2008-10-19 Why Should Use Identica and not Twitter
#REDIRECT 2008-10-19 Why You Should Use Identica and not Twitter
Syndicated 2009-03-21 17:49:20 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-10-19 Why Should Use Identica and not Twitter
#REDIRECT 2008-10-19 Why You Should Use Identica and not Twitter
Syndicated 2009-03-21 17:49:20 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2009-02-22 Society Economy and Metrics
When an idea is confronted over time, there is a high risk (but that's part of the game) of destruction. If the idea is coming more and more stronger over this confrontation process, there is the possibility of the something new to be created over time. The past few months, I read again André Gorz especially Écologica and L'immatériel : Connaissance, valeur et capital. Surprised by his consistency and ability to surround the important topics in the information society, there is a common recurring concept always popping up in his works : the metric and especially the lack of universal measure (called "étalon de mesure") in the information society. Gorz pointed the issue with the capital and the operation of the economy trying to capitalize on the "intangible capital". Reading his works right now is very interesting especially that he was really pointing the risks of creating economic bubble while trying to apply the capitalism techniques of tangible asset against the intangible.
Looking back, the idea of "universal metric" in the information society was somehow already hitting my mind with the following post and projects : Wiki Creativity Index, Innovation Metric (especially that the clumsy patent system is the only metric in use) and Creativity Metrics Are Needed. Project like Ohloh is already providing a specific answer to quantify the activity in the free software community. We are still far away(?) from an "universal metric" but when it will possible to link the respective activity of a human being with an exchangeable "money" (like bitcoin), we could have the possibility of growing without impacting the natural resources and funding the society with a real citizenship.
Tags: metrics creativity positivism freedom economy society
Syndicated 2009-02-22 15:15:20 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2009-01-02 Google Books And Europeana Are Killing Public Domain
More than two years ago, I made a blog entry about "Google Books Killing Public Domain" where Google is adding an additional clause to render public domain works into (again) the private circle by limiting the use to private use all public domain works scanned by Google.
Reading an Interview (sorry in French) of Jean-Noël Jeanneney, Mr Jeanneney is very proud of the Europeana digital library competing with Google Books. That's nice to see competition but is it really different from Google Books? No, Europeana is also transforming public domain works into proprietary works. Just have a look at Europeana's terms of service (copying section), they make the same mistake.
I had a lot of arguments especially during a conference held by the BNF about digital libraries, their arguments is about the cost of scanning or the "add of value" in scanning those public domains works. Sorry to say that but this is pure fiction (to be polite ;-), there is nothing like "adding value" while scanning an old public domain book. If you want to create wealth for the benefit of Society, please release public domain works as public domain. You'll see unexpected use (including commercial use) of those works and that will benefit everyone even the Libraries doing the scanning.
If you want to be ahead (I'm talking to Europeana or even Google) and help everyone, please leave the public domain works in the public domain.
Tags: google publicdomain archiving copyright europeana
Syndicated 2009-01-02 21:53:53 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-12-24 Oddmuse Wiki Using Git
If you are a frequent reader of my delicious feeds, you can see my addiction regarding wiki and git. But I never found a wiki similar to Oddmuse in terms of functionalities and dynamism relying on git. Before Christmas, I wanted to have something working… to post this blog entry in git. The process is very simple : oddmuse2git import the raw pages from Oddmuse into a the master branch of a local git repository. I'm using another branch local (that I merge/rebase regularly with master (while I'm doing edit via the HTTP)) to make local edit and pushing the update (a simple git-rev-list --reverse against the master) to the Oddmuse wiki. The two scripts (oddmuse2git git2oddmuse) are available. Ok it's quick-and-dirty(tm) but it works. There is space for improvements especially while getting the Oddmuse update using RSS to avoid fetching all the pages.
Syndicated 2008-12-24 21:17:19 (Updated 2008-12-25 10:04:36) from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-12-21 Scientific Publications and Proving Empirical Results
Reading scientific/academic publications in computer science can be frustrating due to various reasons. But the most frequent reason is the inability to reproduce the results described in a paper due to the lack of the software and tools to reproduce the empirical analysis described. You can regularly read reference in papers to internal software used for the analysis or survey but the paper lacks a link to download the software. Very often, I shared this frustration with my (work and academic) colleague but I was always expecting a more formal paper describing this major issue in scientific publication especially in computer science.
By sheer luck, I hit a paper called "Empiricism is Not a Matter of Faith" written by Ted Pedersen published in Computational Linguistics Volume 34, Issue 3 of September 2008. I want to share with you the conclusion of the article :
However, the other path is to accept (and in fact insist) that highly detailed empirical studies must be reproducible to be credible, and that it is unreasonable to expect that reproducibility to be possible based on the description provided in a publication. Thus, releasing software that makes it easy to reproduce and modify experiments should be an essential part of the publication process, to the point where we might one day only accept for publication articles that are accompanied by working software that allows for immediate and reliable reproduction of results.
The paper from Ted Pedersen is clear and concise, I couldn't explain better that. I hope it will become a requirement in any open access publication to add the free software (along with the process) used to make the experiments. Science at large could only gain from such disclosure. Open access should better integrate such requirements (e.g. reproducibility of the experiments) to attract more academic people from computer science. Just Imagine the excellent arxiv.org also including a requirements in paper submission to include a link to the free software and process used to make the experiments, that would be great.
Tags: openaccess research education freesoftware
Syndicated 2008-12-21 11:11:17 (Updated 2008-12-29 17:08:12) from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-12-13 Creativity In Free Software
Reading the blog of Frédéric Péters, I stumbled upon his post called "Vers l'infini et au-delà !". I quickly commented as I share a similar feeling about the recent development of the relationship between software "industries" and free software. Frédéric pointed out the recent "2020 FLOSS Roadmap" report where the roadmap is more a tentative to be close to the fuzzy and vague Magic Quadrant than something really coming from the free software community (yep, the community is not only composed of "industrial consortium" even if this report is trying to give this idea).
My feeling is the following : there are no way to predict the future especially while we are talking about (free) software evolution. Roadmaps are more close to science-fiction books (I prefer to read science-fiction books that's more fun) than something else. Why it's like that? Just because software development is a trial-and-error process and especially in the free software community. Free software users also choose their free software by trial-and-error… how can you easily predict the state of free software in 2020 when a trial-and-error process is in use? This reminded me again of the post from Linus Torvalds about "sheer luck" design of the Linux kernel. To quote him :
And don't EVER make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence _much_ too much credit.
Projecting in 2020 what will be the Free Software is just a joke. What we really need to do to ensure a future to free software is to ensure the diversity and the creativity dynamic in the community. Creation and development of free software without boundaries or limitation is critical to ensure a free future. New free software development often comes from individuals and not often from large industrial consortium… So the roadmap is easy : "Resist and create free software".
Tags: freesoftware diversity biology freedom
Syndicated 2008-12-13 12:09:33 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-11-16 It s Time To Join APRIL
It's time to join APRIL… If you have an organization to join in France doing the promotion of free software and its philosophy. There is only one… this is APRIL. The GNU will thank you (as you can see on the picture, he is already thanking me of being a member, even if I'm from Belgium).
Tags : gnu freedom april freesoftware free_software
Syndicated 2008-11-16 16:42:46 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-11-08 Copyleft Licenses and Activating The Perpetual Loop
When I first touched free software (that was a long time ago.. I'm feeling old Today) that was mainly for a technical reason. The technical reason quickly shifted to the ethical implication of free software and its relation with freedom in general. The comfort of copyleft licensing is a like a promise to me : "keeping "information" eternally free". My view is that copylefted information (from free software to free art) is just like a biotope where the environmental condition (in this case copyleft licensing) helps to create a living place. The copyleft is a guarantee for the biotope to have a sufficient input to grow and to provide a good fertilizer. In the past few years, the ecological system of copyleft has been working quite well but the main reason (IMHO) for its limited grow is the incompatibility between the copyleft-type licensing as those licenses are often mutually exclusive.
I'm not in favor of the excessive proliferation of copyleft-type license increasing the legal complexity while not improving the life activity in the copyleft biotope. That's why I'm using the following licensing statement :
This work is licensed to you under at least version 2 of the GNU General Public License. Alternatively, you may choose to receive this work under any other license that grants the right to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute the work, as long as that license imposes the restriction that derivative works have to grant the same rights and impose the same restriction. For example, you may choose to receive this work under the GNU Free Documentation License, the CreativeCommons ShareAlike License, the XEmacs manual license, or similar free licenses.
The recent minor extension of the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 is creating the ability to also use the Creative Commons Share Alike (CC-SA) is going into the direction to improve the biotope interaction. In my view, I never understood why we have different copyleft licenses for at the end any information works like computer programs, images, arts or documentation living in the same biotope. I was willing to use the GNU General Public License for any type of free information works. I'm sure that differences between the type of works will disappear in the future and at the end, we'll have a generic GNU GPL (version 4?) where any copylefted works are included. Life is so beautiful in this biotope that we cannot limit it with incompatible licenses…
Tags: freedom copyleft licensing freesoftware ecology
Syndicated 2008-11-08 11:53:33 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-11-02 We Enter The Age Of Cyberpunk
That's a "great day", we just enter into the age of Cyberpunk by the recent vote of the French Senate :
The French Senate has overwhelmingly voted in favour of a law that would cut off access to the internet to web surfers who repeatedly download copyrighted music, films or video games without paying.
In other words, the "corporate elite" (or the old and aging musical industry) made a law to cut access to Internet while there are (sometimes, just suspicious or without consent of the Internet user) downloads of "copyrighted content". Hmmm… this looks very close to the story line often used in different cyberpunk stories. To be more precise here is the portrait of cyberpunk societies made by David Brin :
…a closer look at cyberpunk authors reveals that they nearly always portray future societies in which governments have become wimpy and pathetic …Popular science fiction tales by Gibson, Williams, Cadigan and others ''do'' depict Orwellian accumulations of power in the next century, but nearly always clutched in the secretive hands of a wealthy or corporate elite.
We have to be prepared and should start the business to make a "black market" for internet access where all those people excluded from official access can get back access to the network.
Tags : copyright p2p freedom internet
Syndicated 2008-11-02 20:42:31 (Updated 2008-11-03 23:08:58) from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
2008-10-19 Why You Should Use Identica and not Twitter
Microblogging is now the preferred way to update publicly your life or activities status. The technique is now used widely due to a generation trained with SMS and small text messages (just like the Post-it note fifteen years before ;-). If you plant to put your life instant messages into a microblogging services. I would suggest you to use identi.ca and not Twitter (or any other proprietary microblogging solution like Jaiku). There are two good reasons for doing so.
The first is a philosophical reason. Software must be free but with the huge success of network services where the software become a service. The software itself looks less important and people tend to forget about its availability. That's why as a user, developer or service provider, you must take great care while using, developing or running a network service. The Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services published by autonomo.us started to look at the issue and defines what's classify a free (as in freedom) network service. In the area of microblogging services, Identi.ca is following the The Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services. The software running this microblogging service is free (released in the GNU Affero General Public License) and called laconica.
The second is a practical reason. identi.ca runs better. As I'm cross-posting between Twitter and Identi.ca, I have a script to post on both at the same time :
adulau@kz:~$perl micropost.pl "I really like #webpy... no constraint and full freedom to code your application." Posting to Twitter... 500 Server closed connection without sending any data back Posting to Identi.ca... 200 OK
Yes. I have such errors very regularly, identi.ca works as expected but Twitter is just dying. As you can see for having working service, it's not a matter of investment. You can have better services just because you have motivated people and design by constraint. Another interesting part is identi.ca supporting XMPP but on the other hand Twitter has troubles with XMPP. On practical and philosophical side, identi.ca is the winner. Of course, you shouldn't look at the trends. Trends are for marketers not users…
Tags: company startup innovation internet microblogging identi.ca freedom
Syndicated 2008-10-19 09:56:55 from AdulauWikiDiary: RecentChanges
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