How Open Access Beat the Inquisition

One of the reasons the idea of open access is so powerful is that it plugs straight into the basis of science: that results and methodology should be available to all so that they can be verified. This idea goes back a long way, but I'd never really thought of them going back this far:

Galileo is often remembered as a martyr of free intellectual inquiry--browbeaten by the Inquisition, confined to house arrest, forced to recant. But he could afford to placate the knowledge mafia because by that time, the 1630s, any censoring by authorities was too little too late. He'd already succeeded in proving Copernicus right and spreading the word enough that the new epistemology had taken root. Those religious authorities wouldn't have been so upset if Galileo's Open Access campaign hadn't already succeeded.

Of course Galileo didn't call his campaign for spreading scientific knowledge "Open Access publishing," but Galileo was following the same principles that animate today's movement to liberate scholarly knowledge. Most in his day were operating within a different paradigm--one that privileged the restriction of knowledge. That paradigm has proven as limiting to the advancement of learning as the Ptolemaic model was for understanding the galaxy.

It's a great piece, well worth reading.

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The Free Software Pact

As regular readers of these posts will have noticed, political issues are starting to impinge more and more on the world of free software and openness in general. I think that's the result of two trends.

One, is that politicians are starting to wake up to the fact that openness is hot, and are beginning to talk about it - not always sincerely - in the hope of looking vaguely trendy. The other is that supporters of free software and the rest are beginning to realise that the main obstacles to spreading openness are increasingly political, rather than technical. This means the fight must be taken to the politicians directly.

One way to do that is to write to MPs and MEPs, and that's also something that I've been advocating more frequently recently, as important legislation with an impact on openness comes before national and European parliaments. Clearly, though, it would be good to be able to bring free software and related areas to the attention of politicians in other ways. The recently-launched Free Software Pact is one possibility:

What is the Free Software Pact?

The Free Software Pact is a citizen initiative to coordinate a European scale campaign in favour of Free Software. We will provide material and software to any volunteer who want to contribute to the initiative.

What are the objectives of the Free Software Pact?

The Free Software Pact is a simple document with which candidates can inform the voting public that they favor the development and use of Free Software, and will protect it from possible threatening EU legislation. The Free Software Pact is also a tool for citizens who value Free Software to educate candidates about the importance of Free Software and why they should, if elected, protect the European Free Software community.

You can find the text of the Pact (in various languages and formats) here, although I can't see a version that politicians can sign online. Either it doesn't exist - which would be foolish, since it's by far the easiest way to sign - or else it's badly signposted on the site. Either way, it needs fixing.

The coordinator for the Free Software Pact in the UK is Mark Taylor, a familiar name to this blog, and one of the most selfless defenders of free software around. Getting him on board is an excellent start for this fledgling movement, and I wish him and it well in their efforts. You can contact him about the Pact at mtaylor@freesoftwarepact.eu.

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Open Source Consolidation: Less is More?

The open source startup scene is certainly very vibrant, but it's also clearly still relatively immature. Company histories are short, and turnovers are still quite low compared to traditional players. Another reflection of that immaturity is the fact that there are simply too many players in each sector. That means that consolidation is inevitable, creating fewer but bigger players with more clout in the marketplace, and broader product offerings. Just recently, we have started to see that happening....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Intellectual Monopolies Kill: Two Examples

One of the reasons I object to the term "intellectual property" is that its cuddly familiarity makes it hard for people to understand that intellectual monopolies kill thousands of people every year - something that seems unlikely for "property". Here are just two of the many ways in which they do so - both involve patents on genetic material.

First example:

This week, genetic patents came under a full-bore legal assault when groups representing more than 100,000 doctors and researchers, working together with lawyers at the Public Patent Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit against the PTO and Myriad Genetics, a Utah-based genetic testing company. It's a lawsuit two years in the making.

The suit's immediate goal is to invalidate seven patents that give Myriad the sole rights to administer tests and do research connected to a pair of genes closely connected to breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 (pronounced "bracka-one" and "bracka-two.") Should the plaintiffs prove successful, though, their strike against the PTO would have far-reaching implications.

...

Myriad is a ripe target for a several reasons. First, the patents it holds are on tests that diagnose breast and ovarian cancer. That got the attention of ACLU lawyers who focus on women's rights. Second, Ravicher says that—unlike some corporate patent-holders that widely grant low-cost licenses to researchers—Myriad has aggressively enforced its patents, making them particularly harmful.

"They have gone around and shut down researchers who are doing BRCA1 and BRCA2 research and providing clinical services," Ravicher says. "That includes universities like the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. They send cease and desist letters, and threaten to sue people."

This affects people directly and adversely:

Six named plaintiffs in the case are women who have been diagnosed with ovarian or breast cancer and have been unable to get proper treatment because of Myriad's patents. Lisbeth Ceriani, for example, is a single mother from Massachusetts who was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2008; she can't her blood samples processed by Myriad because they won't accept her coverage from MassHealth, a Medicaid insurance program for low-income people. Another plaintiff, 39-year-old Genae Girard, wanted a second opinion after she tested positive for a dangerous mutation under Myriad's test—but because of Myriad's enforcement of its patent rights, is unable to get that second opinion.

If people with breast cancer genes are demonstrably suffering in this way, statistics tells us that some of them will be dying as a direct result of Myriad's aggressive defence of its unwarranted intellectual monopolies.

Example two:

Tara Lohan: Farmer suicides in India recently made the news when stories broke last month about 1,500 farmers taking their own lives, what do you attribute these deaths to?

Vandana Shiva: Over the last decade, 200,000 farmers have committed suicide. The 1,500 figure is for the state of Chattisgarh. In Vidharbha, 4,000 are committing suicide annually. This is the region where 4 million acres of cotton have been grown with Monsanto's Bt cotton. The suicides are a direct result of a debt trap created by ever-increasing costs of seeds and chemicals and constantly falling prices of agricultural produce.

When Monsanto's Bt cotton was introduced, the seed costs jumped from 7 rupees per kilo to 17,000 rupees per kilo. Our survey shows a thirteenfold increase in pesticide use in cotton in Vidharbha. Meantime, the $4 billion subsidy given to U.S. agribusiness for cotton has led to dumping and depression of international prices.

Squeezed between high costs and negative incomes, farmers commit suicide when their land is being appropriated by the money lenders who are the agents of the agrichemical and seed corporations. The suicides are thus a direct result of industrial globalized agriculture and corporate monopoly on seeds.

This is a particularly clear example of how intellectual monopolies take away at every level: they make seeds *less* useful, more controlled and more expensive. For hundreds of thousands of the farmers, who had managed to eke out an existence using natural seeds, the shift to those with built-in DRM and protected as part of an intellectual monopoly has not just been disastrous, but literally fatal.

So when people extol the virtues of "IP", remember that these monopolies may only be "intellectual", but they have very real blood on their virtual hands.

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Cisco Becomes Infected by the GNU GPL

When it was first announced that the FSF had filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Cisco, some were predicting that this was going to be the definitive test of the power and legality of the GNU GPL. I was more sceptical...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Firefox *Finally* Straps on the Extension Jetpack

One of the most frustrating things about free software is that it frequently fails to build on its strengths beyond its code-base.

This is probably because programmers are keener to produce the next cool hack than to worry about meta-tasks that seem more akin to marketing....

On Open Enterprise blog.

GNU/Linux's Secret Weapon: USB Drives

I've always been a huge fan of live CDs/DVDs: effectively, they let you try out distros before you install them - and try out multiple offerings. This is something that Windows can't do, of course. It hadn't really occurred to me that live USBs might be even more powerful, but this story about schools switching from hard disc installation to live USB drives makes sense:

The Kremser Bundesgymnasium uses this system since two years on all computers in the computer science classrooms. Now they decided to switch from local installations to live systems on USB sticks. The advantage: The pupils can carry their system around with themselves. They can use it at school, at home or at any computer they want. About 50% of all pupils uses the system regularly at home. It seems like especially the young pupils using the system quite naturally and have no reservations. Further Rene Schwarzinger explains: “We don’t want to encourage our pupils to create illegal copies just to be able to work at home with the same programs as at school”. Of course the natural solution to avoid this is to use only Free Software at school and pass it down to the pupils.

In autumn they want to introduce netbooks together with the GNU/Linux USB stick to the pupils.

I really like the idea using USB sticks instead of normal installations on hard disks. Live systems are nothing new but I think it makes much sense in this scenario. With the USB sticks the pupils can work with their systems and their data wherever they want without having to convince their parents to install a new operating system at home which could be quite challenging, both technically and philosophically.

As well as the natural advantages this system offers, described above, there is also the bonus that Windows simply can't compete: you can't transfer Windows to USB drives and hand them out to all and sundry. This seems to me to be an hugely important aspect: instead of fighting Windows where it is strong - on the desktop - GNU/Linux should be deployed where it offers unique solutions, and unique benefits.

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Norwegian National Library Inches Forward

Here's an interesting experiment that shows the way for all national libraries:

Kopinor and the National Library of Norway signed a contract regarding a pilot project for digital books on the Internet.

Through the project, called Bokhylla.no (’Bookshelf’), the library will make all Norwegian books from the 1790s, 1890s and 1990s available on the Internet.

All titles from the 1990s and some titles from the 1890s – together approx. 50.000 books – are under copyright. These books will not be prepared for print or download, but will be made available to Norwegian IP-addresses.

There are things to fault - like limiting it to Norwegian IP addresses, and the fact that only some years are available - but it's a useful start.

Opening Up in the Netherlands

It's really heartening to see this openness/transparency meme blooming everywhere. But the forces of ignorance are fighting a rearguard action. Here's news from Sun's Simon Phipps of the Dutch journalist Brenno de Winter, who is battling for the truth in the Netherlands:

Brenno has been trying to get details of local government procurement published on the web, so that the resulting transparency can drive better decisions. Since most local authorities haven't wanted to do that, he's been filing bulk Freedom of Information requests (the Dutch abbreviation is apparently WOB) to get the data.

...

I got a note from him yesterday telling me a new problem has come up. Despite the fact that the local authorities - like all in Europe - have a legal duty to provide the information, they have started sending Brenno big bills for the administrative work involved, in a kind of denial-of-service attack on his campaign.

He's pretty sure that if he takes all the claims to court he can get them struck down, but to do that he needs a fighting fund. There's an event in Amsterdam on June 11th where Scriptum Libre will be raising funds for him, and you can contribute by visiting their payment page and designating Brenno as the beneficiary of your donation. Worth supporting - pass it on.

Indeed: please pass on if you can.

Nobody Buying Windows XO Laptops?

One of the most vexed questions at the moment is the state of the netbook market. What are the returns for GNU/Linux-based systems? And is it true that Windows XP is all-conquering here? Unfortunately, despite all this sound and fury, there are few data points to provide much guidance. So some news from the the OLPC community is particularly interesting.

As you may recall, one of Microsoft's bigger "victories" was getting OLPC to offer Windows XP versions alongside the original Sugar-based system, running on GNU/Linux:

It was almost exactly one year ago that Nicholas Negroponte announced an agreement between OLPC and Microsoft to bring Windows XP to the XO-1 to great turmoil. I vividly remember the late-night flood of e-mails and IRC chats where everyone was trying to figure out just what that announcement really meant.

Someone from the One Laptop Per Child News site has had the excellent idea of following things up:

I've been wondering about what ever happened to these Windows XP-based OLPC trials. I haven't really heard anything about them in quite some time. Now more recently I've asked around and found there is a good reason why I haven't seen anything: countries are choosing Sugar over Windows XP for their XO deployments.

Apparently the conversations are going pretty much as many of us had expected: Initially country representatives inquire if Windows XP runs on the XO laptop. That doesn't really come as a surprise - for many people Windows is the definition of a computer. However, upon further investigation every country decided to stick to Sugar.

So, is this evidence that XP is a damp squib in the OLPC world? And what implications does it have for netbooks?

Newham and the Prisoner's Dilemma

Yesterday I had another meeting with Richard Steel, CIO of Newham, who was generous with both his time and information. After our introductory session a few weeks ago, we got down to the nitty-gritty – the server side. I was impressed by spaghetti-like complexity of the diagram showing the links between the disparate services and their databases: running a borough is clearly an incredibly complex job, and it's clear that we are still in the early days of automating that process.

Two things emerged during the morning, one good, and one bad...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Making an Ars Technica of Itself

This review of "Burning the Ships" is perhaps the most clueless thing I've ever read on Ars Technica:

Phelps' point throughout is that such deals were possible thanks to Microsoft's IP, which gave it something valuable to offer in cross-licensing agreements that brought companies together as partners, not just as totally independent rivals. That's the way it has to be for companies today; technology has grown so complex that a "fortress mentality culture and go-it-alone market strategy" simply won't work anymore. Collaboration and partnership are the new name of the game, and IP is the glue that seals such deals.

That's like saying giving people manacles is providing them with some nice bling. The point is they are manacles - just like intellectual monopolies are manacles. They are only valuable in the eyes of slave traders; any civilised society would ban them.

To call this "collaboration" is a perversion of language: it's about *enslavement*, pure and simple. It's just that Microsoft has become subtler.

Move over Jefferson, St. Augustine's Hot Now

One of the favourite passages invoked by people who believe that sharing does not diminish ideas (and by extension digital content) but enhances whatever it touches, is the following from Thomas Jefferson:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

Now Larry Lessig passes on the news that the idea goes back even further (no surprise there) to that fab bloke St. Augustine, who wrote the following poetic par:

The words I am uttering penetrate your senses, so that every hearer holds them, yet withholds them from no other. Not held, the words could not inform. Withheld, no other could share them. Though my talk is, admittedly, broken up into words and syllables, yet you do not take in this portion or that, as when picking at your food. All of you hear all of it, though each takes all individually. I have no worry that, by giving all to one, the others are deprived. I hope, instead, that everyone will consume everything; so that, denying no other ear or mind, you take all to yourselves, yet leave all to all others. But for individual failures of memory, everyone who came to hear what I say can take it all off, each on one's separate way.

Who could possibly gainsay that?

Transparently Wrong

At a time when transparency – or lack of it – is in the air, here's another demonstration of how not to do it, this time from the European Union. It concerns the valiant efforts of an Italian MEP, Marco Cappato, who had a few questions for the European Commission about its use of free software....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Remember What "Patent" Means?

It means to make clear, or obvious. Like this?

1. A system that facilitates rich interaction with and/or management of environmental components included in an environment, comprising:a housing with a face;a communication component that manages a set of I/O components, the communication component is configured to receive an input by way of an input component from the set of I/O components and to transmit an instruction by way of an output component from the set of I/O components;a presence component that employs a set of sensors to determine an orientation of the housing;a command component that determines the instruction based at least in part upon the orientation; andan advisor component that is configured to provide guidance in connection with the orientation.

2. The system of claim 1, the set of I/O components includes at least one of a keyboard, a keypad, a button, a switch, a touchpad, a display, a speaker, a microphone, a receiver, or a transmitter.

3. The system of claim 1, the instruction is configured to update a state of an environmental component, the environmental component is configured to receive the instruction and to update the state.

4. The system of claim 3, the environmental component is at least one of a light device, a thermostat, a media device, a game console, a computer, a controller device, or a component of one or more of the foregoing.

5. The system of claim 1, the orientation is at least one of a direction of the face or a gesture, the gesture is a recent trajectory of the housing.

6. The system of claim 1, the orientation indicates an environmental component targeted by the face.

7. The system of claim 1, the set of sensors includes at least one of an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a camera, a laser, a biometric sensor, a transmitter, or a receiver.

8. The system of claim 1, the command component further employs the input to determine the instruction.

9. The system of claim 1, the advisor component, in order to provide the guidance, facilitates articulation or display of at least one of the instruction, a targeted environmental component, a suitable orientation to produce the instruction, or a suitable orientation to target a particular environmental component

10. The system of claim 1, the advisor component provides the guidance by way of an associated avatar, the avatar is presentable by way of an audio output, a text-based output, a video output or display, a holographic output or display, or combinations thereof.

This comes from a new Microsoft patent:

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can facilitate rich interaction with and/or management of environmental components included in an environment. The architecture can exist in whole or in part in a housing that can resemble a wand or similar object. The architecture can utilize one or more sensor from a collection of sensors to determine an orientation or gesture in connection with the wand, and can further issue an instruction to update a state of an environmental component based upon the orientation. In addition, the architecture can include an advisor component to provide contextual and/or comprehensive guidance in an intuitive manner.

The long, detailed and dull description of this wonder is so obscure and unclear that people are speculating what exactly it might be or do. But the whole point of a patent is to explain what you have invented, and what it does, so that you can lay claim to it as a new and wonderful creation. If it's not even clear from your patent, then you've clearly failed, and it ought to be rejected out of hand.

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CCTV is Great - For Car Parks

One of the Great Lies of the Labour's surveillance society is that being watched - specifically by the greatest concentration of CCTV cameras in the world - makes us safer. Guess what - it doesn't:

The use of closed-circuit television in city and town centres and public housing estates does not have a significant effect on crime, according to Home Office-funded research to be distributed to all police forces in England and Wales this summer.

Actually, I'm being unfair: CCTV is useful for one particular application.

The authors, who include Cambridge University criminologist, David Farrington, say while their results lend support for the continued use of CCTV, schemes should be far more narrowly targeted at reducing vehicle crime in car parks.

So there we have it: the vast majority of CCTV cameras are a waste of money. They should be removed - or at least deployed to where they serve some purpose: to car parks.

Openists of the World, Unite!

As I have observed recently (probably ad nauseam for some readers - apologies, but it needs saying), the openness that lies behind open source, open access and the rest feeds naturally into at least partial solutions for the political malaise affecting many countries, including, notably, the UK.

So it's great to see some of my fellow openists coming to the same conclusions:

I would not normally write about politics on this blog but Non-Brits may not have caught the raw anger of the UK electorate about the betrayal of trust by their elected representatives (members of Parliament). I believe that “web democracy” is now essential for modern government. By web democracy I mean the processes that so many of us have developed in our own work. I am not suggesting that conventional government is replaced by Web processes but that web processes should be used to supplement the process of government and be baked into that process. That is why Net Neutrality matters so much.

Heartening, too, that mainstream media are starting to join the dots, and are realising that the enemies of openness are precisely the ones with something to hide:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has established that backers of a Bill two years ago which aimed to exempt Parliament from the full force of the Freedom of Information Act have benefited from thousands of pounds paid under the second home expenses system.

Openness, everywhere, now.

Microsoft's Neo-Colonialism in Africa

Microsoft is stitching up Africa in the cruellest way:

Microsoft is on its way to becoming a dominant brand in Africa, mainly through the deals made with various governments.

“We are very conscious of the environment in which we do business, where our employees and customers live, we always try to empower those communities," said Dr Diarra.

“Africa is really the last frontier in not only developing technology that is specific to people's needs, but eventually even developing new business models that will enable the emergence of local software industries, such as young people who have the skills to be able to write their own applications for their own community,” he said.

Fine words, but the reality is that if those "local software industries" do indeed emerge, they will be formed from programmers who are completely dependent on American software for the livelihood: it's neo-colonialism, pure and simple.

As the free software advocate puts it in the same story:

“Today we're seeing growing open-source programmer, developer communities in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and other African countries.

“Clearly, if you have this informal programming sector coming up, access to source code is almost critical if they are going to be able to take advantage of these new tools that are emerging," he said.

Exactly; pretending anything else is cynical in the extreme, condemning, as it does, Africa to a wasted generation of software development - something it can ill afford.

"Transparency will Damage Democracy"

Great to see Heather Brooke getting at least *some* recognition for the huge service she has done transparency in this country by fighting for access to details of MPs' expenses, thanks to her fascinating piece in the Guardian today, which lets her tell the real story behind recent events. Do read it if you can: it's an extraordinary tale of dogged refusal to give up in the face of unremitting parliamentary arrogance. Best quotation:

"Transparency will damage democracy."

I just hope she gets at least a juicy book deal out of all this - I'll certainly buy a copy, and will promote it as much as I can. After all, it's the Telegraph that is getting most of the glory for this, when she did 99.9% of the work, which is downright unfair ("Unsung hero" is the all-too apt title of her Guardian feature).

Amazingly, and to her eternal credit, she's remarkably lacking in bitterness about this:

As a campaigner I was thrilled to see the details finally put into the public domain. This is important information that the public have a right to see. But as a journalist, I was livid. I asked myself - what is the point of doing all that work, going to court, setting a legal precedent, dealing in facts, when every part of the government conspires to reward the hacks who do none of these things?

But I don't begrudge the paper. It is getting the story out in the most cost-effective way possible. What's unforgiveable is that the House of Commons repeatedly obstructed legitimate requests and then delayed the expense publication date and that MPs went so far as to try to exempt themselves from their own law. I wonder, too, how much we would have actually seen if we'd waited for the Commons to publish, given that MPs were given a free hand to black out anything that was "personal" or a danger to their "security". These terms have been so overused by MPs that I've no doubt that items such as cleaning the moat would have been removed for "security" reasons, as would the house-flipping scandal, as an invasion of MPs' privacy.

Kudos to all involved.

Georgia Learns Why Open Source is Better

Georgia has some concerns about closed-source code:

Kaspersky anti-virus, one of the most popular software programmes worldwide, has unofficially been declared a spy programme in Georgia. State organizations are avoiding installing Kaspersky, afraid of information leaks.

“The reason is that Kaspersky anti-virus is projected by Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab, who is of Russian origin. Officials from the Ministry of Defence are afraid that with the help of Kaspersky software it will be possible for the leak of confidential news to occur,” George Kofenlu, Product Manager of UGT, told The FINANCIAL.

Maybe they'd like to start using ClamWin: free and open to scrutiny.

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Can the Director of Digital Engagement Open up UK Government?

Recently, several posts on both of my blogs have been circling around issues of government transparency, especially in the light of the current MPs' expenses scandal. As I've suggested, it may well be that this is a singularly propitious moment to push for real openness in government: it would go a long way to allaying fears that the British public has about what exactly is happening in Parliament, while simultaneously providing a simple and fair self-policing mechanism for MPs and other officials.

So the Cabinet Office's appointment on Wednesday of Andrew Stott to the new role of Director of Digital Engagement, a position created to take forward the Power of Information report – whose approach I praised a few months back - is very fortunate timing....

On Open Enterprise blog.

What is an Open City?

How do you applies principles of opennes to an entire city? Ask Vancouver, which has posted the following motion on open data, open standards and open source:

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:

* Open and Accessible Data - the City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;

* Open Standards - the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;

* Open Source Software - the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT in pursuit of open data the City of Vancouver will:

* Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data;

* Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats;

* Develop appropriate agreements to share its data with the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) and encourage the ICIS to in turn share its data with the public at large

* Develop a plan to digitize and freely distribute suitable archival data to the public;

* Ensure that data supplied to the City by third parties (developers, contractors, consultants) are unlicensed, in a prevailing open standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal considerations;

* License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.

If adopted, this will be pretty extraordinary - and a template for other cities who wish to re-invent themselves for the 21st century. Kudos to all involved: let's hope this goes through, and that others follow.

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Is this Cool-er than Amazon's Kindle?

Amazon's Kindle runs GNU/Linux, which is no surprise given its suitability for these kind of consumer systems. The Kindle is fast establishing itself as the leading ebook platform, so, at first blush, that might seem unalloyed good news for free software.

Sadly, though, Amazon has also proved that it is no great friend of freedom - first, by embracing DRM for its books, and secondly, by cravenly disabling the text-to-speech capability because The Authors' Guild has eighteenth-century ideas of what copyright is about.

Against that background, new entrants to the e-reader market that run GNU/Linux are particularly welcome, since they offer hope that not all ebooks will be viewed on locked-down devices.

Here's one, with the rather hubristic name of Cool-er, which has the bonus of being British (although it doesn't seem available here yet). It's too early to say how hackable it will be, and whether it will be able offer features like text-to-voice, but it's likely to be the first of many such alternatives to the Kindle, and that's got to be cool.

Update: @codepope has reminded me that the FAQ seems to suggest that the Cool-er reader isn't compatible with GNU/Linux. In fact, I checked, and this only refers to anyone benighted enough to want to use Adobe's DRM; for texts that don't have manacles, GNU/Linux works fine, I am assured.

The Common Thread: Open Data, Open Access

Sir John Sulston is one of this country's - and the world's - heroes. Already a one-time Nobel prize winner for his work on worms (well, cell death, more precisely), he stands a good chance of winning another one for his work on the human genome project. But his contribution there is even greater: he was one of the main people behind making the human genome data freely available immediately, with no strings attached - one of the first, and still biggest, wins for open data.

One knock-on effect was that this made patenting genes harder in those jurisdictions benighted enough to allow it - something that Sulston has railed against loudly. As it happens, there is currently a major court case in the US is trying to undo some of the stupid earlier decisions in this respect: this is a biggie, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

But Sulston is not resting on his considerable laurels; he's at it again, working this time with a traditional publisher to edit a major new series of books that will be freely available online under a CC licence:

Sir John Sulston, Nobel prize winner and one of the architects of the Human Genome Project, has teamed up with Bloomsbury to edit a new series of books that will look at topics including the ethics of genetics and the cyber enhancement of humans.

The series will be the first from Bloomsbury's new venture, Bloomsbury Academic, launched late last year as part of the publisher's post-Harry Potter reinvention. Using Creative Commons licences, the intention is for titles in the imprint to be available for free online for non-commercial use, with revenue to be generated from the hard copies that will be printed via print-on-demand and short-run printing technologies.

As for the topics:

Sulston and Harris's series, Science, Ethics and Innovation, will be aimed "at a very wide market", covering subjects from "the interplay between science and society, to new technological and scientific discoveries and how they impact on our understanding of ourselves and our place in society", and the responsibility of science to the wider world. Authors they will be looking to commission will range from academics to policymakers, opinion formers, those working in commercial scientific roles, "and maybe even politicians". "They'll be non-technical books which will appeal to any intelligent person," said Harris. "The proverbial Guardian reader."

This is whole area of openness is one where Sulston has been active for decades. Indeed, alongside open data and open access he is also a big supporter of free software, and hugely savvy about the ethical aspects of this movement. If you want to find out more about this extraordinary man and his amazing career, I strongly recommend his autobiography: The Common Thread.

Is Transparency Coming Out into the Open?

Maybe something good can come out of the unholy mess of the MPs' expenses:

Mr Brown said that politicians had to "prove themselves worthy of the public trust" and said the allowances system must be reconstructed to ensure transparency.

At the first Prime Minister's Questions since the expenses scandal broke, he gave his support to a proposal from David Cameron for all future claims to be posted on the internet by the Fees Office.

Now, that would be be truly wonderful, because it would not only solve most of the problems associated with the expenses, but it would provide a beachhead of transparency that people - we - can build on for the future.

And if that sounds hopelessly optimistic, here's another extraordinary straw in the wind:

Minister of Justice Michael Wills has told ZDNet UK that the UK's Freedom of Information Act is to be extended. Currently requests under the act can only be made to public bodies, but Wills said that the government had been considering modifying it to allow requests to private companies working in the public sector.

"We are going to announce the result soon. There is going to be an extension", he told our reporter Tom Espiner at the Private Data, Open Government conference today in London.

Keep those transparent fingers crossed.

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