Since my blogging habit have become more erratic of late I have forgotten to write about stuff that happens. Sorry about this. One important event is the release of the final draft of the GPLv3.
What follows is a brief period for commenting then the draft will get the final and official form and go live.
More info at: FSF official page or Ciaran’s blog (FSFE).
Thanks to Personal Notes for the reminder…
Some people seem not to be able to find anything to write about. Me on the other hand I am stuck with the problem of finding too many things fascinating. The topic of Robot Ethics is one which I would love to have time to engage in. I was reminded of this by the Humlab Blog
Peter Asaro will present a lecture on â??Robot Ethicsâ?? in the HUMlab.
This lecture will be an overview of his research at the HUMlab on Robot Ethics, particularly on the ethics of military robots. Peter is one of the new Postdoctoral Fellows at the HUMlab and the Department of Philosophy.
His film Love Machine will be shown in HUMlab at 15:30 on this Friday, June 1.
This is part of the â??Love, War & Robots Film Seriesâ??
Love Machine (2001), directed by Peter Asaro, 110 min,
My fascination with robot ethics is the border between man and machine. When does a machine become complex enough to be granted rights on its own? Some may argue that no matter how sophisticated the software the machine will always be a machine. Fair point. But what happens when we begin to mix tissue in the machine. What happens when we begin to put more foreign objects into the human body. At what stage will the limits between man and machine become blurred enough for us to seriously discuss the limits of the man/machine dichotomy.
I have used some of these questions in my computer ethics courses but I never seem to have the time to explore this more deeply.
Teaching and presenting is an handicraft. It is, unfortunately, an underestimated craft. Most presenters are too boring and too disinterested in their own material. This becomes even more obvious when you see a great presenter in action.
Take a look at Hans Rosling debunking our impressions about the third-world myths on poverty, families, health and growth. Not only is he enthusiastic but he also uses some of the most exciting statistics rendering software I have ever seen in a presentation.
Youâ??ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called â??developing worldâ?? using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid — toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Roslingâ??s hands, global trends â?? life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates â?? become clear, intuitive and even playful.
Download this talk in full SD resolution.
Hans Rosling is very cool this is from his bio:
Rosling began his wide-ranging career as a physician, spending many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health, and as a professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm initiated key international research collaborations. Heâ??s also personally argued with many heads of state, including Fidel Castro.
As if all this werenâ??t enough, the irrepressible Rosling is also an accomplished sword-swallower â?? a skill he demonstrated at TED2007.
Tomorrow Richard Stallman arrives in Göteborg. During his stay here he will be giving a speech on the 16th May entitled Free Software and Beyond: Human Rights in the Use of Software and Other Published Works. More info on the rms2007.se website.
Stallman’s visit and speech can best be described as a very popular event. Originally we hoped that we would have about 200 attendees but we now have over 1000 people who have registered to come and listen to the talk.
When the registrations started pouring in we were happy then, after reaching 600, we were concerned. And now, after moving the venue to the Draken movie theater we think we have the situation under control. Whatever happens now we will have a good event…
The third annual iCommons summit will be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia (15-17 June) and this year I have the good fortune to be able to attend.
The event includes people like Creative Commons CEO, Larry Lessig, CC Chairman and Digital Entrepreneur, Joi Ito, Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales and CTO of Linden Labs, Cory Ondrejka. We have also add some new voices to the debate this year including Indiaâ??s Lawrence Liang who has become renowned for his considered commentary on the positive impact of piracy in developing countries, Jonathan Zittrain discussing themes from his new book â??The Future of the Internet and How to Stop Itâ??, Benjamin Mako Hill from MIT who will talk about competing visions of â??free cultureâ?? from the free software perspective, and Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group, who will talk about successful campaigns to rid the world of restrictive IP laws.
I am really looking forward to it and to meeting all the other commoners. Naturally the event will be blogged 🙂
Cheaper computers, better software, more intuitive software, the net, cheaper and faster connectivity have all worked together to make interesting audio and video content available at no cost. In addition to this the Creative Commons licensing system has provided a support for those who want to both share and maintain some control over their content.
The problem is that there is too much content online. It’s disorganized and hard to find. All this opens up an exciting niche for the middleman. Someone who will trawl the internet looking for content worthy of listeners and viewers. Naturally these middlemen have already appeared and are able to recommend good content for those of us who want but lack the time and inclination to attempt to find and wade through all the less interesting stuff.
BlocSonic is one such middleman and they (or he/she) have now released their “Volume 4: Soundtrack for the coming revolution“. They write:
Once again, we’ve got a terrific collection of 10 tracks culled from the wide world of net audio. In this one we feature one from ccMixter, a couple from Jamendo and others from various netlabels. Hip-Hop, Trip-Hop, Unplugged Electronica, Post-Rock, Indie Rock, Drum & Bass are all represented. So download it, give it a listen, contact us and leave feedback. If you’d like, we’d love it if you leave a review at netBloc Vol. 4’s archive.org page.
It’s surprising that these services have not been more widespread. Or maybe it’s just because I have not found them earlier. Here is volume 4:
01 – Sun Zoo – New Pirates (featuring DJ HDL)
02 – Maniax Memori – It’s Not Jazzz
04 – deutscheunschuld – Just One Night (DU Remix Edit) (Featuring Vocals by Jeremy Carr)
05 – You Are My Everything – Can You Feel What It Takes?
06 – Bersarin Quartett – St. Petersburg
(via the Creative Commons blog)
This is really cool. Richard Stallman will be giving a lecture in Göteborg in May.
The Free Software Foundation Europe and Göteborg University are pleased to invite you to a lecture with Dr. Richard Stallman:
Free Software and Beyond: Human Rights in the Use of Software and Other Published Works
Dr. Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement: defending essential freedoms for the users of software. In addition, he will address how the ideas of free software do or don’t extend to other kinds of published works. He will also explain what the Pirate Party must change in its program to avoid unintended negative consequences in the software field.
Dr. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project and president of the Free Software Foundation. He has received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology, the University of Glasgow, Free University of Brussels and Universidad Nacional de Salta. In 1990, he was the receiver of a Macarthur foundation fellowship and has been elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The lecture will take place at:
University Aula
Göteborg University
Vasaparken
Göteborg, Sweden
May 16th
From 5pm to 8pm
While the lecture is a public event, and we invite you to forward this invitation to whomever you feel might be interested, we kindly request that in order to participate, you register via http://www.rms2007.se/registrering
The blog Bad Vista puts a nice perspective on the difference in attitude between free and proprietary software:
As the GPL preamble says:
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software–to make sure the software is free for all its users.
In contrast, a typical Microsoft Vista EULA says:
The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.
See the difference in attitude?
The third draft of the GPLv3 has been released. The draft is a result of feedback from various sources (general public, official discussion committees, and two international conferences held in India and Japan). The draft incorporates significant changes since the previous draft (July 2006). This draft is planned to be the penultimate draft prior to the formal release of the official GPLv3.
Changes in this draft include:
* First-time violators can have their license automatically restored if they remedy the problem within thirty days.
* License compatibility terms have been simplified, with the goal of making them easier to understand and administer.
* Manufacturers who include the software in consumer products must also provide installation information for the software along with the source. This change provides more narrow focus for requirements that were proposed in previous drafts.
* New patent requirements have been added to prevent distributors from colluding with patent holders to provide discriminatory protection from patents.
The draft will be open for comments and discussion for sixty days. Following this the FSF will release a “last call” draft, followed by another thirty days for discussion before the FSF’s board of directors approves the final text of GPL version 3.
Richard Stallman, president of the FSF and principal author of the GNU GPL, said, “The GPL was designed to ensure that all users of a program receive the four essential freedoms which define free software. These freedoms allow you to run the program as you see fit, study and adapt it for your own purposes, redistribute copies to help your neighbor, and release your improvements to the public. The recent patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell aims to undermine these freedoms. In this draft we have worked hard to prevent such deals from making a mockery of free software.”
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.
