I know it's old news but I couldn't resist pointing out this item from the "all the things my software freedom advocacy and activism has been based around recently" department:

Apparently, Apple filed for an software patent on an antifeature that uses a DRM-like system and a proprietary network services to lock down people's mobile phones.

If someone can figure out how to work in a revealing error, I think I can make it a sweep.

The Computer in My Pocket -- which I intended mostly as a one-off blog-post -- ended up having some legs. First, Carolina Flores Hine translated the essay into Spanish. More recently the FSF published a slightly patched-up version in the Fall 2009 bulletin, sent to all members, along with a bunch of more interesting writing by other free software folks. Certainly, there is growing recognition in our communities that phones are a critical battleground in the fight for software freedom. More exciting for me though, my post elicited a bunch of comments from folks pointing to promising projects (Replicant was just one often cited example) making real progress toward freedom for all the computers in our pockets. I knew about most of them, but growing knowledge and excitement about problems and potential solutions was striking. There is an enormous amount to do, but there are reasons to believe that all is not lost.

In preparation for LCA, I'm going to be giving my new Antifeatures talk a few times to smaller local audiences. The first is going to be today in Boston (apologies for the late notice!) at Northeastern University at 11:45 and it's being hosted by the ACM chapter there. The second one will be at my alma mater Hampshire College in Amherst this Friday. A draft flier (ignore the unpluralized "antifeatue") is below.

Debian is primiarly organized into mostly one-person "projects," namely packaging a piece of software. But in the past few days on Planet Debian, there has been discussion about how existing packages in Debian need more help. Tim Retout wrote:

There's a huge role for non-DDs to play in getting fixes into Debian, but as far as I remember, the emphasis of the mentors documentation is on packaging rather than bug fixing.

I think this is a serious problem across Free Software. Open source contributors are grouped into projects. If you're burning out on what you're working on lately, or you are looking to become a new contributor, it's hard to know what projects need your help. As someone who knows Python and Debian packaging, it would be nice to be able to search Debian for Python-language packages that need help. I also think that Tim hit on a really important social point later in his post:

It seems to me that the mentor relationship works better when DDs get to know particular people

Tim's right that personal relationships make a big difference. I got serious about my NM application when I asked someone I already knew to sponsor my packages. But not everyone can be so lucky as to have a Debian Developer as a friend. And many projects aren't as friendly as Debian; there's no official mentorship available. I think that we need to start paying a lot more attention to personal relationships all across Free Software. (I'm working on a web tool in this space. Join me in #openhatch on irc.freenode.net to discuss it, or just stay tuned until I write it up tomorrow.)

The mailbox in my building is broken. Nobody can remember it being any other way. The lock is busted so anyone in the building can get access to every apartment's individual boxes in the same way that the mailman does. It's not a huge problem since there are only four apartments in the building and the box is behind a locked door to the street. I saw the mailman come one day to deliver mail. He used a key to unlock a box on the outside of the building from which he retrieved a key to first unlock the outside door and then another to "unlock" the mailbox. Every day, my mailman unlocks a mailbox that is always unlocked and, in fact, unlockable. As far as I can tell, he's been doing it for years. I don't have the heart to tell him the truth.

So I don't tweet because I'm not ready to hand my data and autonomy over to Twitter. Luckily -- or unluckily perhaps -- that hasn't kept me off the microblogging wagon. I "dent" semi-regularly over at freedom-friendly identi.ca. I've found that microblogging is a great public outlet where one can talk about all those otherwise little meaningless things that we all do in our daily lives. High on my list of meaningless little actions, however, is microblogging itself! But can you microblog about your microblogging -- i.e. can you "metamicroblog" (or "metadent", or "metatweet")? I created a new account, metamako that over the last month or so, has been proving that you sure can!

I've just revoked my signature over the Ubuntu Code of Conduct 1.0.1. I did this because Ubuntu's CoC (perhaps jokingly?) singles out Mark Shuttleworth as someone who should be held to a super-human standard (as pointed out recently by Rhonda, as well as earlier in ubuntu bug 53848). I think that the CoC is a good document, and good guidelines in general for reasonable participation in online communities. When i originally signed the document, i thought the Shuttleworth-exceptionalism was odd, but decided i'd be willing to hold him to a higher standard than the rest of the community, if he wanted me to. That is, i figured his position as project leader meant that he could have made the CoC different than it is, thus he was (perhaps indirectly) asking me to hold him to a higher standard. Why does this matter to me now? Shuttleworth has apparently signed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, but as i wrote about earlier, his recent sexist comments at LinuxCon were a Bad Thing for the community, and his apparent lack of an apology or open discussion with the community concerned about it was even worse. So i'm asking Mark Shuttleworth to abide by the following points in the Code of Conduct that he has signed:

• Be considerate
• Be respectful [...] It's important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.
• The important goal is not to avoid disagreements or differing views but to resolve them constructively. You should turn to the community and to the community process to seek advice and to resolve disagreements.
• When you are unsure, ask for help. Nobody knows everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the Ubuntu community

I've signed a revised version of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct 1.01 (with the Shuttleworth-exceptionalism clause removed), to reaffirm my commitment to these principles, and to acknowledge that, yes, the SABDFL can make a mistake, and to encourage him to address his mistakes in a fashion befitting a mature participant in this community we both care about. UPDATE: It seems that Mako and Daniel Holbach have recently revised the CoC resulting in a new version (1.1) which has just been approved by the the Ubuntu Community Council. The new version 1.1 looks good to me (i like its broadening of scope beyond developers, and its lack of superhuman claims for Shuttleworth) and when it is available on Launchpad, i'll most likely sign it there. Thanks to the two of them for their work! I hope Shuttleworth will consider abiding by this new version.Tags: code of conduct, sexism, ubuntu

The Ubuntu Code of Conduct is one of the most surprisingly successful projects I've ever had the privilege of working on. On my first day working for the company that would become Canonical, I talked with Mark Shuttleworth about some ideas for community governance. Partially in reaction to some harsh behavior in other free software projects we'd worked on, Mark and I agreed that some sort of explicit standard for behavior in Ubuntu would be a good thing. Over lunch of what was my literally first day working on Ubuntu, I wrote a draft of code of conduct that was essentially the version that Ubuntu has used until today. Shuttleworth made a series of modification to my draft but I don't think either of us took it too seriously. We figured it would be easy to update it later. Over time, that code has become a central piece of the Ubuntu community. Every new Ubuntu member cryptographically signs the code. When conversation in any Ubuntu forums, channels, or lists becomes disrespectful, users almost instinctively remind each other of the code. Through this process, the code has become a sort of constitution of our community and a widely enforced standard. People treat the code as a reflection of what "ubuntu" --- both the concept and our project --- stands for. Over time, the original code has spawned a Leadership Code of Conduct (which I also worked to draft), and has been modified and employed by scores of free software projects and by many projects that have nothing to do with free software at all. This is all wonderful, but a side effect has been that updating the code has become a more a difficult process that we originally imagined. Despite it success, the code remains a text written in an afternoon in Mark's flat. At times, this fact shows. For example, the code contains some off-hand humor that now seems a little akward and the text was a bit too developer centric at points. And there was a lot that, quite simply, we would have done better if we had realized that the code would be so important. So this summer, Daniel Holbach and I spent another afternoon in Berlin discussing and crafting a new version of the code along with a detailed rationale document that describes all the things we'd changed and why. We believe that what we've created is fully in the spirit of the original code. We've made efforts to minimize the delta in terms of text as possible. Daniel and I realize that changing the code out from under our community is a dangerous game, and we've make exceptional efforts to make sure that the new code doesn't say anything substantively different than the old code --- but that it does say it better. So I'm thrilled that, after being posted since early June and after incorporating a series of revisions with members of the Ubuntu Community Council, the new draft was approved at a council meeting earlier today. Of course, we are continuing to think about how we might improve the text going forward. One important goal we've thrown around, for example, is the creation of a code that is no longer Ubuntu specific and that can be employed by a wide range of different groups and different free and open source software projects.

Joe Barker has been publishing a series interviews with folks from the Ubuntu Forums and the larger Ubuntu community. I'm thrilled to have joined the ranks of his interviewees. You can read the interview on his blog.

One thing I noticed when I got my new LG U990 Viewty [1] mobile phone is the way the core telephony functionality has suffered while features for web browsing etc have been added. It seems that the core phone functionality (making and receiving calls and maintaining a list of names and phone numbers) has generally decreased since about 2004 when I got my first camera-phone. The Nokia GSM phones that I used prior to getting a 3G phone seemed to have a combination of signal reception, voice quality, and basic telephony features that beat all the 3G phones I ve used. The only way the 3G phones were better for core telephony features is in managing the list of recently called numbers. In my past two LG phones I ve been able to easily call an alternate number of the person I last called this feature was dropped in the Viewty. Some of my relatives have camera-phones that have an extremely poor ability to get a signal, they can t get a GSM signal in places where my Viewty can get 3G! Obviously making a usable phone was not a design priority for those devices! Then there s the issue of battery life. Early mobile phones had NiCd batteries that lasted a week, later mobile phones had Li batteries that lasted a week as a standard feature. Nokia sold phones with replacement batteries, so if you wanted to make lots of phone calls while on the move you could have a second battery charged and ready for use. Now the latest BlackBerry [5] apparently has batteries that only last for one day I haven t investigated the options for storing a second battery but a casual glance indicates that changing a battery will be a lot more difficult than on an old Nokia phone. I ve been wondering, why don t they just sell some mobile phones that don t support making phone calls? Smart phones that aren t very good at telephony is really only going half way, do it properly and just rip out the phone functionality! Or they could use the word phone to apply to devices that already exist to do mobile stuff. You could have an Amazon Kindle phone [2] that allows you to read documents, and a Nokia N800 tablet phone [3] for general Internet access including web browsing and email really the only smart-phone feature that is missing from the Nokia is a camera. For that matter my EeePC 701 [4] is probably about twice as heavy as my first mobile phone, maybe it could be called a phone too. If you have two phones, one for making phone calls and the other for doing smart-phone stuff then it won t matter so much if the smart-phone (which can t make phone calls) has it s battery run out. One likely objection to the idea of selling phones that can t be used for making phone calls is that it might confuse the users. However the current situation is that there are significant differences in the signal reception ability of mobile phones, the people who sell them don t know what the difference is, and the rare reviews that analyse signal strength (as done by Choice [6]) are become outdated rapidly and never cover all phones on the market. So I think it would be a great improvement if the phone sales people could say don t buy phone A if you want to make phone calls because it can t do that because currently anyone who just wants to make phone calls has a matter of luck to determine whether they get a phone that works well. The really sad thing however, is that some people apparently have usage patterns that are similar to my satire above. I have heard of people having two phones, one for smart-phone functionality and another for making calls. What we need is to have manufacturers put more effort into making hardware that can receive week signals, from now on I will consult the Choice review of this before making any mobile phone purchase or recommendation. If only a few million other people would do the same then the manufacturers would improve their products. The next thing we need is to have better software to run the phones. The deficiencies in the software on my Viewty could easily be fixed if everyone had source code access. Benjamin Mako Hill writes about some of the problems with closed-source on mobile phones [7]. He mentions security (in terms of our trust in the phone manufacturers), and the general ideal of having control over your own device. One specific problem he doesn t mention are the ways that mobile phones are deliberately crippled by the manufacturers, 3G phones have precious main menu space occupied by the services that are most profitable to the telephone company without regard to what the users desire. Another problem for people who desire free software is file format support. Camera-phones that save video to AVI format instead of OGG reduce our ability to use free software in other places as a general rule every time you transcode a video you either lose some quality or increase the file size so the format that the phone uses will be carried through many other computers and devices. Smart-phones generally have the ability to view a range of data types, the ability to view MS file formats is common (which excludes free competitors). My Viewty has an entire menu section dedicated to Google services (Gmail, blogger, youtube, etc). That s nice for Google who presumably paid well for that, but not so good for me as I don t use any of the Google features on my phone. Now a menu that had a caching IMAP client, an RSS feed reader, a Wordpress API client, a Jabber client, and a caching Wikipedia client would be really useful. My current phone is just under a year old, so I won t be buying a new phone until January 2011 (unless I break or lose my Viewty). Hopefully then there will be some better options. Before anyone suggests that I buy another phone to help with the coding, my current free software coding projects are all behind schedule

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2009/05/31/lg-u990-viewty/
• [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle
• [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800
• [4] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/07/21/review-of-the-eeepc-701/
• [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry
• [6] http://www.choice.com.au/
• [7] http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20091017-00

http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20091017-00

If we've kept up with projections, by the end of this year, the world will be home to 3 billion mobile phones. That's nearly one phone for every other living human being. Although these phones open up a world of important new opportunities in communication, creativity, and cooperation --- and it's important not to understate this fact --- they also represent a step toward a sort of technological dystopia not unlike Stallman's Right To Read. Phones represent one of the most locked-down, proprietary, and generally unfree technologies in wide distribution. The implications for software freedom and technological empowerment are dire. But despite the fact that mobile phones represent what may be the greatest threat to software freedom today, the free software community has --- with a number of notable exceptions that I want to both thank and draw increased attention to --- been mostly silent on the issue. I know passionate advocates of software freedom who work tirelessly to rid themselves and the world of a handful of binary blobs in the Linux kernel --- important work that we all benefit from. And yet, even some of these "hardliners" don't seem to hold their phones to their same standards as their laptops. Ubuntu's decision to ship a new binary driver remains more controversial than the fact that the vast majority of the world's computer using population knows nothing other than phone-based computers that remain almost unthinkably unfree and which remain almost entirely unfreeable when compared to personal computers. For most of the world's computer users', there is no option of, and essentially no hope for, freedom on their current devices. It shocks me that anyone, especially free software advocates, would happily put up with such non-free computers.[1] I think part of the reason lies in the fact that most users of mobile phones, and even most phone users that care about software freedom and technological autonomy, don't think of their phones as computers. Thinking that our phones as computers will not solve any of the problems I've alluded to. But doing so remains an essential first step toward any solution. Although we must still work to build viable, widely accessible, and compelling free phones, we must first convince both users and developers that this is an important goal. Reminding people that our phones, both free and non-free, are powerful general-purpose computers remains an important and still largely unfufilled part of this process. We must find ways to remind ourselves and others of the fact that modern phones are powerful computers with powerful interfaces that are useful for a unimaginable variety of arbitrary applications. We must focus on the fact that these computers have microphones, sensors, and other sensors and that we trust them with our closest secrets and most sensitive data. We must not forget that, in almost all cases, these computers remain controlled, completely and ultimately, by companies that very few of us trust at all. I'm not sure how we will accomplish this task. But more of us need to think long, hard, and creatively about this problem. I'll be calling my phone "my computer" as a first, very personal, step. I have done this over the last week and it has led to some conversations with slightly confused acquaintances. Of course, this doesn't make my phone any less free. But it does mean I'm talking more about the non-freeness most of us have put up with too silently. At this stage, that seems like progress.

[1]	Like many free software advocates, my phone is also a computer running a combination of free and non-free software. I use it unhappily and am doing what I can to change this.

I wasn't going to write about this since I thought that Chris's post covered pretty much everything I would have said, but after reading Scott's entry on how people would have interpreted Mark's remarks differently if he'd said "We'll have less trouble explaining to boys what we actually do" instead I realised that people are still confused about the fundamental issue here.

The assumption that Scott's making is that "girls" and "boys" are semantically equivalent in this case. They're not. There's various ways in which the symmetry is broken, but the most basic one is that Mark's a straight man. When the overwhelming stereotype is that "we" as a community are heterosexual males, using "we" as a shorthand for "People who are straight men" is unfortunate because it supports that stereotype. Using "we" as a shorthand for "People who are attracted to men" doesn't. Unsurprisingly, this results in a fairly significant change in who's going to be offended.

Whatever his intentions (and I could easily believe that it was a slip of the tongue), Mark managed to imply that the Linux community is entirely made up of straight men. This is possible because straight men do make up the majority of the Linux community. In contrast, Scott's version doesn't succeed in implying that everyone in the Linux community is attracted to men because it's blatantly obviously not the case, so we know that Scott is using "we" in a different manner. Context is important, and unless you can invert everything else about the situation as well then simply replacing the word "girls" with "boys" doesn't give you any meaningful insight into whether or not people are justifiably offended.

In a more general sense, I'm saddened by this case because I think it's a clear case where the Ubuntu code of conduct could have been used to good effect. "Be excellent to each other"[1] ought to include accepting that you've offended other people without meaning to and making appropriate restitution. If the offence was unintended, an apology should be cheap. Whatever the reality of the situation, failing to provide that apology gives people the impression that either the offence was intended or that Mark doesn't care about those who were offended. That's not a good way to build an inclusive community.

[1] Mako's original summary of the code of conduct

This last week, I gave a couple talks at OSCON including a fun talk on Antifeatures I hope to give a few in some form a more times in the next year. After a weekend bike tour, the plan is to stick around San Francisco for another week. If you are around and want to get together to talk wikis, free software, or free culture, to have a keysigning, or to share a drink, please don't hesitate to get in contact.

As I am attempting to focus on writing projects that are more scholarly and academic on the one hand (i.e., work for my day job at MIT) and more geared toward communicating free software principles toward wider audiences on the other (e.g., Revealing Errors), I have little choice but to back away from technical writing. However, this last month has seen the culmination of a bunch of work that I've done previously: two book projects that have been ongoing for the last couple years or more have finally hit the shelves! The first is the fourth edition (!) of the bestselling Official Ubuntu Book. Much to my happiness, the book continues to do extremely well and continues to receive solid reviews. This edition brings the book up to date for Jaunty/9.04 and adds a few pieces here and there. Although I was less active in this update than I have been in the past, Corey Burger continued his great work and Matthew Helmke of Ubuntu Forums fame stepped up to take a leading role. As I plan to retreat into a more purely advisory role for the next edition of this book, I'm thrilled to know that the project will remain in such capable hands. I'm also thrilled that this edition of the book, like all previous editions, is released as a free cultural work under CC BY-SA For years, I have heard people say that although they like the Official Ubuntu Book, it was a little too focused on desktops and on beginners for their tastes. The newly released Official Ubuntu Server Book is designed to address those concerns by providing an expanded guide to more "advanced" topics and is targeted at system administrators trying to get to know Ubuntu. Kyle Rankin planned and produced most of this book but I was thrilled to help poke it in places, chime in during the planning process, and to contribute a few chapters. Kyle is a knowledgeable sysadmin and has done wonderful job with the book. I only wish I could take more credit. The publisher has promised me that, at the very least, my chapters will be distributed under CC BY-SA. Many barriers to the adoption of free software are technical and a good book can, and often does, make a big difference. I enjoy being able to help address that problem. I also truly enjoy technical writing. I find it satisfying to share something I know well with others and it is great to know that I've helped someone with their problems. I'll assure I'll be able to do things here and there, I'll miss technical writing as I attempt "cut back."

Two organizations I care deeply about are having elections this month. The first is the Wikimedia Foundation who is electing three community representatives to their board of directors. The second is Ubuntu who will soon be electing a new Community Council. The Wikimedia Foundation is perhaps the most important organization working on issues related to free culture. Wikimedia elections are currently ongoing and will close on August 10th. Editors who have more than 600 edits to their name across all Wikimedia wikis and 50 edits in 2009 made before July 1st are eligible to vote. The vast majority of eligible contributors to Wikimedia projects have not voted in previous elections. Ubuntu will be electing all members in a new --- larger --- Community Council. I have been a member of the council since it was created and I will be standing for election once again --- the last time I plan to do so. Work in setting up the election is being finalized and all Ubuntu Members will be able to vote in the election. Both Wikimedia and Ubuntu are struggling to find the right relationship between the communities who produce most of the value at the heart of their projects and the organizations and leadership structures that try to support and, from time to time, direct it. Ubuntu and Wikimedia are very different. What's at state at these elections is different too. But both elections are are extremely important and at pivotal times in their communities' growth. Both elections will have an important impact on the process of creating new organizational forms. My message in regards to both elections is also the same: If you are eligible to vote, please do. No governance system I've seen has as healthy and close relationship to the community it serves as it should. Wikimedia and Ubuntu are not exceptions. The result is a strange, and unhealthy, relationship between governance systems and the organizations at the heart of our community-driven projects and the communities themselves. We can all do better. There are not enough opportunities for community members to help push this balance in a better direction. These elections are one. I urge everyone who can to vote and to become involved.

On recent weekends, I've been going on long bike rides. I like to keep going until the people I meet no longer know exactly where the place I left from is. The fact that one place is outside another place's inhabitant's mental map seems like a good sign that two places are far enough away from each other.

Order Without Law is a fantastic book by Robert Ellickson published in 1991. In a way, the book is an in-depth case study of the irrelevance of law. Subtitled, "how neighbors settle disputes," Ellickson shows how people solve complicated problems in an archetypal area of liability law without knowledge of the law. Ellickson shows that even when people know exactly what the law says, they often ignore it in favor of community norms and, in his examples, models of "neighborliness." Specifically, the book is about how neighbors in northern California settle disputes related to damage caused by roaming cattle, how neighbors construct and share costs of fences, and how, although the law is frequently debated in relation to classifying land as either open or closed to free grazing, the law tends to take a back seat to unwritten norms in the way that problems are actually solved. There is order and a shared understanding of rules in Ellickson's account; it just has very little to do with the law. As part of his description, Ellickson goes into some detail about the types of damage that cattle cause. For example, Ellickson describes how bulls, will often break down barbed wire fences and go on rampages impregnating heifers, eating vast amounts of food, and destroying crops and equipment. When I was on a long bike trip through northern California a few weeks ago, I was sitting under a tree waiting for my cyling partner to catch up. A giant black bull nearby noticed me. Shorting, mooing, and shaking ribbons of slobber from its mouth, it lumbered toward me. Only a rather weak-looking barbed wire fence separated us. All I could think about was Order Without Law.

On Luis Villa's urging, I wrote up a short response to this article on "why Google Chrome OS will turn GNU/Linux into a desktop winner." I've posted my article over at Autonomo.us where it seemed most important.

After a week at the International Open and User Innovation Workshop 2009 in Hamburg, I'm in Berlin again this week. I've got nothing concrete planned other than spending most of my days hacking on a few projects. Let me know if you're around and would like to meet up. I'll post more about my travel and talks schedule this summer as things firm up in the next couple weeks.

When he was my adviser at the MIT Media Lab, I used to feel bad that I had trouble spelling Chris Csikszentmih lyi's name. As this screenshot from Chris' Dopplr page shows, I am apparently in good company.