Kurppa framed the issue in terms of the open source movement: a splinter movement founded in 1998 which maintains that developmental efficiency (chiefly to benefit business) is most critical because that’s when other programmers are able to help improve software. This movement specifically eschews the philosophy of the older free software movement. The free software movement is a social movement started in 1983 which campaigns for increased social solidarity by granting and protecting specific freedoms for all computer users—running, sharing, and modifying published computer software. The Free Software Foundation has published articles (1, 2) which describe the differences between these two movements including how the open source movement’s philosophy ironically leads to short- and long-term practical disadvantages. I highly recommend reading both essays for a more complete understanding of the ethical argument free software makes and how the open source philosophy falls short.

Kurppa tried to get more recent code from the project’s maintainers and was rejected. Kurppa wrote, “So, I thought.. There’s an author not sharing his code.”. This is where Kurppa first went wrong. Kurppa wrote that this project was sharing their code but they choose to do so only for release versions. They released their code all at once with each release version and never released developer code.

Kurppa revealed the crux of the real issue later on: “To me this sounds like that the the development isn’t as efficient as it could be and this means that the software is not as good as it could be, if only some things were done in a different way.”.

This view is a direct result of the open source philosophy. The ramifications of that philosophy are best understood when considering the differences between that philosophy and the older free software movement’s philosophy. Had Kurppa looked at this situation in terms of a user’s software freedom, developmental efficiency would be prioritized lower as a detail.

It may be inconvenient to not have access to the latest source code straight from the maintainer’s computer but (it’s reasonable to guess that) nobody is being denied their software freedom here. The critical issue, the issue to get upset over, is whether a user’s software freedoms are being respected. We don’t know exactly what program Kurppa is talking about so we can’t be sure that user’s freedoms are being respected. Sadly some programs with proprietary software in them are distributed under the GNU GPL (for example, Linus Torvalds’ variant of the Linux kernel contains proprietary software which allows Linux to communicate with various hardware. Other variants of Linux such as the kernel-libre project distribute a truly free Linux kernel). Such programs are a ruse for users seeking to use their computers in freedom. Fortunately this is not a widespread problem; most GPL’d programs respect user’s software freedoms so it is highly likely that the program Kurppa is talking about does too.

There are no obligations to share a program using a particular methodology, to share source code to programs one doesn’t distribute, or to accept someone’s patches into a program. It’s convenient and nice to distribute developmental versions of programs and to integrate patches from others so many hackers can help improve the program. But these are niceties, not requirements. The ethical obligations to distribute software that respects users freedoms are at the heart of the free software movement. Focusing on software freedom helps keep our priorities straight when considering the consequences of using and sharing computer software.

A surface analysis would reveal that proprietors support their own video formats exclusively. A deeper more significant analysis would reveal what users are left with after installing free and non-free software.

MacOS X and Microsoft Windows don’t come with all the software needed to play Flash video, Java applet-driven video, Microsoft Video codecs, or Apple’s QuickTime codecs. So when Apple distributes movies in some codec wrapped in QuickTime, only MacOS users have the software to play it. Same for Microsoft Windows users with Microsoft Video codecs. One commonly has to get additional software to play movie files. Users who install these programs are installing proprietary patent-encumbered software. Given Cross’ complaints one can only assume that this kind of onesidedness is okay despite how it leaves users in a lurch unable to play anything they come across and, more importantly, how adding the non-free movie players leaves users with non-free software.

Proprietors leave users with non-free software—software users are not free to inspect, share, or modify. If that software does something that any user doesn’t want (various bugs, failing to run in the user’s native language, spy on the user’s activities, to name a few examples), users have no legal means to alter the software to keep the functionality they like and delete the functionality they don’t like. Proprietary software takes away users’ freedom to run their computers as they wish.

But when the FSF distributes their videos in Ogg Vorbis+Theora licensed to share at least verbatim (licensing which is better than Microsoft or Apple’s licensing) they encourage users to get software to play the videos. VideoLAN Client (VLC for short), and Miro are two such programs. VLC & Miro both run on all the major operating systems (GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, MacOS X), both are free software, and both play a lot of audio and video files (VLC also plays DVDs). The Java applet the FSF used is also free software (it’s the same applet Wikipedia uses), so if you have Java installed you can play the video directly on the website. You’re left with free software and a movie you have license to share. The PlayOgg.org campaign can help you if you need more help acquiring or playing free media.

Playing Ogg Vorbis+Theora movie files is about to become a lot easier. Testing versions of Mozilla Firefox come with an Ogg Vorbis+Theora player built-in. Websites using the <video> HTML element will show a movie box without the need to install anything beyond Firefox. Users eager to test that software can get the latest builds and test it out. In time, Firefox’s production release (the version most Firefox users use) will feature these improvements and Firefox will ask users to upgrade to this version. This move adds pressure on other web browser developers to support Ogg Vorbis+Theora, the <video> element, and supporting Ogg Vorbis+Theora increases the chances that we’ll all be able to build our culture around free media.

Cross asks “Java was proprietary (and therefore verboten) until very recently. What did they do before that?” Before Java became free software the FSF advocated for change to eliminate dependence on non-free software and to make a free Java. The FSF wrote an essay about what they called “The Java Trap“—free software programs with non-free software dependencies such as a Java program that relied on the formerly non-free Sun Java runtime. The FSF also encouraged the development of free software Java replacements and hackers had been working on just such a thing. I maintain that it is that hard work which resulted in increased competition for Sun, Sun’s shift in policy, and relicensing their Java software to become free software.

In other words, running proprietary software doesn’t result in the creation of more software freedom. When we run more proprietary software we start to think of the proprietor’s interests as an acceptable state of affairs no matter how much the proprietor restricts our work using our computers. We might even defend their onesidedness which leaves us dependent on their software and with no media to share. When we put in the work to fight for our software freedom we’re left with software that respects our freedom to share, modify, and use.

Finally, Cross notes that “The Free Software Foundation never ever use the term “Open Source Software” as it dilutes their brand.”. The FSF’s objection to the term “open source” stems from the difference in philosophy between the free software and open source movements. Richard Stallman has written two essays on this topic (I linked to the latter but the former is linked from there), spoken about these philosophies at virtually every talk or interview he gives, and answers emails about it any time it comes up. The FSF would like to get people to think of software freedom, not the small subset of programmatic efficiency issues the phrase “open source” was coined for.

If you live in a state bordering Canada or Mexico, you may soon be given an opportunity to carry a very high tech item: a remotely readable driver’s license. Designed to identify U.S. citizens as they approach the nation’s borders, the cards are being promoted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to save time and simplify border crossings. But if you care about your safety and privacy as much as convenience, you might want to think twice before signing up.

The new licenses come equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that can be read right through a wallet, pocket or purse from as far away as 30 feet. Each tag incorporates a tiny microchip encoded with a unique identification number. As the bearer approaches a border station, radio energy broadcast by a reader device is picked up by an antenna connected to the chip, causing it to emit the ID number. By the time the license holder reaches the border agent, the number has already been fed into a Homeland Security database, and the traveler’s photograph and other details are displayed on the agent’s screen.

Although such “enhanced” driver’s licenses remain voluntary in the states that offer them, privacy and security experts are concerned that those who sign up for the cards are unaware of the risk: anyone with a readily available reader device—unscrupulous marketers, government agents, stalkers, thieves and just plain snoops—can also access the data on the licenses to remotely track people without their knowledge or consent. What is more, once the tag’s ID number is associated with an individual’s identity—for example, when the person carrying the license makes a credit-card transaction—the radio tag becomes a proxy for that individual. And the driver’s licenses are just the latest addition to a growing array of “tagged” items that consumers might be wearing or carrying around, such as transit and toll passes, office key cards, school IDs, “contactless” credit cards, clothing, phones and even groceries.

Speaking of “contactless” credit cards, the Discovery cable TV channel recently scuttled an episode of “Mythbusters” (where a team of scientists explore the veracity of stories sent in by viewers) which exposes how insecure RFID tags are. Boing Boing describes the clip thusly, “Mythbusters’ Adam Savage told the folks at the HOPE hackercon about how the Discovery Channel was bullied by big credit-card companies out of airing a program about how crappy the security in RFID tags is.”.

Years ago a university research team exposed the same story showing that by merely sitting in close proximity to someone with a Mobil SpeedPass gas keychain fob you can copy the information encoded on that device through the air (the “R” in “RFID” stands for radio) and replay that information at a Mobil gas station to get gas by posing as the SpeedPass owner. It would appear that credit card companies’ lawyers are more sensitive to bad public perception than Mobil is.

Update (2008 September 8): Adam Savage now says that Discovery Channel didn’t kill the RFID episode of “Mythbusters”, the show’s production company did. CNet news quotes a statement from Savage:

“There’s been a lot of talk about this RFID thing, and I have to admit that I got some of my facts wrong, as I wasn’t on that story, and as I said on the video, I wasn’t actually in on the call,” Savage said in the statement. “Texas Instruments’ account of their call with Grant and our producer is factually correct. If I went into the detail of exactly why this story didn’t get filmed, it’s so bizarre and convoluted that no one would believe me, but suffice to say…the decision not to continue on with the RFID story was made by our production company, Beyond Productions, and had nothing to do with Discovery, or their ad sales department.”

But this doesn’t really change the story in a significant way; no matter what group of people decided to kill the RFID Mythbusters episode, it appears that that episode won’t air. Trying to keep the lid on bad decisions about how to deploy RFID technology is futile and in no way benefits the public. The public is no more secure for the silence from Mythbusters and RFID “contactless” credit cards are out there with more on the way. So ask yourself: who does benefit?

It’s needlessly hard to see a movie on the web because there are no widely-accepted standards for how movies should be encoded as data. Currently popular choices become unpopular later and none of them are well-documented (in a technical sense) or legally in the clear so that all browser programmers can implement them. We end up with a set of incompatible methods to do roughly the same thing.

Ogg Theora+Vorbis can change that but Apple and Nokia are fighting it. They want their preferred patent-encumbered formats to become the standard means for distributing video online. This is a real problem for anyone who can’t pay for the relevant patent licenses, which means all free software hackers.

“Ogg” is a wrapper that ties together “Theora” encoded video and “Vorbis” encoded sound. Together, Ogg Theora+Vorbis give users a way to see movies on your computer. Ogg Vorbis+Theora are not known to be encumbered by any patents (the only applicable patent on Theora’s predecessor, called “VP3″, was licensed for everyone to use in any way they want). Ogg Theora+Vorbis are implementable on nearly all modern computers. There is free software (zero-cost and freely to sharable and modifiable) to make and play Ogg Vorbis+Theora movies. Ogg Vorbis+Theora are a great basis for interoperability and a fine choice to recommend in any standard that uses multimedia files precisely because everyone can use Ogg Theora+Vorbis.

Ogg Theora+Vorbis was in the drafts for the next generation of HTML (the lingua franca of webpages) as a suggestion; nobody would have been required to implement support for Ogg Theora+Vorbis. But that didn’t stop the proprietors from complaining.

What’s the holdup?

Ian Hickson, speaking for the HTML5 working group, recently announced that he removed the suggested Ogg Theora+Vorbis language from the HTML5 specification. The replacement language says that there should be unencumbered common audio and video formats in HTML but it doesn’t suggest any specific means of accomplishing that.

How did this situation come to pass? What happened between the time this spec was drafted and now? Corporate influence, in a nutshell. Apple and Nokia’s complaints have found an ear with those working on HTML specs.

What can you do to stop this? Raise the issue far and wide with everyone, even non-technical computer users. It’s time that these issues no longer live exclusively in the realm where only geeks tread.

Apple and Nokia never liked the language supporting Ogg Vorbis+Theora codecs. Nokia lied by claiming Ogg Vorbis and Theora were “proprietary”. What Nokia probably meant is that the evolution of the Vorbis and Theora codecs were not under the control of a corporate board which Nokia could become a member (and thus have a hand in controlling how Theora and Vorbis improve). Ogg Theora+Vorbis specifications are available for anyone to use for any purpose.

Apple’s representative in the discussion, Maciej Stachowiak, expressed concern that Ogg Vorbis+Theora might be encumbered by patents we don’t yet know about (commonly referred to as “submarine patents”). This is a bogus argument for a few reasons:

• No modern software is 100% verifiably free from patent infringement.

  If one fears submarine patents, one should not turn on a computer (users are at risk for losing a patent infringement case too). Raising fear that a patent holder might sue is a means of trying to stop the free software community from participating as equals in the making of relevant standards. In cases where known patents are actively defended (like the Fraunhofer patents covering MP3), there’s good reason to be cautious. Submarine patents are closer to the opposite of that case.

• The MPEG licensing authority (MPEG-LA) doesn’t guarantee that their patents cover everything

  Hub put it well in a response to a blog on this topic:

  Concerning submarine patents over Ogg and associated codecs, this argument is total bullshit. Even the MPEG-LA does not offer any warranty that they are licensing all the patents necessary to implement the specification. In short, even if you pay the patent protection money to the MPEG-LA gangster, there is not insurance that another gangster won’t be coming after you for another protection racket.

  Hub

  Just how at risk are the companies that paid off the MPEG-LA gangster? Xiph, the organization that made Ogg Vorbis and Theora, pointed out some recent MPEG-related patent threats:

  Despite the MPEG proponents’ claims that MPEG-licensed codecs protect against liability, patent disputes involving MPEG codecs have occurred as recently as the past few months. For example, Lucent v. Gateway and Multimedia Patent Trust v. Microsoft Corp.. The MPEG-LA’s own sublicense disclaimer warns that licensees are not protected from patent-related litigation nor are they protected from submarine patents.

  Xiph

• We don’t need what is technically “the best”.

  Apple contends:

  Even if all browsers end up supporting Ogg Theora/Vorbis, these are not the best-compression codecs available. So a large-scale video content provider that wants to save on bandwidth may wish to provide H.264/AAC content to those browsers that can handle it, even if all browsers could handle a lower-quality codec as well.

  H.264/AAC are patent-encumbered formats Apple has licensed and uses frequently. No matter how “best” is defined, what people need is something common, unencumbered, freely-implementable, and good enough most of the time. Ogg Vorbis+Theora qualifies and Apple’s preferred codecs don’t. Ogg Vorbis+Theora is quite good at what it does, plenty good enough for watching clips or entire feature-length movies on a computer. YouTube became famous with far lower-quality audio and video. Software is continually upgraded; we all accept that we are frequently running not-the-best most of the time.

• If you build it, they will come…

  Apple contends that

  Many mobile devices cannot practically implement decoding in software, and rely on custom hardware which can handle only a fixed set of codecs. While hardware decoders for H.264 are widely available, I don’t think there are any for Ogg Theora.

  Even if that’s true, it’s no reason for discriminating against a free software codec like Ogg Theora+Vorbis. Increased use will spur people to make more hardware to record and play Ogg Theora+Vorbis videos. There was a time where H.264 decoding wasn’t popular, I guess we’re supposed to consider ourselves lucky that didn’t stand in the way of anyone implementing such hardware?

What’s important is the critical difference between a proprietor’s interest (restricting the number of competitors to those in a similar position when outright elimination isn’t possible) and software freedom (letting everyone run, share, and modify computer software, and in doing so socially organize for our mutual benefit). Proprietors would prefer that everyone switch to using what that proprietor can deliver today: for Apple this means QuickTime and QuickTime-compatible codecs, Nokia licenses various codecs and makes money from selling patent licenses to their own codecs. But since no proprietor can swing total dominance, each will settle for keeping the status quo of nothing-works-universally for as long as it benefits them because each proprietor recognizes that that confusion keeps their software viable for their portion of the multimedia audience.

A Prediction

Once the patents covering MPEG development have expired worldwide, Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, and other corporations will lose interest in these formats because the exclusivity has vanished. Despite their distractive arguments their interest here has nothing to do with perceived quality of video or audio, hardware availability, or irrational fear of submarine patents. A proprietor’s main interest has primarily to do with sustaining monopoly and keeping competitors away. These companies want to make sure that the public is in no position to mount an effective threat to the established multimedia codec powers that be. Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, etc. don’t like dealing with each other as it is, but they’ll be damned if they’re going to let people like you compete with them too.

]]> http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/30/ogg-theoravorbis-as-default-for-video-scuttled-in-html5-spec-who-benefits/feed/ 7 http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/23/microsofts-ie8-vaporware-passing-acid2-gets-cheered-in-corporate-media/ http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/23/microsofts-ie8-vaporware-passing-acid2-gets-cheered-in-corporate-media/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2007 07:06:14 +0000 J.B. Nicholson-Owens http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/23/microsofts-ie8-vaporware-passing-acid2-gets-cheered-in-corporate-media/ More Microsoft advocates than I can link to (1, 2 are a couple) recently wrote non-critically about Microsoft’s recent announcement: Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of Microsoft’s proprietary web browser, will pass a standards-compliance test called “Acid2“. As this was covered widely in mainstream corporate press, this is not really news.

What’s news is how people commenting in and on this story don’t question why they should believe Microsoft at all. Why shouldn’t everyone continue to push for the use of free software web browsers? Why should we treat vaporware as good news?

It’s quite common to be able to get free software programs as soon as they’re updated to do something new. Firefox, for instance, is recompiled and distributed nightly. You can download a nightly version and test it all you want. All Microsoft did was produce a screenshot ostensibly demonstrating MSIE8 passing Acid2. They distributed no code for people to verify this alleged standards compliance for themselves, not even proprietary code. To me this represents a significant low in how many people are willing to give credit for something they can’t verify, something typically called vaporware.

At best this is another example of a proprietor making tiny steps toward something resembling what users want, but only when the proprietor is pushed: Microsoft’s announcement comes on the heels of Opera (another web browser proprietor) launching a Microsoft antitrust complaint. Merely a coincidence or unsurprising behavior coming from the target of significant antitrust action (the largest American antitrust case is the Microsoft case and a recent EU antitrust action that resulted in Microsoft getting paid to produce some protocol documentation under NDA)?

]]> http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/23/microsofts-ie8-vaporware-passing-acid2-gets-cheered-in-corporate-media/feed/ 1 http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/22/samba-team-gains-tech-docs-from-eu-microsoft-antitrust-suit/ http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/22/samba-team-gains-tech-docs-from-eu-microsoft-antitrust-suit/#comments Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:56:23 +0000 J.B. Nicholson-Owens http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/22/samba-team-gains-tech-docs-from-eu-microsoft-antitrust-suit/ The Samba team will soon get the fruits of the EU antitrust suit against Microsoft. Samba is software which allows an operating system to communicate with Microsoft Windows shared folders and printers over a network. The network protocols Microsoft uses are secret and had to be determined by Samba programmers by listening on the wire to see what Microsoft’s proprietary software would do given a particular input. Microsoft had to be forced to produce the documentation for various network protocols they use. This protocol documentation allows Samba to fully interoperate with the Microsoft Windows workgroup server products so they can make free software that implements those protocols.

The Samba team will become a subcontractor of the newly-formed Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF) which will pay Microsoft €10,000 for the documentation and agree to keep certain aspects of the docs secret. The PFIF will allow other programmers access as well, this is not a deal exclusive to Samba programmers. This deal doesn’t include patent licenses for any patents covering anything described in these docs but Microsoft has to list their patents which read on the ideas in these docs.

• Andrew “Tridge” Tridgell’s PFIF agreement
• The Microsoft/PFIF agreement (local copy)
• Samba team announcement
]]> http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/12/22/samba-team-gains-tech-docs-from-eu-microsoft-antitrust-suit/feed/ 1 http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/17/36-hours-later-apples-latest-exclusion-scheme-is-brokenagain/ http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/17/36-hours-later-apples-latest-exclusion-scheme-is-brokenagain/#comments Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:37:45 +0000 J.B. Nicholson-Owens http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/17/36-hours-later-apples-latest-exclusion-scheme-is-brokenagain/ The latest change to iPod software that rendered the audio listening device less interoperable has been broken. This isn’t the first time iPod and iTunes-related algorithms were broken and it won’t be the last.

Read more about the news or download a local copy of the public domain source code that implements the new hashing algorithm.

Here’s a sample of what people are saying about the latest break:

Really the only “correct” solution is for folks to stop using Apple products.

Ian Monroe

screw you and your pathetic failed attempt to use your ridiculously trendy device to lock its owners into your sorry excuse for music playing software.

i know you’re afraid of the linux desktop eating away at your precious niche market, but at least you could play fair.

Ryan Lortie

Although we -the Linux community- can choose not to buy iPods, many other people will. And it is our goal to make Linux a viable modern computing platform that allows people to use all of their existing devices.

Breaking the hash is not really a long-term solution, as they can keep making the process harder every time. The long-term solution is for iPods to have a standard interface that third parties can communicate with.

This probably should be compounded to the EU’s findings on Apple’s anti-trust practices to ensure open access to a popular device.

Miguel de Icaza

]]> http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/17/36-hours-later-apples-latest-exclusion-scheme-is-brokenagain/feed/ 0 http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/15/apples-ipod-vendor-lock-in-gets-worse/ http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/15/apples-ipod-vendor-lock-in-gets-worse/#comments Sun, 16 Sep 2007 02:03:08 +0000 J.B. Nicholson-Owens http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/15/apples-ipod-vendor-lock-in-gets-worse/ Background

Apple has changed the way iPods work so that only Apple’s software can successfully manipulate the songs on an iPod. Until the new arrangement is reverse-engineered, Apple has locked in iPod users into their software, transforming a more useful general-purpose audio listening and file carrying device to something that chiefly obeys Apple’s wishes.

Lennart Poettering is a free software hacker, author of important software including Avahi (which helps computers connect to each other and discover services) and PulseAudio (which allows computers to play multiple sounds simultaneously, even sending audio over networks to be heard somewhere else). He is quite familiar with the relevant protocols Apple uses to allow iTunes to share files and send audio around the network. These aren’t the kinds of programs one uses directly but they’re quite necessary for any modern system.

Analysis

Poettering’s analysis of Apple’s latest move is quite apt. There’s more on this issue from Boing Boing and Hubert Figuiere, another free software hacker.

At one point, Poettering concludes to use a technically inferior protocol to do the job DAAP does because DAAP is not an open protocol and UPnP is an open protocol:

I believe that DAAP is the superior protocol in comparison to UPnP MediaServer. (Not really surprising, since I wrote most of Avahi, which is a free implementation of mDNS/DNS-SD (“Zeroconf”), the (open) Apple technology that is the basis for DAAP.) However, due to the closedness of DAAP I would recommend everyone to favour UPnP MediaServer over DAAP. It’s a pity.

Apple did the right thing with the mDNS/DNS-SD protocol (which allows computers to see what services they offer and help make it easier for ordinary users to connect computers together on a local network). Apple allows everyone to use mDNS/DNS-SD and encourage broad acceptance by publishing complete specs under a license that encourages implementation, allow an Apple employee to help with technical questions, and build valuable programs and devices which use the protocol.

But make no mistake, if Apple were a more popular consumer electronics company they would treat you no better than they could get away with. Best not to become dependent on them.

Update

A little over a day after this news broke, Apple’s latest exclusion scheme has been broken.

]]> http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/09/15/apples-ipod-vendor-lock-in-gets-worse/feed/ 1 http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/07/30/as-were-counted-one-by-one-so-goes-our-privacy/ http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/07/30/as-were-counted-one-by-one-so-goes-our-privacy/#comments Mon, 30 Jul 2007 23:38:36 +0000 J.B. Nicholson-Owens http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/07/30/as-were-counted-one-by-one-so-goes-our-privacy/ Thanks to Lovely Lizzie for the tip: If you received a passport recently, you’ve probably got one with an RFID tag in it. Radio Frequency Identification tags are a chip and antenna combination that receive a signal from a scanner. When the scanner sends one a signal, the RFID tag uses the energy in the signal to possibly do a light bit of computation and broadcast a signal back.

RFID tags are embedded in a number of goods we already own and that is quite troubling from a privacy standpoint, but chief among them is in the passport and in a human being. By carrying an RFID tagged passport one is basically broadcasting some information about their passport to anyone with an RFID scanner. I don’t need to get into the details of how unwise this as the US bombs the world into democracy.

Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre co-authored “Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move“, long-time listeners of my show will probably recall the interview. In Spychips Albrecht & McIntyre examine ways in which our privacy is being eroded through RFID, shopper cards, and similar tracking technology. They take on the ethical implications of making us all more easily tracked by anyone who wishes to do so. You’ve probably read about their protests and informative talks in the mainstream media. I keep up with their activities through the CASPIAN mailing list.

In case you’re thinking “why would I care about privacy, I have nothing to hide!” Bruce Schneier reminds you that privacy is not about hiding a wrong, it’s a fundamental requirement for human decency. There are plenty of things we commonly do where we desire privacy; we’re not doing something wrong or shameful, we just don’t wish to broadcast our activities. We also use privacy as a check on those in power by denying those who would oppress us the information they’d use against us. Privacy should be respected and not given away without serious consideration about how the information will be used and who will have access to it.

]]> http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/07/30/as-were-counted-one-by-one-so-goes-our-privacy/feed/ 0 http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/05/09/we-cant-recommend-hardware-that-doesnt-support-our-freedom/ http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/05/09/we-cant-recommend-hardware-that-doesnt-support-our-freedom/#comments Thu, 10 May 2007 05:07:42 +0000 J.B. Nicholson-Owens http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2007/05/09/we-cant-recommend-hardware-that-doesnt-support-our-freedom/ AMD owns ATI, a computer videocard manufacturer. Recent ATI videocards have no free software drivers. The proprietary ATI driver which works with a typical GNU/Linux system is poor quality and as a result many users have problems with it. At the Red Hat summit going on right now, an AMD representative discussed the situation and Tom Calloway blogged about it:

An executive VP from AMD gave a keynote this morning, and he talked up open source and committed to making the ATI driver “better”.

We don’t need the driver to be “better”, Mr. AMD, we need the driver to be “free”. You make it free. Free your specs. Free up a little of your manpower to answer technical queries from developers. Free Dave Airlie from his NDA restrictions. Free your existing code.

You make it free. We’ll make it better. Everyone will benefit.

Calloway has the right message; software freedom will lead to improved code quality. If ATI supported our freedom we could change our position from recommending against ATI hardware to telling people which ATI videocards to buy, just like we tell people which Intel hardware to look for in their next machines as a direct result of Intel’s stance supporting free software. On a related note, consider what ATI spokesperson Henri Richard is reported to have said and the skeptical reaction recorded on Christopher Blizzard’s blog.

The situation Calloway describes here bears an eerie similarity to something we’ve heard before.

From Why “Free Software” is better than “Open Source”:

At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as “Linux”, the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company’s decision to “support” that system. Unfortunately, their form of “support” consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system—in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.

He said, “There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it ‘internal’ open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.” (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)

People in the audience afterward told me, “He just doesn’t get the point.” But is that so? Which point did he not get?

He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.

The point that he missed is the point that “open source” was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.

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