Copyrighteous

My friend Radu uses memoryaid as his IM name. I added his nick to Bitlbee several days ago but had to take advantage of Bitlbee's "rename" functionality to do a little rename memoryaid radu. I couldn't remember that Radu was the person behind that nick.

I've finally recovered from hosting a significant (in quality and also in quantity) chunk of the GPLv3 conference in the Acetarium. Over the last week, I've taken some time to reflect on and digest some of the license itself and, more importantly I think, the process by which it the license is being evaluated.

While most of us try not talk about the products of our digestion, I've put together an essay with some of my thoughts on the issue. In particular, I talk about what I think is really at stake in the GPL revisions process and how we, as a community, can best proceed to the best possible license.

The article is currently a feature on Newsforge. Comments and feedback are welcome!

Authors who name their software using a one-word combination of the language the software is written in followed by a word that describes functionality are advertising their own unoriginality. Such names are slightly more acceptable when describing libraries where the language might actually matter.

Then again, I might just be trying to rationalize RubyVote. RubyVote, of course, is the very descriptive, accurate, and uninspired name of a new election methods library I've just written and released in on RubyForge. Here's the short description:

An election methods and voting systems library written in Ruby. It provides a simple, consistent and well documented interface to a number of preferential, positional, and traditional election and voting methods.

Yes. Condorcet and Cloneproof-SSD are supported.

The homepage and project pages, both of which are also descriptive, accurate, and uninspired, can be found here:

• Homepage: http://rubyvote.rubyforge.org
• Project Page: http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyvote

The software is distributed under the GNU GPL.

Last weekend I was in New York again which meant that I had an opportunity to engage in what was, while I was living there, tied with Belgian beer for the status of my favorite vice: one dollar books.

One of my more intriguing finds was a Grave Matters: a book consisting wholly of epitaphs. The book was a fun and very quick read In terms of the content, the epitaphs are more than able to speak for themselves. A sampling might include...

There are people who seems glad to go, like Lydia Snow:

Gladly I quit this vile, decrepit clay,

To rise in endless youth, in endless day.

— Wellfleet, Massachusetts 1816

There are folks like John Young or Richard Hind whose epitaphs are written by "friends" who were being perhaps a bit too honest:

JOHN YOUNG

Those who knew him best deplored him most.

— [unverified]

Here lies the body of Richard Hind,

Who was neither ingenious, sober, or kind.

— Chestnut, England, c. 1880

There are epitaphs that are just plain confusing like Nicholas Round's:

Here lies the body of Nicholas Round

Who was lost at sea & never found.

— Great Yamouth, England, c. 1790

Additionally, the book is full of warnings and clever rhymes -- not of all which seem completely appropriate for a gravestone.

While I still suspect it's a little premature, I'd like to borrow from Thomas Greenhill at least in part for my own epitaph:

Earth to earth's shovel up is shut,

A Hill into a Hole is put.

alias psudo=fakeroot

I've recently been speaking quite a bit about people who are principled, and sometimes not so principled, about free software.

Now, I'm not convinced that name calling has ever done any movement much good but I won't let that stop me when I want a few concise way to describe different groups of unprincipled, hypocritical, struggling, or just plain confused free software users -- at least not when it's all in good fun. I do not, as I've mentioned before, consider myself immune from either my criticism or my epithets. To appreciate either term, you merely must recognize that the term FLOSS is often used to mean Free, Libre and Open Source Software.

The first great term is the brilliant neologism flip-flosser, a creation of Dafydd Harries. It is perfect for describing the on-again off-again free software user.

My own addition is the more edgy flosstitute: an solid poke at anyone willing to sell out their principles and their movement for a little political good will or a slicker desktop.

I was very pleased to hear that my recent scribblings on free software and principles managed to get some air time on the last LugRadio broadcast (46:30 into the broadcast). I was even more pleased when I listened to the show.

Not everyone agreed with my argument, my tactics or my motivations but they, as a group, managed to uncover many of the metaphors and lines of thought that led to my writing the piece in the first place. More importantly, they engaged in exactly the type of discussion that I hoped to prompt.

I'll embarrassingly admit that it was my first time listening to the show. I tend to not be a fan of recorded speech in general as it strikes me as an inefficient use of bandwidth (both mental and DSL). That said, I have to admit that the show sounds like a whole lot of fun!

<@biella> I can't speak for biella, but...

Oh, I think you can.

And now, for a visual pun about the king of fruits:

I have no desire to be famous.

Of course, I wouldn't mind if people didn't think of (a rather lecherous) someone else when they heard my name.

Someone suggested that I was a perfectionist yesterday. The truth is very much the opposite. I'm an imperfectionist.

Apologies to anyone that finds this preachy or holier-than-thou. I don't consider myself immune to this criticism: my mobile phone still runs non-free software. I realize that what I describe here is a process for everyone. I'm just trying to make sure nobody gets too comfortable with the status quo.

It's been interesting to see non-hackers finding inspiration in the free/open source software movement. In particular, I've been watching this phenomena for a couple years in the the non-profit and NGO sector. Folks in these groups are often very philosophically aligned with the freedom movement behind free software and there are a number of organizations that are involved in promoting free software and the ideas behind it to NGOs and beyond.

What's amazing to me is that in many situations, major advocates of free and open source software in these areas -- people who are advocating the software because of the freedom and not only for the pragmatic benefits -- don't actually use free software on their desktops or in other places they could.

Sure, everyone uses Firefox. Sure, everyone uses Apache and GNU/Linux for their web servers. Sure, everyone uses Drupal, Mambo, Plone, or another free CMS. But one can't help but notice that Firefox, Apache, and free CMSs are higher quality, more featureful, and easier to use than the proprietary alternatives.

People arguing for free software from a principled position need to remember that principled positions are sometimes inconvenient. Free software is no exception. It's frequently different, sometimes incompatible and a bit more work. In some situations (dare I say it?), it's not as good as the proprietary alternatives.

We all need to remember that living a principled life is not always the easiest path. If you take a principled position against GMO foods or in favor of organic produce, you'll probably spend more and shop farther from your house. Your favorite fruit may not be in season year-round. If you only buy fair-trade clothing, your garment choices will be cut down in ways that will sometimes be inconvenient.

It's nice when taking a principled position also means you get to do what is most convenient. But there's little principle in taking a principled position only when it's convenient.

Yes. There are problems -- often major -- with free software: usability, documentation and otherwise. There are also ways to address these problems. Few of them require that you be or become hacker but almost all of them involve using the software first. I don't have to think hard to recall all of the times I've received contributions (e.g., documentation, suggestions, translations, patches, etc.) from people who don't use my software.

If you don't think that spreading free software is an ethical act, you can happily ignore me. If you agree that it's the right thing, think hard about your principles and challenge yourself to take the next step -- whatever that is.

If you use dict to look up the word "cobbler" with a "standard" set of dictionaries installed, you'll get a GCIDE definition and the following Wordnet definition:

cobbler (n)

1. a person who makes or repairs shoes [syn: {shoemaker}]
2. tall sweetened iced drink of wine or liquor with fruit
3. made of fruit with rich biscuit dough usually only on top of the fruit [syn: {deep-dish pie}]

Normally, if you misspell a word or try to look up the plural form of a noun, dict will suggest the correct word. However, if you look up "cobblers" you get:

cobblers (n)

1. nonsense; "I think that is a load of cobblers"
2. a man's testicles (from Cockney rhyming slang: cobbler's awl rhymes with ball)

It's not clear to me whether this was non-graceful failure or even failure at all. It is clear that it was not what I was looking for. An educational experience nonetheless.

A few days ago, I compared Mika (unfavorably) to a Decepticon. Not having played with transformers as a child and having grown up in Japan where, evidently, they are called "Destrons" instead, she missed the reference. She asked if they were anything like Leprechauns.

As it turns out, they're not.

In about a week, the MIT police department is going to install proximity-card locks in the building. I am worried about the fact that the MIT card office stores data about card use for 14 days but am optimistic about seeing this issue addressed.

However, I suspect that the MIT police department has an ulterior motive in installing this new system. Currently, if somebody is locked out of the building, he or she can call the MIT police to be let in. Of course, the individual must first show their MIT ID card to the police. In the new system, where the MIT ID is the key, it seems like there will be very few situations where the police need to follow-up on lockouts.

As a work-reduction measure for the police, it seems quite clever.

In this article, Xinhua's headline tells us, "Likely cause of space shuttle trouble found: NASA."

While I'm sure this statement is true, I think that swapping the text on the sides of the colon would be closer to their intent by locating the source of the information -- and not the source of the problem -- with the agency. NASA, after all, is a pretty tricky problem.

While searching for treasures in Widener's stacks recently, I found a beautiful 1896 edition of William Blade's classical book on book collecting and book maintenance: The Enemies of Books. The title and driving metaphor of the book won me over right away. Books seem like inert and relatively unobjectionable objects. Many people dislike certain books or do not care for books in general but who could be the enemies of books in general?

Some people may not like books but William Blades is not one of these people. Blades loves books (Caxtons in particular) and has, to say the least, a long list of ways that he wants to see books treated. Anything that violates Blade's sensibilities becomes the enemy of William Blades. Blades is happy happy to speak for books in general.

Enemies enumerated include both individuals like the "Bagford the Biblioclast", behaviors, occupations, nature, states of beings, children, and most women. There are chapters on fire, water, gas and heat, dust and neglect, ignorance and bigotry, the bookworm, other vermin, bookbinders, collectors, and servants and children.

The book contains something for almost everyone. Blades opens a wonderfully out-of-date section on the danger of gas lighting in libraries stating that, "unfortunately, I can speak from experience on the dire effect of gas in a confined space." Who can't? Nowhere though, is Blades as worked up as when he discusses the evils done by bookbinders who trim (and who frequently overtrim) the margins of books while binding or rebinding them. Blades explains:

Dante, in his "Inferno," deals out to the lost souls various tortures suited with dramatic fitness to the past crimes of the victims, and had I to execute judgment on the criminal binders of certain precious volumes I have seen, where the untouched maiden sheets untrusted to their care have, by barbarous treatment, lost dignity, beauty, and values, I would collect paper shavings so ruthlessly shorn off, and roast the perpetrator of the outrage over their slow combustion. In olden times, before men had learned to value the relics of our printers, there was some excuse for the sins of a binder who erred from ignorance which has general; but in these times, when the historical and antiquarian values of books is freely acknowledged, no quarter should be granted to a careless culprit.

When collectors' turns comes up, Blades rants for pages on the evils of collectors who rip out the title pages or colophons of otherwise good books to build large bibliographic collections.

As Mika was looking through the book, the title page fell from the old and rather fragile binding. It seems that we may have a candidate for a new addition to the book. On the other hand, perhaps we have a new distinction: the enemy of The Enemies of Books.

The press, others, and even myself have made much of the Media Lab and One Laptop Per Child's decision to embrace a platform that is fully free and open. There are two major reasons for working with the free world on this project. The first is the philosophical reasons that I've laid out recently. The second is the fact that a free platform will help us leverage the work of a large community to accomplish building, testing, and improving what we believe will ultimately develop into a new and more relevant type of software platform for the world's children.

In terms of building community, our first goal must be harnessing the power of the existing free software world and interested parties therein. Later on (i.e., once the machines exist) we can focus on getting governments, non-profits, and ultimately some of the students using the machine, to contribute as well. While there's clearly a bootstrapping phase, we unfortunately, we haven't done much of either so far.

Up until now, Red Hat has been doing the legwork in the realm of software. So much so that at points it has been difficult even for some of us officially working on the project (e.g., myself) to make meaningful contributions. While we've had many people express interest in helping with the project from elsewhere in MIT and in non-MIT world, we've been at a loss for ways to plug folks in.

As part of a larger effort to address these issues in the next month or so, Walter Bender, myself, and David Cavallo are organizing a short workshop on getting involved in the OLPC/$100 laptop project for people at MIT. We will also be posting information from that workshop online for everyone. If you're at MIT and are interested, please show up. If you are in the area but without an MIT or Harvard affiliation, contact me. If you're out of the area and are interested in getting involved, just stay tuned.

The workshop is being offered as a three hours one-day-only IAP class. You can check out the IAP web page and then show up.

We will be done with plenty of time to rest up before the MIT mystery hunt begins. It looks like I'll be hunting with Codex Dresden.