Coming to an end

I tough about this lately, and I took the decision to stop writting on this blog. It was a really fun experience, though many aspects of it were really tedious. Writing in English on a regular basic was a real hindrance for me. I have the feeling that the quality of most of the posts are sub-par to what I can do because of this. The grammar and spelling mistakes make me ashamed of this blog. Many time, I wanted to point informants here, but I haven't done it because I didn't had the feeling that it was serious enough. Also, I had many great ideas that took too much time to translate properly, so I just skipped them.

Also, as a class blog, I tried (and failed!) to limit myself to content relevant to my project. I want to explore larger horizon, on a more open plateform. Therefore, I will soon start a new blog, in French, on a similar thematic, probably on Wordpress. I am just looking for a better name to continue. I will see this blog as a rite of passage into the cyberspace.

I will miss your small avatars' icons on the side of this blog, it was a good reminder that a least someone was reading. It was fun to share with you and to read about your project too. I can say that I have read the big majority of everyone's post and it was really interesting. I hope you will keep your blog alive.

Good luck in your future project!

Trusted Computing

Computing industry successfully control the use and access to a large part of the market software. But what if they extend their grip to the hardware? This is what Trusted Computing is about.

"Trusted Computing (TC) is a technology developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group.^[1] The term is taken from the field of trusted systems and has a specialized meaning. With Trusted Computing, the computer will consistently behave in specific ways, and those behaviors will be enforced by hardware and software.^[1] Enforcing this Trusted behavior is achieved by loading the hardware with a unique ID and unique master key and denying even the owner of a computer knowledge and control of their own master key. Trusted Computing is extremely controversial as the hardware is not only secured for the owner, but also secured against the owner as well." (Wikipedia)

Again, the industry's use of specific a term with a strong positive connotation to enforce their control over computer is quite clever. According to Stephan and Vogel, trust is:

"Trust
Trust is the personal believe of correctness of something.

It is the deep conviction of truth and rightness, and cannot be enforced.

If you gain someone's trust, you have established am interpersonal relationship, based on communication, shared values and experiences." (Stephan & Vorgel, 2006)

If you can trust a computer, then it is more secure. This is the idea that the industry try to promote. But more secure usually means less freedom. The industry want to "secure" the computer and technological gadget so they can monitor their activity and ensure that they are used in a manner that reflect their vision. As Stallman said "they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want." (2002). This technology is likely to be use to enforce Digital Right Management and block interoperability with non "trusted" computer.

Again, the industry is investing people's private life, dictating what they can and cannot do with the available information. The more they "secure" the technologie, the more "freedom" we lose.

I invite you to check this quick video on trust computing:



1. “Trusted Computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing#cite_note-anderson2-1.

2. Stephan, Benjamin and Lutz Vogel, Trusted Computing, 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXU7z2_6Jg.

3. Richard Stallman, “Can You Trust Your Computer?,” GNU Project - Free Software Foundation, 2002, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html.

The Hacker Manifesto

I'll leave this here for future reference.

The Hacker Manifesto

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...

Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

I am losing control of my Internet: net neutrality at stake.

I've realize that, more and more, old institutions and industry agents are trying to shape to way the Internet is use and perceive, and they are putting lots of energy in it. Changes will affect those that are actively using internet, and I think we will move slowly toward a web 2.1: A web "more secure" controlled by large corporation where the users is thrown back to the seat of the spectator, as in old media.

Internet did change our relationship to media and information. User and produced were for a time indistinguishable. People did build a chaotic but democratic sharing of information. Anyone could see and download anything, anytime. This is not true anymore. The traditional media enterprise, that at first neglect Internet as a marginal source of information and spectacle, is now claiming back the industry that is slipping through their hands. They want to secure over the Internet the power they have over traditional media channel. "The chaotic realm of the internet needs to be ordered. "

Lots of energy, and money, is put into this attempt to take back the power from the users. The recent Pirates Bay trial is only an example. Record and movie industry are in court everywhere in the world to claim back their place in the distribution process of cultural products. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are capping traffic, inspecting it with new deep packet inspection technology and assigning different speed depending of your activity. Bell Canada assigned capped speed to sharing protocol during peak hours. In order to achieve this, they need to inspect the traffic, which seems to me a major violation of privacy. Moreover, they are not only assigning those restrictions to their customers, but also to their resellers. Since Bell own the DSL network, if you are using a DSL modem chance are you traffic is inspected and capped.

Why are they capping the file-sharing protocol? Not only because it is the main channel of pirated file sharing, but also because it is a channel that they have no control over it. They rather you use their web service, and thus bring back home their customers. In a not so distant future, they will probably charge depending the services you will be using: youtube, itune, amazon, etc. like the cable TV. Content provider will need to be large corporation, or they will just disappear. Soon enough, producer of content and users will be two distinct categories. This issue has been known for several years as the net neutrality problematic.

What option is left for the user? They can’t really turn to government. Recent events showed that they will take the side of their traditional allied. CRTC already reject injunction against Bell’s traffic throttling. Sweden court applied American copyrights law to the Pirate Bay’s case, despite a really clever defense on their part, one that shown a better understanding of new technology.

Government doesn’t want the citizen to be in control of those new technologies. They are letting corporation take this control out of our hand, and soon we will be charged more and more to use it.

Pirate Bay guilty

I don't know if you were aware of the trial surrounding the larger torrent tracker, the Pirate Bay. You might like to know that they just got fined and jailed. This news will bring an important shift in the way copyright and intellectual property will apply to the digital world. The court just enforce old law to new phenomenon, forcing their categories to brand new concept. Quite the radical opposite of Trent Reznor view of the problem.

Old institutions can't really evolve, can they?

Court jails Pirate Bay founders

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre.

"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.

"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

"We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."

“ It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today's court judgement ”

The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.

However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

"The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he said.

The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.

A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

Political issue

Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".

"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.

"There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.

"Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

Published: 2009/04/17 12:32:07 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Wikipedia licensed under GPL

I just notice that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is licensed under the General Public License (GPL). This is the same license used for Free Software (free as in freedom, libre). This license made a schism in Free/Open Source Software movement. Both Free license (GPL) and the Open Source license (the most known is the BSD license) permit modification and distribution, BUT the GPL required that every re-distribution be published under the same license.

For example, if you want to take a part of code from a GPL licensed program to include it in closed-source software, you will need to publish it under the GPL license and make it open. That's the reason that the GPL license is called "viral license" (Weber, 2005: 53).

In sum, if you take citation from Wikipedia, you should make your paper available under the GPL license.

Weber, Steven. 2005. The Success of Open Source. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Open Source Economic Model

One may wonder why would someone invest time and money into software that is going to be given away. Profitability of the Open Source model always has been a major source of questions. In a recent study, about 38% of the programmers involve in open source were paid for collaborating in those projects (Lakhani and Wolf, 2007: 9). Who's paying those developers to build new software? Ubuntu server host thousands of gigabytes of data that all the users can access freely. All this has a cost, and someone need to pay for it.

The open source economic model can be divided in two aspects: why does company pay for developing open source software, and how corporation like Canonical, the corporation behind the Ubuntu project, intend to profits on building such a project.

First of all, to understand why a company would invest in open source development, we need to take the point of view of the client. With proprietary software, large enterprises are paying large amount of money for licenses, so they get involve in open source project for their own benefits. Software only have a marginal cost for distribution, so all the money made through the selling is profit once the development has been paid for. Large companies, exploiting thousands of workstation are paying a large share for the development of a product. And they can't influence the final product.

That's the reason that many of them, instead of paying for license, are paying developers to help improve Open Source project. The final product of Open Source project doesn't have a licensing cost, so all they have to do is to pay for the developer. Moreover, having their own developer on the project give them the opportunity to influence and control the final product through their participation, a power that they would not have through proprietary software.

Often many corporations have developers involved in a project. In those cases, we can affirm that open source development is mutually funded. Since most corporation involved aren't selling the software, but using it to improve their productivity, there is no reason not to cooperate (Moreira de Sa Coutinho, 2006).

The second reason a corporation will get involve in funding of open source projects is the derived service they intend to sell. For example, Canonical Corporation have been funding the Ubuntu project since the beginning and has yet to see profitability, but they expect to meet it soon (Shankland 2008). How? By selling support service to corporation. As Krishnamurthy put it:

"Enterprises are willing to pay for accountability. When they have a problem, they do not want to send a message to mailing list and wait for support that may or may not be of the highest quality. They have no interest in sifting through technical FAQs to find the answer. Therefore, there is money to be made in services such as support for installation, answering technical questions and training employees to use the product."(2007: 283)

Enterprises are also willing to pay for long-term agreements with distributors to ensure that their products get updated regularly. This is what Canonical Corporation is exploiting. Selling desktop software isn't an option anymore, as Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical note it:

"I don't think it will possible to make a lot of money, or maybe any money, selling the desktop. We're not going to try to make money selling the desktop. We force ourselves to look to services-oriented business models. I remain confident this is the right business model for the industry. Linux is the forcing function that (means) the broader software industry will shift in business models away from licensing the bits and to services." (Cited in Shankland 2008)

So far, this has been a viable economic model that is growing and getting more and more success. Open source software is not only for hobbyist anymore and business can be build around those models.

Krishnamurthy, Sandeep. 2007. An Analysis of Open Soure Business Models. In Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, ed. Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam, and Karim R. Lakhani, 267-278. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Lakhani, Karim R., and Robert G. Wolf. 2007. Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects. In Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, ed. Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam, and Karim R. Lakhani, 3-21. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Moreira de Sa Coutinho, Joao. 2006. Le logiciel libre (1) Aboutissement du Capitalisme. March 4. http://www.domainepublic.org/capitalisme.html.

Shankland, Stephen. 2008. Ubuntu 8.10 due Thursday. Profits? Not so fast. Business Tech - CNET News. October 27. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10075890-92.html.

The making of closed source software

The history of free and open source software isn't one where closes source software were liberated and became free and open. Actually, it is quite the opposite. There was a time, when there's was no distinction between hardware and software, between users and programmers that hobbyists shared freely their knowledge. No one wanted to reinvented the wheels each time they used a computer. so they collaborated and share their lines of code.

This early history of computing came to an abrupt end when Bill Gates from Micro-soft send an open letter to the Homebrew Computer Club.

AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS

By William Henry Gates III

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.

Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Bill Gates

General Partner, Micro-Soft

This letter is a major schism in the discursive formation of copyright (to embrace some Foucault's notion). This letter bring a fundamental change in the discursive field where hardware and software aren't one anymore, and if you pay for the former, you have to pay for the later too. Programmers and users aren't one either. The first one is working and the later use the product, therefore he needs to pay for it. Those notion seems like self-going today, but they are made out, and the root can be trace back to this very letter, where Bill Gates accused hobbyists of stealing software.

DigiBarn Newsletters: Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists in Homebrew Club Newsletter Vol 2, Issue 1 (Feb 3, 1976). http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_01/gatesletter.html.

Foucault, Michel. 1969. L'archéologie Du Savoir. Bibliothèque des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard.

Gates, Bill. 1976. An Open Letter to Hobbyists. Homebrew Computer Club newsletter 2, no. 1 (February 3): 2.

FACIL: actively promoting Open Source in Québec

I found a not-for-profit organization actively promoting free software in Québec: FACIL. They filed a motion against the government for not considering open source software for their workstation. They state that the migration to open source software would produce significant saving for the government and will also help Québec IT sectors to develop. Currently the government is sending millions to multinational corporation (mainly Microsoft) for products license. Those contracts are attributed without any invitation to tender, which is not in accordance to the regulation. FACIL intend to force the government into a more open and transparent procedure for contract attribution.

This is a really interesting case of F/OSS community actively contesting closed source monopoly. I did join up as a member, it cost 20$ and it helps to finance the lawsuit against the government.

You can read all about it here:

Montreal, August 28th 2008 - FACIL, a non-profit association, which promotes the collective appropriation of Free Software, contests the Quebec government purchasing methods for software used within public administrations. FACIL has filed a motion before the Quebec Superior Court in order to bring an end to these methods which the association believes not to be in the best interest of the Quebec government, but more importantly, not in accordance with the regulation for supply contracts, construction contracts and service contracts of government departments and public bodies (R.Q. c. A-6.01, r.0.03).

In Quebec, access to public markets is the rule while contracts attribution without invitation to tender is the exception. A public market should be transparent, fair and most importantly, open to all. The solutions as well as the propositions must be evaluated objectively on known and accepted criteria. Furthermore, the regulation implies that public markets have to enhance the local economic development as well as the Quebec technologies.

From February to June 2008, FACIL has noticed sales of proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars. These purchases were made for products offered by large multinational enterprises, with no regard to suppliers in Quebec. These purchases hurt the Free Software suppliers throughout Quebec and are an obstacle to the development of Quebec IT enterprises. FACIL contests these methods as the association believes they are illegal and unacceptable.

A strategic Free Software utilization in public administration could create thousands of jobs as well as a significant decrease in software licensing costs. However, Quebec's public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options.

While most of the developed countries have started, a few years back, migrating their technological infrastructures to Free Software, Quebec's public administration is far behind. In France, hundreds of thousands of desktops used by civil servants have been migrated. In the Netherlands, the public administration, one of the most modern in the world, has made open formats mandatory within the public administration, as well as a set of mesures to consider Free Software alongside proprietary software, and where possible to prefer Free Software.

But here in Quebec, despite numerous initiatives, the public administration refuses to communicate and to cooperate. FACIL has decided to bring the matter to court in order for the public market law to be respected.

More of Zotero

I've talked about Zotero before, but I can't stress enough on how this is really a good open source alternative to Endnote, you all should be considering it. Here are 10 reasons why you should switch:

1) Easy-To-Use Means Easy-To-Support
Users overwhelmingly report that Zotero is easy to use and intuitive. After watching a five-minute introductory video on Zotero, many users have more than enough knowledge to accomplish basic research tasks.

2) Save Money With Free Open Source Software
Say goodbye to expensive escalating licensing fees. Adopt Zotero and pay nothing. Not only can you use Zotero for free, but all the documentation at Zotero.org is yours to reuse and repurpose. The support community at Zotero.org provides an experienced responsive community to support the software and assist you in your efforts.

3) Hundreds of Institutions Recommend Zotero to Their Faculty and Students
Zotero is already recommended by more than a hundred institutions from around the world, including MIT, Stanford, and Yale. Zotero’s track record of success at these leading institutions underscores its ease of use and elegance as a research management tool.

4) A Single Research Management Solution For Every User, Everywhere
Whether your users run Windows, MacOS or Linux, Zotero is available to them. By syncing their data with the Zotero server, users can move between computers at home and at school with ease, even if the operating systems are different. Users don’t even need their own computers, because they can run Zotero off a small flash drive, which they can purchase for only a few dollars. With Zotero’s web interface, users can browse their collections online, even with mobile devices. Simply put, Zotero is wherever your users are.

5) Did We Mention It’s Award Winning?
Zotero was selected as the best reference management tool at CiteFest 2008 by Northwestern University’s Library and Academic Technologies group. That’s right, better than other, more costly, software alternatives. Zotero is among the “Best Free Software” available, as voted by PC Magazine in both 2007 and 2008. Zotero was also named Best Instructional Software of 2007 by the Information Technology and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

6) An Opportunity For Your Institution to Leave Its Mark
Zotero’s open and extensible nature means that, beyond offering a powerful resource to your students at a no cost, Zotero also offers a potential avenue for your institution to make lasting contributions to the open-source community. For example, the University of Michigan’s School of Information recently won funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to launch a new million-dollar information literacy game, Bibliobouts, on top of Zotero. Similarly, Concordia University’s digital history lab was granted funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to develop Vertov, a video annotation tool for Zotero. Both instances demonstrate how institutions can make Zotero more than a piece of software used on their campus; it can also provide a means to contribute and make your mark on the scholarly cyberinfrastructure.

7) Your Users’ Data is Theirs, Now and Forever
Everything your users do with Zotero is theirs in perpetuity. As a project developed by scholars with a commitment to openness and with a focus on the end-user, Zotero makes no claim of ownership or control over any of your users’ work with Zotero, and invites users to share and collaborate without fear of their work being co-opted.

8 ) Give Your Users Something They Can Take With Them
Licensed research management platforms may provide your users with functional services, but, chances are, your software license ends when your students graduate. Shouldn’t your users have access to their research after graduation? Zotero is free to everyone; that means your students will always have access to their collections.

9) Adherence to Open Standards Offers Flexibility
Zotero is committed to data portability and interoperability through adherence to existing open standards. Software makers which employ site-licensing fees have a vested interest in locking users into their own proprietary formats. Zotero makes it as easy as possible to migrate data to and from other applications.

10) Give Your Users The Freedom To Work In Their Native Language
Zotero runs in more than thirty languages, so chances are good that most of the languages spoken on your campus are available. This sort of linguistic agnosticism means that Zotero runs smoothly for people all around the world. Any languages not already supported can easily be added through the BabelZilla project.

taken from this blog post on Zotero website.

Trent Reznor on music industry

I found this recent interview with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nail talking about his decision to publish his latest album under Creative Commons licenses.

This interview is from the Digg Dialogg show, where the digg community is asked to submit and vote question to be ask.

Reznor's answer to the first question is quite insightful on the way internet may change copyright and intellectual property in the future:

"Trent - you've embraced Creative Commons and file sharing, but your business model (aside from touring) still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven't you embraced advertising as a business model, e.g. placing ads on your torrent tracker? Why let Pirate Bay take all the ad revenue you deserve? Furthermore, why aren't you building a brand new record label based on a modern business model?"

Check out the video for his answer.





You can check the whole list of questions here.

EDIT: video doesn't fit well on the blog, visit digg dialogg web page to see it all.

Crisis: defining itself

Wow, lots went on in the last few days. The list that had a one or two messages per day went to more than a dozen everyday.

A political debate got really hot and personal between certain persons. The moderator had to step in, and it didn't really help the problem. Few persons left the list, new forums emerged and all this fuzz lead to a redefinition of the role of the list. Should it be used only for general discussion? Should the support aspect be moved elsewhere? Should there be new list for different type of discussion? Those are questions that are still debate. The increase of participant lately made the administrator request new moderators to join in, and the community is asking for more clarity.

What I've learn about this is that the place of the political discussion on my discussion list is taking new proportion lately and it is now requesting its own space.

Politicizing technical question

Ubuntu developers community has been describe as a community of practice before (see older post). I think this concept could also apply to the users of the discussion list I am following. They gather for enhancing their practice of Ubuntu. They use the discussion list to ask how to perform a really specific task, (lately it was about installing Ubuntu on a third drive), and everyone is trying to find a way to perform the task. Sometimes, it does look like a game: someone comes up with a problem, and then everyone is trying to get the better solution. It is the same pattern as describe in The Charms of Wikipedia (2008). That’s what makes the list so attractive to the users.

Almost every conversation on the list begins with a support question. But the support question often leads to larger discussion about open source philosophy and/or how to convince more people to join in. Not all support question that lead to open sources philosophy. Unsolved technical problems related to closed source driver, or closed source software are more subject to lead to broader discussion. Situations where corporation force open source user into closed source software give ways to heated debate on the discussion list. This restriction of liberty and choice encourage the users to consider political action, and some of the discussions did lead to concrete action.

Baker, Nicholson. 2008. The Charms of Wikipedia. The New York Review of Books 55, no. 4 (March 20).

Ethical concern

As you may have notice, the posting cadency hasn’t really improved since last time, while the handwritten scrapbook is filling. 

Even if I did participate a little on translation, the support discussion lists were better suited to get a glance at the discourse of the users and programmers. I decided to follow a French support list based in Quebec.

I informed the “administrator” of my intention to conduct a research on his list though the IRC channel associate to the list.

The discussion went like this:

me> I want to confirm, you are in charge of the discussion list, aren’t you?
admin> yes
me> I sent you an email Monday about a research project. Have you check it out? [the email was about getting permission for conducting research]
admin> I see
admin> the list don’t belong to me.
admin> The data that you could find on it is public
admin> the content is only owned by each authors
admin> so no need for my authorization – but “ be kind “ :)

As you can see, as a manager of the list, admin isn’t claiming any ownership. He’s simply using his role as a moderator as I have seen on the list. Now and then, he will only ask people to avoid crude language and that sums it.
Since I didn’t want to interrupt every user of the list for getting consent, I informed the whole list of my intention. Sadly, I never had feedback on this.