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• An inside look at Google’s loudest critic

  What Court doesn’t mention in the book is that lenses can also be used to turn a very small amount of light into a raging fire. This appears to be his strategy with Google, taking nearly any tidbit that emerges about Google and turning it into an opportunity to bash the company.

  This is very easy to do and I am constantly checking myself to avoid it.
• Close the Washington Monument
  Stirring and worthwhile “modest proposal” by Bruce Schneier.
• Avoiding another lost decade for open source
  “The Department of Health has yet to recognise the hugely positive management leverage that open source can bring to bear in a change programme as large as its information revolution. Open standards in proprietary systems have not and cannot deliver ‘openness’ on their own and ‘presumption’ is no substitute for strategy.”

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Constructive Criticism

• Who’s driving this thing?
  Well worth reading this explanation, and especially the Oracle VP’s response.
• ForgeRock announces first authorized US training partner
  Great news – probably the best identity software trainer in the USA is now a ForgeRock approved training partner, making our courses widely available.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Links for Dec 12

• Community Bylaws – The Document Foundation
  LibreOffice hosts The Document Foundation have put together a set of bylaws for their new open-by-rule community and are looking for feedback.
• How to grow your open source project 10x and revenues 5x
  Interesting survey my Henrik Ingo puts data behind the conjecture that it’s better to have an open-bt-rule community that grows the addressable market for your project than to have a captive market that doesn’t scale beyond the “glass ceiling” of the maximum size sustainable by a company.

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

• Intellectual Property Appears to Figure Prominently In Wikileaks Cablegate
  Michael Geist shrewdly observes that, far from being the exclusive domain of military diplomacy as might be deduced from coverage, the Wikileaks diplomatic cables uncover the fact that huge numbers of “intellectual property” issues are involved. Many of us have known for a long time that the US acts on behalf of its biggest companies in advancing a restrictive global copyright, patent and trademark regime, and we may well be about to see just how often they bully other countries over strictly commercial matters.
• TSA Scanner Proof Underwear Protects Your Privates from Government X-Rays
  Looks like a great way to ensure you receive an “enhanced pat-down” from humourless, over-empowered, unaccountable and underpaid security people who don’t see any kind of joke no matter how cool you think it is.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Hidden Motives

• Australian Government adds Wikileaks to banned website list
  With WikiLeaks back in the news, this story from 2009 is more relevant than ever. Having rendered WikiLeaks “illegal” last year, it’s now easy to target it without causing a stir. Banning links is simply pointless as it’s easily circumvented and inapplicable outside their jurisdiction. Once someone makes that clear, the next step could be to criminalise clicking on links to banned sites (perhaps as part of the proposed ISP filtering), at which point we’ve got to “thought police” living. This is the web equivalent of “security theatre” and it’s to be despised anywhere it shows up.
• A Waste of Money and Time
  Excellent article by Bruce Schneier sets the benchmark for any future discussion and clearly identifies the problem as politicians and civil servants covering their backsides instead of making people as safe as possible.
• Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: AudioQuest K2 terminated speaker cable – UST plugs 8′ (2.44m) pair
  The product is amazingly ridiculous, but the “customer reviews” have become a creative writing contest without peer.
• Moving Java forward through the JCP?
  Very reasonable and balanced commentary from Mark Wielaard calls for the licence terms surrounding JDK7 and 8 to be reconsidered in the light of the need for open source communities to be able to freely work with the specifications.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ For Your Safety

• The Science Behind Wikipedia’s Jimmy Appeal
  Why oh why are those a still there? Seems the answer is: because they work.
• Open source BI firms refute SAS CEO’s criticism
  SAS seems to be among the rapidly diminishing category of companies who still think that open source is a threat rather than an opportunity.
• Hurt Locker Makers Sue Lawyer Who Helped ‘BitTorrent’ Defendants
  Not content with attempting blanket litigation against its fans, the movie industry also wants to chill the efforts of any lawyers who might help them defend themselves. If they put half as much effort into satisfying the demand expressed by downloaders they would earn much more money without also exhibiting sociopathy.
• No, you do not need my phone number.
  “It’s very simple. Every field you ask for is another reason for me to say no, or to type in false info that will ruin the integrity of your database.”

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Science and Sensibility

• Recommended reading: Control and Community by The 451 Group
  Lengthy and favourable review of the 451 report on “Control and Community” (which they have very kindly sent to me as well). I agree with Henrik that it’s an excellent report.
• Patent skullduggery: Tandberg rips off x264 algorithm
  While this may indeed be a nasty case of synchronicity, the incident serves to prove how ridiculous it is for software implementation in an era of open source and open standards to be patentableThe sooner software patents are put beyond use of any corporation, the better.

Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »

• Hudson java.net migration status update
  After an unpleasant wake-up call (caused, I am assured, by an administrative error) where their whole community resource was shut down for a week or more without warning, recourse or an end-date, the Hudson community has “rehosted and carried on” independently of Oracle. Yes, I am aware that the java.net migration was expected; but the Hudson move wasn’t, yet.
• Cage Against The Machine! 4’33” for Christmas Number One!
  Of interest mainly to UK readers, there’s a campaign in progress to rig the pop charts again this Christmas and once again disrupt the crass self-enrichment of the modern pop svengalis. They were so full of self-righteous indignation last year they missed the whole point, accusing rage Against The Machine instead of seeing how the campaign was critical of their formulaic exploitation of the TV-drugged masses. So this year the Christmas Number One is John Cage’s 4′ 33″ – let’s vote for a Silent Night this year!
• Novell/AttachMate To Retain UNIX Copyrights
  Prompted by concerns like the ones I expressed, Novell has issued a statement confirming that they will retain the UNIX copyrights they own.
• Media Guardian Innovation Awards
  The Guardian has an award for open source activity this year. Pity there’s an entry fee, since that clearly excludes non-commercial open source innovations, but at least it’s a start.
• HTTPS Everywhere
  If you’re using FireFox, there’s really no reason not to install this plug-in by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It makes sure all your connections to social media sites (and more) are secure, preventing the sort of privacy intrusion FireSheep enables.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Working The System

• Apache Wave Incubator Proposal
  Google apparently wants to donate Wave to Apache. This can work very well for orphaned projects (Sun donated Jini when it finally was obvious it had no future as a product but was important to customers, for example). This will be very interesting to watch.
• Diaspora private alpha just released
  I concur with all Ruth’s points here; open source projects don’t have “private alphas”. I was an enthusiastic supporter of Diaspora when they started, but they seem to have succumbed to all sorts of bad advice about retaining control of everything from apparently more experienced people and are heading towards a system with serious software freedom flaws. Orderly roll-out is one thing, but they are completely closed and following the same path with a social media system that made Wave fail.
• Before the Junk Jokes: Airport Security Cartoons in The New Yorker
  Great selection that just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun.

Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Doing It Right