J5’s Blog

Many people feel that in the open source/free software community openness is about letting everyone become privy to any comment/decision/situation that may happen within a project. For the most part this is the goal we strive for but at the end of the day there are things that should remain private until they become real concerns for the public at large.

The issue is we have diverse communities that rarely agree 100% even among the best of friends. It becomes counter productive when these disagreements become the source of misinformed news articles without general consensus allowed to form within the community itself.

Forget the community for a minute. As individuals we often need to think before we speak in order to make sure we say exactly what we meant to say. The same goes for diverse groups. They must work out the directions they go in in an atmosphere that is free from the chilling effect of having to watch what they say because their intentions may be misinterpreted.

There is also the point of being able to freely express an opinion without fear of outward reprisals. There is a reason Democracy subsists on the concept of private ballots. It allows even the most unpopular opinions to at least be registered while individuals can be sure they won’t be ostracized. The openness comes from being free to dispute results, protest and influence them through public action, not from knowing the individual’s specific vote.

We strive to be inclusive with everyone who has a stake in what we do but when it becomes counter productive one needs to redress the situation so that we continue to move forward. It does no one any good to dwell on speculation from quarters which are ill informed and just looking for traffic grabbing sensationalism. It is perfectly fine to exclude them from discussions they have no stake in and let them feed on the results, judging the community based on its final actions and consensus.

The Open Video Conference just ended yesterday. I attended the first two days and just stopped in briefly during the hack-fests yesterday before having brunch with some old highschool friends and heading back to my parents house where my dog and car were stashed.

I can say without a doubt the turnout was amazing and even though not everything I heard all weekend was positive it was a giant leap forward in then understanding of the importance of Open Video and culture. I won’t put a figure on how many people attended but some of the upstairs talks were standing room only and after the first day some of the organizers were lamenting that then needed to get bigger rooms (consequently some of the talks were swapped the next day). Speaking about the organizers, they ran an incredibly smooth ship and should be thanked and praised for their efforts.

The Good

Apps

I was mainly there looking to see what video producers wanted from FOSS application developers and to support the PiTiVi/GStreamer teams on behalf of the GNOME Foundation. It is amazing to see the PiTiVi non-linear video editing app at such a usable state. While Edward Hervey (bilboed on irc) gave his mini presentation on PiTiVi I was busy hacking up a “How To Make Chocolate Truffles” video from pictures and clips I had laying around.

Afterwards I showed him some of the bugs I encountered in the 0.13.1 release and he just rattled off, fixed in git, fixed in git, fixed in git…etc. Sadly the releases are tied to GStreamer releases (which is a good thing from a development/bugs standpoint but not so good from a user standpoint given the early stages of PiTiVi) so we won’t see an official release soon. I plan on trying to automate a Fedora Repository at some point just to be able to view the progress without breaking my system.

The point is PiTiVi is about 90% there (and perhaps 100% in git) to be able to support my needs for basic video editing in terms of stability and basic tools. That should be pretty reflective of those who need to do things like screen casting and interview style video blogs. Some advanced features like effects (look at Cheese for some examples of this already working in an app) already exist in GStreamer and just need to be integrated in PiTiVi’s UI and rendering pipeline.

There was also a show of Cinelarra but more interesting is the GTK+ fork Lumiera which unfortunately is not usable yet but the direction they are going in (GTK+ interface and some GStreamer integration) looks like a great re-start in the case of pro level editing tools.

Also of interest in the pro level space was Blender which seems to be the pro project with the most momentum and features for pro’s. At least that was the initial reaction from some on the Red Hat media team. The dev’s did admit that the functionality is limited to what they needed during production of Big Buck Bunny (and other productions currently in the queue) but that in those areas it is rock solid. It is interesting to see a UI designed with different usability profiles. For instance one of Blender’s usability criteria is the avoidance of repetitive strain injury. To combat RSI mouse clicks are evenly divided between left and right mouse clicks.

Bassam Kurdali, one of the Blender developers and animators, came up to me later in the conference and said he had noticed me using PiTiVi to edit my video. He was impressed at the simplicity and slickness of the interface and how far along it is. There is plenty of room for different approaches and a real potential for cross pollination between the pro tools and the every day end user tools.

What Content Producers Want

Speaking of end users we got to hear from a bunch of them who let us know how we could support them. One of the biggest themes was that Windows tools suck and those who taught others couldn’t just tell them to go out and buy a mac (praises were heaped on iMovie and Final Cut Pro). They really want an easy to use tool, with the unfortunate note that it would have to run on Windows. One really good thing is that a lot of the non-tech content producers understood the need for free codecs. However in the end they just want a simple way to render down to DVD, You Tube, Daily Motion, iPhone, etc. and don’t want to deal with formats.

I ended up collecting a bunch of buisness cards and am toying with the idea of starting a feedback group with content producers which would get them involved in improving GNOME App usability from the perspective of those who are not yet familiar with the GNOME workflow. If we are serious about expanding our reach we need to go beyond our current self selecting internal feedback loops. The goal wouldn’t be to get these people using GNOME (though giving them a way through the apps wouldn’t be a bad thing). It would be more about getting groups outside of GNOME/Linux to be part of the process of improving GNOME. Will it be fruitful? I don’t know but it is an interesting experiment with a potential huge payoff for a little bit of effort.

Sita Sings the Blues

This good section wouldn’t be complete without the mention of Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley which is a feature length (82 minutes) animated film released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You have complete rights to watch, screen, remix and redistribute the film as long as you abide by the license. I do suggest you watch it and if you like it buy the DVD or simply donate to encourage more works like this (I bought the DVD for $20). Not only is Nina a content producer but she is heavily involved in advocating her distribution methods, going as far as documenting the process that went into releasing Sita under a creative commons license and in her work with QuestionCopyright.org.

Mozilla and the Open Video Contest

I was very impressed with Mozilla’s involvement and their push for Ogg Theora to become a base line codec for the HTML 5 video tag. They are also helping launch the upcoming Open Video Contest which would see the winner flown to the 2010 South by Southwest conference. We should probably run some sort of sister contest to encourage GNOME users to submit entries.

The Bad

It wasn’t all roses. While I feel we are reaching independent content producers way more than I would have though at this point, some of the big companies still don’t get it or are afraid of Open Video implications.

Adobe

It must be said that Adobe has been somewhat good at working with the community over long periods of time but that they just never get around to resolving key issues. What really surprised me was when on one of the industry round tables the Adobe representative pointed to their release of the Flash documentation as a shining example of this relationship. After checking with a developer of an alternative flash implementation I was told those documents are pretty much useless. Due to bugs, some of the spec just doesn’t work as written and other issues makes it impossible to write a third party Flash player.

YouTube/Google

While reportedly Chrome will ship with Ogg Theora support their flagship video site YouTube seems afraid to do so. Their rep at the round table stated some pretty audacious things such as continuing the myth that Theora wasn’t good enough when clearly that argument was directly debunked (the side by side comparisons were even playing on HDTV’s at the conference).

Even more of an issue was the representative’s idea on what Open Video meant. He declared that they would love to support Open Video but that it meant letting anybody do whatever they wanted and that doesn’t work from a buisness perspective.

Open Video isn’t about wild west, trample on rights. If anything it is about balancing the rights of content producers, end users and fair use. From what I read, YouTube’s position is that they are the 1000 pound gorilla in video distribution and at the end of the day they only believe in a user’s and content producer’s freedoms if it is walled behind their own servers. “All the world’s video” indeed.

The solution there is to drive traffic to sites like Daily Motion and Blip.tv which understand the issues involved.

Conclusion

Nothing is perfect, but we are off to a really good start. In the end it is up to us to keep the momentum going and eventually produce a better experience within the complete Open Video stack, from content production to delivery. The web was built and exploded around the concept of open technology. Let’s continue to make sure this is the case going forward. The last thing we want is the web to become the domain of a few, with creativity being stifled by restrictions in the non-open parts of the stack.

One of my biggest pet peeves is this argument:

You’ve done ***************** this much “good” so you are obligated to do more (and to my benefit first). If you don’t do so the world will implode.

I especially hate it when the person making that argument benefits from that good but doesn’t think they should contribute to it.

I do however agree with this argument:

You have done ******************* this much “good” and as a result have benefited from that good on average more than others, you have an obligation to keep putting in as much as you can. I am a beneficiary of your good and will try to add to it but I may lack the ability to contribute in any meaningful way.

On the philosophical side:

Is it more moral to get paid for the above arguments’ “good”, which frees you up to do more of the “good” or to do something else for a living with results being the scope of your “good” contributions are less than they would have been?

Those questions I don’t think there is a real answer to.

And no Spot, I’m not going to suddenly quit, I just sometimes wonder why I chose to be a public free software developer when it means I have to deal with anonymous idiots or break my own moral code on censorship.

Congrats goes to Barack Obama for making history and becoming the next president of the United States.  By all accounts the House and the Senate will also see major Democratic wins.  We now wait and see what the Democratic party will do with this mandate.  If they are smart they will act wisely and swing further centre than most majority parties have in the past.  As we have seen from the Republican mandates for the past eight years no matter how powerful a party, the stronger you are the harder you fall.  The question  has become will the Democratic party build a long term legacy or squander it, damaging their party as Bush had done in a mere eight short years? From what I have seen and read of Obama, I think I have made the correct choice when checking that box this morning. Now it is time for the US to come together, repair our image around the world and continue to be a beacon of Freedom to all.

It was quick, easy and dare I say fun.  I was a little disconcerted that the paper ballot used involves a scanner in which a poll worker stands behind and watches you put your ballot in.  I was trained on and am used to the old mechanical voting booths where I grew up in New York.  It is the one where you walk into a booth, pull a lever which closes a curtain, flip a few switches on a matrix and then pull the lever again to open the curtains and register your vote. No method is perfect which is why there is a continual search for better voting methods. There is always some sort of trust that is involved when going to the polls.

It seems that Cindy McCain didn’t like the questions the hosts on the View asked her husband and her.  You can see the View interview here.

Watching it I saw a lot of evasion from John McCain and fair tough questions being asked by the hosts of the View. Questions on how Palin was going to change Washington, on why John McCain approved ads which have been debunked as lies about Obama – a point even Carl Rove has talked about.

It just seems all of John McCain’s “straight talk” rhetoric has fallen aside to a “perception talk” agenda where his campaign hides the realities by twisting the perception to their view point. Just looking at Governor Palin who has pirouetted around her own beliefs on topics such as global warming and the war in Iraq (has God tasked us with this war?) makes me shiver thinking about what would happen if she had real power. It isn’t so much her beliefs that scare me (though it isn’t the America I want to live in) but the fact that she understands these beliefs to be unpopular so she has to sugar coat them to be more palatable to the majority of Americans. And then there is the bridge to nowhere debacle which was supposed to paint the perception of Palin as a reformer but we instead find out that she had actually only came out against it after it was killed in congress (and she still kept the money). Oh I don’t doubt she is a reformer but I simply can’t trust what she is going to reform if I can’t trust her own words.

McCain’s own performance on the View along with the actions and words of his campaign make me seriously doubt McCain is in control of this machine. There was a time I had respected the Senator but since he has replaced his straight talk with pandering and slight of hand tricks I just have no trust in him and the policies he may pursue if elected.

On the lighter side, you’ve got to love Tina Fey.

You can post whatever you want within the guidelines of the Gnome Code of Conduct (and I don’t think I have seen anything in your posts to say you have overstepped those rules).  I would fight for your right to post whatever to your blog and be aggregated even though I often find your posts illinformed.  You however should understand that others also have the right to disagree with you, and disagree with you strongly.  Throwing a temper tantrum doesn’t really help your cause, whatever that is.

This really gives a kick in the pants to those who take short cuts and lose sight of software freedom.  Kudos to Mozilla who actually has the critical mass to effect real change by endorsing Vorbis and Theora on all of their OS platforms.  Soon it will be up to the content producers to make open formats ubiquitous.  Having a delivery channel which people use on a regular basis means we can finally work from start to finish without touching a closed format if we so choose.  That to me is freedom – not forcing everyone to encode in open codecs, but to allow for those who prefer open formats the ability to deliver their content without any barriers between them and their end users. There are those who don’t want to see this happen but I have to believe that momentum is starting to swing our way.

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.