La Voz De La Revoluccion

With the Climategate scandal and the Econolypse, we now have two major issues in our society where hidden activities were revealed. In the case of the economy, the schemers in the financial industry were surprised when their "sure thing" collapsed, leaving an expensive mess for the rest of us to clean up. The administration (both President Bush's administration and President Obama's administration) acted to protect the banks and insurance companies, which (not coincidentally) helped them avoid the full brunt of the collapse they spawned.

Not that I am claiming administration misconduct. Not at all. The government has relied upon a fairly small and intimate group of financial leaders for much of its economic intelligence for some time. Because those leaders are known and trusted, their advice was solicited--and taken--even as outsiders shown the light on the flawed assumptions and the ethical lapses which may have contributed to the problem. The effect, however, is stil the same. Financial executives avoid prison, some of them even get to keep their bonuses, and you and I will spend the next thirty years paying off the loans (mostly from China) taken out to finance the bailouts.

In the case of the economy, those of us outside of the core financial group know that what those within the group say is unreliable and self-serving. That is, the advisors who are telling the government to prop up badly-managed commercial banks, investment banks, credit card banks, and insurers, happen to be mostly those who currently or recently ran those very companies, and whose actions contributed to the crisis. When everyone else in the country knows or should know that lenders were persuading borrowers to take on more debt than they could handle, the government still believes that the problem was caused by greedy and lazy borrowers!

Similarly, we are being asked to give up the energy use which has lifted us in one hundred and fifty years from dependence upon human and animal labor for almost all of our economic activitiesto much of the world becoming a push-button society. I press a key on the keyboard and a letter appears on the screen. After a few hundred or a few thousand such keypresses, I press another set of keys and the text is submitted to a server. You press a few keys and you can now read what I wrote.

The problem here is that Climategateisn't just some "hacker" breaking into a government site and posting a few e-mail messages. There are around 1,100 e-mails, plus thousands of documents, including computer program source code, apparently taken from some kind of internal investigation or storage. (FOI folder... Freedom Of Information? Maybe these were relevant to one or more FOI requests and were about to be deleted instead?)

Yes, once again, the administration is going to avoid acting on allegations of possible ethics lapses in the pursuit of a goal. This time, the goal is restrictive controls on energy use, particularly on energy uses which emit carbon dioxide, a gas which stimulates plant growth (and enables us to eat when photosynthesis changes CO₂ and H₂O into sugars). Now, of course, it isn't government wrongdoing so much as it is continuing to rely upon information sources that are and have been believed to be reliable. One of the arguments they use for relying upon the same advisors is published, "peer reviewed" studies, one of the areas that Climategate reveals that leading climate researchers used pressure to prevent publication and funding of contrary research.

Likewise, those who try and understand what CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) is about, who try and understand the science and the evidence behind it, soon start to wonder about the CA part. Yes, the globe is warming. I thank God for this, because I recall reading that the Pilgrims in what is now Massachusetts were reduced to five grains of corn (maize) per person per day one Winter. Why? The cold Northeast Winter caused their imported Englishcrops to fail, and they hadn't yet fully converted over to domestic (cold-hardy) plants. The warming is not in dispute. What is in dispute is how much warming there is, how much of that warming is due to man's activities, and how much of that "anthropogenic" warming is actually due to carbon dioxide emissions, rather than land-use and other issues.

When people attempted over the past several years to obtain the data used to formulate the presentations of doom and gloom, the "climate science" establishment has dragged its feetand refused to produce it. When the data does finally come out, it very often isn't sufficient to support the pronouncements made from it. For example, one study used tree ring data to show the now-familiar hockey-stick shape. It turned out that there were twelve trees in one area of Siberia that were used in the blade of the stick, and much of the warming was from one tree out of twelve.

Despite questions about things such as whether a "global" temperature model should depend upon trees in every part of the world and whether the enhanced growth rings are truly proxies for temperature (versus, for example, available soil moisture or available sunlight), leading climate researchers built their speculations upon these tree ring studies, and then (according the e-mails in Climategate) altered the results of some studies to hide prior natural climate variations and the recent decoupling of tree ring growth from published measures of temperatures (a decline that had to be hidden, again according to the e-mails in Climategate).

In all these things, we see the government continuing to rely upon information sources now known to be unreliable. Is human activity causing potentially-catastrophic global temperature changes? Well, we do not know that for sure. What we do know is that ten or fifteen thousand years ago, the last ice age ended, and the temperature has been gradually increasing ever since. Not in a smooth line, however, but more of an undulating up-and-down motion, with warm periods tending to get warmer than prior warmer periods and cooler periods also tending to be warmer. We also know that there has been little or no measurable warming since the 2000-2002 period--not that such a short time period indicates the end of the warming--and that there are some troubling issues (nearly all of which bias measurements toward the warm side) with a large number of the measuring stations used in climate studies. (And, of course the unexplained "boost" that the computer programs add to recent temperature measurements and the corresponding "cut" that is applied to older measurements, which often adds up to just about the entire measured increase over the past fifty to one hundred years.)

We also know that there are Viking cemeteries on Greenland which were formerly within thriving farming communities.These are now permafrost areas. This indicates that the Medieval Warming Period (prior to the Little Ice Age) was warmer than today. This natural variation is one reason we should not lose our heads over "climate change". Just a few hundred years ago, it may have been warmer than now, and there is no way to pin that earlier warmth on human CO₂ emissions.

Now, the point I am making is not really about the climate, and it is not really about the economy. If you are a thinking person at all, you will soon realize that the global media are leading people around by rings in their noses, and that one should not be foolish enough to believe everything that the mainstream media (MSM) tells you. In other words, this is not news to thinkers.

My point is this: there are a lot of commonly-held beliefs out there, beliefs that are promoted by the media and which are organized by and benefit particular organizations. The truth will come out, and many of us will see the emperor's new clothes are imaginary. Whether that belief is that people only want to use Windows (or that Windows is more-familiar and easier to use than <pick-an-operating-system>) or that the solution to warmer climate is returning us to the age of animal labor (with the attendant starvation and freezing deaths of billions of people), many of us will eventually see through it. We may not be able to overcome the entrenched economic and political interests backing said beliefs, but we will know those beliefs to be false.

The Federal Government of Germany [has decided] to implement use of the OpenDocument Format (ODF). According to the plan, German federal agencies will be able to receive, read, send and edit ODF documents beginning no later than 2010.

Germany Joins Growing Ranks of Governments Adopting ODF | Open Document

It is encouraging to see the continued onward march of truly open standards in the face of corporate influence. I am looking forward to seeing renewed proposals to standardize on ODF here in California, in Texas, and other states.

To be sure, some issues remain to be solved. How can the government continue to make use of existing software and processes with the new formats? Which documents presently stored in older formats should be converted to the new formats? How should the conversion be accomplished? And most importantly, which copy (old format or new) is now the legal record?

Truth be told, these same issues were already ahead. Remembering that the market-leading office software changed file formats in the 2007 version, every government agency, world-wide, should be asking these very same questions about now. One does not know how long support for the former formats will be available in the market leader's products. It wasn't too long ago that a "security" update removed support for older versions of those same formats. (Which was a lot of fun for those of us who support users. Suddenly, they had documents/spreadsheets/presentations that they had been using for years, but they could no longer open. After some outcry, the vendor released a fix that rolled back the changes, but we had to manually apply it.)

The point is, government documents are the property of the people. Proprietary formatted documents, even those which are supposedly open (but really proprietary formats in drag) require citizens to purchase the proprietary product or face a loss of fidelity. In some cases, the document may be unreadable without the proprietary vendor's product.

This is why we must continue to work to spread openness throughout government.

Open source, open standards, open government. It just works better.

Tags: ODF, Open Standards, Government

The Open Way Works

C|Net open source blogger (and Alfresco vice-president) Matt Asey gives an example of open software being the better choice for an organization that is informed about its needs and involved in creating solutions that fill those needs.  Using NASA as an example, he shows how a technically-competent organization can make use of FLOSS to better meet its own needs.

If your organization is technically-competent, why are you running the Windows nanny operating system when you could better serve the organization's needs with an open system such as Linux or one of the BSDs?

Late in 2006, Novell signed a patent license agreement with Microsoft. What was particularly galling about it was that the agreement was specially-written to get around restrictions in patent licensing that were built into the GPLv2, the license that covers Linux. The license was also designed to apply to Novell's paid customers, but not to any other users of Linux and other Free / Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS).

Under the agreement, Novell is establishing clear leadership among Linux platform and open source software providers on interoperability for mixed-source environments. As a result, Microsoft will officially recommend SUSE Linux Enterprise for customers who want Windows and Linux solutions. Additionally, Microsoft will distribute coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support, so that customers can benefit from the use of an interoperable version of Linux with patent coverage as well as the collaborative work between the two companies.

By mid-2007, Xandros and Linspire had also signed such deals.

One of the biggest and most important things that happened this year, from a user freedom perspective, is the release of the GNU General Public License, version 3.  This version of the license is meant to patch a couple of holes that were found in GPLv2. 

FSF head Richard M. Stallman speaks about the reasoning behind the new license. [OGG VORBIS audio]  At its release, RMS spoke about these things. [OGG THEORA video, if your media player cannot view this, I recommend VLC.]

Looking back in five to ten years, this will be one of the three biggest events in software this year, the other two being Microsoft's launch of Vista to a decidedly unenthusiastic reception, and the international community's rejection of Microsoft's OOXML file formats (despite attempts to bulldoze over the objections) with the steady take-up of the competing ODF file formats.

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Tags: GPLv3, ODF, OOXML

Mac Expected To Gain Market Share

An article in Investor's Business Daily forecasts increased market share for Apple's Macintosh computers. Thanks to OLPC, I expect increased market share for computers that run on Linux (and BSD) as well. The truth is, the days when people blindly bought whatever Microsoft offered are ending. It may not be next year, but a major market share slide is ahead for Microsoft.

Barely 18 months ago, there were some rumors that Microsoft would give the IIS source code to one of their semi-open-source projects, hoping that by turning it loose with a sort-of open source license, it would gain some traction.  Now, IIS is within striking distance of Apache.

There is pretty of bawling out there, but this can be a good thing.

There are now three active branches of Apache: the 1.3.x line, the 2.0.x line, and the 2.2.x line.  All three are extremely versatile and fairly complex.  For a number of environments, a simpler and smaller alternative is better suited.  Those sites should consider Lighttpd or other lighter-weight Web servers. The open source way is to "let a hundred flowers bloom."

Depending on one single kind of anything, whether it be operating system, database, programming or scripting language, or Web server, is an invitation for someone to find the one flaw that takes it out. Just as we should not all use one office suite, we should not all use one Web server.  Now let's go out and build up a dozen FLOSS web servers and get them all on the list with an overall share that far exceeds closed-source proprietary products.

Microsoft recently made claims that free and open source software (FLOSS) such as the Linux operating system and the OpenOffice.org office applications suite violate hundreds of its patents.

A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.

But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google, Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

There are a few misunderstandings about free software in the article, but let us focus directly on the point that is being made: Microsoft is threatening to use patents to eliminate competition that meets users' needs better than Microsoft's own offerings do, at a lower cost to those users.

Patents should not apply to software anyway, as software is merely the embodiment of mathematical algorithms.  Can you imagine being required to license the Pythagorean Theorem in order to use it?  A² + B² = C².  That would put every middle school and high school math teacher out of business.  Within a few years, the cashiers at Gree-C-Burger would not be able to count up change and the industry would have to use remote call centers to handle drive-through ordering. Just wait until someone installs a cash collector similar to the ones in vending machines that never work correctly.

There is even a new patent for the use of coded URLs to enable single-click orders of repeat items.  That one has lots of prior art, but it also has the ability to be manipulated: somebody's bot could crawl through and trigger hundreds of orders unintentionally. 

Patents are for new inventions, that is, physical objects that do something in an previously unknown way.  When we misuse them in areas where they aren't suited, such as software and business processes, we wind up with needing to license the right to embed a USERID code in a link when we send out e-mail newsletters or licensing the right to use an online "campus" site for education and training purposes.

Free software is not necessarily freeware.  Freeware is software with a price of zero.  Free software, on the other hand, may cost money, but comes with a license that guarantees your freedom.  Free software is good for the end user and the programmer, and anyone that opposes that is actually arguing against their own  customers and employees.

A U.S. News & World Report story, echoed on Yahoo! Finance, explains how the ability to run Windows better inside of Mac OS X is helping make Apple more profitable.

Virtualization is helping free computer users, including business enterprises, from captivity to their hardware or operating system vendors.  I am looking forward to the day when most Windows licenses are sold for the purpose of running the OS inside of Linux, FreeBSD, or similar Unix-like operating systems (including Mac OS X).

Already, those who use FLOSS within virtual machines on the server side are beginning to appreciate the stability that usually characterizes "enterprise" versions of the software.  It will not be long before they begin to replace proprietary operating systems and applications with their FLOSS equivalents or to use FLOSS to host those proprietary systems inside of VMs.

We all know the truth: the days of proprietary software controlling the general market is ending.  Proprietary will evolve to be specialized niche products and enhanced functionality products--but the general market is going toward FLOSS rather quickly.  The pushback on Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007's OOXML formats is showing that people are willing to abandon the leading proprietary products if they do not meet their needs.

In my home, for example, one year ago, there were 12 computers, 2 of which had non-Microsoft operating systems. There are now four that we are using with Windows XP, and one of those is set to convert to a Ubuntu Linux derivative (Linux Mint) as soon as they come out with a version based on the Ubuntu 7.04 family.  The current version of Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu 6.10) automatically picked up the wireless card and all other hardware.  :-)