cyberdash

This should make Microsoft and other software vendors happy In a recent interview with Business Week Online, Linus Torvalds compares the production of open source software to the process by which science evolves. Proprietary software, to witchcraft:

I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things. I compare it to science vs. witchcraft. In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it -- but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it.

Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in knowledge.

Good announcements on Slashdot today for the open source and Linux community:

• RealPlayer 10 has been released for Linux as a free download. Slashdot notes that it uses the GPL'd Helix Player and "has many new features including a Mozilla plug-in, so you can now enjoy all those embedded media clips, as well as the latest RealAudio 10, RealVideo 10, MP3, Flash, and Ogg Vorbis and Theora support."
• CNET reports that CodeWeavers's newest version of CrossOver Office will support iTunes (link via Slashdot).
• The NY Times reports that IBM is giving Cloudspace, a java-based database environment (similar to Oracle) valued at $85 million, to the Apache Foundation. As noted in these Slashdot comments, must be a good tax break for IBM while stimulating development in a lagging project.

In addition to updating the distributions to Drupal 4.4.2, I've made a few minor additions to DrupalEd and DrupalBlog.

• Added urlfilter.module
• Added smileys.module
• Licensed the text of the configuration guides under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

Download DrupalEd-4.4.2

Download DrupalBlog-4.4.2

Bert Boerland and drupal.org both have noted Oracle's June 2004 patent of a content management system. From the patent abstract:

Self service system for web site publishing. . . . A web site creation and maintenance system permits distributed control and centralized management of a web site. The physical implementation of the web site resides on a database maintained by a database administrator. The web site system permits a site administrator to construct the overall structure, design and style of the web site. This allows for a comprehensive design as well as a common look and feel for the web site. The web site system permits content for the web site to originate from multiple content contributors. The publication of content is controlled by content owners. This permits assignment of content control to those persons familiar with the content. The web site system is also a self service web site system for content contributors, content owners, and site administrators. The self service system displays to users one or more panels that contain input fields to permit the users to submit content and web site components for publication on the web site. The user, through use of only a web browser running on the user computer, transmits the parameter to the web site database. In response, the web site is updated at the database in accordance with the parameter.

No doubt that there are plenty of examples predating the patent application in 2002. A comment on LWN notes that Slashdot is a living example from 1997. What I want to know is whether or not the US Patent Office uses anyone with technical knowledge in reviewing patents?

Nice coincidence. Last night, I was trying to show my mother how to use Olympus's Camedia photo software. As anyone who has used it knows, the interface is very clumsy. Well, try teaching it to someone who is technophobic about new software applications.

Enter Picasa, which has just been purchased by Google and can be freely downloaded. From the Picasa download page:

Picasa. Everything you need to enjoy your digital photos in a single software product:

• Auto-transfer photos from your digital camera.
• Organize and find pictures in seconds.
• Edit, print, and share photos with ease.
• Create slideshows, order prints and more!

So after downloading and trying it, I would firmly recommend Picasa over Camedia and some other digital camera/image handling software packages I have used. Granted, it offers fewer filtering/effects options for transforming images than Camedia, but I love the rest of the interface, and it will automatically populate the photo album view with all of the images on your hard drive in a easy to surf display. So even though I use Photoshop for my image editing, I'll keep this one on my hard drive.

This Slashdot post notes that Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative is available to the public. However, unlike MIT's OpenCourseWare which is a content delivery system (granted, with a lot of useful content), OLI is a community-based approach with some innovative, interactive features:

OLI courses include a number of innovative online instructional components such as:

• cognitive tutors
• virtual laboratories
• group experiments
• simulations

Cognitive theory and faculty expertise guide the initial development of each course. As the courses are delivered, OLI researchers conduct a variety of studies to examine the effectiveness and usability of various educational innovations. The research results are used not only to improve the courses themselves, but also to contribute to a growing understanding of effective practices in online learning environments. (from the Project Overview page)

It's nice to see that Carnegie Mellon is using OLI as a way to test new pedagogical tools in an open source developmental style. With the potentially larger user base from making this system public, Carnegie Mellon scholars should be able to leverage a wider range of feedback in user testing.

Raymond J. Keating's editorial on the Small Business Survival Committee website seems more informed by FUD than careful analysis of open source. First, it contains the general misconception that many open source advocates "just simply want to do away with intellectual property rights altogether."

And then there's the argument that any person acquainted with economics would understand some specific drawbacks to open source:

Open-source software certainly is a competitor for Microsoft. But is it a sustainable form of competition? Indeed, open source generates some obvious questions. For example, are entrepreneurs, businesses and other innovators going to do their best work when they aren’t creating their own property? Is security and troubleshooting best performed in such an open, non-proprietary setting? Anyone with a minimal understanding of economics will see that the answer to both questions is no.

Well, perhaps Mr. Keating should read Steven Weber's The Success of Open Source, where Weber explains how open source is an effective economic model in light of the concerns above (Weber's text is much, much more enlightening than this article and a good read for anyone interested in open source economically). Or, since Keating seems very much a protectionist when it comes to intellectual property rights, he might should consider Alan Greenspan's concerns about whether or not our current intellectual property model is appropriate for an information economy.

Thanks to fooworks for raising concerns about this article.

Creative Commons weblog notes that German-based Heise-Verlag has published two texts under CC licences and made them available for download

The rise of open access publishing of scientific research could jeopardise the entire academic publishing industry, according to the chief executive of Reed Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of scientific journals.

Writing in the company's in-house Review newsletter, Sir Crispin Davis warned that asking researchers to pay for their work to be published but then making it freely available on the internet "could jeopardise the stable, scalable and affordable system of publishing that currently exists".

Uh-huh. And if Elsevier's contribution is so "stable, scalable and affordable" then why is it that major academic institutions have drafted policy statements condemning Elsevier (either directly or through implication) in response to high individual journal prices and costly journal subscription packages? But I guess it is a stable system for making them profits, whereas open access does threaten the "commercial" publishing system.

Samantha Blackmon writes,

There's been a conversation on TechRhet about Open Access scholarship of late and this morning Cory Doctorow posted a link to a paper that addresses some folks' questions of how are publishers supposed to make money if they "give away" their content. I have issue with the notion that they are giving away their content. Technically, if I contribute to CCC and they go Open Access aren't they giving away my scholarship? I don't know what everyone else gets, but the stipends that I have gotten for articles have been tokens and do not in any way reflect the blood, sweat, and tears that I put into my work...and that's okay.

I've been following that TechRhet conversation, too, although I feel that they haven't enagaged much yet with open access (seems as if open access still hasn't penetrated the discipline of computers and writing). But I did read How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun linked to by Boing Boing right after reading Tim O'Reilly's The Open Source Paradigm Shift. Good complements to each other because both suggest opening our understanding of open source to a wider spectrum which recognizes the social and economic cultural impact.

Good to see The New York Times covering the open access movement. Dr. Miguel Nicolelis's quote in the article summarizes why open access is important beyond just a scholarly publishing crisis:

"Usually you want to publish your best work in well-established journals to have the widest possible penetration," Dr. Nicolelis said. "My idea was the opposite. We need to open up the dissemination of scientific results."

This agrees with my perspective, and one that we should not lose sight of: it's about using Internet technology and open content licensing to maximize the dissemination and use of academic knowledge. Even without the problems for libraries being created by the commercial publishing industries, open access is still a worthy cause.