Governments in open source

As I write this I am sitting in on the “FOSS GIS in Government” working session at being put on by SITA (State Information Technology Agency, the South African government created IT strategy company).  The working session is attended mostly by members of South Africa’s government, who are coming with questions and skepticism about using free software.

A lot of what I’m seeing here is unsurprising.  Arno Webb, the representative of SITA, delivered a presentation that was full of slides showing hierarchies and taxonomies of institutions and initiatives that SITA believes are necessary for the use of free software in government.  The acronym, FOSS, is a convenient encapsulation for them–it is peppered throughout the presentation and then paired with government-ese.  You would not be able to tell what the presentation was about if you didn’t know what that acronym meant.

As it should be.  There is a palpable difference between the culture and expectations of the government community and the open source development communities here.  Nevertheless, the alliance is a perfect one.  So it wonderful to see people working from both sides to bridge the gap.

One initiative Arno and other speakers from the government sector have describe has especially convinced me that these people get it.  When discussing the transition to open source, these government representatives often talk about how they will be producing training materials for the software they depend on.  And if anybody asks whether these materials will be made publicly available, the answer is, “Absolutely.  Yes.  We are adopting the same principles of openness as the software.”  Arno Webb describes a “Trilogy of Openness”– open software, open standards, and open content. The latter refers to the content that the government created training materials.

What this means is that governments will not only be users of open source software; they will also be contributing back to FOSS communities.  That’s awesome!  Free software developers are notoriously bad at providing documentation for their work, but everyone acknowledges that documentation is an important part of the software project and crucial to the software’s adoption.  And governments, who are real users with real needs, are highly qualified to contribute that documentation.  Those contributions are the perfect way for people in government to become part of open source communities.

Culture shock

I have the privilege of attending FOSS4G 2008 (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) in Cape Town this year as an engineer for OpenGeo.  This is my first time attending a technology conference, and so came with few expectations.  But what I had gathered from colleagues who have attended in the past was this conference is primarily for hackers and open source entrepreneurs who are committed to the free software paradigm and bringing it to the GIS world.  The event is put on by OSGeo, which is unguarded about its goal to piss off ESRI, the monopolistic proprietary GIS giant who we believe misserves their costumers and, indirectly, the general public. (Author’s note: Please see comments below and retraction, here.)

So far, most of the people I have met are coming to the conference from this angle, and it creates an exciting atmosphere.  What I didn’t understand until today was that there are other major groups attending FOSS4G this year.

The reason why FOSS4G is being held in South Africa this year is because FOSS4G is being co-sponsored this year by GISSA, the Geo- Information Society of South Africa.  They have contributed to an otherwise technical conference a humanitarian focus.  The first few talks given today were sober ones about the crises of developing nations, beginning with the health and crime problems in Cape Town itself.  The theme of the conference is oddly cautious: “Open Source Geospatial: An Option for Deveoping Nations.”  GIS professionals from government and NGO’s have been invited from developing countries around the world, with a couple hundred from South Africa itself.

The result is a strange cultural mix.  The FOSS crowd is lively, reliably laughing and applauding when a speaker makes a dig at proprietary software (PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, Apple).  Their speeches are deliberately humorous and irreverent.  After Ed Parsons gave a rather cluelessly untargeted talk about how Google’s (proprietary) products are awesome and how easy it is for people ot use them to make (proprietary) data, the crowd dragged him over the coals during the Q&A.

The government and GIS groups must find this strange.  Their tone was consistently more serious, more cautious, and less confrontational.  The pace of their presentations was slower.  They presented their tragic facts and their strategies to overcome them without the exuberance and confidence that this was their time to rally.

The point of bringing these two groups together is so that groups like GISSA can evaluate the appropriateness of geospatial FOSS for their very serious needs.  In many ways it’s great that they can see the FOSS developers in their element, since the transparency of the open source process and the enthusiasm of its participants is one of the software’s selling points.  But on the other hand, I worry that the two groups are speaking different languages.  I’ll be interested to see whether there’s any convergence by the end of the week.

OneWebDay

A week ago I attended the OneWebDay event held in Washington Square Park.  OneWebDay is “Earth Day for the Internet”–a day for global awareness and celebration of the internet, and a not-so-subtle PR event for the cause of net neutrality.  There was an impressive line-up of speakers: Lawrence Lessig, John Perry Barlow, and Jonathan Zittrain were the most prominent, but there were others who were accomplished as entrepreneurs (The Craig of Craigslist, the Guy Who Started Pandora) or who could be classed as web advocates or activists in some sense or another.  A video of the event can be found here.

These were my reactions, in no particular order:

• Nick Grossman pointed out to that “OneWebDay” is an overly cumbersome name that will probably cripple the adoption of the day on the calender.  Also, camel casing–really?  “Web Day” would be much catchier.  I fear the former name has stuck already, but somebody really ought to try to get the alternative out there.
• It is absolutely fantastic that the Web Movement, or whatever you want to call it, has a poet among its founding members.  John Perry Barlowt–summary–is s striking figure against a backdrop of nerds, and will give this historical moment a memorably Romantic aspect.
• One of the most contentful speeches, in my opinion, was Gale Brewer’s.  She directly addressed the problem of the digital divide, and explained how it was a problem even within the borders of New York City and how connectivity is being fought for as a local political issue.  Since the theme of the event was “Participatory Democracy on the Internet” (double check), I think it was especially important that the day’s speakers address this point.  If political access becomes more tied to internet access, that will only reinforce the existing political inequalities unless there is a concerted effort made toward universal connectivity.
• One of the more interesting comments was made by the Guy Who Started Pandora.  While most of speeches and Q&A discussion were a harmonious choir singing praises of the internet and calling for a united movement for its liberties, this Guy (whose name I forget) pointed out that there is one point of discord within the web community.  “People have to remember that they still have to pay for things,” he said.  “People have to get out the mindset that all of this can be free, free, free.”  He had solved this problem with advertising.  But as a businessman in the digital music industry and also a former musician who had tried to make a living, he was clearly making a reference to music piracy and the common attitude that there is nothing wrong with it.  I believe that the tension he highlighted is a deep one, and that the politics of the web are not as unified as “One Web Day” implies.

Software Freedom Day (Party!)

Last Saturday was Software Freedom Day, and the New York City celebration was held at the familiar Lime Group roof deck/offices in downtown Manhattan.

The event was inspiring, largely because of the presence and words of luminaries. Eben Moglen offered a benediction for the event that combined optimistic gaiety with a sense of historical scope. The gist? (paraphrased:) “We have been fighting for this for a long time. And we are going to win. And to win you just have to keep doing what you are all doing now. So I have nothing to say but to say it’s a lovely day and let’s have a wonderful party.”

Eric S. Raymond was also there, though less noticeably. If I had to guess I would say he was deliberately negotiating a tension between obscurity (he mentioned at some point having “gone stealth”) and wanting to be recognized. He succeeded on both fronts, with a shocking number of people not knowing who he was, but with several of those who did crowding in around he and Moglen as they discussed the history and future of the movement.

Several interesting topics were discussed while I listened in on the conversation.

Medical Devices

Moglen gave an account of why the GPL 3 license was delayed for so long beyond his self-imposed deadline for it. The completion of the license was hindered by Richard Stallman’s insistence that the license should include prescriptions against the use of proprietary code in implanted medical devices. I have no idea how that prescription could be accomplished within the legal context of the license–perhaps I heard wrong. Or maybe I didn’t. Moglen was apparently convinced that such a clause was unenforceable in court and kept that language out of the GPL.

What I found interesting is that while normally I find the Stallman-esque deontological arguments for free software pretty crude and uncompelling, the thought of proprietary technology in my body does send a chill down my spine. It’s the sort of thing that too easily unfolds into a grim dystopia, at least in ones imagination.

Apple

Apple was discussed at length, almost to the exclusion of Microsoft, which was mentioned only to acknowledge its decline. From where I was standing it sounded like Steve Jobs was believed to be the biggest threat to the free software movement around. Between Apple’s recent rise in popularity and his association with Disney, he is now a poster boy for the sinister success of unfree intellectual property.

There was real fear here, and the devil was in the details. Moglen explained how Apple’s use of LLVM as an alternative compiler to the GCC represented a threat to the movement. If I followed correctly, this is due to the fact that LLVM has a more permissive, “BSD-style” license.

At this point, ESR, true to his reputation, began to object: What was wrong with the more permissive license? What’s wrong with BSD licensing? Isn’t that open source? Fears and scars of FSF dogmatism were inflamed.

The problem is patents. LLVM’s license allows more room for Apple to use software patents than the GCC’s licenses do. And Apple now has the opportunity to maneuver themselves into a place where through those patents they can dominate the software that can be run on their machines. Those bastards!

EDIT 8-24-08: Commenter Owen (see below) points out that LLVM’s license actually stipulates better guarantees about the use of patents than i originally thought. It’s quite possible that I misunderstood the discussion on Saturday, or that somebody there was misinformed about the LLVM’s license.

Reflections

It was a great party, and the conversation there made me feel maybe for the first time like I was playing a part in a real political movement that had originated decades ago, even though I’ve been enthusiastic about open source principles for years and now write free software for my day job.

What I found both entirely appropriate but somewhat distant, however, was how narrow it seemed like the struggle being celebrated that day was. It was 100% a day about free software, and the discussions plumbed the depth of that topic without reaching out to related areas of free culture, the science commons, net neutrality, etc.

Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the broader social and economic consequences of open source software, and it has occurred to me that its import for me is embedded in a network of other values and ideas that often require an abstraction from the particulars of the software movement. It was refreshing and grounding to be closer to that point of origin for an evening.

Third Party Spunk

Doug Mayle sent me this article today about Libertarian candidate Bob Barr’s law suit to remove McCain and Obama from the party ballet.

Texas election code §192.031 requires that the “written certification” of the “party’s nominees” be delivered “before 5 p.m. of the 70th day before election day.” Because neither candidate had been nominated by the official filing deadline, the Barr campaign argues it was impossible for the candidates to file under state law.

This may seem like a petty move on the part of Barr, but it’s really a principled demand for better treatment of third parties. “Fair” treatment would be outlandish to ask for–the current legislation hardly gives them a chance. But letting the actual enforcement of the law be held to a double standard would just be a travesty.

“The facts of the case are not in dispute,” says Russell Verney, manager of the Barr campaign. “Republicans and Democrats missed the deadline, but were still allowed on the ballot. Third parties are not allowed on the ballot for missing deadlines, as was the case for our campaign in West Virginia, yet the Texas secretary of state’s office believes Republicans and Democrats to be above the law.”

It’s worth noting that since Texas is such a deeply red state, this move hurts Republicans far more than it hurts Democrats. I’d recommend that dedicated progressives get behind this law suit and support it, however unlikely the suit’s success, if only for that strategic reason (though I think the third party issue might actually be more worth fighting for).

OBEY

idea by kyle moore

Interesting New York 2008

Friend and colleague Rolando Penate was looking for people to accompany him to today’s Interesting New York event. I took him up on it after briefly skimming the list of speakers, otherwise having no idea what to expect.

It did not disappoint. It was a very interesting, if slightly grueling (twenty eight “short” presentations add up to a lot.) I’m still not sure what exactly it was that I witnessed for the whole day.

The first interesting feature was that event was held at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Katie Murphy Amphitheater. Finding myself within the walls of F.I.T. was a small surprise in itself. As it turned out, there was only one talk about fashion, in which an elegantly attired Jennifer Wright, “a freelance writer for a variety of luxury lifestyle publications,” argued that Karl Lagerfeld is a robot. Instead, the audience and speakers appear to be primarily made up of high-tech advertising people and communications consultants. Picking somebody from the speakers’ list at random, the odds are you’d get somebody who would be great at perfecting your digital brand.

This didn’t make me feel any more at home. I tend to view luxury lifestyle as a waste of precious resources; but I have deep suspicions towards all advertising as a source of socially disastrous “false needs.”

But despite all, there was an impressive showing of and expressed interest in social entrepreneurship and even personal stories of disciplined consumption. I was very pleased that this antithesis was brought to light by Gaurav Mishra’s inspiring talk on being “The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption.” He explained that as a successful marketing guy in India, he saw that there were growing anti-consumerist trends in the marketplace. Marketing people, he admitted, should be terrified by this. He himself dealt with it by given up all his unnecessary possessions and changing careers to academic research and social entrepreneurship.

The majority of talks, however, were completely from left field. Some examples:

• The guy who sat in front of me for the first section who I had uncharitably pegged as a generic hipster turned out to be Morgan Friedman, the creator of Overheard in New York. He gave an energetic talk about how to enjoy wandering in a foreign or unknown city.
• The marketing director of a software consultancy expressed her appreciation of Jane Eyre and made me want to read it.
• A Jungian, dream interpreting psychoanalyst (who was also a “consumer researcher”) explained how to get meaning out of your dreams.
• A cute communications strategist performed a mind-blowing interview with some guy who Twitters as a Mad Men fan fiction character. The interviewee was in character for the performance, and managed to describe his fan fiction community entirely through metaphorical references to his (fictional) company, Sterling Cooper.

I’d recommend going to see it if it happens again next year and you’re free for it.

What happened to Paul Newell?

I have mentioned Paul Newell–one of New York State’s Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s first challengers in over twenty years–before on this blog.  Newell represented a departure from New York’s infamous “three men in a room” style of politics, since displacing Silver would have be a serious coup against a monolithic and unrepresentative political machine.

In the course of the primary, Newell’s grassroots fund raising effort outpaced Silvers by more than two to one.  Newell also garnered the endorsements of major New York newspapers including the New York Times, the New York Post, and the Daily News.

The day after the primaries, the New York Post reported Silver’s victory in the district with 68 percent of the vote against Newell’s 23 percent.

So what happened?

My guess is this: Newell had tremendous appeal across the state and even across the country as a good government reformer on the progressive “Change!” platform that has swept the Democratic party with Obama’s campaign.  But meanwhile, Silver has had 20 years to use his almost unsurpassed clout in the state legislature to support the entrenched groups in his district.  And ultimately, despite the impact of the election on statewide corruption and budgeting, the outcome came down to how Silver rebuilt ground zero seven years ago.

Like Sean Tevis’ campaign, this raises questions for me about the purpose of local elections.  In this case, where the locally elected official has such enormous statewide power, it feels like his office should be judged by a statewide tribunal of voters.  And indeed, I’m sure much of Newell’s support came from reform-minded people who could never cast a vote for him.  But meanwhile, Silver first and foremost is a representative of the Lower East Side, and apparently supports those constituents very well.  Were Newell’s supporters from outside that district just butting in where they have no business?

I don’t think so.  But I’m curious to hear what others say.