🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 2 Feb 2002 17:17:23 +1300, "badabing" <badaboom@babe.ee> wrote:

This is a truly great idea, and one of the more inspirational articles I
have read for a long time.

In spirit with the intent of the GPL license, I have modified and debugged
the 'code' (using the traditional Usenet protocol) of this article and
release it under the GPL for further improvment. My modifications are those
without the '>' character.

Version: 1.1, 3-2-2002 Brendan Thompson <corum.usenet@myrealbox.com.nospam>

>      The Great Giveaway
>
>      Good ideas are worth money. So why are hard headed operators giving
>them away for free? Join our experiment to find out says Graham Lawton
>
>      IF YOU'VE BEEN to a computer show in recent months you might have seen
>it: a shiny silver drinks can with a ring-pull logo and the words "opencola"
>on the side. Inside is a fizzy drink that tastes very much like Coca-Cola.
>Or is it Pepsi?
>
>      There's something else written on the can, though, which sets the
>drink apart. It says "check out the source at opencola.com". Go to that Web
>address and you'll see something that's not available on Coca-Cola's
>website, or Pepsi's--the recipe for cola. For the first time ever, you can
>make the real thing in your own home.
>
>
>      OpenCola is the world's first "open source" consumer product. By
>calling it open source, its manufacturer is saying that instructions for
>making it are freely available. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can
>modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, release their recipe
>into the public domain. As a way of doing business it's rather unusual--the
>Coca-Cola Company doesn't make a habit of giving away precious commercial
>secrets. But that's the point.
>
>      OpenCola is the most prominent sign yet that a long-running battle
>between rival philosophies in software development has spilt over into the
>rest of the world. What started as a technical debate over the best way to
>debug computer programs is developing into a political battle over the
>ownership of knowledge and how it is used, between those who put their faith
>in the free circulation of ideas and those who prefer to designate them
>"intellectual property". No one knows what the outcome will be. But in a
>world of growing opposition to corporate power, restrictive intellectual
>property rights and globalisation, open source is emerging as a possible
>alternative, a potentially potent means of fighting back. And you're helping
>to test its value right now.
>
>      The open source movement originated in 1984 when computer scientist
>Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT and set up the Free Software
>Foundation. His aim was to create high-quality software that was freely
>available to everybody. Stallman's beef was with commercial companies that
>smother their software with patents and copyrights and keep the source
>code--the original program, written in a computer language such as C++--a
>closely guarded secret. Stallman saw this as damaging. It generated
>poor-quality, bug-ridden software. And worse, it choked off the free flow of
>ideas. Stallman fretted that if computer scientists could no longer learn
>from one another's code, the art of programming would stagnate (New
>Scientist, 12 December 1998, p 42).
>
>      Stallman's move resonated round the computer science community and now
>there are thousands of similar projects. The star of the movement is Linux,
>an operating system created by Finnish student Linus Torvalds in the early
>1990s and installed on around 18 million computers worldwide.
>
>      What sets open source software apart from commercial software is the
>fact that it's free, in both the political and the economic sense. If you
>want to use a commercial product such as Windows XP or Mac OS X you have to
>pay a fee and agree to abide by a licence that stops you from modifying or
>sharing the software. But if you want to run Linux or another open source
>package, you can do so without paying a penny--although several companies
>will sell you the software bundled with support services. You can also
>modify the software in any way you choose, copy it and share it without
>restrictions. This freedom acts as an open invitation--some say
>challenge--to its users to make improvements. As a result, thousands of
>volunteers are constantly working on Linux, adding new features and winkling
>out bugs. Their contributions are reviewed by a panel and the best ones are
>added to Linux. For programmers, the kudos of a successful contribution is
>its own reward. The result is a stable, powerful system that adapts rapidly
>to technological change. Linux is so successful that even IBM installs it on
>the computers it sells.
>
>      To maintain this benign state of affairs, open source software is
>covered by a special legal instrument called the General Public License.
>Instead of restricting how the software can be used, as a standard software
>license does, the GPL--often known as a "copyleft"--grants as much freedom
>as possible (see http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html). Software released
>under the GPL (or a similar copyleft licence) can be copied, modified and
>distributed by anyone, as long as they, too, release it under a copyleft.
>That restriction is crucial, because it prevents the material from being
>co-opted into later proprietary products. It also makes open source software
>different from programs that are merely distributed free of charge. In FSF's
>words, the GPL "makes it free and guarantees it remains free".
>
>      Open source has proved a very successful way of writing software. But
>it has also come to embody a political stand--one that values freedom of
>expression, mistrusts corporate power, and is uncomfortable with private
>ownership of knowledge. It's "a broadly libertarian view of the proper
>relationship between individuals and institutions", according to open source
>guru Eric Raymond.
>
>      But it's not just software companies that lock knowledge away and
>release it only to those prepared to pay. Every time you buy a CD, a book, a
>copy of New Scientist, even a can of Coca-Cola, you're forking out for
>access to someone else's intellectual property. Your money buys you the
>right to listen to, read or consume the contents, but not to rework them, or
>make copies and redistribute them. No surprise, then, that people within the
>open source movement have asked whether their methods would work on other
>products. As yet no one's sure--but plenty of people are trying it.
>
>      Take OpenCola. Although originally intended as a promotional tool to
>explain open source software, the drink has taken on a life of its own. The
>Toronto-based OpenCola company has become better known for the drink than
>the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company's senior
>strategist, attributes its success to a widespread mistrust of big
>corporations and the "proprietary nature of almost everything". A website
>selling the stuff has shifted 150,000 cans. Politically minded students in
>the US have started mixing up the recipe for parties.
>
>      OpenCola is a happy accident and poses no real threat to Coke or
>Pepsi, but elsewhere people are deliberately using the open source model to
>challenge entrenched interests. One popular target is the music industry. At
>the forefront of the attack is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San
>Francisco group set up to defend civil liberties in the digital society. In
>April of last year, the EFF published a model copyleft called the Open Audio
>License (OAL). The idea is to let musicians take advantage of digital
>music's properties--ease of copying and distribution--rather than fighting
>against them. Musicians who release music under an OAL consent to their work
>being freely copied, performed, reworked and reissued, as long as these new
>products are released under the same licence. They can then rely on "viral
>distribution" to get heard. "If the people like the music, they will support
>the artist to ensure the artist can continue to make music," says Robin
>Gross of the EFF.

      It's a little early to judge whether the OAL will capture
imaginations in the same way as OpenCola. But it's hoped that some of the
strengths of open source software can be applied to music. In computing,
the open source method lets users improve software by eliminating erros and
inefficient bits of code. This same process could be applied to music -
listeners would be able to modify the score to adjust the instrumental
track and would be able to modify the voice track if they had the skills to
do so - just as with computer code. The result would be a continuously
evolving piece of music with many off-shoots ('forks' as it is known in
Open Source parlance).

Infact, you could argue that usic is one of the earlier examples of Open
Source devlopment methodology. Throughout history, music generes have been
taken up by a new generation in a modified form, songs modified and
reinterpreted, with new styles evolving periodically. The recent system of
copyright on music can be seen as an abberation when compared to the
history of music.

http://www.openmusicregistry.org contains tracks that competent listeners
can download and modify at home with their own instruments.

      It's also not clear why any mainstream artists would ever choose to
release music under an OAL. Many bands objected to the way Napster members
circulated their music behind their backs, but they may not have a choice
in the future as more and more back-yard bands become popular performing
GPL music with a known and dedicated following. The benefits of freely
downloadable tracks also cannot be underestimated when considering the
mindshare market for music.

>Sure enough, you're unlikely to have heard of any of the 20 bands
>that have posted music on the registry. It's hard to avoid the conclusion
>that Open Audio amounts to little more than an opportunity for obscure
>artists to put themselves in the shop window.
>
>      The problems with open music, however, haven't put people off trying
>open source methods elsewhere. Encyclopedias, for example, look like fertile
>ground. Like software, they're collaborative and modular, need regular
>upgrading, and improve with peer review. But the first attempt, a free
>online reference called Nupedia, hasn't exactly taken off. Two years on,
>only 25 of its target 60,000 articles have been completed. "At the current
>rate it will never be a large encyclopedia," says editor-in-chief Larry
>Sanger. The main problem is that the experts Sanger wants to recruit to
>write articles have little incentive to participate. They don't score
>academic brownie points in the same way software engineers do for upgrading
>Linux, and Nupedia can't pay them.
>
>      It's a problem that's inherent to most open source products: how do
>you get people to chip in? Sanger says he's exploring ways to make money out
>of Nupedia while preserving the freedom of its content. Banner adverts are a
>possibility. But his best hope is that academics start citing Nupedia
>articles so authors can earn academic credit.
>
>      There's another possibility: trust the collective goodwill of the open
>source community. A year ago, frustrated by the treacle-like progress of
>Nupedia, Sanger started another encyclopedia named Wikipedia (the name is
>taken from open source Web software called WikiWiki that allows pages to be
>edited by anyone on the Web). It's a lot less formal than Nupedia: anyone
>can write or edit an article on any topic, which probably explains the
>entries on beer and Star Trek. But it also explains its success. Wikipedia
>already contains 19,000 articles and is acquiring several thousand more each
>month. "People like the idea that knowledge can and should be freely
>distributed and developed," says Sanger. Over time, he reckons, thousands of
>dabblers should gradually fix any errors and fill in any gaps in the
>articles until Wikipedia evolves into an authoritative encyclopedia with
>hundreds of thousands of entries.
>
>      Another experiment that's proved its worth is the OpenLaw project at
>the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Berkman
>lawyers specialise in cyberlaw--hacking, copyright, encryption and so
>on--and the centre has strong ties with the EFF and the open source software
>community. In 1998 faculty member Lawrence Lessig, now at Stanford Law
>School, was asked by online publisher Eldritch Press to mount a legal
>challenge to US copyright law. Eldritch takes books whose copyright has
>expired and publishes them on the Web, but new legislation to extend
>copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author's death was cutting off its
>supply of new material. Lessig invited law students at Harvard and elsewhere
>to help craft legal arguments challenging the new law on an online forum,
>which evolved into OpenLaw.
>
>      Normal law firms write arguments the way commercial software companies
>write code. Lawyers discuss a case behind closed doors, and although their
>final product is released in court, the discussions or "source code" that
>produced it remain secret. In contrast, OpenLaw crafts its arguments in
>public and releases them under a copyleft. "We deliberately used free
>software as a model," says Wendy Selzer, who took over OpenLaw when Lessig
>moved to Stanford. Around 50 legal scholars now work on Eldritch's case, and
>OpenLaw has taken other cases, too.
>
>      "The gains are much the same as for software," Selzer says. "Hundreds
>of people scrutinise the 'code' for bugs, and make suggestions how to fix
>it. And people will take underdeveloped parts of the argument, work on them,
>then patch them in." Armed with arguments crafted in this way, OpenLaw has
>taken Eldritch's case--deemed unwinnable at the outset--right through the
>system and is now seeking a hearing in the Supreme Court.

      There are drawbacks, though. The arguments are in the public domain
right from the start, so OpenLaw can't spring a surprise in court - but
this may foster a new, more open justice system as all parties can
rigorously 'debug' the arguments of the other side.

>      For the same reason, it can't take on cases where confidentiality is 
>important. But where there's a strong public interest element, open 
>sourcing has big advantages. Citizens' rights groups, for example, have 
>taken parts of OpenLaw's legal arguments and used them elsewhere. "People 
>use them on letters to Congress, or put them on flyers," Selzer says.
>
>      The open content movement is still at an early stage and it's hard to
>predict how far it will spread. "I'm not sure there are other areas where
>open source would work," says Sanger. "If there were, we might have started
>it ourselves." Eric Raymond has also expressed doubts. In his much-quoted
>1997 essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, he warned against applying open
>source methods to other products. "Music and most books are not like
>software, because they don't generally need to be debugged or maintained,"
>he wrote. Without that need, the products gain little from others' scrutiny
>and reworking, so there's little benefit in open sourcing. "I do not want to
>weaken the winning argument for open sourcing software by tying it to a
>potential loser," he wrote.

      It is possible though that books also might benefit from being
debugged and improved in an open source fashion. Textbooks for example,
often suffer from many minor inaccuracies or omissions. These could be
easily fixed if the book was open source - leaving only the problem of
duplication and distribution. But that is where the Internet comes in - it
makes both problems essentially disappear as the latest edition is always
available for download.

Even Novels and Fiction could benefit: mistakes in plots, storylines and
background could be continuously improved, evolving a period novel very
consistant with history or a SF story without the inconsistancies or
unexplained background. Star Trek is a partial example of this: decades of
Trekkers have demanded a rigorous enviroment that precludes most glaring
problems in the story world, and they even trimphantly point out new ones
that pop up. The result has been a new nomenclature that has found a home
in many speculative Physics essays, and has inspired many scientists.

>      But Raymond's views have now shifted subtly. "I'm more willing to
>admit that I might talk about areas other than software someday," he told
>New Scientist. "But not now." The right time will be once open source
>software has won the battle of ideas, he says. He expects that to happen
>around 2005.
>
>      And so the experiment goes on. As a contribution to it, New Scientist
>has agreed to issue this article under a copyleft. That means you can copy
>it, redistribute it, reprint it in whole or in part, and generally play
>around with it as long as you, too, release your version under a copyleft
>and abide by the other terms and conditions in the licence. We also ask that
>you inform us of any use you make of the article, by e-mailing
>copyleft@newscientist.com.
>
>      One reason for doing so is that by releasing it under a copyleft, we
>can print the recipe for OpenCola without violating its copyleft. If nothing
>else, that demonstrates the power of the copyleft to spread itself. But
>there's another reason, too: to see what happens. To my knowledge this is
>the first magazine article published under a copyleft. Who knows what the
>outcome will be? Perhaps the article will disappear without a trace. Perhaps
>it will be photocopied, redistributed, re-edited, rewritten, cut and pasted
>onto websites, handbills and articles all over the world. I don't know--but
>that's the point. It's not up to me any more. The decision belongs to all of
>us.
>
>      Further reading:
>      For a selection of copylefts, see
>http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/open_alternatives.html
>      The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond is available at
>http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
>
>      Editor's comment
>
>
>      THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed
>and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License
>published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt


Brendan

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