Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Help in making Ryzom a Free MMORPG!

One of the big advantages of using GNU/Linux is that most of the computer games don't run on it and, as a consequence, I don't have the risk of trying one, become addicted and hence even less productive (whatever productive means). However I somehow feel isolated from conversations and frontier experiences for not being able to try World of Warcraft or SecondLife. I once tried to find some Free Software alternatives and downloaded PlaneShift, a very cool Free Software MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) that runs also under GNU/Linux, but what happened is that I played until 6 in the morning and the following day I was sooo sleepy!
Another game that might soon become Free is Ryzom.
"Ryzom is an innovative MMORPG, which has been developed since the year 2000 by the independent studio, Nevrax. For the past two years Ryzom has been marketed and sold to gamers, developing a fiercly loyal fanbase. Unfortunately, due to market conditions and other unforseen cirucumstances, a request to begin bankruptcy proceedings has been filed at the commerce tribunal."

The Free Ryzom Campaign is soliciting donations in order to "help us purchase the source code, artwork and other game data associated with Ryzom, so we can breathe new life into it as an open, democratically run player project".
It is great to read that the Free Software Foundation announced that it will officially support the Free Ryzom Campaign with a pledge of $60,000. Lack of games is often mentioned as one of the main reasons for people not to switching to GNU/Linux.
And Ryzom seems incredibly cool too (see the YouTube video), so who will need the non-free software World of Warcraft or SecondLife anymore?!?

You might want to support this initiative and donate to The Free Ryzom Campaign or donate to the Free Software Foundation.

[via gnuvox] (this post was also an excuse to try how embedding YouTube videos works)

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
ICT4D	ict4d

Apple offers for free MacOSX for $100 laptops, MIT says "No, thanks"

You probably have heard of the MIT initiative One Laptop Per Child, a plan to develop a $100 laptop computer for distribution to millions of schoolchildren in developing countries.
Today I read from WallStreetJournal:
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with.
Wow! Apple offers for free its fabolous operating system and the MIT has the strenght to refuse such an offer. Just think if this would have happened 5 years ago. MIT would probably have been so happy and thanking. But now GNU/Linux on the desktop is almost as usable as other operating systems, and it will be better in few years.
Of course MIT's refusal makes a lot, a lot of sense and I totally support their decision, even if they should speak fo Free Software and not Open Source. Anyway, embracing a proprietary operating system would not give to schoolchildren in developing countries the freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0), the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). [Access to the source code is a precondition for this.], the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2), the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). [Access to the source code is a precondition for this]. These are the freedom that Free Software gives you.
The $100 laptop is just a mean for achieving a goal, that is reducing poverty (that can be defined as inability to improve your current conditions). In this sense, only the ability to "play with" and study how your tool works, the ability to be an active player in the game and not just a passive swallower of information can produce empowerment. So being able to play with the tool (i.e. access to its source code) is mandatory. And the before mentioned freedoms as well.

Categories (tags):

Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software

Spyware Sony seems to breach copyright

From dewinter.com: The spyware that Sony installs on the computers of music fans does not even seem to be correct in terms of copyright law.
It is simply great. While Sony claims that it installed software secretly on the computers of unaware customers in order to protect the copyright of its musicians (while everyone knows that Sony is just trying to perpetuate its dying
business model), Sony itself does not care about not respecting the copyright of the author of the software LAME that is licensed under the so called Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL).
It turns out that the rootkit contains pieces of code that are identical to LAME, an open source mp3-encoder, and thereby breach the license.
This software is licensed under the so called Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL). According to this license Sony must comply with a couple of demands. Amongst others, they have to indicate in a copyright notice that they make use of the software. The company must also deliver the source code to the open-source libraries or otherwise make these available. And finally, they must deliver or otherwise make available the in between form between source code and executable code, the so called objectfiles, with which others can make comparable software.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Future	future

Google+Sun OS announced: check Microsoft's shares and predict the next future

[Update: re-released under CC-by for Sys-con (my blog posts are usually released under CC-by-sa)]
From Yahoo!News: Google, Sun Challenge Microsoft's Office
Google Inc. took a big step toward challenging Microsoft Corp.'s dominance in computer word-processing and spreadsheets with the announcement Tuesday that it would distribute Java technology from Sun Microsystems Inc.
Few days ago I got a phone call, it was Jason Stamper from London, wow, I never got an interview call from London. He wanted to know about my forecast: Ajax Office available in less than one year. The article ended up in Computer Business Review and then got slashdotted. Wow, I have never been slashdotted. But let me be clear about it: I opened a project called AjaxOffice on Sourceforge because I was thinking about writing some code (I played with Javascript and the DOM model and you can create magic and this is easy-enough). I was thinking that a community would possibly gather around the project. In the process I set up a wiki and start collecting many similar projects and useful packages (some of them are Free Software). But I received many emails saying that the project is just vaporware, that I just want to get credit for something that other people are doing (I suspect all of them generated from few persons but I cannot tell of course).
So let me clear about it: yes, there is no code and, since I should write my PhD thesis and since there are already many interesting projects, I don't have plan to write any code about it in the next few months. I plan to shout down the project shortly and just leave pointers to other Free Software projects that are already ahead creating a Web Office suite (Zimbra manages emails and contacts by now but check the video and hold your jaw (it is Free Software). But there are other intersting projects as well, just look in the ajaxoffice wiki).
Anyway, it seems that with the "one year" forecast I have been conservative.

In fact, this post is about the today joint announcement of Google and Sun. This is really disruptive for the entire computer, software industry.
Don't you think that Google and Sun have already spoken with Hardware producers in order to have their system pre-installed on normal computers sold to normal people? I think so. And I can already foresee the scene in a normal computer shop: the seller is going to ask: "Ok, we have chosen your computer. So, which system do you want on? The crappy Windows XP or the new shiny Sun system with bright OpenOffice and Google widgets already integrated? By the way, the Microsoft one costs 100 euros more."
Well, if you want a first idea, check the stocks: quotes of Microsoft vs Google (last 5 days) and quotes of Microsoft vs Sun (last 5 days).
And look at what Scoble keeps saying: the thick client is coming back. I understand that you have to say it but really, Scoble, do you believe your own words? Or are you secretly selling all your Microsoft stocks?
Question for you, reader: "which you would rather give up - your browser, or all the rest of your desktop apps?". First, answer. Ok, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun President, asked this very same question to the audience at a keynote and I can imagine you can predict the answers he got.

Last point of an already too long post: having an alternative in the software market will be simply great for everyone, having concurrency is always better, having a monopoly is always worst. In this way, normal people will start undestanding that there is an alternative (TIAA), i.e. Windows is not the computer. The fact that OpenOffice is in the new system is good since OpenOffice is Free Software, software that gives you freedom. I don't think that the Java Desktop code is Free Software (see licence) but I think sooner or later Sun will have to release it under GPL. [The fact that most of this new Google+Sun system will use online services, for which they don't have to release the code, is the topic of another long post].
By the way, I think this is a great opportunity for a Free Software GNU/Linux system to really become available pre-installed on normal computers sold to normal people, my forecast this time is that it will be Ubuntu. Yours?

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Orwellian Microsoft: Openness is Closeness

From news.com: Massachusetts has decided to use only products that conform to the Open Document Format for Office Applications which is developed by the standards body OASIS. (...)The move to adopt OpenDocument shuts Microsoft out of the state's procurement process because the software giant, which dominates the office application market, has said it does not intend to support the OpenDocument format.
Microsoft of course is trying to stop a precedent that would be possible followed by many other states all over the world (and terminate its global monopoly). So Microsoft manager Alan Yates wrote a letter (15 pages PDF available on mass.gov site).
I hightlight just one paragraph of the Microsoft letter: In short, the proposed policy is costly and unnecessary and would limit the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to a desktop software policy that is less functional, less open, and less flexible than the Commonwealth’s current policy.
Tim Bray comments on this precise claim: That barn-floor stench threatens to overcome me. In particular, the claim that office technology based on an open, standardized, file format that has already been implemented multiple times is necessarily “less functional, less open, and less flexible” is outrageous.

Summaryzing, "Openness is Closeness". I think Big Brother Microsoft is suggesting to add this new slogan to the 3 Orwellian ones, “War is Peace”, "Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength" [by the way, if you have not read 1984, I strongly recommend it. And of course, after reading it, you may want to join SOS: Students for an Orwellian Society.]

More from news.com article: "Here we have a true conflict between the notion of intellectual property and the notion of sovereignty, and I'd say that 100 percent of the time in a democracy, sovereignty trumps intellectual property," Kriss said. "That's the issue we're grappling with."
It is not saving on costs that is leading States to choose Free Software (or at least Open Formats). It is freedom and provider independence. This is similar to the reasons motivating the migration of 2,460 Windows XP desktops to GNU/Linux in Bolzano province schools. From punto-informatico: "A spingerci verso il software libero - spiega l'ispettore Lorenzi - non ci sono ragioni economiche legate ai costi delle licenze proprietarie. L'unica molla che ci ha spinto al cambiamento è stato un approccio per così dire filosofico che seguiamo nei processi di istruzione. Crediamo che le tecnologie abbiano un ruolo fondamentale nella costruzione dei saperi e poter contare su tecnologie non proprietarie consente di allargare le possibilità di crescita".
That again is the same point made by Prof. Di Cosmo in the lecture he gave here in Trento time ago: Public Administration must choose Free Software (even if it is more expensive than proprietary software). Check the very interesting Video (in Italian). It is a matter of freedom, not price.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
GeoBlogging	geoblogging

Discovering Roman ancient villa through GoogleMaps

From Nature: Using satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth, an Italian computer programmer has stumbled upon the remains of an ancient villa. (...)
Luca Mori reports his findings on this blog post. On Gmap you can see the discovered villa.
Luca then created CyberArchaeologist.net: In the world many places exist that deserve of being investigate to you. For this it is necessary collaboration with the persons of the place, with who it knows to recognize the places and with who it knows the history well.
An Italian television (La7) made a report about it. And you could possibily see the video at mms://videoteca.cdn.... I could NOT see it since I use GNU/Linux and MMS (the mms:// part in the previous URL) or ' Microsoft Media Server ' protocol is Microsoft's proprietary network streaming protocol. Microsoft has never released a specification to describe how MMS actually works, yet it is extensively used by their Microsoft media player software. (info about MMS protocol taken from http://sdp.ppona.com/ and I didn't check if they are still true). I could probably try to download the last codecs for my Free Software player that someone has retroengineered but this is not the point. Just as much as http:// is an open protocol that allows anyone to contribute (for example, Luca was able to contribute using the Web and providing info on the Web), mms:// is a closed protocol which does not allow evolution, contribution, freedom. Seeing videos on GNU/Linux is always a bit problematic, since there are no open protocols for streaming videos, or I'm missing something? Vorbis? How can we make an open protocol hugely adapted?
By the way, good spot Luca!

Categories (tags):

Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software

Open standards: you want to be able to call the police independently of the phone you use, right?

However FEMA announced that online applications for Federal Disaster Assistance would only be accepted from victims who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser.
On grokster you can find this great article When Open Standards Really Matter - The Katrina Factor. I really suggest you to read it and to pass it on to your friends (especially the non-tech-savvy ones!). Starting from post-Katrina communication efforts, it makes good points on why communication formats MUST be based on open standards.
Isn't it time, after so much suffering, to recognize that keeping people alive is more important than allowing private companies to lock in customers into proprietary systems that don't then work in an emergency? And why does the Internet always work, no matter who you are or what operating system you use? Because it was built, not on proprietary standards, but entirely on open standards. That's why you can send an email to me, even if you are using Microsoft Outlook. I don't run any Microsoft products currently, but because of open standards, I can still read your email, and in an emergency, we will not be disconnected because we are on "different communication systems." (...)
I shudder to think what Microsoft would have done, if it had invented the Internet. Every bit of it would be patented, and we'd all be paying through the nose and would be restricted to whatever Microsoft chose to let us do. (...)
If Microsoft is successful in persuading the powers that be to establish emergency communications based on their proprietary XML, it will shut out millions of people. That is too big a price to pay. And there is no reason why Microsoft can't follow the same XML standards as the rest of the world. They may feel it is in their best interest to have proprietary extensions on XML, patented to boot, but it isn't in the public's best interest to be forced to use it, and frankly, why would any government wish to reinforce a monopoly's monopoly position? How is that good for the marketplace? For that matter, how does it build faith and respect for the law?
Anyone should really tell me a reason for which a closed, proprietary, secret format is better than a public, published, standard one. It is like someone telling you "it is better if you forget English, Italian, etc and communicate only using the language I inventend. You cannot understand how to utter words (the language is secret) but you can use our tools to do it (of course other people cannot create other tools for uttering words because, you know, it costed a lot to us to develop this language and, you know, we must get some money to buy food, you know). It will be much much better, for everyone". By the way, Massachusetts is requiring open standards for all government documents. If your software does not save documents in open standards, Massachusetts's agencies cannot buy it, as simple as that.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Linux displaces 2,460 Windows XP desktops in rural Italian schools

Some 16,000 students in the mountainous South Tyrol province of Bolzano in northern Italy will find 2,460 classroom computers upgraded from Windows XP to Linux when they return to school this month. (...) That's not all. More than 20,000 liveCDs will be burned "with the same (Linux) software they will find at school," Russo said. "These will be given for free to students and their families" for use at home, he said. If you are interested read the entire article on DesktopLinux.
Bolzano province is in north east of Italy, really north, just northern than Trento Province. Hopefully we will be able to do something similar as well and hopefully soon you will read on DesktopLinux "Linux displaces 5130 Windows XP desktops in Trento province schools". This is still a hope but we are working on it and surely the mediatic impact will be great if you think that Microsoft had opened a research center in Trento. Wish us good luck.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Five reasons NOT to use Linux

Read it

Categories (tags):

Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software
Programming	programming

Releasing under open licences and getting some feedback.

This still amazes me. I released some slides under Creative Commons licence time ago and I got some emails with a improuved version of the slides and some comments about typos, errors. I released IdentityBurro under Creative Commons (I would have preferred GPL but the original code of BookBurro was under CC as well because the a snippet of code Jesse used was under CC, I guess this is what virality of licences really means) and I received 2 emails of people using the code in different ways.
Jeremy wrote me "Because I learn by tinkering, I was able to pick through your script and adapt it to provide this functionality.". His greasemonkey script, The Flickr Tag Convergence Script, allows you to search for any tag on a Flickr photo page on either del.icio.us or Technorati with one mouse click. The script places small icons (one for del.icio.us and one for Technorati) in front of each photo tag (see the screenshot). The script is also available on UserScripts.org, another shiny creation of Jesse, BookBurro's creator.
On the other hand, Daniel was so kind to improuve the Identity Burro code by looking over the Todo list. He added some of the other sites I listed as wanting to include (Cite-u-Like, Last.fm (+audioscrobbler now that it's completely incorporated into last.fm), 43things, 43ideas@43things, 43places, 43ideas@43places, 43.allconsuming.net, Rojo and LJ). He also added the shrink/collapse button I mentioned. So I played with it again, added some more funcionalities and there will be a 0.3 version of IdentityBurro in minutes.
I just want to mention that I created Identity Burro tinkering with the code of Book Burro. I met Jesse, Book Burro's creator at AAAI, and I was amazed to meet him and I thought I had a lot to learn by looking at his code, I was right. [During his AAAI invited talk, Jay Tenenbaum showed one slide about Book Burro, and at the end of the presentation, Jesse showed up saying "you showed a slide about Book Burro, well, I created Book Burro"]. That's amazing, I want something like that happening to me as well in future! By the way, Jesse is now visiting Commerce.net and he ponders about Trust - Since userscripts operate outside of the security model, a malicious userscript could send every keystroke to the bad guys. A combination of peer review, and automated testing will be used to help secure end users.. UserScripts.org aggregates scripts but the actual code stays on the creator's site, so I think the idea is that, say, Mark Pilgrim trust/approuves a certain Greasemonkey script and I trust Mark Pilgrim, I can install the script without examining the code line by line. What if the bad guy's web server, mine for example, serves 90% of the time a "good" script and 10% of the time (or only to people using Windows that are probably not going to look at the code) serves a "malicious" script? Should Mark Pilgrim just trusts a generic URL or it is better to tie his trust action to a specific file content, for example associating an MD5SUM to the trusted file? More clearly, the trust action should be "I trust the script served at http://example.com/script.user.js" or "I trust the script served at http://example.com/script.user.js whose MD5SUM is 34GFGF94RU..."? The second provide more security but every time you release a new version, people have to restate their trust in your script by re-reading the code. So Jesse, what do you think?

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Future	future
Mozilla	mozilla
Programming	programming

AjaxOffice / WebOS / Microsoft starts shivering

Many possible titles for this entry on Kottke, and all of them means "start counting microsoft's remaining days". This is nothing too new for AjaxOffice-aware people but the article is very well written. A question for you: should the code running this apps be Free Software? I think so. Moreover, Kottke reasons that the entities who can create WebOS are just Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple or Mozilla Foundation.
And why not the world community starting for example developing AjaxOffice on Sourceforge?
Oh, yes, I was going to forgot; the titles of the post were:
* GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS?
* You're probably wondering why Yahoo bought Konfabulator
* An update on Google Browser, GooOS and Google Desktop
* A platform that everyone can stand on and why Apple, Microsoft, and, yes, even Google will have to change their ways to be a part of it
* The next killer app: desktop Web servers
* Does the Mozilla Foundation have the vision to make Firefox the most important piece of software of this decade?
* Web 3.0
* Finally, the end of Microsoft's operating system dominance

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

AjaxOffice now on SourceForge

Few weeks ago I forecasted a server-side office suite provided by Google or Yahoo! in less than one year calling it AjaxOffice. I took 6 minutes to register the project on Sourceforge and few days ago it got approuved. So we now have a AjaxOffice project on Sourceforge. The project description starts with:
AjaxOffice: A complete office suite usable via your browser. Your documents are safely stored on a server so that you don't have to worry about backups and you can access them from every computer in the world!
AJAX OFFICE is to Microsoft Office what GMail (Google Mail) is to Microsoft OutLook
Or the free software version: AJAX OFFICE is to OpenOffice what GMail (Google Mail) is to Mozilla Thunderbird.
In case you are interested in the project, check the project and send me an email to phauly AT users DOT sourceforge DOT net.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

What Business Can Learn from Open Source (and blogging)

What Business Can Learn from Open Source (and blogging) (This essay is derived from a talk at Oscon 2005.)
So these, I think, are the three big lessons open source and blogging have to teach business: (1) that people work harder on stuff they like, (2) that the standard office environment is very unproductive, and (3) that bottom-up often works better than top-down.
One of his point is that the emerging investor-investee (horyzontal) relationship is much better than the employer-employee (vertical) relationship. It is much better from everyone's point of view: the one receiving the money (was employee / is investee [*]) works on stuff she likes and choosed and hence she works more and with greater joy and productivity, the one spending the money (was employer / is investor or founder funder) gets more return of investment and has to care less about keeping the other part productive. It is probably better also for society at large: it is better to have a country of people happy about what they are doing and feeling like they are doing something worthy. From client-server architecture to peer-to-peer also in economy!
[*] I think there is a typo in the essay: he writes "the investor-founder relationship" and, if I'm not wrong, investor and founder are synonyms. I made up the word "investee" for the one receiveing the money but it is probably not the correct word.
UPDATE: thanks to the comment of Francesco, I understood that there was no typo. The correct word is "founder" (as Paul writes) and represents the one who receives the money and founds the company. I confuse "founder" with "funder". Thanks Francesco!

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

10 things that should be free (as in free speech)

Ross reports that Jimmy at the Wikimania conference (I should be there!) has presented his list of 10 things that should be free (free as in free speech and not as in free beer).
One of the most asked question (I guess) is "There are people that are living selling what will become free. How will those people survive?". A point I liked a lot from the Q&A session is "It's not up to us to answer the question of what happens to the candle makers with the invention of electric lighting.". Read the all post and ask yourself "why I'm not there?".

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Donald Knuth on Software Patents (and Microsoft to patent emoticons)

According to Groklaw, Microsoft has filed for a patent on the smiley face. Yes, the emoticon. I have no word for commenting this, I let Donald Knuth, author of "The Art of Programming, doing it:
My personal opinion is that algorithms are like mathematics, i.e. inherently non-patentable. It worries me that most patents are about simple ideas that I would expect my students to develop them as part of their homework. Sometimes there are exceptions, e.g. something as refined as the inner point method of linear programming, where one can really talk about a significant discovery. Yet for me that is still mathematics.
I come from a mathematical culture where we don't charge money from people who use our theorems. There is the notion that mathematics is discovered rather than invented. If something was already there, how you patent it?
I cannot wait till the day micro$oft will be just history: "do you remember that global monopoly called microsoft?" "which one, the one that tried to patent emoticons?" "yes that one, when did it run out of business? was in 2007, right?" ...

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Video of Di Cosmo's talk on "Why Public administration must choose Free Software"

In February 2005, Roberto Di Cosmo gave a presentation at my University about "Free Software and Public Administration" (I commented on it at that time). Now, thanks to the work of Marco Cova, the video of that presentation is available on archive.org. Check also the slides of that talk or the collection of his other slides. Di Cosmo's final point is that the Public Administration is not a big enterprise but that it has specific needs and these needs mandate that the Public Administration chooses Free Software (ALSO if it costs more that proprietary software). His presentation was wonderful, full of real and convincing examples and very very clear: just imagine that he was able to explain to a non-techy audience a concept such as "a compiler used to compile the compiler"!
The talk was in Italian so, if you don't know it, can you imagine a better reason for learning it than watching this video?

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

The Open CD: versione in Italiano

Some students at Politecnico di Torino translated in Italian TheOpenCD: quality open source for Windows. You can download the Italian version of TheOpenCD. You can also appreciate what you would see if you insert the CD in a Windows machine (open in a new window) and play with the programs (see screenshots, descriptions, installations, ...). Letting Windows users understand what Free Software is and how much it is successful is a first step for having them fully embrace a totally free operating system as well. Keep spreading!

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Ubuntu sent me 300 GNU/Linux CDs

I received few days ago 300 CDs from UbuntuLinux (see photos on Flickr).
Our initial idea (as LinuxTrent) was to distribute these CDs in the Fair Trade Shops in Trentino along with TheOpenCD translated in Italian (see project, in Italian). However, there will be a fair in Trento called Fa' la cosa giusta (Do the right thing), 4-6 november 2005, and we are probably going to distribute the CDs in that occasion. I just wanted to let you know that you can order Ubuntu Linux CDs at shipit.ubuntulinux.org and that this can be a good way to reach people that are not likely to cross their ways with Free Software (and alternatives). Happy spreading!

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Forecast: Ajax Office available in less than one year

My little forecast: I think that in less than one year there will be a Suite Office usable "inside" your browser, entirely written in Javascript and AJAX, using the DOM model of XHTML.

UPDATE: AjaxOffice is now on sourceforge.

UPDATE My office mate told me that there are already many Free Software HTML text editors such as FckEditor, TinyMCE (longer list at HTMLArea). So I guess we just need Google (or Yahoo!) to provide the service and the possibility to store files on their disks. END OF UPDATE

Many usable pieces are already there (usually as Free Software javascript libraries): toolbar, menubar, drag-and-drop, edit-in-place, window, resize images.
What is peculiar is that
- writing this suite is not too complicated
- there are so many people (thousands or more) with enough skills for easily doing it
Using "release early, release often" phylosophy and a Free Software licence (such as GPL), we could have a big number of hackers working all together at the "Ajax Office", adding functionalities, correcting bugs, ...
You can easily imagine that having a reliable Office Suite that works inside your browser is a great opportunity for normal users (who will need Microsoft Office? but also OpenOffice...).
But you can also imagine having Google (or Yahoo! or another big player) offering the Ajax Office interface AND the ability to keep your files on their disks and access/modify/print them from every computer in the world just via a browser. And not having to bother with backups. Similar to what happens now with Gmail (almost infinite storage for your emails and the ability to access it via any computer just with a browser). Jeremy already thinks that Gmail is faster and better than Thunderbird (desktop email program). I think one of its next posts will be "Ajax Office (or Goffice) is better than Microsoft Office (and OpenOffice)". [Oh yes, there are huge privacy issues.]
Anyway that would be killer! A totally new way to use computers and the web. And I want to see Microsoft shares that day! I'm just dreaming or is it a reasonable forecast? My bet is for the second. So, I see you here in less than one year.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Faletti: "Open Source leads to Barbarity"

[again news about Italy in Italian]
In article on La Stampa, Faletti speaks about his free appearance in a Television Spot campaign of the Italian Government to fight piracy of multimedia content. There is no need to say that the spot costs public money to be broadcasted in televisions and that this becomes private money of Berlusconi who owns Italian private televisions.
Anyway the point I want to make here is another: the spokeman of the campaign against piracy, Faletti, is so informed that says:
«Io invece penso che l’open source sia il sistema migliore per precipitare nella barbarie.».
(I think instead that Open Source is the best way to fall into Barbarity.)
Let me state it again: this is the man chosen by Italian Government to explain to Italians (via television) what is piracy and how to fight it.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla
Programming	programming
Social Software	social_software

Identity Burro: GreaseMonkey extension for social sites.

UPDATE: there is now an IdentityBurro project page
You are looking at the page of xyz on flickr and you would like to see xyz's bookmarks on del.icio.us?
Or, you are on the technorati profile page of abc and you would like to see abc's photos on flickr?
Well, if one of these desideratas has been in your mind before, you now have it!
Enter Identity Burro (or IdentityBurro), a GreaseMonkey extension that inserts, in the profile page of user xyz on flickr or del.icio.us or technorati, the link to the profile pages of user xyz on flickr and del.icio.us and technorati. Your social sites are now more social!
See the screenshots.

Still with me? Then I guess you might want to install:
   Current Version: Identity Burro v0.1

At the moment there is nothing better I can do that assuming an user has the same nick on every site: I assume xyz@flickr is xyz@del.icio.us and xyz@technorati. I know this is by no means guaranteed to be true (or desirable). I hope (and ask) that one of this social sites will soon let its users to enter which are their nicks on other sites. In this way I would be able to get this information and put the correct links when xyz@flickr is called abc@del.icio.us.

And of course, as you can see by the name of the extension, inspiration for this extension came from the mighty BookBurro extension, whose creator Jesse I just met few days ago at the AAAI 2005 conference in Pittsburgh.
The code is released under a Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5" licence (since Book Burro was released in this way and the shareAlike option didn't really give me a chance to change licence for a GPL).

If you like, you might want to let me know if it works in the buggy browser, I mean, Internet Explorer.
Todo:
# when expanded, part of the unexpanded interface (buttons and icons) remains in background, more transparent. understand why and fix it
# when expanded the "expand" icon should become a "shrink" icon (the arrow in the other direction).
# some CSS properties are inherited from the current site, so that for example, the extension looks a bit different in flickr and in del.icio.us. Understand which are the properties of which elements and overwrite them (surely the background of some elements is inherited).
# adding more social sites, for example, webjay, citeulike, last.fm, audioscrobbler, furl, wist, blogmarks, 43things, tagsurf, upcoming, jots, podcast, consumating, rojo, bloglines, smugsmug, bookswelike, kinja.

Leave comments to this post for communicating with me about the extension.

Screenshots

Del.icio.us with Identity Burro not expanded (all icons are clickable anyway):

Del.icio.us with Identity Burro expanded:

Technorati with Identity Burro not expanded (all icons are clickable anyway):

Technorati with Identity Burro expanded:

Flickr with Identity Burro not expanded (all icons are clickable anyway):

Flickr with Identity Burro expanded:

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Trento province chooses Free Software

The article on newspaper L'Adige reports that "Also Microsoft, that is opening a research centre in Trento, will have to use it". Anyway I think it is probably just a boutade of the article writer to get attention (and he succeeded, at least with me). Anyway the press conference of the Province is more precise and useful. All the links point to information in Italian, some extracts follow.

(...)
Secondo le linee guida, la pubblica Amministrazione, in armonia col
Codice dell'amministrazione digitale (in particolare, Art. 12, 14 e
68), privilegia nelle comunicazioni interne l'adozione di formati di
dati aperti; mentre garantisce per le comunicazioni esterne l'adozione
(pur non esclusiva) di formati dati aperti.
I progetti e servizi, che saranno sviluppati sulla nascente
infrastruttura della Società dell'Informazione, valorizzeranno i
principi dell'interoperabilità e della cultura del Software Libero e a
Sorgente Aperto. In particolare, alla Provincia autonoma di Trento è
raccomandato di promuovere e sostenere attivamente le iniziative
finalizzate all'alfabetizzazione, alla diffusione e all'impiego
consapevole di tecnologie informatiche che siano basate su strumenti e
standard aperti. Attraverso specifiche iniziative – anche a carattere
normativo – sarà privilegiata l'adesione a standard di accessibilità
internazionalmente riconosciuti. Inoltre sarà costituito un centro di
competenza per il Software Libero e a Codice Aperto, col mandato di
studiare il fenomeno e di supportare la conoscenza e l'adozione presso
la pubblica amministrazione, gli operatori, i decisori ed – in
generale – gli utenti di servizi informatici nella provincia di
Trento.
(...)
Nello spirito di una tale cultura, come del Codice
dell'amministrazione digitale (Art. 69), saranno studiate e definite
le condizioni sotto le quali il software prodotto da o per conto della
pubblica amministrazione sia da considerarsi "bene pubblico" tutelato
da appropriata licenza d'uso. Così come saranno realizzate iniziative
che incentivino, nel tessuto locale, l'adozione di modelli di sviluppo
basati su Software Libero o a Codice Aperto, in particolare in
relazione al riutilizzo del software ed all'accrescimento delle
competenze interne alla pubblica amministrazione.
(...)

Categories (tags):

Folksonomy	folksonomy
Free software	free_software
PhD	phd
Recommender Systems	recommender_systems
Semantic web	semantic_web
Social Software	social_software
Trust and Reputation	trust_and_reputation

AAAI05: terrific talk by Marty Tenenbaum

AI Meets Web 2.0: Building The Web of Tomorrow Today by Dr. Jay M. Tenenbaum.
Terrific terrific talk, fascinating. I should have podcasted it because you really missed something (except I have nothing to record audio on, would you consider sending me your old mp3 recorder pen?). I was so excited during the talk that I happened to take a photo of almost any slide. Actually the slides were 94 and I photoed 59 of them! Incredible to me as well.
Anyway, you might want to read the slides (pdf) or maybe you want to have a look at my pictures (possibly as a slideshow).
He introduced all the stuff I enjoy, such as Blogs, RSS, wiki (wikipedia), folksonomies, tags, flickr, Del.icio.us, microformats (aka Lower case semantic web), technorati, pubsub, greasemonkey (bookburro, greasemap) and much more; all tied together in a fascinating, convincing, making-sense manner!
After his presentation, we spoke about my research and he seemed interested. He invited me to visit commerce.net for one month or so and I have to say that I really like the idea. I spoke also with Rohit Khare that is actually working with Tenenbaum and he has a whole bunch of very clever, fascinating, realizable ideas that would really make an impact. They also underline more than once that this kind of architecture/language-of-web2.0 projects should be open source and I totally agree with them and like it.
Actually after the presentation, while I was speaking with Marty and Rohit, there was also Jesse Andrews, the creator of the mind-blowing book burro (actually he got most of the attention, totally deserved by the way). I guess it should be too cool having someone presenting your hack on a conference and then go to meet that person and say "You know the Book Burro extension you presented? Well, I'm the creator of it!". Cool! If you want to see how Jesse looks like, here is a picture of him and wait some more great hacks from him in few days.

Categories (tags):

Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software

EU parliament stops Europe Parliament nixes software patent law.

Great day for European Computer Industry! And for Democracy! Ane one less reason to leave "old Europe"....
Europe Parliament nixes software patent law
STRASBOURG, France Jul 6, 2005 — The European Parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposed law to create a single way of patenting software across the European Union, a blow to big tech companies who had pushed hard for its adoption.
The so-called software patent directive, turned down in a 648-14 vote with 18 abstentions, would have given companies EU-wide patent protection for computerized inventions

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Metadata	metadata
Recommender Systems	recommender_systems
Semantic web	semantic_web
Social Software	social_software
Trust and Reputation	trust_and_reputation

My suggestion to Google: getoutfoxed('s author)

Google, do hire Stan before Yahoo! does it. Stan is the author of "Outfoxed - Personalize your internet." I didn't play with the code yet (seems a Linux version is not yet ready at the moment, but on the way). Yes, the code is open source (Mozilla Public Licence), sweet! Anyway, the detailed description is fantastic! It is a bit like what I want to do for my PhD thesis. The difference? Stan did it! Check the site: it has a lot of interesting pages such as The Outfoxed Idea (A collection of thoughts on the theoretical aspects of Outfoxed, and the whole idea of using social networks for metadata distribution). Or at least the page A Third Phase of Internet Search in which Stan pictiorally shows the 3 phases: Naive trust --> PageRank and inferred quality --> Social networks to determine subjective quality

Every search query is a question: "What pages are most related to X?" Current search engines assume there is a single correct answer to each query. But consider a query like "Britney Spears." (The most popular Google query for 2004.) If you're a fan, you probably want to see her official site and maybe lyric pages. If you're a musician, you probably want to see reviews and music tabs. Of course, current search engines can't do this because they only consider "objective" measures like the number of links to a page. (See The good, the bad, and the subjective) What is needed is subjective, trusted ratings of the pages.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla
Semantic web	semantic_web

GreaseMonkey is the real Semantic Web (and now works on HospitalityClub)

GreaseMonkey is an extension for Firefox that allows you to totally (and easily) change the layout of any received web page. Don't like the color of the banner of that_site.com? You can change it! Do you prefer to have the login link on the_other_site.org on the right? You can place it wherever you want! While visiting the page of a certain book on Amazon.com, do you want to see the prices other sites ask for the same book (with this information embedded on "original" Amazon page)? You can do it (with BookBurro extension)! Want to hide forever every Google AdSense ad? You can do it! You find hundreds of scripts (for hundreds of different sites) over at GreaseMonkey UserScripts wiki or you can easily create yours (as I did, see the end of this post).
Oh yes, this will blow up your business model and "any kid with a bright idea and a knack for DHTML can create a new interface for your site, and it will probably be better than yours."
And yes, this is much much more real (and useful) than all the Semantic Web you listen about at conferences (with tons of papers and tons of highly funded programs that, at least at the moment, produces almost nothing you can use and play with; if I'm wrong, use the comment to point out interesting stuff).
Anyway, I played a bit with GreaseMonkey. I recommend you diveintogreasemonkey by Mark Pilgrim and I suggest you to follow it step by step (this is faster than trying to jump to what you need because you will jump back to understand that what you skipped was important).
And eventually, I created 2 GreaseMonkey scripts for HospitalityClub, that I think can save me a lot of time in using the site. I used HospitalityClub for finding hospitality in Trieste when I was attending the School on Networks (thanks truesmile and inquis), I used it in order to find hospitality in Pittsburgh where I'll be for the AAAI conference (thanks roder) and yesterday I wanted to use it for finding hospitality for my (short) holidays in Italy [not going to tell where]. The problem with HospitalityClub is that the interface is not too usable. My usual use case is the following: I search all the people offering hospitality in the place where I want to go, and I send to all of them the same request. This requires visiting the list of users, clicking on every username to go to her userpage and, on the userpage, click on "send message to this user" that leads to a new page, then copying my name in a field, my passport number in another field, the request text in a text area and push Submit. All these steps must be done for all the users!
So I created a GreaseMonkey extension that add a link near every username: the link allows to go directly to the "send message" page.
      [ script: hospitalityclub_addSendMsgLink.user.js ]
And I created another extension that prefill the values in the "send message" page with the default ones (my username, my passport number, the request message).
      [ script: hospitalityclub_defaultValuesInMsg.user.js ]
In this way you just have to push Submit. It would be possible to push Submit automatically with the extension but I wanted to keep some control ... interestingly GreaseMonkey gives you so much power that then your small brain is no more able to manage it. I mean, for example, I have at least 4 extensions that modify google.com pages and I'm no more able to tell which extension inserts what in which cases... this is something I need to think a little bit more about.
Anyway the 2 extensions are released under GPL (software that gives you freedom) so you are free to play with them, free to study them and free to modify them. Enjoy!

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Contribute to"The Politics of Open Source Adoption"

The Politics of Open Source Adoption. It is very interesting and so present. It is on a wiki so you can edit it (and the 2 best new contributions will receive prizes of $250)
Some chapters: The European Politics of F/OSS Adoption, LiMux—Free Software for Munich, Source vs. Force: Open Source Meets Intergovernmental Politics, FOSSFA in Africa: Opening the Door to State ICT Development Agendas – A Kenya Case Study, NGO’s in the Developing Worlds, Legal Uncertainty in Free and Open Source Software and the Political Response, F/OSS Opportunities in the Health Care Sector.
This wiki is an invitation to collaborate on a real-time history and analysis of the politics of open source software adoption. The Social Science Research Council is pleased to offer a first version of this account—POSA 1.0. For our purposes, understanding the ‘politics of adoption’ means stepping back from the task of explaining or justifying Free and/or Open Source Software (F/OSS) in order to ask how increasingly canonical explanations and justifications are mobilized in different political contexts. POSA 1.0 tries to map the different kinds of political and institutional venues in which F/OSS adoption is at stake. It tries to understand important institutional actors within those venues, and the ways in which arguments for and against F/OSS are framed and advanced. It seeks to clarify the different opportunities and constraints facing F/OSS adoption in different sectors and parts of the world. It is an inevitably partial account that--we hope--can be extended and deepened by other participants in these processes. We would like your help in preparing POSA 2.0.
(via BoingBoing)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
[edit]
Introduction

JOE KARAGANIS

ROBERT LATHAM

* Structure
* Conclusions
* References

[edit]
The European Politics of F/OSS Adoption

RISHAB AIYER GHOSH

* The EU Political Framework: Why Free Software?
o Overall Societal Benefits
+ Universal Access or "eInclusion"
+ Independence, Local Control and Local Economic Growth
+ Transparency and Democratic Accountability
o Pragmatic Arguments
+ Interoperability, Proprietary Standards and Vendor Lock-in
o Security
o Cost
* Policy and Practice in EU Member States
o EU-level Policy and Actions
o Germany and France
o Other Countries
o The Extremadura Case
* Conclusion

[edit]
LiMux—Free Software for Munich

VOLKER GRASSMUCK

* Background: The Growing Acceptance of Free Software
* Munich's Starting Position
* First Phase: Evaluating the Alternatives
* Intermezzo: A Visit from Redmond
* Second Phase: Working Out the Details
* Other European Citites: a Domino Effect?
* Third Phase: A "Soft" Migration
* Intermezzo: Software Patents
* First Results and Next Steps
o Next Steps
* Conclusions
* Notes
* References

[edit]
Source vs. Force: Open Source Meets Intergovernmental Politics

KENNETH NEIL CUKIER

* Introduction: National Governments and Open Source
* Open Source @ Intergovernmental.Org
o United Nations Development-Related Agencies
+ UN Development Program (UNDP)
+ UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
+ UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
+ UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
o World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
o UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
* The Empire Strikes Back: Reaction by States and Software Firms
* Conclusion: The Value of Intergovernmental Forums for Open Source
* Notes
* References

[edit]
FOSSFA in Africa: Opening the Door to State ICT Development Agendas – A Kenya Case Study

BILDAD KAGAI

NICOLAS KIMOLO

* The Economic and Political Dynamics of the African ICT Sector
* The Kenyan Case: Background
* Telecommunications
* Private Sector Support
* Alliance Building
* Conclusion

[edit]
F/OSS Adoption in Brazil: the Growth of a National Strategy

EUGENE KIM

* Software and Nationalism
* Conclusion
* References

[edit]
NGO’s in the Developing Worlds

GABRIELLA COLEMAN

* Introduction
* Tactical Technologies and the Creation of a Fledging Network
* Source Camps: Challenging the “Conventional Wisdom” on F/OSS
* Resituating F/OSS: Ethical Frameworks and Conceptual Maps
* Pragmatic Justifications
* Security
* Customization and Localization
* The Broader Economic Landscape
* The Developer Community
* Notes
* References

[edit]
Legal Uncertainty in Free and Open Source Software and the Political Response

JENNIFER M. URBAN

* Introduction
* Sources of Legal Uncertainty for F/OSS Licenses
o Code: Ownership and Control
o License Enforcement and Interpretation Issues
* The Effect of Political and Economic Interests in F/OSS
* Current Cases
o Sitecom/Netfilter Case
o Mambo/Furthermore Dispute
o The SCO Cases
+ Competitor Reactions
+ Publicity and Response
+ The F/OSS community response to SCO
+ Whither SCO?
* Conclusion
* Notes
* References

[edit]
F/OSS Opportunities in the Health Care Sector

SHAY DAVID

* Challenges in the Health Care Sector
* Leading F/OSS Projects in Health Care
o Debian-Med
o OpenEMR
o OpenVista
o OSCAR
o SPIRIT
* The Politics of F/OSS Adoption in Health Care
* Conclusion
* Notes
* References

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Nokia 770 and the power of grassroot development (read GNU/Linux)

Nokia presented Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and (behold!) it is powered by Linux. Is this a clever move? From my point of view, yes. I'm thinking to buy one, even if I dislike buying gadgets that are not totally useful to me and at the moment I can totally live without a tablet pc. The presentation by Nokia titled "Give and Take: Open Source play for a major telecom manufacturer" presents pros and cons, risks and potentials. I think Nokia was very clever, they are giving a tool to all the GNU/Linux hackers community. The community will play with it happily hacking and (as a by-product) will give back to Nokia (mostly for free) a bunch of incredibly clever applications and ideas that Nokia can embed on its Tablet PC and sell it even more. In fact Nokia is also trying to guide the process, since it has created maemo.org, a development platform to create applications for Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and other maemo compliant handheld devices in the future. Very clever! Will all the Tablet PCs move to GNU/Linux? I hope so but we will see.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla
PhD	phd
Trust and Reputation	trust_and_reputation

My first Firefox extension: SemanticLinks

For the previously mentioned paper, I created a small Firefox extension called SemanticLinks. The purpose? Showing VoteLinks, rel="nofollow" and information about the linked resource by appending a small icon near the link text (anchor text). SemanticLinks is a simple change of TargetAlert to which I just added a 1%. You can find more information about SemanticLinks and how to install it on the SemanticLinks page. You might also want to see some screenshots.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

50.000.000 downloads for Firefox!

Congrats! 50.000.000 downloads for Firefox!!! I think this is the best way to let "normal people" know what free software (or open source) can achieve, and it also demonstrates fantastically how the proprietary software development model lacks behind hundreds of years when considering features. extensions, security, .... everything! Go on, keep choosing freedom!

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

India rejects software patents

From BoingBoing: Software Patents Stopped in India. Well, India acted much savvier than Europe but we are still fighting against Software Patents in Europe. Software patents are good only for mega big companies that use them to destroy, via legal fights, small and medium companies. Imagine being sued by, say, IBM for patent infringement. You will lose a lot of time and money to defend your reasons and you will eventually give up and bankrupt. Software Patents are a nightmare for European IT market and for Europe. Help in stop them.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Trust and Reputation	trust_and_reputation

GUESS the graph

GUESS: The Graph Exploration System by IBM seems a very interesting tool if you have fun managing and playing with graphs but I didn't have time to try it yet. They say Source code available soon, if you have some desperate need for it in the meantime just email me and GUESS uses some great open source software including Piccolo, JUNG, HSQLDB, Jython , and RServe. I use JUNG and it is a delicious piece of software. If GUESS is able to improuve it and to give something more, it is probably an astonishing piece of software (and it is open source)

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

No limitations for Google OS

I don't agree with Lucas when he reasons about the Limitations of Google OS. He says In any computing application where there is a sense of responsibility, the computer must be owned by the person or organization who owns the responsibility. A desktop company like Microsoft can sell you software which you then take responsibility for. A web company like Google can't.
But there is an error: Microsoft does not sell you the software, you buy a licence of use from Microsoft. This is completely different. In the same way, you can buy from Google the licence of use for GoogleOS. The fact that the bits that compose the software happen to stay on your computer (or not) is totally non-relevant. Actually, in the licence of use, Microsoft could even ask you to not reverse engineer it, to not study it; you could be in situation when you have no way to verify the code you think is there is actually there. Besides, if you have Microsoft Windows installed on your computer, you don't know if it is relying for some services on some remote servers (of course disconnecting from the Internet will reveal it). You have no way to check what is on your harddisk (a complete operating system or some random bits?) since Windows is not Free Software (it does not give you freedoms).
But, hey, if you want a CD pressed by Google with a shiny GoogleOS logo on it, that simulates its installation on your hard disk, I think Google will be happy to provide it.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

If you know an Italian shop selling computers with Linux preinstalled, insert it on LinuxSi.com

(It is an Italian initiative, so I'll write it in Italian).
LinuxSi.com e' un sito per raccogliere informazioni su quei negozi che vendono computer con Linux gia` installato, e che magari hanno anche delle persone "linux friendly" che possono dare una mano e fare suggerimenti sulla selezione di un sistema dove far girare Linux.
E` un modo per premiare e aiutare chi pensa a noi.
Essendo nuovo, finora ci sono pochi negozi nel database, ma ci si mette molto poco per aggiungerne uno.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

Firefox vs InternetExplorer

Mozilla Firefox 1.x with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by 3 Secunia advisories rated Less critical.
Microsoft IE 6 with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by 20 Secunia advisories rated Highly critical.
via BlogForFirefox

Categories (tags):

Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software
Future	future
Italia	italia

Italian Government Commision on E-content wrote a report copying (without citation nor permission) a sentence about CopyLeft, thus violating Copyright.

San Remo is the most known Italian Music Festival. Millions of people watching TV these days. So 3 Italian Ministers had the good idea to show off in TV signing an agreement against piracy and for protecting music authors; in reality it just defends big Music Labels and not citizens. Anyway this is normal: we have a media govern, they govern via television.
What is more interesting is that the Ministry for Innovation and Technologies released a report about Digital Rights Management (2.9 Mb Pdf file in Italian). I come to know via an article by Emanuele Somma (you can try the automatic translation in English if you don't master Italian) that this report, besides being full of errors, also stole a sentence about Copyleft from the magazine "Il Mucchio Selvaggio", n. 526, march 2003, precisely from an article titled "Il copyleft spiegato ai bambini" (copyleft explained to children) written by Wu Ming Foundation. Of course they didn't cite the original article. So here we are at the incredible paradox: the government commision, that wants to regulate e-content, copies the copyright-protected e-content of someone else without even citying it!!!
Moreover the sentence contains a lot of errors and it is not at all precise. They copied and they copied from a wrong report! Geniuses! They also refused to hear the Free Software Foundation (there was no time!), while they were happy to listen all the Music Labels lobbyists.
The copied sencence is:
"Si è andata affermando negli ultimi anni la filosofia del Copyleft. Il termine (denso gioco di parole intraducibile in italiano) si traduce in diversi tipi di licenze commerciali, la prima delle quali è stata la GPL- GNU Public License ([in nota] La licenza GNU/GPL è stata realizzata dalla Free Software Foundation), nata per tutelare quest'ultimo e impedire che le grandi case di software si impadronissero, privatizzandoli, dei risultati del lavoro di libere comunità di utenti. Il software libero è a «codice-sorgente aperto», il che lo rende potenzialmente controllabile, modificabile e migliorabile dall'utente, da solo o in collaborazione con altri."
You can find all the articles that use the copied sentence by searching in Google for "denso gioco di parole intraducibile in italiano" (that means "pun overloaded of meanings, untranslatable in Italian"). The first article is the original, the last one is the goverment's one shamelessy stealing the sentence. The copied sentence is at page 81 of the Commission report.
Just to let you know: based on current law, in Italy, someone caught downloading copyright material off the Internet could go to jail.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

BillGates was (what he defined) a communist.

Richard Stallman on news.com:
Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism. (...)
Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."
Mr. Gates' secret is out now--he too was a "communist;" he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful--until Microsoft became one of these giants. Now Microsoft aims to use software patents to impose whatever price it chooses on you and me. And if we object, Mr. Gates will call us "communists."
Read the entire (not long) article and join the No Software Patents campaign (We just received 2 good news from old Europe).

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Richard Stallman in Trento: photos, audio and video

Some days ago Richard Stallman was speaking at the University of Trento, Faculty of Sociology. It was a great day. Stallman spoke most of the time of freedom, of sharing, of helping your friends and neighbours. These are the reasons behind GNU. Check his biography if you don't know who he is.
I took some photos of that day: in the photo on the left, I'm with Stallman, Napo and Arianna.
Emanuele recorded a complete video (courtesely hosted by archive.org, if you need to host videos, audios, do it on archive.org and make them available to everyone! you can also just watch the thumbnails) and there is also the audio. And if you like sounds, you might enjoy a compilation of free software songs (collected on the wonderful Webjay).

There were 2 conference rooms totally full of people (I arrived in time, but the first room was already overfull and I had to (try to) enter in the second one where it was possible to follow Stallman's talk in videoconference. Stallman seems very rigid, very extremist and enough arrogant, for example he interrupted some of the people asking questions because they were "sloppy thinking", i.e. not being precise enough. Anyway I should say I like this. He is convinced of what he says. He spoke (al least 50 times) of freedom, of sharing, of helping other people. He was not happy with was going on in the software world almost 20 years ago and he started (from scratch!) in building another world. I would like to be so convinced about something, so convinced that I could start a long journey against almost everyone and not understood by almost everyone to defend what I value. Stallman seems a modern sort of Don Quichote, fighting against the windmills. But and this is a great but, I think we are now seeing that the windmills are starting to crack down. And all this would not have been possible without him. And this is great. He believed in something and he started fighting for it and he still fighting. When he started nobody was speaking of free software and now countries, big cities, normal people are speaking about it. This is great! He is travelling around the world repeating the same concepts that were so clear to him 20 years ago and that are, even now, obscure to most of the people (me too, of course). It is probably boring for him speaking every day of freedom number 0, 1, 2, 3 but I guess this is what happens when you are so ahead of time.
He is asking to call the operating systems we use GNU/Linux and not Linux in order to let other people know that what is behind it are not sterile engineering design principles but a will for freedom. Also Linux is just the kernel that is a small part of the operating system, an fondamental one but still a small part.

Anyway I also understood why someone started the Open Source Initiative. Stallman could not speak one second with business men. Business men don't care about freedom, they care about saving money or using/creating a better product. Anyway business men can be a great ally here (just think how much IBM or Sun are doing for open source movement) and hence I think that the Open Source Initiative is a great one. But Stallman is the phylosopher, is the one that makes you think "I can do it, I should do it".
I'll try to remember next time I have some small problems with my GNU/Linux system that Stallman started from zero to build a new free system just because he values so much freedom. Compared to this, having to ask in some mailing list how to fix a problem and setting 2 or 3 paprameters is really nothing!

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Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

The Free Software community is women unfriendly?

Women in Software - Open Source, Cold Shoulder (registration required, find login/password at bugmenot). Interesting article that analyzes also why "while the gender ratio in the industry as a whole is roughly five to one, the ratio in FLOSS appears to be several hundred to one". I have to admit that reading a "female" nickname on a technical mailing list often surprises me. I'm not proud of it and I guess this is just due to the fact that, to me, this is not a frequent fact and I'm not used to. Anyway any article that allows to think about our own limits (and possibly overcome them) is good and so I think this article can help us in moving forward.
[Via my shared institute printer (I always look at pages printed in the printer and often find something interesting, I guess it is similar to a deadtree del.icio.us page )]

Categories (tags):

Alternative Economy	alternative_economy
Free software	free_software

Capitalism-enthusiasts should go for Open Source

The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source by Bruce Perens: recommended! Open source and capitalism are really more similar than what you think.
It's not immediately obvious how Open Source[1] works economically. Probably the worst consequence of this lack of understanding is that many people don't understand how Open Source could be economically sustainable, and some may even feel that its potential negative effect upon the proprietary software industry is an overall economic detriment. Fortunately, if you look more deeply into the economic function of software in general, it's easy to establish that Open Source is both sustainable and of tremendous benefit to the overall economy.
Open Source can be explained entirely within the context of conventional open-market economics. Indeed, it turns out that it has much stronger ties to the phenomenon of capitalism than you may have appreciated.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

The Gates of Interoperability

Some recent bla bla bla by billgates about interoperability (while the all history of micro$oft is all about closed formats that force you to use the buggy micro$oft software). And a good reply by Opera CEO, noting for example that the page of the billgates announcement produces 126 HTML errors (it it not interoperable since it does not conform to standards) [the printer-friendly page is even worst] and that "your server sniff out the Opera browser and send it different style sheets".
Why did gates speak about interoperability? My guess is that more and more governments are thinking about moving away from M$Office (for the really interoperable OpenOffice) and billgates is trying the last, desperate attempt to say "ehi, governments, we are open too". Some weeks ago, at the University of Trento there was a day devoted to "Software libero e formati aperti per la Pubblica Amministrazione" (free sofware and open formats for the Public Sector). There was Markus Spring who is in charge to migrate 14.000 computers of Munich's City Hall from closed-gates software to gnulinux/openoffice/freesoftware. He said many times that the reason for the switch was INDEPENDENCE: they want to be independent from a single vendor and free to read citizens data with different softwares (just in case your vendor closes its activity), especially in the future and free to move to different vendor, if they wish. This is not possible with closed formats (such as .doc): about this I suggest you to read "We Can Put an End to Word Attachments" by Richard M. Stallman. I especially enjoy the presentation of Roberto Di Cosmo that was an astonishingly clear, entertaining and convincing talk about why governments should only use free software and open formats (even if they are much much much more expensing than closed software). Check his talk (PDF in Italian) and all the other talks. If you are organizing a presentation trying to convince a public administration about the reasons for switching to free software and open formats, call him, he will convince even stones (in English, French, Spanish or Italian)!

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
PhD	phd
Social Software	social_software
Trust and Reputation	trust_and_reputation

Eclipse trust framework

I found on SocialPhysics Wiki a very interesting proposal: Eclipse Trust Framework (ETF).
The goal of the ETF Project is to provide an open source framework to support the creation of applications on the Eclipse platform that manage a person’s online context (profile) and identity from the person’s or their agent’s perspective. (Eclipse is one of the most used tool for writing Java code, it is open source and funded mainly by IBM).

The description of the application that SocialPhysics wants to build is hyper-cool as well!

The base app is a downloadable application that helps you manage your identity and interactions with co-workers, customers, business associates and friends.

The app can be extended with context plug-ins that support new and different "social protocols"--cultural conventions about who can see what about whom, what's measured, what's private, what's shared. Using a community-of-interest plug-in, for example, communities can share insights into "what's hot," and who's working on what, or what's not happening that should be. It might provide community-wide and/or individual metrics of trust, connectedness, centralization and so on.

Categories (tags):

Alternative Economy	alternative_economy
Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software
Trento	trento

Ubuntu and Stallman

Today I received a package from Ubuntu. It contains 50 cardboard folders containing both an UbuntuLinux Install CD and an UbuntuLinux LiveCD. And Ubuntu sends it for free. This is very timely since there will be Stallman (father of GNU and Free Software Foundation, the one who started it all) in Trento on February 28, 2005 and the intention is to give away hundreds of CDs with free software (ubuntu GNU/Linux, mandrake Linux, but also free software for Windows such as theopencd and gnuwin2) and creative-commons-licenced music. Most people still don't understand that copying and giving away free software is totally legal, actually it is what people creating that software want you to do! Anyway, I want to thank Ubuntu, to invite you to order some free Ubuntu CDs as well and, if you feel like, to donate to Ubuntu.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Microsoft Reseach Center in Trento

Trentino (local newspaper of Trento) is reporting that "Microsoft will open its first Italian Microsoft Reseach Center in Trento". None of my colleagues knew about this before. I think this news (if confirmed) will affect in many ways all the research institutes in Trento area (they are many) and nobody seems to know how. [ehm, I think I should remove all those anti- microsoft I was enjoying writing lately ]

Categories (tags):

Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software

Microsoft means e-exclusion (also in music)

(via TeledyN) An alliance announced today between MSN Music and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings will make tens of thousand of historic songs from legendary performers of folk, blues, jazz and world music available online for the first time, allowing music fans to discover a diverse world of music and sound. But from the archive I can get nothing, since the System Requirements are screamful and I don't use the crappiest operating system ever. This is an example of e-exclusion: since I choose not to use that operating system, I am cut out of this experience. File formats (and songs formats obviously) MUST be open so that everyone can be free to write a program able to read them! Just try to imagine if Microsoft was more smart and understood earlier what the web could have been. We would have now: closed protocols (no TCP/IP, no HTTP, but M$TP!), no open formats for web pages (no HTML but M$ML). Of course you would not be able to use whatever program to communicate over the internet or to create a page but you would have been forced to pay for highly-unuseful and dangerous and closed-source M$ software! I'm so depressed that most people just don't see it: the future Microsoft wants for us is a future of darkness. Following you can find the System Requirements for listening to "historic songs from legendary performers of folk, blues, jazz and world music":

System Requirements
These are the minimum requirements to play radio or purchase music from MSN.

Hardware and Software Requirements

* Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
* Internet Explorer 5.01 (or later), which supports 128-bit encryption
* Windows Media Player 7.1 (or later), we recommend the latest version
* A 233 megahertz (MHz) processor (such as an Intel Pentium II or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor) or faster
* 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM or more
* Speakers and sound capability
* Payment with a valid credit card with a U.S. billing address
* To enjoy high-quality audio as a Radio Plus subscriber, you will need Windows Media Player 9 Series (or later)

SETTINGS REQUIREMENTS

These settings are already appropriately set for most users. If you are experiencing problems with MSN Music, please make sure the following settings are configured inside Internet Explorer:

1. Enable cookies:
Your privacy settings in Internet Explorer need to be set to accept first-party cookies.

You can change this privacy setting this way:
On the menu, go to Tools-> Internet Options -> click the Privacy tab -> click the Advanced button -> check "Override automatic cookie handling," and then choose to "Accept" First-party Cookies.
2. Choose "enable/prompt" for some security settings:
Your security settings in Internet Explorer may prevent the installation of MSN Music Assistant. Without MSN Music Assistant, you will not be able to purchase and download music.

These security settings are usually set appropriately for this activity by default. If you have adjusted your settings, you can change these security settings in Internet Explorer this way:

On the menu, go to Tools -> pull down to Internet Options -> click the Security tab -> click the Custom Level button. Where you have the radio button set to "disable," you will need to choose either "enabled" or "prompt," as appropriate, for the following items:

ActiveX controls and plug-ins -> Download signed ActiveX controls: choose "enabled" or "prompt"
ActiveX controls and plug-ins -> Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting: choose "enabled"
Scripting -> Active Scripting: choose "enabled"
Miscellaneous -> Navigate sub Frames across different domains: choose "enabled"
3. Turn on BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service):
Your setting with regard to BITS may prevent the installation of MSN Music Assistant. Without MSN Music Assistant, you will not be able to purchase and download music.

BITS are turned on by default. If you have altered your settings, you can turn on BITS on this way:
Go to Start -> open Control Panel -> choose Performance and Maintenance (skip this step if you're in Classic View) -> Services, select Background Intelligent Transfer Service, right-click and select Properties. Make sure startup type is set to "manual" or "automatic," not "disabled."
4.

You must be an administrator on the computer in order for the ActiveX control to install properly. You need not be an admin to use the service once the control has been installed.

(next time you'll find)
5.
Sell your soul.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Humour	humour
Mozilla	mozilla

Microsoft's AntiSpyware thinks IExplorer is spyware

Too funny! Microsoft's AntiSpyware Tool removes Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser judging it as Spyware. Wouldn't it be better if it would remove the entire Windows? Maybe your occasion for changing it with Gnu/Linux? (via asa). [The linked story is satire: it is not true]

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Windows crashes, crashes and crashes

zeusnews (in Italian) reports on a number of failures of billgates technologies in his "see the future. today" show(off).
The video is (kind of) available at microsfot site. But I was not able to see it. In general with my gnu/linux laptop I'm able to watch all the videos i wish notwithstanding the closeness of the format. Instead this time, after some efforts without success (there is the scary mms:// protocol), i realized that if they don't want to make easy for me to see it, perfect, I'm not going to see it. Zeusnews also reports the fact Microsoft removed the video from the web for some time but had now put it there again.
Luckily enough, I was able to see the 1998 show with the usual windows crash (.mov file) that is always fun but it also makes me think that, despite being a worst software product, windows got a global monopoly on users' computers.
Below, you can find the salient pieces related to (4) failures from the transcript of billgates failure-show:

--------

1. Gates presents the "single remote control" (minutes 26:16-27:25): [WOW what an invention! they probably have filled at least 5 patents over this innovative idea!]

BILL GATES: Here on the screen this is Media Center, which is our key product that has really converged everything, and here is this single remote control that lets you navigate. Well, we're in the photo section here.

CONAN O'BRIEN: These are the photos we took I think last night.

BILL GATES: That's right. So if I click OK I'll get a little slideshow and you'll get a little glimpse of what we were up to together here.

[Nothing works]

CONAN O'BRIEN: OK, all right, OK, and right now nine people are being fired. (Laughter.) Digitally fired, wireless, there's no connection. (Laughter.) That's the beauty of it—you don't need firewall or—I don't know what I'm talking about.

BILL GATES: OK.

CONAN O'BRIEN: I'm a monkey. All right, we'll get this going. Should we start, should I just—are we ready to go? OK, the first photo here is you picking me up at the airport right there. I thought that was—are we seeing these at all?

BILL GATES: No, I don't think we are.

CONAN O'BRIEN: No, I don't think we are.

BILL GATES: That's the problem when you have the wrong remote control. It's a good thing you only have one, though.

CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, that's good. (Laughter.) All right, well, is anybody going to do anything or should we just move on? (Laughter.) Did I mention there was gambling in this town, Las Vegas? Feel free to hit the tables. You can come back when we get this thing working.

---------------

2. After some minutes Bill Gates tries it again (minutes 28:59-30:00)

CONAN O'BRIEN: I'm going to interrupt you for one second because I think they have the slideshow together. Do you want to take a look at that right now?

BILL GATES: Let's give that one more try.

CONAN O'BRIEN: Let's give it a shot and let's see what we get here and again, just incredible, I don't know who's running things here. (Laughter.) Who's in charge of Microsoft? Oh. (Laughter, applause.) Whew.

Well, I think they say we're ready to do the slideshow, that thing keeps blinking, but I think not, so maybe we'll move on yet again.

BILL GATES: Yep. (Laughter.)

CONAN O'BRIEN: I love that.

BILL GATES: All I have to do is click one button. It's not real complicated.

CONAN O'BRIEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That was a powerful yep. (Laughter.) The yep heard round the industry. (Laughter.) Oh my God, Bill said "yep," get out of here. (Laughter.)

You were talking about television when I was so rudely commanded to interrupt you.

------------------------------

3. Sean Alexander shows Windows Media Center (minutes 39:38-40:02)

SEAN ALEXANDER
So what I thought we'd do here is give you just a quick example of how that works. So here's my Tablet PC. So again just using Internet Explorer and using my Passport account, I can go ahead and access the same programming guide that's available on MSN Entertainment today, but thanks to some software from Microsoft I can go ahead and click on the program in the program guide and select either record it once or record it scheduled.

[does not work]

Now, unfortunately I have a little challenge with the Internet access here so we'll go ahead and take a look at that later. [it will not be shown later]

---------------------------

4. Garrett Young crashes X-Box (minutes 1:13:15-1:13:59)

GARRETT YOUNG: OK, so I've added a couple parts to my car but I'm not done yet. I am now going to go in and I could go in and change the paint job on my car. I like the red paint though on this RX8 so I'm going to stick with that, and I'm going to go in and apply some decals.

Now, this is a very powerful tool, hundreds and hundreds of shapes as far as the options on the types of shapes that you can create in this tool. I'm going to try to do it quickly.

["Out of system memory" Blue screen]

(Laughter.)

This is a little bit of demo karma, sorry, I'm out of system memory apparently. Yeah, so just imagine, if you will, that I was customizing my car and doing some really cool stuff.

But you know what, we can skip that part, it's a little dry, it's a little boring, I've got some feedback that said that that was kind of the slow part of the demo.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

Secunia: "use another product"

Secunia's report:
"Some extremely critical vulnerabilities have been discovered in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system, conduct cross-site/zone scripting and bypass a security feature in Microsoft Windows XP SP2.
Solution: Use another product." (found via wikilab)
Seriously, if you are still using the most bugged browser of history, drop it and jump on the shiny Mozilla Firefox.
[This is the second anti-micro$oft post. In Italy we say "non c'e' due senza tre" (there is no two without the three), so you know what next entry will be about ]

Categories (tags):

Alternative Economy	alternative_economy
Copyright	copyright
Free software	free_software

For billgates, Free Culture advocates are Commies

From BoingBoing, I come to know that billgates consider people that believe in free culture as communists. Such a comparison is so deeply wrong, I'm almost speechless. Free culture and communism are 2 completely different topics.
"There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
Anyway I had a small glimpe of what americans on average think about communists (should I say "they don't think"?) when I was there for some months. I guess billgates'strategy is simple: call them communists, have your media broadcast the idea and let televisions-truths-swallowers get the concept and burn the communists.
Making fun of this nonsense sentence, some people have created wallpapers, t-shirts and other gadgets with this "creative commies" propaganda. Check some of them on BoingBoing.

Anyway, the arrogance of the richest man in the world, head of a global monopoly, is overwhelming and disgusting. The future he draws for us is a dark one (read the entire article on news.com). He also says (speaking of security on InternetExplorer) that "The key message we have for people is they should turn on auto update because if you turn on auto update, without you having to think about it and go through a bunch of user interface or know about this or that or the other thing...".
The reality is the opposite: users who are not aware of what is going on in their computers will never be secure, and they will also be forever forced to do whatever Sauron wants them to do (Yes, the analogy billgates=sauron is very easy, one created the rings to keep people in the dark and control them, the other created windows to keep computer users in the dark).
Are you happy with the future he draws for you? If not, start leaving Windows for GNU/Linux (or at least InternetExploder for Firefox). This could be a first step to tell the richest guy in the world, head of a global monopoly, you don't agree with him and you are taking a different way. Doing tomorrow could be too late. Do it now. If you need help in dropping Windows, I'll be happy to help you, just leave a comment or email me.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

No Internet Explorer Information Bar added

As I wrote before, I inserted in my blog the No Internet Explorer Information Bar. If you are reading this lines with a InternetExplorer, you should see an information bar saying "Internet Explorer is preventing you from having a better Internet experience. Learn more". Clicking on it should lead you to browsehappy.com.
Let me know if this addition broke something.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

Google suggests (Firefox)!

On SpreadFirefox, I found a new Google feature: Google suggests: as you type in the search text field, Google offers suggestions about possible completions. SpreadFirefox was reporting it because if you tipe just f, you get firefox as the first suggestion. Cool!

You should also note that Firefox default home (the page you download when you click on the "home" icon in the navigation bar) is www.google.com/firefox. This is both an endorsement from Google to Firefox as the best browser and (i guess) a way for the mozilla foundation to save money due to the bandwidth costs of millions of firefoxes in the world otherwise downloading some bits from mozilla.org every time they got fired.

On SpreadFirefox, I also found the No IE Information Bar, that was hence made so as to remind your IE visitors to say no to IE. Take a look of the demo with IE. This bar will only show up in IE, but not other browsers. No browser detection script was used, so it is 100% sure only IE will see this..
The code shows an information bar with the string "Internet Explorer is preventing you from having a better Internet experience ..." and the string is also localized in the language you are using for browsing. I cannot test it now since I have no access to a machine running window$ but I think I can borrow a collegue's machine next week in order to test it and I will also try to add the code (released under a Creative Commons) license to my blog. It would be good of course if you remind your IE visitors to say no to IE as well.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

Linux day

Today is Linux day. If you are in Trento, pass by, it'll be fun.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

NeverForgetAttachment: Thunderbird extension needed

Have you ever sent an email writing "in attachment you can find..." and then forgot to attach the file? Have you ever received such an email? I guess so. At least I had, many times. So, I'm invoking the LazyWeb and asking for an extension to the free software mail reader Thunderbird (link not working at the moment, use the cached version). A name for the extension can be NeverForgetAttachment but of course the creator will decide the name. How could the extension work? Version 0.1 will simply look for the words "attach" or "attachment" and, in case they are present and there is no attachment when the user clicks the send button, a small window such as the one you see in this post will popup and asks the user if she wants to attach a file. Following versions can even use some machine learning in order to learn which words (or combination of words) refer to an email with a desired attachment and which don't and react consequently. This can especially be the case if the author don't want to enter the relative "attach" word for every language in the world. Ok, I'm waiting for someone to create the extension, could this be you?

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Peer to peer	peer_to_peer
PhD	phd
Social Software	social_software

Sharing research papers

Citeseer is less useful today than how it was 2 years ago. It seems they stop the crawling looking for papers. [I have a project about adding "web of trust" to citeseer so that every user can express a degree of interest in another users' kept bibliography) but it seems I never have the time to seriously start it.] Anyway this post is to cite 2 interesting related projects: LionShare and Eprints ... (read below for links and details)

LionShare P2P project (see the search screenshot on the wiki) allows people to stop thinking P2P is illegal by default. It is Java Open Source code.
"LionShare P2P project is an innovative effort to facilitate legitimate file-sharing among individuals and educational institutions around the world. By using Peer to Peer (P2P) technology and incorporating features such as authentication, directory servers, and owner controlled sharing of files, LionShare promises secure file-sharing capabilities for the easy exchange of image collections, video archives, large data collections, and other types of academic information. In addition to authenticated file-sharing capabilities, the developing LionShare technology will also provide users with resources for organizing, storing, and retrieving digital files."
(found via the iper-interesting Italian WikiLab).

The other interesting project is more mature and is called Eprints.org - Self-Archiving and Open Access (OA) Eprint Archives. The software is called GNU eprints and it is of course free software. At present, there are 141 known archives running EPrints software worldwide. It is a sort of p2p network where peers are libraries (also University libraries) that certificates that the papers they host are real papers from their scholars. I think that every single researcher can have her own instance of the peer but I think noone is doing it. [Anyway I didn't investigate too much the project and I could be wrong]. My University Library is one of the 141, good! Among the softwares, there is CiteBase whose goal is, I guess, very similar to citeseer.
You can also admire some powerlaws (are they ubiquitous?) in these graphs (Java applets).
The different eprints peers keep them up to date using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.

Ok, I must admit I didn't check the projects in great details so if you do it (or even install them!), leave some comments (if you feel like). Thanks!

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

Mozilla-based Google Browser

Will Google develop a Google browser based on Mozilla? I hope so, everyone trusts Google and will surely download a "browser recommender by Google" (Blogger, owned by Google, already recommends Firefox). See Kottke and Anil for more info.
Anyway, do you Browse Happy? If not, it's because you should get Mozilla Firefox; it's even written in the stars.

Categories (tags):

Free software

free_software

I robot: Open Operating System?

I visited the I, Robot movie site and watched the trailer. I think I'm not going to see it because I've read some reviews who said that the Asimov's atmosphere is lost and this is just a classical Holliwood action movie. However, the flashy website allows you to order a "real" robot (at NS-5.com). There you find the features of your robot. The operating system? Glad you asked! It's called Teresa 2.1.2 OS.

They say the OS is "considerate, intuitive, fun. OS updates will be available for wireless download 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All NS-5 owners shall receive FREE OS updates for the lifetime of their personal domestic assistant".
So it seems you will receive updates and hence you don't have access to the source code.
I don't know you but I would be hyper afraid to run a closed source OS on a big, moving machine such as a robot. Basically there is no way for you to know what your robot will do, scary! Actually It is also scary that so many people right now run Window$ on their PC, but at least they don't move and have no metallic hands, right?
I guess this means: "please, someone starts soon building a gnu/linux distribution for robots, please".

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
PhD	phd
Programming	programming
Trust and Reputation	trust_and_reputation

Jung (Java Universal Network/Graph Framework)

For my studies on trust metrics, I need to code trust metrics. I was looking for a Java package for modeling, analysis, and visualization of graphs (possibly weighted and directed). I tried many of them (see below) but I found a wonderful one!
Java Universal Network/Graph Framework hosted on SourceForge so open source under a BSD licence (javadoc).
JUNG — the Java Universal Network/Graph Framework--is a software library that provides a common and extendible language for the modeling, analysis, and visualization of data that can be represented as a graph or network. It is written in Java, which allows JUNG-based applications to make use of the extensive built-in capabilities of the Java API, as well as those of other existing third-party Java libraries.
The current distribution of JUNG includes implementations of a number of algorithms from graph theory, data mining, and social network analysis, such as routines for clustering, decomposition, optimization, random graph generation, statistical analysis, and calculation of network distances (Dijkstra Shortest Path), flows, and importance measures (centrality, PageRank, HITS, Random Walk, etc.).
JUNG also provides a visualization framework that makes it easy to construct tools for the interactive exploration of network data. Users can use one of the layout algorithms provided, or use the framework to create their own custom layouts. In addition, filtering mechanisms are provided which allow users to focus their attention, or their algorithms, on specific portions of the graph.

If you don't trust me, you can try the Ranking Demo or the other demos.

It is of course an evolving project, I already wrote some code to draw arrows and to label edges with weights and I'm trying to integrate it. I plan to code some of these trust metrics. JUNG is maintained by some great PhD students.

Other packages I tried and didn't fit my needs: JGraphT (visualizable with Jgraph), JGraph, jdigraph, The Data Structures Library in Java.

Other packages I quickly analyzed without downloading them and trying them and not meeting my needs either (especially because focusing only on graph visualization): Graph Foundation Classes for Java (It is by IBM but it is retired and no longer available), OpenJGraph - Java Graph and Graph Drawing Project, Touchgraph (wonderful for visual interaction with drawn graphs), Grappa (A Java GRAPh PAckage), JGraphEd, Graph Editing Framework, GVF - The Graph Visualization Framework, Graph Mapper, VGJ, Visualizing Graphs with Java

Many of these packages (and some more) can be found searching graph on java-channel.org

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Programming	programming

MozDex: an open source search engine

MozDex is an open source search engine. It is based on Nutch.
You can become a developer or just have a look at the Javadoc or the tutorial. You can also download the code from the CVS.
Pretty cool!
(found via Danny)

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

Mozilla poetry

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
    from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
    (Red Letter Edition)

Read about The Book of Mozilla on Wikipedia.
(found via Kevin)

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

It is written in the stars ... Firefox

According to w3schools stats, Mozilla usage is growing fast.
The latest figures state that Mozilla had a 9.0 percent usage share in February, up from 8.2 percent in January. The W3Schools data indicates that Mozilla's usage share has more than doubled in the last twelve months.

In the meantime even the stars seem telling you: "Use Firefox". (Via Adot)

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Mozilla	mozilla

Microsoft: "don't click on links!"

(Via BoingBoing) Microsoft's crapware browser, Explorer, has more security vulnerabilities than my block has dope-dealers, but this is ridiculous. MSFT now advises its users to not click links, but rather to type them in by hand:
Micro$oft says:The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself. By manually typing the URL in the address bar, you can verify the information that Internet Explorer uses to access the destination Web site. To do so, type the URL in the Address bar, and then press ENTER.

It's like if a door constructor would say: "Since we are not able to make good doors, don't touch the handle because you could get hurted". In a competitive market, this productor would be out of the market in few seconds.

The alternative? Easy! Download Mozilla or Firebird.
Mozilla is a wonderful browser, is Free Software (Free as in Freedom) and works perfectly also on M$Windows.
Note also that Mozilla has now a global usage share of 1.8% and is increasing.

Categories (tags):

Free software	free_software
Movies	movies

Revolution OS review

J.T.S. Moore: Revolution OS

I really liked this movie. It is not easy to make a movie about free software and not to make it boring or too technical. I think J.T.S. Moore made a great job and he didn't commit any mistake with definitions of free software, open source, GNU, Linux, ... or at least not a mistake I was able to spot out.
I like to put here an excerpt from the movie, one that made me feel part of something really great.
a final thought from the man who started it all: "the all GNU project is really one big hack, it's one big hack of subversive playfull cleverness, to change society for the better, because I'm always interested in changing it for the better ... but in a clever way" Richard M. Stallman

Categories (tags):

Alternative Economy	alternative_economy
Emergent Democracy	emergent_democracy
Free software	free_software

Brazil is our last hope

If I look at the situation of democracy around the globe, I feel really bad. I think our last hope is Brazil and Lula and the participatory democracy adopted in Porto Alegre.

But this post is about free software.
Brazil believes that free software is an excellent tool for the democratization of knowledge, foreign currency savings, and the optimization of institutional investments and costs. The model also offers perspectives for Brazilian industries to research, create, and develop new free software programs.
Source: Brazzil (found on WorldChanging).

I hope that also Italy (my home country) will realize soon how much free software is strategic for the future, instead I notice how the Report on Digital Innovation of the Italian Government uses 4 pages (in Italian) to explain us how much our life will be improved by the Smart Dust and give no mention to Free Software.

I guess in the future I'll go to work in Brazil and I also like the idea actually.