rebel with rather too many causes
I had an existential experience in my local drug store last night while pondering this sign.
What does it mean for pain to be truly external to the person feeling it? Have I ever felt external pain? Is external pain merely another term for empathy? What might products to help with empathy entail? Would my local drug store stock them?
If you’re interested in free software — and free network services in particular — and should try to join me in Boston for the weekend of March 21st and 22nd.
The FSF is organizing its annual members meeting again. This year the model is very different. For a start, the audience isn’t limited to FSF members and the conference is not just about FSF projects and work.
Instead, the meeting has been rebranded LibrePlanet and has been broken up into a two-day event that is going to talk about and then try to tackle some of the biggest problems facing the world of free and open source software. Saturday March 21st will feature a series of talks about major issues facing free software. Sunday March 22nd will be focused on an unconference attempt to tackle and explore several of the key themes or tracks: network services, high priority projects, and the nascent LibrePlanet activism network.
I’ll be focused on the track around free network services which I’m helping organize in part through Autonomo.us. For more information on that angle, please take a look at my blog post over at Autonomo.us. We’re going to have a great group of people at the track and I’m excited by the idea that that we’ll be able to make some real progress on the issues.
I encourage anyone who thinks they might be able to make it to consider doing so. There are details including travel, location, hotel information and much more on the event web page and wiki (login is required to RSVP). Please spread the word!
I recently ate a bag of potato chips made by FoodShouldTasteGood, Inc.. Their motto (as printed on that bag under their name) was, "It’s our name. It’s our brand. It’s our motto." Now, either the antecedents for those three it’s are different — which seems implausible — or their motto is lying in its final sentence. It’s all very complicated.
Seth Schoen reminded me of a somewhat similar issue with the United States’ national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. The final stanza includes the line, "And this be our motto—’In God is our trust.’" This is not and has never been the U.S. motto. In fact, the U.S. had no motto at all until 1956 when "In God We Trust" — which is very similar, but not quite the same — became official.
It seems that nobody is quite sure where "In God We Trust" came from but there is some speculation that it originated in the anthem itself. Presumably, it became the motto because lawmakers thought it sounded good in the song and not because the U.S. government failed while trying to "correct" the embarrassing incorrect line in its anthem.
When I explain the importance of free software, I often use some variation of the following example:
Suppose I see a beautiful sunset and I want to describe it to a loved one on the other side of the world. Today’s communication technology makes this possible. In the process, however, the technology in question puts constraints on message communicated. For example, if I pick up my cellphone, my description of the sunset will be limited to words and sounds that can be transmitted by phone. If I happen to have a camera phone and the ability to send a picture message, I will be able to communicate a very different type of description. If I’m limited to 150 characters in an SMS message, my message will be constrained differently again.
The point of the example is this: the technology I use to communicate puts limits and constraints on my communication. Technology defines what I can say, how I can say it, when I can say it, and even who I can say it to.
This is neither good nor bad. It is simply the nature of technology. But it means that those who control our technology control us, to some degree. As information technology becomes increasingly central to our lives, the way we experience, understand, and act in the world is increasingly controlled by technology and, by extension, by those who control technology.
I believe that the single most important struggle for freedom in the twenty first century is over the question of who will set these terms. Who will control the technology that controls our lives?
Free software can be understood as an answer to this question: An answer in the form of an unambiguous statement that technology must be under the control of its users. When free software triumphs, we will live in a world where users control their technological destiny. We simply cannot afford to fail.
The Free Software Foundation is the most important organization fighting for the rights of users in this struggle. Here are some of the ways that I plan to direct the FSF to support software freedom in the coming year:
Network Services
Last year, the FSF organized a meeting on software freedom and network services that lead to the creation of the Autonomo.us group and the release of the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services. As network services — like those built by Facebook, Google, and others — continue rise in popularity, progress in this conversation is of increasing importance.
This year, I will direct the FSF to build on the work of Autonomo.us to launch the first of what I hope will be several FSF position statements on software freedom and network services. More importantly, the FSF will begin to provide support and planning for solutions — technologies, social campaigns, and legal steps — that will protect computer users whose freedom is currently threatened by network services.
Enforcing free software licenses
Early on, people who decided to work on free software did so because they agreed with — or, at the very least, were willing to abide by — the principles and rules laid out in our licenses. In our push for software freedom, we have created software of immense value and attracted companies and individuals to our community who are less willing, or simply less interested, in protecting users’ freedom.
In December 2008, the FSF went to court for the first time in the organization’s history to force Cisco to uphold the freedom of the users of FSF copyrighted software. This lawsuit asks Cisco to live up to its obligations under the GPL and to ensure that it does so in the future. The FSF needs the support of its community in this and in future enforcement actions.
The FSF has operated a compliance lab for several years and has ensured software freedom for countless users. As free software becomes more successful in the next year, the FSF will be playing an increased role in protecting software freedom from those who do not share its principles.
Continuing the fight against software patents
As I said last year, one cannot write non-trivial software today without running a serious risk of infringing patents. The software patent minefield we’ve found ourselves in is a very fundamental threat to the success of free software and we’ve already begun to see the first casualties and costs. We must eliminate software patents. Now. The FSF will continue its work toward this end.
The FSF’s End Software Patents project’s major contribution this year was a brief submitted in the In Re Bilski case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Recently, an opinion was issued which seems to mark an important shift away from broad protection for software patents. With this victory, now is the time to keep up this momentum. The FSF is drawing up a strategy to do just this and will be announcing the relaunch of its campaign on February 9,2009 led by Ciaran O’Riordan.
Every recent fundraising appeal seems to mention the difficult economic climate and it seems to cliche to do so here. That said, the effect of a bad economy is, in fact, felt most strongly in non-profits dependent on donations. The FSF is not immune.
The FSF’s work is essential for success on the issues I’ve described here and on all of its other campaigns and projects. Although the cost of a membership or donation may be less easy to afford this year for many of you, the free software movement cannot afford a weakened FSF at this important moment.
If you are not an FSF associate member, now is the time to become one. If you are already a member, please join me in giving generously through a tax-deductible donation. The FSF is a very lean, very humble organization of passionate and dedicated individuals working tirelessly for software freedom. Every single gift makes a difference.
Over two years ago, the FSF started its BadVista campaign with the goal of educating the public on problems related to software freedom, DRM, and more, with Microsoft’s latest operating system. Today, the FSF is declaring victory; the name "Vista" is synonymous in the public eye with failure.
The real credit, I suppose, should go to Microsoft. Vista’s design put the desires of big media companies, software companies, and Microsoft itself ahead of the desires of users. Vista defeated itself.
But the FSF’s campaign drew a huge amount attention to the problems with Vista — especially early on — and provided a central location aggregating and amplifying criticism of Vista. In doing so, the FSF played an important role in helping the whole process along and in balancing this criticism with a more positive message about free software alternatives.
Gratitude is due to the FSF staff, members, and supports who made BadVista a success. Please read the announcement, Digg the article, support the FSF, and follow its other work in its other campaigns so that all the FSF’s work can be as successful as BadVista.
One change and one addition to my current European tour.
First, it looks like we’ll be skipping Amsterdam this time and heading straight to London from Zagreb on the evening of January 10th. We’ll still plan to arrive in Cambridge before the 13th.
Second, I’ll be giving a redux of my Revealing Errors talk at Mama in Zagreb on January 10th at 14:00 as part of the normal skill sharing meeting. It’s the longer version of my OSCON keynote with many more examples. Folks who have seen earlier versions of the talk seem to think it’s a lot of fun.
If you are in or near Zagreb, you should come!
I was thrilled to be part of a successful Debian bug squashing party organized by MIT’s Student Information Processing Board on December 13th. Greg Price, who helped organize the event, did a wonderful write up which he sent to the debian-devel email list.
I though it was worth mentioning the BSP now because I think it’s a wonderful model that I’d love to see replicated in Debian and beyond. The event was initiated, organized, run, and executed by people with little or no direct experience with the project. While the organizers went out of their way to recruit several Debian developers and other experts to the party, these experts’ role was more in answering questions and helping others. The the majority of the participants — around 30 of them in total — had no previous experience doing Debian development.
While the 11 bugs closed or dealt with are the most visible outcome, I’m not sure that it is the most important. The event acted as an important learning experience for everyone involved and, perhaps most centrally, an important first step for most participants from using free software to giving back and participating in the community.
You don’t need experience, connections, or a @project.org email address to organize a party like this for Debian or your own free software project. All you really need is a few people, some technical knowledge, an Internet connection, and the desire to make it happen.
Other things can help, of course. In particular, the SIPB folks have packaged up some scripts they used to select bugs to work on and put them online.
Mika and I are going to be in Europe for the next few weeks. The tentative plan seems to include these stops:
I’ve got very little planned in the ways of talks or meetings with free software folks and would, as always, be open to arranging these. If you are in or near any of these places and want to plan a dinner, drinks, keysigning, talk, etc., don’t hesitate to get in contact with me.
I’ll try to keep this wiki page updated with details on the latest plans.
This bottle was found in Mika’s biosafety level 2 laboratory.
To address any confusion, isoamyl alcohol is not drinking alcohol and this bottle was bought for use in a scientific lab from a scientific lab supply company. Explanations are welcome.
At Kinokuyina in New York, I noticed that Playboy was sorted into the "Men’s Fashion" section of the magazine rack.
Funny. I wasn’t under the impression that Playboy’s primary selling points included either either men or clothing.
I spent more time than I would like to admit massaging the process that ultimately led to the release of the the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 (GFDL) by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Hours counted, it was probably one of my biggest personal projects this year.
The effect is to allow wikis under the GFDL to migrate to the Creative Commons BY-SA license or, as Wikimedia’s Erik Möller has proposed, to some sort of dual-license arrangement.
There are many reasons for this change but the most important is that the move reduces very real barriers to collaboration between wikis and free culture projects due to license compatibility. BY-SA has become the GPL of the free culture world and Wikimedia wikis were basically locked out from sharing with a larger community, and vice-versa; projects will no longer have to choose between sharing with Wikipedia and sharing with essentially everyone else. The GFDL has done a wonderful job of helping get Wikimedia projects to where they are today and Möller’s proposed switch seems, in my opinion, the best option to continue that work going forward.
The FSF gets a lot of credit (and a lot of flack) for what it does. Offering to "let go" of Wikipedia — without question the crown jewel of the free culture world — represents a real relinquishing of a type of political control and power for the FSF. Doing so was not done lightly. But giving communities the choice to increase compatibility and collaboration by switching to a fundamentally similar license was and is, in my opinion, the right thing to do.
Everyone who has worked hard to make this happen deserves the free culture movement’s thanks. This list includes Richard Stallman, Brett Smith and Peter Brown of the FSF; James Vasile and Eben Moglen of the SFLC; Erik Möller, Mike Godwin and Shunling Chen of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The FSF in general, and RMS in particular, deserves a huge amount of credit for what it has decided to not do in this case and for giving up control in a way that was responsible and accountable to its principles and to GFDL authors and in the interest of free culture movement more generally. It has not been easy or quick. If you support or appreciate work like this, please support the FSF and express this while doing so. Doing so is an important way to support these essential and almost inherently underappreciated efforts.
The following list is merely a small selection of scholarly articles listed in the ISI Web of Knowledge with "invisible hand" in their title:
And, finally:
For those that are curious as to I’ve been up to recently, you might be interested to read this portrait of Eric von Hippel on Linux.com. The article mentions that I’m currently studying with von Hippel in my own effort to try to help build a more evidence-based understanding of how free software works and explore some of the ways I might help it work better.
I’ve been a bit remiss about keeping this space up to date with my upcoming talks over the last month or so. Here’s me playing catchup.
On Monday October 20th, I gave a talk on Selectricity for the IEEE Boston Section’s Society on Social Implications of Technology. It covered more or less the same ground I coverd in my OSCON talk on the same subject. Then next day, Tuesday October 21st, I gave a short talk on Revealing Errors as part of the MIT-Harvard-Yale Cyberscholars meeting.
There was nothing new or ground-breaking in either but it was good to spread the word on the projects — work continues on both.
I also have one more coming up: another Revealing Errors talk in Amherst, Massachusetts at my alma mater on October 31st (Halloween). If you are in Western Massachusetts and would like to meet up or attend the talk, let me know.
On the morning after the final US presidential debate that happened a week ago, I was invited onto the excellent new WNYC morning show The Takeaway — syndicated by Public Radio International. One of the hosts, John Hockenberry, was in Boston to tape that edition of the show.
I was on to talk about Selectricity and some of other ways that we might use election technologies. I was on and off (mostly off) air for the whole second hour (7:00-8:00 AM) of taping and had a bit of a segment just into the second half of the hour. You can check out the website or download the podcast.
Although it’s definitely not as fun to listen to as my a last gig on public radio, it’s certainly more consequential. The role of the techno-pundit was also — unfortunately? — easier for me to fill.