Intellectual Property

The recent articles I posted are only available to blog readers who are belonging to ip numbers within an institution subscribing to the databases. I have been trying to find "free" peer-reviewed journal articles, but have not had much success finding them. There are creative commons texts and books about this issues. Peer reviewed journals have too much monetary resources at stake to allow for free access to their content. Florida State University spend thousands of dollars every year to provide us access to these databases. For example, JSTOR charges large universities like FSU between $20,000 and $45,000 to access new databases. In addition about $8,000 is charged each year for access. It appears that these fees are cumulative, which means that FSU would have to pay several hundred thousand dollars to provide these services. These service are cheaper than storing hundreds of journals in Strozier or Dirac. However, from a social justice standpoint there is a problem with this scenario. How will people be able to access scholarly information from the community. Most public libraries do not subscribe to large numbers of databases due to the high costs involved. Even universities do not subscribe to every possible database. These databases are not being priced by the cost running the web servers and paying the employees for scanning content. Instead these databases are raking in tremendous sums of money from universities that are in no financial position to spend large amounts of money. Thus, there is prioritization of subscriptions.

Here are some additional articles in academic journals that I have come across that discuss open source software.

The Architecture of Information: Open Source Software and Tactical Poststructuralist Anarchism Post Modern Culture

Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy Social Text

What is free?

The concept of free is complex. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, free means not under the control or power of another. A later definition says available without charge.

This leads to possible contradictions in the discussion of freedom. For example, Google Earth is free, in that it can be used without charge. However, it is not free because there are controls that Google restricts access to unless you pay for Google Earth Pro. Depending on the definition used, it would be possible to argue for hours for it being free or non-free. Another good example would be derivatives of open source projects. According to the Linux Weekly News, Debian and the Mozilla Foundation were in conflict over the freedom to modify Firefox. Ironically, Mozilla Firefox is an open source project that is freely modifiable. However, the Mozilla Foundation wishes to maintain its brand integrity by requiring the Mozilla logos to be used only in ways they dictate. This is in conflict with the foundations of freedom of open source. At the same time, Debian is rebranding Mozilla Firefox to be called Iceweasel to avoid this problem. However, this can confuse, and potential alienate users that are looking for Mozilla Firefox on their computer.

Anderson Ashby Lecture, or why to be alert on wikipedia

The Anderson Ashby Lecture on April 12th presented some concerns that impact the Internet community. The lecture focused on the open ended encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows for anonymous entries on anything. The CEO of Wikipedia has defended the rights of anonymity of posters. At the same time the speaker has been attacked numerous times by libelous comments about quite objectionable acts. The only recourse that is currently allowed is to delete the material, but it remains in historical archives, and be reinserted again. I disagree with removing anonymity from sites like Wikipedia. Instead I would think a democratic way to preserve freedom would be for a mechanism for the person who is the subject of an entry to identify themselves to Wikipedia's governance and be given access to a portion of the title of the article in which they could mention that this article has been sabotaged and contains erroneous information. This would still allow anything to be posted, but a potential reader would be alerted to the nature of the irregularities in Wikipedia. This type of system is already in place in open source projects, where build team managers monitor code submissions. They also have the ability of maintaining several different versions of the code. This helps to keep viruses and other destructive activities from harming the users of the open source software.

Installing Google Earth

As a geographer Google Earth is an interesting little program to look at globe with. The program is quite easily installed. Drivers for the display to work correctly are important, as it is an intensive program. Sometimes extraneous lines will show up if the display driver is outdated. Updating it will usually resolve most of the display problems.

My Ubuntu setup was fairly generic so that it could work with most computers. However, the display driver was not exactly configured, which meant that every time I launch Google Earth, I was sent back to the login screen. I was able to download the drivers and then used the text interface I described in a recent post. The ability to post into a completely text based environment allows me to update the graphics drivers. This is not possible to do while logged into a graphics environment. After doing this, Google Earth is working great!

Economic Incentives

I was thinking about the way economic incentives work and a potential contradiction emerges with open source. Economics tells us that innovations are done for monetary or other economic gain. This does not necessarily occur with open source, as the innovations must be kept open for other people to use as they wish. There is the idea of public goodwill, in which offering ideas freely to each other does create value indirectly. This is quite confusing to understand at this time because it would appear that the open source community follows an economic activity model very different from capitalism or socialism.

If this contradiction were true, open source would be a very small movement that would not garner significant attention in society. Alas, this is not the case, as most of the Internet incorporates some open source software. Large corporations are adopting Linux as well. Clearly there are new laws of production at work here that are difficult to grasp.

Vista growing pains concerns

Windows Vista, the newest offering from Microsoft has several problems. I experienced extensive driver problems with Windows Vista when it first came out. These problems have been fixed for the most part after a few weeks. The hardware vendors had to come out with major driver updates for their products to work correctly with Vista. Hopefully with Windows 7 coming out more rapidly there will not be such a large gulf between programming APIs.

Ubuntu for humanity

Ubuntu (made in South Africa: backed by Nelson Mandella) is the most popular linux distribution, or flavor today. It is based off a fork of the Debian Project. The Debian Project has a strict policy dictating that all of its software be free of proprietary licenses. The Debian distribution has a wide variety of software available, but it is not that easy for an end user to setup. Ubuntu is a prearranged series of Debian packages that make up an operating system. It can be customized and extended if desired. Ubuntu is produced by Cannonical Corporation. They intend for Ubuntu to be free for humanity. Ubuntu refers towards humanity towards others.

Kristian Bredemeyer

Ubuntu and bookstores

Today, I had the realization that the Barnes and Nobles/Borders model of allowing for free book browsing (while you sip coffee or eat snacks in the store) is a brick and mortar example of openness freedoms. The new paradigm is for bookstores to allow for books to be removed from the plastic so that readers can enjoy reading the book in the store. Twenty years ago, requests to be able to read books in a store would probably have been met with, we sell books here; if you want to browse go to a library.

The Geography of Free

Kris Bredemeyer, Lisa Jordan, John Fradel
Florida State University, Department of Geography

Abstract

Preamble

This is under GNU public license. This has to stay in open document format, see http://creativecommons.org/license/ for more information.


Introduction

Free Distribution of Information

Free software foundation 1985 (http://www.fsf.org/) started concept of free software. Free software refers to the liberty to use software in any desired manner, rather than it not having a cost. Thus free software may be freely copied and disseminated. However, individuals may charge a fee to provide you with free software. (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html)
Four freedoms
1. Freedom to run the program for any purpose.
2. Freedom to study how the program works and adapt it.
3. Freedom to disseminate copies of the program.
4. Freedom to improve the program and release these improvements to the public.

Freeware versus open source (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/categories.html)

Open Source Software
Open source software allows the user to use the program in any way they want to as long as it continues to be available as open source software. As open source software allows for anyone to modify the source code, the source code has to be publicly available. The source code may be embedded in the program files itself, or it may be located on a public web server.

There are a variety of different types of open source licenses. According to (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/), the most common open source license is the GNU Public License (GPL). GNU stands for GNU is not Unix. This nomenclature is used because the original free software programs were attempts to recreate a free Unix operating system. The second most common open source license is the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The difference between these licenses is that the GPL does not allow the program to be used in proprietary programs, while the LGPL allows for the program to be used in proprietary programs.

Examples of Open Source Software

Firefox is a free cross-platform web browser. Firefox is derived from the open sourced Netscape code. However, the software has been totally rewritten and is licensed under the GPL, LGPL, and a legacy Mozilla Public License. The Mozilla Public License was created when Netscape created the Mozilla project, but it was found to not be compatible with the GPL or LGPL, which is why Mozilla is now using the GPL and LGPL.


Open Source GIS in particular

ESRI is the most popular GIS in industry, and there is an incentive for GIS training to be done using ESRI products. In reaction to ESRI's high cost of GIS software there have been some open source GIS products developed.

Map Window
U-Dig
QGIS
GRASS

Dollar Breakfast Buffet and Book Bags

Cost to enter the buffet, but once inside no concept of price. There is an incentive to take as much as possible to obtain the highest value. Thus a fixed entrance price could result in a small value if only a little is eaten, while extra free value is obtained if a large amount is eaten, and additional food is taken home.

Barriers to “The Free”

Attempts to privatize public space decrease accessibility to freedom of expression of ideas. According to McLeod's Freedom of Expression (p. 227), the mallization of society has resulted in private places replacing public places for many everyday activities. These private places do not have to afford the first amendment rights to peacefully assemble, demonstrate, and express free speech. McLeod (p. 229) also describes the use of free speech zones in public areas. Free speech zones allow for law enforcement to suspend rights of assembly and speech in most areas, leaving only a small area for free speech. In addition these free speech zones are often under intense police scrutiny.

Information can be tracked by governments as well as private companies without public disclosure (McLeod p. 245-246). Trying to freely access these databases may result in conviction of a felony of violating the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This copyright act requires Internet service provides to immediately remove any copyrighted material or face litigation. A similar, but less draconian copyright act was passed in Europe in 2001. The European copyright act does not require Internet service providers to immediately remove copyrighted material or face litigation.

Fear of the Future

Online dissemination of information results in lower barriers to accessing information. These new possibilities, such as totally online journals are not respected by many in academia due to a combination of fear of change in the future, and a lack of familiarity with online journals.

Openness is Counterintuitive, e.g. Free is inferior, “there's a catch,” “no such thing as a
free lunch,” nobody else uses it, it won't work with existing standards (i.e. File
extensions, incompatibility), using open source/open access is a way of legitimizing
theft because we expect to pay for products


Conclusions

Abstract from last week

Text from my abstract for the 1st year report to the department.

I am currently most interested in the geography of freedom. This can be represented by the diffusion of open source throughout the world wide web. This topic would also lend itself to a visualization type approach, such as mapping the uptake and social impacts of open source software. I would also be able to look into some of the differences in a continuum from non-disclosure agreements, to standard closed source licenses, to more copy left licenses, such as the GPL or public domain licenses. This topic would also lend itself to some economic analysis of changing flows of capital stemming from information spreading electronically. This could include the role of open online archives and libraries, such as the Project Gutenberg movement. Looking at current academic journal online publishing movements would be relevant as well. There is some scholarly research that exists on freedoms and diffusion of ideas. A large amount of the open source and open knowledge literature exists in non-standard channels to promote freedom of exchange. These are usually of high quality, but there are significant barriers towards using these media for presenting scientific ideas, as they are not formally accepted on the ISI listings.

I have been collecting and reading literature on this topic for quite a while. I was initially involved open source when I became a volunteer Mozilla quality assurance member in 2002. This was an introduction to how the open source community functioned, by each member contributing their skills and knowledge to the whole community. This functions as an alternative economic system to the traditional capitalist or socialist model. Political geography could play a role in explaining the open source dissemination of information.