Posted on June 22, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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This is the online equivalent of a group of people keeping a jar full of Tesco Clubcards by the door so they can get all the benefits without losing their privacy.
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Interesting software for online discussions – might work well for voice conferences in communities.
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Discussion venue for meshed telephony explorations.
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The networking equivalent of the FSF.
Also:
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Free Communications
Posted on June 21, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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What an amazingly dangerous world Apple are exploring here. The scope for abuse, together with the quantisation of analogue freedoms, makes this breathtakingly poor judgement.
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Cory makes an excellent point in this talk about how all technical measures need to evaluated not only by their effectiveness for their stated purpose but also by their potential for abuse and unintended consequences.
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Fascinating article that reveals how the movie industry’s control-freak paranoia that treats all third-parties as criminals has as a corollary the degradation of the movie experience for paying customers becuase projectionists turn out to be untrusted third-parties who have to be controlled with ridiculous degrees of technical measures. If it’s this hard to change lenses, imagine how hard it will be to preserve the movie in the future after the business model that’s driven the technical measures has died.
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Interesting thinking, although I’m not sure I completely agree with the diagram as open source is feasible as an ingredient at several points on the curve, and the software freedom dimension is missing.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Control Freaks
Posted on June 17, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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So Microsoft doesn’t have a patent on XML in document processing in New Zealand. Excellent result for the New Zealand Open Source Society here – congratulations to everyone who has been involved over the long haul involved in the case.
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While this is a contractual matter at the moment, it’s easy to imagine how HP could make an anti-trust complaint concerning use of market dominance in the software market to attempt to gain control in the hardware market. Presumably Oracle has thought of that and has a defence?
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So much for “cross-platform”. This is the problem with corporate-controlled platform strategies – arbitrary changes in direction over which you can have no influence can happen at any point to blow you out of the water. Best stick to open standards and community-led activity. HTML 5 anyone?
Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 15, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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The Document Foundation continues its steady progress with news of a Gnome-style Advisory Board – which also presumably means the companies involved are making donations to strengthen TDF’s already considerable cash base.
The composition of the Board is very interesting, with Red Hat’s CTO giving strong endorsement and with Google and SUSE represented too. A welcome development that lends gravitas to the already bold engineering effort.
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I missed this last week, but it makes great reading. The work the community team has done improving LibreOffice performance and footprint is just splendid.
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Summary of progress so far.
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The mailing list archives are now online for those who want to follow the discussions.
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Good to have another group advocating on behalf of the public domain. Goodness knows there are enough lobbyists working against it.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Office Links
Posted on June 11, 2011 by Simon Phipps
- Vote on accepting OpenOffice.org for incubation at Apache
After the heaviest traffic in recent memory on the Apache Incubator list, with many impassioned messages on both sides of the argument (along with some heavy-handed slapdowns here and there by proposers of the action), the vote is now open for 72 hours and looks like it will gain approval by a comfortable majority.
- My +1 Vote
I voted in favour of starting an incubator podling. I did this because I believe there is a strong future for a new project drawing code from OpenOffice.org and maintaining it for use by multiple projects, such as LibreOffice, RedOffice and Symphony. I believe it would be hard and misdirected work to attempt to build a full competitor to any one of those projects at Apache – a good explanation is on the mailing list.
If a re-usable reference implementation of ODF editors for each ODF sub-format can be created from the code Oracle is relicensing and maintained at Apache, it could be immeasurably positive for everyone. Over time I’d hope LibreOffice, Symphony and the rest could incorporate that new work, since the strongest path to interoperability by way of a clear and open specification with a shared open source reference implementation.
If on the other hand the Apache podling just turns into an opportunity for the known opponents of LibreOffice to attempt to compete with it using the “OpenOffice.org” name, that will be a dark development for software freedom and I’ve expressed my disapproval strongly elsewhere.
- An Invitation to Apache OpenOffice
While the official statement on IBM’s behalf is interesting, the discussion in the comments is far more enlightening. The statement itself completely ignores the existing ecosystem and speaks as if Apache is moving into a green field, but the comments reveal how the existing community feels about that as well as showing the intense and inexplicable antipathy IBM feels towards The Document Foundation in general and LibreOffice in particular. Note especially the wise and balanced comments from Jeremy Allison (of the Samba project).
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The FSF’s statement is pretty balanced. I can’t help thinking they were forced to comment after misinterpretations of their advice on licensing were forcefully asserted by the proposers of the Apache podling despite correction from an FSF Board member.
Filed under: Links | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 10, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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My own conversations of late suggest that wiser minds (or rather, minds that can make the reptile see the difference between food and fear) are starting to prevail in the various publishing industries, and the tone is softening as business models that leverage the realities of the 21st century instead of fighting them start to succeed.
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This is bad news, but given the shift to the right that’s happened in SCOTUS not terribly surprising. Let’s hope that Congress sees the case and realises that the law needs updating, as appears to have happened in the UK given the request for and then result of the Hargreaves report.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Slow Progress To Modern Business
Posted on June 9, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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One of the things I keep hearing some advisors saying is that VCs won’t invest in your startup (or at least are much less likely to) if you don’t have any patents, becuase patents protect your innovation. In turn, this meme is used by patent capitalists (like disaster capitalists only more active) to justify their assertion that patents promote innovation. Well, here’s one of the most respected VCs I know saying that’s just not so.
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Looks like Scott is about to get back into directly running a business again. Wonderful!
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For those random text applications, try something a little meatier next time.
Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 6, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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The LibreOffice community is organising a conference. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the various strands that corporate intrigue have torn the OpenOffice community into were somehow able to come back together at this event?
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I’d really not considered the money involved in official video uploads to YouTube, but it’s clearly significant. As this article explains, when you provide a convenient legal way for fans to get their music, they use it. All that hatred-of-fans stuff by the RIAA etc is incredibly stupid.
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Interesting to see lots of people voting with their wallets.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Ending Division
Posted on May 29, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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Excellent article.
The internet does not exist as untouchable. Morality and the rule of law do apply to the actions people do there. The question is whether those laws are appropriate. … And the proper response, if there is “unsuitable” (unsuitable to whom, by the way?) content is to go after those who produced and distributed it. Not to seek to block access and sweep it under the rug. That’s denial. Let’s live in reality.
Time to reject the frame, I’d say.
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Roberto’s review of OSI’s governance reforms correctly points out that individuals are very important to OSI. I hope the new governance will grealy expand the number of individuals able to contribute significantly and directly to OSI’s mission to advance open source and unite its communities.
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CIX is still the hosting provider for the static parts of my web site, just as it has been ever since they introduced those novel “web page” things a couple of decades ago. I too still have my CIX “sphipps” ID and mail to it still works fine.
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I wish I’d had the conceptual overview of Asterisk in AOSA when I first encountered Asterisk. Explaining the concepts clearly like that should be a mandatory part of every open source application’s documentation.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Not Wild Just Alive
Posted on May 28, 2011 by Simon Phipps
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Great stuff from JPB here. Shame of it all is despite hist stature in all the domains of interest at eG8 (songwriter, entrepreneur, internet veteran, rights activist) he gets no respect from either the politicians or the copyright capitalists.
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Watched this on iPlayer and found it captivating. This looks like it is building into a narrative about digital liberty. The first episode works from
Ayn Rand‘s philosophy and links through her relationship with
Alan Greenspan to explain the financial market meltdowns. Captivating – I’ll be watching the series.
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Another ingredient to weave into the story the BBC2 series is telling – the poem from which the title is derived.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ No Respect
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