Michael Tiemann of Red Hat chairing. With Marshall Phelps of Microsoft, Chris DiBona of Google and David Hustace of open NMS.
Active audience discusses how to measure innovation. Robert Kaye says innovation should not be patents but patents and discoveries that are actually used and built on. Southhampton guy working on openNMS points beyond R&D budgets as does Sam Jelinek of College of William and Mary (who actually kicked on this line of discussion). Gene Hoffman founder of eMusic talks about not only the rate of change but how change accelerates and then stablizes.
Phelps and DiBona and Tiemann discuss the iPod as an innovation. What is the diff from orginal mp3 players and the iPod? How does innovation fit in here? Is business model the innovation or the design or what?
MT Try to access the option equation of the internet say. Cites: Massive Change.
David Bollier talks about making things free. MT says that more stuff is free now or is it?
Does capital serve society or does society serve capital? Bollier and Phelps and Hoffman are now into it over commerciality. David B talks about the changes in the market. David H talks about innovation in a smaller project and the relationship to his contributors and customers. (sorta the Eric von Hippel talk)
Next topic Google as a word and an innovation. Is the principle meaning of Google a noun or a verb? (MT) Innovation principally a property to be managed or as an activity?
DiBona says working at Google we have an idea about this. Engineers can take their 20% for innovation to scratch their itches. Surprises of innovation by not managing
Marshall says innovation can be directed and companies do that with R&D budgets. Serendipitousness (ouch i can’t spell) is not the only
David H says innovation might not be finding a new molecule but in finding new ways to find new molecules.
Marshall discusses innovation of Microsoft and says the experimental
John Buckman asks about how innovation works at MSFT. Do they use the same metheods as Open Source. Phelps talks about the culture of MSFT. MT talks about the 2 new open source-ish licenses. (not every once agrees that those licenses). End of Certainty (cited by MT). What draws the line between determinism and choice?
Robert Kaye – the good chaos of open source won’t work within a corp
Hoffman – says well known companies are structure models for successful open source projects
MT – customer satisfaction? what happens when enablement is a necessary component of customer satisfaction.
Andy Oram – Open Source is never finished. But windows is expected to be solid.
Wales – what is the danger of closed with protection
Hoffman – some business men would rather beat to market than to patent.
Phelps – hasn’t sued anyone but is defending 40+ suits against MSFT. why can we innovate despite IBM patents? MSFT wasn’t stopped from innovating by that.
Wales – open source cannot license in the same way
MT – space ship one vs the nasa shuttle. space ship one doesn’t explode thanks to fuel design.
MT – cites Montessori: The Genius behind the Science
MP – on software patents. some are good and some bad. he thinks that some things should definitely no patentable. Would MSFT be better off without software patents? Better than trade secrets. Great IP theft by employee story about IBM disk patents.
Having trouble keeping writing here. Discussion getting hot on software patents. Codec research should be patented says Hoffman. He also wants crypto patents. MT says that GH missing the third leg (ouch michael) how to include the community and the relationship in distributed colaborative models.
MP says there is a romantic vision of software about software development.
CDiB – is not happy with codec patents.
Chris Evans – talks about his companies and their experiences with patents. He was earlier on and dodged the IP bullets. Now he’s leary of patent holders who might come in on him.
James Besson – attacks the property model. that you can’t find who owns what is the barrier.
MP – 50% of all patents are overturned on appeal
Sam J – asks where is the failure point?
Shift from patent quality to quality of software says MT
Dan Bricklin – how to make software last 200 years.
Software postmortems mentioned.
What should happen in the next 6 months at the Center? (Center at the Law School)? Dubai’s innovation is a race over their wells going dry. They needed to transform their future without oil and to have it thrive.
Category: Information Commons (Page 16 of 26)
Information Commons, Copyright, Censorship and/or withdrawal of public information, Libraries: Digital and other
Intro by Lolly Gasaway. Four ways to ruin a technological revolution. Jamie say he now has 7 ways. Three more for free. First it’s hard to ruin a revolution in tech. Law is particularly good at ruining tech advancement. Decentralized nature of innovation is fueled by copyright, patent, and trademark in the marketplace (when it works well). To do so the Public Domain must be protected. Patents are about disclosure. Copyrights used to expire (in the old days). This refuels the pubic domain.
IP Law distorted not only kills innovation but also once distorted also kills the relationship between public domain and ownership.
US law has always been atuned to balancing the rights and the public. Jefferson writes about that and especially the Isaac McPherson (spelling) letter.
1) policy should always be made without empirical evidence. before or after implimentation. don’t compare copyright in different countries for successes. without database protection, the US out performs Europe (which has strong protection) in the market.
public information policies. all public info in the USA from the government, is open and free creating a secondary market. in Europe tries to recoup public expences. US gets 39:1 and Europe gets 9:1
patents. better than trade secrets.
2) we must adopt a world view in which overprotection. totally abolishing protection would also kill the revolution. BTW. raising cost of outputs raises the cost of inputs. software copyrights worked well to screw up the recolution, but judges took them down.
a) impose the logic of control. whereever possible close things up. VCRs are a failure of this. Silicon Valley vs. Boston area. Weaker worker rights in Boston actually killed knowledge circulation whilst SV with more allowable employee mobility actually grew.
b) confusing IP vs physicial property.
c) 20-20 downside vision.
d) prejudice against destablizing technologies
3) the real number 3. don’t revise the copyright law to allow for new tech. have the current holders write the law.
4) vital to ditch the tech of the internet and go instead to “trusted computing.” open platforms are nothing but rights violating devices, spam sources and security holes. clamp down controls and hand controls to a monopolist. get back to minitel!
5) always make policy in international venues and harmonize upwards. WIPO is great for this as it closes out other voices in the policy formation.
6) critics should be apathetic. activists should be selfdestructive. screaming, not washing, no alternatives, etc.
7) avoid the creation of a broad environmental like movement.
Tomorrow and Wednesday are the days for the Red Hat/UNC System sponsored Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process. Although the attendence at the conference site is extremely limited, we’ll be working with WUNC-TV to capture as much as possible on video and we’ll be making torrents available on ibiblio as soon we can process them.
For more on the Symposium see the UNC System site.
I’m spending a little fun time trying to be helpful to the Lyceum developers — JJB and Fred — by using their test environment and trying to find bugs.
If you visit my blog there, poke at it a bit and see if you can get a bug to show up. [Changed to point to Lyceum front page per JJB suggestion].
UPDATE: Lyceum has been reloaded a few times over the night. JJB has been working hard. That means I’ve recreated the test blog there a few times. Each time the location changes. That’s one thing to work on. Any how, when you test things may have changed and will likely change again.
From Andie of Africa:
Library that lets you take out people who are left on the shelf
By David Rennie in Brussels
(Filed: 25/08/2005)A public library in Holland has been swamped with queries after unveiling plans to “lend out” living people, including homosexuals, drug addicts, asylum seekers, gipsies and the physically handicapped.
Brewster Kahle was trying to get UNC involved in the Open Content Alliance for digitized public domain books while he was here for the Wilson Knowledge Trust meeting.
Now he announces that Microsoft Network will not only join the Alliance, but will commit to scanning 150,000 books in 2006!
Brewster’s brief press release includes a link to a Word version of the MSN release
The Open Library site which will house the collections has a very nice book browser.
IBM announced a very bold announcement regarding patents and sharing. The patent giant will allow folks from the health care and education industries free use of patents for development and use within certain open-software standards for Web services, electronic forms and open document formats.
IBM Press Release to be here as soon as I take it out of a proprietary format is here or at this web site ;->
Here is a slide presentation in PDF format.
Open, archival and exchangable health records here we come!
IBM Site quote: “Open software standards lead to greater efficiency and innovation, transforming both health care and education.”
www.podcastercon.org for more details.
WHERE: University of North Carolina, 116 Murphey Hall, Chapel Hill, NC
WHEN: Saturday, January 7, 2006, 11am – 4pm
How Much: FREE
Website: www.podcastercon.org
Blog: www.podcastercon.org/blog
Contact: Brian Russell, Event Organizer, info (at) podcastercon (dot) org
Sponsors: Ibiblio.org, Cache Networks, and many individuals
Call for Volunteers
We need volunteers before and during the event. We need help setting up signs to the event, helping participants find their way to Murphey Hall, help putting up flyers in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area, basic tech support, help blogging and recording the event, etc.
Both Ted Vaden and Melanie Sills have kept up the conversation with bloggers that began just after the ConvergeSouth conference.
Ted’s column from Sunday’s News and Observer, Blogs challenge newspaper standards, is located in two places on the NandO site. One (linked above) that allows comments and trackbacks and one that is located at the print version of the paper’s online location which allows neither. A bit confusing — and non-standard practice for bloggers I might add ;->
Melanie’s Frame vs. Filter attempts to further clarify her take on Jay Rosen’s comments at ConvergeSouth and in comments on her blog after.
No comments on either article as of this posting on Monday afternoon.
Jamie Boyle writes to announce the Adephi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property, an international group based at the Royal Society of Arts in London which is concerned with innovation in the arts, sciences and industry.
Articles in the Guardian and in the Economist (covering both Brit Pol Wings this) explain the Charter further. The Charter itself is available for download and reading (in PDF) from the Charter site.
The Charter steering committee writes:
The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property responds to one of the most profound challenges of the 21st century:
How to ensure that everyone has access to ideas and knowledge, and that intellectual property laws do not become too restrictive.The Charter sets out new principles for copyrights and patents, and calls on governments to apply a new public interest test.
It promotes a new, fair, user-friendly and efficient way of handing out intellectual property rights in the 21st century.
The Charter has been written by an international group of artists, scientists, lawyers, politicians, economists, academics and business experts.
Or are ethics tightly tied to ethos?
I tweeked Brian Russell a bit when he said that he didn’t subscribe to journalistic ethics. I’m not sure that Brian knows exactly what journalistic ethics is/are, but my accusing him of being without ethics (that is aethical not unethical) put him in a reflective mood. He’s now blogged a bit about the experience — and seems to still be in a quantry.
Larry Lessig has a brief bit in Foreign Policy called The Public Domain: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. It’s Larry’s standard pitch for balance and for the protection of the public domain. Clearly written and concise and well-argued. What makes it interesting is the placement. In Foreign Policy.
It begins:
Within every culture, there is a public domain—a lawyer-free zone, unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of anyone else.
This public domain has always lived alongside a private domain—the part of culture that is owned and regulated, that part whose use requires the permission of someone else. Through the market incentives it creates, the private domain has also produced extraordinary cultural wealth throughout the world. It is essential to how cultures develop.
A new press release out from the School of Information and Library Science explains a bit more about the Louis Round Wilson Knowledge Trust and lists more members of the Academy.
I was there last week with Jimmy Wales and Brewster Kahle among others for the ritual induction in the Rare Book Room of the Louis Round Wilson Library. Appropriately, the induction took place under the Round dome at the center of the Rare Book Room.
Coming November 1 and 2.
Yes Yahoo is there with a nice interface and search at podcasts.yahoo.com. I had trouble with the Listen feature but haven’t had time to inspect it closely. I did find my favorite podcasts there: audioactivism, Folk Den, Le Show, Cory’s books.
Very useable compared to iTunes which for podcasts is a bit of a pain because of their Apple RSS changes/extensions.
Yesterday, I was up early to ride over to Greensboro (formerly known as Greenesborough) for the ConvergeSouth conference with MisterSugar, Corey and Marcella. Luckily Weaver Street Market (in Southern Village) opens at 7 and has the coffee brewed and ready at opening.
The conference took place on the NC A&T campus in a couple of very nice newish buildings. Everyone there was helpful and I was having a pretty mellow time. Lots of good folks from G’boro including especially Ed Cone, Sue P, making it all happen in a very community spirited way and more coffee.
The first session, for me, was with Duncan Black aka Atrios. He was lost for a while but a guy named Shaka (as in Shaka Zulu) found him and brought him to us. The crowd had many more women and people of color than most tech or blogging conferences that I’ve attended (one in Cape Town was a notable exception) and the conversation was highly inclusive and smart. That said many of the questions at blogger conventions have a kind of sameness to them over time.
Following Atrios, I went over to Jimbo Wales’ talk on collaboration. Predictably, this drew on a lot of the same material that I had hear/seen during his talk in Chapel Hill on Wednesday. This time I wasn’t in charge of the room or the arrangements, etc so I actually got to pay more attention.
One thing that both Jimbo and Brewster Kahle reminded me is that Wikipedia and Archive.org both have three times the number of sysadmins as ibiblio does, but that almost all of their sysadmins are volunteers while both of ours are full time. Wikipedia has only two paid employes; Jimbo’s assistant and a lead software developer.
Jimbo ended at a place where discussion should begin: What parts of the wiki experience of broad collaboration should bloggers adopt?
Lunches appeared in bags. So I sat down and chatted with Kirk Ross about the Independent’s new political blog, Dent, there Kirk tries to post at least a brief note every morning as well as articles of more import.
WillR was pitching a Common Memory wiki or history of Chapel Hill wiki so that folks could understand how long various issues have been out there trying to be resolved by various councils and the context in which various decisions have been made, wisely or unwisely, over the years. Talked a little about how to build a successful community.
Ruby and Brian were there on out to a wedding after Ruby’s session. Ruby was much in demand having been a session leasder both days. OrangePolitics was getting serious and proper respect at the conference.
Also ran into and chatted a bit with Dave Winer whose session was just after lunch. Winer is in rare form these days, taking the first question about his recently announced sale of weblogs.com to VeriSign and making a little joke. Q: What will you do with your $2 million from VeriSign? Winer: That’s 2.3 Million and I’m going to put it in my savings account. Classic Winer ensued in a session that I think mostly pleased the crowd and pleased Dave. Lots of discussion by many voices — perhaps the most of any session that I attended.
Next I went to the Podcasting session by Herb Everett. The room was really really cold. Despite Herb’s enthusiasm, I was not so excited about podcasting basics and about good microphones as I probably should be so I slipped out to Sandy Carmany‘s political blogging session.
Sandy is an elected official, a City Council member in Greensboro, who blogs about her daily interactions as a council member. Sally does something like this with her listserv, but Sandy has even broken news (most recently the appointment of a new City Manager) on her blog. Many people involved in G’boro politics in the session as well as WillR from Chapel Hill.
Much made of being in touch with the voters and opening up government (it was not widely noted or was noted before I joined the session, that the appointment of the Manager was in a closed session).
WillR outed me as Mr. Sally Greene. Many people there know of and read Sally’s blog and website. I talked a little about how a site or blog can be used to provide deep background on an issue that might not seem clear at first and how a well researched and presented paper or essay can help frame the issue’s further discussion.
After a long break for coffee (and beer for some), about 10 of us convened for dinner with Dave Winer at the Undercurrent, a place too nice for most of us. So nice that some pretty spiffily dressed folks were there celebrating homecoming (at the local high school?). I spent a lot of time hearing about RadRails: a Ruby on Rails IDE from the creators Kyle Shank and Matt Kent– both of RIT and both interning at IBM in Raleigh.
Back in the dark rain with MisterSugar, Corey and Bora. Hearing the story of Bora’s coming to the USA as the Serbian horse-whisperer. Quite a wild tale and he got out just in time.
Bora also reported that Fred’s FaceBook study (and Bora’s follow on) came up several times during the conference.
The GSO BlogCon Blog is gathering various impressions of ConvergeSouth.
Last night, with much pomp — our faculty in their finest academic regalia; even me –, the Louis Round Wilson Knowledge Trust was initiated with the induction of the following members:
- Dr. José-Marie Griffiths, Dean and Professor University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Mr. James Bailey, Author & Scholar
- Dr. Joan Challinor, Commissioner U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS)
- Dr. Nancy Davenport, President Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)
- Ms. Catherine De Rosa, Vice President, Marketing and Library Services, Online Computer Library Center
- Dr. Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian, Director and Co-Founder Internet Archive
- Dr. Robert Martin, Lillian Bradshaw Endowed Chair in Library Science Texas Woman’s University
- Dr. Eva Méndez Rodriguez, Dept. de BiblioteconomÃa y Documentación, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
- Mr. Daniel Morrow, Board of Visitors, UNC School of Information and Libray Science, Chairman Emeritus Computerworld Smithsonian Program
- Mr. Tom Rabon, Executive VP, Corporate Affairs, Red Hat
- Dr. Robert Shelton, Provost, UNC at Chapel Hill
- Dr. Vivian Siegel, former executive director, Public Library of Science
- Dr. Winston Tabb, Dean of Univ. Libraries; Director, the Sheridan,The Johns Hopkins University
- Mr. Jimmy Wales, Founder and President, Wikipedia Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Talking with a Red Hat exec yesterday and learned that he had seen several prototypes of the MIT $100 laptop. He had actually turned the crank to drive one prototype; it works (ok, it works on one prototype model). At least one prototype will be ready for the big announcement by Nick Negroponte on November 17th.
And he says that the Linux that will be on the prototype will be Red Hat (Fedora or RHEL?).
Hanging with Jimbo, Brewster Kahle and others at the Wilson Knowledge Trust founding meetings [more on this at another time]. In the meantime, The Daily Tar Heel has an article on Jimbo’s talk yesterday.
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