4 September 2006

I've upgraded Planet (the software that runs Planet Debian) to version 2.0. It's been a while since I touched the planet software so many issues that had annoyed users of planet should now be remedied by this upgrade. I think people will very happy with the upgrade. In the process, I really screwed up planet for the moment. New posts from the last day or so may not be showing up. Other people may appear to have flooded planet when in fact they've done nothing at all. This is not their fault but I've had a hard time going through and picking up the pieces left by the upgrade. Please just bear with me. If you notice a little bit of funkiness in Planet Debian in the next day or so, please wait a day or two (or a post or two) before contacting me to debug the problem. Thanks for your patience everyone. If you have questions, don't hesitate to get in contact with me.

I kicked a new version of RubyVote out the door last week. This version has support of Instant Runoff Voting contributed by Alexis Darrasse. Thanks! I'm not a huge IRV fan but others are so it's important to have it in the library. There's a gemified version with range voting plus an improved IRV implementation that may have landed in the SVN repository by the time you read this. I'll release another version in the next week or so once everything has settled.

We often hear about the technical advances that occur at Debconfs. For example, using only Debconf signage, I once invented a portable toilet that was the size of a single sheet of A4 paper. The picture is a bit blurred but you can get the idea:

I was very concerned by Martin Krafft's appeal to voters in the Debian Project Leader election to shut up about their own "biased" opinions on the race. He argued that the candidates should campaign and that anyone who wants to spread their point of view should be running themselves or keeping their opinions to themselves and getting real work done. Perhaps I just buy into the whole deliberative democracy concept but I think this attitude is dangerous. In fact, I think it's essential that Debian publicly weigh the benefits of possible decisions and discuss, argue, and debate as a group. I think that every instance of public discourse (and no, flaming is not discourse) on project policy or leadership is a sign of a healthy and involved electorate and I'd like to see more of it. The leadership of the Debian project is at stake in this election. Our organization is more complex than a wheel with the DPL at the center. Our decision should be made as a project with a complex organization. That means conversations need to work the way the project does. Obviously, we vote as individuals. But that's precisely why conversations and discussions, through which we can make decisions as a community, play such an important role in informing our votes. I'll leave talking about enfranchisement in Debian, and the lack thereof, for another day.

Mika and I are hosting a guest visiting who has decided to do many of the normal tourist things while in Boston. Yesterday he went on the freedom trail and saw Old Ironsides. Old Ironsides is, of course, the USS Constitution and it is the oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy. Constructed from 2,000 oak trees (!) it is one of the few ships in the US Navy whose sides are not made of iron. In this sense, Old Ironsides is a bit of misnomer. Admittedly, the nickname is catchier than the more accurate Old Sides.

Believe it or not, there is news that is even cooler than the free content and expression definition. The news is that after knowing each other and dating for something like 7 or 8 years -- on and off but mostly on -- Mika and I are going to be getting married. Here's a picture of the two of us at a picnic last weekend: If you read my blog, you've probably seen my frequent links to hers. If you hung out with me in Seattle, Boston, or New York, in the last 3 years or have ever visited The Acetarium, you probably already know her. We've told our families and many of close friends and will going ahead with a wedding and parties in the coming months. At the very least, we'll be having parties in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and in Seattle. Neither of us are particularly traditional and I don't imagine we'll make a very traditional married couple. But we are crazy about each other and in it for the long haul. And that's what counts. The only bad news it that it means that I won't be making Debconf this year -- for the first time in four years. With a little bit of luck I'll be back (perhaps with Mika who attended Debconf 4) next year. If you want to send messages of congratulations. You could make us really happy by sending them in the form of cards or postcards. You can mail those to:

Benjamin Mako Hill and Mika Matsuzaki

The Acetarium

1010 Massachusetts Ave, Apt 54

Cambridge, MA 02138

USA

Stay tuned for information on forthcoming parties and celebrations.

I bet Wikipedian SJ Klein one dove that pigeons and doves were one -- one and the same that is. Wikipedia says, "the terms dove and pigeon are used interchangeably." Of course, this picture of a Chequered Rock Dove is what really seals the deal: As you can guess, Rock Doves are commonly found in city parks and widely known as "feral pigeons." Because I won, SJ can pay off the debt with a pigeon.

Something about this museum in Eindhoven made my think of my friend Daf.

In a few weeks, I'm going to be giving the keynote address at the the Conference on Engaging in Open Source at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The conference is organized by the student chapter of the ACM at Dalhousie and looks like a unique, and very interesting, gathering. My talk will build on some of my previous critical analyses of the unique process of principle-setting in the free and open source software communities and will try to introduce some new and challenging concepts while framing the broader discussion that will continue in the rest of the conference. The conference will be held on June 1 & 2, 2006. Ping me if you're in the area and would like to meet up.

Bookmarks are one of the simplest things in the world. If I want to mark my place in a book, I can almost always find some random scrap or object which, immediately at hand, is able to serve the purpose. I was reflecting today on the fact that there are people who make their living making or selling bookmarks. Its true! They make their living selling bookmarks. There is hope for me yet.

I was very happy to see that the anti-DRM protest that I suggested people go to seemed like it was a success! It would have been nicer if even more people had gone out for it but I guess that's just one of the problems with organizing such a thing on short notice. Given the time from announcement to protest, I think it went pretty well. It seems like there were definitely enough people to make it work. Of course the Defective By Design folks let you sign up now so you won't miss the next one if its in your town. If DRM is going to be successfully opposed this decade, it will be through education and activism in the next months and year. I think that it is very important that people get involved.

I've been doing a little research on the open access to scientific articles movement to bring myself up to speed. It's interesting because while they have adopted CC licensing and are often mentioned in the same breath as open source and free software, they have employed a set of normative stances and tactics that seems to be very different than what you'd see in those communities. Lots of good stuff. Nature has a nice focus page on the debate around open access in the scientific community. In it, they link to articles that they have published on the topic including one titled, Societies take united stand on journal access. Of course, if you try to click on the article and are not on an IP block of a subscriber, you are brought to a page that requires that pay US $30 for the article. I'll bet I can name at least one society that's not part of that united stand.

It's about time for a wrap-up on the recent major event in my life. On May 29th, Mika Matsuzaki and I were married. The festivities kicked off with a parade through Somerville's Davis Square. Andres Salomon kept rhythm on drums and, thanks to my new lab adviser Chris Csikszentmih lyi, we had a couple dozen other wikipedians, hackers, technologists, and biologists keeping tune on kazoos. Like all good Somerville parades, we forgot our parade permit. Which was fine. On the marginally more traditional side, we exchanged vows (written under a mathematical constraint -- Mika's idea) and rings. The marriage was made official by Oxford/Harvard professor of "Cyberlaw" -- who I once worked as teachers' assistant for many years ago -- and Massachusetts Justice of the Peace, Jonathan Zittrain. We ended the day watching the sunset with the serious party-goers from out of town, Debian, and the FSF. Then off to dinner and "happily ever after." Lots more pictures are linked the Cambridge wedding page on our wedding wiki. If you have pictures, you should link them there or mail them to use and we'll upload them. If you want to send messages of congratulations, please visit that page for mailing instructions (best!) or a wiki page to write them up on. Just yesterday, we received (via Joey Hess) four wonderful pages of tightly packed congratulations messages from the attendees at DebConf. Although it's not a constitutional matter, I'm pretty confident we had more than 3Q developers signing that form which, in a Debian election methods sort of way, really warms my heart. Thank you everyone! It's really too bad we missed DebConf but we're both determined to make next year!

Mika and I applied for membership at the Boston Athen um today. In addition to paying the USD $160 yearly fee, were each asked to provide three references who can attest to care for books. That's right; three references to get a library card. This is a very good library. We'll hopefully hear back about our application within two weeks. If we are accepted, we'll be able to take guests into the library with us. The Athen um has, among other things, a copy of Narrative of the life of James Allen, alias George Walton, alias Jonas Pierce, alias James H. York, alias Burley Grove, the highwayman. Being his death-bed confession, to the warden of the Massachusetts state prison. It is bound in the authors skin. Apparently, while rare, this is not entirely uncommon. The Harvard Law Library has another example of anthropodermic bibliopegy and just a couple months ago, someone found a book bound in human skin in the middle of the street in Leeds.

My friend Seth recently pointed out that the Brazilian Real coins look strikingly similar to the Euro coins. I agree. This was something that I noticed on my last trip to Brazil as well. In fact, they are so similar I had trouble telling which one were the knockoffs or which were Real!

As part of the Defective By Design anti-DRM campaign which I've been rabble-rousing for recently, there are going to be a series of protests at Apple Stores across the United States Saturday, June 10th. Events will be in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Plano. There will be costumes and cameras and plenty of people attempting to warn Apple customers about the dangers of DRM in iTunes and Apple hardware and software. If you are going to come to any of the events, you can find more information on the Defective By Design website and you can RSVP by mailing appleflash@defectivebydesign.org. If you are coming to Boston, there's a tentatively planned after party at the Acetarium. If you have an iPod or other DAP with DRM, we can attempt to liberate your iPod with RockBox there. If you live in or near any of these places, you should come. If we don't win some serious mindshare in the next year and before the next holiday season, it will become much more difficult. As consumers of technology, we have a lot to lose to inaction right now.

Namie Amuro is a very famous Japanese pop star. Mika pointed me to her most recent album. The title is, Can't Eat, Can't Sleep, I'm Sick. I like the title! While Namie goes into some detail on the nature of her malady in the title of her piece, I think it would be even better if she did so more. Like, for example, in my new upcoming single, Can't Think Straight, Can't Stop Vomiting, I'm Sick.

What do you a call someone who studies meteors? No, really.

Three years ago, I was elected to the board of directors of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. About halfway through my three year term, I was elected by the board to the (largely ceremonial?) role of Vice President of the organization. This month, my term is up and after a good deal of soul searching over the last weeks, I've decided to not run again. With time, I've become busy with other projects including work and graduate school at the MIT Media Lab, Debian, Ubuntu, One Laptop per Child, several book projects and more. Recently, I've found that I've simply had less time to put toward SPI than I have had in the past. Of course, I continue to care very much about SPI and its mission and feel that I done a good job of fulfilling my responsibilities throughout my term. The real reason I'd like to step aside to let some new blood and energy take a more active role and to let SPI take off in new directions. Since I've served a full term, I thought I would take the opportunity to look back at my work with SPI over the last three years and to the future. SPI's Recent Past Three years ago, I ran for the SPI board on a platform that I would like to see SPI work more like a real pro-active non-profit organization and less like Debian's legal shell. SPI was at at transition point then and the board spent a lot of time thinking about it was that SPI should do and what role it should fill in the free software community. Many of these questions are still open but the following is my round up. There are two types of non-profit organizations in the free/open source community. The first is the large-project foundation. Example are the GNOME Foundation, KDE Foundation, and Plone Foundation. These support and work closely with one large and otherwise institutionally independent project. The second type is concerned with advocacy or issues of concern to many or all free software projects. The FSG/LSB, Open Source Initiative, Software Freedom International, Linux International, and the Free Software Foundation are all examples of this type (although the FSF also supports the GNU Project so can be put into both camps). Three years ago, SPI was basically the Debian Foundation under a different name. However, SPI also supported a handful of other medium-sized projects (at the time, this included Berlin and OFTC). In this way, SPI provided some of the benefits of a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization to groups that were large and important enough to care about issues like the tax-deductability of donations, but small enough that starting their own foundation didn't quite make sense. This, I am convinced, is SPI's niche and its where the organization can make the greatest difference. While Debian continues to be the driving force behind SPI, this mirrors Debian close relationship with other free software projects as a downstream and a distribution. Debian may ultimately decide its has outgrown SPI and wants its own foundation but it's role in providing an umbrella for other free software project also makes a lot of sense. Over the last years, SPI has added several new member projects including GNUStep, Drupal and PostgreSQL and members of these projects have played an increasingly important role in SPI. OFTC members including SPI secretary David Graham have continued to drive the organization. I am thrilled to see that PostgreSQL's Josh Berkus is running for a seat on the board and wish him the best of luck. He has put a huge amount of effort into SPI in the past several months and I believe he would make a great board member. Of course, not everything has been rosy. While our organization is in slightly better shape than it has been in the past, SPI still suffers from a lack of interest and activity by participants in its member projects. SPI handles Debian's money and every Debian developer should be interested and involved in SPI; yet only a relatively small percentage are. I've run SPI sessions, talks, and BOFs at three of the last four Debian conferences but haven't been able to make a satisfactory dent in either the Debian community or SPI. The next board of directors will need to work actively and creatively to help do what the last board did not accomplish. While things are currently much better than they have been in the past, SPI has continued to be mired in a number of bureaucratic issues. Simple issues like accurate, timely and transparent bookkeeping have proved more difficult than the board or those brave (or foolhardy) enough to take on the treasurer position seem to have thought. I worked with the treasurer and our lawyer to meet with a bookkeeping service in New York City. The Future In the future, I'd like see to more members projects and more active participants from all members projects. I'd like to see a more active organization in general but am beginning to conclude that a fully volunteer "staff" is only going to be able to do so much. In terms of bureaucratic issues, several board members have lobbied hard to spend money to hire full or part time help either in an administrative capacity or as some sort of combination administrator/executive director. For a number of reasons, the board has been reticent to do this but I think it's become increasingly clear that our growth and relevance as an organization is going to require this. I think hiring the bookkeeping service was a good first step. I think at the very least, SPI should "outsource" most of the non-fun administrative work to others so that the board can focus on the important work of advocating free software and helping our member projects. I'm famously concerned with introducing paid labor into voluntary free software projects but I think that, if done right, this could be a very good step. In terms of my own involvement, I'm planning to stay involved as a contributing member or perhaps even as an adviser if the board will have me. I'd like to continue work on the SPI-Trademark committee and look forward to the day that we can create a general policy for helping folks use and license the Debian mark (and other trademark SPI may hold in the future) as permissively as possible. I'd also like to see a better documented process for becoming an SPI member project. This should explain to projects what SPI expects from them (e.g., democratic decision making, an active representative to SPI, etc), what they will get from SPI, and what is necessary to make it all happen. I'd like to work with some of the recent member projects to help document their experience and make easier for the next batch. I'm looking forward to taking some time off and look forward to the possibility of running for a seat on the SPI board again at some point in the future.