Copyrighteous

In the last year, I have heard a couple very smart people involved in the free software movement call open source dead or dying. This is clearly intended as a provocative statement -- the nature of the critique is not immediately apparent -- but I think that it might be true.

Most people reading this will know that open source is a movement started to distance the software created by the free software movement from the movement's people and ideals. Open source exists as an answer to the fear that people who wear suits will run away every time they hear the word freedom. Open source folks argue that you can sell free software by emphasizing the practical benefits and wrapping the code in new, more business-friendly term.

For a period of time, open source seemed spectacularly successful. The people in suits latched onto the idea and thrust the movement into the spotlight. Open source could be found in the business sections of the newspaper, and the NASDAQ's swelling list of explosive tech IPOs in the late 1990s.

With Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" freshly thumbed on their bedside tables, executives and engineers alike stuck the GPL and the source code for their latest development project into a neat little package and onto a website. They sat back waited for bugs to start disappearing. They were usually disappointed.

There are many practical benefits to open source, but with time and with the sense of self-reevaluation that the bursting of the dot-com bubble brought, many people looked more closely at open source's claim that their software was, in all situations, inherently better than proprietary software. Open Source is inherently better -- but only for some definitions of better. For those whose definition of better involves the immediate and constant growth of a company's stock price, there may be reasons to be less uncritically optimistic than we all were in 1999.

Since the peak of the bubble, we've seen many companies abandon their faith in the gospel of open source. Linuxcare has a new name an a new business model selling proprietary software. Red Hat is betting on Red Hat Enterprise Linux which, while still embracing the letter and licenses of open source, seems to depend more on the restrictive power of trademark law than Eric Raymond's word and the inherent power of the community. In some situations, the open bug tracking systems from the boom have shriveled and disappeared. The GPL is still in effect, but development has moved back inside the shops.

But my story so far is one of ideology, not of terminology, and not of the software in question.

While the ideology of open source seems to be waning in popularity, the term "open source" is growing in strength. More importantly, the software itself is bigger than ever and growing quickly. In Spain, regional governments are embracing "open source" and software libre. In Munich, in Brazil, and in non-profit organizations and schools around the globe, "open source" is a familiar phrase.

People haven't stopped talking about and deploying open source, but the people who do this today are not the people who bought stock in VA Linux's IPO. Ironically, those talking about open source today increasingly use the term to refer to the ideals and ideas of the free software movement which the open source initiative sought to deemphasize. When people say "open source," they are increasingly often speaking about "free software."

A handful of examples can illustrate this point:

• Ubuntu, which uses both the terms open source and free software, paraphrases important parts of the free software Definition (FSD) in their philosophy page -- so even when they use the term "open source", they are talking about freedom.
• David Turner, licensing guru for the Free Software Foundation, has told me that he has seen the term open source defined verbatim as the FSD.
• Sergio Amadeu, technology czar for the Brazilian presidency sued for libel by Microsoft, routinely talks about the essential role of freedom in software.

In these examples and in non-profit organizations and in groups of computer users from across the developing world, people are as much driven by their desire for software freedom and institutional independence as they are by their desire for a cheap OS and an alternative to DRM. People are increasingly often talking about free software -- even when they are using the words "open source".

Richard Stallman throws a fit every time he hears the word "open source" used in reference to his work. What he should be angry about is the confusion of the goals of the free software movement with the goals of open source. Stallman doesn't seem to see that the term open source's relationship to the two sets of goals is increasingly confused.

I will continue to talk about free software because I like disambiguating the term and explaining why I think that software and information freedom is a good thing. But I'm increasingly skeptical that the term "free software" can win. While the label "open source" will triumph, the concept will not. It's not my ideal world but I think I will be happy.

Last night, I took a risk and gave myself a haircut. I also bought a hat.

Many people might think that they could easy infer a causal relationship from this information but they would be wrong. My haircut is great and the fact that the hat hides it is merely part of the price I pay to stay warm.

With it's Latin roots (ferrum meaning iron and everything), I understand why in Catalan (and Spanish), a hardware store is called a ferreteria:

What I don't understand is what you call a store that sells ferrets.

My friend is applying to Tisch's Interactive Telecommunication Program. He is very interested in the program but not as wild about the "tele" bit; Just how far away do the people he's trying to communicate with need to be? Would across the room work? I suggested that perhaps if his communication were "far out" (in the 1960's sense of the word), that might qualify as "tele".

I also suggested that a fun way to begin his interview might be to say, "I'm interested in your program but I live in New York City and it seems kind of silly for me to telecommute." The faculty doing the interview would either thing he as very clever -- or wouldn't.

I was pretty confident that Mika and I had the cutest toilet bowl cleaner (see Figure 1).

I'm sad to say that after a visit to Jordi Mallach's bathroom in Valencia last week, I am reconsidering this (see Figure 2).

I've heard folks on mailing lists argue (only partially in jest) that multiple punctuation points, and in particular multiple exclamation points, are a sure sign of a brain damage.

Recently I've been wondering what to make of folks who use the interrobang (‽) and other Unicode characters that combine multiple pieces of punctuation into a single glyph (like ⁉, ⁈, and of course ‼). Do these count as one punctuation point or a single new hybrid mark? What does using ending a sentence with such a mark say about the author⁇

I saw a live eel dealer this morning at Valencia's Market Central (sorry, no pictures). The shop front was simply a pile of hundreds of writhing eels.

It was like a snake pit out of Indian Jones, except yummier.

I once had a job clearing land in the forest to build homes. For one job, we were clearing land for a Tibetan Buddhist women.

On the land where the house was to go, the owner had built a small hand-hewn hut for "sweats" and meditations -- her little sweat house.

After a day of work, one of the other workers looked around and asked, puzzled, where the sweat house had gone. With a little bit of examination we realized that we had managed to hit it, squarely, with a large tree we had felled. It was completely pulverized.

Very diplomatically, my boss informed the owner that from now on, her life would be "no sweat."

I frequently run into congestion problems in two places: networks and noses. In the nasal sense of the word, it usually has to do with a build up of pressure and/or an infection in my sinus(es):

With that in mind, take a look at Michael Vogt's wireless card pictured below:

He said the card preforms poorly. I can suggest a couple good sprays...

When I was younger I went through a punk rock phase. I never really grokked punk music but I liked the punk aesthetic and clothing.

My parents gave us a small allowance to purchase clothing -- but it could only be spent on clothing. If I remember correctly, my parents and I once had a small argument when I asked for my clothing allowance to go shopping in the chain, stud, and rivet sections of the hardware store.

A few days ago, I wrote about my kissing competition moment of glory. I think that this is the sort of information that might make me more successful in my love life if it were widely known.

The problem is that if I go around telling people that I've won a kissing competition, I would seem sleazy and vain. The fact that I was bragging would hurt opinions of me more than it helped for any of the people that I am interested in kissing.

I think my real friends should find and employ subtle techniques to mention my victory to people that I might enjoy kissing before I meet them.

I was in Italy for much of the last two years but I was always in and out and usually stayed for between a couple weeks and a couple months. It was usually long enough that I didn't want to eat out every day but not long enough that I wanted to invest in a lot of "core ingredients" for cooking.

As a result, I was frustrated that I couldn't find olive oil in bottles less than one liter. In the US, it is usually difficult to find bottles larger than half a liter so I couldn't imagine why there was nothing smaller than what was, for me, extra, extra large.

I asked Enrico Zini (who is from Bologna) if you could find smaller bottles of olive oil in Italy. He paused and then asked in return, "why would anyone want less than 1 liter of olive oil."

I guess that was my answer.

When coke orgies come up in conversation, people usually use the term "coke" to refer to "cocaine." Imagine, for a moment, a "Coca-Cola Orgy."

That sounds like one sticky misunderstanding.

OMGWTFAFK

When I was in 8th grade, I was suspended from school for public displays of affection. Basically, I was kissing at school in a way that the school administration thought was "over the top."

Two years later, I entered an audience-judged kissing competition. Basically, an exercise in over-the-top, exhibitionist kissing. I took first place.

Make your weaknesses your strengths.

I think the full-bodied, full-on-lisp voice urging players to "just relax" each time they lose a level in the arcade game Pipe Dream, may be the single least relaxing sound in any video game ever. Except maybe crazy balloon.

The Strand is the largest book used book store in New York City. They have several locations around Manhattan. If they choose to open a location in Brooklyn, I suggest they open shop at Nostrand Avenue. It's the last place people will suspect.

I've recently given two talks on Custom Debian Distributions and on deriving distributions from Debian more broadly. I finally got around to putting the information on my website so I thought I would mention it here for anyone that was there and wanted the notes/slides, for those that want to derive their own version or just for anybody who is interested.

The first talk was given on November 17th at my current "local" LUG, the New York Linux User Group (NYLUG). It was called Customizing Debian: Fork Yours With Debian GNU/Linux (a name I can't and won't take credit for). The talk was two hours and focused on the goals and techniques used by a number of groups that are deriving new distributions from Debian. I introduced Debian and gave an overview of the universe of Debian customizers. I then broke down the idea of customizing into a number of logical pieces and, using the examples of UserLinux, Ubuntu, and Debian-NP and Skolelinux (representing internal "CDD" groups), I walked the audience through the nitty gritty of customization using in-depth descriptions and a couple code samples.

You can get information on the talk in the following forms:

• Announcement: link
• Talk Notes: HTML, ReST,
• Slides: HTML, PDF, Openoffice.org Impress

The second talk was simply a shorter stripped down version of the NYLUG talk. It was only 45 minutes and was given at the Grupo de usuarios de Software Libre de Barcelona, AKA, Badopi. The modified versions of the slides I used are below. I gave the talk without notes.

• Slides: HTML, PDF, Openoffice.org Impress

I spent some time last night with a room full of Australians going through a list of differences between US and Aussie English. They seemed to get a kick out of the fact that USians refer to "bum bags" as "fanny packs." The real winner for me is the fact that Aussies refer to potted plants as "pot plants."

I keep imagining the poor people who innocently ask US Consular or Customs officials if they are allowed to bring "pot plants" into the US.

I asked the Aussies what one would call a potted "pot" plant. They seemed to be struggling for an answer.

I don't have a full list but I can say with confidence that finding and switching to offlineimap has been one of top ten most important life changes I've experienced in the last two years.

People laugh when I say this but I'm pretty sure its true.

Barcelona! What a tourist friendly city. Without useful signs like this, I would have, in all likelihood, confused the icon in this picture with a bus!

I saw this article (and many others on the same subject) about how laptops can reduce men's sperm count. I'm at the Ubuntu Conference in Mataró: a virtual sperm apocalypse.

Many geeks who are at no risk of impregnating anyone -- or who are paranoid at the idea that they might -- seem very concerned by the negative effects on potency of laptops that raise their "scrotal temperature." I've never understood this.

At some point in your life, you might have the opportunity to try out the NES-based game Bad News Baseball. I can save you the trouble.

Bad News Baseball is bad news.

Here in Mataró, I tremendously enjoyed a brief bit of confusion between per version documentation (i.e., documentation that is unique to each version of a program or project) and perversion documentation.

I think that any distribution shipping dselect documentation has perversion documentation covered.

I saw someone on the subway wearing a red hat with a picture of Ernesto "Che" Guevara on it. He was reading Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard -- a sort of motivational popular psychology book that is self-described as "An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life."

I couldn't help but think of the ways that Che, perhaps the most famous communist revolutionary ever and author of a book called Guerrilla Warfare, might disagree with Spencer Johnson's advice on "dealing with change" and, in all likelihood, have a very different idea of what "dealing with change" meant.

Today I tried to read an article titled, The Morphogen Sonic Hedgehog Collaborates With Netrin-1 To Guide Axons in the Spinal Cord written by Patricia C. Salinas.

Apparently Sonic Hedgehog, morphogen or otherwise, is a pretty important gene. That may be, but I still find the gene's namesake, Sonic the Hedgehog, to be a lot easier to understand.

I may not understand what Netrin-1 is but I'll bet I can score higher on Sonic than Ms. Salinas. It's nice to see that such different skill-sets can find common ground in a single term.

Many people from outside of the US and Western Europe receive a vaccine for tuberculosis called Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG). It often leaves a pattern of scars on the arm of person who was vaccinated. They look similar (but less distinct in adults) to this:

I've suggested to Mika that she should tell people that hers is from a street fight involving bike chains or the time she had to push a child out of the way of a speeding motorcycle and was grazed by the spinning gears.

Thinking about the possibilities makes me wish I had such a scar.