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A hard problem worth solving

There's an ongoing debate about whether a free/open source project needs to be "organic" to be worthwhile, where "organic" is (arguably) defined as a project which the first release included source, and is generally characterized as by a distributed development team with no single company truly in control, and "inorganic" is generally code that started off life as a proprietary effort. I'd like to argue that making "inorganic" open source work is a big challenge worth tackling.

The Myth that Content Management is easy

The Myth
Content Management is easy. You download one of the numerous systems available, plug-in your data. Something magical happens (???) and out comes a professional looking and operating website. This obviously manages all of your content from all different sources with ease. All you have to do is make a template and you’re done! If this sounds like something you’ve heard and are suspiciously weary of. You should be, because it’s all snake oil! If it was that easy I would probably quit my job and go study law. Since it is not, let us continue first by giving a brief background on what content management is.

GNU and FSF News for May 2008

Skype fought the GPL and the GPL won. The OLPC XO project abandons free software just as RMS switches to an XO; RMS not happy. New monthly newsletters from the FSF and FSFE. GNOME and KDE want to have a joint development conference in 2009. GNOME and GCC conferences coming up later this year. Plus all the usual news: more GPL v3 conversions, HURD news, GNOME news, GCC news, and more.

Rsync on Steroids

Rsync is an incredibly powerful tool that synchronises anything from a single file to an entire hierarchical filesystem, over a network. Unlike many other synchronisation methods, rsync will use the outdated copy of a file to save on network traffic (resulting in anything up to 99% optimisation).

Rsync the implementation however is restricted to only Posix systems (such as Linux, Cygwin and *BSD), and, worse, its implementation can only perform operations on Posix-based filesystems. This seems somewhat puzzling, and, as part of the continued Tech Fusion series, this article will outline some of the amazingly powerful things that could be done with rsync... if it had a VFS layer.

Apologies to Pizza!

informal though this is, it's important enough to say as an article. i've been keeping an eye on the series currently being written and some of my comments - most notably to Pizza - indicate that i'm "jumping up and down". so Pizza - many apologies! :)

Distributed Debian Distribution Development

As part of the Tech Fusion Outline Series, this article describes some additions to the Debian Distribution model which, if implemented, would have the benefits of making Debian, the Debian Development and deployment entirely independent of Server-based Infrastructure.

The brief outline will be expanded in this dedicated article, pointing out how tieing together components and technology that already exists would be useful not only for Debian but also for other purposes, such as video and audio media distribution. (A method of payment for work on Debian or other media is not within the scope of this article but is easily conceivable). This article therefore explains how and why Debian Distribution Development could go "Distributed".

Free Choice: the "Social Business" model and Free Software

Free Software developers fall into two main categories: those that stand by the principles behind free software - patent-free, license-free and unrestricted distribution (for example, Richard Stallman's admirable stance); and those that are simply happy to compromise to some extent, for example to download libdvdcss to watch DVDs, or to install proprietary software such as Skype, on the basis that there is simply no (or no better) alternative (for example, Ubuntu which supports all kinds of proprietary firmware and binary drivers, and gets itself into enormous difficulties as a result).

These "level of integrity" choices are decisions that we, as Free Software developers, are free to make. Yet the average person is simply unaware of these issues of "integrity", or they are but do not value them highly, choosing "interoperability with their friends and businesses" as "more important". Or worse, they agree that integrity is important yet are forced into making decisions to use - and stick with - proprietary software. In such instances, the level of experience of (and thus the offerings available from) Free Software developers in a particular area of specialist expertise that the users absolutely must have before being able to consider migration, is close to or literally zero.

As Free Software developers, is it therefore ethical for us to ignore these people whose lives are blighted by lack of choice, or is it more ethical for us to remain in our integrity, by providing non-interoperable Free Software alternatives (with no means of conversion between the free and proprietary software)?

To put that another way: should Free Software developers serve themselves and their own needs, or should they look to serve others? This article highlights these quite important questions that every Free Software developer should be asking themselves, and advocates a way to proliferate, protect, enjoy and benefit from Free Software principles: that of the "Social Business".

Free Soft Wear ?

Arrrgh !

I'm not a PiRRRate, I'm a PRRRivateeRRR !!!

(I've got them letters of mark, from me uncle Sam !)

Better Free Software Organisations?

Are free software users particularly bad at the basics of running an interest society, have I been spoiled by cooperatives with their friendly Member Services departments or secretariats, or what? Is this why so many free software orgs seem to include self-perpetuating leadership groups? Is this a serious problem if, as reported, Software Development is a Team Sport [etbe]? Are there fully-working free software mass participation groups out there?

Technology in Warfare, for Peacekeeping and Peacetime

In How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not Electronic the deployment of Technology assists soldiers to be more effective - providing the commander with real-time information on their location and status. Additionally, the local people are recruited to assist (including guarding the major of the town, who was funnelling money to insurgents).

This article will outline the benefits of providing local people with access to the same kind of technology as that provided to the military, illustrating that a combined teaching, life-changing enabling opportunity and intelligence-gathering could very quickly make it difficult for insurgents to gain momentum.

Singularity of Computing

Computer Technology is not serving our needs, or if it is, it is vulnerable to failure at every level.  Outlined in this article is a clear articulation of the failings of technology. Importantly, this article describes the solutions required to mitigate against failure and attack, and how to overcome some of the shortcomings that would, if implemented, make computer technology actually "useful" to the human race.

Muhammad Yunus' book Creating a World without Poverty advocates the use of IT to solve the problem of poverty (Chapter 9, page 184 onwards ).  Many articles have already been written that outline or hint at the problems:

About the Future of the Web
Top 10 Linux Desktop Hurdles
Open source usability is a technical problem we can solve on our own
Cook's Collaborative Edge

However, all of these articles miss a fundamental point: what are computers for?  The original definition of a "Computer" was a title - like "Professor" or "Doctor", and Asimov's book entitled "The End of Eternity" was written at the time when the title was still in use.  The title was given to someone who "performed computation".  Before valves, transistors and silicon chips existed, many "Computers" were given the job, often in parallel, of hand-calculating a complex mathematical task, with mental arithmetic, pencil, paper and slide rules as their tools.  Fast forward to the 21st Century and we have "Computers" that can perform billions of calculations per second, and communicate millions of words per second (although it definitely doesn't seem like either of these things are true!).  Yet, all that speed helps humanity not one bit if we don't know what "Computers" are actually for!  How can "Computers" actually help us "humans"?

So, this article will ask - and attempt to answer - the questions listed below. It will also outline where things stand at the moment; outline what the author believes people really could do with help from technology; what technology the author believes will be useful to people; and finally, provide a roadmap outlining what technologies need to be sythesised together, improved or developed entirely from scratch to actually and reliably meet people's needs.

Muhammed Yunus Vison - IT Solutions to End Poverty (ISEP)

Muhammad Yunus book, Creating a World without Poverty envisions a world in which everyone is useful and leads fulfilling lives (following Mother Theresa's example, who is on record famously for stating that she would not attend anti-war rallies but only "Peace" rallies, and at the acceptable risk of offending Professor Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, I would urge people to consider instead of focussing on "ending poverty" to focus instead on "Creating Wealth").

An excerpt - Chapter 9, from page 184 onwards - describes his vision - the creation of an organisation to bring the right kind of I.T. infrastructure into being. Tech Fusion Outline: Organising the World's Knowledge describes exactly that infrastructure.

GNU and FSF News for April 2008

The combination of BusyBox, GPL, and SFLC proves itself unbeatable once again. The FSF has relaunched their website with a shiny new homepage. They've also set up a new free software job database. We have reports on rms speeches in Virginia and Berlin. Harald Welte and Groklaw win FSF awards. Gold goes Gold. Do I even need to mention that more software packages switched to GPLv3 this month? We have the latest news from the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Free Software Foundation India. We even have meta news this month; after more than a year of FSF news reports here at Advogato, the FSF itself seems to be getting into the swing of things by launching their own FSF newsletter.

Tech Fusion Outline: Organising the World's Knowledge.

With the introduction of the Internet, vast amounts of information became available - and, rather than help people of the planet to become useful in a globalised world, it has deluged them. Peeking through the morass of software and hardware is the occasional light (hopefully not an oncoming train). This article will outline those technologies. briefly, for later expansion.

The "Executive Summary" is that for computer technology to be useful, we need modular portable hardware with wireless mesh networking as well as standard internet access, and for the software applications to sit on top of distributed and peer-to-peer technology.

None of the technology outlined here is new (in fact, some of it has existed for many decades): it's just not being brought together. It should be pretty clear that in the current world climate, there is some degree of urgency to making this "Tech Fusion" happen.