software

EU vs Microsoft

Here is part of the official statement of the Free Software Foundation Europe on the EU decision to fine Microsoft almost 300 million Euro.

“Microsoft is still as far from allowing competition as it was on the day of the original Commission ruling in 2004. All proposals made by Microsoft were deliberately exclusive of Samba, the major remaining competitor. In that light, the fines do not seem to come early, and they do not seem high,” comments Carlo Piana, Milano based lawyer of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) regarding the decision of the European Commission to fine Microsoft 1.5 million Euro per day retroactively from 16. December 2005, totalling 280.5 million Euro. Should Microsoft not come into compliance until the end of July 2006, the daily fines could be doubled.

These fines are a reaction to Microsofts continued lack of compliance with the European Commission decision to make interoperability information available to competitors as a necessary precondition to allow fair competition. FSFE has supported the European Commission from the start of the suit in 2001.

“If we are to believe Microsofts numbers, it appears that 120.000 person days are not enough to document its own software. This is a task that good software developers do during the development of software, and a hallmark of bad engineering,” comments Georg Greve, president of the FSFE. “For users, this should be a shock: Microsoft apparently does not know the software that controls 95% of all desktop computers on this planet. Imagine General Motors releasing a press statement to the extent that even though they had 300 of their best engineers work on this for two years, they cannot provide specifications for the cars they built.”

Posted on by mklang

iCommons Governance

Tom Chance has written a thought provoking article about the governance and finances of iCommons summit in Rio

The second iCommons summit…proved many things about the free culture movement. The most exciting development is that we’re growing rapidly, both in terms of the numbers of activists and advocates who identify themselves with the movement…But the summit also highlighted some issues that iCommons needs to address if it is to maintain its vitality and legitimacy.

From this humble begining Tom explains what the iCommons needs to do to develop into a the organisation it hopes to become. Well worth reading.

The position held by CC is to a large part due to the reputation of the organisation. The belief the users have in what the CC is and what its goal’s are. The question (reflected in Tom’s article) is whether the organisation has a clear ideological goal with which the organisation can grow and develop?

Posted on by mklang

Free Software and Open Standards

Here are the highlights of the launch day of a project on Free Software and Open Standards. If you happen to be in Amsterdam on Saturday Monday this might be interesting. The people involved are definately worth listening to. For more information and the full program go here.

10:20 – 10:55 Presentation of the SELF project by Wouter Tebbens, SELF project leader
10:55 – 11:10 J.W. Broekema, programme manager OSOSS, â??After Open Source Software and Open Standards there’s Open Contentâ??

11:15 – 12:15 Theme I: Strategic implications of Free Software in the Netherlands and in Europe
Keynote by Georg Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe
Panel discussion led by Bert Melief (ISOC, M&I) with Paul Klint (CWI), Rob Rapmund (Twijnstra Gudde), Rishab Ghosh (FLOSSworld), Jan Willem Broekema (OSOSS), Joep van Nieuwstadt (Exin)

13:00 – 14:00 Theme II: The Open Content Revolution
Keynote by Mathias Klang, lecturer at Göteborg University and project lead of Creative Commons Sweden.
Panel discussion led by Jonas Ã?berg, vice president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, with Kees Stuurman (University of Tilburg), Jo Lahaye (HollandOpen), Ton Roosendaal (Blender), Martijn Verver (VPRO)

14:00 â?? 15:00 Theme III: Free Software Curriculum Building
Keynote about the European Master programme on Free Software by David Megias, Open University Catalunya (UOC, Spain)
Panel discussion led by Dessi Pefeva (ISOC.bg) with Peter Sloep (OU.nl/Fontys), Frank Kresin (Waag Society), Marja Verstelle (University of Leiden), Michael van Wetering (KennisNet), Leo Besemer (ECDL), Tom Dousma (SURF)

15:20 â?? 16:20 Theme IV: Semantic web, knowledge platforms, collaborative authoring
Keynote on the development of the SELF platform by Nagarjuna G., Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (India)
Panel discussion led by Michiel Leenaars (ISOC.nl) with Frank Benneker (UvA), Rob Peters (Zenc, UvA, HollandOpen), Gabriel Hopmans (Morpheus)

Background: The EC to invest in Free Software promotion and education
The European Commission is directing more and more money to promote the use of Free Software and Open Standards, which is a strategic objective within the IST (Information Society Technologies) Programme. The EC has signed a contract for this purpose with the SELF Consortium, a group of universities and free software advocates in seven countries, including Bulgaria, Argentina and India. The SELF project will receive funding for the startup period (of two years) of about 1 million euro.

A short intro on the SELF project
SELF (Science, Education and Learning in Freedom) is an international project that aims to provide a platform for the collaborative sharing and creation of open educational and training materials about Free Software and Open Standards. First of all, it will provide information, educational and training materials on Free Software and Open Standards presented in different languages and forms.
Secondly, it will offer a platform for the evaluation, adaptation, creation and translation of these materials. The production process of such materials will be based on the organisational model of Wikipedia.

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good plagiarists arenâ??t caught

The BBC ran a story on plagiarism a couple of days ago. The main point was to present the work of Professor Sally Brown. The results are not surprising but the interesting thing is that this has become an issue to report on the BBC website (or maybe it was a slow news day!). Sally Brown says that plagiarism is affecting all UK universities: â??The ones that say they havenâ??t got a problem have got their heads in the sand.â??

I have written about university plagiarism before â?? both when itâ??s students plagiarising and when itâ??s the researchers. The non-recognition of the problem is not only due to the google-generation. There are too many examples of scholars schooled in pre-google, and indeed pre-Internet, who have been caught cheating in this way.

Professor Brown also comments on the flaws of software based solutions against plagiarism: â??The good plagiarists arenâ??t caught.â?? Again this is not new but it is interesting that it needs to be said.

But is â??goodâ?? plagiarism really plagiarism? The amount of work it takes to personalise a text can really be greater than writing it. Editing other peoples work is not an easy process and it is most definitely a learning process which the university in one way claims to be interested in.

If plagiarism is when the student (lets ignore the professional plagiarists for now) hands in someone elseâ??s work and claims that it is his/her own â?? by these standards ripping off someoneâ??s name from an essay and adding ones own is plagiarism. But so is bad or inadequate use of references.

All too often we demand that our students think independently on issues where many superior minds have thought for a long time. If the student â??simplyâ?? collects the thoughts of others and references this process well it is considered a fair essay â?? it lacks the individual thought. If the references are badly done its plagiarism.

Maybe, just maybe, we should begin to reappraise this process. In the age of Internet and CIO (Chief Information Officers) is the goal independent thought? Or is the goal the ability to sift through the mass of information and then present it in a new and coherent way? By focusing on the independent thought we are (indirectly) promoting the urge to plagiarise since the student always will be able to find someone who has had their idea before themâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 report II

Eben Moglen began his presentation by putting recent news in new perspective. He spoke of the retirement of Bill Gates in a way that I found intriguing.
When a CEO states that he resigns there is a period of calming the market. Therefore when Gates says he will step down in two years this should not be seen as a long time. Two years it is the minimum timeframe that will not spook the market. The important issue is that the resignation comes 6 months from the shipping the most important product in 10 years.

Also we can put this into another perspective the FSF is on schedule with the most important product in 15 years. The update of to the GPLv3. The process going to version three is open and public. Philosophically it reflects the rule-making process put forward by Habermas where the idea is that those affected by the rules should be part of the decision making process.

When discussing the substantial changes Eben explain why the GPLv3 has been adapted to meet the needs of issues such as distribution via torrents, the developments within patents and the increase in DRM.

On the latter he explained that companies feel that they should be allowed to have rights (digital) and want to protect them. Many of these feel that RMS is attempting to change their vocabulary (from Rights to Restrictions). But this is not about attempting to use a software license to address non-software problems. The license (and its implementation) is about the software and the four freedoms. DRM is about the attempt to prevent users from practicing the 4 freedoms.

In closing before an extended Q&A session Eben returned to the issue of Microsoft. The falling revenues and the stepping down of Bill Gates will have the effect that one of strongest voices against Free Software will be silenced (almost). In the future arguing for Free Software will therefore not meet the strong resistance it is accustomed to.

Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 report

The conference begins with Georg Greve explaining the organisation of FSF with its idea of sister organisations of FSF USA, FSF Europe, FSF Asia and FSF Latin America.

This was followed by Richard Stallman explaining what the GPLv3 would entail. He begins by stating very clearly that the most important thing to remember about any version of the GPL is that it is a free software license. Additionally the goal of the FSF is the liberation of cyberspace. This goal will be carried out by maintaining and defending four freedoms.

Software following the four freedoms is Free Software. If any freedom is substantially missing then it is proprietary software. The problem with this is that proprietary software is about the subjugation of users.

It is easy to write a license which says you are free to do what you want. But this is not the best way to liberate all the users. This is because people will modify and then distribute it as proprietary software. Copyleft is the method of preventing this practice. Copyleft is copyright flipped over. Copyright subjugates users. Copyleft prevents the middlemen from enclosing the code and making it proprietary.

Stallman then went through the highlights of important changes which are being discussed in the GPLv3.

This talk was followed by Ciaran Oâ??Riordan who gave a short talk of the public process before it was time for lunch.

Posted on by mklang

Island Summer

Its time for the annual summer move – We have rented a small cottage on the local island of Asperö (population 450 people) where we shall be for the next four weeks. The island is small (only about 1 square kilometre) but still manages to have a varied nature â?? including a nature trail through a leafy area, lots of swimming places and a small sweet-water lake.

Asperö (the scale is 500m)

The best thing about the island is that there are no cars only mopeds built for transport rather than speed.


the moped

this type of moped is called â??Flakmoppeâ?? in Swedish which literally translated means loading platform moped â?? sounds much better in Swedish. As you can imagine the pace is much more relaxed on the island. So I am looking forward to a long relaxing summer on the islandâ?¦ even if I do have some short trips (Barcelona & Amsterdam) and some writing (Military Violence, Free Software) planned the main idea is to have a relaxing holiday-time.

Posted on by mklang

Exciting news and GPL3

Exciting news! I will be part of a panel at the 3rd International GPLv3 Conference in Barcelona next week. Look at the schedule (highlights below) can you imagine a more interesting two days?

Highlights day 1 – 22 June
10:30 – Georg Greve: opening introduction
11:00 – Richard Stallman: Overview of GPL v3 Changes
12:30 – Ciarán O’Riordan: The public consultation process
14:30 – Eben Moglen: The wording of the changes

Highlights day 2 – 23 june
10:30 Panel: Current projects of FSFE

  • Carlo Piana (Tamos Piana & Partners), the MS anti-trust case
  • Pablo Machón, building the Spanish team
  • Ciaran O’Riordan, Legislation from Brussels
  • Stefano Maffulli, FSFE’s Fellowship

11:30 Panel: Awareness and adoption of GPLv3

  • Fernanda Weiden, Associação SoftwareLivre.org
  • Anne Ã?stergaard, GNOME Foundation
  • Alexandre Oliva, Free Software Foundation Latin America

12:30 Pablo Machón: GPLv3 and the European software patent struggle
14:30 Panel: The Discussion Committees

  • Niibe Yutaka, Free Software Initiative Japan (committee A)
  • Philippe Aigrain, Sopinspace (committee C)
  • Masayuki Hatta, Debian (committee D)

15:30 Panel: Enforcing the GPL, thwarting DRM

  • Harald Welte, gpl-violations.org
  • David “Novalis” Turner, Free Software Foundation
  • Mathias Klang, Informatics researcher, University of Goteborg

16:30 Stefano Maffulli: Closing presentation

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The Death of Memory

OK â?? so articles that begin with the title â??The Death ofâ?¦â?? have a tendency to be alarmist. Despite this the recent news that Dr. Martin Luther Kingâ??s estate is about to auction off his papers (10 000 papers) creates thoughts in this direction. (via On the Commons)

The main fear is that the collection of sermons, speeches and papers that King wrote between 1946-1968 (including drafts of  â??I Have a Dreamâ??) will be bought by an investor and then sold off in pieces to the highest bidders. The economics of this is totally logical it will raise the most money. The downside is that this amazing collection will be spread making research difficult, and maybe impossible. As part of a collection a small note written by Dr King is a valuable addition. Taken on itâ??s own it is worth little and can be maltreated and eventually lost â?? as history has often shown.

This is indeed a death of memory.

The second part of the death of memory concerns the digitisation of communications. Since the dissemination of computers there has been a dramatic rise in communication and creativity. The general impression is that more and more people are writing and creating different forms of creative works. In addition to this more of our photographs are stored on digital storage devices. What are the implications of the shift to digital storage devices?

Cuneiform writing on clay tablets can still be read today after over 4000 years. Through this we have been able to read the Hammurabi code of law and the Gilgamesh epic and legends. (UPenn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology). Older books have a relatively long life expectancy in particular those printed on paper made from cloth rags. â??Ordinaryâ?? paper is less enduring and in particular modern paper since the acid remains in paper made between 1850 and 1950 cause this paper to slowly disintegrate (actually a slow burning acid fire) (Wikipedia).  Microfilm and Microfiche have a life expectancy of 500+ years but in reality this is substantially lower due to wear and tear by users.  Magnetic tape, Videotape, Magnetic disk and Optical disk will last less than 30-40 years.*

Stored digital photos will not be recovered from dumpsters and garage sales (Swapatorium) since they will have become unreadable as well as deteriorated.

All information storage forms require that the reader be able to understand the data. In the case of cuneiform tablets it is necessary to understand the written language. In the case of technologies such as tapes and microfilm it is also necessary to maintain functioning equipment that will be able to read the stored data. In the case of digital equipment it is necessary to save both the hardware and the software.

A good way to begin to understand the magnatude of this problem is to look at the â??Mother Tonguesâ?? chart of the development of computer languages that shows the rise and fall of programming languages.

Who will save the hardware, software and knowledge to be able to auction my collected works stored on several decaying computers? Even if someone eventually would want to read itâ?¦

* Rothenberg, Jeff. ‘Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents’, Scientific American (Jan 1995): 24-29.

Posted on by mklang