One of the keys to a successful open source community is appropriate transparency. A community with strong values around transparency will also be likely to respect its participants privacy. Such a community will also be unlikely to have a copyright assignment benefiting a commercial party. Read why over on ComputerWorldUK.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK | Tagged: Harmony | 1 Comment »
https://twitter.com/#!/jackschofield/status/54516659674812416
Filed under: Tweets, Zeitgeist | Tagged: Amazon, Borders | 1 Comment »
https://twitter.com/#!/jzb/status/53441658951438336
Filed under: Tweets | Comments Off on ⚡ Cue Alanis
How did Document Freedom Day go for you? If you need a reminder about it, I wrote about why document freedom matters a month or so ago. But I note that in Switzerland there’s been a setback against openness. Read my views over on ComputerWorldUK.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Procurement | Tagged: Document Freedom Day, Switzerland | Comments Off on ☝ Switzerland Celebrates Document Freedom Day
Events bookings have become busy lately and I realise I need to put more data online. I’ve been working on the About and Events Booking pages on the site and in the process have added a Past Events page which I’ll gradually populate with details of the events where I’ve spoken.
Filed under: Events, Webmink | Comments Off on ☂ Updated Events List
As you may recall from my links a few days ago, I actively avoid using Skype. I’ve explained why in more detail over on ComputerWorldUK today.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK | Tagged: Skype | Comments Off on ☝ Avoiding Skype
I’ll be speaking at GoOpen in Oslo on Tuesday (on the Grand Panel at 20:00) and Wednesday (the closing keynote). I’d love to meet with you if you’ll be in Oslo this week – find me at the event.
I was asked for a two-paragraph “position statement” so the panel moderator knew where I was coming from, so I sent this:
Open source is what the older concept of software freedom turns into when it happens on the world-wide web. The ever-increasing reach of the web has led to ever-increasing use of open source. That expansion has made it increasingly a business requirement passed to suppliers that software used in enterprises is open source in some way. That in turn has made software vendors increasingly try their best to cheat, pretending that all it takes is an open source license to make something open source and that software freedom is irrelevant.
It doesn’t. Software freedom takes more than just a license. It takes a living community that’s open-by-rule, where every participant is free to pursue his or her own motivations for participating, doing so at his or her own cost. As the games companies play get more sophisticated, so the remedies communities create need to be more effective. Usually the best remedy is based on transparency, common sense and community empowerment. All the time open source is important, the game will be elevated, so I believe today we need benchmarks, best practices and inter-community co-operation if we’re to see software freedom build the open society I know it can.
That will be the background for my comments on the panel and for my keynote – what do you think? Comments below please – help me write my talk 😉
Filed under: Events, Webmink | 3 Comments »
Thanks to everyone who has been alerting me to the fact that the same post has been showing up here over & over again. The problem is once again that Delicious has gone crazy and the auto-post task over there is stuck in a state where it constantly respawns. I have reported the problem but their tech support is sadly very thinly staffed (I do wonder if the guy who knows how to fix it even works there any more). If some other service offered blog postings I would switch in a heartbeat.
I have switched off Twitter/Facebook/Identi.ca notifications, but the only way to stop delicious posting is to change my WordPress password and I’m reluctant to do that too early as it breaks lots of other things, and anyway it stops the Yahoo people seeing there is really a problem they need to debug – clearly they didn’t last time it happened.
I just hope Stumbleupon or whoever are buying Delicious know what they are taking on.
Filed under: Webmink | Tagged: delicious, Yahoo | 2 Comments »
My article discussing why open source subscriptions should not be procured with the same assumptions and procedures as proprietary software is now available in the Essays section.
Filed under: Procurement, Webmink | Tagged: Subscriptions | Comments Off on ☂ Subscriptions Article Available
Filed under: Copyright, Webmink | 2 Comments »
Meshed Insights - Open Source Management Consulting
All views expressed on this blog are those of Simon Phipps and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other entity, including current and former employers and clients. See my full disclosure of interests.
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