An article over at Information Week details the court case between an open source developer and someone who violated their copyright. Check out the article.

I'm particularly impressed with the rulings reasoning, specifically:

There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties. For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge. Similarly, a programmer or company may increase its national or international reputation by incubating open source projects,

As that is exactly one of the reasons why I've released some of my products free. It is nice to see that the court system is taking on the open source legal questions and, for this ruling, seems to be siding with the intellectual property owner's rights instead of those who wish to violate those rights.

Score another one for open source!

Free, I like free. I use free stuff all the time. Firefox, Filezilla, 7zip, and Thunderbird every day, for example. My server is on some flavor of GNU/Linux with Apache, phpmyadmin, Horde, mySQL and PHP (which also includes, I’m sure, TONs more software). I have a Yahoo, Hotmail, Myway, Gmail, and AOL free email address. All of those have a variety of free to them, some are open source free (GPL, for example), some are closed source free, some are just used for free (like Google, for example) where there is no source to see. Now, with open source, it is more than mere “free” software – it carries a philosophy with it, that software should be free. The preamble to the license includes:

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users.

Now, where this all gets ironic is the drumbeat for donations. I have several extensions I use in Firefox and a couple of them make heartfelt, earnest pleas for money, after all, they spend considerable time creating the software. If I visit open source software sites that aren’t currently backed by a commercial company, 90% of the time they are asking/accepting donations (if the product is any good and widely used).

So … which is it? Is it free or do you want money for it? I find it odd they would choose an open source license and then cite their time, effort and hard work that goes in to making the software work for reasons people should donate. If they want money for it, they should simply charge for it; if they want it to be free, really free – including “guilt free” then they should list it under an open source license.

Here is what I think has happened. They started a project as they though “hey, such-and-such application does that, it shouldn’t be that hard, I can do it” and then they wrote a proof of concept and it wasn’t that hard – maybe a month or even a few months of dedicated work on it. They are still in the excitement phase of a new project; the buzz from making something work is fresh in their minds. So they see all of the open source applications and how everyone just gets all giddy over them and elect to release the code in open source format. They have something that works and they release it at sourceforge and, then, someone else starts using it – but they find it doesn’t work right. So some bug fixes come in. The programmer, who has a family, life and such, continues to take time to make the fixes work. Some one else adds code to make it do something else, so the programmer adds it to the application and this keeps up for a little while. The novelty of the project is wearing off, it is becoming WORK. Bugs keep coming in, new feature requests and someone slams the project because their entire system crashed because of it (even if it is impossible, it just happened at the same time …) They don’t see a lot of help coming in, if any at all, and they see hundreds, if not millions, using their software and making money off of it – while the author is stuck making the changes and adjustments so the consumer can continue to make money off of it and the author gets??? They start to see the project as a time hole that sucks all of their free time making, fixing, updating and maintaining the application all without any compensation and decide that, maybe, someone will chip in some money to cover what they could be making if they were working on a commercial application or contracting.

The irony – they believe in free software as a philosophy, so strongly that anything that “touches” the software becomes free as well – but, not strongly enough not to ask for donations because they actually created the software.

So, for those open source author’s – put up and shut up or write commercial software, but don’t think using guilt, pity or such to garner donations is in the spirit of the open source philosophy. At a bare minimum, setup a license for those who want to contribute so that the viral nature of the GPL doesn’t apply to them and then, maybe you’ll get something for your hard work. When you give something away for free, people will value your work in to it as much as you’ve placed the value on the work (i.e. free). I know several projects I’d love to contribute to if they had an alternate license for those contributing – and several that I’ve actually given to, some from the value of the work to my business and others because it was way cool or had an alternate license.

Well, it continues to happen and I'm not surprised. This time an open source company, mySQL, is bought by another company, SUN. I am curious, given the open source product development, as to the profits. See, a long time ago I heard a proprietary software developer laugh at the open source movement, something like "Someone is going to make a lot of money off of that and it won't be the contributors". Well it seems those words came to pass. The owners of mySQL are raking in a fortune while those who made it happen (the little people) got to participate.

Compound that with companies, like facebook, which use open source tools, like mySQL and who sell parts of their company for millions - you've just got to wonder - how can I get a staff of people working for an open source project I own for free so that I can sell the company, who owns the main copyright of the open source project, years later for millions?

To the point of the purchase, I do wonder what this will hold for mySQL? What will SUN do with the project? Will it become like Red Hat's distro for Linux - all for profit entries with the source files for the distro off somewhere else? Will the pre-install licensing change? One thing is for sure, the mySQL is open source, so they can't change that - and it will still be widely used and installed for some time to come. I would love to see the database make it to the next level of maturity and include enterprise level functionality (beyond what it has now) that will make it a slam dunk decision for most applications. What I think would also be really awesome would be an application distribution, like MS Access, to bring it to the desktop or to be married to Java somehow and made inter-operable with the language! Now that would be cool!

If you have read my most recent article, Tools for Designers: del.icio.us and Flickr', I made mention of starting a CMX Blog piece for anyone interested in sharing their design and inspiration tools,resourceful solutions for their business, and for self-organizational purposes.

Please leave a comment on this post to share your thoughts. I look forward to seeing what you're up to and if I can get new ideas and be inspired by your ideas.

Happy blogging!

PHP.net announced (a while back) that PHP 4 is at end of life and will end all support by the end of the year (2007). If you are still using PHP v4 and haven't considered an upgrade, now would be a good time to do so. PHP 5 has been out for years and it is stable and solid. Many applications are being written to take advantage of the new features in PHP 5.

They are promising security updates until 2008-08-08 on a case-by-case basis, but after that, it is all done. From a security standpoint, you have to upgrade before that as exploits beyond that point will not be fixed leaving your website and contents vulnerable to malicious attacks.

Good luck and start now so you can migrate safely before you are forced to because of security reasons.

Reprinted from my Brain Frieze blog, just because I thought it was that good.

(Caution. Satire ahead. The products and people in this "interview" are purely drawn from the author's imagination and any resemblance to real Web 2.0 companies is merely accidentally intentional.)

*******************

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Geoffrey Smidgen, CEO of Virtual Absurdities LLC, a company that has just received its first round of venture capital funding for its Web 2.0 startup know as MoLekULr. The service has just completed its initial round of beta testing and will be launching a wide-scale public beta in the near future. Geoffrey and his engineers have devised an entirely unique approach to the concept of social networking that he discusses in this interview

Brainfrieze: Geoffrey, welcome. This is a pretty exciting time for your company isn't it?

Geoffrey Smidgen: Boy it sure is. Lots of late nights and.......................time spent at the computer. But things have really................................come together and I believe we've really nailed the entire................................essence of Web 2.0 with our product.

BF: Right. Tell us a little about the concept behind MoLekULR and what you hope to accomplish with your service.

GS: Well, it's a pretty radical idea, but let's start with the entire definition of.........................what Web 2.0 is really all about. You see, what we've learned over the last 10 or 20 years of social networking, going all the way back to the early..................................message boards and newsgroups is that people really love staying connected to a circle of people electronically. They find others with like interests.................................and then they use their computers to communicate with each other. Some even get a little addicted.......................to staying connected.

BF: Boy, I know what you mean. I've had some serious issues with newsgroup addiction myself. You know you're in too deep when you catch yourself logging in to your favorite group when you're on vacation, just to see what's going on and who's saying what.

GS: Right, and all Web 2.0 does is take that urge..............................that we all feel and makes it even easier to consume and produce and stay in touch. So now you can spend time doing things like................................uploading photos to Flickr, making your own videos for YouTube, share a calendar on Google, and on and on. People.................................love this stuff.

BF: So tell us about MoLekULr. What does it do that's different?

GS: Well, we took that basic concept, and then we saw the explosion....................of even more immediate social tools like Twitter, and we thought, what if we could take that fundamental.......................idea of staying connected all the time to its logical conclusion? What if we could reduce the idea of social networking........................to its most basic components and then connect people in that manner? At a molecular level..............................? Hence the name.

BF: So how does this work?

GS: The first thing we need is information about you. During the registration process we provide a tool..................that will scan your computer, record the IP address, and follow your online activities. This real-time feedback allows us to build a network for you on the fly, so that we know who in our network is pursuing similar activities. But that's just.........................the first layer. We also track all of the applications..........................that you run on your computer. So for instance, we know if you're making lots of videos or listening to lots of music. We want to gain a deep understanding of everything you do on your computer.

BF: Interesting, if you can get people to surrender their privacy that way.

GS: We can reliably prove that you have no................................privacy anyway, so you might as well use it to your advantage. Right?

BF. I suppose so. Then what happens?

GS: Then a few days later a sample kit.................will arrive from our company. Our users will take a small blood...........................sample and return it to us. From that we'll gather even more information about you. Your eating habits, sex and weight, age.......you'd be amazed at what our algorithms can do.............................with that information.

BF: Wow. This is really in-depth. And then I understand that users get some kind of biometric device?

GS: Right. Our MoLekULr Feedback Device is attached to your computer's USB port and from that we can feed....................................you a steady stream of information from your social network. You'll know all sorts of things about the people that you're matched with......................where they are, what they're doing, if they're happy or mad or sad..................all through a series of micro-bursts delivered by our device. When one of those bursts warrants further attention.......................on your part you can immediately bounce over to the full web-enabled version of MoLekULr and send a note to your friend, post to your blog, respond to someone via a comment, upload a video, or crank out a podcast. When you do any of those things...................everyone on your network is immediately notified through a MoLekULr Microburst. Then they can respond......................if they choose to do so. It's a completely closed loop.

BF: Whoa. Well, it seems that someone might be a little distracted in that kind of environment where they're always connected and always consuming information. Do you.....sorry. Geoffrey?

GS: No worries. I was posting something..............what were we saying?

BF: I was saying that it might be hard to concentrate when you're connected all the time.

GS: We actually.........................don't find that to be the case. Sure, there are brief moments when the device is sending you................................................information, but it doesn't get in the way of other..............things you're doing.

BF: I've been noticing a lot of pauses in our conversation. Are you getting microbursts during those times?

GS: Sorry. What were you.........................saying?

BF: The pauses Geoff. You sort of drop away right in the middle of a sentence.

GS: Oh, well, yes, it does take a second to consume the information about everyone in my network................................and then decide how I want to respond. Sorry, pardon me, there's a bit of a dustup in my Second Life chat room. Be right back.

BF: Do you worry that this sort of communication might make people a little too superficial? They won't ever have time to focus on anything but the immediate. How do you promote social networking tools as a way to.....Geoff, are you there?

GS: Wait please........................................wait............

wait...............

wait.............

Uh oh. Sorry, I really have to run now. I've got some serious issues to deal with and only 14 seconds to do so. I better..........................run. It was great talking to you Susan.

BF: Um, I'm not Susan. Geoff? Are you there?

Today I heard about a very cool new tool developed by NASA. From their press release:

The MDE (Math Description Engine) distinguishes itself from other accessibility software by determining the key characteristics of a graph "on the fly." Using this determination, it builds natural-language text descriptions that enable visually-impaired users to view spatial relationships through sound alone.

Check out the demos at the MDE web site for examples of the text and sound the software can generate. It's pretty neat. I can see a great use for this, as I work for a research center that deals with a lot of data. So far, we've laid graphs out and written their alternative text manually. But with this new tool, it might finally be time to look into graphs that are built dynamically, because now they can be accessible too.

If you've been following my Ubuntu articles here on CMX, or if you've read about Ubuntu elsewhere and have considered installing it, you may be curious about today's announcement of an Ubuntu "maintenance release", Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS.

Not to worry: if you installed Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper Drake") earlier, and have installed the updates as they were announced, chances are you're already running 6.06.1. You can easily find out: press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to escape the GUI, and you'll see your Ubuntu version number (press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to revert back to the GUI).

This .1 update is mainly concerned with fixing various glitches with the 6.06 installer, although it also incorporates all the updates and security patches since the initial Dapper release. If you've already installed Dapper you can safely ignore this maintenance release (assuming you've been good about installing updates when prompted). If you haven't yet installed Ubuntu, this new maintenance release promises to make the process smoother, and also save you from downloading a lot of updates.