Decoding Liberation

Book of the month at RCCS

2009-03-03T14:18:00.003-05:00

The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies ("an online, not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to research, teach, support, and create diverse and dynamic elements of cyberculture"), amongst its other activities, features book reviews each month. Decoding Liberation features as Book of the Month for March 2009. Check out reviews by Brian Carver, Andrew Famiglietti and our responses. As always, we'd be very interested in feedback.

Must Redirect the Drool

2008-07-30T18:13:00.002-04:00

The FSF makes a frustratingly compelling case for rejecting Apple's latest palmtop-that-happens-to-make-calls.

I might, just might, have been able to talk myself around these arguments, except for the quote from the iPhone license (specifically, the "Developer Program License Agreement"):

You further represent and warrant to Apple that the licensing terms governing Your Application, or governing any third party code or FOSS included in Your Application, will be consistent with and not conflict with the digital signing or content protection aspects of the Program or any of the terms, conditions or requirements of the Program or this Agreement. In particular, such licensing terms will not purport to require Apple (or its agents) to disclose or make available any of the keys, authorization codes, methods, procedures, data or other information related to the Security Solution, digital signing or digital rights management mechanisms utilized as part of the Program.

which is clearly a right-back-atcha to GPLv3; pretty disgusting.

But the (very) bright side of the FSF piece is the mention of the Neo FreeRunner from OpenMoko, which looks really promising

Mako on DL in Minds and Machines

2008-06-07T09:17:00.003-04:00

Benjamin Mako Hill has written a very good review of Decoding Liberation in Minds and Machines, Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2008, pp. 297–299. Mako has some nice things to say about DL, and also offers an interesting critique of some of the distinctions we make between the free software and open source movements. Do check out the review (and if you want, read our comparative assessment of free software licensing schemes, which is some of the material that Mako is critiquing). Mako's points are worth further discussion and we'll do so very soon on this blog.

Bender on Sugar, FOSS, pedagogy

2008-06-06T13:05:00.003-04:00

An interesting interview with Walter Bender over at OpenEducation.net. Of particular interest are his comments on the interaction between FOSS philosophy and pedagogical imperatives (something Scott and I looked at in Chapters 3 and 4 of DL with regards to writing code and computer science education respectively). Bender goes on to talk about Sugar, OLPC's "desktop" and notes its potential for fostering collaborative learning:

At its core is the concept of an “Activity”. Activities are software applications such as a web browser, a word processor, or even a calculator, that, when “Sugarized”, are enhanced by three key features: (1) the application is readily shared with others; for example, to share what you are reading with others requires just one “button click”; in the word processor, Sugar provides the ability to do peer-to-peer editing, again with just one click; a chat window is always available for seeking help, sharing ideas, or exchanging data; (2) a journal entry is created every time an application is run; not only are files and data automatically saved, but a diary is created so that a child, his/her teacher, and parents can monitor progress; and (3) applications run full-screen in a simplified framework, yet there is no upper bound on the complexity that can be reached;

And lastly, there is an interesting discussion of pedagogical philosophy and its resonance with FOSS:

Papert and his students found that children learn best when they are in the “active role of the designer and constructor” and that this happens best in a context where the child is “consciously engaged in constructing a public entity” — something “truly meaningful” for the learner. Further, the creation process and the end product must be shared with others in order for the full effects to take root.

Not so fast

2008-05-09T13:34:00.004-04:00

A strange article over at ZDNet, fretting about Linux's immaturity, and salivating over the possibility of Solaris and Linux merging because both will be GPL V3'd (in some possible world). Clearly, Perlow doesn't seem to understand just how difficult relicensing the kernel would be. Linus isn't the one who makes the decision in this regard; there are thousands and thousands of contributors to the kernel, all of whom would have to be contacted and their permission taken for this relicensing. This is what I might delicately describe as an intractable problem. While all the net chatter about Linus' resistance to GPL V3 was entertaining (as flame wars usually for a while), there is very little chance that Linux will be relicensed.

Professor Duffy's bombshell

2008-05-06T10:47:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure (by a long margin) what the impact of John Duffy's analysis of the supposed unconstitutional appointments of patent judges will have on the world of patents but one thing is clear: if you thought the world of patents, patent laws, patent litigation and all of the rest was in bad shape, then this finding, that the entire edifice of patent judge appointments has been without the appropriate authority since 2000, should convince you that the mess is worse than we thought, and that it is going to require some very creative thinking for this boondoggle to not get worse. Keep an eye out for Translogic Technology, Inc. v. Dudas in the days to come.

Plenty of politics out there

2008-05-01T15:57:00.002-04:00

Biella Coleman has an interesting post at her blog that resists the notion (recently floated by Jonathan Zittrain) that hackers are not political enough. First off, I’m not sure why anyone would think this, though it might seem tempting if one falls for the trap of actually believing those folks who say things like “technology is just technique, man” or “I don’t care about politics, I just wanna code” or “the best technology will just win out” and so forth. But Biella’s post is directed at remarks made by Jonathan Zittrain and my suspicion is that what is to blame is a particular understanding of the word “politics”. In this understanding, “politics” is a very particular sort of activity, which takes place in very particular ways in particular arenas. Politics in this understanding is a fairly organized activity that takes place in well-known recognized channels, and is always easily recognizable as such. So, someone voting or signing petitions or writing policy is definitely doing politics but if you are simply buying things or talking in cafes or organizing a local farmer’s market, then you aren’t doing anything political. From this point of view, the FOSS movement just looks like a bunch of hackers who want to hack on the code of whatever it is they are using, and so, all they are doing is computer stuff – just messing around with technology and if its political impacts are noted, then that is some sort of incidental activity. Politics enters this picture just because the politics of the “external world” impinges on what these folks would most want to be doing with their time. But if you think of work as political, if you think of making choices about how to work as a political, if you think affecting how technology impacts us is political, and so on, then hackers are up to their necks in politics and a profusion of political principles can be read off their activity. Then what hackers seem to be doing is politics through and through, very explicitly and straightforwardly. From this perspective, a hacker who claims to be just coding, and doesn’t want to be bothered by the political impact of his choices is just revealing another political preference (to be honest, whenever someone says that , I just read it as “this doesn’t agree with my politics”). JZ might be thinking that hackers don’t do enough of the politics at the level of the larger entities around (though that’s wrong too, as many, many cases of hacker involvement in legal and policy battles do); he might be mistaking the chatter of hacker communities as just that, chatter, while its actually the working out of issues germane to an intensely politicized group; and he might not be paying attention to the fact that technology-labor is a political beast, and its most passionate residents and citizens are hackers, and what they do, and how they choose to do it, is first and foremost, a political choice. Listen closely to the conversation of hackers – every single statement highlights an ideological perspective. There’s plenty of politics being done out there; you just have to have the right kind of measuring instruments to detect it.

And over at openstudents...

2008-04-18T18:48:00.002-04:00

Some time ago, Gavin Baker of OpenStudents.org (amongst other things), asked me to write a guest post on their blog about my publishing experience with Decoding Liberation. The post went up last week; hope you find it interesting. (Not sure why I didn't link to it earler; possibly laziness; yes, that must be it). Do check the various posts and links at openstudents.org; open access in academia could do with all the help it can get.

Section 108.2.3.5.7, gerritt?

2008-04-04T15:25:00.004-04:00

Here is some trenchant commentary by James Grimmelmann on the efforts of the study group convened by the Copyright Office and Library of Congress (back in 2005) to find ways of revising copyright law (especially Section 108, which provides exceptions for librarians and archivists) to "to ensure an appropriate balance among the interests of creators and other copyright holders, libraries and archives in a manner that best serves the national interest". I'm not going to comment at this stage, because James has done a more than adequate job. His views might be summed up, in his own words, as:

This isn’t a matter of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. This is more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, if the Titanic were sinking because of the absurdly large number of deck chairs it was carrying.

Oh, and also:

Redrafting it [Section 108] would be like helping a hungover drunk pull on enough clothes to go out without being arrested, so he can go to a bar and get even more plastered.

FOSS at SIGSCE

2008-03-24T21:32:00.004-04:00

Our Birds-of-a-Feather session at the SIGCSE conference went off well to say the least. Attendance was spectacular: we were expecting about ten attendees at most, and got some thirty-five. Discussion was intense, and we could have spent the entire night talking about the issues that came up. It was interesting to note the different ways in which FOSS is playing out in computer science education: from classes simply stressing open source tools as an underlying environment, to those using it as a software engineering methodology, to those using the availability of code to demonstrate the application of algorithms and data structures (and so on). Scott and I have started up a Google Group to continue this discussion and if you'd like to be a member do drop us a line at bcfoss AT gmail DOT com.

Scott and I also attended the HFOSS project workshop. The HFOSS project seems to have come up with a solution to a problem that I've encountered before with students: how does one encourage/facilitation in an open source project (not for recruitment purposes, no, but mainly to get students to tackle non-trivial programming work, and to get them to experience software engineering principles in a serious setting). I tried this at Brooklyn College with some of the members of the student club, but was stymied by the students being intimidated by the complexity of some of the projects and the lack of guidance. And I simply did not have the time to be an adequate mentor. In the HFOSS project though, this work is structured around a class, and the students interact with a developer group (the SAHANA project) that is keen to work with them as well. The students learn about FOSS tools such as PHP and MySql, read about FOSS principles, and go on to make small, but crucial contributions to the SAHANA project. All in all, very impressive, and you could do worse than check out the stuff that Ralph Morelli and his gang are up to.

Open code and law

2008-03-22T19:46:00.004-04:00

An interesting post by Jon Garfunkel over at Civilities, provocatively titled "Oppressiveness by Software" (the piece is in response to an excellent paper by James Grimmelmann, titled "Regulation by Software", which really, I should respond to in some detail as well sometime). I've posted a comment, which in a burst of self-indulgence, I reproduce below:

It seems to me that the openness of code as demanded/requested by the free software camp is a pretty important step toward getting the sort of accountability you speak of (find desirable). An analogy with the law that is worth making is the visibility of the textual portion of a law. Ordinary citizens might not be able to decipher all of the language of a statute, but the statute being visible and its readability by someone trained to do so can be an important determinant of what makes it into the text of the statute - and the authorship of the statute can be easily determined. Similarly, transcripts of congressional hearings can be made available for the concerned and determined citizen. When code is open, when its authorship (via changelogs, emails etc) is known, there is some measure of accountability packaged into the code. As with a goverment or power structure whose workings are open and visible, which ensures some awareness or sensitivity on those in power, so with open code. When governmental function is delegated to software and that portion of the govermental functioning gets closed off behind non-open code, we've done nothing less than make governmental power opaque, something that sneaky congressional sessions (or over-ambitious central executives) try to do sometimes. Technological opacity of delegated governmental function is yet another technique in the power-seeker's armory. The demand for free software is sometimes seen as something having to do with a new software engineering model; the application and relevance to governance by code, should make it clear that its way more important than that.

Merce Cunningham and Open-Source Software for the Arts

2008-03-06T23:52:00.002-05:00

Some exciting news from the arts . . . our colleagues over at the Dance Notation Bureau have alerted us to the fact that Merce Cunningham and colleagues at The OpenEnded Group have released Loops, an "abstract digital portrait of Merce Cunningham that runs in real time and never repeats," as open source. Specifically, 3D representations of the choreography are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, and the authoring source code, Field (and some related components), will (most likely) be licensed under GPL3 in November.

The motivation for the open-source release is eloquently discussed in the context of the "Cultural Ecology" of Loops and Field:

It is a convenient fiction that completed artworks exist in perfect and isolated purity, framed for eternity. But the truth is more entangled than that, for artworks both grow from, and survive within, what you might call a CULTURAL ECOLOGY. . . . The cultural ecology for Loops is a good case in point for it is under constant threat. As a dance, can it outlive the now-88-year-old who is its sole performer? As a digital artwork, can it survive the rapid obsolescence of its hardware and software?

More specifically,

By releasing our code as open source, we seek to share it with others in hopes that they will become invested in using the same tools that we do — and indeed to expanding and refining those tools. If a broad community takes up our approach, then the likelihood of Loops' survival and evolution becomes far greater than if we were to try safeguarding it exclusively.

FOSS Birds-of-a-Feather at SIGCSE 2008

2008-03-04T20:49:00.006-05:00

Team Decoding Liberation will be at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education in Portland, OR next week; I think it's fair to characterize this as the most significant annual conference about CS education in North America. The conference's theme is "Diversity through Accessibility," which is hard to argue with.

One would think that FOSS might be an important aspect of "accessibility," but that doesn't seem to be the case. Samir and I will be leading a "Birds-of-a-Feather" session on Thursday evening for people interested in thinking about FOSS and CS education; I have no idea how many attendees to expect. We'll also be attending a workshop on teaching and building humanitarian open source software, led by Ralph Morelli and his colleagues on the HFOSS project (Ralph will also be helping us out with our session Thursday). Otherwise, the FOSS presence is fairly thin. I do note, looking at the program-at-a-glance, that vendors, most especially Microsoft, but also Sun, Intel, Cisco, and Google, have dedicated parallel sessions throughout the conference -- so Thursday morning I'll have to decide whether to go to a panel on "Computers, Culture, and Society" (including a paper about a course on collaborative computing by some folks from Auckland) or listen to Microsoft talk about "External Research Efforts and Assessment in Education Research" (they're going to be showcasing new educational technologies!)

The one moment in the schedule where FOSS leaps out is Saturday morning (sadly, as I expect we may be spending that time enjoying anything Portland might have to offer outside the Convention Center). Another Microsoft Vendor Session, this one on "Comparing Windows and Linux in OS courses ." Just for the sparkling brevity of it all, here's the abstract of the talk:

The presentation provides a top-level overview of kernel architecture, using Windows to teach OS, and how Windows fundamentally differs from Linux.

I'm sure we'll have more to say when we get back. If you're going to be there, please track us down . . . .

Problems with peer review, Part Three

2008-02-18T16:06:00.002-05:00

The problems I noted with peer review in my post below are, perhaps, too well-known to most people in not just the sciences, but the humanities as well. Too many submissions, not enough time, too much deference to authority, not enough recognition of new, potentially paradigm-challenging work, and so on. As a result, too many papers of poor quality get published, too many papers that could make interesting contributions to a field don't get published. The problem with this picture is that all the review is anonymous, and that a very small set of reviewers is in charge (over the community as a whole quite a few members might be reviewing, but for a given paper, the number is very small, sometimes just one or two, and there is no opportunity for author response or clarification).

Instead, it might be better for both workshops and conferences for the submitted papers to be made able to a wider audience, and with reviewers able to make both anonymous and identifiable comments, and authors able to make responses. Take a small workshop with approximately 10 members in its program committee. It receives something like 20-30 contributions, and it plans to select about 10 for final presentation. The submitted papers could be placed online with annotation tools for commenting and author responses. The program committee could send out notifications of submissions to the community at large, inviting commentary on the papers. The review period could begin on a rolling basis, with papers becoming available for review as they are submitted, and staying online till some point, at which stage authors could either submit a revised version or the PC could declare an end to the reviewing process.

One particularly salutary consequence of this system would be the chance for authors to respond to critiques, and for a real discussion to break out on the papers. In fact, I suggest that this process of public submission, open review, author response, ensuing discussion, and subsequent revisions might even be more valuable than the intended presentation at the workshop. For what happens in that scenario under the current system? The author sends the paper out, it gets reviewed in the hurried fashion I described in my last post, and then when it is submitted, his only audience is the small one at the workshop or conference (yes, there is the advantage of the oral presentation, but it can also very easily become a disadvantage). The community is only partially represented at the workshop (even if it is a specialized area, very few people can actually travel to workshops and conferences; funding is especially hard to come by for people in theoretical fields). The public process also ensures that poorly written, superficial, content-free papers that make it just because a PC member wrote a hasty, superficial review that was not vetted by anyone else on the PC will have a harder time getting through. It will also ensure that papers written by so-called 'authorities' will be subject to a wider critique than just a couple of possibly star-struck reviewers. And the length of the review process will also ensure more thoughtful reviews as people can add points over a period of time (I'd certainly consider making incremental comments on papers made available for public reviewing). But what about star-struck reviewers afraid of upsetting the 'stars' in the field? There isn't much that can be done if you are worried about reprisals but you needn't worry if your primary concern is that you might say something wrong. But why would this worry about reprisals be a problem? It'll only be one if a critique is made in intemperate fashion, where the content is obscured by its form. Which of course is a huge problem in anonymous reviewing where the amount of vituperative swiping from the safety of the anonymous reviewers position is quite amazing.

To sum up (and to be sure this is a very quick take on things), while the problem of volume in today's academic world can't be easily solved, the workshop and conference world in the sciences would greatly benefit from a public, open, extended, iterative review process. Plenty more to be said here, of course. but all in good time.

Problems with peer review, Part Two

2008-02-16T08:40:00.004-05:00

As usual, I begin with an apology. Sorry for taking so long to get to the second part of this intended series of posts on peer review. So, why do I think peer review is busted in the sciences? (please see caveats below about this being based on my own personal experience). Firstly, and I think this should come as no surprise to anyone, there is simply too much material being sent forward for publication. In computer science, there are thousands of annual conferences and workshops held annually. I don't exaggerate, you simply need to check whether on any given day there are at least three events being staged somewhere or not. The reviewing for these events is typically done by the program committee (PC), a bunch of academics who got together to organize the event; some of them were part of the original plan to put together the workshop or conference, others were invited to serve on the PC for various reasons (sometimes to add heft to the PC - as academics will often judge a meeting's quality by the star rating of the PC, and sometimes, quite simply, to aid in the reviewing). When submissions arrive, the papers are parceled out to the PC for reviewing. Sometimes papers are assigned to more than one member of the PC. More often than not, this stage of the reviewing is one-way-blind (I know the name of the author, but he does not know mine). In larger conferences, the reviewing is double-blind. More often than not, the PC member is over-committed. He has signed up for as many academic invitations as he can, all in a rush to add lines to the CV, to increase his visibility in the community, to network a bit more. But now, the papers are in the Inbox, and they need to be reviewed. Typically, the PC member is late with the reviews. He then receives reminder emails from the head of the PC, and he rushes off to review the paper, which is invariably read in perfunctory fashion, and then hastily reviewed/summarized/critiqued. The effect of this on the quality of the papers submitted to a typical event should be clear. Sometimes, the PC member will sub-contract the reviewing, either handing it on to a Ph.D student or to a colleague who he thinks might be able to help out (I should point out that Ph.D students can be both very harsh, or very mild, reviewers; the former is eager to show off his talents and knowledge, the latter is still convinced he does not belong in academia, and is very diffident in his reviews).

There are other problems. Sometimes a workshop or a conference will not receive enough submissions. Then the PC members panic; the event will not be viable if a miniscule number of papers are accepted. At this stage, other instructions go out to the PC members: "lets accept papers if they will spark discussion; lets accept them if they show some promise; lets accept them even if is not-met". So the event floats and all is well. The quality of the papers is uneven, but at least the workshop or conference did not get canceled.

There are problems of authority. Publications in premier conferences carry a great deal of prestige in the community. Paper acceptances are much desired. And attendance lists are familiar. Some of this has to do with the quality of the papers, some of this has to do with the established nature of the authors. Double-blind reviewing sounds very good in theory; but in fact, its quite easy to make out who the author of a paper is: writing style, subject matter, even the formatting style of mathematical symbols (a research group in France insisted on using MS-Word to format their papers, as opposed to Latex, others used idiosyncratic symbols for logical operators). A not-so-confident reviewer, confronted with a paper written by an 'authority', holds fire. The paper makes it through. Yet another, knowing that this is written by an 'authority', simply lets it go through, because 'it must be good'; others simply support friendly research groups. Peer review responsibility has been abdicated, and because a small group has been picked, there are no other opportunities to correct this. And often, because paradigms are jostling for first place (as often happened in my field, logics for artificial intelligence), reviewers are not too keen to promote papers that promote rival paradigms (but are keen to promote those that show their own favored paradigm in a good light). A colleague of mine who was trying to suggest an alternative formal framework had great difficulty getting his papers accepted; reviews of his paper were clearly off-base, prejudiced and hostile. Finally, another academic advised him to simply forget about the premier conferences and concentrate on journals whose editors would intervene, and who would guarantee him a chance to respond to his referees. So much for the impartiality of the peer review process.

Not much can be done about the volume of publication/writing problem. The modern academy demands that everyone get on the writing and publishing treadmill, and like obedient children, we jump on (how else would we get promotion and tenure?). But something can be done about the blind reviewing problem, all imperfect solutions to be sure, but they strike me as offering a better chance of ensuring the quality of that which gets through to be published. More on that later. I'll also try and write a bit on grant proposal review.

Problems with peer-review, Part One

2008-02-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

In Chapter 4 (Free Software and the Scientific
Practice of Computer Science) of Decoding Liberation, while writing of the ideal of objectivity in science and the role of free software in ensuring it in computer science, we spent some time examining the phenomenon of peer-review. In this post (there'll be two actually), I want to revisit that discussion by way of amplifying one of the points made in there. I'll post a couple of small parts in this first post, and then follow-up tomorrow with my own comments

In Chapter 4, We started by noting that

Free software and current scientific practice share a reliance on peer review to help ensure that results are of the highest possible objective quality. Peer review’s role in science was formalized in the eighteenth century, when the Royal Society of London’s “Committee on Papers” was granted the power to “solicit expert opinions.” Peer review became an indispensable part of scientific practice due to the sharp increase in scientific work after the Second World War (Drummond 2003). Just as the increased complexity of science, due to its increasingly mathematical nature, required scientists to conduct peer review in the era of patronfunded science during the Renaissance, the increase in both variety of disciplines and volume of submissions drove formerly self-reliant journal editorial boards to seek larger pools of reviewers.

From this point onwards, though, we note a problem, which will ultimately be the subject of these posts:

But peer review, especially its anonymous variant, might not improve the rigor of the review process and thus not adequately facilitate objectivity (van Rooyen et al. 1999). Instead, anonymous peer review might act as a damper on innovation, by placing guardians at the gates to science: paradigms remain unchallenged as the authority of powerful scientists remains unquestioned (Horrobin 1990). The discipline of computer science is not immune to these problems; anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that practitioners are disgruntled about this process. Anonymous critique of papers, they point out, results in a familiar attendance list at premier academic conferences. But a more serious charge can be leveled against anonymous peer review: it provides no guarantee of the quality of published work (Horrobin 1990, 1996, 1981). An examination (Rothwell and Martyn 2000) of the correlation among reviewers’ evaluations of submissions to neuroscience journals and conferences revealed that
For one journal, the relationships among the reviewers’ opinions were no better than that obtained by chance. For the other journal, the relationship was only fractionally better. For the meeting abstracts, the content of the abstract accounted for only about 10 to 20 percent of the variance in opinion of referees, and other factors accounted for 80 to 90 percent of the variance. (Horrobin 2001)
It is difficult to value this form of peer review when little distinguishes it from arbitrary selection.

Thats the problem; we go on to talk about open, non-anonymous peer review as a particular solution, and about free software's methods of peer review and its value as an ideal for the practice of computer science at large. In the second post, I want to talk a bit about how badly, it seems to me, peer review is busted in the sciences. This will be anecdotal, insofar as I will be reliant upon my own experiences and observations. Still, considered as a report from the trenches, it might have some value for the reader. I should also qualify my comments by saying that while peer review seems to work reasonably well in journal article review, it is undeniably broke in conference article and grant proposal review, two fairly large and important parts of the practice of science today. We can then return to the solutions mentioned above.

Tale of a button

2008-02-10T13:37:00.000-05:00

Ok, so this is a frivolous post (you weren't expecting a very serious one after this prolonged hiatus from blogging, were you?) I wear a "Free Software - It's all about freedom" button on my winter jacket (I picked it up at a swag dispensing sessions after a RMS talk a year or so ago). Here is a quick laundry list of the reactions I've gotten to this button (very few, and hence I can list them all):

#1. Student of mine sees me in the cafeteria, walks up, and says, "Free software? Where? I want some!". Interesting reaction; clearly, a free lunch is still attractive, but she seemed to be remarkably undiscriminating in her desire for software. Any software, so long as it was free, would do. I tried explaining the button, but I'm not sure I got anywhere.

#2. I visit a bar in Brooklyn for a friend's birthday party. A young man also invited to the party sees the button, and putting on a "save-the-whales" voice, speaks: "Set the software free, set the software free". I grin back, and he continues, "Information just wants to be free, doesn't it"? I'm getting tagged as a crunchy hippie here, but its allright, as more people crowd into the bar and disrupt our 'conversation'.

#3. Its my friend's daughter's 10th birthday party. His brother-in-law spots my button (I think he works downtown in Manhattan) and guffaws loudly. "You're such a dork, dude. Why don't you wear a peace button or something?". My intended response is cut off as my SO asks me if I want a drink. I shuffle off in pursuit of greater pleasures.

#4 And to bring things full circle. I run into the student mentioned in item #1 above. It's been a few months, memories have faded. For she says again, "Free software! Where? I want some!". And I try to return to my as-usual-futile explanation.

In with the new/out with the old

2007-12-01T19:52:00.001-05:00

The grand Decoding Liberation book tour is officially over. We had our last book party at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center. Neil Smith was kind enough to host us and we look forward to more collaborations with the Center down the line. The discussion was the shortest out of all the four events thus far, but way more wine was consumed (in fact, watching the very efficient replacement of empties by full bottles was one of the highlights of the evening).

Scott and I have also sent off an article to the journal Ethics and Information Technology; it considers what the ethical import of Freedom Zero is and what contribution it makes to our understanding of the ethical uses of software (it spins off some thoughts that first occurred to us during the writing of Chapter 2 of Decoding Liberation). We'd love to get comments on it, so please pick up a copy from this link, and tell us what you think.

Think Free Press, not Free Beer: Toward a Discourse Ethic for Software

2007-11-26T15:17:00.000-05:00

A few strands starting to weave together . . . at the Brecht Forum book event, Biella, Samir, and I talked a bit about the tension between the communitarian and libertarian impulses within FOSS . . . at the Brooklyn College/Wolfe Institute book event a couple weeks ago, Mako talked a bit more about his dissatisfaction with our treatment in the book of the distinction between the free software and open source software movements . . . and Samir and I are finishing up a journal article, based on our presentation at NA-CAP last July, about why Freedom Zero is so important.

One of our arguments for Freedom Zero (which essentially says that the creator of a piece of software can't forbid its users from using it for any particular purpose) is that it supports an aspect of discursivity both within the development community and within the user community (to the extent those are distinct).

Doing a little research to see how that kind of idea has been fleshed out elsewhere, I stumbled across some surprisingly interesting sources. One is a piece by Nick Couldry, "Digital divide or discursive design? On the emerging ethics of information space," which appeared in Ethics and Information Technology 5 in 2003. In it, Couldry meditates on the extent to which the Internet (broadly construed) might be cast as a 'discursive design.'

The notion of 'discursive design' was introduced by political scientist and critical theorist John Dryzek in 1990, in his book Discursive Democracy. As Couldry points out, Dryzek represents

a particular strand within deliberative democracy theory, which insists it should not be limited to considering the ideal speech situation and the broad principles of democratic participation but must think concretely about the institutional preconditions for any actually existing public sphere.

Couldry goes on to quote Dryzek's short definition of discursive design:

a social institution around which the expectations of a number of actors converge [which] . . . therefore has a place in their conscious awareness as a site for recurrent communicative interaction among them . . . as citizens, not as representatives of the state or any other corporate or hierarchical body.

From that definition, Couldry raises a number of questions concerning how and whether the Internet meets this definition, questions that are relevant to the consideration of FOSS. Among them, not surprisingly, are the question of what it is to 'converge,' and who exactly converges; what 'recurrent communicative interaction' means and what it can produce (as Couldry points out, "Deliberation is not just talk . . . . [it] must be more than a talking-shop without consequences."); how state and corporate power relate to this deliberation; and how such putative discursive designs evolve over time.

Dryzek's book itself is rich with suggestive material (especially the first half; the latter part of the book is rich in case studies that would likely be of interest to a political scientist but are a little hard to abstract from). One relevant observation of Dryzek's about the difficulties of maintaining true discursive designs:

State and corporate actors may seek some association with, or even participation in, discursive forums. The door is open to manipulation by these actors. They can cloak private interests in a rhetoric of public concern, perhaps even in the genuine belief that what is in their own interest must also be in the public interest. They can make superficial concessions to opponents and thereby secure passive acquiescence on the part of potential troublemakers. (p. 81)

It seems to me that the 'discursive design' framework is one worth exploring more carefully to see what it teslls us about FOSS. In particular, I'm intrigued that it echoes ideas in Coleman's dissertation that we need to be analyzing FOSS in terms of what hackers are actually doing and saying, and it explicitly incorporates an idea Mako spent some time talking about at Brooklyn College, that of the appeal of the "institutional independence" of FOSS.

At the same time, I ran across a piece by Patrick Lee Plaisance, "The Mass Media as Discursive Network: Building on the Implications of Libertarian and Communitarian Claims for News Media Ethics Theory," which appeared in Communication Theory 15(3) in August 2005. I first misread the title as referring to "new media" rather than as "news media," which caused me no small confusion. But it's a very relevant piece of writing. Knowing next to nothing about theories of the press, I was delighted to learn that there is an ongoing and vigorous (at least in some circles) debate about whether the purpose of the media is best defined in accordance with libertarian or communitarian principles. Plaisance makes plain the importance of the difference:

In the libertarian framework, the media system should express man's "natural," Lockean state, which advocates have said must be a robust, unfettered marketplace of ideas that ought not to constricted by a constant insistence on social justice. In the communitarian framework, the full self-realization of each individual, both as freedom-loving beings and as engaged members of a community, must be the underlying motive of all media policies. They do not rest on the same moral foundations and thus are essentially posing different moral questions.

It's almost hard to believe he's not talking about FOSS.

Plaisance goes on to critique libertarian press theory, with the final assessment that

Libertarian press theory, at bottom, is hampered as a moral theory by its unsubstantiated assertion that the product of the media marketplace, which is only one out of an infinite number of possible outcomes, somehow has privileged status as "the truth" . . . . To resort to such is to strip truth of its moral power and leave autonomy stripped of any function save its own worship.

Now, journalistic 'truth' doesn't have an obvious cognate in the vocabulary of software engineering, but certainly this critique echoes some of the critiques of libertarianism that have been leveled at some open source advocates.

On the other hand, a communitarian press ethic suggests that (here Plaisance quotes from E. Lambeth's 1992 text, Committed Journalism)

by action on yet another principle--stewardship of free expression--the committed journalist embraces the concept of community defined as the shared practice of inquiry. By cultivating and pursuing standards of excellence in the craft of reporting and interpretation, the journalist acquires the truth-telling ability to stimulate and assist the inquiry of fellow citizens.

Plaisance goes on to sketch out a "discursive-network model" for the media:

At the core . . . is a fundamental shift in our understanding of audience expectation and participation. Conceiving of the "public" served by media as a population for moral agency requires more than the instrumental application of ethics . . . . [T]his model sets forth the justification . . . to expect news practitioners not merely to view ethical standards . . . as proscribing their own behavior . . . by rather that the cultivation of moral agency be embraced as a central objective of the press.

Which brings me to the title for this posting: I wonder what happens if we analogize the social good provided by software with a free press rather than with free speech. I'm increasingly convinced that the real ethical meat of free software lies in the sorts of public discourse it supports, both among developers but also, and arguably more importantly, among 'regular' users; of course free speech is a necessary condition for that, but I'm not certain that it's the goal toward which free software should be conceived of as moving.

Math and Open Source

2007-11-20T12:23:00.000-05:00

Jill Cirasella, Decoding Liberation's in-house librarian, points out a recent piece in Notices of the American Mathematical Society which speaks to the increasing significance of FOSS in mathematical research. (One of the authors, William Stein, is lead developer of SAGE, an open source mathematics software system.) Stein and co-author David Joyner offer this scenario:

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.

Indeed, as the authors point out, the makers of proprietary mathematics software, such as Mathematica, are perfectly aware of this limitation, though they deploy some contorted rhetoric in order to cast it as nothing more than an occasional minor inconvenience. Joyner and Stein quote briefly from the Mathematica tutorial document "Why You Do Not Usually Need to Know about Internals," which is worth taking a closer look at. First, according to the tutorial,

You should realize at the outset that while knowing about the internals of Mathematica may be of intellectual interest, it is usually much less important in practice than one might at first suppose.

Why? Oh, because

the vast majority of the computations that Mathematica does are completely specified by the definitions of mathematical or other operations. Thus, for example, 3^40 will always be 12157665459056928801, regardless of how Mathematica internally computes this result.

Fabulous news, really -- Mathematica always produces correct results! Guess we can fire all those guys down in testing (and my friends who do formal methods research will have to retool). One of the keys to this is, apparently, the fact that

Mathematica can usually use its arbitrary-precision numerical computation capabilities to give results where every digit that is generated follows the exact mathematical specification of the operation being performed.

But wait: maybe you're not at all worried about correctness (a secondary consideration for most mathematicians) but would like hack up a more efficient approach for some Mathematical calculation. Might you not need to analyze the implementation of said calculation? Not really, because

most often the analyses will not be worthwhile. For the internals of Mathematica are quite complicated, and even given a basic description of the algorithm used for a particular purpose, it is usually extremely difficult to reach a reliable conclusion about how the detailed implementation of this algorithm will actually behave in particular circumstances.

There you have it: the code of Mathematica is so complicated that analyzing it wouldn't help you get a more efficient implementation, yet it's not so complicated so as to prevent blithe assurances of exact mathematical correctness.

Decoding Liberation at the Wolfe Institute

2007-11-16T10:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the Wolfe Institute at Brooklyn College hosted an interdisciplinary colloquium to celebrate the release of Decoding Liberation. The featured speakers were Tim Shortell and Benjamin "Mako" Hill. Robert Viscusi of the Wolfe Institute kicked things with a little welcome spiel, pointing out the importance and relevance of the free software community's discourse about creativity and 'intellectual property' to the humanities ("Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to publish in today's copyright regime"!); Scott Dexter read out parts of Decoding Liberation's introduction; I followed with a brief discussion of how the book project started and what its various chapters covered, and then handed off to Tim Shortell.

Tim started with a little recounting of how he came to encounter the free software philosophy by way of his experiences while working as doctoral student in social psychology that wanted to write text-processing tools for discourse analysis. The fledgling community of researchers in that field gladly shared code and techniques, enabling each other to build on the shared work and to go further than anyone would have been able to go on their own. Tim then proceeded to ground his discussion of Decoding Liberation on the theme of alienation, finding various manifestations of it in the different chapters: alienation of workers from their products, of users from technology and within the science of computing, of scientists from the works of other scientists. He then framed a few questions about possible futures for free software and turned it over to the audience for discussion. This first stage touched upon some expected themes: the reluctance of corporate incumbents to let go of established business models that stress proprietary regimes, the applicability of free software concepts and models to other fields, the possibility of reworking notions of knowledge as a commodity and our understandings of intellectual property.

For the next stage, I introduced Benjamin Mako Hill, who began by providing some interesting perspectives on the real and supposed differences between the free software movement and the open source movements, stressing that differences were largely tactical rather than ideological. There were some interesting historical notes, and the notion was developed that the freedoms of free software, as developed and articulated in the Free Software Definition, the Open Source Definition, and the Debian Free Software Guidelines were by far the most important principles for the community, more important than any ideological differences, whether political or technical (I loved the story about the two Debian developers who, in the course of arranging a key-signing meeting, found out that one was a delegate for the Republican National Convention, and the other a protester). Mako then went on to talk about how the community's strongest point was its institutional independence, its ability to respond to user needs in a manner and fashion unknown to its proprietary counterpart, and its dire need of bug-catchers to help iron out kinks in development efforts. Mako's talk was followed by more interesting discussion about the extension of free software notions to literature, the possibility of free software extending its reach into domains like gaming where it lags, and clarifications of copyleft, the problem of patenting, and the importance of free software to computer science pedagogy.

All in all, a great discussion, very educative and thought-provoking. My sincere thanks to the audience, to the speakers, and to the Wolfe Institute.

As a reminder, the Center for Place, Culture and Politics will be hosting a book party for us at the CUNY Graduate Center on November 29th (6PM - 8PM).

A funding appeal from the SFLC

2007-11-08T06:19:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, a big gap in blogging again. Let me try and get things started again by forwarding Eben Moglen's appeal for funding for the Software Freedom Law Center. (As its Eben, the appeal is eloquent):

Dear Friend,

I am writing to you to ask that you consider a donation to the Software Freedom Law Center this year as you make your year-end giving plans. Now completing its third year of life, SFLC has produced a body of distinguished legal work in the public interest. Our ability to continue this work relies on your support.

http://softwarefreedom.org/donate

When my colleagues and I formed SFLC in 2005, with the generous support of the Open Source Development Lab and its member companies, our intention was to build a legal services organization for a unique community: the far-flung collection of programmers and projects that constitute the non-profit Free Software and Open Source landscape. Our philosophy of practice is that early legal assistance offered to projects when they are young prevents problems, reduces friction, and benefits everyone. We are primarily counselors and advisers, rather than litigators; we believe in being, where appropriate, "lawyers for the situation," in Louis Brandeis' classic phrase, rather than partisans.

Our clients are talented and generous people who put their technical virtuosity and hard work into making wonderful software everyone can freely copy, modify, and share. Our practice on their behalf conforms to their values: we try to create agreement and eliminate artificial barriers to innovation and access to technology. Our goal is to eliminate risks today, rather than to sue over them tomorrow.

In these last three years we are proud to have built a client list that includes the Apache Software Foundation, the GNOME Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, the Sakai Foundation, the Software Freedom Conservancy and X.org to name just a few. Some high-profile activities, like our involvement in the making of GPLv3, have received more than their share of attention. But it's the less visible aspects of our practice that have, in my opinion, created the most value for our clients and the surrounding community. For example, we have helped projects to restructure and reorganize themselves to ensure sound corporate form and governance, limiting liability that could have jeopardized the very projects that those structures were establish to protect.

Reproduced below is our information sheet that lists some of the work we can talk about. We've been active invalidating patents, reviewing code bases sullied by accusations of infringement, providing licensing assistance, pursuing enforcement, developing copyright and trademark policies with our clients and publishing educational materials that we hope will benefit the whole community.

I've been practicing legal education as well as law for twenty years, and from my perspective, SFLC is as important for its role in training lawyers specialized in these issues as it is for the client service it provides. SFLC is able to recruit, employ, and train lawyers who will carry on the representation of FOSS programmers not only in the US, but around the world. We are preparing to open our first affiliated practice, in New Delhi, India, where we plan to participate from the ground up in the development of the Indian free software development community.

Of course, as every fundraising letter must sooner or later surrender to cliche and disclose, "all this costs money." Vendor support is still the mainstay of our funding; we're very grateful for the generous support of the companies who provide funds to ensure that hackers have counsel.

But if the vendors are our only contributors, we put at risk our definition as a public charity, and rightly so. We don't want to be lawyers offering services to hackers on behalf of a community of corporations: We want to be lawyers working for, coming from, and supported by the community as a whole.

Free software law from the beginning--or at least as far back as my experience extends--was always about reducing friction by increasing the peace. The cardinal idea that we all do better by sharing, which has gone hand in hand with transparency and peaceful methods of dispute resolution, has created both economic and social value beyond all but the most wildly optimistic expectations. Please help me, and the outstanding colleagues who practice with me at SFLC, to continue doing what we can to represent, cherish, and foster this way of making software.

http://softwarefreedom.org/donate

Software freedom is good for almost everyone, and it needs to be protected. This year, please give generously.

Thank you,

Eben Moglen
President and Executive Director
Software Freedom Law Center

November 2007
About Us

The Software Freedom Law Center provides legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Founded in 2005, we now represent many of the most important and well-established free software and open source projects. As an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, we are able to offer our services for free to the developers we represent.
What We've Been Doing

The Software Freedom Law Center has made significant strides in accomplishing our mission to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software. Since our founding, we have:

* Built from scratch the technological infrastructure required to run a law firm using entirely Free and Open Source Software. This includes a VoIP system that allows for sophisticated telephone call routing and conference calling at a fraction of the traditional costs of such services, as well as a time tracking system that allows SFLC staff to record and report time spent on SFLC activities.
* Provided legal and organizational support to our client's process of updating the GNU General Public License to version 3 (GPLv3). SFLC created a web-based public document commenting system which facilitates public discussion of documents. SFLC helped draft the new license and mediated the GPLv3 discussion committees.
* Successfully defended against a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of Indiana alleging that the GPL is an anticompetitive restraint of trade.
* Published white papers to share our legal expertise with the broader FOSS community. These papers have considered: using GPL licensed software in light of Sarbanes-Oxley; alleged patent issues with implementing the OpenDocument format; U.S. rules governing Software Defined Radios; standards for copyrightability; and guidelines for maintaining permissive-licensed code in a GPL project.
* Launched the Software Freedom Conservancy, an organization that acts as a fiscal sponsor to FOSS projects and provides them with financial and administrative services. Member projects now include ArgoUML, Boost, BusyBox, Inkscape, Libbraille, Mercurial, OpenChange, SurveyOS, Samba, uCLibc and Wine.
* Co-hosted a conference on software patents held at Boston University and MIT. Held our first annual legal summit and included an afternoon of educational presentations to the public.
* Filed a formal request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, asking them to re-examine Blackboard's patent on e-learning systems. The Patent Office accepted the request and ordered re-examination of the patent.
* Audited OpenHAL's code base and determined that there was no illegal copying from Atheros' proprietary HAL code. We also analyzed its ISC license compatibility. OpenHAL is low-level interface software for Atheros-based wireless cards, which is used in both Linux and OpenBSD systems.
* Filed the first-ever U.S. GPL infringement lawsuit on behalf of developers of BusyBox against Monsoon Multimedia. The case has settled and the defendant has promised to comply with the GPL.

Inside SFLC: Review of Linux Wireless Code Completed

Last month, SFLC announced that it had carefully reviewed the lineage of the open source Atheros wireless driver for Linux and determined which portions can be distributed under the ISC license (also known as the 2-clause BSD license).

The licensing situation for the Atheros driver is complex because much of it was originally derived from an OpenBSD project called ar5k. This original code is licensed under the ISC license, but Linux code is typically licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL places specific additional requirements on distributors of software to ensure that its users are able to obtain the software's source code, and freely to copy, modify, and redistribute all subsequent modified versions.

Ultimately, all the copyright holders of the Linux ath5k-driver code, derived from ar5k, were contacted and agreed to license their changes under the ISC license, thus allowing improvements to be re-incorporated into OpenBSD. One of the three historical branches of the code reviewed by SFLC, however, included portions that are only licensed under the GPL, and SFLC has determined that it would be very difficult to re-incorporate that code into OpenBSD.

To share its knowledge with the FOSS and legal communities and to share background regarding its analysis, SFLC also released two documents of general interest. One document is a set of guidelines for developers who wish to incorporate code with a permissive license, such as ISC, into a GPL-licensed project. The other paper discusses the legal standards of originality with regard to computer programs under U.S. and international copyright law.

This is not the first time that SFLC has worked with the Linux Wireless developers. In July, SFLC announced that it had performed a confidential audit of the open source Atheros driver and determined that no portion of it was illegally copied from Atheros' proprietary code.
For More Information...

Visit us at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

From the Forum to the 'hood

2007-10-15T22:06:00.000-04:00

Biella Coleman pens some thoughts on the Decoding Liberation book launch party at the Brecht Forum last week (and segues nicely into some ruminations on Web 2.0 and FOSS). Her opening remarks on Decoding Liberation were very thoughtful, and I truly appreciate her putting in the time needed to work on them (especially given teaching work!). We'll be having our next event at VoxPop, our local favorite coffee shop, this Thursday, October 18th at 7 PM, so, please come on out if you can. The structure will be a little different; Scott and I will read from a couple of chapters each and then get into questions/discussion. VoxPop serves great beer (my favorite American brewers, DogFish feature on tap!) and has very good politics. It should be an interesting evening.

Decoding Liberation at the Brecht Forum

2007-10-06T19:45:00.000-04:00

Our first book-release event took place this past Wednesday at the Brecht Forum(I haven't linked to the Forum's site because their domain name seems to have expired!). Biella Coleman was the commentator and she did a wonderful job in explicating some of the book's central points (hopefully, Biella is going to post her comments up at her blog very soon). It also led to some good questions and a lively discussion. Some questions: if we are so critical of non-copyleft licensing in Chapter 2, why do we let the FSF off the hook for their tolerance of non-copyleft licensing? What does the FOSS movement really mean for day-to-day non-sophisticated users of technology? Does using FOSS automatically bring political reform/liberation/liberalism in its wake? Does the use of different kinds of FOSS licenses affect the quality of software? What implications does the FOSS model have on other domains of production? There were also some requests for clarification on the nature of licenses and terminology. All in all, a good night with a few bottles of wine helping things along. The next book-release event will be on October 18th at 7 PM at VoxPop on Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn. Come one, come all. For other events, at Labyrinth Books, Brooklyn College, and the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, check out the book's information page on the right.

A murky PRISM

2007-09-26T20:05:00.000-04:00

This post isn't about free software, but about open access to scientific knowledge (oops, sorry, one and the same thing). Anyway. A new coalition called PRISM is here, and apparently its not so happy about the kinds of things our friends at Open Access are trying to accomplish. I checked out their website, which is horribly vague about who they are. But I did find a couple of (vague) gems. Here is what PRISM Is worried about:

the unintended consequences of unfunded government mandates and mandatory one-size-fits-all policies that underestimate the complexities and differing needs of the scientific community and scientific journals.

They are also worried about

Government mandates that ignore the need for sufficient and sustainable financial support for peer-reviewed journals -- whether the source of support is from users, authors, or sponsors

because these,

risk undermining the very fabric of the system of independent, formal peer-reviewed publication, a system that is of crucial importance for scholarly communication and the preservation of scientific knowledge.

Clearly the worry is about "government mandates" (I don't know what the "unfunded" in the first bit is referring to). What could such a "mandate" be? Could it be the requirement that all (or some) publicly-funded research be made available to all and sundry i.e., that it be Open Access? Now, that sounds like an onerous requirement to me. But PRISM is seriously creepy. Check out this piece by Bruce Byfield at Linux.com if you feel like getting a bit more creeped out.

The US' first GPL-violation case

2007-09-25T18:22:00.000-04:00

Apologies for this inordinate gaps in postings to this blog. My semester started, and I'm teaching three classes. 'Nuff said. Anyway, a very interesting piece of news wandered across the top of my mail inbox the other day; about the first court case involving GPL compliance problems here in the US. We've had GPL compliance cases in Germany, but this is the first one I've noted in the US. Initial reports made it sound like Erik Andersen and Rob Landley [Busybox developers] v. Monsoon Multimedia Inc., (case number 07-CV-8205, to be heard Senior District Judge John E. Sprizzo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; the Software Freedom Law Center filed on behalf of the Busybox developers) was headed for a quick settlement. But today, that doesn't seem to be the case any more. As Daniel Ravicher of the SFLC puts it:

Simply coming into compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter, because that would mean anyone can violate the license until caught, because the only punishment would be to come into compliance

You can check out the SFLC's complaint as well. From the point of view of developing a body of case law dealing with the GPL, it'd be useful for this case to come to an in-court resolution, I'm guessing.

Plus ça change...

2007-09-03T23:03:00.001-04:00

One of the explanations frequently given for the emergence and success of the free software movement is that it is simply one particular expression of a pre-existing tendency to share code.

In an effort to get started on an embryonic project concerning the social history of The User, I just finished reading Atsushi Akera's meticulously researched 2001 paper, "Voluntarism and the Fruits of Collaboration: The IBM User Group, Share." (As far as I can tell, it's only available online if you have access to a Project MUSE subscription.) While Akera seems primarily interested in the roots of professionalism in the computing industry, I was struck by a number of his observations that speak to FOSS.

Share was founded as a group of corporate users of the IBM 704 mainframe, generally composed on the individual level by directors of computing installations. The group did ground-breaking work to develop notions such as "systems programming" and "operating systems," -- Akera notes that

during this period the terms themselves were being defined in specific relation to the emerging labor structure of computing installations

-- and developed a compiler for a mathematics-intensive language, PACT, that ended up being eclipsed by FORTRAN.

Among the interesting moments in the paper:

[The focus on systems programming] followed from the computer center directors' commitment to operating efficiency. . . . As if to reinforce this orientation, Share forbade the exchange of applications programs. . . . Share used this distinction to mark the boundaries of proprietary interest.

which certainly foreshadows the logic of differentiating and non-differentiating technology deployed by Bruce Perens in his First Monday piece on "The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source." Also,

Share was established with an eye towards productive collaboration. . . . The unsatisfactory quality of IBM's programming tools and particular dispersion of knowledge provided a technical rational for collaboration.

which is a (probably unnecessary) bit of support for Raymond's principle about programmers and their itches.

One of the most interesting points Akera makes has to do with corporate voluntarism and anti-trust law:

[T]he group arguably transgressed a legal boundary by coordinating development work. By asking each installation to take on specific "assignments," Share entered a gray area that could have brought on costly litigation. Share representatives therefore began to stress the voluntary character of the work . . . . the rhetoric of voluntarism began to pervade Share's letters and proceedings.

So one implicit function of FOSS projects is in fact to provide legal cover for corporate contributors.

Finally, a note about the early connections between collaboration and reputation:

[S]ince all of Share's programs were attributed to their authors, the very distribution of programs served as a mechanism for credit. During the mid-1950s, when programmers could lay claim to no professional society, Share provided many programmers with the single most important forum in which to develop and demonstrate their skills. . . . The group also made it easier to identify . . . talent by establishing common measures of skills and abilities.

Certainly an article worth seeking out.

Suber on OA for monographs

2007-08-31T11:15:00.000-04:00

Peter Suber, director of the Open Access Project, weighs in with his thoughts on the question of open access to monographs (in contrast to journals), and also recounts an interesting tale of particular relevance of us. If you don't know about the Open Access Project, check it out; an amazing amount of work is going on (as I said in my post on NA-CAP 2007 below, it was quite inspiring and reassuring to hear how far they have gone).

The librarians' lament

2007-08-31T11:11:00.001-04:00

Marc Meola pens an interesting piece over on the ACRL blog about free software, open source, open access, books (well, lots of things). Check it out - and the discussion that follows on the question of libraries having access to books.

Back-n-forth

2007-08-29T20:03:00.001-04:00

By the way, a very interesting discussion covering questions of access, the difference between the political economy of books and software and the nature of freedoms appropriate for books and/or software has really taken off over at Biella's blog. On this page, and on this one, and this one.

More on Copyright

2007-08-27T10:16:00.001-04:00

This conversation is way too interesting for me not to throw in a few thoughts on the issue (as I see it) of controlling access to the book through pricing and license. (There's considerable overlap, of course, with what Samir posted earlier.) My approach to these questions is inflected by two somewhat different roles that I see myself inhabiting:

In the role of academic author, I have two primary interests: to disseminate my ideas so as to increase my contribution to an ongoing intellectual conversation, and to enhance my reputation so as to secure both indirect financial compensation (through eventual promotion) and further opportunity to disseminate my ideas (though future book contracts, research funding, etc.). Satisfying these two interests simultaneously, as any academic author knows, is an enterprise fraught with tensions. We could post the entire manuscript on the web and try to get the word out: if we were fortunate, our easily-accessible text would generate some buzz, but not reputation of the sort that our employer knows how to recognize. (If we were even more fortunate, we might be able to parlay that buzz into a traditionally-published book.) Or we could go the traditional route and publish a book, which brings recognizable reputation-enhancement as well as automatic dissemination of a sort.

But in my role as a free software advocate, in particular one of the sort that thinks that the Open Access and Free Culture movements (for example) are doing important work, I have an interest in applying principles from these movements to my dealings around the book.

In Peter Suber's summary of the principles of Open Access (OA), he observes:

[Open Access] to royalty-producing literature, like monographs and novels, is possible as soon as the authors consent. But because these authors will fear losing revenue, their consent is more difficult to obtain. They have to be persuaded either (1) that the benefits of OA exceed the value of their royalties, or (2) that OA will trigger a net increase in sales. However, there is growing evidence that both conditions are met for most research monographs.

Well, for what it's worth, I consent! (In his comment on Biella's blog, Karl Fogel asks about making the text freely available for derivative works -- I happily consent to that, too.) However, the book's publisher required us to transfer copyright to them, so our consent appears to be moot. Before signing the contract, we asked (in these exact words),

[D]oes Routledge have any flexibility in its copyright language? Because the topic of the book is so closely related to copyright, intellectual property [sic], etc., we'd like to explore the possibility of 'practicing what we preach' by using some less restrictive licensing (perhaps along the lines of one of the Creative Commons licenses).

And we were told (in these exact words)

I'm sorry to say that we don't have greater flexibility with regard to the copyright language of the contract. I understand your concerns but this is standard language for all Routledge contracts, and therefore I'm afraid I can't really change the copyright or licensing terms.

We would be very interested in any advice about how we could persuade Routledge to adopt more flexible terms -- for example, Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, published by MIT Press, a book we consulted heavily during our writing, is copyrighted by MIT under a traditionally restrictive copyright license, but the full text is now downloadable from the Press's website. (Other similarly important books on FOSS demonstrate an interesting variety of licenses: in O'Reilly's Open Sources 2.0, each piece is licensed under a Creative Commons license; Steve Weber's The Success of Open Source is traditionally copyrighted by Harvard College; CatB is copyrighted under a [nonexistent?] version of the Open Publication License; and the pieces in RMS's Free Software, Free Society are licensed as: "Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.")

Any thoughts about how to deal with presses that haven't embraced a more modern perspective on copyright -- other than by having a pre-existing record of successful publication -- or how to negotiate more effectively among (apparently) conflicting interests, would be very very welcome.

The irony of it all

2007-08-26T17:02:00.000-04:00

Karl Fogel makes a critical observation over at Biella Coleman's blog about our choice of license i.e., a traditional publishing one, for Decoding Liberation:

a “pricey” book about free and open source software, that isn’t available online, and from which derivative works cannot be freely made, strikes me as having at least the potential for great irony...I doubt the authors are going to recover their investment of effort from the money they’ll make from sales...So surely they didn’t write this for the royalties, and they aren’t going to make even minimum wage for the time they put in. Rather, I presume they wrote it because they (clearly) care about the topic, they want to spread the word, and because having written it will be a professional asset for them. So, why the proprietary license? Why not live freedom, instead of just talking about it?

I've responded, briefly, and perhaps a little too quickly, both in my initial response to Karl on this blog, and then over at Biella's, so I wanted to write something a little more considered because in point of fact, there are several things floating around in this issue that need to be disentangled.

First, there are two implicit premises in Karl's initial claim: one, that if you are writing on free software and making prescriptive claims about the desirability of sofware freedoms, then it behooves you to act in a way that reflects the sympathy you ostensibly feel for attempts to make information in general more freely accessible (alternative copyright schemes for example), and secondly, that software and books are just like each other, in the freedoms they deserve. The first point is uncomplicated, and pretty obviously correct. The second is more complicated and would take a much longer time to resolve. For what its worth, there are obvious differences between books and software that make the answer to that question complicated. But it doesn't change the answer to a slightly simpler question: do current copyright schemes crack down on innovation, knowledge-sharing and creativity in this day and age? The answer to that is an unambiguous "Yes". And so, really, the answer to the second question is made easier by considering that an affirmative answer to the first question also behooves us to explore which freedoms should the printed word enjoy (exactly the same as those of software? slightly different ones? and so on).

So, why did we agree to a traditional copyright license for Decoding Liberation? We did try, and we failed. We were not sure of how much flexibility we had in these negotiations; we were both quite non-savvy in dealings with publishers and the like; we were well aware of the fact that our book did not fit neatly into any academic category and thus the whole world of academic presses was ruled out, and only publishers that published titles in 'in-between' areas would consider us; we did not come into this book-contract negotiations with any previous capital in this area (I'd published most of my previous work previously in logics for artificial intelligence; Scott in multimedia and security) . All of these reasons are fairly standard ones. Two academics, trying for intellectual and academic cachet for a book, the authority generated by a traditional published title, eager for readers, agree to licensing terms that represent a compromise with their principles. What did we stand to gain by this? Well, hopefully, a readership and an audience and a chance to acquire capital that will enable us to drive a harder bargain down the line. It is entirely possible that Scott and I missed a trick during the course of marketing our book proposal or negotiating the terms of our contract. But we felt quite at sea, and made, at the time, what seemed like a reasonable compromise. The political economy of books is very different from that of software; that of academic books seems more removed from that of regular publishing. Within its constraints we made a decision and this version of the book represents its outcome. I'm hopeful though, that this experience, and the negotiating space created by it, will enable a choice of a different license and distribution modality the next time around. As for "living freedom" and not just talking about it, I'm trying, I assure you, I'm trying. Not quite there yet, but its an ongoing process. (PS: the price is a function of the publisher having determined what the 'market' for the book should be, in this case, libraries. We're working on a paperback version, which will become a possibility if sales are good).

Still waiting

2007-08-08T07:03:00.000-04:00

Well, I still don't have my copy of Decoding Liberation just yet, but I'm optimistic it'll happen soon. But we've started to line up some dates for book-release related events. One will be at Brecht Forum (October 3rd) where Biella Coleman will comment on/discuss the book with Scott and myself. The second will be at Labyrinth Books (November 2nd), with a similar format (commentator yet to be determined). We've put up a llittle page (also linked on the right-hand sidebar) with information on the book, including an introduction, links to the author's home pages, the back cover and blurb, and a listing of release events. Watch that space. And this one.

I refuse to get it

2007-08-02T19:35:00.000-04:00

An unintentionally hilarious rant against free software. Theres an argument in it somewhere (let me know if you find it), some predictions, some attempts to sound magisterial, and plenty of fallacies/misrepresentations and the like. But seriously, do have a read, and tell me what you think. If you find it funny, pass it on.

FOSS at NA-CAP 2007

2007-07-29T11:21:00.000-04:00

Last week, Scott and I traveled to Chicago for the North American Computers and Philosophy Conference to deliver a talk titled "The Freedom Zero Problem: Free Software and the Ethical Use of Software". You can check out the slides for the talk if you like (some of the discussion is drawn from Chapter 2 of Decoding Liberation, whose release date has now apparently been pushed to August 2nd). The conference went well, but I would be lying if I did not say that I was not stunned by the number of profound misunderstandings of the concept of free software that were on display. Those who wonder why Richard Stallman gets cranky about this stuff would do well to note the persistence of many of these: the economics (plus associated politics) of FOSS and 'coercion' in the GPL being just two of the most egregious ones (I plan to write a bit more about 'coercion' in the GPL a bit later). There was also some weird hostility, most of which I found unpleasant and unsettling. But to be fair, there was also a great deal of interesting analysis of FOSS and its implications (and a marvelous and hope-inspiring informational talk on Open Access by Peter Suber). All in all, a great weekend, and we can't wait to get Decoding Liberation out there to spark off more discussion. Kudos to the folks at Loyola (Tom Wren, Matt Butcher, George Thiruvathukal, Konstantin Laufer) for putting on a good show.

More on the term 'open source'

2007-07-09T16:56:00.000-04:00

I'm linking here to a post on Biella Coleman's blog which features a nice discussion on the lingering spat between the OSI and some CRM vendors who would like to use the term 'open source' to describe their products. Check it out. It features these lines:

The Free Software Definition is well defined; but it must be emphasized, narrowly so. It does not try to do everything and have everyone pledge allegiance to an inordinately complex set of commitments. Clarity, narrowness, and well-defined goals –> these three attributes have powered it far and wide and I hope it remains so.

I agree; and these thoughts resonate with I had noted earlier on this topic.

The SFLC on the FCC

2007-07-08T08:59:00.001-04:00

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has just released a white paper on the FCC's new rules, which go into effect today, governing Software-Defined Radio (SDR) devices (SDRs are highly configurable by software, and unlike AM/FM radios, are generic devices reprogrammable in various modes). From the SFLC's website:

In this white paper, SFLC explains why the FCC's new rules do not restrict independent development and distribution of FOSS made for use in SDR devices. This is because the FCC's new rules only apply to hardware manufacturers who distribute SDR devices, regardless if they use FOSS in them or not. However, the FCC does acknowledge the importance of FOSS — specifically identifying the GNU/Linux operating system — and expressly encourages its use in SDR devices.

The paper is available here.

A friendly word

2007-07-05T14:29:00.001-04:00

So, Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software will be released on July 27th, and I'm glad to say we got a nice comment from Steven Weber, which I'm reproducing in its entirety as I think it captures part of our argument well:

In Decoding Liberation, Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter recapture and extend a part of the conversation that will ultimately be much more important than business models, patent and copyright law, or total cost of ownership for a piece of software. What does the open source model offer to political, artistic, and scientific freedom, and thus to the human enterprise of creativity beyond the guts of a computing machine? Their book is an eloquent, thoughtful, adventurous, and exciting dive into what really matters about changing the rules of code.

Thanks, Steve. We thought your book, The Success of Open Source was pretty darn good too!

Just another business model, eh?

2007-06-27T11:12:00.000-04:00

A little follow-up to the spat brewing between the OSI and CRM vendors that I blogged about yesterday. As I see it, the OSI is bothered by the failure of CRM licenses to provide some crucial - and here I'm going to use a word that the OSI didn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole - freedoms, that the OSI considers an important part of the concept of 'open source'. The irony of this situation is immense. The OSI sought to distance itself from 'ideological tubthumping', 'free software zealotry' or whatever else it was, to make the case for 'open source as a purely technical, pragmatic, business strategy. It was all about access to the code, because that, you see, just helps us write better software. But 'free software', the conditions associated with which are stated quite clearly in the Free Software Definition was to be disdained because that wouldn't be business-friendly enough (they don't like talk of values and freedom apparently). But being business-friendly has its downside as the OSI is discovering. Maybe if they had kept their values front and center, they wouldn't have needed to have dragged them out now, pointing to them, and asking for community policing to try and block the path of those corporate vendors, who staggered into this space, enticed by a new business model, and now just want to exploit it for all its worth. It never was just about having access to the code so that more folks could debug it. And this story tells us why.

What's in a name

2007-06-26T18:39:00.000-04:00

There is a wierd little battle developing over the term "open source", between the Open Source Initiative, and a small group of vendors (CRM folks like Sugar et al.) that would like to use the term to describe their products, despite their licenses not being OSI-approved. Slashdot is talking about it, and unsurprisingly, focuses on Michael Tiemann's furious blog posting, which responding to Dana Blankenhorn's post querying how far 'open source CRM' could get from OSI-license terms, included this blast:

..there really is not room in the market for Yet Another Proprietary CRM system....THESE LICENSES ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE LICENSES. This flagrant abuse of labeling is not unlike sweetening a mild abrasive with ethylene glycol and calling the substance Toothpaste. If the market is clamouring for open source CRM solutions, why are some companies delivering open source in name only and not in substance? I think the answer is simple: they think they can get away with it.

Now, the OSI does not have a trademark on the term 'open source', it simply maintains the Open Source Definition, and a list of approved licenses that meet that definition. So, this battle, to say the least, promises to be interesting. Can the OSI pull off this particular kind of policing? (Perhaps it might have been easier if they had stayed with a corporate-unfriendly term like 'free software'? But I digress). The 'problem' is that licenses like the CPL is that as David Richards explains

the CPL limits EXTERNAL redistribution. That's pretty much it. So while our source code is available and is for free, while we allow it to be modified and the modifications licensed however the authors dictate (think BSD), and while it can be freely distributed internally by user organizations, we run afoul of the OSI because we do not allow, without our consent, external redistribution. partners.

And there are other restrictions, all of which fly in the face of the OSI's requirements of leaving certain decisions on modifications to downstream developers.

There is a reason behind RMS's obsession over terminology; it matters.

Its all just one, really

2007-06-19T19:47:00.000-04:00

Tom Chance pens a thoughtful piece on Lawrence Lessig's views on the 'two culture economies': supposedly, an amateur, "sharing economy" and a second, 'traditional', full copyright "commercial economy" (how this "commercial economy" got to be the 'traditional' one is beyond me). If that distinction sounds dubious to you (and like it might have internalized, unwittingly, the very dichotomy that the restrictive culture that Lessig thinks he is contesting, wants to promote) then read the piece for yourself. I found Lessig's _Free Culture_ extremely persuasive when I read it, and its hard to reconcile his view of two separate creative economies with the vision that seemed to run through that book - that all of culture, not some subdivision of it, was reliant on sharing, cross-pollination, and innovation based on relentless derivation. I found that analysis exhilarating, and often used the examples of borrowing lines one heard on a train in one's writing or joke-making or conversation-starters in my classes in Computer Ethics (at Brooklyn College) as entrees into an extended discussion on copyright and patent issues in software. That vision, I'd argue, would reject the kind of dichotomy that Lessig endorses (and Chance's piece is an extended take on that riff, as it argues for a kind of interdependence and inter-relationship between the two that in the final analysis renders that kind of distinction meaningless to begin with).

A stat and a confirmation

2007-06-17T13:52:00.000-04:00

Buried in this news piece about the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, organized by the Linux Foundation, which featured discussions about the Linux support for embedded systems, power-saving, those patent deals, real-time Linux and so on and so forth, is the kind of nuggety technical stat that tickles my nerdy sensibilities, and I just know I'm going to be using it a party sometime soon:

Starting with release 2.4 and then 2.6 of the Linux kernel,Linus Torvalds and company have been issuing updates every two to three months. "We add 2,000 lines of code a day to the Linux kernel. We work on 2,800 lines of code a day," said kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman. "I've never seen the pace of change that Linux has shown."

While that "work on" line is a little vague, this passage is followed by some rumination on the kind of testing that happens on the kernel (not enough regression testing), and the way in which the structure of the Linux development model relies on its user base:

There's a tension between introducing new features and stabilizing them...what we really need is for the user community to help us track down bugs...The user base is far bigger than the number of kernel developers

Another deal?

2007-06-15T19:51:00.000-04:00

Microsoft wants to strike a yet another 'we-wont-sue' protection deal with Red Hat, but so far, the only interest is on their end. Red Hat's response:

We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency

I'm finding this series of 'protection deals' increasingly bizarre; Microsoft must realize the terrible PR this is creating (on the other hand, they haven't worried so much about terrible PR in all these years). If, as Microsoft claims, the issue is interoperability, then surely there are plenty of other ways to address it - like the kinds of technical solutions that folks on both sides would be willing to work on. Why are these deals needed? How does striking them address the so-called 'intellectual property' issue that Microsoft claims to be worried about? Are they going to sign deals with each and every commercial Linux enterprise? But perhaps the most damning questions is:

if interoperability and protecting customers are Microsoft's ultimate goals for the deals...why is the company so interested in Linux companies that ultimately don't affect that many customers?

The damning answer to that, comes from Bruce Perens who says:

Here is Microsoft out collecting the losers in the Linux business and paying them money so they can...paint open source as music pirates out there using Microsoft technology without a license...I think they're out to scare people.

I hadn't realized Microsoft had effortlessly segued into the horror movie business.

Can I sit in?

2007-06-14T12:04:00.001-04:00

Jonathan Schwartz invites Linus to dinner (in response to Linus' comments on GPL V3 as a possibility for the Linux kernel if OpenSolaris goes that route). But more importantly, his blog post, in doing so, sparks off a blizzard of comments that make for superb reading and remind me once again, of why the FOSS community is so much fun to observe. Everyone's heart is on their sleeves, the flaming is high-class, the points made are sharp, the technical content is high and some of the most important issues that hold the community together (reciprocity in this case) always make an appearance. Check it out. (I found Linus' comments on the kernel mailing list excessively cynical but your mileage may vary).

A change of heart?

2007-06-13T19:37:00.000-04:00

Well, well. I didn't think it was possible, but Linus has (gasp!) actually admitted the possibility of the Linux kernel moving to GPL V3 - thanks to OpenSolaris. While he still remains a bigger fan of GPL V2, this self-confessed pragmatist offers reasons grounded in precisely that philosophy for his change of heart:

If Sun really is going to release OpenSolaris under GPL 3, that may be a good reason" to move Linux to the new licence, Torvalds said in a posting to the Linux kernel mailing list on Sunday. "I don't think the GPL 3 is as good a licence as (GPL) 2, but on the other hand, I'm pragmatic, and if we can avoid having two kernels with two different licenses and the friction that causes, I at least see the reason for GPLv3.

Of course, technical issues could still interfere in the proposed intermingling of Solaris and Linux code (whose advantages include "adding Solaris' ZFS (Zettabyte File System) storage software or DTrace probing utility to Linux or adding Linux's broader hardware support to Solaris"). One last splash of cold water from Linus:

They'll not be releasing ZFS and the other things that people are drooling about in a way that lets Linux use them on an equal footing...To Sun, a GPLv3-only release would actually let them look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back...And don't get me wrong: I think a truly open-source GPL 3 Solaris would be a really, really good thing, even if it does end up being a one-way street as far as code is concerned!

While not everyone in Open Solaris wants to move to GPL, the fact that Sun has done it before with Java means it isn't impossible either.

Affero is out for discussion

2007-06-12T21:22:00.000-04:00

The first discussion draft of the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is now available. Based on version 3 of the GNU GPL, the AGPL includes terms to ensure that users who interact with software over a network can receive the source for that program. The ability of webservices provider to not provide source has long been a contentious issue (noted on this blog previously, and remarked on by Tim O'Reilly as "pockets of proprietary opportunity"). Now comes the free software community's response to this issue. I expect the discussions on this to be quite interesting largely because the question of how the user "interacts" with the software in question is a tricky one (how direct such interaction should be remains vague) and also because it seems web services would provide greater opportunities for circumvention of the AGPL's terms. Still, with the draft out for discussion, some of these issues should get sharpened. With web services on the up and up, something like the Affero was going to be required eventually, and it poses a very particular challenge to get its terms clear and legally workable.

Eben holding forth

2007-06-05T20:34:00.000-04:00

Linux.com has been running a series of video clips of an interview with Eben Moglen. I'm linking to just one of them as you can pick up the rest from the same spot. Check them out. Moglen speaks like, as someone said to me once, "Moses come down from the mountain". He clearly seems to think he has the gospel, and I'll say one thing, if preachers were as passionate and made as much sense as he did, I'd be religious by now. (OK, I'll stop with the religious comparisons, I know it makes folks nervous, what with FSF zealotry and all, what?). Anyway, Eben holds forth on all the fun stuff: hacking the Novell-MS deal, free software, meeting RMS, monopolies and common-based production.

RMS on why V3 is good for you

2007-06-03T19:27:00.000-04:00

RMS writes pretty well and here he is, doing his best to explain why upgrading to GPL V3 is a good idea. There are some useful clarifications in here (I'm not sure whether it will do much for those folks that have very fundamental disagreements with V3 but it will definitely help those who are confused by some of the discussion that the new version has generated). First, RMS points out that despite incompatibility between V2 and V3

GPL version 2 will remain a valid license, and no disaster will happen if some programs remain under GPLv2 while others advance to GPLv3.

He then goes on to explain why this incompatibility should not be such a nuisance, for

license incompatibility only matters when you want to link, merge or combine code from two different programs into a single program. There is no problem in having GPLv3-covered and GPLv2-covered programs side by side in an operating system.

He then goes on to explain its stance against Tivoization and DRM. And closes with a brief discussion of that patent deal:

Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community. In order to take advantage of this, programs need to use GPLv3. Microsoft's lawyers are not stupid, and next time they may manage to avoid those mistakes. GPLv3 therefore says they don't get a “next time”. Releasing a program under GPL version 3 protects it from Microsoft's future attempts to make redistributors collect Microsoft royalties from the program's users.

A bit closer to making up

2007-05-10T18:23:00.000-04:00

Some good news for GPLV3 watchers: Apache and GPLV3 compatibility is closer to reality after differences over the patent-termination clauses in GPLV3. Some more details are available, including the following:

An inconsistency with the Apache license involves a potential interpretation of Apache rules that would have rendered it incompatible with GPL version 3...An indemnification clause in the Apache license stipulates that if a software provider offers a warranty on its software, then the provider would have to indemnify other contributors to the program from being liable for that warranty. The clause is vague on what kind of indemnification would have to be provided....It could be construed as an additional restriction that is not part of GPL 3, he said. The GPL requires that code offered under the GPL cannot be combined with code that carries additional restrictions....

With V3 due in August, a reconciliation with a big-daddy like Apache can only mean good things. An interesting subtext to this discussion (well, perhaps its been more explicitly expressed than subtexts usually are), is the need to avoid the public-relations fiasco that would result from prominent projects and personalities' public disapproval and attendant rejection of the V3. The latest draft seems to have addressed many of those worries (if it could calm down a Torvalds frothing at the corners, then it must have done something good) - and it seems the upward trend continues with SUN continuing to make encouraging noises about their move to GPL (Java for now, and possibly Solaris later).

Sun, Java, governance and community

2007-05-09T20:04:00.000-04:00

A progress report on Sun's move to free Java (under the GPL). The GPL version of choice is 2, and while most of the work is complete, some issues remain:

Sun hopes the open-source community will help it resolve the issue of Java source code that remains "encumbered," where Sun doesn't hold enough rights to release the code under GPL.

The article goes on to discuss how this situation will be first worked-around, and then resolved fully with a rewrite of the code. But code availability, as long recognized in any flourishing FOSS community, is only part of the picture, and Rich Sands, community marketing manager for OpenJDK community at Sun has done well to note this:

"Open-source developers need to have rules and governance spelled out for them for how they use and interact with the code base".

Sun's approach is to create an OpenJDK interim governance board, tasked with creating a constitution and gaining the community's approval for it. Of the five-person board, two will be Sun employees. With a constitution in place, the OpenJDK community will elect a new governance board (including two Sun employees).

Dell-n-Ubuntu

2007-05-02T19:51:00.002-04:00

Dell gets Linuxed - to be precise it gets Ubuntu'd. Very interesting move for all the obvious reasons. To be honest, I'm not sure how big Dell's sales are going to be and if this is going to be the move that rescues them from their financial doldrums. Also, will people who buy Dell/GNU/Linux machines be first-time GNU/Linux users or will they just be older GNU/Linux folks who want the convenience of a pre-install? And, will anyone else follow suit?

Who has the power indeed

2007-05-01T16:56:00.000-04:00

So, last Thursday, both Scott and myself spoke at a Brooklyn College conference on Govermentality and Globalization. Scott spoke on the political economy of free software (using material from Chapter 1 of Decoding Liberation) while I presented material from Chapter 5 while speaking on the political philosophy of the cyborg world (yeah, it was as exciting as it sounded). So, interestingly, one comment we got in response was, (roughly), "Who is the "we" that is asking for these freedoms? Aren't these freedoms just of interest to software?" or, "This freedom is of no use to me; I can't program!", or "How am I placed in a more autonomous, powerful position vis-a-vis technology when I'm not tech-literate". These are all very good points (I've heard them before in various forms), and worth addressing in detail (which I promise to do in a future post, honest). But for the time being, I want to quickly throw out a little intuition tickler in reponse to these questions, which hopefully would suggest that there is something these questions are missing out in their prima facie take on the free software argument. Suppose these folks heard the news that, say, a Ford auto plant had just been taken over by the workers and run as a cooperative (or something). Would their immediate response be, "What difference does that make? I don't know how to build cars!" Presumably not. And then what if those cars went on the market, with user manuals for their use being written by other drivers, who were making elementary maintenance tips available to everyone else, with the slightly more expensive ones available from other co-operatives, who because they had access to the blueprints, could also offer service contracts for the same cars, and so on. You can embellish this picture in plenty of ways. The basic point remains: shouldn't the passage of control from the former entity (the corporate entity) to the latter (the workers co-operative) speak to a whole set of different imperatives and have exciting implications for the control of the technology?

Some heat, some light

2007-04-24T20:35:00.000-04:00

So, here is this post by Hugh McLeod over at GapingVoid that by itself is not so interesting, but manages to generate an interesting discussion. So do check it out. In part, that discussion centers on the supposed value that proprietary vendors (its about Microsoft originally, but his general point applies more broadly) provide, which makes them the preferred choice even when software is provided free of cost. [Basically, its the question, why FOSS? all over again] I'm not sure I have anything to add to that discussion, but I noticed this article by Matt Assay, which contains the following very useful lines (which are of direct relevance to software web services that run on top of free software):

I dislike the implication: the only way to make money from open source is by being a parasite. If the only way to make money from open source is by co-opting others' work (and giving nothing back) and spewing ads at them, then let me off the bus now...I don't believe that this is the only way to make money with open source...I like GPL-based models where you monetize the software directly. But I'm willing to accept the Web 2.0 angle, provided that Web 2.0 companies stop treating open source like a free good to be plundered, and rather as a valuable resource to be replenished. It is in their interests to do so. Google gets this better than most, though it has done little to replenish some of the core projects from which it derives value (e.g., Linux). My hope is that the Web 2.0 world will recognize that open source will only be available to "plunder" to the extent that these companies, like IBM and others before them, give back. Generously. Not out of charity, but out of self-interest.

Just the facts on FOSS market share

2007-04-23T16:21:00.000-04:00

You will notice a link to David Wheeler's FOSS references page on this blog. Its quite an amazing collection of articles and well worth checking out. On that page, Wheeler has, for a long time, had an article which, in my opinion is quite possibly the most comprehensive quantitative study on FOSS market shares. As Wheeler puts it,

My paper “Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!” is a massive collection of quantitative studies on free software, with the goal to “show that you should consider using OSS/FS when acquiring software”. It has a large set of different studies grouped into the categories market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership.

The good news is that Wheeler has updated that piece, (first put out in 2005). Check it out (and read Wheeler's post over at the Free Software Magazine for what has changed in the meantime).

GPL and commercial advantage

2007-04-22T17:40:00.000-04:00

I have a feeling I've talked about the commercial advantages of the GPL on this blog before, but I'm too lazy to go take a look in the archives. In any case, here is an interesting piece that reiterates that claim (one of the surefire certainties about the writing in this area is that the same points will be made again and again, the same canards spread, the same refutations made - this particular repetition suits me, so I indulge in it). The piece's narrative follows a general trend. It notes how some commercial vendors prefer licenses other than the GPL because the GPL is "too restrictive"; it then goes on to point out that the reciprocity requirement of the GPL actually makes tons of commercial sense, because it requires those that draw upon you, to give back. Here is an interesting excerpt:

Enterprise Content Management vendor Alfresco recently decided to move from its Mozilla Public License based (which is similar in many respects to the Apache license) to the GPL. Instead of seeing the GPL as being something that would handcuff their business, Alfresco has taken the view that it will actually help their commercial business. Matt Asay, vice president of business development at Alfresco, told me that the risk of a forked version of Alfresco's GPL code would be a positive thing for the company. "We would be ecstatic if someone forked the GPL version of Alfresco because then they get to go off on their fork and develop their own system but we would also benefit from the work that they do," Asay commented. "If we can't compete based on the work that we're doing on our own code as well as benefiting form the work that a fork would do on theirs, then we don't deserve to be in business."

I've read very similar sentiments expressed in a post by Matt Assay (provocatively titled "Microsoft + GPL = Match Made in Heaven"), which, while including language about "inhibiting competitors" that I find problematic, includes this gem:

Microsoft needs to ditch its weird view on the GPL. It used to call it anti-American. It’s actually the exact opposite. It is the most American of open source licenses. Microsoft could embrace it and continue to pull in its billions…and what could be more American than crass materialism?

A word on gNewSense

2007-04-19T20:25:00.000-04:00

I use Ubuntu at home and work, which isn't a completely free distro, and have often debated the question of whether this sets back free software (mind you, I maintain a dual-boot machine that has XP on it, which I use for watching some streaming video that requires, grrr, the dreaded IE/MP combo, so I'm definitely not pure as driven snow). Still, I've often dreamed of going to a completely free distro, so recently, I went ahead and asked at the Free Software Magazine how distros like Blag, Ututo and gNewSense were doing. I received a very useful reply from another reader, which I reproduce in full (in case anyone is thinking about going, like, totally free):

I'm using gNewSense 1.1 at the moment, and it works really well. I definitely recommend downloading the live CD and trying it out. There's nothing I can't do with it that I couldn't with Ubuntu (unless I really wanted to download the proprietary ATI driver in Ubuntu Dapper, which let me have 3D acceleration but caused various other problems). I did buy a new wireless card (the Linkysys WUSB54G v4) so it would work well with gNewSense using 100% free software, without any proprietary firmware. To get my old one working with Ubuntu I had to download and compile the driver anyway (which contained proprietary firmware), and it worked terribly. This one works fine out of the box in gNewSense and Ubuntu. I haven't tried the other fully free distros such as Ututo, but I've heard they don't work as well. Judging by gNewSense though, I expect that's because of factors other than a lack of proprietary drivers.

Here is the page where I asked my question, which features an interesting discussion in its own right, about the propriety of using not-completely-free distros. More on that later.

From a plugin to innovation

2007-04-17T17:16:00.000-04:00

So Microsoft's Open Source Labs has sent in a Media Player plug-in fix for Firefox (it "[it] shows another level of interoperability and eagerness in working with the Community"). You can check out the features offered (and of course, there is the gentleman in the comments who asks, "This is cool, but is there some chance of Microsoft creating an official Linux version of the Windows Media codecs so that people using Linux machines can view content on webpages that is encoded with WMx?"). This reminds me of yet another conversation in Seattle with folks from Port 25. I had asked the question on whether as part of their strategy of "working with" or "contributing to" the "community" they planned to send in code to FOSS projects. At that time, the response was whether or not I counted all the other instances of helping FOSS applications run on Windows, or the interoperability work counted as "contributions". They do in one sense, but the most fundamental contribution, and one that would help Microsoft best understand the culture that they seem to quite deeply misunderstand, would be to immerse themselves in it, and allow themselves the luxury of stepping away from thinking of it in terms of only business and technical models, and instead to think about it as a genuine passion for people. Thinking about it as a passion doesn't mean regarding them as nuts, or "extremists", or any other loaded term, but instead to try and understand the nature of the motivations that could have led to the FOSS dimension in its current shape. Innovation is driven by so many different motivations that it is simplistic in the extreme to imagine that it always takes capital to get it rolling (and shouldn't the copious literature on FOSS put out by business departments have convinced them otherwise?). MS often seems worried that not only will their business collapse if they were to go open-source, they just wouldn't get any code written. I don't know about their business (but I suggest they'd be surprised by how friendly the GPL would be to them) but I know that on the latter count, they needn't worry. Code will get written - and a lot of it will be very good. Writing code is a creative act, and the mysteries of how that act of creation kicks in, is one we're still working on. What we do know at the moment is that the answer most definitely is not "if no capital gets mobilized, nothing gets created"

Predictions galore

2007-04-16T18:13:00.000-04:00

Oh, no, heres one more "the open-source bubble is going to burst" story. And guess what, to make this even more credible, its an open-source CEO (a successful one) speaking. But what does he have to say? This:

"Right now, open source is hot," says Rod Johnson, author of the Spring Java development framework and CEO of Interface21, the company he founded to market it. Most open source projects are supported by an army of volunteers who buy into the hype, but "capitalism will inevitably reassert itself" and developers will find they need to put more effort into steady jobs and private lives, leaving "open source zombies"--unsupported, unmaintained projects--he predicts.

Really? Whats the argument here? Or is this just prophecy? "The hour draws nigh when capitalism will assert itself". Newsflash: capitalism has already asserted itself in the world of free software and open source (like, maybe 1998?). And, "open source projects are supported by an army of volunteers who buy into the hype"? (Methinks this reporter has brought into the hype - so in that sense the subject and reporter are in sync). And I'm mystified by what it could mean that developers will need to put "more effort into steady jobs and private lives"? All those people working for open source businesses must crave the kind of job security the rest the corporate world has (like those 17,000 folks Citigroup laid off last week). Finally, just to strike fear into all of us, there is the prospect of "open-source zombies". Scary. But at least we know they are out there. What about all those closed-source zombies, confined to the campuses of their proprietary headquarters? Who knows what they're capable of?

Another take on the MTS-07

2007-04-10T18:01:00.000-04:00

Pia Waugh blogs on the Microsoft Technology Summit. Pia has done a good job of providing the kind of synoptic take I was planning to write, so go ahead and check it out. I'd commented on her blog but somehow that comment was lost, and in any case, it was inadequate so I'll try to write more here sometime soon.

You can't get away from 'it'

2007-04-09T18:27:00.000-04:00

So, as might have been evident from my past few posts, I attended Microsoft's Technology Summit from March 26th to the 28th. I posted a blogroll a few posts below so that you can see what other attendees blogged on live, and on some of their feedback. I also posted a link to an interview at their Open Source Labs (full disclaimer: my trip was paid for). But in this post, what I want to do is take a slightly higher-level look at what I think MS was trying to achieve with this summit. In its most basic form, it was to get the word out to technologists about what they were up to. Yes, its all smoke and mirrors, but in any case, its worth commenting on.

Some problems: First, this attempt at communication took place in a form which too many attendees at the summit felt was too half-duplex. Too much talking by Microsoft folks, and not enough amongst the attendees, (or listening to them), or facilitating a structure that allowed for more discussion. All of this got said to MS on the second day itself. Secondly (related to the first), part of MS's agenda at this summit appeared to be to present a kindler, gentler face to that part of the FOSS community they think they can do business with: "FOSS - FSF zealots" was the subset MS seemed to want to work with. The only problem with this approach was that often the way in which MS folks spoke seemed to indicate that any discussion of FOSS outside of software engineering or business models (and within that they only seemed to want to talk of revenue streams as being exclusively license-sale driven) makes them nervous as it might be what those "open-source philosophers" talk about. While I can understand the standard reason for being so leery ("like, we might get infected by left-field ideas") surely, MS cannot imagine that they can successfully co-opt FOSS without attempting to tackle adequately that part of FOSS ideology that is not covered by software engineering or business models. Or can they? Related to this was a question that I put to folks at MS's open source labs: do they plan to contribute to FOSS projects? It might seem wierd to them, but ultimately, if MS wants to learn about what makes FOSS tick, they'll have to jump in head-first.

"You can't handle the kernel!"

2007-04-05T20:28:00.001-04:00

So, one point of contention (amongst many others) that came up in the course of a conversation with Sam Ramji, who heads Microsoft's Open Source Labs, regarded the usefulness of access to the code. As Ramji put it, "You want the kernel? You can't handle the kernel!". I've heard this one before, and its fairly simple to express. Don't hype access to the code when most users (insert your favored percentage here), simply can't code, or even if they didn't wouldn't want to inspect the code, and even if they did, wouldn't be competent enough to understand it, and even less competent to fix it. Fair enough. But what substantive point about free software follows from this, and does it lessen the normative weight of the request made in the Free Software Definition? I don't think so. Note that access to the code is a precondition for two out of the four freedoms (freedom 1: to study the code and adapt it to your needs, and freedom 2: the freedom to modify the code and release improvements). Now, note that the competence argument that is being deployed here simply says "you can't use the freedom to study the code and adapt it to your needs, because you aren't competent enough to - and concomitantly, access to the code also means nothing if you aren't able to modify the code". But again, the access to the code is merely a precondition to these freedoms; nowhere is the claim being made that access to the code is sufficient for code study and improvements. Those latter activities will only follow upon inspection and modification of the code by competent programmers, and here is where the crucial point lies (pardon me if its obvious to you): with code available to me, I am free to take my ignorance elsewhere (including presumably to the original programmers) and to ask more competent folks to help me. What access to the code most importantly secures for me is the freedom to pick and choose (within some reasonable bounds) who fixes my code and when.

As I indicated in my interview at the Open Source Labs, there is a free market out there in the free software world. Its a free market for programmers, able to bid on coding jobs with their eligibility determined by their portfolios (or some other demonstration of excellence).

Israel and the GPL

2007-04-04T14:35:00.000-04:00

A detailed note on an Israeli case involving the GPL. There are very few legal proceedings involving the GPL, and every one of them is worth their weight in gold for the attention they focus on licensing issues, the chance to revisit the terms of the license and their respective implications. Even if this case is not of the dramatic "will-the-GPL-survive-this-latest-challenge", its useful in all these ways.

A trio on the GPL

2007-04-02T14:10:00.000-04:00

RMS, Torvalds and Novell comment on the new version of the GPL V3. No surprises in any of what got said in there (except, perhaps, Torvald's less-than-flame-like-response).

Interview at MS's Open Source Labs

2007-04-02T14:04:00.000-04:00

While visiting Redmond for the Microsoft Technology Summit, I visited Microsoft's Open Source Labs (the Port 25 you folks might have heard about), and was interviewed by Anandeep Pannu. Here is the link for the interview (you'll notice a reference to that part of my life that has to do with aviation history - check it out if you like). I spent most of the chat talking about the book, trying to come up with a reasonable synopsis of each of the chapters. I also got into a feisty conversation (later that night) with Anandeep's boss at the labs, and will try and post my summary of that particular interaction a little later.

Using GPL V3 against Novell-Microsoft

2007-03-18T17:01:00.000-04:00

Eben Moglen plans to use a modified version of the GPLV3 to attack the Novell-Microsoft 'protection from patent suits' deal. Here is the relevant bit (quoting Moglen):

Suppose GPL3 says something like, 'if you distribute (or procure the distribution), of a program (or parts of a program) - and if you make patent promises partially to some subset of the distributees of the program - then under this license you have given the same promise or license at no cost in royalties or other obligations to all persons to whom the program is distributed'. If GPL 3 goes into effect with these terms in it, Novell will suddenly becomes a patent laundry; the minute Microsoft realizes the laundry is under construction it will withdraw.

Its an ingenious strategy though the devil always lies in the details. While a a great deal of the tool chain needed to build the Linux kernel will/might adopt GPL V3, it remains to be seen if Novell can't come up with some circumvention strategy. If you are interested in this, you might want to ask Eben for more details when he speaks tomorrow at NYU's Information Law Institute.

The Microsoft Technology Summit 2007

2007-03-14T15:31:00.000-04:00

So, I've been invited to the Microsoft Technology Summit, 2007. I don't know the full list of invitees but do know that Robby Russell and Michael Koziarski have been (yeah, I know both Ruby on Rails types, too little to indicate a pattern, what?) (sorry, thats ambiguous, I do know that thinking and talking about FOSS will feature prominently). This, by the way, is part of the description of the MTS:

The purpose is to gather a small group of technologists and discuss today's technology issues and opportunities, as well discuss Microsoft's role & future direction.

Yes, I know the usual EEE worries apply. I'm looking forward to meeting the FOSS crowd in any case.

Mostly good sense and then this

2007-03-13T18:45:00.000-04:00

Sun Microsystem's Matt Thompson holds forth on open-source being 'benefit-driven'. (This is related to the story of SUN and NIIT (India's biggest IT trainer) launching a joint training program in India). Most of the interview is the usual explanation of why open-source works, develops user-autonomy, why closed-source is becoming "irrelevant" and so on. It also includes the following quote, which struck me as interesting:

Many people confuse open-source to be a kind of selfless movement that strives to make things better. Open-source can be very `benefit-driven' as well. Here is an opportunity to take somebody else's good ideas, build something on top of it and make money on it! So, the world now sees it as a route to personal success and that's where open-source's success lies.

I wonder how many 'movements' the scale of FOSS have to continually disdain the altruistic interpretation put on them? And continually assure folks that there is a selfish side to it all? Interesting, innit? And I wonder if this is the sort of stuff that drives RMS nuts? (don't bother answering the last question).

Jonathan Lethem Experiments with Freeing Culture

2007-03-12T19:31:00.000-04:00

Novelist Jonathan Lethem has a thoughtful essay in Harper's (the Feb. 2007 issue) on copyright and culture; his sources alone are useful and informative, and the essay is a nice presentation of arguments (mostly familiar to readers of Lessig and Vaidhyanathan) that there are serious problems with, and interesting solutions to, contemporary copyright practice. For example, he observes

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. In this regard, few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation.

Thinking apparently induced action, as he is also engaging in two experiments with some of his works. First, he is seeking a filmmaker to option his just-published novel, one who will agree, with Lethem

to release all ancillary rights to the film (and its source material, the novel), five years after the film’s debut.

And second, under the auspices of his "Promiscuous Materials Project," he's non-exclusively licensing many of his short works for adaptation as stage plays or films. No sign of copyleft anywhere, though.

Tories get with it

2007-03-10T09:52:00.000-05:00

From David Berry and the libre-society mailing list:

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has promised that an incoming Conservative (UK) government would create a level playing field for open source software in the UK, in a move which could save taxpayers more than £600 million a year. In a speech at the Royal Society of Arts, he also announced the appointment of Mark Thompson, of the Judge Business School at Cambridge University, to advise the Party on how to make Britain the open source leader in Europe. Mr Osborne reckoned that opening up the market in software would enable the Government to slash 5 per cent off Whitehall's annual IT bill, because open software allows users to read, change and improve its code, in contrast to proprietary software where a company controls the source code.

Read the full story.

More from Bernie Galler

2007-03-08T20:04:00.000-05:00

I'd mentioned the late Bernie Galler in a previous post noting his quote at the GNU philosophy page. Bernie was indeed a pioneer in noting the freedoms of free software. In Decoding Liberation, our forthcoming book on free software (in case you'd forgotten), we mention his public debate (in the pages of the JACM) with Calvin Mooers twice. Here are the references to the letters themselves, and then two excerpts from our book (one from Chapter 1, and another from Chapter 4)

Galler, Bernie. 1968. Language Protection by Trademark Ill-Advised. Communications of the ACM 11 (3):148.

Mooers, Calvin N. 1968. Reply to "Language Protection by Trademark Ill-Advised". Communications of the ACM 11 (3):148-149.

From Chapter 1:

The year 1968 also saw a significant discussion of intellectual property issues take place on the pages of the Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery (CACM), the flagship journal of the primary society for computing professionals. In a policy paper published by the Rockford Research Institute, Calvin Mooers had argued for trademark protection for his TRAC language to prevent its modification by users. University of Michigan professor Bernie Galler responded in a letter to the CACM, arguing that that the best and most successful programming languages benefited from the input of users who could change them, noting in particular the success of SNOBOL, which he suggested "had benefited from meritorious extensions by irrepressible young people at universities" (Galler 1968). Mooers responded:

The visible and recognized TRAC trademark informs this public . . . that the language or computer capability identified by this trademark adheres authentically and exactly to a carefully drawn Rockford Research standard. . . . An adequate basis for proprietary software development and marketing is urgently needed particularly in view of the doubtful capabilities of copyright, patent or trade secret methods when applied to software.(Mooers 1968)

While most computer science professionals acknowledged the need for some protection in order to maintain compatibility among different versions of a language, Galler's views had been borne out by the successful examples of collaborative development by the SHARE and MAD user groups. Significantly, Mooers's communique had noted the inapplicability of extant intellectual property law to software, which would continue to be a point of contention as the software industry grew. As it turned out, Gallers analysis was correct, and the trademarked TRAC language never became popular.

And then from Chapter 4:

Also in 1968, in the first public discussion of intellectual property issues in computer science, Calvin Mooers and Bernie Galler engaged in a highly visible exchange in the pages of the flagship computer science journal, the Communications of the ACM (CACM). Mooers had announced his intent to seek trademark protection--noting the doubtful capabilities of other forms of intellectual property law with respect to software--to prevent the unauthorized modification of the programming language TRAC. In a letter to the editor of the CACM, Galler argued progress in the design and implementation of programming languages would be accelerated by the active participation of users, and therefore this scientific project needed to remain public (Galler 1968). Mooers response, that the absence of some sort of protection would result in version proliferation and pernicious mutual incompatibility, is an argument that anticipates contemporary claims for the indispensability of intellectual property protection in computer science (Mooers 1968).

Fire away - you're missing

2007-03-07T19:42:00.000-05:00

Robert Lefkowitz takes a few digs at open source at Eclipsecon. I'll concentrate on one dig and leave his nonsense about patents aside (much smarter people than me have destroyed that argument many times over). Lefkowitz's dig in question is a good one because it exposes the incoherence at the ideological principle of the OSI (or the open source movement or ESR's ideology, take your pick) that the way to talk about free software was to drop talk of freedom, and talk only about technical/business issues. So when we get the following:

The ideology of the open-source moment is built atop some odd assumptions, Lefkowitz argued, including the idea that buyers need access to code because product designers can't be trusted to get it right. Couple that with the extensive disclaimers routinely attached to all software, commercial or free, and you have a philosophy standard in the software industry that's at odds with other fields.Flashing a photo of a pill bottle, Lefkowitz quipped, "Sorry this drug was defective. I'm sorry you got sick but, you know, we included the chemical formula on the bottle! You could have fixed it yourself!"

...its worth noting that this claim has nothing to do with free software because nowhere in the Free Software Definition is the claim made that "product designers can't be trusted to get it right". On the contrary, we do trust you. Mind if we take a look at the code ourselves? Mind if we share this with our friends? Or just tinker with it for the heck of it? Or use it any way we want?

Its back!

2007-03-06T18:29:00.000-05:00

One sad thing about the corporate newsletter/magazine/blog scene when it comes to open source is the persistent rehashing of a few debates. In a certain sense, its the newsgroup syndrome all over again: stick around for a while, and that flamewar that you poured so much time and energy into, is back! So here, without further comment, is a pointer to the "some myths about open-source...oh, no, they ain't!" debate. Its the last time I'll do this on this blog, I promise. No, seriously, I mean it.

Come again?

2007-03-03T19:28:00.000-05:00

Here is a Flash developer, talking about why he thinks "open-sourcing Flash isn't the way to go". The core of the argument is the following:

I like knowing that everyone's version of Flash player is exactly the same. I don't want to have to start hacking applications to make them work in the 2-3 most popular versions of the Flash Player. For me, that's the single biggest reason why open sourcing the Flash Player would be a bad thing.

In response to reason numero uno, why? Why is this so important? I'm genuinely curious. Why is version proliferation such a bad thing, especially when it is known that the most used versions will ultimately become the most common, forcing out those that simpy don't cut it for their user base? And in response to reason numero dos, again, why? Why is this so important to you? Why would you have to hack these applications to get them to work in the "2-3 most popular version of the Flash Player"? Why would there even be "2-3 most popular versions" rather than one which will float to the top? There are tons of free software applications and most of them don't suffer from the kind of version proliferation so dreaded by this gentleman. Development tree mergers happen all the time to take care of that - if the user community and the developer community demands it.

Unfortunately, what these reasons sound like are lame reiterations of very old, tired , excuses for refusing to free the source, and even more unfortunately, they try their best to propagate old, easily-dismissed (but apparently, not so easy to put to rest) canards.

Bernie Galler, relevant as ever

2007-02-28T17:45:00.000-05:00

Over at GNU's Philosophy Section, I just noticed the addition of a quote from Bernie Galler, excerpted from "a letter to the editor of the Communications of the ACM (vol.3, no.4, pp.A12-A13), saying in part (mentioning price, but clearly implying freedom):"

... it is clear that what is being charged for is the development of the program, and while I am particularly unhappy that it comes from a university, I believe it is damaging to the whole profession. There isn't a 704 installation that hasn't directly benefited from the free exchange of programs made possible by the distribution facilities of SHARE. If we start to sell our programs, this will set very undesirable precedents.

Galler, who engaged in one of the first public (via letters to the editor of the JACM) debates of the issue of intellectual property, had other memorable quotes to offer on the subject. I'll dig 'em up and post 'em here. And hopefully, over at GNU as well.

'Taint a bad thing to fail so much

2007-02-27T19:01:00.000-05:00

Chris Holt over at the Free Software Magazine Newsletters writes about Clay Shirky's take on FOSS (in the February 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review). Holt's take on Shirky's piece (which I haven't read myself) is a little quick, but he does seem to take umbrage at Shirky's focusing on the large of FOSS projects that don't take off (for whatever reason, original developer moved on, no adopters, no interest, bad management, no need, etc) and its potential to scare off investors who look askance at the large percentage of FOSS failures (of course, thats precisely the kind of thing venture capitalists seem to invest in all the time - high-risk, high-payoff deals but thats probably besides the point here). Holt also seems a bit nervous about the ambiguous nature of Shirky's suggestion that particular kinds of FOSS projects are likely to be business-friendly (er, the worry being corporate exploitation).

All said and done, I suspect Shirky's pronouncements are quite benign. Pointing out high failure rates means nothing in the world of business. 95% of restaurants fail, and yet there is no shortage of investors because it is understood the nature of the business is such that the winning formula is only rarely achieved, and furthermore, Shirky could merely be pointing to the truism that there is a tremendous amount of flux in the FOSS world, and that its practices are unlikely to guarantee the kind of stability that traditional business investors demand. Is the latter such a bad thing? If anything, Shirky seems to be highlighting the unique features of the FOSS world that set it apart - so that those who claim its "just another software engineering methodology" might take heed. And it didn't seem to me that Shirky was saying (or at least Holt didn't point to it) that FOSS products score lower that proprietary products when it comes to things like quality. Lastly, the point that I claimed was tangential above might not be so off-the-mark. VCs are still likely to stay interested in FOSS projects despite the high failure rates.

Dell-n-Linux

2007-02-26T16:50:00.000-05:00

Dell thinks about putting Linux on its machines. It'll be interesting to see which distro gets picked, and what the typical bundle of software will be. The move is significant for all the obvious reasons, not the least of which will be the entry of another support entity into the Linux world. Dell could also offer a choice of distros but that might be a stretch. At the very least, the chance to get a run-out-of-box Linux box would quite an enticement for not just the old faithful but also for a whole new demographic. It'd also be interesting to see how this would play into Dell's academic market.

Physician, heal thyself

2007-02-22T17:52:00.000-05:00

ESR goes mental on Red Hat. I am a Ubuntu user myself, and don't like Fedora that much. But ESR's language grates on me. I wonder if he realizes that with his constant ranting about "ideological purity" or whatever it is, he sounds like a raging demagogue too, just one committed to a different ideology.

They really are commies!

2007-02-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

Well folks, its true. FOSS pleads guilty to the charge of being a communist enterprise. After all, as this news item reports, "Cuba's communist government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire — Microsoft Corp. — by joining with socialist Venezuela in converting its computers to open-source software." And to make things worse, RMS, "a paunchy, wild-haired man in a T-shirt" showed up at the International Conference on Communication and Technologies in Havana, to make the "biggest splash". Good Lord. The cover is blown; there is no plausible deniability any more.

Come again?

2007-02-11T19:56:00.000-05:00

An unintentionally funny article on Microsoft's adoption of the open-source paradigm. Actually, the article derives its humor from the following gem:

One aspect of open source that Microsoft isn't planning to adopt is the actual open source part, as it remains incompatible with the company's business model. However, the code for officelabs products will be available to anyone within Microsoft itself

This is clearly a case of massive-internalization of one of ESR's mantras, without having taken on the rest of the message.

And another one

2007-02-07T17:39:00.000-05:00

Microsoft now throws its weight behind the OpenID authentication standard. Bad news for .NET Passport; good news for open standards. It'll be interesting to see whether recent moves will get discussed at this year's Microsoft Technology Summit; and what role they are playing within Microsoft's moves to co-exist, co-operate or what-have-you with the open standards/FOSS community. Perhaps we might see a whole bunch of these as a prelude to the MTS. To create a friendlier atmosphere, if you will.

Microsoft, ODF, OOXML: We'll help ourselves, thanks

2007-02-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

Microsoft will co-operate with some aspects of the demand for open standards. In what way? For instance, consider this business of Microsoft working on an open-source project to develop plug-ins for interoperability between OOXML and ODF. So, now, Word users need not use OpenOffice to open ODF files. And it means that those reluctant to use Office 2007 because it didn't include such support for ODF have had that reason taken away. I suppose there could be others, like it isn't free software for instance, but this one is gone.

Off with you, Blackboard!

2006-11-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

The Software Freedom Law Center is going to contest Blackboard's ridiculous patent application. I have a personal interest in this particular battle. I worked for years at the Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center, as part of a development effort for group decision support systems. Quite frankly, every single thing Blackboard is claiming as part of its patent application is prior art. And all of it in the Electronic Information Exchange System. Check it out. [Those pages are old; EIES is now defunct, but its history lives on]

Get yerself a book

2006-11-28T19:06:00.000-05:00

More an advertisement than a real blog post, I know, but because Benjamin Mako Hill has commented on this blog more than once, I thought I'd post a link to the competition being run by the Free Software magazine that has as one its prizes, a book by BMH.

Get stuck into it.

A tale of two acts

2006-11-15T19:59:00.000-05:00

A decent quasi-technical newspiece on the importance of Sun's Java move.

And an article on the other end of the spectrum of decent acts, Microsoft's protection racket with Novell.

Sun GPLs Java!

2006-11-14T21:22:00.000-05:00

In case you can't tell, Geek Gaucho is very happy that Sun has placed Java under the GPL. I agree with the spirit expressed - congratulations Sun! Read Cassia's linked piece as well (hmm..some glee in that blog post title, what?)

Also, here is a link to a video featuring some big-hitters commenting on the Sun decision (and you actually get to see RMS praising a corporation!)

MySql and dual licensing

2006-10-23T15:57:00.000-04:00

A forward from Greg Whitescarver of Code and What-Not about MySql's dual licensing strategy. Check out the comments on the initial post.

The Honest Public License

2006-10-18T19:28:00.000-04:00

I only chanced upon the Honest Public License today. Sorry about the tardyness but there you have it. In any case, Capobianco's polemic is directed at webservices(yup, those things that Tim O'Reilly so charmingly described as "pockets of proprietary opportunity") and they are, no exaggeration intended, the one thing that could render lots of current licensing constraints irrelevant in a world moving towards web-centric computing. I quite like the reasoning in the piece but imagine that the exact wording of the HPL will take some working on before it works for everyone (especially those folks at Yahoo and Google).

RFP/FOSS and Red Tape

2006-10-13T18:54:00.000-04:00

Conventional governmental purchases of software rely on the good ol' RFP scheme. Send out a tender, if you will, asking for proposals, and pick the most competitive. And that model doesn't work too well with FOSS, seeing as most FOSS is, er, free. But this article fails to join the dots and draw the obvious conclusion - that with price issues out of the way (not that they have to be, FOSS needn't be free-of-charge) RFPs can concentrate on the technical issues: who will support the source (if anyone), will enhancements be possible, who to contact for bug fixes and so on. Personally, I'm a little puzzled by the piece; it speaks of how much confusion the open source model introduces into procurement because of the fact that it displaces cost from the RFP process but what about all the other factors? Surely, those still figure in the RFP process?

Fads can't last so long

2006-10-12T16:43:00.000-04:00

There are certain inevitable cycles in the trade magazine writing business (perhaps they are not cycles, but just recurrent themes). Many of these are of the "is-not, is-too" variety and one persistent one with FOSS is the "FOSS is a fad, FOSS is not so hot, FOSS is not going anywhere" which is then met by the usual rejoinders about market shares, data on bugs per 1000 lines of code, or whatever stat it is that turns you on. Here is a rejoinder to a "FOSS is a fad" claim that accurately points out that FOSS can hardly be a fad as it has been around 40 years. But in a sense, the "FOSS is a fad" claim was inevitable given that "open source" was promoted as such a "innovation" and "departure" in the first place. In doing that, the rhetorical advantage, I suggest, was handed over to the proprietary camp, who were then able to paint themselves as the established model, and put themselves of being the pickers and choosers from the offerings of this upstart. The history of computing suggests that instead, proprietary software was the disruption, the new business model, the radical departure, the hijacking, the intrusion or whatever else you want to call it. Falling into the trap of donning the radical robe when it comes to FOSS ensures that you're always having to argue for your legitimacy. Or so I think.

Enough misunderstanding already!

2006-10-11T20:46:00.000-04:00

A hilarious misunderstanding of the GPL V3 on display here. Zuck doesn't get it. NOBODY is going to be forced to use the GPL V3 - nobody. If you don't want to use it, don't. If people want to use it, they will. If it doesn't get widely used, it will go away or become a marginal player. GPL V2 is popular because people like it. None of the software covered by the GPL V2 will be affected by V3 - unless, of course, the developer in question decides to do so, and even then someone could fork the codebase before that and place that under the GPL V2. Wow. No wonder people complain about Stallman saying the same things again and again - its because no one listens!

Oh, and yes, the article also plays up the schism in the FOSS community. That always makes for good press.

Microcosmographia Licentia

2006-10-07T09:47:00.000-04:00

David Berry recently offered this definition (with all due apologies to F.M Cornford) on the Libre-Society mailing list. Pretty priceless, I must say. Enjoy.

"Microcosmographia licentia:A talking shop of (mostly) non-lawyers discussing the number of DRM-angels sitting on invariant-pins all of whose deliberations are pre-framed within a particular 'objective' conception of law that they claim to dislike (copyright/patent/DRM), but which through the drafting process becomes increasingly reliant upon as a legal support for the very licences they endlessly discuss. Heavily influenced by libertarian conceptions of the state or government in which politics can be 'circumvented' by the individualistic use of technical hacks and clever tweaks instantiated through copyright licences (known as copyleft). Particularly known for its theological belief in the redeeming power of the Trinity of Richard M. Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Lawrence Lessig and the eschatological promise of a utopian GNU land of milk and honey where information is free. With its own version of Judas Iscariot (Eric S. Raymond), the Anti-Christ (Bill Gates/Microsoft) and the Devil (the RIAA), it rallies its members to fight the 'closing' down of human freedom through the use of online mailing lists, wiki, blogs and social-networking software. Discussions in microcosmographia licentia are bought to a swift close whenever anyone mentions belling the cat. The underlying principles are all deducible from the fundamental maxim, that the first necessity for a body of people engaged in the pursuit of free culture is the freedom from the burden of political cares. It is impossible to enjoy the contemplation of free culture if one is vexed and distracted by the sense of responsibility. The microcosmographia licentia is also superior to liberal democracy in having no organised parties. Thus avoiding all the responsibilities of party leadership (there are leaders, but no one
follows them), and the degradations of party compromise. It is clear, moreover, that twenty independent persons, each of whom has a different reason for not doing a certain thing, and no one of whom will compromise with any other, constitute a most effective check upon the rashness of individuals. See also Free Culture and Creative Commons."

That 'ol debate

2006-10-06T21:21:00.000-04:00

Whoee - a little sacrilege over at Business Week (or so the author seems to think ) with the suggestion that for some domains, closed-source might be better. Read the article, and then read the very perceptive comments that follow - only two so far, but they've already nailed the issue!

Google's Code Search

2006-10-05T11:37:00.000-04:00

Google releases Code Search. From Google:

"Google Code Search helps you find function definitions and sample code by giving you one place to search publicly accessible source code hosted on the Internet. With Google Code Search, you can: Use regular expressions to search more precisely; restrict your search by language, license or filename; view the source file with links back to the entire package and the webpage where it came from"

Hours of fun ahead.

Germany enforces the GPL

2006-09-27T07:23:00.001-04:00

The GPL gets enforced in Germany. This particular case has been brewing in years, and has served to set all sorts of legal precedent, starting with the Munich court's decision in Welte v. Sitecom Deutschland GmbH,that the GPL is, yes, a valid, enforceable license carrying legal weight. And now, this decision. Read a bit more about Welte and check out his website, gpl-violations.org. In writing on Welte, Brian W. Carver, in ("Share and Share Alike: Understanding and Enforcing and Open Source and Free Software Licenses", Berkeley Technology Law Journal 443-481, Vol. 20, 2005) wrote:

"Welte did not win damages, but rather an injunction and GPL compliance. If he had lost, under German law, he would have had to pay attorneys fees, and these enforcement actions take up valuable time. What motivates those, like Welte, that seek to enforce the GPL? The answer can be found in the philosophy driving the GPL itself. The netfilter team members... chose the GPL for the work that it does as a license. The license keeps one's copyrighted work available in the manner one chooses. Software developers spend a great deal of time creating such software, and when they are not being paid directly for that work, there is even more reason to think they may seek other forms of compensation for the long hours, such as the assurance that others will always be able to study, modify, improve, and share the work that they have begun. Welte is one of many free software developers who has made a conscious choice to use the GPL because it prevents others from making proprietary derivatives of his work. When asked why he pursued this legal action, Welte said, "Because I write code under the GPL and not the BSD license" "

Boffins and open source

2006-09-25T13:55:00.000-04:00

This storyis worth reporting, if only for the fact that it uses the word "boffins", which is delightfully WWII-ish. But seriously, 750,000 dollars to study open-source development models seems to indicate some serious interest at the NSF in figuring out why the model works and what relevance it might have to the broader practice of computer science.

Linux in Kerala

2006-09-22T18:11:00.001-04:00

A Business Week article about Linux adoption in Kerala, often considered India's most progressive state. Read the comments below the article - well, just the one by "jay". Wierdo. Also, dig the 12-year old who says he's never heard of Windows. Nice going - didn't really think that was possible, anywhere, anytime.

The Microsoft Open Source Lab

2006-09-21T11:48:00.000-04:00

Microsoft has a Open Source Lab/Center/Initiative/Summat. They have a website and a blog (apologies if this is old hat for everyone out there). Check it out. Read it, and try and figure out what is going on. Is it a marketing stunt? Are they for real? What exactly are they up to? What do they hope to achieve with this, and why are they doing it? I have some ideas; I'm not sure, and I'd appreciate some help.

Ignore contrapositives at your peril

2006-08-12T13:41:00.000-04:00

This blog has been defunct for a very long time. Apologies for that, and I promise to make it more active in the following days, weeks, months and years. We've been very busy with the book as the deadline approaches (September 1st with Routledge), and its led to all sorts of things getting neglected (like my cricket blog, can you imagine?). Anyway, so while digging around on the BitKeeper fiasco (remember last year's flame wars, which ultimately led to git being used for the Linux kernel?), we rediscovered the original flames concerning the use of BitKeeper on the kernel. RMS sparks things off, and there is the usual "don't you lecture me" responses, and Larry McVoy steps in with his "quit whining" diatribes, and then, amazingly, comes this interesting smackdown. Taken from the linux kernel mailing lists:

Larry McVoy: (In response to RMS saying "You are asking for the power to silence criticism. That is not freedom, that is a power."):

"Richard, the day that the GPL doesn't use it's power to force people to do things they may not want to do is the day that you get to make the above statement in public without getting flamed. Today is not that day. "

RMS: "Alas, by flaming me now you have made your own statement untrue."

In his response, McVoy doesn't acknowledge RMS's reply above. I wonder if its because he didn't get it, or because he realized he had been had comprehensively. In case you didn't get it, the structure of McVoy's claim is: If the GPL doesn't use its power to force people to do things they may not want to do then you get to make the above statement without getting flamed. But McVoy flamed RMS, so the antecedent is rendered false. Ergo, the GPL doesn't use its power to force people to do things they may not want to do. Poor McVoy, he shoulda studied the structure of contrapositives a little better.

The GPL and Kororaa

2006-05-15T21:14:00.000-04:00

The Kororaa live CD distro has apparently been brought to a grinding halt. The story itself is a bit confusing, but what I find interesting is all the angst on display in the comments on the linked page. Gee, some folks find it bizarre that you might have to depend on the law to sustain the free software community - what would it do without the legal requirements of the free software licenses? And proprietary software vendors are so accomodating aren't they?

Decoding Liberation

Book of the month at RCCS

Must Redirect the Drool

Mako on DL in Minds and Machines

Bender on Sugar, FOSS, pedagogy

Not so fast

Professor Duffy's bombshell

Plenty of politics out there

And over at openstudents...

Section 108.2.3.5.7, gerritt?

FOSS at SIGSCE

Open code and law

Merce Cunningham and Open-Source Software for the Arts

FOSS Birds-of-a-Feather at SIGCSE 2008

Problems with peer review, Part Three

Problems with peer review, Part Two

Problems with peer-review, Part One

Tale of a button

In with the new/out with the old

Think Free Press, not Free Beer: Toward a Discourse Ethic for Software

Math and Open Source

Decoding Liberation at the Wolfe Institute

A funding appeal from the SFLC

From the Forum to the 'hood

Decoding Liberation at the Brecht Forum

A murky PRISM

The US' first GPL-violation case

Plus ça change...

Suber on OA for monographs

The librarians' lament

Back-n-forth

More on Copyright

The irony of it all

Still waiting

I refuse to get it

FOSS at NA-CAP 2007

More on the term 'open source'

The SFLC on the FCC

A friendly word

Just another business model, eh?

What's in a name

Its all just one, really

A stat and a confirmation

Another deal?

Can I sit in?

A change of heart?

Affero is out for discussion

Eben holding forth

RMS on why V3 is good for you

A bit closer to making up

Sun, Java, governance and community

Dell-n-Ubuntu

Who has the power indeed

Some heat, some light

Just the facts on FOSS market share

GPL and commercial advantage

A word on gNewSense

From a plugin to innovation

Predictions galore

Another take on the MTS-07

You can't get away from 'it'

"You can't handle the kernel!"

Israel and the GPL

A trio on the GPL

Interview at MS's Open Source Labs

Blogroll for MTS-07 Participants

Using GPL V3 against Novell-Microsoft

The Microsoft Technology Summit 2007

Mostly good sense and then this

Jonathan Lethem Experiments with Freeing Culture

Tories get with it

More from Bernie Galler

Fire away - you're missing

Its back!

Come again?

Bernie Galler, relevant as ever

'Taint a bad thing to fail so much

Dell-n-Linux

Physician, heal thyself

They really are commies!