links for 2007-06-11

Microsoft Office support rage

It is exactly for the following reason that I strongly dislike doing support for Windows. I have one client that I’m helping out at the moment in between Waugh Partners work, and it is driving me nuts!

The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150002). Click on OK to terminate the application.

This behavior may occur if you install Office 2003 and Windows XP Service Pack 1a (SP1a) on your computer, and do any of the following:
• You upgrade your Windows XP Home-based computer to Windows XP Professional.
• You reinstall Windows XP on your computer.
• You perform a repair of Windows XP on your computer.

Support message found here.

So basically, if I run a repair, which I did, it’ll give me a random error that doesn’t mean anything. And the fix is to apply a service pack.

What the…!!!

links for 2007-05-15

Openness – how open is FLOSS?

Having spent a long time in the FLOSS world both in community and industry roles, I started to see a serious disconnect between the industry and community perspectives on FLOSS about 5 years ago. I mean a disconnect that went beyond philosophical and into the practical, and this is largely because is a rapidly expanding userbase and industry around FLOSS. Community participants in FLOSS have a different understanding and expectation of openness than people in industry, and this difference is unfortunately being used to undermine the core values that make FLOSS more than just another technology set. The issue is that for all the well meaning of the 4 freedoms of the FSF or the Open Source Definition of the OSI, people can simply take those licences and not subscribe to any of the other attributes of openness that are expected of a FLOSS project and still get the good name of being a FLOSS project.

Openness has been proven time and time again to be the way forward. We saw it with TCP/IP, with HTTP, and now with FLOSS projects like Apache. Openness provides a platform for innovation, collaboration, an open and competitive market, and a sustainable approach to a digital future. In the same vein, a more closed approach may in some cases also be appropriate. For instance some popular and successful FLOSS projects have relatively closed development models controlled by an individual or a single company. An understanding of the degree of openness in software helps people understand the implications of the software model and also the implications in using the software.

In the spirit of discovering the core principles of openness, Jeff and I spent some time working on a model to help explain openness in such a way that it couldn’t not be undermined. We came up with 5 Foundations of Open:

  • Open Source – the conditions surrounding the project source code. Usually defined within the licence terms.
  • Open Standards – the data, communication and other standards used within a project, for example, APIs, protocols, & documentation norms.
  • Open Knowledge – the documentation, project information, decision making, communication archives and any other content related to the project.
  • Open Governance – the structure of the organisation that defines who participates in a project and the terms of participation. Includes decision making, and any practical or policy limitations on participation.
  • Open Marketplace – the ability for any organisation to build a business around a project. Includes practical, legal and technological limitations to building an open marketplace around the project.

As we can see, above is a far broader understanding of openness than is generally subscribed to. A project may decide to have a more closed approach to any of these 5 vectors, and sometimes for good reasons, however by looking at all software (not just FLOSS) using these vectors people will be able to have a good understanding of how open the software is and what that means for using it, developing on it, building a business around it and so on and so forth.

I’m currently building some metrics around this to help determine the openness of any software, and will announce here when it is done.

Edit: This is an idea Jeff and I have worked on for some time, so I can’t take all the credit 🙂 Thank you Jeff!

Statement of IP Principles for Australian Government Agencies

Last year Linux Australia put in a response to an Australian Government review of their IP principles. Our response was largely based on the idea that the terms under which Government IP and maintained should be done so with the best public good in mind. We suggested that in the case where the IP was not to be commercialised (such as some CSIRO and NICTA commercial ventures) that they consider clear and open licenses (such as Creative Commons for content and Open Source licences for software), reduced complexity of access to IP (easily searchable and downloadable online rather than having to send a request which takes both time and money for every request), and storing data in Open Standards data formats to ensure sustainable long term access to Government IP.

They have just released their final statement of IP principles for the Australia Government, and although I am still working through it there are both some good and difficult points about it. The press release states:

“Government agencies will have to be responsive to opportunities for the commercial use of IP by the private sector. Sometimes it is appropriate for Government to maintain public ownership of IP such as crucial defence or national security IP.

“In other cases, agencies should consider the benefits for innovation and employment, particularly in the information technology sector, of enabling the government contractors who developed the IP to commercialise it.” – Attorney-General Philip Ruddock

I’m glad our Attorney General sees but two uses of Government IP. Commercialise inhouse or allow others to commercialise. How about the crazy notion that some Government IP should be available to the public? Government already does this in some cases and there is a lot of Government information that absolutely should be freely available to the public.

There is obviously a desire to learn how to better share Government IP:

“Agencies should encourage public use and easy access to copyright material that has been published…”

However there is also a strong bent towards commercialisation of IP, protectionism, and the responsibility of agencies to commercialise wherever possible, which although important for a number of agencies that commercialise some IP, also inhibits a realistic approach to sharing publicly funded IP. Recently the ABS started sharing their data where they used to exclusively sell it and they appear to be doing better for it. Software in particular is created and reinvented right throughout Government, and for the sake of sustainable and useful IP, much of this could be open sourced for both public use and inter-Governmental collaboration. Hopefully more Government agencies will start to realise that the real value of at least some Government data is in the sharing and use of it by Australian citizens, and that by locking up Government IP, they are doing the people of Australia a disservice.

The people’s data should be accessible by the people…

links for 2007-05-03