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autonomo.us cloud computing

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:50:00 +0200

A flurry of activity on free software blogs addresses the losses of freedom brought about by cloud computing.

The Free Software Foundation is concerned, that:

the movement of software off of personal computers has reconfigured power relationships between users and their software and complicated questions of ownership and control in ways that free software advocates do not yet know how to address.

Cloud computing presents a centralization of resources, hence a centralization of power. The software you're using doesn't run on your own PC, it runs on a distant server. The documents you're creating aren't saved on your local harddisk, but somewhere on the intarweb. The combination of the two presents a major shift of control away from you, an individual, towards a few giant global technology corporations.

That's scary. Read on for countermeasures.

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open source government

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:14:00 +0200

Now here's a wacky idea: let's rule the planet by wiki. Quote metagovernment.org:

Metagovernment [...] is the system which will run a series of governments using a scored, versioned website as the medium for legislation and bureaucracy.

Huh? What have these guys been smoking? You don't save the planet by combining wikipedia-style proposal writing with slashdot-style voting.

And how, exactly, is this technocrat babble supposed to replace the tax-collecting, monopoly-of-violence apparatus of the State?

Open source governments begin with no power to use force or collect taxes. Periodically all existing governments at every level will be asked to cede power to the websites pertinent to their region.

And we'll all live happily ever after.... This stuff is just inane and counterproductive. Who wants to be ruled by a Wiki cabal?

The open source movement has a lot to contribute towards better functioning political systems: a culture of transparancy, proven patterns for decentralized collective action, and a substantial influence in, and understanding of, technology culture.

Of course open source is politically relevant. Reducing politics to an exercise in software version control is not, however, a valuable contribution to that debate...

OOXML approved as an ISO standard

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:02:00 +0200

Several Dutch sources confirm (in english) that Microsoft's Office XML (OOXML) has been approved as an ISO standard.

Amidst new reports of voting irregularities, this makes ISO the worst april fools joke in history.

Microsoft has succeeded, not only in pushing through a non-standard, but in effectively destroying the credibility of ISO. This is a serious blow to the concept of standardization.

The amount of dirty play exhibited around the OOXML effort reveals the PR talk from Redmond about "interoperability" as nothing but a sham. To quote Glyn Moody:

If the whole sorry OOXML saga shows anything, it is Microsoft's deep and utter contempt for the whole idea of an open, collaborative process based on mutual respect and consensus. Henceforth, members of the open source community must view with deep cynicism all - not just some - offers by Microsoft to work more closely with the free software world. If they don't, they could find themselves used and abused just like the once famous, and now former, International Standards Organisation.

gandhicon 4

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:10:00 +0100

The following @LinuxJournal caught my eye:

Open Source has won. We've moved into Gandhicon 4. Now what?

This refers to a simple but powerful model for the adoption of open source:

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

And we do seem to have crossed over to the fourth, last stage: Gandhicon 4, in which we win.

Just take a look at the news emanating from Redmond lately:

ODF support in Dutch government software

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:45:18 +0100

Centric, one of the few suppliers of software stacks for managing municipalities and other government outfits in the Netherlands, has announced support for ODF (and OOXML) throughout it's product suite.

The announcement follows after a row last year with the municipality of Heerenveen. After switching to OpenOffice, Heerenveen complained about the lack of interest by Centric in enabling ODF support for it's Doc4all application. Heerenveen let an external programmer write the required functionality.

GetronicsPinkRoccade, another major player in the Netherlands claims it has been supporting ODF for three years already. Searching for any references on it's site either through Google or using the local site search did not return any mention of ODF by GetronicsPinkRoccade though.

Mitch Kapor leaves Chandler

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:27:00 +0100

Not every project can succeed. Now Mitch Kapor leaves OSAF, the chances for Chandler to fulfill it's vision have become very slim indeed.

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dataportability gains traction

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:59:33 +0100

With Microsoft joining DataPortability.org, an impressive line-up of major web2.0 sites is now co-operating on establishing common ground for exchanging social data.

This augments Google's launch of OpenSocial, a programming standard for social networking environments, last november.

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IE8: not quite standard

nospam@example.com (Guido Stevens) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:54:00 +0100

Microsoft has announced, that the upcoming release of Internet Explorer will render standard-compliant web pages in a non-standard way. Standard-compliant rendering requires a non-standard page tag. Huh?

welcome to the mirror palace!

If you get the feeling something's not quite right here, you're right. The reasoning behind this proposal was quickly shredded to pieces by the development community. You might as wel have a laugh

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