J5’s Blog

I’m not going to get into details because I have no interest in a pissing match but I am sure anyone who has been in any large Open Source project has had to deal with poisonous people. It sucks even more when that poisonous person trumpets themselves and actually has an audience of easily gullible listeners who’s eyes have wool pulled over and ears, cotton shoved into. It sucks yet even more when that person leaves the project, and then becomes self proclaimed pundit of the project, proclaiming to have the cure to all ills, as the person proclaimed when part of the project as well. And the total suck comes from the fact that that person, who was at first a trusted member of the project and given much responsibility, who failed on almost every single one of their given tasks, is one of the main reasons for any issues which said person now sells the cure for. We call people like this snake oil salesmen, charismatic people with no morals other than their own desire to get ahead at any cost, and it suck to see people like this still exist and still can pull one over on the masses. This day is the suxor.

It seems Apple is not the entity fighting for a DRM-less world we thought they were and Nokia isn’t such a great patron for open source software either. For those who haven’t heard the news, lobbying by both companies have caused the W3C to strike a provision in a HTML5 draft which would make OGG Vorbis and Theora a standard media format on the web. What baffles me about this is having Vorbis and Theora media formats does not stop Apple or Nokia from distributing content using whatever proprietary format they wish. This just hobbles the web which had exploded thanks to open standards, open formats and open source. In recent years though the web has become more and more proprietary. Allowing companies to remove open formats from an open standard without nominating another equally open format to take its place allows special interests to control the development of the web. This effectively locks out a large portion of the small independent content providers from distributing next generation content such as video while moving us toward a world where a few entities control the distribution of all content.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel though. It is time for us to make the OGG family of codecs ubiquitous with or without the mandate of a standard. A large step in that direction is Firefox developing native OGG support. Easily installed IE plugins would go a long way also. It is also up to the community to post their content in an open format. The next time linux.com post a link to mp3 content that they produced and not have a Vorbis link associated with it I hope people take them to task. The same goes for people posting content on the various planets. Open formats are essential to a free and open web.

Well the unofficial results are in and a new board has been formed. I am humbled by being elected to the board and hope my tenure will exceed the communities expectations. A lot of great people have been elected this year and I look forward to serving with them. A bit of correction however, due to a late night rushed candidacy announcement which copied the format of last years, I am listed as representing Red Hat and OLPC. While I still work on the OLPC project as a volunteer I have moved on to my own projects within Red Hat and no longer officially work for OLPC.

Bryan Clark has put out his reaction on the candidate’s GNOME Online Desktop positions. He writes

John has a clear understanding that the Board is not setting technical direction, however he’s a little vague on whether they can help when GNOME developers may require hardware infrastructure.

Let me be absolutely clear that this is exactly what I believe the Board is for. The Foundation gets resources and the Board manages those resources, allocating them where needed. Those resources could be money, hardware, people’s time or almost anything that needs managing. The Board’s job as an elected body is to judge how the Foundations members wish to spend those resources.

I whole heartedly believe that the majority of Foundation members want to see us spending resources on pushing forward the Online Desktop. From my own answer to the questions I have said

From the beginning I have been excited about the prospects of moving GNOME beyond the desktop. … I see the GNOME Online push as pulling us into the Wild West of the Web platform where everyone is staking their claims and there is yet to be monopolies to stifle innovation … we have the chance to bring in integrated Open Source web applications to the mix and even define a new era of Open Services.

So I am totally for the Foundation helping out in pushing the GNOME Online Desktop initiative. I believe it is the future of GNOME. What I failed to state is that the developers need to meet us half way. I’m not going to set technical direction and assume what resources the project needs. I am going to listen to the developers and fully back them when they come to the board to let us know what they need to get things done. I’m going to encourage and engage those developers even if it means harassing Bryan to attend some board meetings and taking up action items

I know you don’t want to comment on specifics of recent US law news but what might be useful to the community is a discussion on what patent law really says. There is a disconnect (often emotional) between the true nature of such laws and the laypersons understanding. I for one would like to know why patent law isn’t more like trademark law where one has to actively defend a trademark or risk losing it. Obviousness of a method is hard to prove over the lifespan of a patent. As time goes on and more people start accepting a certain method as being commonplace (and hence obvious to those concerned) does that factor at all into the law? What is the metric for obviousness?

The reason I have to ask here is there really are few resources a person has access to to research these issues without going to law school - something I personally have considered and then rejected at this point in life. This is not a desire to create some sort of grass roots campaign against cases in the court system. I’ll leave the lawyering to the lawyers. This is more of a hacker’s desire to understand the rules that govern the world around him. So far, where the law is concerned, it seems an unobtainable goal for your average Joe citizen.

“Yes, yes that all sounds all nice and fantastic!!! Come back when you know how to get there.”

Context to come…

ONE is a campaign to make poverty history. I found out about it through a news story on the CNN. It is a nice complement to the work I do at OLPC as it focuses on some of the more basic needs outlined by the UN Millennium Goals. What I liked about this particular effort is it is bipartisan, having picked up members from all over the political spectrum. Their One Vote ‘08 initiative is geared towards putting political pressure on all the US candidates towards focusing policy into trying to solve the issues of world poverty. This is a much better strategy than backing one horse in the race and brings change through unity and not division. I’ve signed the declaration, joined the facebook group, and offered to help and am now seeing if there are any like minds who would like to do the same.

Daf talked about it, Robert McQueen followed up on it. Perhaps Senator Ted Stevens wasn’t so wrong after all.

TUBES the video!!!

Our latest Sugar builds now have Collabora’s excellent work on TUBES!!! I just got off an Internet video chat between myself and demo Walter Bender is doing down in Argentina. Sound was amazing. We also have a Connect 4 activity, and shared PDF activity going. Eric Blankinship is on the verge of tubafying his excellent Capture activity so kids can share photos and videos over TUBES and we have some guys tubafying a drum circle activity. I should be getting to Block Party soon and releasing a bunch of tutorials in the process.

So we belatedly proved the Senator correct. The Internet is now made up of a bunch of Tubes. There is still one thing he got wrong though. I hereby state that D-Tubes, which is D-Bus messages over Tubes, can also be called Big Truck. So now the Internet can be a Big Truck which drives over TUBES!!!!

Umm, I don’t know about you but I don’t use the same interfaces I used ten years ago and since then technology acceleration has been exponential.  Of course there are always those who would rather the next generation learn only what the current generation understands.  That way the future isn’t so scary and unknown.  Personally I would rather teach the ability to deal with any new situation a person may encounter in their lifetime and the ability to adapt.

What can I say? I’m a short guy.  Standing on the shoulder of giants is much more pleasant than standing toe to toe, or face to toe as the case might be, even if the height gets scary at times.  Giving children the courage to climb those giants instead of just learning about them - now that is teaching.

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/04/olpc_free_softw.html