Comments on FaiF 0x22

I have some comments on today's episode of Free as in Freedom: 0x22: Elder's Methods of FOSS Activism. Obviously you should listen to it (and add FaiF to your favorite podcatcher. You will be the forth listener! ). This oggcast is the first in a series from the first Legal Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM which Karen, Bradley, Richard Fontana and I organized.

I think Bradley was critical of Ambjörn's talk not enumerating all the collaboration that has taken place in the FLOSS community. To be fair Ambjörn himself said he had tried to enumerate various examples (and has 196 or so pointers on his blog ... see the Speakers page for blog links). Karen makes the point that it is precisely these sort of events where we can learn about activisim across a broad range of our communities.

I appreciate Ambjörn's view that we can develop and use various norms and legal tools to help promote Internet Freedom generally, but sometimes activism is necessary to educate and move public policy (e.g. the SOPA protests). Indeed we seem increasingly under threat of being limited to walled application gardens or even being literally firewalled from the open Internet.

The key takeaway, I believe, is we need to collaborate more between Free Software, Open Source, Free Culture and broader Internet Freedom communities generally. In a conversation with Mike Linksvayer after the DevRoom session we discussed the challenge from a FLOSS project level of designing the licensing of software and non-software artificacts such that both could evolve together over time. This is a tricky issue which involves "or later" (plus licensing) versions and software/non-software licensing compatibility. We shared the observation -- apropos to Ambjörn's talk -- that many humanitarian or otherwise public activisim efforts often don't make FLOSS part of their agenda (and, in fact, may not even be aware of it). We need to do a much better job at this collaboration and cross-community education.

As for the logistics of the DevRoom allow my to publicly express a mea culpa. I have been to FOSDEM before and I know how challenging it is to fit "a 20lb conference in a 10lb bag" (as @spot said). I knew that 30 minute sesssions would be short... We had so many great proposals that I was happy to hear from as many as possible. However it is true that this was ultimately too short and the format did not adequately allow for Q/A, discussion, time to change DevRooms and setup for the next speaker. And I especially want to apologize to anyone who was waiting outside the DevRoom that I steadfastly refused to let in . I didn't want the FOSDEM volunteer organizers to have the University withdraw support for future conferences due to violating fire codes.

I hope everyone will be able to check out the slides and/or audio oggcasts of the talks as they become available. And, yes, we'll hopefully get a bigger room and plan for more discussion time next year!

Inbjuden tillbaks till hemlandet: Sverige

Det är en ära för mig att ha blivit inbjuden att tala på konferensen Software Passion i Göteborg, Sverige. Det här är en stad med en mer än tusenårig historia och ett område (byn Forsheda) från vilket min gammel mormor en gång utvandrade till USA för över hundra år sedan. Jag hoppas kunna lära mig lite svenska innan min resa.

This will be an exciting challenge for me because I realize that most of my public speaking in the past few years has been very much in a FLOSS context. The program at Software Passion shows quite a diversity of technologies and topics -- including proprietary technologies that I know little about. In my talk I will cover some of the great fun I've had with the Clojure programming language. Therefore I will consciously make a point to highlight the importance of "standing on the shoulders of giants".

The productivity I have enjoyed would not be possible without the stack Free Software I count on, including, but not limited to:

• Clojure
• Clojure Contrib libraries
• The noir web framework
• The leiningen dependency management and build tool
• OpenJDK
• The Redis database
• The Jenkins continuious integration server
• And, of course, the bedrock of it all: Debian GNU/Linux

Several years ago I was able to travel to Norway on a project I had with the electric vehicle company Think Global. I was able to visit my aunt in Oslo and get very close to the border of Sweden while working at the car factory in Aurskog. Indeed many of the engineers I worked with were Swedes who commuted across the border each day.

My great-grandmother, Olga, immigrated from Sweden to the United States around 1900. She was from a fairly well-to-do family in Fosheda. After some careful investigation we learned that she had fallen in love with a servant, but couldn't marry him due to family pressure. A few years later after her mother died she came to the USA with her "little brother" and started a new life here. She was studying nursing in Boston when she was asked to accompany the Minneapolis Postmaster's wife back home on the train.

Much earlier than the "personal ad" era Olga mysteriously found my great-grandfather, Andrew, within 3 days of arriving in Minneapolis and married him soon thereafter (the Swedish mafia? ) . This is the background on my Nordic roots in Minnesota.

I realize that for non-Americans the obsession with immigration history seems a little silly. I'm proud of my mixture of German, Danish, Swedish and Bohemian roots. And I'm especially excited to finally set foot in Sweden!

Noir is the new Black

Next week (Wednesday Feb 1) I will give a talk about my experiences in Clojure and noir.

Brian just sent the our local Clojure user group a pointer about the meeting at 7pm at Refactr (Thanks Brian!).

I will work to post slides here on my blog (along with other links/resources).

See you next week!

FOSDEM will be intense!

I mentioned that I'm helping to organize two DevRooms for FOSDEM 2012... And now I'm thrilled to announce the speakers and schedules for each have been posted on the FOSDEM website:

• Free Java DevRoom Schedule
• Legal Issues DevRoom Schedule

But, of course, there's more! There are main tracks, Lighting Talks, Stands, the Beer Event and the Keysigning. I want to see all my Java friends, Legal friends, Debian friends, and meet a whole new bunch of interesting hacker friends.

In a word... FOSDEM will be intense. It's crazy, busy, chaotic and charming. What's the big deal about Free Software? It's not about free beer... It's not about the most efficient means of software production... It's all about the people! See you there!

p.s. Ask me if you need help to get ready for the Keysigning (by Jan 29).

The Sunset of the DLJ

The actually sunset of the DLJ happened last summer, but it's news because of an article in OMG! Ubuntu! and Simon's followup today in Computerworld UK.

Simon's article does a good job of highlighting the role of the DLJ in the pre-OpenJDK days. Even for many of us at Sun we didn't know at the time we working on the DLJ that the plans to open source Java would be announced at JavaOne 2006. Even so it would be over a year before OpenJDK source was actually released and several more months before it was built and distributed by major Linux distributions.

Especially in the early days the DLJ bundles played an important role in the transition to the Free Java we enjoy today. In particular this enabled meaningful conversations between Sun and the community around packaging which have continued to this day on the subject of Java modularity. Yet there is one thing Simon did not mention: how many people thanked Sun for making Java available under the DLJ.

The people who were most appreciative were those using government mandated applications (e.g. tax filing in France) or financial applications (e.g. banking in Brazil). What is very important to note is that these key applications use Java applets. These applications depend on having a solid Java plugin which provides applets in modern browsers.

What the community lost in the sunset of the DLJ was the de facto plugin implementation even though it is not, in fact, part of the Java SE specification. Since Java 6 update 10 or so the Sun (now Oracle) implementations have used a new, re-architected plugin (let's call it plugin2). One of the large, remaining deltas from Oracle's closed Java and OpenJDK is the plugin: neither plugin1 nor plugin2 have been open sourced.

Here we must acknowledge the amazing community effort of the IcedTea project in Free Java and, specifically, around an open source plugin implementation. So is Java in Ubuntu? Yes. Is there a plugin in Ubuntu? Yes. Yet this is one area where the community is struggling to provide users with Java functionality they need and Oracle isn't cooperating with the community as well as they are on the bulk of OpenJDK.

My former Sun colleague David Herron has blogged about the DLJ as has a fellow Debian Java developer Sylvestre Ledru.

We not at the End Times for Java. I would even go so far as to suggest that we are now in a Java renaissance thanks to the variety of languages and projects running on the JVM. If you would like to experience the vibrance of the community please join us at FOSDEM 2012.

I do hope Oracle will decide to liberate the new plugin (only then will the DLJ R.I.P.).

You are going to find yourself immersed in legal issues

The title of this blog post is a quote from Karen in the most recent Free as in Freedom oggcast

FAIF 0x1E:

Legal issues are an inherent part of Free and open source software generally. If you get passionate about Free and open source software you are going to find yourself immersed in legal issues. It's something I think developers are really aware of... much more so than in other fields.

I consider myself to be very passionate about FLOSS and I care about the it's legal underpinnings because I see the enormous potential good FLOSS can bring to addressing the big challenges facing the planet. Continuing to enjoy the right to engage in FLOSS depends on the legal terrain which makes it possible.

We have seen the excesses of copyright maximalists in Free Culture and the damaging impact they can have. The SOPA (PIPA) debates are simply the latest chapter in that saga. Lessig points out that, at least in the USA, we will never win that war until we win the war against corruption of our Republic. We must strike the root of the problem in addition to the branches. I say we must remain vigilant about the branches as well.

FLOSS is another branch which is as important as Free Culture. Understanding that FLOSS is possible due a hack on copyright underscores how critical it is for developers to be aware of the legal environment in which their creativity can thrive. And the escalating software patent war -- especially in Java and mobile -- has had a chilling effect on innovation.

One the strengths (can we think in terms of countermeasures?) of our community is that we function out of basic principles of transparency and respect. The traditions in FLOSS like the traditions in the early open Internet form a culture of true innovation where working code drives collaboration and makes it possible to "stand on the shoulders of giants". Fontana has talked about this lex mercatoria in Free Software as an essential part of understanding the context of legal issues in FLOSS. I hope he will expand on this in his new blog.

I am optimistic that if we combine our brainpower to protect FLOSS as we do to create awesome software we can enable new kinds of working together which other fields will emulate. I can't wait to explore the frontier of the future possible.

Listen to the oggcast introduction [4:25..12:55] (at least) to hear Karen and Bradley discuss the upcoming Legal Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2012. The Legal Issues DevRoom Call For Participation closes on December 30 -- please consider submitting a talk today!

Two DevRooms for FOSDEM 2012

I am really excited to be part of two DevRooms for FOSDEM 2012: Free Java and Legal Issues.

I first participated in the Free Java DevRoom in 2007 just after Sun announced the liberation of Java. This was an amazing time to be able to represent Sun and meet the developers who had actively sought open source Java for so many years. Just after FOSDEM 2008 I left Sun, but I got involved in the the Free Java DevRoom again last year and had a blast. From the interest so far I suspect we will have even more great speakers this year!

Having been part of Sun's team that navigated tricky copyright, patent and trademark issues in publishing OpenJDK I cultivated an appreciation and fascination for the legal frameworks that make FLOSS possible. The obvious success and growth of software in our everyday lives makes the vitality of software freedom a huge concern. This year "legal geeks" will be thrilled to learn that we have just proposed a new Legal Issues DevRoom for FOSDEM. This is a "Saturday Only" DevRoom which will culminate in a one hour interactive panel with all our speakers.

Of course the big challenge with FOSDEM is there are far too many DevRooms to go to at the same time. I apologize in advance for making your decisions even trickier! I can assure you that the FOSDEM "hallway track" will be better than ever....

So please check out the CFP's for each DevRoom and submit a talk idea or share the pointer with someone who would be a great speaker.

Merci!

Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.YEAR) == 2011 && ! J1

Here we are in the middle of yet another J1 and, alas, I won't be joining folks in the City of Oracle World. Of course I'm skeptical of the "new" hotel based format (from last year)... But the reason I would want to go is, of course, the "hallway track": to see friends and colleagues like: @robilad, @alexismp, @mreinhold, @fabianenardon, @virtualsteve, @delabassee, @brjavaman, @karianna, @romainguy, @headius, @AzulSystemsPM, @jddarcy, @jfarcand, @tom_enebo, @asz and @terrencebarr.

I'm not even sure of Oracle is aware of the hallway track?

The big news recently for FLOSS enthusiasts was the sunsetting of the DLJ. When we released a redistributable version of Java under the DLJ in 2006 we heard a lot of criticism about this new, less restrictive license. The Free Java world saw it as simply "not enough". As it turns out on the same day Rich Green promised the open sourcing of Java and with this news the roar of applause was amazing. However it would take a full year before the complete publication of OpenJDK source code. And, even then, the community was frustrated by the lack of support for the Java plugin.

During this intitial period we heard from people such as the Brazilian's at FISL that the Java plugin -- now well integrated with GNU/Linux under the DLJ -- made it possible to do banking and file tax returns on their favorite platform. Meanwhile an open source plugin effort was underway. Largely through the efforts of RedHat OpenJDK gained a truly open source implementation of the plugin. However due to the lack of a public spec (and source code) it continues to be very difficult to get the exact same Java plugin behavior with the IcedTea plugin.

Before the acquisition of Sun many of us had hoped that the code for the new Java plugin would be contributed to OpenJDK. Even though Larry has a beard he clearly doesn't drink the open source Kool-Aid and thus Oracle has decided to continue the closed plugin status. Since UI developers gave up on applets long ago maybe this is just an annoyance... At the very least its a shame that we now have a completely fractured Java plugin landscape and GNU/Linux users that need applets will have to struggle (as in the bad old days) to configure their browsers correctly.

Despite this setback it does seem that Java technology is enjoying a renaissance in the form of dynamic languages built on top of the JVM. I'm hoping to help with the modularization of OpenJDK and encourage community based performance analysis tools that extend the platform.

Send me a tweet and let me know how the hallway track is going!

I Copyleft this Crowdsourcing

Fascinating news this week about success in using FoldIt to successfully crowdsource the folding of an "AIDS-like virus enzyme".

This is a milestone in imagining a blend of human and machine skills for, perhaps, one of the biggest health related challenges we have. The technology is awesome. The human creativity is awesome. The goal is awesome.

What's striking about this story is how little is told about the fruits of this effort. My guess -- and I'm perfectly happy to be corrected -- is that the large beneficiaries of this work will be pharmaceutical companies that will patent the molecules they discover can bind to such proteins. These molecules will be the basis for very important cures. And the pharma with the patent will have a monopoly on that molecule for 20 years.

So is there even attribution for the AIDS patient who donated her time to FoldIt? Could she benefit from the medication she helped bring to market (at a reduced price)?

For many years those of us in the FLOSS community have been raising the concern that software patents do not, in fact, "promote the progress in science and the useful arts". There is growing awareness that that software doesn't pass the § 101 "machine or transformation test" and mathematics -- a representation of software -- is not patent-able.

The other large customers of the current patent system are big pharma. Do pharma patents promote progress? Would the drugs come to market anyway? An economic analysis of this market would be enlightening.

If the court of public opinion pushes Facebook to disclose privacy policy (and implement modest controls) doesn't FoldIt owe it to the community to at least disclose the "terms of service"?

New Blog

Welcome to my new blog! I've been meaning to restart my blog for a long time...

Late last year I re-launched my consulting business and I've been crazy busy since then (yes, this is a very good thing)!

You may have seen me microblogging on identi.ca, but probably not this weekend as StatusNet is down for maintenance.

I'd like to make a shoutout to all the geeks that are lucky enough to be at strangeloop this weekend!

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

--Tom