SunMink

Simon Phipps's other Weblog
(a WebMink in the Sun)

ACTA secrecy is in fact a cynical game being played by the analogue economy (great phrase) to defend itself against us - you and me - the beating heart of the new digital economy and the connected society. The attempt to build a meta-national treaty-based fait accomplis has to be secret because too many of us are now intelligent and informed enough to derail it if there was any transparency or honesty. What is "piracy" in this context? It is the attempt to steal the future of culture and democracy from every one of us. We have in our hands a true test of global democracy and we dare not fail.

And that's hardly a surprise becuase AGPL is purely about license-derived software freedom. We're on beyond licenses now, and we need to condition people to consider all the degrees of freedom and not just one.

In at number two is the OpenOffice.org community. Great work, everyone.

"Revising a programming language that’s in active use by millions of developers is no small task. Sun neither can nor should do it alone, so I hereby invite everyone who participated in the earlier closures conversations—as well as anyone else with an informed opinion—to join us."

US senators, that is. I'm sure the Commission will completely ignore them.

"Government is the unelected incubus which needs parliament only in order to cloak itself in its electoral legitimacy."

From which we learn that it is in your health interests to engage now to protest about the secrecy behind ACTA and to its terms, and if you are in the UK to the proposed Digital Economy Bill. Just walking away from these outrages puts you at greater risk from a heart attack.

From Forbes, no less: "In 2009, 30 million people sit unemployed in America. Yet, the speculators have managed to lift the stock market up, and the media pretends that we're having a recovery." -- As I have said in every keynote for many years, when you create a system, you create the game that plays it and if the system remains unchanged it becomes the game.

"It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry ... as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system. ... What isn't in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy." -- Awful, shameful stuff. And the fact the Tories aren't speaking against it means we can expect no better from them.

As if Europe's men needed more encouragement.

Until the end of January instead of the middle. At this point it's all just more blows to a bruised body.

These are great questions which deserve (but won't receive) honest answers. By the way, I hate the name of this party and will not join or support it until it chooses a name which does not demean the victims of crimes at sea and give the pro-big-media lobby a perfect talking point with which to discredit these great arguments.

Paul Graham gets it spot on again. Apple's attitude is Google's biggest asset in the battle for the mobile market.

Looks like non-US developers can now submit software for the Java Store, although they can't charge for it. Glacial, but the destination is worth heading for I think.

This fits in with the populism-over-wisdom approach characterise by UK politics at the moment. Sugar is not the worst possible role model for today's connected society, but he has to come close. Another Mandelson decision, I am sure.

I agree with (the ever remarkable) Quinn here. My children are now old enough to tell me if I lived up to this ideal, which is a bit scary.

A bit of apocalyptic sci-fi, but no less plausible than the other scenarios.

Closures still causing debate after all these years. As I understand it (and I'm not close to the situation so I may be wrong), work continues on JDK7 in OpenJDK. When the JCP gets unstuck, JSRs will get submitted, and the expert group will then be able to decide what to keep/add. Pragmatism, community, open source.

"While the government and the music industry posture about illegal filesharing, smaller, smarter companies are simply out-competing it" -- Copyright abuse of most kinds is just a message to the market saying "business model available". We don't need new laws to protect the incumbents, we need entrepreneurs to outpace them.

While these proposed reforms of the US system are to be welcomed, they fail to address - or even acknowledge - the real issues, which are to do with the way patents are used to support demands for injunctive relief and demands from non-practicing patent holders. Both allow extortion of the "nice business you have there, shame if anything happened to it" kind and need urgent attention, especially in the ICT industry.

Very worthy and very broad.

Excellent news here - I hope they follow through fully and don't find a way to make it closed at the 11th hour.

Great story about using a Googlewhack to monitor for researchers pursing a secret.

Answer: Yes. So why do the labels want to kill it off? Because they don't. Translation: All this toxic law to cut people off the internet is all about protecting big businesses with tired business models and not about protecting music artists, art or culture. Shame on you, Lord Mandelson.

I do hope it's actually a hearing and not a kangaroo court. So far the EC spokespeople that have responded on the record seem to treat all counter-arguments with very little respect, which is probably what finally made Oracle snap on Monday.

Very interesting language, even if it's yet another extension of Google's hegemony.

While the sentiment is a common on, as Matt says it's a bit rich coming from SAP. I can't help thinking this is more to do with their frustration that the EU didn't include Java in their Statement of Objection despite SAP's best efforts to join in with the rest of the companies busily trying to advantage themselves in the name of "competition".

US Department of Justice issues a statement that's the diplomatic equivalent of a challenge to the EU regulator.

Completely agree with the points made here. The deep evil of software patents is less their actual enforcement in the cases where there is merit. It's the many, many cases where they are used cynically to force out-of-court payments with menaces, as illustrated here. The absolute minimum changes needed to the system are to outlaw this sort of practice or at very least make any money extorted be repayable with interest in the event the patent is later overturned.

The European Commission declares war

Looks like the gloves are off.

Bad news for software freedom. Yes, it's pragmatic, but it means the diseased status quo of the mobile industry is infecting Android. (And yes, I have fought every instance of Sun doing the same thing)

DAISY is a talking book format that allows texts to be read out loud - especially valuable for the visually impaired. Today saw the launch of a new add-on for OpenOffice.org that makes creation of DAISY talking books easy. Great news, congrats to Vincent & the team.

I like this reflection from Chris Messina. The OpenOfficeMouse is just part of the rich flora and fauna that happens when you're in a place that's truly open. It's not in any way associated with Sun or endorsed by the OpenOffice.org project, just an excursion into entrepreneurship by an enthusiast.

How long before the "advance passenger data" required by airlines includes your Facebook and Twitter IDs?

I saw this from Highway 17 near Los Gatos and thought it must have hit Felton - but from the various accounts it must have actually been much further away and much higher. In which case, it was an enormous fireball over the ocean that made a heck of a splash.

Michael Geist put the evidence together from the available "leaks" and shows us all why ACTA is anti-open, anti-freedom. If democracy means anything today we need to mobilise popular opposition to this disgusting travesty before it's too late.

EFF's title sums up the purpose of ACTA nicely. It's a secret work by the copyright fascists to lock down their business model before we all realise what's going on, and to do so at a trans-national level so that no country is empowered to challenge it. Dirty, dirty, dirty.

Once you're past the tabloid sensationalism, there's an insight in this piece - that the copyright fascists tend to concentrate on monetising a cult of personality whose actual music doesn't stand too much scrutiny.

Could prove useful, although I couldn't make the list of places work.

Important to understand how this model works as it will be at the core of the disruption all technology businesses face from Google over the coming years.

Dinosaur alert.

Looks like the extension capability in Chrome is already getting plenty of exercise. If the ones I'm hooked on in Firefox show up, maybe Chrome will get more of my attention.

I'll be opening this conference (which is mainly in English) in the splendid town of Bozen (or Bolzano). Come for the wine (the local Lagrein grape is great) if not for the tremendous content, which includes Sam Ruby.

And naturally this will be the story with internet downloads as well. All the fuss from the big media companies - and their manipulation of legislation through their powerful joint lobbying with the pharmaceutical and software industries - will be shown to have been based on false assumptions depending more on a desire to retain their oligopoly than on any benefits to society.

A thing of beauty, not to say obsessiveness.