copyrighteous

In the last week, Nicholas Negroponte gave this unfortunate interview decrying "open source fundamentalism" and hinting the possibility of a warmer relationship with Microsoft. Predictably, this has elicited an ongoing response by OLPC News and on the OLPC development mailing lists.

Just a few days before Negroponte's statements hit the press, I gave a talk at Penguicon called Laptop Liberation where I talked about why I thought that OLPC's use of a free software operating system and embrace of free software principles was essential for the initiative's success and its own goals of education reform and empowerment. I've been saying similar things for some time.

My main point boiled down to something that, appropriately enough, Nicholas Negroponte was fond of saying back when the project was still called the $100 laptop: an extremely cheap laptop is not a matter of if, but of when and how. This technology will define the terms on which students communicate, collaborate, create, and learn. These terms are dictated by those with the ability to change the software -- by those with access to computers, the source necessary to make changes, and the freedom to share and collaborate.

Constructionism -- OLPC's educational philosophy -- is about putting powerful tools and control over those tools into the hands of learners. It is about learning through exploration and creation -- about shaping one's own educational environment. Constructionist principles bear no small similarity to free software principles. Indeed, OLPC's stated commitment to free software did not happen by accident. OLPC convincingly argued that a free system was essential for creating a learning environment that could be used, tweaked, reinvented, and reapplied by its young users. Through these processes, the XO becomes a force for learning about computation and an environment through which children and their communities can use technology on their terms and in ways that are appropriate and self-directed.

We know that laptop recipients will benefit from being able to fix, improve, and translate the software on their laptops into their own languages and contexts. Much more importantly, however, are all of the uses for the laptops that OLPC has not -- and can not -- think up. OLPC is a powerful tool for learning, but ultimate power is only in the hands of those that can freely use, change, and collaborate in defining the terms of their learning environments. In its commitment to software freedom, OLPC chose not to be arrogant by assuming that it knows how its users will use their laptops. Flexible environments designed for constructionist learning and a free software platform protect against this arrogance.

Constructionism and free software, implemented and taught in a classroom, offer a profound potential for exploration, creation, and learning. If you don't like something, change it. If something doesn't work right, fix it. Free software and constructionism put learners in charge of their educational environment in the most explicit and important way possible. They create a culture of empowerment. Creation, collaboration, and critical engagement becomes the norm.

OLPC does not get to choose if educational technology happens. If we work hard at it though we might get to influence the "how" and the "who." Proprietary software vendors like Microsoft want the "who" to be them. With free software, users can be in power. What's at stake is nothing less than autonomy. We can help foster a world where technology is under the control of its users, and where learning is under the terms of its students -- a world where every laptop owner has freedom through control over the technology they use to communicate, collaborate, create, and learn.

This, to me, is the promise of OLPC and its mission. It is the reason I've been involved and in support of the project since nearly day one. It is the reason I left Canonical and Ubuntu to come back to school at MIT to be closer to the then nascent unincorporated project. It is the reason that OLPC's embrace of constructionist philosophy is so deeply important to its mission and the reason that its mission needs to continue to be executed with free and open source software. It is why OLPC needs to be uncompromising about software freedom.

As an adviser and sometimes contractor to OLPC, OLPC does not need to listen to me. But I hope, for all our sake, that they do.

Update: Richard Stallman and the FSF have published another essay on the same topic focused more on pure free software (i.e., less education specific) objections.

In the last leg of what has been marathon traveling over the last two months, I'm going to be heading back to San Francisco to give two talks at CommunityOne.

CommunityOne is a new one-day conference that Sun is putting on -- along side it's massive JavaOne conference -- that focuses on free software, open source, and non-Sun projects.

I'm going to be there talking about free software and free culture. I will be giving updated versions of the two talks that I have at the FSF members meetings over first two years. In the first talk, I'll be making the case for a strong free culture movement and in the second I'll be talking about liberating network services.

If you will be at the conference, or just in the Bay area, and would like to meet up, I'll be in the area for most of a week and would love to arrange something. Just get in contact.

Thanks to Matt Lee for helping SVGizing my drawing.

I've been on the road quite a bit lately. During my manic travel, I have been rather lax about blogging many of my recent talks.

After a talk at CHI in Florence on the 7th and a talk at LUG Radio Live USA last Sunday, I'm in Troy, Michigan for Penguicon. It's an incredible combination of a science fiction and a free software/open source conference and it's a huge amount of fun.

This morning I gave my Laptop Liberation talk and tonight I'll be helping judge the Open Source-ry Masquerade costume contest -- the very contest were Tron Guy premiered his now famous costume!

Tomorrow I'll be giving my Revealing Errors talk which I premiered last Sunday at the LUG Radio event and which I'm really excited about. If you're around and at the event please find me and introduce yourself! If you're in the area, I may have some free time tomorrow night. Don't hesitate to get in contact.

I wrote an essay several years ago called The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth: My Story of Unlearning. It's buried on my website but still manages to attract a consistent stream of readers.

It's essentially the story of how I became a geek, about school, ADD, and free software. It is by far the most personal thing I've ever published. That said, several people have told me that it's influenced them deeply -- changed their views, politics and attitudes in important ways.

In December, my friend Marcell asked me to give a version of the talk as part of his G33koskop series. I was hesitant to give such a personal talk but I did it anyway. I've finally got around to cleaning up the recording and have posted it online. You can download and listen to the talk here in Ogg Vorbis or here in MP3).

Yesterday I speculated that Lamers Bus Lines was the most disproportionately photographed, unintentionally insulting, bus line name on the Internet.

Apparently not. Several readers pointed out that, while a Flickr search for lamers bus returns 81 photographs, a search for fücker bus and fucker bus return a combined 84 photos not unlike these.

With Lamers, PUTA, Fücker, SCAT, and the SLUT, I'm beginning to wonder if something very fundamentally wrong with the way human society is choosing the names for its mass transit systems.

I suspect that Lamers Bus Lines, Inc. (golamers.com) may be the most disproportionately photographed bus line in America by young Internet-savvy photographers.

These photographs, and many more, are taken from Flickr:

When it comes to the most insulting bus company, however, the unfortunate typography that rendered the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority buses dangerously close to "puta" may give Lamers a run for their money in Spanish speaking communities.

Unhappy Birthday -- a website that tries to educate the public and encourage folks to snitch on their friends for singing the (copyrighted!) Happy Birthday song in public places -- is perhaps the most widely read thing I've ever written. It's been seen by millions and I continue to get hate mail several times a week.

Last Sunday, the nationally broadcast CBC show WireTap aired an pseudonymous in-character interview with me about the site where I pretended to be a copyright high-protectionist. I think it turned out pretty well.

You can listen to it on the unofficial WireTap podcast. My interview starts at a bit more than 10 minutes into the show.

My partner Mika is doing a research project on geek nutrition. In addition to being a geek herself, she's got degrees in human nutrition and public health. She works at Harvard School of Public Health. So she seems pretty qualified and I'm looking forward to the results.

She's trying to get a little bit of data on the food culture and eating habits of GNU/Linux's users and developers. If you can take a couple minutes to fill out a survey, it would be very helpful to her. The survey is anonymous and only takes results from the first 100 people. Analyzed anonymous results will posted publicly. Comments should be sent to 5colorsaday@gmail.com. The survey took me under 3 minutes to fill out.

The survey itself is online here.

Mika will present initial results and analysis on her blog and at Penguicon which both of us will be attending.

I'm in Amherst, Massachusetts from now until Friday visiting my alma mater. I'll be giving a redux of my "Laptop Liberation" talk today (March 12) at 12:15 in Adele Simmons Hall for anyone that is around and wants to come. The talk is about free software and OLPC.

I'll be around and speaking to several classes at Hampshire College this week. If you're around Amherst and want to meet up, don't hesitate to get in touch.

There are many blogs called No Comment. Most of them allow comments, but not all. Unavailable for Comment is in fact available for comments, although it seems that few have taken advantage of the fact.

Most blogs called Comment also allow comments although the blog Daily Comment (which is not daily) does not.

The blog Leaveacomment.com does not seem to have the domain leaveacomment.com but allows its visitors to leave comments.

It's very short notice but I'm giving a talk tonight (2008-03-03) at the Joan Jonas Performance Hall at the MIT Visual Arts Program. It's rather last minute.

I'll be talking along with Mark Tribe as part of a series called Zones of Emergency. I'll be speaking a bit about free and open source software and why it's particularly important in the context of emergencies. Think Sahana. There's more information about the talk online here.

Last week, the Free Software Foundation announced an important new initiative called End Software Patents whose goals are pretty evident from the project's name. So far, the initiative is backed by the FSF, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center.

There are several organizations who are taking on specific bad patents but ESP is unique in that it is activitely working toward the abolition of software patents in the United States. While the organization is focused on work in the US, it's deeply important globally -- much of the world's patent law is "exported" from the US.

The FSF is stretching extremely limited resources in backing ESP to help it get off the ground because we believe two things:

• First, software patents are a fundamental threat to free and open source software (but not just to free and open source software). The FSF must oppose software patents because they provide a fundamental threat to free software's continued success. That sounds like hyperbole but is unfortunately not.
• Second, we can win this fight. For a whole set of reasons, the successful abolition of software patents is a goal that, while extremely ambitious, is also within grasp. These issues, of course, are much bigger than free software. Companies spend billions of dollars in litigation over software patents that are not novel and that should not exist. ESP can reach out farther than the FSF alone and build a coalition that can destroy software patents for the good of much more than the free software community.

Please read the new ESP report on the state of software patents written by the ESP Executive Director Ben Klemens to understand why we are optimistic. And please, support ESP financially in this fight. ESP's continued work is not ensured past the immediate future. Your support will help endow a bright future for the next generation of software developers and users.

I'm going to be traveling and giving talks quite a bit this spring. Here's what my schedule looks like now. I don't think much will be added to it:

• February 29-March 1 - Houston, Texas - Matt Lee's Wedding
• March 12 - Amherst, Massachusetts - Hampshire College
• March 15-16 - Cambridge, Massachusetts - FSF Members Meeting
• March 27-28 - New York City, New York - Fordham IP Conference
• April 7 - Florence, Italy - Renaissance Panel: The Roles of Creative Synthesis in Innovation at CHI
• April 11-13 - San Fransisco, California - Lugradio Live USA
• April 17-20 - Detroit, Michigan - Penguicon
• April 25-27 - Cambridge, Massachusetts - ROFLCon
• May 5 - San Fransisco, California - Sun's Community One

I'll be giving at least one talk at the FSF Members Meeting, the Renaissance Panel, Lugradio Live, Penguicon, and Community One.

Matt's wedding is private. To join the FSF members meeting you must become an FSF Associate Member if you are not already. All of the other conferences require some sort of registration. Penguicon, Lugradio Live, and ROFLCon are each cheap and each promises to be a lot of fun. The talk at Hampshire should be free and open to the public.

I'll be posting more about each of these as things get closer including details about what is that I'll be talking about.

If you'd like me to talk to another group or at another event while I'm town for any of the events above, now would be a good time to ask. If you just want to meet up for a beverage of your choice, that's good too. In either case, get in contact.

Recently, the EFF reported that the European commission had responded to a request by European Parliament member Satu Hassi about tracking dots in printers. European Commissioner Franco Frattini replied that tracking dots may constitute a human rights violation saying that:

"..to the extent that individuals may be identified through material printed or copied using certain equipment, such processing may give rise to the violation of fundamental human rights, namely the right to privacy and private life. It also might violate the right to protection of personal data."

Intriguingly, the request text includes a mention to and link to the Seeing Yellow project I started last year as an example of the fact that consumers have complained to printer manufacturers and that these complaints have fallen upon deaf ears.

Everyone who called their printer manufacturer in response to Seeing Yellow deserves come credit for the raised visibility to the issue that we've created and the set of actions that have brought the issue this far. Please, keep it up! If you've not complained to your printer manufacturer, visit Seeing Yellow and call today.

Every since I found out that the first digits of any credit card denote the issuer identifier (i.e., folks can tell who issued a credit card and what type it is just from the first digit or two) I've been annoyed almost each time I have to input credit card information on the web. Any decent credit card system knows that if a sixteen digit credit card number starts with 4, it's a Visa. And yet, each time anyone buys anything on the web, they must select "Visa" from the drop-down box. On a certain level we all know this; People in stores and restaurants never have to select the type of card before swiping.

When I'm feeling generous, I imagine this is so that the credit card companies can give an extra reminder that they only accept certain credit cards -- not being able to select a card type in an "essential" input field constrained to multiple choices is a pretty strong reminder.

When I'm feeling less generous, I suspect it might be so that the companies can subtly remind us that they have their own brand credit cards that we might like to acquire.

Yesterday witnessed the most important step forward for the Definition of Free Cultural Works (DFCW) since its adoption and endorsement by the Wikimedia Foundation a year ago.

Although I might have wished things otherwise, Creative Commons is not a social movement fighting for essential freedom or the essential freedoms at the core of the DFCW in particular. From the movement's perspective, CC is more like a law and advocacy firm that works for us -- a very sympathetic one. CC writes, hosts, and supports a variety of licenses. Some are free. Some are not. Last year they took steps to explicitly limit the extent of restrictions they are willing to tolerate in their licenses.

Yet, while CC has resisted taking a stand in favor of the Definition of Free Cultural Works, they continue to produce some of the best free licenses, tools, and metadata available and they seem honestly interested in helping users interested in social movements based around these definitions organize more effectively.

In perhaps its most important move to date in this area, Creative Commons announced yesterday that it was placing a seal on each of its licenses that provide the essential freedoms laid out in the Definition of Free Cultural Works. The seal links to the definition over at freedomdefined.org. In Creative Commons' words:

This seal and approval signals an important delineation between less and more restrictive licenses, one that creators and users of content should be aware of.

A very practical reason users should be aware of these distinctions is that some important projects accept only freely (as defined) licensed or public domain content, in particular Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites, which use the Definition of Free Cultural Works in their licensing guidelines.

The seal is currently on two CC licenses that provide for essential freedom (Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike) and their public domain dedication. Thanks go to Erik Moeller at the Wikimedia Foundation and everyone at Creative Commons to helped make this happen.

Recently, Students for Free Culture -- a non-profit organization dear to my heart -- elected its new board. Several months ago, the group voted to hold its elections using the same preferential election method system that Debian uses. To help make their election easier I agreed to support them with a new set of features in Selectricity aimed at more structured organizational decision-making. Currently Selectricity is more geared toward more informal QuickVotes.

From a democratic and voting technology perspective, the election was a huge success. With 16 voters and 13 candidates, a traditional plurality or "first past the post" election would have been a poor match for their group -- the 16 first-place votes were very split among the candidates. The results also show one very polarizing candidate who won the plurality but was in the bottom third of most preferential rankings! The use of Selectricity helped SFC select a board who better represented the preference of their group than they would have otherwise. Exciting stuff! You can read more on the Free Culture website or on the Selectricity blog.

Thanks are due both to the previous SFC board who took the risk on the technology and to all of the candidates and voters! I'm currently integrating feedback and improvements based on the SFC election and will open the feature up the public in the next couple weeks. If you want hear about this when it happens, you should subscribe to the Selectricity Blog or drop an email to team@selectricity.org.

Today, I orphaned AUB -- my very first Debian package and the first free software project whose maintenance I took over. I had been helping and doing work in Debian and the free software community for some time but AUB was the first package I uploaded into Debian with my own name in the maintainer field and with my key in the Debian keyring.

AUB is a program for working with Usenet binaries. As late as 2002 perhaps, it was a pretty useful tool for a variety of things. Today, however, it doesn't seem to be useful for much more than indiscriminately downloading large amounts of porn and spam. The software is crusty and written in Perl 4 which, today, seems almost unforgivable. Like Usenet, AUB's day has come and gone.

During my maintenance of the package, I ended up taking over upstream development and writing and integrating quite a few new features and patches. In fact, there still seem to be a few users! Unfortunately, I am not one them and I officially gave up on upstream maintenance a few months ago and contacted the submitters of all pending bug reports. Today I'm orphaning the Debian package and completely letting go.

None of this is particularly noteworthy, I suppose. If AUB was ever important, it hasn't been for a long time. I think its worth mentioning because it's symbolic of the completion of the life cycle of a free software project that was important in my own growth. Languages, the world, and even I have moved on. In the process, I've grown hugely as a developer, programmer, and free software activist and advocate. Minor as it be, AUB played an important role in this whole process.

If you are interested in taking over AUB, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm just as happy to let it disappear.

On Saturday February 9th, at 13:00, I'm going to be joining free software and anti-DRM activists to protest the use of DRM by the Boston Public Library on parts of its electronic collection.

Those of us protesting are unhappy because the BPL has launched a new service powered by a company called OverDrive. The system gives BPL patrons access to books, music, and movies online -- but only if they use a Microsoft DRM system.

There are lots of problems with the introduction of this system: it bars access to users of GNU/Linux and MacOS and creates a dependence on a single technology vendor for access. These are important issues, certainly. The worst problem, however, is much more fundamental.

By adopting a DRM system for library content, the BPL is giving OverDrive, copyright holders, and Microsoft the ability to decide what, when, and how its patrons can and cannot read, listen, and watch these parts of the BPL collection. They are giving these companies veto power over the BPL's own ability to access this data -- both now and in the future. Cryptographically, BPL is quite literally handing over the keys to their collection. In the process, they are not only providing a disservice to their patrons. They are providing a disservice to themselves.

The first-sale doctrine says that libraries can do essentially whatever they like with copies of books they purchase short of duplication, modification, or performance. Of course, copyright holders would prefer to charge a toll every time someone checks out a book. Public libraries were possible in spite of this desire because they were able to exploit power over the possession and control of their books in the interests of their patrons. With DRM, libraries will reduced to powerlessness.

Of course, times have changed. As media and the ways we interact with it is increasingly digital, libraries have changed and will need to change more. But if public libraries are to succeed at their fundamental mission of spreading knowledge and serving communities, this change can't be at the expense of patrons' ability to control their own technology and libraries' ability to control their own collections.

I've supported my academic library, MIT Libraries, as they took a risk and stood up to DRM when other institutions did not. And they won.

BPL is the largest municipal library in the US and the third largest US library overall. It is the first library to be supported publicly, to be open to the public in the US, and to allow patrons to take home books to read and use them. BPL has an opportunity now to continue this history of leadership, of access, and of patron empowerment.

If BPL stands up against DRM and in favor of its patrons' freedom and its own control of its technical destiny and collection, it may set an important precedent. If you're in or near Boston, please join me in Copley Square on Saturday to help make this happen. If you're not near Boston, please help put pressure on similar efforts in your own communities.

I don't think I've been this amused since Reebok accidentally named a shoe after a demon that sexually assaults women.

Want to contribute to my list of unintentionally offensive product names?

In Brazilian Portuguese, "bombeiro" is the word for both a fireman and a plumber. If someone asks you to call a "bombeiro," their statement is usually unambiguous due to context. Usually.

Both SVG source and t-shirts are available at cost.

As I mentioned I would a month or so ago, I attended a workshop on Computing in the Cloud organized by Ed Felton's Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. The conference aimed to discuss the policy issues that are raised by the shift from computing on machines we own and have direct control over to computing on servers owned by others. Think Google, Facebook, MySpace, and that lot.

I talked about what all this might mean for free software and for open source and our communities, a bit about the AGPL, and discussed some ideas of how might proceed as a community. Princeton has been organized enough to post audio and video of the whole conference, including recordings of my talk, in a variety of formats and qualities (although unfortunately not in Vorbis and Theora).

As I said in my FSF membership appeal last month, I think complications raised by "cloud computing" are one of the most important sets of challenges facing free software this year.

In the "bits from the Planet Debian maintainer" department...

Steve Kemp has been running a little index and search script for Planet Debian for a couple years now that lets you search for old entries that have showed up on Planet Debian. He was going to take his system offline but, since it was in use by a variety of people, he opted to move it into the default Planet Debian instead.

You should be able to see and use the search box in the sidebar on Planet Debian now. Feedback is welcome, I'm sure. Thanks to Steve for the fantastic addition to our aggregator.

I'm going to be giving a reprise of the Laptop Liberation talk I gave at Cornell University in November at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in the Kansai region of Japan on January 7th. If you around, please feel free to show up. If you are in Osaka, Kyoto or Nara and would like to have lunch or dinner, please email me and we can try to arrange something.

Details on the talk is online here in English and Japanese (thanks Mika!) although the talk itself will be in English.

I'm going to be visiting Mika's family in Tokyo for the next two and half a weeks. We're planning a trip to Kansai at some point as well.

Currently, I've got no free software related plans or meetings lined up but if folks in Kyoto, Osaka, or the greater Tokyo area would like to meet up for drinks, that would be great. Additionally, I'd be happy to put together something more organized (e.g., a short talk, workshop, etc). If you'll be around and are interested in either, contact me and let's figure something out.

On January 15th, I'm going to be giving a talk on a panel at the Computing in the Cloud conference held by Ed Felton's Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. The conference description says:

“Computing in the cloud” is one name for services that run in a Web browser and store information in a provider’s data center — ranging from adaptations of familiar tools such as email and personal finance to new offerings such as virtual worlds and social networks. This workshop will bring together experts from computer science, law, politics and industry to explore the social and policy implications of this trend.

I'm going to talk about the AGPL 3.0, why it's important that we put effort into figuring out what freedom for different technologies means, and what the components of freedom for web services might be.

Registration is free and bags you a name-tag and lunch.

Worth noting perhaps, the conference is sponsored by Microsoft.

Sun's Barton George just published an audio interview he did with me a few months ago at FOSSCamp.

We talked mostly about my joining the FSF this past year, what it means for myself and the organization, and how I got there. Check it out!

It's an end of year tradition for non-profit organizations to do big fund-raising and membership pushes. As I mentioned several days ago, I am personally giving to two organizations this year: the Wikimedia Foundation and the Free Software Foundation.

The FSF has a goal of 500 associate members by year-end and it's an important goal that will sustain the foundation's activities. While membership dues keep the lights on, the fact that the foundation has a robust and growing membership is equally, if not more, important.

FSF executive director Peter Brown put an appeal online in both video and text versions. In it, he lays out some of the most important issues for the next year. You should watch the video version in OGG Theora or this YouTube version (requires Gnash or non-free Flash). The appeal briefly lays out the FSF's plans for next year. My partner Mika Matsuzaki and my friend Oliver Day shot and edited the video. Please pass the link around to those you feel might be interested.

Here's my appeal:

Now is the time to join and give to Free Software Foundation. 2008 is going to be extraordinarily important year for free software.

Eben Moglen likes to quote Gandhi's "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" progression when describing the free software movement. As I pointed out when I joined the FSF board, we're beginning to see powerful interests fighting free software. It's going to increase in the next few years. Things will probably get a lot uglier for free software before they get better. We can win but things are far from settled. The FSF is the front-line organization in this fight and we need a robust and proactive foundation, and an active and involved membership, if we're going to win.

Here are the issues that I'm going to pushing the FSF to pursue in the next year.

Expanding activism outside our traditional technologist communities:

In part through the work of projects like Defective By Design, we've seen the tide turn for DRM on music in what what may be the FSF's greatest success last year. I'm going to push the FSF to continue the campaign to attack DRM for video, eBooks, and the other places it is cropping up.

The most remarkable thing to me about Defective By Design is that its participants and supporters are not, for the most part, people who develop or use GNU/Linux or even know what GNU is! If advocacy for software freedom involves a conversation we can only have with people who understand what POSIX is and how one uses it, we've already lost. Through DbD, BadVista, and other projects, the FSF has made major strides in the last year. It need to do much more and needs your support to do so.

Get proactive about software patents:

As a community, we've had our head in the sand about software patents for far too long. There are companies and patent trolls sitting on massive, growing piles of software patents. They are not our friends and they do not mean us well.

One cannot write non-trivial software today without running a serious risk of infringing patents. The software patents minefield we've found ourselves in is a very fundamental threat to the success of free software and we've already begun to see the first casualties and costs. We must eliminate software patents. Now.

The US is very important in this fight (much patent law is "exported" from the US) and almost no organization is working on software patent elimination there. Not enough people are thinking and acting strategically on this issue. The FSF is planning to make major steps in this fight in the coming year and we need your support to do so.

Web services and the changing face of software:

This last year, I worked to help launch the new version the AGPLv3. The license addresses the role of copyleft for software like web-services which, due to the legal particulars of the GPL, did not extend to the purveyors of web services. Of course, access to source code does not make the users of all web-services free (e.g., the GMails and the Facebooks).

Nobody seems to know what freedom for webserver entails. There might not even be good answers. In the next year, I'm going to push the FSF to help start several conversation and to begin to follow up on what I think was an important first step with the AGPLv3. While this is not a major organizational priority yet, it's a major action item that I will be pursuing through the FSF. If you feel strongly about this issue, whatever your position, become a member, stay involved as these projects develop, and have your voice be heard. We don't know the answers yet and we need your input as much as we need your action.

Please, support the FSF in the efforts listed above, and in others, by giving generously.

If you're not a member, please join the FSF as an associate member. If you are already a member, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. The FSF is a very lean, very humble organization of passionate and dedicated individuals working tirelessly for software freedom. Every little bit helps.

Members pays USD $120 ($10/month) and student members pay half that. FSF has members across the world -- where a weak dollar often makes it even cheaper. Member support and participation builds capacity and credibility for the foundation and keep the organization responsible, responsive, and in tune with our community.

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition -- a large alliance of academic and research libraries and other organizations working on open access scholarly publishing issues -- just recognized me as a SPARC Innovator.

The award/recognition is given semi-annually to honor contributions to the open access movement. I'm being singled out in part for my work on Overpriced Tags and for other OA work and advocacy. I'm sharing the stage with several friends -- all of whom are students active in the Free Culture movement. SPARC seems to see this set of innovator awards as an opportunity to recognize the contributions of the next generation of activists. I'm honored to be counted among them!

An essay I wrote for the Wikimedia Foundation fundraising drive was just published on the the foundation's Why Give blog. The essay, titled Wikimedia and the Free Culture Movement, discusses the movement for free culture, Wikimedia's central role in it, and the importance of supporting the foundation because, I argue, the immediate success of the free culture movement is intimately tied up in Wikimedia's efforts.

It is very exciting to see an essay I wrote linked prominently from the top of every page in Wikipedia! It is also exciting to imagine that I might help the Wikimedia foundation at this important time in that organization's life.

I am giving to two organizations in support of two causes this year: the Wikimedia Foundation in support of free culture and the Free Software Foundation in support of free software. No other two groups are as committed or are doing as much to build a world where knowledge, and the tools we use to use, produce, and communicate it, are and remain free.

The FSF's fall members bulletin is out. For it, I spent some time refining the blogpost I recently wrote on antifeatures into an article. I got a whole lot of feedback last time (Thanks!), most of which criticized my choice of examples. I've structured this version around different, and I hope less controversial, examples.

Please read the new article and leave comments here, especially if you criticized the old one.

The bulletin also includes two pieces introducing a campaign against software patents that the FSF plans to launch early next year and a discussion of the AGPL by Brett Smith. This bulletin hints at what I think are the big issues that the FSF plans to take on next year: software patents, web services, and creative new takes on the free software message that are designed to resonant beyond our historically very technical community of hackers. I'll write more on this in the next week or so. To support this mission, and to receive future copies of the bulletin directly, please consider becoming an associate member today during the FSF's year-end members drive.

My birthday is Sunday, December 2nd. To celebrate, my friends in Zagreb have organized a party for me at the club and cafe Kset at 20:00. It should be low-key and lots of fun. Since I don't actually know too many people here, other folks reading this should definitely feel free to drop by if they'd like to meet up.

Rumor has it that we'll have another party at the Acetarium after I get back to Cambridge on the evening of Saturday, December 8th. Let us know if you want to drop by for that one.

I think that traveling extensively and working on my new blog Revealing Errors might make me an international errorist.

My new life of errorism is, in any case, developing nicely. If you haven't yet, you should check the blog out.

Of all of the problematic qualities and implications of MySpace, I think I might find the fact that it leads to constructions like "His MySpace," "Their MySpace" or even "My MySpace" the most objectionable.

I've posted an an article on my website called Free Culture Advanced which I wrote for the last edition of the Free Software Foundation Members' Bulletin which went out several months ago. The bulletin is one of things you get when you become an associate member of the FSF.

The article makes the case for free culture and a freedom definition in terms that are directed to and I hope will resonate with folks from the free software community. I've posted versions of the article in HTML, PDF, and LaTeX.

The Free Software Foundation sent out a press release today announcing a new addition to the FSF stable of licenses: the Affero General Public License or AGPL. The FSF has also published a set of answers to anticipated questions in the GPL FAQ.

The first paragraph of the release explains what the AGPL is:

This is a new license; it is based on version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3), but has an additional term to ensure that users who interact with the licensed software over a network can receive the source for that program. By publishing this license, the FSF aims to begin fostering user and development communities around free software web services and other network-oriented software.

The GPL is designed to ensure that users of software have access to the source code -- source is prerequisite to freedom and to the type of collaboration that has made free software successful. However, the GPL doesn't say "users" when it talks about who gets freedom; instead, it references people to whom the software is distributed. It doesn't say users for two reasons. The first is that, under copyright, "distribution" is a much more meaningful term and a powerful hook than "use" which is not, in most cases, one of the copyright holder's exclusive rights. The second is that, until very recently, having a copy of software was prerequisite to using it; possession was prerequisite to use.

Things have changed. A large part of many people's computing experience involves running web applications. These include email clients (e.g., GMail or other webmails), office applications (e.g., Google Docs), social network systems, and others. These applications all run on servers -- i.e., on other people's computers. The providers of these services, the Googles and the FaceBooks, build upon, modify and improve GPL software without giving back to their users or the community that they took their software from.

The AGPL was created several years ago by FSF board member Henri Poole as a way to address this issue. The license took the form of the GPLv2 with one extra clause. It was a first stab at a license and was imperfect. The language and methods were clunky and, most problematically, the license was incompatible with software under the GPL.

The new AGPL is based on the GPLv3 and the extra clause has been rethought and rewritten. It has been vetted using the GPLv3 comment process and dozens of insightful comments from dozens of lawyers, hackers, and users of free software have been incorporated. The new license fixes the issues that many folks -- including myself -- had with the first version of the license. More importantly it can now be linked to GPLv3 code which makes the license a whole lot more practical.

I am quoted in the release being excited about the license and I really am. I've got 2-3 major development projects (including Selectricity) which I've been waiting to distribute so that I could do so under the AGPLv3.

The AGPL isn't a complete answer to the problem faced by disempowered users of web services. Without data or the capacity (in terms of servers, money, and expertise) to run web applications, the state and quality of these users' freedom remains far from clear. Thankfully, there are a whole bunch of folks thinking about what freedom for users of services might be -- it's a conversation that I'm going to push the FSF to participate in and pursue moving forward. The AGPLv3 marks a first solid contribution to the process of answering that question. If you'd like to help supporting or assisting the FSF in this effort, please consider becoming an associate member or donating.

I recently mentioned that I would visiting some friends at mi2 in Zagreb and would be traveling around the Balkans a bit to give some talks and workshops. Here's what the current plan includes:

• Novi Sad (November 20, at 20:00): I'll be participating in a discussion of hacker culture at CK13.

• Novi Sad (November 21-22 16:00-21:00): There will be a System.hack() exhibition which I helped prepare some of the text for and which I'll be on-hand for. It will include a narrated history of hacking through six objects. The exhibition will be held in an room of the Mediteraneo Hotel in Novi Sad.

• Belgrade (November 23 20:00): Another discussion on hacker culture, this time at Rex.

• Belgrade (November 23-24 17:00-20:00): System.hack() will be exhibited again in a room of the Kasina Hotel.

• Ljubljana (November 26, Time TBD): I'll be giving a talk on free software project management at Kiberpipa/Cyberpipe

• Zagreb (November 29-December 1): I'll be participating the Open Translation Tools workshop organized by Aspiration.

• Zagreb (December 3): I'll giving a talk in the giving a talk in the g33koscope lecture series. The topic and time are still undecided.

If you're in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Ljubljana, or Zagreb and would like to meet up, please consider coming to the events and exhibitions. If you can, and especially if you can not but would like to meet up anyway, feel free to drop me an email and let's try to organize a meeting.

Thanks go to Tomislav Medak and Marcell Mars who organized System.hack(), this whole tour, and who helped do the work to bring me over. I'm looking forward to the next couple weeks.

Yesterday, when I posted the list of talks that I'll be giving this week, I forgot to mention that I will be giving a Cluedump at MIT tonight organized by SIPB. It will be in the form of a simple hands-on workshop to teach folks how make Debian or Ubuntu packages. The session is not aimed at teaching folks to make policy compliant packages or how to pass Debian's NM process but rather to be more of an, "Everything a Sysadmin Needs to Know about Debian and Ubuntu Packages," style introduction.

The talk is tonight, November 12, 2007, at 20:30 at MIT in room 56-114. Feel free to read the longer description and to show up if you're interested.

The Ubuntu Code of Conduct is probably the most widely read document I've written. Agreement to it is prerequisite to participation in the Ubuntu community in all official and many unofficial capacities. It is has successfully set a positive tone and helped turn Ubuntu into what is probably the most friendly and civil free software project I've worked in.

Over time, quite a few free software projects have copied or adapted the CoC. Tired of giving folks permission, the project went ahead and licensed the CoC under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license to explicitly allow reuse as long as attribution to the Ubuntu project is given and derivatives are similarly modifiable.

In a recent development, it was adapted by the Fort Erie, Ontario town council for use government interactions of their business improvement areas! It's amazing to see the document gain so much traction! Unfortunately, the person who repurposed the CoC did not attribute the document correctly and was publicly accused of plagiarism by another council member!

Ubuntu is happy to have Fort Erie, and anyone else, use or adapt the CoC. Folks should just take care to be honest about where it came from and maintain the BY-SA license.