2008-05-12 Wiki Creativity Metric An Experiment

Following my past blog entry why creativity metrics are needed , I quickly made an experiment called Wiki Creativity Metric to monitor the activities of some well-known Wiki talking about Wiki (from technology to the use of them). The idea is to have a more positive approach to metrics where we can have more influence. Let's imagine that you have seen that the WCI was down yesterday, that's maybe the time to contribute more to CommunityWiki. If our world is overflowed with today's metrics, indices of all kind, why not inventing our metrics to make the world more free and better.

Tags: metrics creativity positivism wiki freedom

Syndicated 2008-05-12 13:31:13 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges

2008-05-11 GPL is not always the GNU General Public License

GPL is not always standing for the GNU General Public License… as this seen on a flower label. It's a company doing "plant novelty rights" called GPL international (http://www.gpl.dk/). They are clearly going into the opposite direction compared to the freedom defined in the well known free software license called GNU General Public License.

By the way, if those osteospermum flowers are not F1 hybrid we will be able to keep some good seeds and copy (doing multiplication) of the plant. It's the right to nature to reproduce itself. It's the first time I see a company trying to disallow the gardener (as described on their labels, check the photo below) the multiplication of the plant purchased.

Tags: freedom biology gpl gnu license nature gardening seeds biodiversity

Syndicated 2008-05-11 14:04:56 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges

2008-05-03 IPv6 Multicast Forwarding Finally In Linux Kernel

Finally, the Linux kernel is now supporting IPv6 multicast forwarding with the recent commit of Hideaki Yoshifuji (Thanks for his great work around IPv6 support in recent Linux kernel). That's a great news and we could expect it in the next 2.6 release (of course, you can compile the current master branch). FreeBSD was natively supporting IPv6 multicast forwarding since end of 2002 as the KAME project used FreeBSD for the reference IPv6 implementation.

Before you were forced to use various tricks in order to make IPv6 multicast forwarding/routing under GNU/Linux. One of the trick is to gather the MLD (the IGMP-like protocol for IPv6) messages on each interface and do forwarding based on the messages received (the system x wants to receive group y). The system works quite well in very common tree structure where a lot of systems are connected to an aggregated infrastructure like an ISP. There is a free software implementation for Linux (if you are not running the master branch and cannot wait forwarding IPv6 multicast ;-) called ecmh doing this. The concept of "multicast forwarding based on MLD learning" is also described in the RFC 4605. Beside the new IPv6 multicast forwarding in the Linux kernel, the other approach is still applicable for old kernel or devices not able to run a recent kernel.

So I just hope that the RFC 5058 (Xcast) won't take so many years to be implemented by default in the Linux kernel… ;-)

Tags: multicast ipv6 linux kernel xcast

Syndicated 2008-05-03 15:41:29 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges

2008-05-02 Linkfingerprint MachineTag

In my continuous MachineTag dementia (but at least useful with the license Machine Tag), I experimented an implementation of an interesting expired Internet-Draft called Link Fingerprints into MachineTag. The idea of the Link Fingerprints is to fingerprint the information reference to be sure that the content of the retrieved object is matching the initially reference object (you can replace object by file). In other words, to be sure that the file downloaded is the one initially provided by the author. This is very handy when distributing free software over Internet to limit the risks of downloading compromised software. The background idea of Link Fingerprints is really good but implementing it in the URI is introducing various issues (discussed in the WG during the introduction of the Internet Draft).

Why not reimplementing the idea into MachineTag ? Here comes the Machine Tag Link Fingerprint with a specific namespace called : linkfingerprint. How does this work ? That's pretty easy if you know already what a MachineTag is.

URL : http://www.foo.be/gnupg-adulau.txt
Tags : adulau linkfingerprint linkfingerprint:hash=md5:cbd9f12c32adec490b23061edb61f5fe 

The tags are stored in del.icio.us for the tests url. The reduced security risks are not really coming from the use of the MachineTag themself but more from the collaborative tagging approach of users. Collaborative tagging application (like del.icio.us) often introduces network of users and that can be used to gain a certain level of trust for a tag. This is helping to give a kind of certainty for the object or file to be downloaded. That's not perfect but better than storing the hash or fingerprint in the same directory where are hosted the files. I have also updated the MachineTagLinkFingerprint to add the support for OpenPGP detached signature.

Tags: fingerprint hash security machinetag linkfingerprint openpgp

Syndicated 2008-05-02 10:03:51 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges

2008-04-02 Royalty Free versus Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing: When you are in a standardization process (in other words, around the table with different people trying to make a "standard"/document), there are . . .

When you are in a standardization process (in other words, around the table with different people trying to make a "standard"/document), there are two major ways regarding the licensing of the "patented technologies" required for the standard. Either you use the Royalty Free licensing model or the (un/fair) Reasonable and Non Discriminatory licensing model.

Obviously, if you want a real open standard, you have to go for the royalty free licensing model. To better understand the difference, an example is better than theory.There is nice example of a Royalty Free license around ATOM (RFC 5023 and RFC 4287) made by Google at the IETF (you are required to disclose any patent claims around a (proposed) standard) :

Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent license for patents necessarily infringe d by implementation (in whole or in part) of this specification. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to You under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

The wording is clear, there is no real ambiguity and the license is compatible (be careful, I'm not a lawyer) with free software implementation. I think that's fine for the promotion and the use of open standard. The license is valid for everyone and you don't need additional interaction with Google to have the license.

Now, here an example of a RAND (Reasonable And Non Discriminatory) licensing model, this one has been made by Cisco about VRRP :

Cisco is the owner of US patent No. 5 473 599, relating to the subject matter of "Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol for IPv6 <draft-ietf-vrrp-ipv6-spec-04.txt>. If technology in this document is included in a standard adopted by IETF and any claims of this or any other Cisco patent are necessary for practicing the standard, any party will be able to obtain a license from Cisco to use any such patent claims under reasonable, non-discriminatory terms to implement and fully comply with the standard.

First you need to contact Cisco to have a license but the terms are unknown. "Non-discriminatory" is vague and could be an issue for any free software implementation. I know that we cannot make from an example a general case but I'm still trying to find a RAND license where it is clear and without ambiguity. When you are around a table at the a standard body, please go for a real Royalty Free licensing model. That would ease adoption of the standard (by promoting free and non-free use of the standard) without the administration burden required with a RAND licensing.

Tags: patent licensing copyright ietf standard lincese

Syndicated 2008-04-02 07:12:35 (Updated 2008-04-07 21:07:23) from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges