The Evolution of Knowledge

This is moving in the right direction - towards *all* knowledge, freely online for *everyone* to use in *any* way - rather like free software:

Darwin's private papers online - the largest publication of Darwin's papers in history. Read about it here. Browse the papers here.

This site contains Darwin's complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; [Click to enlarge] also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.

Almost all is online only here: such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th); important manuscripts: Beagle Diary & field notebooks, Journal, transmutation notebooks and Autobiography.

Forthcoming: more editions, translations, introductions & manuscripts.

But:

These materials may be freely used for non-commercial purposes and distribution to students; republication in any form requires written permission.

Why? Isn't knowledge for sharing?

Ah well, it's a good start.

Open Textbooks - An Idea Whose Time has Come?

Well, there's this call for affordable textbooks, including open textbooks:

One thousand professors from over 300 colleges in all 50 states released a statement today declaring their preference for high-quality, affordable textbooks, including open textbooks, over expensive commercial textbooks.

Open textbooks are complete, reviewed textbooks written by academics that can be used online at no cost and printed for a small cost. What sets them apart from conventional textbooks is their open license, which allows instructors and students flexibility to use, customize and print the textbook. Open textbooks are already used at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions - including Harvard, Caltech and Yale - and the nation’s largest institutions - including the California community colleges and the Arizona State University system.

And then, as if on cue, we have a company, Flat World Knowledge, offering open textbooks:

Our books might feel like your current book – for a minute. They are written by leading experts, and are peer- reviewed, edited, and highly developed. They are supported by test banks, .ppt notes, instructor manuals, print desk copies, and knowledgeable service representatives. There the similarity ends.

Instead of $100 plus, our books are FREE online. We don't even require registration! Students just enter the URL they're given by their instructor and start reading. It's that easy. No tricks. No popup ads. No "a premium subscription is needed for that". In fact, our free books go beyond what standard print editions provide with integrated audio, video, and interactive features, powerful search capabilities, and more.

What's particularly interesting for me is the business model behind the open textbooks:

Our business model eliminates the catch. We're giving away great textbooks and making them open because it solves real problems for students and instructors. In so doing, we are creating a large market for our product. We then turn around and sell things of value to that large market – more convenient ways to consume our free book (print, audio, PDF) and efficient ways to study (study aids). Sure, we’ll make less money per student than the big guys. But that’s okay. We’ll be selling to a lot more of them, and we’ll be doing it for a lot less money (thanks to technology like web-hosted services, XML, print-on-demand, and more).

Which is, of course, the "classic" approach - well, at least around here - for free content: making money *around* the free stuff. Let's hope it works - we could all do with more quality open textbooks.

Tricky Things, Ecosystems

A decade ago, I and others started wittering on about the Microsoft monoculture - the fact that practically everyone was using the same OS, the same browser, the same office suite. This made crafting attacks much easier, because certain assumptions about what was on a given machine were almost certainly true.

Nowadays, with the rise of Firefox and, to a lesser extent, OpenOffice.org, you might think we've moved on. Apparently not:

We have different versions of the OS, and we have Mac users. But we’ve only got one Flash vendor, and everyone has Flash installed. Why do you care about Flash exploits? Because in the field, any one of them wins a commanding majority of browser installs for an attacker.

Moreover:

Although this document deals specifically with the Win32/intel platform, similar attacks can most likely be carried out on the many other platforms flash is available for. In particular, some of the methodology discussed might be useful for constructing a robust exploit on Unix platforms as well as several embedded platforms.

In other words, ecosystems need to be heterogeneous everywhere: as soon as you have a monoculture in some area, that becomes a weakness for the entire system to be attacked.

Not Economically Viable

Speaking as a mathematician, I have never understood why economics ignores its environmental effects, since this fundamental error in the model almost guarantees things like climate change, deforestation, overfishing and the rest. It seems I'm not the only one:

the mathematical theories used by mainstream economists are predicated on the following unscientific assumptions:

* The market system is a closed circular flow between production and consumption, with no inlets or outlets.
* Natural resources exist in a domain that is separate and distinct from a closed market system, and the economic value of these resources can be determined only by the dynamics that operate within this system.
* The costs of damage to the external natural environment by economic activities must be treated as costs that lie outside the closed market system or as costs that cannot be included in the pricing mechanisms that operate within the system.
* The external resources of nature are largely inexhaustible, and those that are not can be replaced by other resources or by technologies that minimize the use of the exhaustible resources or that rely on other resources.
* There are no biophysical limits to the growth of market systems.

If the environmental crisis did not exist, the fact that neoclassical economic theory provides a coherent basis for managing economic activities in market systems could be viewed as sufficient justification for its widespread applications. But because the crisis does exist, this theory can no longer be regarded as useful even in pragmatic or utilitarian terms because it fails to meet what must now be viewed as a fundamental requirement of any economic theory—the extent to which this theory allows economic activities to be coordinated in environmentally responsible ways on a worldwide scale. Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet. It is imperative that economists devise new theories that will take all the realities of our global system into account.

Amen to that.

Oh, Tell Me the Truth About...Tibet

Amidst the sound and fury of the current standoff between China and the West over Tibet, this National Geographic Magazine feature - presumably written before current events - is about the most balanced that I've read anywhere. Here's a sample:

Tibetans I met acknowledged that along with oppression China has brought a standard of living far higher than that of their parents under the Dalai Lama's rule. The Chinese have built hundreds of schools, where until the 1950s there had been just a handful of nonreligious schools. They've built hospitals. Everywhere I traveled, they'd halted deforestation and are replanting trees, having learned through bitter experience in the summer of 1998 that the denuding of Tibet caused the Yangtze to flood, drowning 4,000 people. They've built airports and are beginning the first Tibetan railroad. They've also installed a telecommunications network, one that enabled me to dial directly to the U.S. Despite having a phone line to India, the best the Dalai Lama could do to send word across Lhasa from the dim recesses of the Potala Palace was to dispatch a runner.

Yet Tibetans almost invariably also said that China was implementing development solely to help exploit Tibet's natural resources. "Their goal is to extract all our treasures—timber, wildlife, gold, uranium—"and to make China rich and powerful," said a man in his late 20s in Chamdo, a town on the banks of the Mekong River.

How Microsoft Will Play the ISO Card

On Open Enterprise blog.

Where Would We Be Without Patry?

William Patry, incidentally Google's copyright man, and, more pertinently, pretty much the world's leading expert on anglo-american copyright, has the shameless demand of the Music Business Group (MBG), a coalition of UK music publishers, record labels, and licensing organisations, for a second licensing fee for personal format shifting nicely skewered in this great post:

What this means to me is not that consumers have captured value that belongs to the industry, but rather that consumers have long been deprived of the value of their money, and are finally beginning to get something close to the true value of the product being sold. It is that market reality that scares the you-know-what out of the MBG, and that forced it to turn to a consultant to come up with a theory to sell to government policy makers as an example of the sky is falling from yet another effort to blame consumers for the industry’s own shortcomings. The proposed solution by MBG is an attempt to obtain a government-mandated subsidy by consumers of an industry that is finally being forced to give consumers what they want. There is no value for policy makers in mandating such an undeserved subsidy. And, as a policy matter, the theory on which it is based, namely that every unauthorized use by consumers is the misappropriation of value properly owned by copyright owners, has no limit; it applies to book reviews, news stories, quotations, parodies, the first sale doctrine, and a limitless term of protection (note the connection between the value theory and the concurrent effort at term extension for sound recordings in the UK and Europe). Even Blackstone’s view of property as the sole, despotic dominion of the owner never reached this far.

Hopefully the UKIPO will reject the proposed levy and the theory out of hand. Rejection would be a valuable lesson.

Venezuela Gets It on Eye-Pea

Who doesn't want intellectual prosperity?

The term “intellectual property” is a new-speak propaganda word. First, the topic it covers varies from copyright, patents, trade secrets and trademarks to a variety of other things, all of which are very different and unrelated. Second, it is based on the premise that you can give someone something intangible and yet control it as if it or they were your physical property, even the ideas they may have in their mind.

The consequences of treating ideas as if they are tangible property are the very destruction of science and education, and the elimination of individual rights and freedoms.

The consequences of treating ideas as if they are tangible property are the very destruction of science and education, and the elimination of individual rights and freedoms. Science is in part built upon the idea that new knowledge is created by incrementally improving ideas.

Education is based on the idea that one can learn from existing things and then use that knowledge to create new works. The idea behind “intellectual property” is barbarism, and could well lead to a new dark ages, where only a privileged few are allowed to learn, under the exclusive control of greedy intellectual monopolies.

SAPI, the Independent Service ministry of Propiedad Intellectual, was the ministry that used to define Venezuela’s so called “Intellectual Property” laws. The current Director General of SAPI has very different ideas for the purpose of SAPI. Rather than creating new intellectual restrictions, the Director General proposes that the mission of SAPI should instead become that of promoting “intellectual prosperity” by creating laws and services that promote the ability to share knowledge as the common heritage of all mankind, rather than hoard it to make a few people wealthier.

The Coming Shift: China Starts Outsourcing

Here's another straw in the wind:

MOBILE PHONE builder China Techfaith said Wednesday that it has signed up Egyptian firm Quicktel to develop and assemble low cost handsets there.

Once therer are cheaper places to build stuff than China, the latter's role as the workshop of the world will diminish, and with it the economic and ecological imbalances that has led to.

Of course, the West - and China - will need another cheap workshop to keep their unsustainable lifestyles going, and to soak up all the outsourced pollution. My money's on Africa, and it looks like Egypt is leading the way....

Talking of Ultraportables...

Try running Windows on this. (Via Linux and Open Source blog.)

ISO Ill at Ease Over OOXML

On Open Enterprise blog.

Life in Cloud Cuckoo Land

On Open Enterprise blog.

When in Rome

Even if we don't necessarily want to copy everything the Italians do (the approach to rubbish disposal in Naples, for example), this is certainly something we can learn from:

100 Italian candidates signed Assoli’s letter engaging themselves to promote the use of free software.

I wonder what would happen here in the UK if we tried something similar? At least John Pugh would sign it....

Has Asus Lost the Plot on Ultraportables?

Like many, I have been waxing lyrical about the possibilities of the new ultraportable market pretty much created by the Asus Eee PC. One of the key drivers of this sector is cost, so anything that reduces it is likely to be important. Against this background it's hard to understand the following:

Asus Eee PC 4G (white, Windows XP)

Product Summary

The good: Small, light weight, and inexpensive; Windows XP for the same price as the Linux version.

The *same price*? Are they bonkers?

Fortunately, Asus is not the only player in this sector - there's probably around a dozen now. So if Asus won't do the decent/sensible thing and pass on the savings arising from using free software, I'm sure someone else will.

Update: But here it says same price, but more memory for GNU/Linux....

Why We Must Keep Backing Dell

As I've written elsewhere, we need to keep the momentum behind Dell's high-profile GNU/Linux experiment. Here's a reminder why:

Dell has continued to sell enterprise servers with Linux since that 1999 debut, he said. The recent Linux on Dell program for laptops and desktop machines, however, has been gaining momentum, he said. "If the program wasn't successful, we wouldn't be able to continue it," Domsch said.

Make Your Words Count

Journalists live and die by the number of words they write (quantity, not quality). This makes a Firefox add-on like Word Count Plus a godsend.

Don't be Neutral about Net Neutrality

On Open Enterprise blog.

The £100 PC

I've written plenty about the exciting new class of ultraportables, most of which run GNU/Linux as their primary operating system, but that's maybe led me to overlook what's happening with the ordinary PC. Like this: a PC system box (no monitor) for just over £100. The spec? Low end, but eminently usable:

* Intel® Celeron 3.2GHz Processor
* 80GB – 7200RPM Hard Disk Drive
* 512MB DDR II RAM
* DVD Rom drive
* VIA PM 800 Pro Motherboard
* Integrated shared 64MB Graphics
* 5.1 channel AC’97 Sound
* 6 x USB 2.0 Ports
* Integrated Ethernet 10/100 Mbps
* 1 x AGP 8x , 3 x PCI
* Enhance 250W PSU
* Multimedia Keyboard
* Optical Scroll Mouse
* Ubuntu Linux

At this kind of price, put together with a spare monitor or LCD, the barrier to giving Ubuntu or similar a go just got much lower. (Via LXer.)

I, For One, Welcome Our New Blogject Overlords

Now objects are on-line too - blogjects , blogging objects. Once “things” are connected to the Internet, they immediately become part of the relational system, thus improving and boosting the connections in the social network, and they finally define a new relationship between presence and mobility in the physical world. With a pervading Internet network objects are now “citizens” of our space, with the possibility to communicate and interact with them.

Uh-huh. (Via Collaborative Thinking.)

Ecuador Goes Free

It's easy to focus on the dramatic bad news - like the OOXML shenanigans - and overlook the quiet success stories. Like the announcement that the Presidente of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado, has just signed a decree making the use of open source the default policy for government:

El Presidente de la República, Rafael Correa, mediante decreto No. 1014 de 10 de abril del 2008, establece como política pública para las entidades de la administración pública central la utilización de Software Libre en sus sistemas y equipamientos informáticos.

[Via Google Translate:

The President of the Republic, Rafael Correa, by decree no. 1014 of April 10, 2008, establishes as public policy for institutions of the central administration, the use of free software in their computer systems and equipment.]

There are just three situations in which it is permissible to use proprietary software:

Además el decreto faculta la utilización de software propietario (no Libre), únicamente cuando no exista una solución de Software Libre que supla las necesidades requeridas, o cuando esté en riesgo la seguridad nacional, o cuando el proyecto informático se encuentre en un punto de no retorno.

[In addition, the decree authorizes the use of proprietary software (Free), only when there is no solution to free software to fill the needs required, or when national security at risk, or when the computer project is at a point of no return.]

It's not every day you see Stallman's "Four Freedoms" included in a presidential decree:

Se conoce como Software Libre a los programas de computación que se pueden utilizar y distribuir sin restricción alguna y que permiten su acceso a los códigos y fuentes y que sus aplicaciones pueden ser mejoradas.

Los programas de computación incluyen las siguientes libertades; utilización del programa con cualquier propósito de uso común; distribución de copias sin restricción alguna; estudio y modificación del programa (requisito: código fuente disponible); y publicación del programa mejorado (requisito; código fuente disponible).

[It is known as Free Software to software that can be used and distributed without any restrictions and allowing her access to the codes and sources and their applications can be improved.

The software includes the following freedoms; use the software for any purpose in common use; distributing copies without restriction; study and modification of the program (requirement: source available), and publication of the enhanced programme (requirement; source available ).]
(Via Esteban Mendieta Jara.)

Compiz is Cool – and Why That Matters

On Open Enterprise blog.

A Tale of Two Graphs

This is restating a point I've made elsewhere: that the graph of hardware requirements for Windows keeps on rising, while that for GNU/Linux is practically flat:

What all this means is that Windows is becoming more and more resource reliant while Linux essentially maintains its requirements. Microsoft is already seeing the effects of their sloppiness in bad reviews of Vista and having to extend XP’s life, but unless they change soon, they will see it even more, and pay for it too.

In the future, it seems likely that a computer with Windows will cost far more than a computer with Linux, not because of the price of the operating system (since hardware manufacturers are constantly pretending Windows is free, when in reality it is not) but because the hardware required to run Windows is so much more expensive than the hardware required to run Linux.

It's why I think the ultaportable sector is so important: it exposes this trend most brutally.

Chinese Whispers

One of my hobbies is to try to spot the emergence of unintended consequences of major events. The classic, perhaps, is the fall of the Communism, and the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which was supposed to be a victory that showed the West's strength, but turned out instead to make our lives hugely less safe. Here's another - and a profound one at that:

Just as damaging for China in the long run, however, may be the effect on ordinary citizens. One place the Tibetan flag no longer flies is in the window of a bed shop in the English city of Sheffield. Its owner is a Tibetan sympathiser, who displayed the flag last month. Two young Chinese, apparently students, visited and made threats. That night his windows were smashed. A celebration supposed to mark China's emergence as a friendly global power has made some people think for the first time that its rise is something to fear.

Only a whisper at the moment, but I predict it will become a fearsome - and fearful - roar before long.

OOXML: Poland Refuses to Roll Over

More fat ladies who haven't sung:

Tomasz Bednarski (Mandriva Poland) wrote a letter to PKN president, Tomasz Schweitzer, in which he expressed his concerns about the Polish OOXML ratification process which Bednarski took part of, as a member of the technical committee 182.

...

So, it seems that the OOXML saga in Poland is far from over and there will be more proceedings in the nearest future, which we will pass to you as soon as we hear about them.

Ubuntu = Eubeunteu?

Well, maybe one day:

The European Parliament's IT department is testing the use of GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Firefox and other Open Source applications, the British MEP James Nicholson explained last week in a letter to Italian MEP Marco Cappato.

According to Nicholson the tests show this Open Source configuration meets the Parliament's office requirements. It does not mean that Ubuntu will immediate replace the currently used system, he added. "This depends on long-term developments and needs and functional requirements of the Parliament. The stability of our IT systems is crucial."

Nicholson writes the IT department is considering a change in approach of the IT services. The move to a so-called service-oriented architecture could provide an opportunity to move to Open Source.