Consilience

(sourcecode is to binary as ??? is to ppt/odp/pdf)

Ted Gould just posted to the planet with his presentation that he gave at the Desktop Summit. At the end of his post you’ll notice that he uploaded his presentation to Launchpad (at lp:~ted/presentations/2009_desktop_summit/).

I think that is a great idea! Not only does it provide the ability for the community to see what others are using for their presentations but it allows anyone to branch a presentation, which has awesome potential. Especially with the presentation format that Ted chose, SVGs. The S5 presentation format (XHTML/CSS/JS based) would also be a great candidate for easy branching and editing of presentations.

But what if you need to create presentations with others who use Powerpoint or Impress and you wanted to harness the power of a Version Control System? Old powerpoint (ppt) files are binary blobs which don’t work well in version control systems (they *work* but not *well*). Impress (odp) and new Powerpoint (pptx) files are effectively zipped archives of xml and images. However, since it is zipped, bzr treats it as a binary. I only tested with bzr but don’t foresee any of the other systems behaving any differently.

Why would you want to use a VCS for your presentation files? Especially a DVCS like bzr/git/hg? COLLABORATION!

Some of you may know that I am currently working with Open.Michigan, a project at the University of Michigan that enables the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER). OER is effectively a broader term for the concept of Open CourseWare. Basically, everything used in education is a resource, not just presentations, and thus is useful for others to see, use, and remix. If you are curious to see what kinds of things we produce, see our Educommons installation.

Back to the topic at hand though: presentations and DVCS.

One of the major areas that the OER community could greatly improve upon is the area of remixing; taking the openly licensed materials and using them, adding new material, and creating something original. Remixing, in general, is enabled by having access to the source files of the material being worked with. Sure, you can use a PDF or a mp3 in a remix, but it is usually better to have the original .odt or multitrack file to work from. This is why Open.Michigan provides to the public the ppt files along with the pdfs of the presentations created through the OER program.

But lets leverage some of the tried and true methods of the FLOSS community in the OER community. One of the biggest and most fundamental benefits of the FLOSS world is that everyone has access to the source code, and can easily get it, edit it, and (hopefully) compile a new version of the program; effectively a “remix.” How does the FLOSS community lower the barriers and increase efficiency for that workflow? We provide public access to code repositories, instructions on building the software (documentation), and a bug tracker to inform what needs to be worked on next.

I want to mirror much of that to the OER community. One of the first things that needs to happen is to provide an easy way to manage multiple versions of a single resource (eg: presentation, video/audio, book). A VCS seems like the obvious choice. But there must be a better way than just managing binary blobs, right?

That is the part that I need to figure out next: how to utilize the power of a DVCS in this genre. Then I can move on to figuring out what a bug tracker for OER would look like (and if it is even needed). The documentation is actually already there, at least for Open.Michigan.

Do you have any ideas?

As many of you know, I am currently working for Creative Commons and as such I am also always in the Creative Commons IRC channel, #CC. One of the unintended consequences of this abbreviation of Creative Commons is that it is also the abbreviation of Credit Cards (and “Change Congress,” come on Larry, branch out a little!). This didn’t really seem like a problem to me at first: who would have thought the #CC channel was a place about credit cards? Would people be applying for credit cards via IRC? No.

But, I forgot to account for the nefarious side of humanity. The people that are looking for an easy way to scam the world. On a somewhat regular basis people come into the channel and ask for credit card numbers. Scratch that, they DEMAND credit card numbers. A typical scenario is:


user1 enters #CC
< user1> !CC
< user1> ?CC
< user1> !give
< user1> give me credit card #!
... 5 minutes goes by
user1 leaves #CC


This has happened enough times that the /topic for #CC now includes this at the end: “Need credit card numbers? email tips@fbi.gov”

Today, however, I got my first personal request for credit card numbers. Since I idle in #CC, so goes the users logic, I must have access to credit card numbers to sell to people. Here is the full unedited transcript from our interaction:


12:03 Irssi: Starting query in Freenode with oera
12:03 < oera> hello, i'm here for buy credit card number, can you help me?
12:03 < greg-g> email tips@fbi.gov they can help you
12:05 < oera> ok thank but are you try this email?
12:06 < greg-g> they can help you
12:13 < oera> they can help me for going to jails ?
12:13 < oera!i=oera@eta91-1-82-234-203-250.fbx.proxad.net ["Leaving"]


Now, my response wasn't as good as it could be; it could be a ton more funny. What do you think I should say next time someone asks me for credit card numbers? I'm looking for snarky and/or punny responses.

This past week was Spring Break at the University of Michigan. So I decided to skip the trip to the beach and instead go to Washington DC to work 9-5 for a week. Really.

My school, the School of Information, has this neat program called Alternative Spring Break where students can go work with some really cool organizations in Washington DC, New York, or Chicago. It is an opportunity to go discover if you actually enjoy doing what you are in Graduate School full-time to learn (my words, not theirs). Also, it is a wonderful networking opportunity; I met some really great people last week and whether or not they can help me find a job is secondary.

I specifically worked for the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy. This is basically the “think tank” for the ALA Washington office. The Washington office also has the people in the Office of Government Relations; the people that go out there and make sure that the libraries’ perspective is heard on Capitol Hill. It is a really important perspective: who else are as big of proponents of open access to knowledge for all people? who else guards your privacy to such a great degree? Librarians are wonderful people to have on your side, but watch out if you do something wrong.

My time at the OITP involved writing a report about the HathiTrust, an endeavor originating at the University of Michigan and the University of Indiana. It is, in the most simple of terms, a long-term digital works preservation project. It is preserving and providing access to all of the digital scans that are being given to the various member Universities from the Google Book Search scannning program and also the libraries’ internal scanning operations. But there are some important implications of the HathiTrust, and that is what I set out to find. I want to give special thanks to John Wilkin, Executive Director of the HathiTrust, for answering my many questions.

So, I’ve spent a little over a week setting up my new email consumption/creation system. As you can see from the title of this blog post, there are a few parts to it. Why would I do something crazy like edit config files for 4 different apps JUST to read and write email? Well, I wasn’t happy with Thunderbird (yes, I’ll try 3.0 when it hits the repos) and Evolution wasn’t at all what I wanted. I do have gmail so why not just stick with the web interface? Because I am wanting to do more self-hosted solutions for web apps. Also, since I have more than one account, I want different messages to be sorted different and archived differently.

In Thunderbird I had an extension that allowed me to press “y” and the current message would be “archived” to the gmail All Mail folder. This was great, but it only supported one account. If I was reading my work email in Thunderbird (which is also hosted by gmail) and I hit “y” the message would go to my personal gmail account’s All Mail folder, not the work account one. Not good (and a dumb limitation).

So, what email program allows you to have complete control over those types of settings? Mutt. And yes, (Al)pine also. But, I have friends local to me who use mutt so exchanging .muttrc files and such is easier and we can meet in person to share tips.

What I want to do with this blog post, though, is not convince you that Mutt is the best solution for you. I do want to, however, share what I did to set everything up for use with Mutt. In fact, all the rest of the pieces of this setup can work equally well with some like Alpine or even Thunderbird.

(since it is a long post, I didn’t want to spam your reader, click for the rest of it)
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That isn’t me talking, that is the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress along with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, and the SURFfoundation released a report (pdf) on Monday that basically states just that.

The stated purpose of the report is:

1. to review the current state of copyright and related laws and their impact on digital preservation;
2. to make recommendations for legislative reform and other solutions to ensure that libraries, archives and other preservation institutions can effectively preserve digital works and information in a manner consistent with international laws and norms of copyright and related rights; and
3. to make recommendations for further study or activities to advance the recommendations in the Report.

The key is number 2, “to make recommendations for legislative reform…”  From the release on digitalpreservation.gov:

As the laws of the countries discussed in the report demonstrate, in many cases exceptions and limitations do not accommodate the actions required for digital preservation.

Now, the recommendation doesn’t just simply state that anyone who wants to preserve information can do so.  So no, you won’t have the LOC on your side if you are sued for “preserving” media on your home machine which you do not have legal right to possess it.

From the report:

[These suggestions should] apply to all non-profit libraries, archives, museums and other institutions as may be authorized by national law (hereafter, “preservation institutions”) that are open to the public, provided they do not undertake these activities for any purpose of commercial advantage.

These institutions would be able to (1) reproduce as many copies as necessary for effective preservation, (2) transfer those copies to other formats as standards progress, (3) “communicate” those works within and between various preservation repositories to maintain redundancy.

Why did the Library of Congress et. al produce this report?  Because without some changes to the current status qua of copyright law libraries and archives will be unable to exercise one of their most important roles in our society: preservation.

[In the current US copyright system] there is no specific authorization for libraries and archives to make preservation copies of published works in their collections.

If you are at all interested in learning more about how copyright effects the preservation of our society’s knowledge, you should read the report.  Plus, for those of you who thought that librarians are just quiet subservient employees of the state that don’t speak up for our rights; think again.  Librarians are at the front of cultural freedom as any other group, if not more.

I thought I would pass this along for those of you interested in the Free Culture side of things*.

My coworker, Fred Beneson, has just announced the CC Salon in NYC for July.  A CC Salon is to Free Culture what a LUG Meeting is to Free Software.  At this salon he has lined up some great looking presentations from Wikia Search and Livable Streets Network along with a performance by comedian Max Silvestri (of Gabe + Max’s Internet Thing).

If you are interested it will be taking place on Wednesday July 23rd at The Open Planning Project ( 349 W. 12th St. first floor).

There will also be some free (as in beer) beer sponsored by the Brooklyn Brewery.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see other Freedom minded folks and have a good time!

You can RSVP on the Facebook event or emailing Fred at creativecommons.org (simply make that an email address).

*Full disclosure: I am employed by Creative Commons this summer

The first project which I have been working on at Creative Commons is now launched.  It is one of those projects which will help everyone in the Free Culture/Open Source movement in some way.  Here it is:

Creative Commons, as a ‘movement’ (more correctly, as a part of the Open Society Movement), has many users, both content creators and content ‘enjoyers’.  But, if you are interested in releasing some of your work under a CC license, where do you go for information?  The Creative Commons website obviously.  But, just reading over what the licenses say doesn’t give you all the information you need to make your decision.  It would be like reading the GPL and than saying, unequivocally, that the GPL will in fact be the best option for your specific case.  Sure, most of us believe that to be the case, but no small part of that reasoning is the fact that the GPL has served us all very well over the years.

What if you could read some interviews and opinions from people who have done what you are thinking?  That would probably help you decide in a more informed manner, right?

Well, that is what we produced for you.  Here is the blogpost announcement that tells you a bit about the project.  But here is my quick description:

What is the field which you create in (photography, writing, movies, music, etc)?  Do you want to read stories and interviews of people who produce similar content and release it under a CC license?  We now have many such writeups on the Case Studies page.  As you will see, that page and all of the case studies linked from it, are in a wiki.  So if you see something wrong/misspelled/out of date, feel free to fix it and help us all.

One thing you might notice which is missing from that list of music case studies is a writeup for SeverdFifth.  That isn’t because I didn’t want to do it; I just only had a limited amount of time to do the ones I could.  Here is my plea for you:

Help me write the SeveredFifth case study on the Creative Commons website!

As the project progresses keep it updated with new happenings and discoveries.  This would be a great way to make sure Jono’s musical adventure can help others interested in doing the same.  I have some quotes from a short interview with Jono I can put up later, but I won’t be able to get to it for at least the next day or two.  I set up a skeleton case study page for Severed Fifth here, but it really needs to be fleshed out.  That is where you come in.

Just go to the Severed Fifth Case Study page, and scroll to the bottom and click on “edit with form” (not the normal edit, the form option makes life a whole lot easier).  Help me fill in the missing information.

Lets show everyone how many cool Open projects there are out there, and how cool they all really are!

As a part-time bug triager, I’m always curious of the new tools out there that enable people to work better and more efficiently.  One such new project, which I think has some real potential, is Stephan Hermann’s Leonov project.

Another thing which I just read in my news reader was the fact that Luca Nussbaum added a functionality to Debian’s package overview pages which lets maintainers see what version of the package is in Ubuntu and how many bugs are reported against it in Launchpad.  This seems like a great idea and could even be expanded upon for better results.

My thought process:

A. Launchpad’s ability to watch other bug trackers for the same bug greatly improves the ability of developers to find and fix bugs.

A.1. People really like that ability.

B. Launchpad is only able to do that in a one-way direction (it can’t tell the Debian BTS that it’s bug has been marked “Fix Committed”)

B.1. Putting all of the work on the dev’s/triagers to then go back upstream and report it for every bug is a laudable goal, but as we all know, time is precious for everyone.

C. The ability to get bug data from LP and use it for enabling productivity is there, albeit a little “hacky” (screen scrapping is never fun).

D. Wouldn’t it be cool if other Bug Trackers could watch LP in the same way it watches them?

It seems to me, from both Lucas’ and Stephan’s efforts that doing D is possible right now.  Yes, it would be a ton more easy if Lucas’ and Stephan’s concerns were addressed (text/XML export etc).

I know the Launchpad developers are working right now to implement support for reporting back to other bug trackers certain information but I’m not sure of its progress.

Some Blueprints which might be related but I can not read (they are private): Bugs Remote API and Remote Launchpad Python Library (if you know of any other blueprints or bugs with more information, post them in the comments, please).

Does anyone know of any other bug trackers which are actively working on or at least discussing the ability to grab data from LP (or other BTS)  about certain bugs?

As some of you know, I am now working with Creative Commons as a Community Development Intern for the summer under the lead of Jon Phillips (of Open Clip Art, Inkscape, ccHost, etc).  Because of that, you might hear much less of me for the next 2.5 months (not that I was constantly blogging before).  Additionally, for you bug triagers out there, if you see a bug which I have commented on do not hesitate to take over the triaging process, I might not get to it as quickly as I should.  Don’t feel like you are stepping on anyone’s toes.

However, if you are thinking to yourself “I wonder what Greg is up to at Creative Commons right now?” you are more than welcome to watch the blog at CC, which is handily on the front page.  Today, in fact, I posted my first post.

Also, if you know of any cool Creative Commons/Free Culture related things going on in your area (physical or virtual), feel free to contact me.  And yeah, I already know about Jono’s new music project ;)

Pete, from Guerrilla Tech Support, has written a nice little howto on cron jobs.  What are cron jobs?  Read his post!

His little lesson would go along nicely with either of my last two posts about the “scripts” I use to keep my life, I mean files, in sync.

Have fun learning the ways of cron.