Expectations:

A little over a week ago I participated in a camp/event/conference/ that threw together 12 different networked based-groups/phenomenon/organizations. They got to do what many often can’t do: spend some time working face-to-face as well as thinking about about questions of un(organizational) growth/ungrowth. Some of us spent some time learning about the nature of networked coordinations and organizations from these groups. There is a lot I could write about but, in part because I was in Amsterdam for a week, I am now playing serious catch up, but there are a few things that really struck me both of which relate to expectations, which I thought worth jotting down.

Generally present were the following types of groups: open source projects (such as Blender), tech-oriented activist projects (Dyne), non-tech oriented projects (such as Free Dimensional), artistic-tech projects (such as GOTO10), artistic projects (Upgrade), academic-activist (Edu Factory) and others which are harder to classify (such as Gender Changes, and FLOSS Manuals).

One thing that came out during the plenary sessions, which is when we got together as a large group to debate and discuss, is that technically oriented open source projects are at times singled out for not being “inclusive.” That is, people pointed out that most projects expect you to contribute technically in order to participate (and don’t necessarily offer people the training/capacity so you can participate). I have heard a version of this many many and many times before and find it to be a curious (and generally unproductive) accusation, though I understand why the confusions arises.

I say confusion because most of these projects are not overtly set up to be inclusive/technically pedagogical, and this is perhaps the key point —they don’t purport to be though many folks think this is part of their overall message/mission. Because these free software projects are open source, this, for some, somehow automatically translates into the political projects of inclusivity (that is, training folks so that they can become part of this world). And yet some other projects, such as Edu Factory and GoTo10, which are run as tight-knit of collectives, are rarely accused of not being inclusive. Why should this be?

I raise this mostly because I find it interesting, pointing to the way certain terms or phrases (Freedom, Openness) combined with the visibility of FLOSS projects, automatically generate other expectations and meanings even if they don’t actually exist. I also raise it because I think it is an unfair expectation to have of these communities only in so far as most of them are full of folks busy hacking up technology and this in and of itself, as I have written about before is worthwhile politically. And yet If one wants to make them more inclusive, then one can go ahead and bring into being such a project for most of them are quite open to various initiatives to enlarge the scope of participation. These projects can be internal to projects or external to them. That is, self-initiative goes a long way in this world, and has helped changed the terrain of participation and inclusivity and I am sure will continue to do so.

Which brings me to my second point about expectations. Many people complain that open source is not easy to use. While this was entirely, 1000% true prior to 1998, every passing day makes this statement harder to stand by. I imagine in another 10 years, there will be many many programs that are as usable for the novice user as proprietary software. They had to play serious catch-up and I think have done a decent job. In some regards, all that was and is needed is time because time has already shown that usability has improved leaps and bounds. And yet there is still something odd about the accusations, which my friend tulpje but in the following way “One would never accuse the Zapatistas for not having their military might/shit together like the US army, so why accuse open source for not being the mightiest software our there?) While I actually think that free software has already and will continue to give proprietary firms a run for their money in a way that a rag-tag guerrilla army can’t do with a national army, it is nonetheless important to couch one’s responses and accusations in terms of the constraints and realities of these projects.

That said, I still think such expectations reflect important hopes and desires. They show us just how profoundly free software/open source has, simply by virtue of its existence, inspired many to follow suite politically, turning to FLOSS as a beacon of possibility.

Hi everyone,

So do people know of a relatively famous book (academic, fiction, non-fiction trade) published by a female author and under a Creative Commons license?

If you are in the NY-area and would like to help out with the project described below, they are looking for volunteers. Help FLOSSIFY the enormously popular book Digital Foundations. The event is being hosted Feb 6-8 at the lovely Eyebeam with some Free as in Beer and Grub provided!

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FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations
For a long time educational courses have been cheap marketing
for proprietary software companies. Can a student really afford all
those expensive softwares required by the courses? No. Ever hear of a
software company kicking up a fuss because students are using
‘unofficial’ versions? Well, it does happen but not often. And why not?
Because proprietary software companies know, as the universities know,
that once the students leave their training they will be indoctrinated
with those tools and simply slipstream into being paid up proprietary
software citizens. Simply put, unlicensed software used in education is
tolerated because it is cheap marketing.

This is how tools become ‘industry standards’.

FLOSS Manuals is fighting this flow by converting textbooks that
use proprietary software to using free software in their examples.

We call this process “FLOSSify”. We convert the book from
closed software to Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) hence we
‘FLOSSify’ the book.

Our first text book is the wonderful Digital Foundations book produced
by Michael Mandiberg and Xtine Burrough
(http://digital-foundations.net/). Its a text book designed to teach
software by teaching design. The current toolset it uses is the Adobe
Creative Suite and we will convert these examples entirely to using free
software.

FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations will focus on a fun 3 day event at
Eyebeam, NYC. Anyone is welcome to attend and some food and beer will be
provided. Come and meet some of your old geek friends, make some new,
and help make a step towards unshackling education from proprietary
software.

FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations
Eyebeam, New York City
Feb 6-8
starts 10ish
finishes when we are done
fast connection, a table, some chairs, and beer and food provided
contact adam@flossmanuals.net for more info

venue:

http://eyebeam.org/

540 W. 21st Street, (between 10th and 11th Avenues)
New York, NY 10011
Tel. 212.937.6580 Fax: 212.937.6582

I am sure this is making the rounds but this seems like an appropriate place for this list: If Programming Languages Were Religions. My favorite description:

Lisp would be Zen Buddhism – There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach – if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it’s not a language at all; others say that it’s the only language that makes sense.

Speaking of computer languages and projects and religious holy wars, in the last few weeks I have been totally intrigued by the culture being built by the Ruby on Rails “guys.” As a researcher of Free and Open Source Software, I, like others, actually tend to see the similarities more than the difference between these two poles (in part because I focus on practice, not on the purist ideologies or two ideologues, you know who I am taking about) but it seems to me—-and I could be wrong here but I suspect I am not—-that Ruby on Rails is producing a unique Open Source culture, one that really diverges from some of the core principles of Free Software, much more so than other Open Source projects like Apache.

The rail guys as I have heard, are Open Source evangelists of a certain stripe, who are quite “cultish” (you know, it is “weird if you don’t use github, a Mac, TextMate).

What do you think of Ruby on Rails? Are the attacks fair? Are they a bunch of douchebags, as this (very incisive) post argues? Is it where Open Source meets and marries, for better or for worse, the Web 2.0 craze?

If I could clone me, this is definitely one line of research, I would love to dive into right now but since I can’t, your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

If you don’t know about this great project, you should. The nitty gritty details are to be found here.

FLOSS Manuals Release Circumvention Book, How To Bypass Internet
Censorship

December 4, 2008, Amsterdam

A new book released by FLOSS Manuals, How to Bypass Internet Censorship,
describes circumvention tools and explains why you might want to use
them, and honestly describes the risks you must consider before
circumventing blockers or monitors. Blockers and monitors restrict
access to areas of the Internet, and this book describes simple
techniques for bypassing those restrictions. The book can be read or
downloaded for free as a PDF from flossmanuals.net, or you can purchase
a high-quality printed copy of the 200 page book through Lulu, an
on-demand printer, at http://www.lulu.com/content/4904448 for €10.83
($14.00).

The growth of the Internet has been paralleled by attempts to control
how people use it, motivated by a desire to protect children,
businesses, personal information, the capacity of networks, or moral
interests, for example. Some of these concerns involve allowing people
to control their own experience of the Internet (for instance, letting
people use spam-filtering tools to prevent spam from being delivered to
their own e-mail accounts), but others involve restricting how other
people can use the Internet and what those other people can and can’t
access. The latter case causes significant conflicts and disagreements
when the people whose access is restricted don’t agree that the blocking
is appropriate or in their interest. Problems also arise when blocking
mechanisms and filters reduce access to useful business, health,
educational, and other information.

Because of concerns about the effect of internet blocking mechanisms,
and the implications of censorship, many individuals and groups are
working hard to ensure that the Internet, and the information on it, are
freely available to everyone who wants it. There is a vast amount of
energy, from commercial, non-profit and volunteer groups, devoted to
creating tools and techniques to bypass Internet censorship. Some
techniques require no special software, just a knowledge of where to
look for the same information. Programmers have developed a variety of
more capable tools, which address different types of filtering and
blocking. These tools, often called “circumvention tools” help Internet
users access information that they might not otherwise be able to see.
This book documents simple circumvention techniques such as a cached
file or web proxy, and also describes more complex methods using Tor,
which stands for The Onion Router, involving a sophisticated network of
proxy servers.

How to Bypass Internet Censorship was written by eight writers in a
FLOSS Manuals ‘book sprint’ – a week-long intensive writing session, and
it also includes content from many different authors’ previous works on
the subject.
(more…)

I am not holding my breath but I think the B-man could in theory at least be convinced of running freedom on his laptop.

I have blogged about it before, but I will blog about it again as it is that cool: SISU. According to its author, Ralph Amissah, “Susu was born of the need to find a way, with minimal effort, and for as wide a range of document types as possible, to produce high quality publishing output in a variety of document formats.” And really what it does it makes reading on the web a whole lot easier. He can only throw up Free Material and so his options are a little limited but he has recently added Christopher Kelty’s Two Bits, making it easier to read than ever. We just finished reading a about 3 chapters of the book for my class (wish I had known about the SISU for my students but oh well, next time) and here is the latest entry from one of my students covering the birth and development of F/OSS and ending with some questions about Free Culture. Good stuff, if I can say so myself.

Ten Easy Ways to Attract Women to Your Free Software Project?

I am a little to sick with a cold now to say anything substantive. I agree in spirit with a lot of what the author says though I still think that part of the problem emerges way before the free software project. I still want to know, in other words, why girls/women are not hacking away at a younger age, which puts them at a disadvantage when and if they decided to join a project.

Also, though the author as an important caveat in one of his footnotes:

[10] Throughout this article I make a lot of generalizations about how “men” and “women” behave. Obviously men and women are not monolithic groups, and there’s a lot of variation, so this is just short hand. There are some important differences that apply in the real world, though, whether because of nature or nurture. Indeed, in writing this article, I have taken the assumption that many of the issues are really just manifestations of lifestyle differences, and it’s largely because of lifestyle issues that I feel I can identify with many of the problems that women face when dealing with “hacker culture” in general and “free software” in particular.

I am still more than a little bothered by the essentialized portrayal of females/males and the concomicant technlogical determinism as well.

Thoughts?

Last weekend at the Software Freedom Day party, I was a little surprised to find myself among hundreds of attendees and supporters. Even if NYC is not known, like Silicon Valley is, for its vibrant tech scene, this event reminded me that we definitely have a thriving community of programmers and advocates but we have lacked a central “place” to check for computer-related events in the area.

At least until now. James Vasile, a lawyer at the Software Freedom Law Center will now be publishing an event feed. Please send him an email if there is any event you want advertised (contact details on his page), you can subscribe here, and here is a calendar.

Parties around the world were held yesterday to celebrate Software Freedom Day. I went to the NYC party which attracted an impressive number of people who were mingling and celebrating on the beautiful rooftop of Limegroup/Limewire office. Here are a few pictures and a short video of Eben Moglen who has done a whole lot to make software freedom a reality today.