software

GPLv3 Update

The work on version three of the GNU General Public License (Wikipedia) is moving along nicely. A news update on the progress reads:

The second discussion draft of GPLv3 was released eight months ago, in July 2006. We had never planned to let so much time pass between public releases of the license. We felt it was important to fully discuss a few specific issues, including the recent patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, before proceeding with the process. A new discussion draft will be released on March 28 at 10:00 AM US Eastern time; it represents the outcome of those discussions, and the rationale document that will accompany it explains how we arrived at these decisions. However, we remain absolutely committed to hearing input from as much of the free software community as possible before publishing a final version of the license. We are adjusting the drafting process to make sure that everyone interested has an opportunity to make their voice heard.

The third discussion draft will be open for comment for sixty days. Based on the feedback we receive during this window, we may publish new language from time to time for additional review. For example, if someone points out a side effect of some term that we hadn’t considered before, we may publish updated text for that section aimed at addressing the issue. These changes will be announced on the GPLv3 web site and mailing list.

We will continue to take feedback from public comments and discussion committees as before. In addition, if there are common questions about the license, we will address those in blog posts on the GPLv3 web site. Our goal is not to preempt discussion or criticism of the draft, but rather to enhance that discussion by helping the community fully understand the text. We are also considering other ways to solicit input, which we will announce as they are planned.

After this discussion period is over, we will publish a last call draft. That draft will be open for comment for thirty days, and the final license will be published shortly afterwards. We would like to thank everyone for their continued support during this process, and their assistance as we work to make the our licenses the best they can be.

Read more about the GPLv3 and the progression of its development at the GPLv3 site.

Posted on by mklang

Recommendation Mapping

Recommender systems are nothing new. The list of books on the side of this blog is generated by LibraryThing which has a very nice recommender system. It analysis your library and then recommends books contained in other users libraries. Amazon tends to use recommender systems and recommends customers that people who bought a certain book also bought certain other books.

This is nothing new. But when I came across Amaznode I was pleasantly surprised by the graphical representations of their recommendations (which are based on Amazon). The system creates a web of books which others have bought. This is a cute way of representing data.

Posted on by mklang

Stress Flag

Adding a haphazard artistic touch to most cities are the street artists. They apply their art in many different ways here it is in the form of a small flag tied up to the railing of a bridge in Göteborg. The flag bears the word “stress” but is it for or against stress?

Posted on by mklang

A European Spine?

“The British Government has issued a response to a recent petition calling for ‘the Prime Minister to make software patents clearly unenforcible’. The answer is reassuring but perhaps doesn’t go far enough, and gives no specific promises to bring into line a patent office that grants software patents (according to the petition) ‘against the letter and the spirit of the law’. The Gowers Review that it references gives detailed insight into the current British position on this debate, most interestingly recommending a policy of ‘not extending patent rights beyond their present limits within the areas of software, business methods and genes.'” (via Slashdot)

OMG! Does this mean that there are European countries, part of the EU which actually may have a spine? That they are prepared not to toe the EU competition of who can sellout their values the fastest in order to please the US?

Originally I thought that European Unity was a good idea since it would enable Europeans to take a stand against the cultural and economic superiority of the States – but we haven’t seen much of that yet…

Posted on by mklang

Tell Dell

The Bad Vista blog has an interesting post about Dell. Apparently the company is looking for ideas how they can improve their systems. Besides letting them know which hardware they should have, Bad Vista recommends letting them know that selling their computers with preinstalled with free software, or without any operating system would be a way of promoting freedom.

You can go here to propose your idea and to vote for ideas you support. If you register an account with them, your vote counts for 10 anonymous votes.

Bad Vista also has created a nice t-shirt on Cafe Press

Posted on by mklang

Sweden to criminalise DoS attacks

It does not come as a surprise to read (in Swedish here) that Sweden is on it’s way to criminalise denial of service attacks. This is unsurprising since it is simply another step in the obvious direction of EU harmonisation following the framework decision on attacks against information systems. The latter framework decision is part of a general scheme to fight against terrorism and organised crime within the information society.

The problem is that criminalising DoS attacks in this way makes all DoS attacks illegal. Even if an attack is carried out in the form of political protest, in other words, not terrorism, not organised crime. For example, in a case settled in 2006 where the Frankfurt Appelate Court found the groups â??Libertadâ?? and â??Kein Mensch ist illegalâ?? (No Human is Illegal) had carried out a legitimate form of political protest when they organised 13000 people in an online blockade (With a script- client- based distributed denial of service attack) of the airline Lufthansa. The protest was against the companies part in the deportation of asylum seekers (for more see links below).

When states now criminalise the act of DoS they also make sure that this tool cannot be used as a form of political protest. Therefore the regulators go far beyond their intention and scope of preventing terrorism and organised crime.

A more paranoid person may suspect that the regulator is using the label of terrorism to create rules which limit our ability to use technology in political communications… Read more about the “unintended” negative consequences for democracy, which occur when regulators attempt to control technology in my thesis: Disruptive Technology.

—

Decision by the Frankfurt Appellate Court (in German only, 22.05.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/service/downloads/pdf/olg220506.pdf

Statement by Libertad on the ruling (in German only, 1.06.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/inhalt/projekte/depclass/verfahren/libpe010606.shtml

In German (1.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/73755
In English (2.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/73827

Posted on by mklang

Updating to Ella

Every time word press releases and update I go through a period of tense anticipation. Will I be able to update my software without breaking the whole thing. So when I saw in January that WordPress had released WordPress 2.1 â??Ellaâ??, named for jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald I was a bit tense. But everything went well with a few minor changes that needed to be made to the theme.

But it wasn’t until I tried to actually write a new post that I realised that something was seriously wrong. Ella supports a new tabbed editor which enables switching between WYSIWYG and code editing while writing a post. Unfortunately not only was there no tabs but my whole toolbar had disappeared. I eventually resolved this by deleting and re-installing the /wp-includes/js/tinymce/ folder and doing a hard refresh. Hey Presto! there was my toolbar. But my problems were not over.

Right now I have a toolbar but attempting to add a link fails since the popup window that appears has no button to press on. Hitting return does nothing either. This is all very frustrating. Oh well if you don’t know what to do you can always fill your time by upgrading software…

Update! problem solved. The loss of the cancel/insert buttons that prevented me from inserting links without going to the html editor was solved by changing my java settings in Firefox, clearing the cache and then restarting. So now everything looks fixed again (until I find the next little bug).

Posted on by mklang

Train day 2

Yesterday included a six hour train ride from Stockholm and back again. The point was to go meet some people and organise my visa for the Indian trip next week. Today was another six hours on the train. This time it was off to Linköping to give a Creative Commons presentation. The journey was with Jonas �berg who was presenting the third draft of the GPLv3 which is about to be officially released in a matter of hours.

Interesting stuff and an enthusiastic audience made the brief stay in Linköping worthwhile. Unfortunately the last train home left at 8pm so we were pressed for time.

On the train home and I have just bugged Jonas to put his presentation online – download the pdf here.

Posted on by mklang

BSD license question

Brendan Scott of Open Source Law has written and posted an interesting article on Groklaw. The article posits that this is a broad misconception about the freedoms granted by the BSD license. In particular that code licensed under the BSD is not re-licensable (after modifications to the code) under “closed source” licenses as commonly believed (article in pdf).

From the arguments presented four consequences may be drawn

(a) the BSD appears to require that modifications be distributed only under the terms of the BSD, and that this requirement therefore cascades down to subsequent generations of code;

(b) the license does not appear to permit the relicensing of BSD code under the terms of any other license, at least in so far as any restrictions in other licenses would seem not to be binding;

(c) there may be some scope for arguing that the term â??modificationâ?? to the code is restricted or limited in some fashion. However, as the license only permits redistribution of â??modificationsâ?? the BSD does not permit the redistribution of any derivative work which is not a modification;

(d) the BSD does not have a requirement for the distribution of source code. It is not clear whether this means there is a deficiency in the Open Source Definition.

Posted on by mklang

Technology AS resistance

For a long time the dominant player in the personal computer market has been Microsoft. This has created a de facto standard among users who have come to expect and tolerate certain technological standards (and flaws) from their computers. One of the results of this dominance, among computer users, is the usersâ?? ability to praise diversity in principle but expect conformity from their computers.

If we all use the same tools we will produce the same limited range of products. Naturally there is a great variation within these products but still it is a freedom with limitations. One example of this is our perception of learning â?? at many (most?) universities today, when we say the word lecture most students and teachers think powerpoint. Therefore education becomes bullet-point lists. (more on powerpoint/eductation here: Do you hand out your handouts?).

But there is a technological resistance. Not to Microsoft. But a resistance to the current software ownership models which make it impossible (legally and sometimes technically) for users to

Run their software for any purpose
Study and adapt software to their needs
Redistribute, so others can be helped by such adaptions
Release improvements to the benefit of all

These four points are collectively known as the Four Freedoms and form the fundamental philosophy of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF works to provide software that fulfills such conditions.

Now many users argue that they are not competent to make changes to their software and therefore do not see the purpose of caring about such goals. This is a shortsighted outlook. The Four Freedoms grant others the ability to make changes. As non-techies all we have to do is reap the rewards of their labour. But without the freedom for them to make changes â?? we would have no rewards to reap.

Examples of Free Software are too numerous to list. But here are a few: Gnu/Linux operating system (comes in many different versions for example Ubuntu), Firefox (an internet browser), Thunderbird (an email client), GIMP (picture editing tool), Open Office (Office package with all you need), WordPress (the software that drives this blog) and much, much moreâ?¦

The software is free (fulfills the four freedoms) and is available at no cost. This is technology AS resistance.

Posted on by mklang