I met so many new people at Libre Planet that I cannot remember all of them. I also finally met Mako, Evan, Kat, Mike and Asheesh physically for the first time, after six or seven years of online contact in some cases. But due to a combination of jet lag and convention duties I hardly got to talk to any of them. I must do better next time...
March 2009 Archives
The world wide web is locked in at least in part to the proprietary Flash format. Replacements such as the HTML 5 canvas tag are emerging (although they have their own issues, see Stallman's new essay "The Javascript Trap"), but here and now Flash is an unavoidable part of the experience of the internet. The official Flash player is not free. So a free replacement must be written.
That free replacement is the Gnash player. Rob Savoye gave a talk about how that project is progressing. He founded Cygnus solutions and worked on GCC before working on Gnash, so he's bringing plenty of hacking experience to the project.
Rob explained that the next release of Gnash, later this year, will support Flash 9 and (in a bit of news of great interest to those of us in the UK) the BBC's iPlayer Flash interface.
In a discussion session on Sunday someone asked about Flash authoring on GNU/Linux. There are tools both for compiling ActionScript (MTASC) and for compiling graphics and sound assets (swfmill). I developed the Flash version of draw-something using MTASC and Emacs for example.
Whether you develop using Free Software or not, if you develop Flash 8 web sites please test them against Gnash and report any differences in behaviour as bugs. This will help the Gnash project help you with an even better Gnash player.
The Gnash project, like many free software projects, needs financial support, so if you can help do get in touch with them.
That free replacement is the Gnash player. Rob Savoye gave a talk about how that project is progressing. He founded Cygnus solutions and worked on GCC before working on Gnash, so he's bringing plenty of hacking experience to the project.
Rob explained that the next release of Gnash, later this year, will support Flash 9 and (in a bit of news of great interest to those of us in the UK) the BBC's iPlayer Flash interface.
In a discussion session on Sunday someone asked about Flash authoring on GNU/Linux. There are tools both for compiling ActionScript (MTASC) and for compiling graphics and sound assets (swfmill). I developed the Flash version of draw-something using MTASC and Emacs for example.
Whether you develop using Free Software or not, if you develop Flash 8 web sites please test them against Gnash and report any differences in behaviour as bugs. This will help the Gnash project help you with an even better Gnash player.
The Gnash project, like many free software projects, needs financial support, so if you can help do get in touch with them.
Christopher Montgomery gave a detail-packed presentation about the development, freeing and status of the Theora video codec. If you like video formats then the details of how Theora grids, quantizes, compresses, schedules and otherwise munges video data are fascinating. If you don't then the details of how Theora fits into the free video formats ecosystem are fascinating. Montgomery sees Theora as finding its natural place in the low-to-medium-end and online delivery sections of the market, and the BBC's Dirac finding its natural place at the high end and professional editing sections of the market (if I remember correctly).
If you are considering using Ogg Theora then support for it will be available in the long term, and any future changes won't break compatibility so it is a good, stable, reliable format for video. And with Firefox it out of the box for HTML 5's video tag, it's going to be the best option for free video online.
If you are considering using Ogg Theora then support for it will be available in the long term, and any future changes won't break compatibility so it is a good, stable, reliable format for video. And with Firefox it out of the box for HTML 5's video tag, it's going to be the best option for free video online.
After making friends with the FLOSS Manuals guys I was initially worried by how few people were in the base room for their book sprint. I needn't have worried. As well as more people joining the room over the course of the weekend many other people were joining in from neighbouring rooms using the Harvard Science Centre's wireless network and also online.
This particular book sprint was dedicated to producing a book to serve as an introduction to the GNU command line. I asked arund for such a book last year and Benjamin Mako Hill's excellent "Debian GNU/Linux Super Bible" was recommended to me. FLOSS Manuals' "GNU/Linux Commands" book is different, it is a more general introduction to the command line for users on any GNU distro. It is ideal for people who are new to GNU's userland and to the idea of the UNIX command line in general.
"GNU/Linux Commands" starts with a very good example of how the command line can be more efficient than a GUI (a point that GUI users often do need persuading of), then builds up from the very basics to advanced shell scripting and other languages over 196 pages. Completing an 196 page book to the point where it can be printed over a weekend, even with planning and some contributions beforehand, is quite an achievement and a good demonstration of how free and collaborative projects (or "commons-based peer production" if we must) can succeed in new areas outside of software production.
The sprint served as a focus for activity from around the world. The results were very successful and I think exceeded everyone's expectations. It's a model that I think other non-software projects should consider emulating if they can. You can buy the book here.
This particular book sprint was dedicated to producing a book to serve as an introduction to the GNU command line. I asked arund for such a book last year and Benjamin Mako Hill's excellent "Debian GNU/Linux Super Bible" was recommended to me. FLOSS Manuals' "GNU/Linux Commands" book is different, it is a more general introduction to the command line for users on any GNU distro. It is ideal for people who are new to GNU's userland and to the idea of the UNIX command line in general.
"GNU/Linux Commands" starts with a very good example of how the command line can be more efficient than a GUI (a point that GUI users often do need persuading of), then builds up from the very basics to advanced shell scripting and other languages over 196 pages. Completing an 196 page book to the point where it can be printed over a weekend, even with planning and some contributions beforehand, is quite an achievement and a good demonstration of how free and collaborative projects (or "commons-based peer production" if we must) can succeed in new areas outside of software production.
The sprint served as a focus for activity from around the world. The results were very successful and I think exceeded everyone's expectations. It's a model that I think other non-software projects should consider emulating if they can. You can buy the book here.
The Elphel camera is an HD video camera running free software and with a free hardware design. Cameras may seem an unlikely subject for software freedom but digital still and video cameras are computers and by using them we use software. That software can be made proprietary which disempowers the camera's users, as I found recently when trying to interface my SLR digital camera to my GNU/Linux laptop.
The Elphel camera runs GNU/Linux and an FGPA system to handle its image data. The lens and sensor chip can be of any kind that the motherboard can be reprogrammed to handle. For manufacturers an easily hackable motherboard and software changes their relationship with upstream suppliers, making their manufacturing and procurement processes more agile.
For camera users this is a completely hackable camera. Whether for film production, medical or forensic or scientific studies or for other uses, it can be modified to do precisely what its user wants. Imagine bullet time or stop-frame animation made with a camera that can be programmed and networked to handle the unique demands of a given film or even a given scene.
I was excited by the potential of the Elphel, and given my own past experiences of projects that have been frustrated by webcam, digital video and digital still cameras I hope that digital arts hackers in particular can find new ways of exploiting its capabilities.
The Elphel camera runs GNU/Linux and an FGPA system to handle its image data. The lens and sensor chip can be of any kind that the motherboard can be reprogrammed to handle. For manufacturers an easily hackable motherboard and software changes their relationship with upstream suppliers, making their manufacturing and procurement processes more agile.
For camera users this is a completely hackable camera. Whether for film production, medical or forensic or scientific studies or for other uses, it can be modified to do precisely what its user wants. Imagine bullet time or stop-frame animation made with a camera that can be programmed and networked to handle the unique demands of a given film or even a given scene.
I was excited by the potential of the Elphel, and given my own past experiences of projects that have been frustrated by webcam, digital video and digital still cameras I hope that digital arts hackers in particular can find new ways of exploiting its capabilities.
Alexandre Oliva's talk on the Linux Libre kernel was one of the clearest and most persuasive presentations of the what, why and how of a project that I've ever seen. It's shocking that the Linux kernel has non-free software in it. The Linux Libre project has written a system to clean out that non-free software (not so much removing functionality as adding freedom) and provide a truly free kernel.
One issue that Alexandre raised which I hadn't considered before is of code legibility as an issue for freedom. If code consists of incomprehensible blobs of data that's one thing, but incomprehensible code can also thwart a user's ability to study and modify a program.
I installed Linux Libre on my laptop running Fedora before attending Libre Planet. The only change I had to make was the addition of a free wireless network link. It's a usable kernel for GNU that respects your freedom. Try it!
One issue that Alexandre raised which I hadn't considered before is of code legibility as an issue for freedom. If code consists of incomprehensible blobs of data that's one thing, but incomprehensible code can also thwart a user's ability to study and modify a program.
I installed Linux Libre on my laptop running Fedora before attending Libre Planet. The only change I had to make was the addition of a free wireless network link. It's a usable kernel for GNU that respects your freedom. Try it!
The first day of talks at Libre Planet was scheduled, the second day was open to suggestions. These were gathered using sticky notes and organized on a wiki. This worked very well, with a good balance of thorough presentations of projects and issues and more open discussions.
With three concurrent tracks on the second day there was no avoiding some talks being more popular than others. In particular the impromptu mobile phone talk was a big draw.
Some people would have liked time to hack, which is definitely something to bear in mind for next year. When I first visited the FLOSS Manuals book sprint base room I was worried by how few people were in there, but I later found out that not only were people joining in online but that people at the conference were adding to the book using the wireless network while sat in other rooms. So hack events can be both a useful focus and more distributed than I had previously thought.
From the leaders of well known charities through representatives of corporations large and small to college students, everyone had a say. There were even impromptu musical performances.
The FSF are soliciting feedback from attendees here.
With three concurrent tracks on the second day there was no avoiding some talks being more popular than others. In particular the impromptu mobile phone talk was a big draw.
Some people would have liked time to hack, which is definitely something to bear in mind for next year. When I first visited the FLOSS Manuals book sprint base room I was worried by how few people were in there, but I later found out that not only were people joining in online but that people at the conference were adding to the book using the wireless network while sat in other rooms. So hack events can be both a useful focus and more distributed than I had previously thought.
From the leaders of well known charities through representatives of corporations large and small to college students, everyone had a say. There were even impromptu musical performances.
The FSF are soliciting feedback from attendees here.
Andreas Fuchs' Journal: Clojure and Art of Illusion: BFF.
Interesting story about using Clojure Lisp to make a program wheel for a dishwasher. Printing obscure replacement parts and tools will be a strong use of 3D printing for domestic users. It's cheaper for companies than keeping inventory, and easier for consumers than hunting that inventory down.
Interesting story about using Clojure Lisp to make a program wheel for a dishwasher. Printing obscure replacement parts and tools will be a strong use of 3D printing for domestic users. It's cheaper for companies than keeping inventory, and easier for consumers than hunting that inventory down.
Excellent photos from Libre Planet, BY-SA by Matt Hins -
Photos from the conference - Free Software Foundation
I think I can spot myself in three of the photos, here's one (I'm on the right of the image) -
Photos from the conference - Free Software Foundation
I think I can spot myself in three of the photos, here's one (I'm on the right of the image) -
I hung out at the FSF offices on Friday to help prepare for Libre Planet. If you've ever wondered where donations to the FSF go then let me assure you that it's money well spent. The team are very capable and are focussed on software freedom, and their offices are modest and well organised.
(It was great to see one of the team wearing one of the t-shirts I designed as well.)
(It was great to see one of the team wearing one of the t-shirts I designed as well.)
Creative Commons won a very well deserved award for "project of social benefit" at Libre Planet 2009. See here for a photo of Mike and Asheesh accepting it. I hadn't met Mike or Asheesh in the flesh before, it was great to finally catch up with them.
Libre Planet was great.
The FSF extended their annual get-together to two days this year and discussed free network services and their high priority projects as well as free software activism. It was held at Harward's science centre building, which was a great setting for rooms and for wifi but not so hot on food. ;-)
I met lots of cool people, and I'm going to blog about what I learnt over the next few days. Before that I need to say a massive thank you to Benjamin Mako Hill for letting me sleep on one of his sofas, to Matt Lee for suggesting I attend the convention, and to the rest of the FSF staff for running such a well-planned and successful event.
The FSF extended their annual get-together to two days this year and discussed free network services and their high priority projects as well as free software activism. It was held at Harward's science centre building, which was a great setting for rooms and for wifi but not so hot on food. ;-)
I met lots of cool people, and I'm going to blog about what I learnt over the next few days. Before that I need to say a massive thank you to Benjamin Mako Hill for letting me sleep on one of his sofas, to Matt Lee for suggesting I attend the convention, and to the rest of the FSF staff for running such a well-planned and successful event.
Due to an unlikely series of events I'm going to be in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts from Friday 20th to Monday 23rd of March. Amongst other things I'll be at the FSF's Libre Planet conference.
If you'll be in the area or at the convention you can contact me using the comments here, identi.ca, twitter, facebook or email where I am always "robmyers", although for email you need to add rob@ ... .org .
And if you won't be in the area but you've any questions regarding network service freedom or the FSF's high priority projects add them in the comments.
If you'll be in the area or at the convention you can contact me using the comments here, identi.ca, twitter, facebook or email where I am always "robmyers", although for email you need to add rob@ ... .org .
And if you won't be in the area but you've any questions regarding network service freedom or the FSF's high priority projects add them in the comments.
I once offended some BBC backstage hackers by claiming that the hardware and software for an online media service was the easy part. I didn't mean to imply that making and maintaining a large datacentre to serve audio and video streams to hundreds of thousands of users is easy, quite the opposite. It's just that the even compared to such a striking technological achievement, the contractual negotiations with rightsholders are a harder problem.
Spotify is an authorised subscription-based streaming music service that has solved the harder problem. I can find tracks by even mid-level obscure indie acts from 20 years ago on it and listen to them safe in the knowledge that the BPI won't threaten my kids. But the server and client software are proprietary.
That is silly. The software is easy to reimplement, as the Despotify free software client demonstrates. The secret sauce for Spotify is the licence agreements. They can make the client free software and the server a free network service without endangering those agreements. In fact doing so will increase the value of them, as they will grow and retain the audience for their brand and for their provision of music covered by those agreements.
If Spotify let a thousand projects bloom based on their source code, they could find themselves selling picks and shovels rather than panning for gold. Selling subscriptions to copyright licenced music isn't particularly a good thing for free culture, but a service that means listeners don't get sued and musicians are at least in with a chance of getting paid is good. And if it is based on free software and free network services, it can be even better for everyone.
Spotify is an authorised subscription-based streaming music service that has solved the harder problem. I can find tracks by even mid-level obscure indie acts from 20 years ago on it and listen to them safe in the knowledge that the BPI won't threaten my kids. But the server and client software are proprietary.
That is silly. The software is easy to reimplement, as the Despotify free software client demonstrates. The secret sauce for Spotify is the licence agreements. They can make the client free software and the server a free network service without endangering those agreements. In fact doing so will increase the value of them, as they will grow and retain the audience for their brand and for their provision of music covered by those agreements.
If Spotify let a thousand projects bloom based on their source code, they could find themselves selling picks and shovels rather than panning for gold. Selling subscriptions to copyright licenced music isn't particularly a good thing for free culture, but a service that means listeners don't get sued and musicians are at least in with a chance of getting paid is good. And if it is based on free software and free network services, it can be even better for everyone.
http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/03/why-3d-printers-won%E2%80%99t-go-mainstream/
Couldn't resist. Sorry.
1. It's debatable whether publishing on demand has gone mainstream, but word processing, webogs and inkjet printers certainly have.
2. Plastics are complex but so is colour printing. If you can do even a small subset of what professional 3D printing needs with just 3-4 compounds then 3D printing can be the inkjets of manufacture.
3. Laser printers used to be expensive. Now mono ones are less than 100 pounds and colour ones are less than 200 pounds. Innovation and economies of scale can work wonders.
4. Plastics are large and intricate but then so were electronic components. RISC and miniaturization can work in both cases. You can fit a jigsaw in a smaller box than a poster, and it can be more instructive to put together.
5. Designing in 3D is really hard but this is what "commons based peer production" is for. Make 3D design copyleft and it may still be hard but it will be decomposible and improvable. Make copyleft distros of fabbable components and objects made from them and watch them grow.
3D printing won't go mainstream any more than home photocopiers did. But we will get the Kinko's, Lulu.com, YouTube and HP Deskjets of 3D printing, and these will change things as much as the Internet and free software have.
Couldn't resist. Sorry.
1. It's debatable whether publishing on demand has gone mainstream, but word processing, webogs and inkjet printers certainly have.
2. Plastics are complex but so is colour printing. If you can do even a small subset of what professional 3D printing needs with just 3-4 compounds then 3D printing can be the inkjets of manufacture.
3. Laser printers used to be expensive. Now mono ones are less than 100 pounds and colour ones are less than 200 pounds. Innovation and economies of scale can work wonders.
4. Plastics are large and intricate but then so were electronic components. RISC and miniaturization can work in both cases. You can fit a jigsaw in a smaller box than a poster, and it can be more instructive to put together.
5. Designing in 3D is really hard but this is what "commons based peer production" is for. Make 3D design copyleft and it may still be hard but it will be decomposible and improvable. Make copyleft distros of fabbable components and objects made from them and watch them grow.
3D printing won't go mainstream any more than home photocopiers did. But we will get the Kinko's, Lulu.com, YouTube and HP Deskjets of 3D printing, and these will change things as much as the Internet and free software have.
the [US] federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute
The New Book Banning by Walter Olson, City Journal 12 February 2009
Via Neil Gaiman.
"Farenheit 451" meets Adbusters via "The Right To Read"...
http://project.arnolfini.org.uk/
Fail. The GPL isn't "open content", and "open content" presupposes the
"content industry" as a frame of reference. "Free culture" is a
better description, but...
NC-SA is not a free culture licence. And NC-SA is not copyleft either
because it does not fully pass on the right to use and distribute the work.
It should be a precondition of getting Arts Council funding that work be
BY-SA so that the public get full access to the work that they have paid for...
project.arnolfini offers a repository of materials for further use
under open content licenses
Fail. The GPL isn't "open content", and "open content" presupposes the
"content industry" as a frame of reference. "Free culture" is a
better description, but...
that require derived works to be made available under the same
(copyleft) conditions - using using GNU GPL and Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.
NC-SA is not a free culture licence. And NC-SA is not copyleft either
because it does not fully pass on the right to use and distribute the work.
It should be a precondition of getting Arts Council funding that work be
BY-SA so that the public get full access to the work that they have paid for...
(Update 13/3/09 - Adam from FLOSS Manuals points out in the comments that the licence page already says that the book will be re-licenced under the GPL. D'oh! Sorry FLOSS Manuals! But I still don't think you guys should be publishing the book NC in the mean time...)
FLOSS Manuals is an excellent project providing manuals for Free Software. I gave the project a good review here, and I've written scripts to convert its HTML to ebooks.
FLOSS Manuals have been using the GPL for their manuals, which is a good licence if a strange choice for software manuals, but their latest manual, a digital art handbook, is licenced under Creative Commons's Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike licence (NC-SA).
NC-SA is not a free licence by any definition. The FSF, OSI, Debian and Freedom Defined all reject it. It has no place in a project calling itself "FLOSS".
It would be better for FLOSS Manuals not to publish this book than to break their principles in this way, particularly given the project's robust rejection of the FDL for lesser reasons.
There are already other NC-SA Digital Art Textbooks available. What would be exciting, if it's going to be CC licenced, would be a BY-SA one.
FLOSS Manuals should switch to BY-SA generally if the FDL is not acceptible. I'm not suggesting dual-licencing, which would just compound the problem, I'm suggesting re-licensing the project as a whole as BY-SA. This would answer FLOSS Manuals' concerns about the FDL much better than using the NC.
But in the mean time, FLOSS Manuals should either relicence or pull the digital art manual. Because NC isn't FLOSS.
FLOSS Manuals is an excellent project providing manuals for Free Software. I gave the project a good review here, and I've written scripts to convert its HTML to ebooks.
FLOSS Manuals have been using the GPL for their manuals, which is a good licence if a strange choice for software manuals, but their latest manual, a digital art handbook, is licenced under Creative Commons's Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike licence (NC-SA).
NC-SA is not a free licence by any definition. The FSF, OSI, Debian and Freedom Defined all reject it. It has no place in a project calling itself "FLOSS".
It would be better for FLOSS Manuals not to publish this book than to break their principles in this way, particularly given the project's robust rejection of the FDL for lesser reasons.
There are already other NC-SA Digital Art Textbooks available. What would be exciting, if it's going to be CC licenced, would be a BY-SA one.
FLOSS Manuals should switch to BY-SA generally if the FDL is not acceptible. I'm not suggesting dual-licencing, which would just compound the problem, I'm suggesting re-licensing the project as a whole as BY-SA. This would answer FLOSS Manuals' concerns about the FDL much better than using the NC.
But in the mean time, FLOSS Manuals should either relicence or pull the digital art manual. Because NC isn't FLOSS.
The enthusiasm for new technologies, when watched twenty years later, has something funny, but also something eery about it.
via New Art: Andy Warhol the computer geek.
Warhol meets Amiga. Good stuff
