack of trust in the banking system, of inflated values ungrounded in any reality, of “opacity”, and of “contaminated” financial instruments, I realise I have heard all this before. In the world of software, as in the world of finance, there is contamination by overvalued, ungrounded offerings that have led to systemic mistrust, sapped the ability of the computer industry to create real value, and led it to squander vast amounts of time and money on the pursuit of the illusory, insubstantial wealth that is known as “intellectual property”....

On Linux Journal.

Haque Really Hacks It

I'd stopped reading Umair Haque's posts on Bubblegen because I was beginning to find them increasingly incomprehensible (probably old age on my part). This one is crystalline in comparison - and highly germane to everything I've been writing about on this blog:

Central banks and governments are throwing money at an economic superstructure rotting from the inside - but given the severity of the situation, that's like trying to put out a fire by throwing Molotov cocktails at it.

So what should we do - what can we do - about it? Here's my answer.

...

That's the third, simplest, and most fundamental step in building next-generation businesses: understanding that next-generation businesses are built on new DNA, or new ways to organize and manage economic activities.

Think that sounds like science fiction? Think again. Here are just a few of the most radical new organizational and management techniques today's revolutionaries are already utilizing: open-source production, peer production, viral distribution, radical experimentation, connected consumption, and co-creation.

Openness, sharing, etc., etc., etc. (Via David Eaves.)

Watch Out! It's a Trap....

Go, RMS, go:

"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," he said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software."

Mind you, I think it would be better if RMS came up with ways of taming clouds rather than just excoriating them (assuming you can excoriate a cloud, which seems unlikely.)

Android Gets a Hand

As I wrote last week, Android's USP is openness. Although that means open to everyone, there is arguably an advantage to open source coding on the Android platform. For a start, the methodology that Android employs will be totally familiar, as will the idea of building on pre-existing code.

Here's a case in point....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Now, That's What I Call a Monoculture

Apparently, Internet Explorer has a market share of around 98.7% in South Korea. As I understand it, this is largely because the South Korean government is even more benighted than the UK one, and insists on using ActiveX controls for its dealings with the public. More figures and explanation here.

ID Cards: Hope and Hopelessness

There's hope:

academic John Daugman, a former member of the Biometrics Assurance Group (BAG), which reviewed the scheme, said its reliance on fingerprints and facial photos to verify a person's identity will cause the system to collapse under the weight of mismatched identifications.

Daugman, an expert on iris recognition, said fingerprints and facial photos are not distinctive enough for telling the UK's 45-million-strong adult population apart.

Daugman said that, even if the error rate was as low as one in a million, the 10 to the power of 15 comparisons needed to verify the indentities of 45 million people would result in one billion false matches.

And there's hopelessness:

Speaking at the launch of the UK's first ID cards on Thursday, home secretary Jacqui Smith claimed problems with taking or recognising fingerprints pose no threat to the effectiveness of the ID-card system.

Presumably because the whole scheme will be utterly ineffectual anyway....

What Microsoft Still Does Not Get

At first, I thought this Computerworld UK story about software vendors “challenging” proposed EU guidelines was just a typical Microsoft whine about the imminent loss of its stranglehold over the government sector in Europe. It is such a bad loser: after having abused its monopoly position for years, essentially telling the world and his or her dog to like it or lump it, it now runs screaming to teacher as soon as there is any suggestion of the playground daring to stand up to its bullying.

But I was wrong; the following comments are no mere knee-jerk whinge, but provide us with a profound insight into the troubled soul of the Redmond behemoth....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Let's Frame This...

....just in case they need reminding:

Dominic Grieve has said it is “high time” Labour abandon their "ill-fated" ID cards project after Jacqui Smith unveiled the design of ID cards for foreign nationals.

The Shadow Home Secretary stressed, “ID cards are an expensive white elephant that risk making us less - not more - safe.”

And he said the Government were “kidding themselves” if they think ID Cards for foreign nationals will protect against illegal immigration or terrorism - as they don't apply to those coming here for less than three months.

A Conservative Government would abandon the ID cards project, and Dominic said he hoped Labour had taken that into account when they negotiated the contracts.

“If they have not acted on this to protect the British taxpayer, it is reckless in the extreme at a time of heightened economic uncertainty.”

A Question of Perspective

I’ve been asked to share a few words about the reported theft of 900,000 records of past and p1resent RAF service personnel, often with bank account details.

...

We should put this in perspective. This is an isolated incident. There is no reason to suppose that the thief has any idea of the value of this data on the black market. In any event, most of these staff have certainly had their details lost already. This will be true if they have children, have taken driving tests recently, are also members of Al Quaeda or the Iraqi security services, have been in prison or use local GP services. All of this data has already been lost or transmitted to the “toxic soup” pool of shared data, as it were.

Brilliant, brilliant stuff: kudos.

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, We Salute You

Think about it.

Tragedy of the Fishy Commons

Fishing vessels on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland are this week destroying the best hope for years that the region's cod fishery, once the world's most abundant, might yet recover.

Faced with utter, selfish stupidity like this, I do sometimes think we deserve what is bubbling up through time towards us....

Deu, Dé, Dee, Deus, Deux, Dex

A free, online Anglo-Norman dictionary? God, that's cool. (Via languagehat.com)

Hear, Hear...Here, Here

A fine, impassioned tirade here from Cory Doctorow about ID cards - now being rolled out to people like him - and how Labour has killed liberty in this country:

Many of my British friends act as if I'm crazy when I say that we must defeat Labour in the next election. We're all good lefties, and a vote for the LibDems is considered tantamount to handing the country over to the Tories. But what could the Tories do that would trump what Labour has made of the country? The Labour Party has made a police state with a melting economy, a place where rampant xenophobia makes foreigners less and less welcome -- where we are made to hand over our biometrics and carry papers as we conduct our lawful business. The only mainstream party to speak out against this measure is the LibDems, and they will have my vote.

To my friends, I say this: your Labour Party has taken my biometrics and will force me to carry the papers my grandparents destroyed when they fled the Soviet Union. In living memory, my family has been chased from its home by governments whose policies and justification the Labour Party has aped. Your Labour Party has made me afraid in Britain, and has made me seriously reconsider my settlement here. I am the father of a British citizen and the husband of a British citizen. I pay my tax. I am a natural-born citizen of the Commonwealth. The Labour Party ought not to treat me -- nor any other migrant -- in a way that violates our fundamental liberties. The Labour Party is unmaking Britain, turning it into the surveillance society that Britain's foremost prophet of doom, George Orwell, warned against. Labour admits that we migrants are only the first step, and that every indignity that they visit upon us will be visited upon you, too. If you want to live and thrive in a free country, you must defend us too: we must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.

This is an issue beyond politics: if the only way to destroy the cancer is by destroying Labour in its current form, so be it.

A Victory (of Sorts) for e-Petitions

It's easy to be cynical about 10 Downing Street's e-petitions (I should know). But here's a case where it might even have done some good.

Thank you for your e-petition, which asks that The National Archives convert its electronic records to Open Document Format rather than Microsoft Open XML Format, in order to make them accessible to users.

The National Archives is committed to preserving electronic records that are both authentic, and easily accessible by users. Wherever possible, records are made available online in a format which can be accessed using any standard web browser. Electronic records transferred to The National Archives are always preserved in their native format; if the native format is not suitable for online access then a separate ‘presentation’ version is created. No single format can address the diversity of electronic records held by The National Archives. At present, documents transferred in Microsoft Office formats are converted to Portable Document Format for online access. PDF is an international standard (ISO 32000-1: 2008) and is supported by all major browsers, either natively or via freely available plug-ins. The National Archives does not currently plan to convert any records to Microsoft Office Open XML format.

It's the last bit that's important: there were rumours circulating that some dark deal was being done to lock up the Archives in OOXML. For the moment we seem safe....

Beware Non-Evil Companies

The open source company Ringside had an interesting idea:

Ringside enables any website to be a container for OpenSocial applications.

Alas, that idea doesn't look like it is going much further, and for a rather interesting reason:

We were ready for our Series A round of funding, and in late May we received a number of term sheet offers from the very best VC firms. As we were about to finalize our funding, one of the biggest non-evil Internet companies asked if we would have interest in being acquired instead. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided that the larger company would enable us to get our technology to market sooner and with more impact.

The story sounds almost too good to be true. And it was. After dragging out the process for most of the summer, the non-evil company decided that they really did not want to acquire the company after all. Recommendation: always beware of wolves dressed as Grandma, they may be more like Microsoft than they admit.

I wonder who they could be talking about...? (Via ecmarchitect.)

"Three Strikes and You're Out" is Out

Apparently:

Ce matin, le Parlement européen a enterré la riposte graduée. En France, et dans les tous les pays membres de l’Union. Une « énorme gifle », selon la Quadrature du net, pour les lobbys de l’industrie culturelle et l’administration française. « On ne joue pas comme ça avec les libertés individuelles. Le gouvernement français doit revoir sa copie ! », a indiqué de son côté l’eurodéputé socialiste Guy Bono.

[Google Translate: This morning, the European Parliament buried the graduated response. In France, and in all member countries of the Union. A "huge slap," according to the squaring of the net for the lobby of the cultural industry and the French administration. "You do not play like that with individual freedoms. The French government should review its copy," said his side Socialist MEP Guy Bono.]

I also like another quip of that nice Mr Bono:

«Aujourd’hui l’Europe apparaît comme le dernier rempart contre les velléités liberticides de certains Etats membres»

Of course: *that's* what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are with their ID cards and endless authoritarianism: liberticides.

Want to Open Flash? Ask Sun How

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Flash, but there's no denying an open version would at least be better than a closed one. Here's why that's not happening:

Now whether we would publish the entire Flash Player as open source is something that first of all would be somewhat challenging in that there are some codices in Flash that we don't have the rights to all the source to. That's one challenge with that. The other is that I think in terms of what's best here for consistency of Flash on the web, having multiple implementations and having forking and splintering of that code would be a big loss for the web in terms of that consistency. So we're really working to be a good steward of Flash and making sure that it runs across operating systems on the web. And we really want to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where it's fragmented and loses the value that it has brought to the web so far. That's really what we're working to do is to maintain the consistency, but we're very inclusive of open source and involved in open source to enable that innovation of the open source community to be part of the success story with Flash.

Now replace the word "Flash" with "Java", and you have *precisely* the argument that Sun used to give for not open-sourcing Java. Which is now available under the GNU GPL.

Adobe, are you listening...? (Via Aral Balkan.)

Google's First Open Source Product

So the fabled Googlephone has arrived. It's pretty much as people expected, with tight integration to Google's main services, including a rather nifty use of Google Street View. It undoubtedly lacks the glamour of the iPhone, and even misses a trick or two in terms of basic mobile technology – Apple's use of the touchscreen seems superior – but that is mitigated to a certain extent by the presence of a keyboard for those of us who can't live without such things.

But maybe the most important fact about the G1 is that for the first time Google has shipped a major product that is open source....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Put That in Your Intellectual Monopolies Pipe...

...and smoke it:

the Department of Justice has limited resources to dedicate to particular issues, and civil enforcement actions would occur at the expense of criminal actions, which only the Department of Justice may bring. In an era of fiscal responsibility, the resources of the Department of Justice should be used for the public benefit, not on behalf of particular industries that can avail themselves of the existing civil enforcement provisions.

(Via Boing Boing.)

90% Open Source Lightning

Well, not exactly: Lightning, which comes from Mozilla, is a 100% open source calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Stop Software Patents Today - and Every Day

Today is World Day against Software Patents, apparently:

Three years ago the European Parliament stopped the attempt to make software patents enforcable in Europe. An unprecedented community effort made it possible with a relative low awareness about the dangers among larger software companies. Since then litigation and patent traps have become a serious problem for the market and users of software. We need to reduce patent risks which impede innovation and investment.

On a worldwide scale Patent Offices continue to grant these rights and did not adapt their practice. They are facing a patent crisis caused by lowering standards and fail to cope with their examination backlog. In a patent office the main creativity shown is directed towards interpretation of their own legal base. Even without political support the patent community expands what can be made patentable through practice and case law. Though they face a groundswell of interest in stopping software patents their typical excuse is: "We don't grant software patents, we don't really know what software patents are." or "Why exclude software?" or "We just execute the law.". Additionally they lobby the legislator. It is upon democratic forces to bring bureaucracies back under control which live well off with their software patent regimes. It is indispensible that the software community remains organised and responsive.

We want to overcome the software patent crisis. We raise awareness about their devastating effects on the emerging information and knowlege society where software predominates and we make our constructive reform proposals heard. But without your support there would be no way to succeed. Rather the ongoing threads would aggravate.

Of course, *every* day should be a Stop Software Patents Day....

Could it Get Even BECTA?

News that an open source company has become an accredited IT services supplier for schools and colleges across the UK broke on Monday. As has been widely noted, this is an important step forward for free software, albeit a rather belated one....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft's Black Humour

Just yesterday, Microsoft Malaysia posted a new advertisement in a Malaysian daily which gloated that it now had control of all the software pirates in Malaysia. This new "feature" targets pirates by making the background of the desktops black, making it easy for law enforcers to fine the law breakers.

As this post points out, animadverting to screens of death is not a very clever move.

Proof That Authoritarianism Leads to Insanity

A government minister has spoken glowingly of the prospect of kids as young as six handing over their biometrics as she boasted that the Tories and LibDems would find it impossible to unpick the government’s ID card scheme.

Barking, totally barking.

Clever Old Cleversafe

I have been a bit remiss in not mentioning Cleversafe before. It's a company with a very, er, clever idea, which has been open source from the start. It's just released a new version of its free code, and this gives me a good opportunity to to make up for past sins of omission....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Who Needs Wikipedia...?

...when you've got Deletionpedia:

Deletionpedia is an archive of about 63,552 pages which have been deleted from the English-language Wikipedia.

Deletionpedia is not a wiki: you cannot edit the pages uploaded here. An automated bot uploads pages as they are deleted from Wikipedia.

Couldn't we make that a round 65,536 (another pedant asks)? (Via the Next Web.)

How Not to Fly the Flag...

Flying the flag for "UK digital firms" is a nice idea; pity they got the Union Jack back to front (a pedant writes...)

IBM Fires a Shot Across the ISO's Bows

I've written before about the parlous state into which the once-irreproachable ISO has fallen, particularly with its flagrant disregard of the concerns of major developing countries like India and Brazil during the OOXML standardisation process. Pointing out the ISO's flaws is easy enough, but fixing them is more problematic. It seemed likely that much of the impetus would come from those countries that have been marginalised by the ISO, but things have just got much more interesting with the announcement of IBM's new “IT Standards Policy” which addresses precisely these issues....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Urgent: Telecoms Package Vote *Again*

Back in July I urged you to write to your MEPs about the Telecoms Package. Well, I'm at it again: the main vote was postponed, and will now take place on Wednesday 24 September, so there’s still time to write to your MEPs and ask them to support some amendments that should help (more details from Open Rights Group.)

On Open Enterprise blog.

Of Digital Abundance and Analogue Scarcity

Recently, I’ve started buying records. I’ve decided that CDs just aren’t enough of a collector’s item. Since I can own all the music I could ever want digitally, I want to buy something that looks nice, special, and something that’s going to be fun to browse through in a couple of years. Records are beautiful collector’s items, CDs don’t even come close; especially because records are almost always available in special limited editions with coloured vinyl, posters, extra sleeves and whatnot. I also prefer the warm, soothing sound of records compared to the sound you get from CDs and especially MP3s, which - contrary to what some may believe - do not have nearly the same sound quality as CDs or records.

This is one way for the music industry to make money: sell *records* again....

UK Gov Short of Cash? Kill the ID Card

At a time when Labour is pledging "no tax increases", and yet is facing a bigger and bigger deficit, one easy part of the answer is clear: scrap ID cards now, and save yourself £19 billion you haven't got.

Word of the Day: Gagauzia

Never 'eard of it. You live and learn....

Peer-Reviewed Open Journal of Science Online

One of the most eloquent proponents of the idea of open science is Cameron Neylon. Here's an interesting post about bringing peer review to online material:

many of the seminal works for the Open Science community are not peer reviewed papers. Bill Hooker’s three parter [1, 2, 3] at Three Quarks Daily comes to mind, as does Jean-Claude’s presentation on Nature Precedings on Open Notebook Science, Michael Nielsen’s essay The Future of Science, and Shirley Wu’s Envisioning the scientific community as One Big Lab (along with many others). It seems to me that these ought to have the status of peer reviewed papers which raises the question. We are a community of peers, we can referee, we can adopt some sort of standard of signficance and decide to apply that selectively to specific works online. So why can’t we make them peer reviewed?

Two Views of Enterprise Open Source

You can tell business is a bit quiet in the open source world, because it seems that everybody wants to talk to me at the moment – clearly they have nothing better to do. As I described, I met up with JasperSoft last week, and then the next day had a chat with not one but two companies whose views and comments offered contrasting viewpoints on enterprise open source....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Cisco Reduces Messaging to Just Jabber

Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held Jabber, Inc., a provider of presence and messaging software. Based in Denver, Jabber will work with Cisco to enhance the existing presence and messaging functions of Cisco's Collaboration portfolio.

As several have pointed out, open source doesn't really enter into the equation - or even get a mention in the press release. That's not surprising: Cisco neither gets nor cares about free software. For Cisco, this is just some pretty icing, which it will doubtless distribute freely. Everyone else can now forget about making money in messaging.

Open Access Books from Bloomsbury Academic

Here's a fine open access initiative, but unusually, it's for books:

Bloomsbury Academic is a radically new scholarly imprint launched in September 2008.

Bloomsbury Academic will begin publishing monographs in the areas of Humanities and Social Sciences. While respecting the traditional disciplines we will seek to build innovative lists on a thematic basis, on issues of particular relevance to the world today.

Publications will be available on the Web free of charge and will carry Creative Commons licences. Simultaneously physical books will be produced and sold around the world.

For the first time a major publishing company is opening up an entirely new imprint to be accessed easily and freely on the Internet. Supporting scholarly communications in this way our authors will be better served in the digital age.

Let's hope it, er, blooms.

Open Source Giraffe

One of the biggest votes of confidence in open source can be found in the number of previously closed-source companies adopting it as part of their strategy. Here's another....

On Open Enterprise blog.

The *Other* Vista: Successful and Open Source

The is a clear pattern to open source's continuing rise. The first free software that was deployed was at the bottom of the enterprise software stack: GNU/Linux, Apache, Sendmail, BIND. Later, databases and middleware layers were added in the form of popular programs like MySQL and Jboss. More recently, there have been an increasing number of applications serving the top of the software stack, addressing sectors like enterprise content management, customer relationship management, business intelligence and, most recently, data warehousing.

But all of these are generic programs, applicable to any industry: the next frontier for free software will be vertical applications serving particular sectors. In fact, we already have one success in this area, but few people know about it outside the industry it serves. Recent events mean that may be about to change....

On Linux Journal.

Avast There, Me Google Hearties

Google may be evil, but at least it has a sense of humour:

It recently came to our attention that Google was not accessible to a large, influential, and notoriously quick-tempered community: Pirates. As of today we are proud and rather relieved to announce that Google Search is available in Pirate.

That's Pirate the *language*....

Toshiba Who?

There is a deep irony in this:

Most netbook enthusiasts could recite the specs sight unseen, based on the most popular spec of the 9 inch netbook market. The powerplant is Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom N270, with 512MB of RAM in the Linux model (running Ubuntu 8.04 with OpenOffice 2.4) and 1GB in the Windows XP version, and a hard drive up to 120GB. Then there’s a LAN socket, 802.11g Wi-Fi, three USB ports (which can charge connected devices such as an iPod even while the netbook is asleep), a low-res (0.3 megapixel) webcam and memory card reader.…… sorry, did we nod off at the keyboard for a moment there?

Quite. Once Toshiba was the Microsoft of portable computing, but it's belated and boring entry into the ultraportable market confirms that - like Microsoft - Toshiba is a follower, not a leader.

St. Bruce Nails it Again

airport security has to make a choice. If something is dangerous, treat it as dangerous and treat anyone who tries to bring it on as potentially dangerous. If it's not dangerous, then stop trying to keep it off airplanes. Trying to have it both ways just distracts the screeners from actually making us safer.

Read the whole thing - it says it all.

Is Sir Tim B-L Distancing Himself from the W3C?

When you've invented probably the most important technology for fifty years – and then magnanimously given it away – it's hardly surprising if your every move is seized upon. And yet in the case of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's latest wheeze, I've been struck by the paucity of real analysis. Most commentators have been happy to applaud its obviously laudable intentions. But I wonder whether there might be more to the move than meets the eye....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Enterprise Open Source 2.0

Yesterday I met up with Brian Gentile, the CEO of JasperSoft. He's relatively new to the job, although not new to the company, since he was already on its board for some time. It was striking that much of our conversation was about marketing and management, and that's probably a fair reflection of why Gentile's there: he's been brought in essentially to take that little old open source startup to the next level – and that means worrying about all that tiresome adult stuff like articulating corporate strategies, conversion rates, and generally getting a good operational handle on things....

On Open Enterprise blog.

A Breath of Fresh Air

A major breathalyzer vendor is facing increasing pressure to make the source code of its product available for inspection by defendants. I’m pleased to see my home state of Minnesota leading the charge. The Constitution gives you the right to confront your accuser, and if your accuser is 50,000 lines of assembly code, then you have a right to examine that code. And if CMI doesn’t want to release the source code for its products, then it shouldn’t have gone into a business in which its product is the key witness against defendants in criminal cases.

Quite.