by Dr. Moshe Yudkowsky,
author of The Pebble and The Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions
Fri, 2007-Jul-06, 10:27
Microsoft just can't seem to co-exist with open source software — not surprising, of course, as Microsoft continues to fight tooth and nail against true open document formats such as ODF to prevent erosion of Microsoft's Office monopoly. According to Groklaw, Microsoft is so spooked by the latest "GPL" license that Microsoft refuses to honor their customer commitments.
Topics: · microsoft · open+source
Wed, 2007-Jan-24, 20:26
Earlier today I was thinking of how certain companies stomp all over their biggest supporters. Apple is famous for intimidating bloggers who reveal any information about Apple products; lately it's threats against anyone who "skins" a phone to make it look like an iPhone.
I was thinking to myself how smart it would be for a company to encourage, rather than discourage, people who use discarded or neglected bits of intellectual property. If your fan base finds something of value that only they care about, and the money is insignificant, why not just let the fans work hard to spread buzz about your product?
This evening I received a link from a friend of mine to a blog comment written by the lawyers from Second Life. Someone had created a parody web site called "Get a First Life." The usual way this story goes is that the lawyers write to threaten the parody web site; since they're lawyers, and since the parodist can hardly afford a day in court, the parodist closes the site and the joke is over.
Not the lawyers for Second Life, however:
We do not believe that reasonable people would argue as to whether the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ constitutes parody — it clearly is. Linden Lab is well known among its customers and in the general business community as a company with enlightened and well-informed views regarding intellectual property rights, including the fair use doctrine, open source licensing, and other principles that support creativity and self-expression. We know parody when we see it.
Moreover, Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception.
The lawyers then go on to remove any doubt over the right of the parodist to modify Second Life's logo by granting him a license. This is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, the triumph of common sense, and a move guaranteed to bring Second Life enormous good will.
Topics: · intellectual+property · marketing · open+source
Fri, 2006-Sep-29, 15:11
I've been busy again. I've just released some open-source softare, the Disposable Phone Numbers™ project.
I've written an article that explains my motivation for the project. The project has its own web site.
Topics: · announcements · open+source · telephony
Wed, 2006-Sep-27, 07:29
A somewhat overblown article complains that one of the biggest open-source projects is in danger of "dying" because of internal politics. After reading the evidence, I don't agree with the conclusions.
But here's a fascinating passage about an internal motion to recall the head of the Debian project:
Interestingly, Towne [the project head] has seconded the motion for his own recall, to bring the matter to a decision.
He wrote, "I'm seconding this because I do think it's a fair question for the project to consider, and to make it clear I don't personally have any problem with being recalled if that's what the project thinks is right and proper..."I read this differently than the author of the aritcle. This passage indicates amazingly healthy debate within the Debian project, an interesting internal culture, and how very different an open-source project can be from a commercial project. The disaggregation of ownership and the diffuse governing structure (the disaggregation of authority) produced a situation in which someone can sincerely consider resigning without bitterness — a situation that's exceedingly rare in any traditionally-structured community service project, and almost unthinkable in the corporate world.
Topics: · open+source
Thu, 2006-Aug-03, 11:33
RocketSource.org is a new site dedicated to the RocketSource initiative, which will specialize in open source applications for speech technology. See the press release which includes pithy quotes from yours truly. My Voice Conference Manager, which remains one of the top-ranked open-source projects on SourceForge, is part of RocketSource and is now automatically installed as part of Voxeo's Prophecy platform.
I've been at a conference this week; they asked me to give an impromptu talk this morning about innovation — or, rather, the lack of innovation — in audio services and the Internet. I hope to have that talk available sometime soon. But the upshot is that I haven't had time to update this blog the past couple of days; with any luck I'll be able to post some comments soon.
Topics: · announcements · open+source
Fri, 2006-Jul-28, 18:59
In case anyone is wondering where I've been, I've been working hard all day to give things away for free. In particular, if you're interested in technology, take a look at the Voice Conference Manager package. Not only can you set up a conference call by calling in and saying the names of the people who should be on the call, but you can also monitor the progress of the call using a web page, and even drop people from the call with a mouse click.
My friends at Voxeo provided a bug fix for a problem I hadn't noticed, so I'll be busy on Saturday night as well.
Topics: · announcements · open+source · technology
Mon, 2006-Jul-24, 07:43
The "Democracy TV" project combines several different technologies, ones that are disaggregated components of other projects — RSS, BitTorrent, podcasts, and more — into one slick interface.
In the best tradition of the Internet, not only is it free and open-source, it lets anyone create their own Internet-based TV studio.
Topics: · internet · open+source · software
Tue, 2006-Jul-18, 09:17
Here's an utterly weird article about the dangers of Open Source as applied to dangerous and malicious software — "malware." Everyone in the security business knows that kits have been available for years for people who want to write viruses, but now Red Herring's writers have finally found the footnote:
Cyber criminals are making available source code with documentation so that it can be easily modified using popular open-source project management tools like Content Versioning System (CVS), thus giving malware creation a high degree of efficiency, said McAfee's Global Threat Report for 2006.Content Versioning System? They seriously believe using CVS is a breakthrough menace? That's like condemning the typewriter because it can be used for ransom notes, or the automobile because it can be used as a getaway car. CVS is a basic tool for developing software, like the keyboard, mouse, and terminal; simply because the keyboard, mouse, terminal, text editor, and CVS can be used to develop malicious software doesn't mean Open Source has become evil.
I expect what they're trying to say is that the same techniques that Open Source developers use are also used by malware developers. That's true, and in fact that's the subject of an essay of mine yet to come about how disaggregation "improves" the efficacy of certain criminal schemes.
But to confuse and conflate an innocent Open Source tool with computer crime is — well, criminal. I wonder if some ambulance-chasing lawyer out there is about to file a class-action lawsuit against everyone and everyone who created CVS. Wouldn't that be fun!
Topics: · open+source · security
Thu, 2006-Jun-22, 21:03
A funny map that shows the current state of the war Microsoft is waging against open-source software, or perhaps vice-versa.
Topics: · computing · microsoft · open+source
Mon, 2006-Apr-17, 10:19
One of the reasons that Microsoft's security is so poor is that they refuse to disaggregate their software into easily maintained modules. They've got what they believe are solid business reasons for that choice, along with a good strong dose of institutional intertia and corporate arrogance.
To see just how tangled Microsoft's software is, here are two diagrams of how "servers" send web pages. The first diagram shows the "system calls" that go into serving up a web page using the free, open-source Apache's web server; think of it as the path a request takes from the time you request a web page until it shows up at your computer's browser. While it looks pretty complicated, the paths are actually fairly clean.
Now take a look at how Microsoft's IIS system treats that same request. It's a tangle of spaghetti that makes the first one look like a walk in the park. And I agree with the blogger who commented that the more tangled the code, the more opportunities for security holes.
Topics: · computing · internet · microsoft · open+source · security
