software

Make a Toaster

Some friends and I are kicking around the idea to build a Freedom Toaster. What?, you may ask, is a Freedom Toaster? And why on earth build one? So, first things first.

The Freedom Toaster is like a vending machine. It stands in a central location waiting for customers. But what does it sell? You ask impatiently? Nothing.

The Freedom Toaster is preloaded to dispense free digital products, including software, photography, music and literature. The idea is to bring together a compilation of Free Software based on the GNU/Linux operating system and combine this with music and literature taken either from the public domain or licensed via Creative Commons.

The point is to create a showpiece comprised of an easy to use system which allows users to pick up their own copy of such a CD.

Again, Why?

Well those of us who feel comfortable with Free Software use the Internet as our primary infrastructure of distribution. But to those who are unfamiliar with Free Software finding a site, and deciding which software is needed, downloading it and finally installing it is a process filled with a number of barriers.

The Freedom Toaster is a way to circumvent some of those barriers and will hopefully make people feel more comfortable with the selecting and downloading process. One far reaching goal is to show that Free Software is in the reach of everybody.

Posted on by mklang

More on Walls

In a previous entry I wrote about walls of design and segregation. I tried to write about the impact of segregating people by using physical barriers â?? but mainly I pointed to the fact that there are many walls out there but we tend to forget this fact since we remain pleased with ourselves that THE WALL (the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain) has been removed.

Probably the easiest way to discover a wall is by looking at an area of the world which is troubled. Find a trouble-spot and all you have to do is to glance at the more fortunate neighbors to find a hefty wall.

So it should come as no surprise that the Saudi Arabian government is planning to build a security fence along its 550 mile stretch of remote desert northern frontier. This is a huge project. The wall or barrier will be equipped with ultraviolet night-vision cameras, buried sensor cables and thousands of miles of barbed wire.

Through this fence the Saudi Arabianâ??s now can join the great wall builders of the world such as the Israeli security barrier, the massive migration fence in southern Spain, and the U.S./Mexico border.

The Saudi Arabian barrier consists of a double fence running about 100 meters apart with 135 electronically controlled gates, fence-mounted movement detection sensors, and buried radio detection sensor cables. Naturally the equipment will also combine the standard hi-tech ultraviolet night-vision cameras with face-recognition software and communications equipment.

(via Subtopia)

Posted on by mklang

Swords and Apples

A long time ago I read the biography of the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. This story led me to curiously find and read Musashiâ??s own strategy book, called â??Book of Five Ringsâ?? (Go Rin No Sho). Musashi developed the skill of fighting with a sword in each hand. He also had a list of seemingly simple recommendations for the reader. Among the recommendations that Musashi had which stuck into my mind was the advice:

Know your favorite tools and techniques for key tasks without getting overly attached to any one

This advice is on the surface extremely simple. We can all intuitively understand the importance of not getting stuck in a rut, learning new things, challenging our established beliefs and principles. BUT this is not an easy thing to do. We are (or at least I tend to be) simple solution people. We identify a problem from memory and apply the same solutions from the past – even if these did not work so well then.

This philosophically sound advice is important. But on a simpler level â?? I miss my mac. After having handed it in for repairs I have been using a loaner. Itâ??s a great machine. Itâ??s an IBM â?? I shouldnâ??t be complaining. But I miss my mac. I realize that it is not the actual software solutions that I miss. What I miss is the familiarity of the tool I am accustomed to.

Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 info from FSF

The Free Software Foundation wishes to clarify a few factual points about the Second Discussion Draft of GNU GPL version 3, on which recent discussion has presented inaccurate information.

1. The FSF has no power to force anyone to switch from GPLv2 to GPLv3 on their own code.  We intentionally wrote GPLv2 (and GPLv1) so we would not have this power.  Software developers will continue to have the right to use GPLv2 for their code after GPLv3 is published, and we will respect their decisions.

2. In order to honor freedom 0, your freedom to run the program as you wish, a free software license may not contain “use restrictions” that would restrict what you can do with it. Contrary to what some have said, the GPLv3 draft has no use restrictions, and the final version won’t either.

GPLv3 will prohibit certain distribution practices which restrict users’ freedom to modify the code.  We hope this policy will thwart the ways some companies wish to “use” free software — namely, distributing it to you while controlling what you can do with it.  This policy is not a “use restriction”: it doesn’t restrict how they, or you, can run the program; it doesn’t restrict what they, or you, can make the program do.  Rather it ensures you, as a user, are as free as they are.

3. Where GPLv2 relies on an implicit patent license, which depends on US law, GPLv3 contains an explicit patent license that does the same job internationally.

Contrary to what some have said, GPLv3 will not cause a company to “lose its entire [software] patent portfolio”.  It simply says that if someone has a patent covering XYZ, and distributes a GPL-covered program to do XYZ, he can’t sue the program’s subsequent users, redistributors and improvers for doing XYZ with their own versions of that program.  This has no effect on other patents which that program does not implement.

Software patents attack the freedom of all software developers and users; their only legitimate use is to deter aggression using software patents.  Therefore, if we could abolish every entity’s entire portfolio of software patents tomorrow, we would jump at the chance.  But it isn’t possible for a software license such as the GNU GPL to achieve such a result.

We do, however, hope that GPL v3 can solve a part of the patent problem.  The FSF is now negotiating with organizations holding substantial patent inventories, trying to mediate between their conflicting “extreme” positions.  We hope to work out the precise details of the explicit patent license so as to free software developers from patent aggression under a substantial fraction of software patents.  To fully protect software developers and users from software patents will, however, require changes in patent law.

Posted on by mklang

Late News From Rome: CC is OK

So I am late, again! But in going through some old mails this was particularly interesting. It is relevant to a post I wrote (4 Sept – Call for Copyright Activists):

Rome, August 7th 2006.

For the first time in Italy, Siae (the Italian collecting society), with a non-expiring resolution active from July 25th 2006, (documento protocollato presso l’Ufficio Multimedialità al nr. 1/290/06/FDP) recognizes the opportunity and right for the public playing of ambient music inside a commercial space, without compensation to be paid, thanks to the adoption of copyleft licensing schemes (like CC, Art Libre, Copyzero x, Clausola Copyleft) or in the public domain.

Inside the ice cream shop Fiordiluna, in the heart of the Trastevere district in Rome, there is a multimedia space (32″ lcd monitor and Bose speaker system) managed by a Linux pc with free software on it, through which audio, video and literary works with copyleft-like licenses or in the public domain are publicly played.

This major historical achievement has been made possible by the work of Ermanno Pandoli (Giapster and Quindicino) who is a member of the Liberius digital window of the FrontiereDigitali network and who has represented the Fiordiluna ice-creamery to Siae.

Those interested in exposing their works inside the ice-creamery may inform the relevant groups inside the FrontiereDigitali network. To obtain more information on the legal and logitical procedures to follow it is also possible to contact the Liberius digital window.

English translation by Luigi Canali De Rossi, Master New Media Association.

This is an excellent way of bringing about change in the present copyright regime. By enabling businesses to avoid paying the collecting societies and (as in the case above) making a name for themselves we can see how creativity can make a difference. And how it can work outside the narrowly defined conventional music models.

Posted on by mklang

Free Software & Microsoft Sales Reps

Due to a colleague calling in sick I jumped in and gave a short presentation on Free Software & Open Standards to IT technicians at my university. Following my presentation two salesmen from Microsoft presented the corporate visions of the future and a short demo of the coming Vista and Office software.

The first salesman after hearing my presentation insisted on talking about how “Free Software” microsoft was. Since they were involved in several projects intended to define open standards this made, according to him, Microsoft – Free Software.

Should someone tell Balmer?

I bit my tongue when he spoke about all this and about trusted computing. It was all too much. He was so positive that the inconsistencies were only embarrasing.
He also was lyrical about schools without books and the fact that many university students are not able to use basic excel – something he felt the university should teach them. So I shut up while he praised the dumming down of universities.

I will get him during the break… Or maybe not… it’s just too embarassing to listen to.

Posted on by mklang

The logic of free online books

David Glenn, Yale U. Press Places Book Online in Hopes of Increasing Print Sales, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 8, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Discusses the advantages of making books available online. His examples include Jack M. Balkin’s Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology (book chapters online in pdf) and Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, which Yale published in May. The book is also available online together with a wiki so that readers can respond.

“The real question,” Mr. Balkin says, “is what the vocation of academic publishing is. Academic publishers saw themselves as trying to spread knowledge â?? high-quality knowledge â?? as far and wide as they could … not just as a service that they provide to the universities that they’re associated with. Well, now they can promote that vocation even better than they could before. And they may even be able to make money off of it, which would be all to the good.”

Without a substantial investigation of a wide selection of material it will be difficult to claim the effects of online material on book sales. Any reports without such a study are anecdotal. But there is also another problem with that kind of study. It is the question of whether the specific book would have sold more or less without the online site.

I believe – a subjective opinion based upon my limited anecdotal evidence – that books sales generally increase when material is placed online. But this requires an important caveat: if the publisher prices the books too high then putting material online will not promote sales.

High-cost academic books are only intended for libraries and therefore online material will only prevent researchers from asking for the book. But high-cost academic books are a bad idea. They cannot claim to be about spreading knowledge (as Balkin states above).

Finding the right price for a large group of potential buyers, then placing material online will first create interest in the book and second ensure that the book is more easily found by those interested in the material. If the book is moderately, or reasonably, priced most (not all) still prefer to read a book in it’s traditional form rather than on a screen.

The problem is arguing with the publishers about this…

Posted on by mklang

Smoke and Fire

Is it true that there is no smoke without fire?

Browzar claims to be privacy enhancing software. Despite the fact that it is little more than an “Internet Explorer shell”, a program that sits on top of Microsoft’s popular browser to change its look and some of its functions. It is a free download and is offered as a “beta”, or test version.
Now Browzar is being accused of being adware (BBC article) – in other words the privacy tool is being accused of collecting and using user data to ensure that advertising can be sent to it’s users.
Browzar denies that it is adware or spyware or anything och that sort. The interesting  thing is not whether the claims are correct or not but what will the effects of such claims be on a company… Obviously accusing a privacy enhancing company of violating users privacy is not a small thing.

Posted on by mklang

The ungood system of academic publishing

Another text on Free Software that I have written has been accepted for publication. This is good news. But then I read the rather draconian copyright and licensing rules which the publisher wants to apply to my text.

Basically the ideas remain mine but if I want to present them I have to re-write the ideas from scratch.

The author retains the rights to any intellectual property developed â?¦While the author may use any and all thoughts and research results developed or accumulated while working on a manuscript, and may rewrite, update, and re-title them for use in other publications, â?¦ the author CANNOT use the verbatim text of the manuscript or any part thereofâ?¦without first obtaining the written permissionâ?¦

From my limited experience this wording is pretty standard. From the academics point of view I â??needâ?? publications. But the situation becomes strange when the topic I am writing about is Free Software which has a large focus on openness and the freedom of ideas.

Let me just point out from the start â?? there is no limitation on the reader to read and develop the ideas. They just cannot slavishly copy the text.

My niggling concern is the fact that I am paid by an organisation to do research (and teach). So I spend my time gathering information and thinking about the implications of what is occurring in my particular field. I may even have applied for public grants to do this work.

Once I write down my thoughts the only way for the others to gain access to them is for my library to buy the book so that others can read it. Which basically means my university is paying twice for this information. First for me to think/write and then to obtain physical access to the information.

Even though I dislike the contents of the copyright agreement I have just signed it did not prevent me from signing it. The problem is one of incentive structures. Had I written the work and then just posted it to my website â?? it would not have been worth anything to my academic peers and therefore to my academic career.

The academic text only becomes valuable after it passes through the quality control system which is in the hands of the publisher. Without a publishing house behind the text the information contained therein is not seen as knowledgeâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Creative Commons Launch Colombia

If you happen to be in Colombia on the 22 August then you are invited to go to the Creative Commons launch party in Bogota.

There will be two separate events, in the morning at the Polictecnico Grancolombiano University we will present several speakers that will include: Proffesor Laurence Lessig, the ccColombia team, SIB (Colombian Biodiversity Information System), Eltiempo.com (an important nationwide newspaper that will begin to offer their citizen journalists the opportunity to use Creative Commons licenses in its online portal) and The Free Software Community.

This venue will be webcast here and here at 14:30 GMT.

In the afternoon we will be having an open content session in one of Bogota’s most vibrant public space: The Biblioteca Publica Virgilio Barco with a live performance by Silvia O and several DJs, VJs and Bloggers that will be displaying their CC work. This venue will be webcast here at 23:00 GMT.

Be sure the check the visual memories of the launch by searching the tag: cccolanzamiento on flickr.

If you do go please say Hi from CC-Sweden to your host – Jaime Rojas

Posted on by mklang