• The Hungarian President ruling over France -I guess it is now a correct qualification of Nicolas Sarkozy based on the distinctions between French citizens he would like to make- has managed to stir quite a bit of outrage these days. The problem is that the case is a bit more complex than  what it seems. For several years now, taking the metro in Paris or walking on frequented streets, you couldn’t have missed the presence of Roma begging or playing music. Earlier this summer though, an incident between cops and a few Gypsies (not to be mixed with Roma, as they have been French centuries ago) prompted our beloved Hungarian President to demand laws that could lead a fresh French citizen to have his/her nationality withdrawn.  The absurdity and dangerousness of such measures set aside, the whole move was, according to some presidential majority representatives, an electoral maneuver designed to lure extreme-right voters back to the President’s camp. I predict this strategy is doomed to fail, as 30 years of recent French political History have shown.  On top of that, the methods of the French police to arrest the Roma and shove them in an airplane are not just outrightly scandalous, they are also useless: not only are Roma European citizens, they’re also migrant, poor, and many of them are locked inside mafious organizations that will put them back on the same streets they just left. But no attempt to fight this sort of crime ever emerged from the brain of our genius -and Hungarian (& partly Greek)- President. In fact, many people were wondering why the police was not doing anything to stop some of these Roma and take them away from the streets. When metros and public spaces are filled with CCCTVs you have to wonder what was going on… and in fact, their sudden arrest and expulsion of 100 people was a sheer act of disingenuity from a government that acted as if it had just discovered the issue one week before. That’s what I call a lie, as these Roma were literally kept on the back burner in case their public arrest might serve for political purposes. How convenient.
• How convenient here again: Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, gets charged with rape accusations, arrested by police and … the police withdraws the charge. “Strong social pressure” is the way a lobbyist once described these sorts of interesting events to me. If you thought the CIA could do something more effective than that, think again: they could not even predict 9/11.
• On a different level, but very much disingenuous: Oracle sues Google over alleged patent infringements on Java. This does not just highlight the absurdity of software patents once again, it shows an incredible lack of understanding on how ecosystems and FOSS work. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m confident that Google has money to pay its lawyers, and so does Oracle, but why wasting so much money? Time to land back on earth, Iron Man…

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• Join us at the OOoCON 2010 in Budapest, we’ll be happy to meet you, the city is beautiful, the conference topics quite interesting (as far as the ones I reviewed)… And don’t forget to register before the 27th of August! More details here.
• Just alongside the OOoCON in Budapest, there will be an unique event: the OASIS Interop Demo on ODF. This will be the opportunity for ODF implementations to compete and stress test both the different applications and libraries, but also the standard itself. Ars Aperta will represent lpOD there.
• Mark your calendar for the OpenWorld Forum in Paris and attend Ars Aperta’s conferences there. We have quite exciting news coming up for you.
• Last but not least, I have to share something that may interest a relatively minor portion of the readers of this blog, nonetheless I won’t refrain from letting you know that upon installing the latest OpenSuse 11.3 on my father’s laptop, I noticed a notable performance improvement of the Evolution Email and groupware suite. However, I still do not understand why for the love of G*d Evolution cannot use multiple inboxes…

Time for vacations!!!

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In previous posts, I had mentioned that I’m using KDE more and more. This is very much true today, but somehow I haven’t entirely migrated to KDE yet. I’m of course talking about the KDE 4 branch. I thought it would be interesting to share my reasons why my primary desktop on GNU/Linux is still Gnome.

Before the release of the KDE 4 and its subsequent versions, I was only seldomly using KDE. For some reason it felt odd to me; I never quite got used to its looks and style. Things changed a lot with KDE 4. I have been testing KDE ever since the 4.0 release and have been using it regularly in a “production-mode” ever since. By production mode I mean that I’m using it at work over extended periods of time (one full day of work or one half-day). Yet I never fully transitioned fully to KDE, using instead Gnome as my main and stable desktop. I evaluate the usage ratio in the following way: Gnome is around 60% of times, KDE 40%. There are some reasons for this that I would like to share here. They fall into two broad categories: Things KDE could improve and things Gnome still has the upper hand on. For what it’s worth, I’m using Arch Linux, which means the KDE and Gnome versions are the latest stable and pristine versions released straight out of their respective projects (no distribution specific tweaks).

• Things KDE could improve:

I see two main areas for improvements, which does not mean KDE fails in these two fields, but simply that I find things could just work better. The first one is stability, which really means quality and the second one is the applications. Don’t get me wrong: There has been a huge leap towards quality between the ill-fated 4.0 release and the 4.4.5 one. KDE is stable, very stable in fact, but some details just remain a bit clunky. The Plasma desktop could be more stable as it behaves sometimes in a funny way: Plasmoids would not show up after logging into the system for no clear reason. Talking about Plasmoids, these can be sometimes buggy and the Plasmoids Installation and selection interface could really be clearer (although it does look quite elegant).

On the side of applications, I am still looking for better replacements of some of the software I use everyday, namely: Claws-Mail, Rythmnbox, and Nautilus. I know I can use them on KDE (although it would not make sense for Nautilus) but obviously GTK+ software does not play that well on KDE even with Qt styles. I don’t think I would trade Claws-Mail for any other email apps (and no, I don’t like Thunderbird), while the Kontact suite that ships with Kmail does not seem to meet my expectations (handling tons of emails while using MH mailboxes). Rhythmnbox is somewhat of a question mark. I like this one, but believe it too could use some improvements, and Amarok is an obvious choice on the KDE platform. I have been using Amarok regularly but I find it quite difficult to configure and not really user-friendly, although I understand there are lots of fans of this media player out there who could help me…. The same line of thought goes for Nautilus vs. Dolphin. I am quite sure that Dolphin is very powerful but it lacks this sense of simplicity that Nautilus conveys. Perhaps toying around with its default settings could be the key. Nautilus obviously has its drawbacks too.

There is another type of applications KDE is lagging behind: Web browsers. I really like Firefox, which is cross-platform, but I have never used it exclusively. In fact I do like to use platform specific browsers as they are supposed to provide a more diverse and integrated experience. Unfortunately, Konqueror is really outdated, Arora (using the webkit) is way too unstable, which leaves me with reKonq. I think this last one still needs improvements (especially in the interface and bookmark management) but it is so far the most powerful browser for KDE.

• Things Gnome does better

Gnome does certain things better, some of which I already outlined above. I can add to this list a general feeling of stability and simplicity. Obviously, you don’t have to use Claws-Mail to stick to Gnome: but you could be using Evolution, or Thunderbird and still have a better experience on that one. Another advantage with Gnome is that it does convey this sense of complete control over the interface that KDE 4.0 traded away for a much more innovative -and beautiful- experience. A well-configured Gnome, as a result, will always feel faster and more effective than a well-configured KDE. Faster access to your data, to any of your applications, better sense of desktop room and predictability have so far kept me to fully leave Gnome.

Gnome, however, will very soon change its interface significantly: I have given a try to the Gnome-Shell interface, and I must say that while I find its concepts quite relevant and useful, I keep on having the feeling it’s a great interface for… Netbooks and small devices. I think I will in fact use KDE more.

Last but not least, I felt this post would not be complete if I wasn’t quickly highlighting the fact that Qt apps for the KDE platform tend to become more and more powerful and feature packed. I would not be using KDE so much if it weren’t for Okular and Gwenview. The document viewer is simply a swiss-army knife for documents reading and annotating, while Gwenview provides a much better experience than F-Spot will probably ever deliver.

As you can see, I’m still somewhat undecided on these matters, but can probably make up my mind quickly if any of the areas discussed above actually gets improved. Stay tuned!

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To the credit of Florian Mueller, he’s been involved in the fight against software patents for over 10 years. He also seems to have worked for the Real Madrid Football Club before landing back in Brussels to defend the poor millionaire Monty Widenius against Oracle. Now Florian is all about IBM and claims that IBM essentially shot down the debate on software patents at the Supreme Court by addressing a “Friend of the Court Brief” in which IBM was essentially explaining the Court should not outlaw software patents right away, as these were valuable intangible assets that could badly hurt US companies. Florian Mueller has also been behind the infamous “Open Mainframe” initiative, targeted again at IBM and involving himself in an existing anti-trust case.

I disagree with Dana Blankenhorn on several points. First, Florian Mueller is by no means a leader of the Free & Open Source movement.  Florian had his shot several years ago when the debate on software patents in Europe emerged and was a defining moment for the European community of digital rights and innovation proponents. It was in a sense a “rite of passage” for many. Since that time, some went their own way, some others maintained the flame and vigilance that is tested again these days.  Florian was part of the former group. He went to work for the Real Madrid Football Club, and we somehow lost his track.  Sometimes after the OOXML standardization odyssey, Florian took several planes to Brussels. He went to see many people, including many of my own personal friends and colleagues. His big project was to crush IBM, and Oracle, and anyone who was benefiting from software patents. Well, not exactly anyone: Microsoft was thoroughly avoided each time, sliding through the raindrops, but leaving everyone with an odd taste in the mouth. Soon enough, Florian’s campaigns, backs and forths appeared to many as  they have always been since his come-back: an over-inflated bag of wind.

Let me explain: There is no division when it comes to software patents inside the Free Software & Open Source community. Software patents are evil. They stifle innovation. When used by patent trolls “non-practicing entities” they are at the core of a despicable racketeering system that can at times be seen as proxy war between some large software vendors. When piled up by software vendors, they are used as weapons of mutually assured destruction. That is, by the way, what the Open Invention Network is doing, piling up patents and neutralizing them, and it’s one of the reasons why Canonical recently joined it, as Ars Aperta has done a few years ago. Let there be no doubt: Software patents suck. We do not want them in Europe, no matter how high the pressures are. In this game, every major software vendors has patents on software: IBM, Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Computer Associates,  Novell… heck, I even think that Red Hat has some. Is this a situation we wish to solve? Certainly. Does the fact of owning software patents mean you stand against Free & Open Source Software? Hardly. Does IBM own Software patents? Yes it does. Does IBM help Free & Open Source Software? It did more than most of the others, Red Hat excepted. Does IBM benefit from Free & Open Source Software? It certainly does, it even makes billions of dollars out of it, and they’re not the only ones. But the question is perhaps asked the wrong way, so let me rephrase it: There is a project, there is a team, or only one person, there is code. And when the code is available online, in the form of source code and binary bits, that you can access, study, modify and redistribute the software under these two forms with no constraints attached on the code, then you have Free & Open Source Software. That’s where contributors or sponsors come in. IBM is no different than any contributor or sponsor. There is given project with available code. IBM decides to contribute to it (the same is true for anybody else), period. Free and Open Source Software does not have bow to anyone to strive, because it does not have to “join” one camp or another. It is its own camp, which IBM, Oracle, Google, Red Hat, Novell, etc. agree to join for contributions or not.

In this sense, Florian Mueller has been rattling his saber for almost a year now, launching “fatwas” and anathemas on selected vendors (IBM and to a lesser extent, Oracle) while refusing to address the very big elephant in the room: Microsoft. Now this is not a rant against Microsoft I’m engaging into, but truth be told, Ballmer must have a crack at watching its competitors diving into various anti-trust cases in which they’re involved. And he sure must be very grateful to Florian Mueller, although Florian’s actual impact is very much limited to his own buzz: There is a reality distortion field that seems to be on around Florian’s weblog. It does not go beyond it. Florian has no troops, no clout, no beef, no legitimacy, no credibility among the Free & Open Source Software community. The man seems to have enough money to drum along though and in this sense, he’s acting a bit like  the infamous “Tea Party Movement”: You create a pretendedly grassroots movement in the hope people will believe it’s real until some more people actually joins your cause. In this case, however, I’m afraid this “Tea Party Movement” is stuck at level 1: The Astroturfing stage.

Make no mistake though: we all stand against software patents. But Florian Mueller’s tactic is strange, extremely partial, and leaves some big questions unanswered: Who does benefit from an anti-IBM campaign? Who does benefit from Oracle not merging with a dying Sun? Who does benefit if everybody thinks Google infringes your privacy?

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Together, you and my new colleagues of the Board of Directors and the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) will help not just the OASIS Consortium’s expansion; we will also promote and forward what has appeared over the recent years as the OASIS “model” of standards development: an open, inclusive, professional and no-nonsense approach to standards development, allowing everyone to have a say in a transparent fashion and giving birth to standards that are easy to use, integrate and redistribute with no constraint on any implementor nor distributor. In a word, the OASIS Consortium helps the establishment and expansion of unbiased and sustainable competition in harmony with governmental leadership and authority.

High quality, innovative, ready to use, open and free (in every sense of the word) standards: That’s what we strive for, that’s what we do. And I look forward doing this with you at the Board of Directors. Again, thank you for your support, I look forward working with all the stakeholders of the standards development world. This is going to be exciting.

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Meanwhile, you can dive right inside the official lpod documentation, which is at this stage covering only the lpod-python part of our platform.  Speaking about languages, I can already point our interested readers to an early, development stage version of lpod-perl, currently hosted on the CPAN repository (as this development version is thoroughly unofficial).

Last but not least, here’s where you can get our code, and if you are interested feel free to take a look at our custom ODF News Reader. It agregates the feed from many interesting sources (blogs, websites, etc.), you can export them as an OPML file, and it’s a good place to stay tuned to what’s going on inside the ODF ecosystem.

Enjoy!

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Address at Open Forum Europe 2010 Summit: ‘Openness at the heart of the EU Digital Agenda’

“Will she really be able to pull off all that?” you may wonder. I also wonder, sometimes. But at the end of the day this is a matter of leadership. We can’t change all of this in one year, and there will be plenty who try to stop change. But I still want that change, and I will keep coming back and speaking to you until we achieve it.

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Steve Jobs is therefore a many of the “entertainment industry” as much as he’s an IT genius. Too many people forget it. Because of the focus on developing and selling machines for digital content consumers who are supposed to pay for it, one can come to see the iPad as one other device to consume paid content. The point, unfortunately, is that the lines are very much blurred at this stage between pundits taking on the angle of the tablet metaphor and the ones focusing on the business model instigated by Apple on the iPad (and the iPhone, indirectly).

The fact that the iPad is not capable of multitasking might have come as a disappointment to mostly IT people, but it’s beside the point: We will see multitasking iPads, make no mistake about it. The problem, and the one that Cory Doctorow does in fact properly discuss in his article, is not the hardware. The hardware is very nice, somewhat weak, but it will improve anyway. The problem lies in the economic model of the iPad: Digital content publishers adapt to one particular sales channel for one or two specific devices with a revenue sharing model that does not seem to satisfy them for the most part, and by doing this they essentially relinquish control to one player (Apple) controlling both the delivery channel and the device.  That does not end there. The device itself, be it an iPhone or an iPad, is not meant as something you can create anything with. Sure, there’s IWorks, but that hardly counts as a truly creative software. Anyone can get an office suite. On the iPad… you can only have this one. So because of the tablet metaphor, which in itself is not bad at all, the content delivery channel and the inherent limitation of the software platform, the iPad turns its “owners”‘ as passive consumers of digital content.

Now, there is surely a market for paid digital content. It would be better if this paid content was in the form of non-DRM riddled open standards and if you could actually have the tools to freely collaborate, share and create. That’s not what the iPad is intended to do. And that’s where Cory’s article hits the target. But there is more: the civilization in which the solely accepted way to use software and digital content is to be a passive consumer is over. It may perhaps never have really existed. The reasons for this are complex, and relate directly to the very end of the mass consumerism era as we know it, with its environmental and social damages (see the Story of Stuff for instance) it induces.

The iPad essentially is perhaps a beautiful tool, but it litteraly frames us in an environment where the only accepted form of creative creation comes from the established entertainment industry. It’s the television that everyone can take in his/her hands, and that dream already existed for 3G phones 10 years ago. But today, in the age of social networks, collaborative platforms, free and open source software, this model looks strangely outdated. As the famous sociologist Bernard Stiegler puts it, people have become sick of mass consumerism and eerie marketing strategies that tend to frame people as objects.  Entertainment consumerism is no different. And the irony of all this is that we still perceive macs as being computers for the creative bunch. It’s actually quite the contrary. And that’s why, by the way, my next laptop will not be a mac, inasmuch as I love its hardware.  Macs, iPads, iPhone will continue to generate enormous revenue, but they  have it backwards and will have to be reinvented (again): Apples never fall far from the tree…

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• Excellent post by Jean-Louis Gassée (French software genius, inventor of BeOS and former Apple employee) on Microsoft’s troubled future.
• There is, in a related but previous post, some hope about that though. I tend to agree with Mr Gassée here: I simply do not buy into the whole all-cloud, no-desktop system. It simply does not work no matter how large your bandwidth is. This being said, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft’s strategy with respect to cloud services and office suite evolves. As for OpenOffice.org, you might ask… Well, that one could also end up being interesting as well. But make no mistake on that one: Fat, Monolithic clients are out.
• Great post on combining some microformats, in this case OpenID & OAuth. Microformats are extremely important in Cloud contexts and are the most pragmatic tools to fight off cloud and social lock-in by companies like Facebook.
• The UK Government promotes open data. If only we could do the same over here…
• Don’t miss Steve Job’s & Steve Ballmer’s interview on All Things Digital, starting tonight at 6 pm California time!
• Last but not least, OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 is almost out. Last RC is looking good, so be prepared to download it.

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