• http://englishrussia.com/2006/10/15/strange-soviet-buildings/
• The wikipedia page on the Stalinist style, one of the various Soviet-era style of architecture.
• And one about its failures (yes, this stuff was actually built and made).

On to a lesser known style and topic: the Expressionist Architecture.

The Goetheanum

The name is ambiguous and only makes sense if we define Expressionism as an European movement started before WW1 that ended with the crash of 1929 (roughly). These designs do not have a common aesthetical line; some would say it’s the chaotic cradle of the BauHaus movement, some others claim it’s the very end of the Art Nouveau. You can form your own opinion with these links:

• A quite complete compendium on the matter with links (but no, it’s not Wikipedia).
• okay, the wikipedia page as well for a summary
• a nice listing with links of actual buildings (not just designs) that got built and labeled as Expressionist creations.
• Last but not least, a tumblr site with lots of great pictures of the XXth century designs and buildings.

Enjoy the week-end!

FRAND has had until the end of the month of April 2013 no definition. What “Fair” , let along “Reasonable And Non Discriminatory” terms mean had no agreed definition. Worse, it had no definition at all. It is the first time that a U.S. judge is struggling with this matter and while it is applied to a specific case only (the use of patents in the H.264 codec claimed by Motorola to be used by Microsoft in its products), it is nonetheless interesting to see someone actually tried to evaluate the claims and lay out a specific assessment.

Reading Groklaw you will see that  to some observers think Microsoft got the upper hand and got a good deal out of the judge. That might be true or not, but I think it is somewhat missing the point.

• There is still no definition of what FRAND terms mean. 
• This piece of opinion implicitly shows again that FRAND terms are by their very nature incompatible with Free & Open Source Software licenses: It is not a matter of money, but the notion that terms dictate that the licensee agrees to the existence of the said patents and that these patents have to be licensed, even on a free basis to each licensee by the patent holder (who can of course refuse, demand payment or impose some other conditions to the licensee).
• Somebody wrote that business is all about certainty. In a sense, innovation requires certainty with respect to the environment it springs from in order to be meaningful and to have something to disrupt. Well, if this judge’s opinion shows and tells us anything, it’s that FRAND licensing (and RAND licensing is just the same) is nothing but certain and has no clear rules nor accepted definition.  Because of that, it puts a threat on innovators, developers and ends up restricting choice for consumers, citizens and governments.

The lack of certainty in patent licensing seems to have become a major legal and business hurdle in innovation-oriented businesses in the US. In some ways, patent trolls, the endless “mobile wars” of hardware manufacturers and operating system developers have changed the perception of U.S. courts more than any speech about the freedom to innovate and the principles at the core of Free Software. If that’s a sad thing or not does not matter too much in the end, but it may well be the combined absurdity and the absence of legal definition of FRAND terms that prompted Judge Robart to write his opinion. Regardless of how brilliantly his document was drafted, it will be in practice little more than a band aid applied over a  clutch (the case at hand between Motorola and Microsoft notwhistanding). If you need all this time to even start to ponder on what licensing terms actually mean in an industry that has used them for about 30 years then something’s fundamentally broken with the system.

I hope we could all remember that when the next pundit will claim somewhere on a stage in Brussels or in a policy document that FRAND is the most conventional, the most practical and the most widely accepted patent licensing mode. While this might be the case, it is also the most broken one, and if it does not help the U.S. innovation, it will certainly not help any kind of economic recovery (haha!) in Europe.

Not so surprisingly, these two “kinds” of printers are reminiscent of what happened and happens in the software industry in the past and stands true to this very day. One the one hand commercially produced 3D printers enjoy a growing market of hobbyists and artists. The most famous brand, MakerBot, is definitely driving the push for lower prices and innovation as they have announced their first 3D scanner.

On the other hand, we have the “RepRaps”. In a nutshell, RepRaps are Open Source 3D Printers. You can assemble them yourself; their design is open, and pretty much everything about them is Free as in speech. Needless to say, no one wants patents on them. But that would miss the real point about RepRaps: these are 3DPrinters that can replicate themselves, which is not the case with other printers. This means that one can make a 3D Printer out of a 3D Printer. This is an important nuance: RepRaps are machines that let’s you replicate pretty much everything that’s in their reach. Started by Adrian Bowyer in Scotland in the middle of the 2000′s RepRaps are a personal adventure in assembling a machine, then designing the object(s) you wish, and create it. You can get the parts (and the spares) from website such as EmakerShop and RepRapCentral. Other Open Source “fabbers” include the Contraptor, and their website’s content is worth a look.

The combination of the values and principles of Free and Open Source Software and the Maker’s philosophy highlights the fundamental relationship between Man and its creative power. It’s not just about the sheer creation of objects; it’s about the freedom to produce objects and concepts, hardware and software with tools one can design from the onset with no strings attached to any of these. It is the opposite of the traditional top-down approach of the industrial and consumers’ era. As such it is an opportunity to revisit our potential for creativity and the extent of our actual freedom, both as individuals and as a community. Looking ahead, 3D Printing might very well be a new kind of industrial revolution and one of its effects could be an intense trend towards local manufacturing of every kind of stuff. In this context, open 3D printing plays a major role, and builds about Free and Open Source Software to be truly open.

3D Printing is not just about hardware, it’s about software as well. You need to design what you want to produce first and the way to design it is to use desktop software tools such as CAD software. The output of your design is a file that has a format such as the STL one, but there are others. Once you have this file you need to produce some binary code from it, as 3D Printers need this code as their set of instructions to create the object that will match your design. This code is called G-Code and of course it would not be  that simple, as there are different hardware drivers for printers. The good thing is that since these designs tend to be open they are also available on the internet.

In any case, this could be really fun if you have some time to tinker with this. As for me, this week-end was a Hyperboria week-end. But that’s another story… Enjoy your week!

IbizaLights III from Jose A. Hervas on Vimeo.

•  Café del Mar: you could say it’s the place where it all started at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. Contrary to popular belief, Balearic Music was not played and composed for tourists in a summer. It was a musical movement led by people living in Ibiza during the Winter.
• Perhaps the biggest, if not the most emblematic DJ and composer of Balearic music is of course José Padilla. If you want to know what a genius DJ can sound like, I can only recommend the first four albums of the Café del Mar. His own production is also great, especially Souvenirs, Navigator, and specific rare tracks of his.
• Another big, very big talent of the same stream but this time an actual composer, Nacho Sotomayor. Nothing’s light and fun wit him but rather profound, sensual and outlandish.
• Somehow, this emblematic couple often does not appear in mixes of Balearic music. A Man Called Adam (Sally Rodgers and Steve Jones) has played dance music from the eighties till today. Their tracks are both at the base of the Balearic mood and dance classics from the eighties. Their albums are also a bit hard to find.
• Lenny Ibizarre: a great name as well, fits more a Trance-like audience, although it created some of the most well-known Balearic Ambient songs ever written.
• Nova Nova: well these two French guys are not too related with Ibiza location-wise, but their tracks are as sublime as they’re rare. If you can think of the perfect and strange balance between medieval music performed on traditional instruments, trance music and ambient, you should give it a try.
• Cantoma: his real name is Phil Mison and he’s been using both his stage name and his real name for various productions. Clean, elegant, his beats let golden sparks of magic all around when it’s played. Phil was one of the main DJ behind another compilation, Real Ibiza, produced by the now defunct React Records for years which probably surpassed the famous Café del Mar Compilation after José Padilla left.
• John Sa Trinxa: One of the most famous DJ from Ibiza, who produced extraordinary mixes and tracks from and about the island. His audience and style are actually very eclectic and you could find both very nice tunes as well as more mainstream tracks.
• Last but not least: this blog is hosted and has been hosted for years by Daniel Memetic who’s actually a DJ and composer of electronic music; while not from Ibiza, his music captures a similar and energizing mood that flows very well with Balearic music. You should give it a try.

As it turned out these native-language community were quite successful. Of course there were quite some differences among them. Some were very well grown and active communities mirroring the “central projects” in almost every aspect. At the other end of the spectrum there were communities that were little more than (useful, but small) localization teams. What was very successful about them was that it proved to me a framework that was flexible enough to accommodate almost every type of team or organizations, and that on top of this it worked as an effective tool to spread the usage of the software while granting each team’s “home rule”.

There were, however, some instances for which the native-language projects prove to be inefficient. These cases are worth pointing out as they do cover populations that tend to be rather computer literate. The case in point is the English speaking world. One could basically square it down to this: anywhere else, native-language projects worked (and often extremely well) but in English speaking areas. Certainly, the difference between these areas and the ones where native-languages project are striving is rather clear: English speaking volunteers do not need to replicate, translate nor adapt materials and software that are obviously already available. From a project management point of view, there’s less to do if you live in Oregon than if you live in Portugal. Perhaps all the tasks needed to provide both the software and the support in one specific language are enough to force existing volunteers to structure themselves. Perhaps cultural differences come into play. At any rate we cannot satisfy ourselves with the situation that came to be since the early days of the OpenOffice.org project and that seems to continue inside the LibreOffice project.

We thus need to grow the LibreOffice community in places such as North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. How could we do this? How do we start? One simple starting point is to not think in terms of structure: native-language projects seem to work elsewhere, but not for these places. This means that we need to “start at the beginning”, and that would entail to nurture local communities of developers, testers, local volunteers working on marketing, users support, etc.

A first step in the right  direction would be to organize a small scale event to meet the interested people; this event would be very much a gathering of local people interested in knowing more about the project and how they could help. A hacking session on one side a community workshop on the other; food, drinks…. human contact matters (probably even more so with goodies). There’s no need to make it too formal.

What we should expect from such a meeting is the starting point for people to take interest in what they could be achieving inside the LibreOffice project. It’s one thing to know that somewhere, on the wiki, there’s a list of things to do. It’s another thing to discuss about them face to face. It motivates people, and they feel that we (the LibreOffice folks) want them to be part of the community. Of course similar meetings may very well be repeated once or twice. In the end it comes down to resources from the Document Foundation and the local groups. But I’m confident we can get something going, possibly this year in North America. At least we’ll try, and if we fail, it’ll be next year.

See you on the next side  of the Atlantic!

For more information please visit Mandriva’s announcement blog.

More information available on the Document Freedom website

Other links of interest:

• OpenDocument Format Information site (OASIS)
• LibreOffice
• PDFReaders

In a similar fashion the same people who are complaining about the demise of Google Reader do not seem to understand what RSS is about, and do not seem to realize that they can export their feeds very easily to other online news reader such as NetVibes and NewsBlur. And that’s just for the online services. There are actual news reader servers as well one can install for its personal use or  for an organization. Now the way the feeds can be exported out from Google Reader and imported to any of these services is simple: you can use a simple xml file or an OPML file. Yes, Google Reader lets you export an OPML file. And what’s OPML? It’s an open standard. It’s been developed aside other open standards for the web, such as the microformats, OpenID, RDF, XMPP, hcards and RSS, so you’re in good company. Ultimately these specifications revolve around the very interesting notion of data portability and everyone should have a look at it.  There you have, one more case to prove their importance has just appeared in front of everyone. But instead of that we’re witnessing a headless chicken dance. If you ask me, I have exported all of my feeds regularly over the years in an OPML file, and I don’t feel the slightest panic creeping my spine. I’ll use Open Standards.

These days, I’m still in the ODF development and promotion in various capacities, but I don’t  “do” standardization the way I did back in 2007, 2008 or even in 2011. This blog has been at times a tribune for me, a soapbox, and more often a public venue  for thinking and writing on digital matters in a deeper fashion. This is not changing, but as I was looking at its title and at its meaning the other day I wondered whether its name is still relevant. I went further and wondered whether it would stay relevant in the near or mid term.

My conclusion is that when it comes to Freedom (Software Freedom or otherwise) standards actually matter as much as rights. Standards, regardless of what they are about, industry specifications, public policies, conventions defining legal terms, even words and their meaning, are the fundamental building block on an open, inclusive and efficient system. While their use may be twisted -any tool can, for the hand that uses the tool is the one ultimately defining its intent- standards form the basis of innovation, be it technological or social, and even political. Standards are what we must agree on first in order to agree on principles, values, and on the way we live. Our world, our countries, our lives, the industries we are working in are thus powered by standards. But it would be a pale assertion to stand at that line; for the author of this blog does not just stick to standards. He believes in Freedom as the energy in everything good that’s been happening in his life and around him as far as he can witness; and if the truth about the “primum mobile” will forever remain a mystery to Man, at least part of its manifestation lies in our innate and universal potential and right to Freedom. Software is no different in that respect. This blog will thus continue to be not just powered by standards. It will always be moved by Freedom.

He dreamed, anonymous and dispersed,
The Empire by God Himself seen,
Confused as the Universe
And plebeian as Jesus Christ.

He was neither saint nor hero,
But God made sacred with His sign
This man, whose heart was
Not Portuguese, but Portugal!

Santo Lisboa from MattBen on Vimeo.