Recently in Openness Category
Open Content Alliance Rises to the Challenge of Google Print
Excerpt:
October 3 , 2005 — What a great idea! Why didn’t we think of that? Google Print’s ambitious effort to digitize the world’s book literature has inspired others to initiate their own effort. And, with the Google Print program caught in the snag of a copyright lawsuit, the sight of a relay race handoff keeps hope burning for a brighter digital future. The just announced Open Content Alliance (OCA; http://www.opencontentalliance.org) creates an international network of academics, libraries, publishers, technological firms, and a major search engine competitor to Google—all working on a new mass book digitization initiative. The goal of the effort is to establish a flexible, open infrastructure for bringing large collections of digitized material into the open Web. Permanently archived digital content, which is selected for its value by librarians, should offer a new model for collaborative library collection building, according to one OCA member. While openness will characterize content in the program, the OCA will also adhere to protection of the rights of copyright holders.
OCA founding members include the Internet Archive; Yahoo! Search; Hewlett-Packard Labs; Adobe Systems; the University of California; the University of Toronto; the European Archive; the National Archives (U.K.); O’Reilly Media, Inc.; and Prelinger Archives. The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), which is led by Brewster Kahle, will provide hosting and administrative services for a single, permanent repository. Technological and some financial support will come from Adobe and Hewlett-Packard. Yahoo! Search will supply initial search engine access as well as technological support and some funding.
From Yahoo launches Creative Commons search:
Excerpt:
The Yahoo Search for Creative Commons makes it easier to locate Web content with a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyrights for creative works. The group builds upon the traditional "all rights reserved" form of copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright, according to Creative Commons. Tools from Creative Commons are free and the organization offers its own search engine.
From Internet Archive to build alternative to Google:
Excerpts:
Ten major international libraries have agreed to combine their digitised book collections into a free text-based archive hosted online by the not-for-profit Internet Archive. All content digitised and held in the text archive will be freely available to online users.
Two major US libraries have agreed to join the scheme: Carnegie Mellon University library and The Library of Congress have committed their Million Book Project and American Memory Projects, respectively, to the text archive. The projects both provide access to digitised collections.
The Canadian universities of Toronto, Ottawa and McMaster have agreed to add their collections, as have China's Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute of Science, the European Archives and Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.
Very interesting thoughts and ideas. Certainly, in the past technology has been a great source of change; maybe the technologies of today that embody the concept of openness could initiate another socio-economical-political change across the globe.
About the Potential of E-democracy
Abstract
This paper develops a reflection on the potential of E-democracy to strengthen society's democratization exploring historically and technically the possibilities of cooperative organizations. From Singer's historical view about the rise of capitalism it is conjectured that Internet and E-democracy could be the technological innovations capable to trigger off the creation of a virtual network of cooperative organizations and thereby the development of a new economic system, based more on humanitarian values than the present ones.
From Is Open Source the new cell phone?:
Excerpt:
Or Internet? Or Operating System?
Flash forward to 25 years from now – will we look back in disbelief at a time when people didn't completely trust Open Source? When all of the dominant technologies in our lives are built on Open Source models (if they aren't already) what will the history books say about the slow adoption rates of Open Source at the turn of the century? The answer won't be available for some time, but what we can do is examine the question.
Results from a survey conducted by VA Software Corporation (NASDAQ: LNUX) has revealed that executive resistance to Open Source may be hindering greater adoption of Open Source development methods for internal software development. As a result, many enterprises are failing to capitalize on the benefits of Open Source development processes and techniques.
This CNN/Reuter (Microsoft warns Asian governments of Linux suits) article certainly does not fall within the category of news, at least not in the sense of factual news. Considering that many receive their news from CNN/Reuters, this article sounds like a propaganda piece against the open source operating system.
The article should have mentioned that SCO’s lawsuits against IBM and many other companies have either been dropped, declared as being without merit, or are really in doubt about their credibility.
Will CNN or Reuters report in the same way if they switch to Linux? Why is CNN siding with CNN and SCO?
What happen to the fairness in reporting!?
Whoever is reading this, just to let you know that I will be presenting at the Annual ASIST&T Conference "ASIST 2004 Annual Meeting; "Managing and Enhancing Information: Cultures and Conflicts" (ASIST AM 04), " in Providence, RI, on November 16th, 2004, at 5:30p-7:00p.
As a part of a panel titled Diffusion of Knowledge in the Field of Digital Library Development: How is the Field Shaped by Visionaries, Engineers, and Pragmatists?, I’ll be “theorizing on the implication of open source software in the development of digital libraries”.
Will you be there?
Panel Abstract:
“Digital library development is a field moving from diversity and experimentation to isomorphism and homogenization. As yet characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and new entrants in the field, who serve as sources of innovation and variation, they are seeking to overcome the liability of newness by imitating established practices. The intention of this panel is to use this general framework, to comment on the channels for diffusion of knowledge, especially technology, in the area of digital library development. It will examine how different communities of practice are involved in shaping the process and networks for diffusion of knowledge within and among these communities, and aspects of digital library development in an emerging area of institutional operation in the existing library institutions and the specialty of digital librarianship. Within a general framework of the sociology of culture, the panelists will focus on the following broader issues including the engagement of scholarly networks and the cultures of computer science and library and information science fields in the development process and innovation in the field; involvement of the marketplace; institutional resistance and change; the emerging standards and standards work; the channels of transmission from theory to application; and, what 'commons' exist for the practitioners and those engaged with the theoretical and technology development field. The panelists will reflect on these processes through an empirical study of the diffusion of knowledge, theorizing on the implication of open source software in the development of digital libraries, and the standardization of institutional processes through the effect of metadata and Open Archive Initiative adoption.
The panel is sponsored by SIG/HFIS and SIG/DL”
From Educationists Hail Open Source:
"There is a growing belief that the wide-ranging benefits of ICT can be delivered to Africa's tertiary education sector only through the strategic adoption of open standards, free and open source software, and open content."
To the list I would also add open communication as an enabling process. Also, the above is not only true for Africa, but for the rest of educational systems throughout the world as well.
Richard Stallman on The great divide between free and open source software:
Without these freedoms, using software presents people with ethical dilemmas. If a neighbour sees you running a program, realises it would be useful and asks for a copy, what do you do? If the program isn’t free, you have to choose between two evils: either be a bad neighbour by not helping, or violate the software licence. The latter is the lesser evil, he argued, because the organisation supplying the software has already done something bad to you by supplying proprietary software, but you would still be going back on your promise. Furthermore, you are spreading more copies of non-free software that will present a similar dilemma to the recipients. The answer, said Stallman, is to only use free software.
From BBC launches open-source video technology:
The corporation has gone to great lengths to avoid any patent problems, and has used tried and tested techniques that have prior art. "We are reviewing the literature and will code round the problems as they arise."
To protect the software and the techniques used to develop it, the BBC has taken out its own defensive patents, said Davies, and is releasing the software under the Mozilla licence to ensure "that those patents are licensed for free, irrevocably, for ever."
The terms of the licence mean that Dirac could be used in open source software, said Davies, or in proprietary software in such a way that the company producing that software would not have to divulge their source code.
This is great news! Needless to say, this means fewer restrictions for innovation and development of new ideas and tools. The resulting ripple effect could encourage more open video communication because independent video producers will not have to carry the cost burden of their tools.
Open Source and Open Standards provides a brief 'compare and contrast' between open source and open standards, and the pros and cons associated with each concept and practical implementations.
From PC Pro: News: UN body promises greater recognition for open source licencing:
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is promising greater recognition of Free and Open Source software licensing in a bid to balance the needs of copyright owners and the public.
A group of Non-Governmental Organisations led by the Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech) successfully lobbied WIPO in its 'Geneva Declaration', resulting in a 'development agenda' that includes alternatives such as the GPL.
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The group had also spent some time documenting WIPO meetings in order for the public to be better informed of the trademark, copyright, and patent policies being adopted that affect their every day lives.
Genome Model Applied to Software:
Open-source developers attempting to reverse-engineer the mysteries of private networking software turn to genomics research. They're applying algorithms developed by biologists to decipher the secrets of closed networks.
This paper (Do Open Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?) reports its findings that "freely available articles do have a greater research impact. Shedding light on this category of open access reveals that scholars in diverse disciplines are both adopting open access practices and being rewarded for it."
The findings of this paper have just confirmed what seems to be an obvious argument: the more open the accessibility to articles is, the more they will be used, and thus they ought to have greater impact in research and practice.
An additional question that needs to be addressed in this context is the overall impact of articles published in open access journals. It is quiet possible that articles published in open access journals might be able to shift the focus of a discipline or a field of study because of their wider availability and accessibility.
Political Agnosticism Open Source, Politics of Contrast is a MUST read article on the socio-economical, political and legal issues regarding the concepts of openness when looked through the 'open source' prism, and its interrelatedness to innovation, creativity, and free speech.
Excerpts:
FOSS, of course, beholds a complex political life despite the lack of political intention; nonetheless, I argue that the political agnosticism of FOSS shapes the expressive life and force of its informal politics.
FOSS gives palpable voice to the growing fault lines between expressive and intellectual property rights, especially in the context of digital technologies. While free speech and property rights are often imagined as linked and essential parts of our American liberal heritage, the social life of FOSS complicates this connection while providing a window into how liberal values such as free speech take on specific forms through cultural-based technical practice: that of computer hacking.
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The technological potential for unlimited programmable capabilities melds with what is seen as the expansive ability for programmers to create. For programmers, computing in a dual sense, as a technology and as an activity, becomes a total realm for the freedom of creation and expression.
In essence, computing is understood and experienced (sometimes reflectively, other times implicitly) by FOSS hackers as the very micro-sphere for the unfettered circulation of thought, expression, and action that freedom within the macro-sphere FOSS seeks to achieve through licenses.
Open source comming to hardware:
"Can the open-source model be extended beyond software? It already has. In speaking today with Indian scholar Deepak Phatak, I learned about the "Simputer," introduced in 1998 and licensed under the Simputer General Public License, an open-source license developed for hardware."
The following article (Why The Open-Source Model Can Work In India) presents and interesting viewpoint about the coexistence between propriety and open source software. Note the "j-factor" and "g-factor".
In fact, Phatak thinks U.S. programmers' open-source approach has changed the world. "Americans may not realize this, but the [general public license] is one of their greatest contributions to the world," he says, explaining that the GPL allows open-source software to coexist with proprietary software.
He considers the coexistence crucial. "The whole world can't depend on open source," the scholar acknowledges. Moving forward, the software world will consist of both those who develop proprietary code and those who develop open-source code. The success of this model depends upon two things--what he calls the "g-factor" and the "j-factor."
"Proprietary vendors should avoid the g-factor and not become too greedy, otherwise people will choose open source," Phatak says. "And open-source developers should avoid the j-factor and not become jealous that someone else might be profiting from their work. They should be delighted that people are using it."
The following article Try open source for hardware is a clear explanation of the potential benefit of implementing open source to hardware. While we see the open source hardware implemented in various PC technologies (via open protocols and open standard interfaces), the printer and printing industry is not there yet. The article clearly articulates the benefit to the consumers if printer cartridges are made standard across various vendors. It should drive the crazy cartridge prices down.
Upon reading Hidden costs of open source one starts wondering as to what are the 'hidden costs' the article insinuates? The author suggests that the cost associated with learning how to use (install, maintain, and run) a particular software is a hidden cost.
"There we are. Cost again. If it's so easy to use and it is reliable (one assumes it's reliable since apparently Nasa is using it to run mission critical applications, although that would put me off becoming an astronaut), why am I asked to shell out $1,500 for entry-level support? And support costs can go as high as $62,400 - hardly a cheap option."
But this is nothing new with either commercial packages or open source software. Using any software that is complicated requires learning and maintaining, independently if it is closed or open source. The expense of learning and maintenance hardly classifies as 'hidden cost'. And guess what, you don't have to by the support from the actual developers of the open source. You can learn it on your own and do it yourself, or hire other competitive training and support consultants. Sometimes you wonder why this article is even published as a serious discussion point. Hmm…
