Wild Webmink

• NameCoin at The Dot-bit Project
  With internet-control-freak politics everywhere now – just look at eG8 and PROTECTIP for example – the need for distributed infrastructure beyond the control of any entity is getting stronger and stronger. This new project uses the same approach (same code, in fact) as BitCoin and creates a distributed DNS where everyone gets to be their own domain registrar in a safe way. It’s a very young project, but I am certain we need something like this soon. Otherwise the lobbyist-driven actions of our political leadership will soon render citizen-empowered innovation impossible.
• Bail out school ICT … Euro-style
  This clear explanation of the hole UK schools have got themselves in with ICT rings true for me. I remember around 5 years ago explaining very clearly to the headmaster of a local school why the new infrastructure he was creating in his new school buildings needed to use virtualisation, thin clients and open source software for as much as possible, and then watching him install Windows PCs everywhere. I bet that school has the mother of all legacy issues today.
• Cutting into open source business models with a sharp knife and a squeeze
  I like the story at the start of this, but it’s mainly notable for the insight in the comments that Matthew Aslett is not a fan of open core.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Future-proofing

This is the 500th posting on Webmink.Com, and it’s taken about a year to get here. Thanks to all my readers for supporting me this far in my post-corporate adventure!

• If you tolerate this… the commercial open source window of opportunity
  Interesting thinking about the opportunity for businesses to profit from open source involvement. Matthew hypothesises there is a natural space where acting correctly leads to profit. Unusual to see him dabbling with “invisible hand” thinking but welcome all the same.
• OpenJDK Bylaws Q&A
  Worth taking a look at this honest FAQ. Admitting to problems and explaining pragmatism is the key to progress in complex situations like this, as master-of-the-art Rich Sands explains in his white paper.
• Ex-MySQL, Nokia Execs Close $60 M Fund For Europe-Focused VC Firm Open Ocean
  Good to see a fund that is both focussed on and can help open source startups.

Filed under: Links | 3 Comments »

• Google Summer of Code: Where are the students?
  Interested by how few European participants there are in GSoC. Does this reflect poor support for FOSS or a reluctance to sign on to a programme that’s widely seen as a disguised graduate recruiting activity?
• Updates on The Document Foundation
  Strong statement here from TDF shows they have the support needed to take the former promise of OpenOffice forward. They have multiple, participating vendors operating as equals in their Engineering Steering Committee. They have a global community of localisers. They have a roadmap that’s driving ongoing releases. They have the organisational backing to keep them going and a pot of money to spend. Fine work – I hope the remaining hold-outs can sink their differences and join in with TDF to make LibreOffice the revitalised success that the world needs it to be. Indeed, that’s what TDF leader Florian Effenberger says himself.
• Product Notification: Skype for Asterisk – end of sale – July 26, 2011
  Unless Microsoft are going to surprise us all by releasing the Asterisk modules as open source, this is a depressing indication of Microsoft’s true intentions with Skype, as well as a wake-up call to all the FOSS people who have been “sleeping with the enemy” and treating Skype as excusably closed.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ From Around The World

• JCP.next JSR submitted to the JCP
  I’m delighted to see these plans finally formalised – they have been around ever since Sun as proposals, but the acquisition got in the way. All the same, what matters is not the rules themselves so much as whether Oracle will actually stick to them when faced with a serious competitor or disruptor using them disruptively. Apache Harmony remains the elephant in the room, dismissed as history by apparatchiks but still large as life to the rest of us.
• F-Droid Repository
  Another marketplace to add to your Android phone, alongside the ones from Google and Amazon. This one only offers Free software.
• The Document Foundation announces the members of the Engineering Steering Committee
  Good to see such a diverse and experienced group of people stepping forward.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Openish and Open

• Open source .NET mimic rises from Novell ashes
  I’d heard Miguel was looking for funding to do this so I’m not surprised, but I still offer him warm congratulations and the best of luck in his new business.
• IT History Society
  I don’t know whether to be excited this exists, depressed that I know so many people on the “Honor Roll” or honoured to be on the Honor Roll myself. Or all of the above.
• HTTP 201 Created – Mark Reinhold
  Mark Reinhold, formerly Sun’s and now Oracle’s head of Java engineering, has moved to a non-Oracle-hosted blog. Good move and one to watch.
• G8: Protect the Net Civil Society Statement
  OSI has signed as an organisational signatory. It’s important that the G8 leaders wake up and realise that the era when the only voices they needed to heed were corporate lobbyists has come to an end.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ History Already

• Conway’s Game of Life in one line of APL
  This is a really good introduction to the mind-numbing complexity that is APL. It’s not just the terse, obscure syntax; the way you need to think in order to use it is complex too.
• Lingua::Romana::Perligata — Perl for the XXIimum Century
  The talk Damien gave on this at OSCON was one of the best I have ever been to – erudite, funny and clever.
• 36 Hours in San Francisco
  Some great ideas in here that I want to try next week.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Programming

• Rebooting Public Notices

  Public notices and inquiries should be moved from the newspapers and the bowels of the web online to where we are: networks like Facebook and Twitter.

  An important topic, but the solution proposed here needs thinking through some more to take into account locally-important minority channels.

• Regulatory capture – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

  This also applies to standards bodies and to procurement policies. The only solution in my view is a combination of extreme transparency and a fixed life for the agency after which it has to reboot.

• No More Free eBooks on the #1 Rated eBook Reader

  We bet everything on Apple and iOS and then Apple killed us by changing the rules in the middle of the game.

  Surely there has to be an anti-trust case in here somewhere?




• Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says – Galactic Empire Times
  This rework of the New York Times is, as Jeff Waugh commented on Twitter, beyond awesome.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Bureaucracy Rebooted?

• Might Be Evil
  Firefox extension that allows you to keep your Google Docs private from Google if you want to.
• On Changing horses: Open Source Licenses, Foundations and The Software Freedom Conservancy
  Interesting article from James about choosing a service explicitly because it provides the freedom to leave.
• Microsoft’s $8bn Skype deal shocks analysts
  Given Skype runs on Linux, this could be a technology trainwreck. It will be interesting to see what happens business-wise; meanwhile, the impetus for the open source community to create a viable alternative is stronger than ever.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Changing Horses