August 7th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Mitch Kapor spoke on The Case for Wikifying Politics at this year’s Wikimania Conference (which I missed). Andy Carvin transcribed Kapor’s talk on his blog. It’s fascinating and wonderful to read something progressive and optimistic in the world of political thought today.
Hula is an open source email and calendar server based on code donated by Novell. The project’s been running for a year and a half now, and has reached alpha-level code. I noticed new screenshots of the web interface which include some great ideas. They’re summed up in the dashboard view of the application, showing an overview of the user’s email and calendar events for the day. See the screenshots at Hula’s tour page.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, Uncategorized, Wiki | Comments Off on Mitch Kapor on Wiki Politics, and Hula Project Web and Calendar Server
August 3rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The Register reports the One Laptop Per Child Project has collected 80% of the orders necessary to begin production:
“The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme is just one million laptops away from beginning production, as the group confirmed that Brazil, Argentina and Thailand have each placed orders for a million machines, according to DesktopLinux.com.
OLPC says it will begin production when it has orders for between five million and 10m laptops. Last week, it announced that Nigeria had signed on to the scheme, taking the total pre-ordered to four million.”
Meanwhile, java programmer John O’Conner writes in his blog (okay, almost a year ago) that he’d like to see a blogging extension for OpenOffice.org. I agree it would be handy, in particular because some competitors are touting the feature now (and because it would be helpful for the legions of computer-using folks who still prefer the desktop software paradigm over working through a browser).
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on One Laptop Per Child Update and Request for OOo Blog Extension
July 18th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
This is our final week of fundraising, and luckily for us, Boing Boing linked to the Metro Ads project this Tuesday morning!
The project will also be featured Wednesday on Italy’s daily IT news site Punto Informatico.
The OpenOffice.org Metro Ads project homepage can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/bhorst/
Posted in Announcements, Free Culture, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
July 10th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Dirk Riehle interviews three major Wikipedia contributors (in the English, German, and Japanese language Wikipedias). A very scholarly article, his abstract reads:
“This article presents an interview with Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working. The interview was conducted via email in preparation of WikiSym 2006, the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, with the goal of furthering Wikipedia research [1]. Interviewer was Dirk Riehle, the chair of WikiSym 2006. An online version of the article provides simplified access to URLs [2].”
Posted in Free Culture, Wiki | Comments Off on Interview: “How and Why Wikipedia Works”
June 23rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Consortium Info’s Standards Blog covers two stories about Microsoft’s attempts to steamroll democratic decision-making in Massachusetts.
First, Andy Updegrove covers Microsoft’s donation of “$30 million” worth of software to MA schools. (Of course, MS is measuring the value based on sticker price of the software boxes in stores, not on the marginal cost for the production of each additional unit, which would be about $0.25 per CD delivered.) MS’ obvious bribe attempt was accompanied by a large ad next to the opinion pieces in the Boston Globe, in which convoluted and irrational arguments were made that MS’ new XML format allows for great interoperability! (Nothing but irony and satire!)
Secondly, Updegrove discusses the RFI responses received by Massachusetts with regard to an ODF-reading and -writing plugin for Microsoft Office. Microsoft responded and used the opportunity to soapbox, but didn’t provide any information of value. Sun also responded with a detailed proposal and a workable solution to Massachusetts’ request.
In general, it appears that MS is responding to the ODF situation in Massachusetts with a series of uncoordinated actions that will probably not move the Commonwealth to accept its so-called logic. All that is needed now, to really throw the monopolist into disarray, is for one or two more states to announce their imminent adoption of ODF.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Microsoft Attacking Massachusetts
June 13th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Groklaw reports on the recent Danish resolution in support of open standards. It passed on June 2, and reads in summary:
“Motion for Parliament Resolution Regarding Use of Open Standards for Software with Public Authorities
Parliament directs the government to ensure that the use of information technology, including software, within public authorities is based upon open standards.
No later than January 1st, 2008, the government should introduce and maintain a set of open standards that can serve as inspiration for other public authorities. Hereafter, open standards should be a part of the basis for public authorities’ development and purchase of IT software, with the aim of furthering competition.
The government should ensure that all digital information and data that public authorities exchange with citizens, corporations and institutions are available in formats based on open standards.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on ODF for Denmark?
June 11th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
A working model of OLPC’s “$100 laptop” is starting to make the rounds.
“At the MITX (Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange) What’s Next Forum and Technology Awards June 7 in Boston, Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, was inducted into the MITX Innovation Hall of Fame…
But Negroponte used his time at the podium to talk about his current job as chairman of the One Laptop per Child association and its goal of putting what is commonly referred to as the $100 laptop into the hands of children in developing countries.
Negroponte didn’t just talk about the association and its goals; he also brought the first working model of the $100 laptop.”
A lot of innovations designed to specifically tailor the laptop to its intended markets have been introduced, some of which (such as wireless mesh networking) aren’t available anywhere else.
“During his talk Negroponte discussed some of the core requirements of the $100 laptop, such as that it run at very low power (around 2 watts), be readable in bright light, and be rugged enough to work in inhospitable areas.
One of the most interesting points was regarding the wireless mesh capabilities of the laptop. Negroponte pointed out that the point of most distributions will be to make sure that the villages have some form of internet connectivity in a central location, such as a school.
Each laptop will then use wireless mesh technology to spread wireless networking across the entire village. When the laptop is shut down, it will continue to work as part of the wireless network.”
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Working Model of $100 Laptop
June 9th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The Guardian interviews Lawrence Lessig and learns about the beginning of his interest in cyber law and the start of the Free Culture movement.
“This insight – that computer code (the “architecture”) can function as a kind of law in the online world – lies at the heart of Lessig’s first book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. As he soon realised, “the most interesting context for that was intellectual property”, because there were examples of code trumping law – notably digital rights management.
There was another reason why Lessig focused on this area. “It wasn’t a fair fight: all the great lawyers were on the side of IP maximalism [the view that intellectual property (IP) should be protected forever] because they were all hired by Hollywood. So I kind of felt like a lawyer with a guilty conscience, and just got into it to try to see if there was a way to balance it.”
Lessig founded the Free Culture movement to bring the ideals of Free Software to the larger community of culture creators.
“Lessig has made the book [Free Culture] freely available online (http://free-culture.org/freecontent/), using a licence drawn up by his Creative Commons project, set up in 2001 as another response to the extension of copyright. Through these licences, which hand back to users some rights granted by copyright to creators – such as those to make copies or derivative works – Lessig hopes to provide a legal framework in which free culture can bloom.
The analogy with Richard Stallman’s GNU General Public License is evident: “I think of the free culture movement as inspired by the free software movement,” Lessig says. “I think it’s going to be a more significant movement than the free software movement because whatever the importance of the freedom of coders, coders will still be just a tiny proportion of the public, but culture is … much broader.”
The ideal for copyright reform, in Lessig’s view, is to return the statute to its roots and strip away much of the additional powers it has been granted in recent years. He also suggests several adaptations to make copyright more appropriate in light of the unique capabilities enabled by digital media and the internet.
“Lessig would like to see copyright reduced to 14 years, renewable to 28, as laid down by the 1710 Statute of Anne, the basis of all subsequent legislation in the UK and many countries. He also wants the emphasis on copying as the trigger for copyright to be removed. “In a digital age, copying is as natural as breathing” – every web page you view is technically a copy – “and the idea that the law should be invoked every time there’s a trigger of copying is totally inefficient.” He suggests a different approach: “[If] you’re distributing something publicly for commercial purposes then that’s the appropriate thing to be taxing with the copyright act.”
More realistically, Lessig is trying to limit the damage that copyright extensions cause to culture by requiring people to register for them, rather than receiving them automatically. “The vast majority would never request the extension, and so most stuff would pass into the public domain and the cost of perpetually extending copyrights would disappear.”
Posted in Free Culture | Comments Off on Interview with Lawrence Lessig
May 9th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The Linux Box has created a handful of Open Source Presentation Templates that Will Make Proprietary Office Suites Jealous.
They are distributed as ODFs (specifically, “.otp” files), and some of them also have freely-shareable fonts that you can download to go with them. I particularly like “Chalkboard” and “Letterpress.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
May 8th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Linux-Watch reports on the new ODF Plugin for MS Office, allowing MSO to read and write ODF files as if it were native. Widespread distribution as a part of the Google Pack is being explored.
The original news comes from Groklaw, where PJ writes “OpenDocument Foundation to MA: We Have a Plugin.”
Gary Edwards of the OpenDocument Foundation tells Groklaw: “The OpenDocument Foundation has notified the Massachusetts ITD that we have completed testing on an ODF Plugin for all versions of MS Office dating back to MS Office 97. The ODF Plugin installs on the file menu as a natural and transparent part of the open, save, and save as sequences. As far as end users and other application add-ons are concerned, ODF plugin renders ODF documents as if it were native to MS Office.”
“The testing has been extensive and thorough. As far as we can tell there isn’t a problem, even with Accessibility add ons, which as you know is a major concern for Massachusetts.”
Elsewhere on the web, we’ve got some more reports and discussions on the subject:
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on ODF Plugin for MS Office