Global Nerdy

Just a quick couple of updates to yesterday's post on Java being released under the GPL.

First, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogged about the news, and used his bloggy pulpit to add another twist to the story:

And in closing, I want to put one nagging item to rest.

By admitting that one of the strongest motivations to select the GPL was the announcement made last week by Novell and Microsoft, suggesting that free and open source software wasn't safe unless a royalty was being paid. As an executive from one of those companies said, "free has to have a price."

That's nonsense.

Free software can be free of royalties, and free of impediments to broadscale, global adoption and deployment. Witness what we've done with Solaris, and now, what we've done with Java. Developers are free to pick up the code, and create derivatives. Without royalty or obligation.

Schwartz is striking directly at the heart of the SCO-y overtones of the Novell/Microsoft announcement. The implication of that deal being that Novell's SUSE customers, unpaid programmers, or SUSE contributors, are somehow safer than Red Hat's customers and developers (to pick a distro at random) because Novell was paying royalties to Redmond.

While we're on Microsoft's dog in this OpenJDK fight, David "Between the Lines" Berlind raises this interesting .NET angle to the freeing of Java:

Where might the impact on .Net be felt first? Well, there are millions of developers out there all working with different languages most of which are not compatible with either Java or .Net. That's right. Compared to the number of languages that work with one or the other, there are many more that do not. Now that Java is being open sourced, the way has been paved for developers who want to connect their favorite language to the Java Virtual Machine to actually scratch that itch. In other words, in the past, it may have taken an act of Sun in order to get dynamic language support for some languages the way it has for Ruby. And, if there's one thing that can really put an open ecosystem on turbo-chargers, it's dynamic language support. Microsoft's .Net, by the way, offered dynamic language support long before Java did. But now, it will be far easier for the Java community to marshall the resources of the open developer community to cultivate a wider range of dynamic language support.

You can, of course, see this as a defensive move for Sun, which hasn't seen a lot of Java at the heart of Web 2.0. Gaining some traction for their platform entails broader language and framework support, and that's what OpenJDK can help them accomplish, without massive investment on Sun's part. So the debate is no longer: .NET supports multiple languages, but only runs on Windows (hence Mono) vs Java runs on multiple OSes, but only supports one langauge.

Watching these implications unfold is fascinating. I guess the bottom line is that Java really is free in the sense of freedom: the freedom to expand the platform into places Sun alone couldn't have taken it. With that kind of freedom to move, who knows what the future holds.

Link

Tags: Java, GPL, OpenJDK, Microsoft, Novell, .NET, SUSE, Red Hat

(Sorry, I couldn't find any cities in Afghanistan that both get mention in the news and start with the letter “D”.)

The Scotsman has one of those interesting stories about what happens when you drop technology on a country that would be called “stone age” if it weren't for the Kalishnikovs: Afghans' Growing Appetite for Porn.

Here's the bit from the article that made me chuckle:

At least one satellite operator offers foreign channels such as
eurotictv, allsex, 247Sex and transex, along with the God Channel and
the Church, Miracle and Hope channels. In a country where converting to
Christianity from Islam carries the death penalty, the Christian
channels are just as offensive to some as the pornography, although not
as popular.

Link

As a subscriber to Bell Canada's mobile service — I've resigned myself to the fact that in exchange for better cell coverage, I have to put up with a meager offering of phones; all the really cool handhelds seem to be offered by the other, spottier carriers. As a Canadian, I've resigned myself to the fact that I live in one of the few industrialized countries whose cell phone offerings are actually more lame than those in the U.S..

Hence my surprise that not only is the black edition of the Moto Q being offered in Canada first, but it's being offered by Bell Canada. It's like discovering that the local dollar store has started stocking Johnny Walker Blue Label.

Among the Moto Q's specs:

• Weighs 115 grams (ask your stoner friends, it's just over 4 ounces)
• EV-DO
• 2.4″ 320-by-240-pixel 64K color screen
• Input options galore: QWERTY keypad, D-pad and thumbwheel
• 64MB RAM / 128MB ROM
• 1.3 megapixel camera with flash
• Bluetooth
• Software includes:
• Microsoft Outlook Mobile
• Microsoft Media Player 10 Mobile
• Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile
• Pocket MSN (MSN Hotmail and MSN Messenger)

Bell Canada has a special deal for the black Moto Q: it's CDN$150 (US$132) “when activating a voice plan and minimum $60 E-mail & Internet data feature on a 3-year agreement”; the offer's good until December 3rd. Otherwise, it's $CDN450 (US$396).

Those of you who aren't in Canada won't have to wait long before Verizon offers it.

Link to Engadget story
Link to Bell Canada's page on the black Moto Q
Link to Motorola's Moto Q page

November 14th is upon us, and soon Zune will be too so music can, presumably, be "the way it wants to be."

(Am I the only one who hates that ad's tagline? "Music the way it wants to be?" Does that mean I've been doing it wrong all these years? I guess Microsoft's not used to being in second place; you have to walk a fine line between trash-talking the leader and insulting their customer).

Anyway, Engadget and Gizmodo are revving their engines for the big day. Engadgtd leads with their experience installing the Zune software which, well, sucked. Gizmodo spent a good part of yesterday unboxing their Zunes and stuffing them in their pants. Gizmodo got lucky with a smooth install, and the Zune software imported all their non-DRMed tracks from their iTunes library, which is a nice touch.

Even Steve "Uncle Fester" Ballmer got overexcited, promising video sharing (probably just for user-created content) and a Zune phone in the future in this Bloomberg story.

Ballmer pointed to Zune's wireless connection, currently used for music sharing, as an advantage over Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, which has 75 percent of U.S. sales. New features will help Microsoft keep pace with Apple, he said.

“The race is on,'' he said. “I'm confident we can keep up. They have brand and image going for them, and we have some innovative ideas.''

Brand, image, and about an 80-million unit (and 70 marketshare point) head start, Steve-o.

Game on!

Tags: Zune, video, phone, Steve Ballmer

Nick "Gawker" Denton cuffs Battelle.

John "Federated Media" Battelle smacks Denton.

Bloggers sit back and watch. Rest of world ignores whole sad thing.

Tags: John Battelle, Nick Denton, slapfight

RIAA supremo Cary Sherman has a blood-boiling Op-Ed on CNET News right now called "The Farce Behind 'Digital Freedom.'"

Even I didn't think the RIAA was cynical enough to put ironic quotes around the word "freedom."

The target of Big Content's pitbull? The Consumer Electronics Association's CEO, Gary Shapiro. The CEA is one of many organizations (including the EFF) behind the Digital Freedom campaign, which was launched to check Big Content's desire to change copyright laws in the US in ways that restrict people's freedom to enjoy the stuff they buy in ways that are most convenient to them.

Remember how Jack Valenti (now there was a Big Content shill with some flair) claimed "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone?" Well, the same thing seems to happen periodically in the world of digital content, and this is one of those flare-ups.

Like a trademark that becomes generic, the fair use doctrine is in danger of losing its meaning and value if CEA's self-serving claims are taken at face value. CEA has twisted and contorted "fair use" beyond its true intent, turning it into a free pass for those who simply don't want to pay for creative works.

The "Digital Freedom" proponents have consistently staked their case out of the mainstream. CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro's comment that unauthorized downloading is neither "illegal nor immoral" is illustrative of the extremist position of that group, especially given the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion otherwise in its 2005 Grokster ruling.

Sherman's first nifty rhetorical trick is to try to redefine fair use so narrowly as to be inapplicable to you and I. In truth, there's no place we can turn to in the Copyright Act that actually defines fair use as explicitly or exclusively as Sherman implies. What he avoids saying is that the entire doctrine is grounded ensuring the neither the commons nor individuals are unduly restricted by expansive copyright monopoly that serves only authors and owners.

For example, the transitive and temporary incidental copies of data made during their transmission over digital networks (ie, stuff that's cached or buffered when you download or stream it over the internet) was deemed fair use by the Copyright Office. One of the bills Digital Freedom is trying to fight, the Copyright Modernization Act, would force digital, interactive broadcasters (an on-demand internet radio station, like Pandora) to obtain separate licenses for those incidental copies, in addition to the usual licenses their conventional radio counterparts have to get. The Digital Freedom campaign doesn't want to let these services operate without licenses, but merely to ensure they don't face twice the financial burden of more traditional broadcasters. Shapiro's not exactly advocating "a free pass for those who simply don't want to pay for creative works."

Another example of the legislation Digital Freedom's trying to stop? The Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act (or NAMBLA), whose most odious provision explicitly stuffs fair use in a time capsule by allowing product designers and manufacturers (and users) the right only to "customary use." In other words, whatever Big Content has been forced to allow you to do in the past (like record to tape), they'll continue to permit, but no new stuff! In one fell swoop, fair use is no longer a balanced test applied to new situations as required, but a backward-looking, dead thing. It also means that innovation, any new, unforseen uses, are de facto infringing. Fighting this legislation is what it takes to be "out of the mainstream," in Sherman's view.

Not that you'll see Sherman tackle these, or any other substantive arguments, head-on in his op-ed piece. Then again, what do you expect from an industry whose companies feel justified in shaking down individual consumers, the technology industry, and treating their customers like criminals? Billboard magazine had this choice quote from one of the guys who pays Cary Sherman's salary:

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. "So it's time to get paid for it."

It's true that what we have here is one well-paid lawyer and lobbyist slinging mud at yet another well-paid lawyer lobbyist, each representing huge corporations who, while professing an undyling love for the market, would just as soon have the government legislate their enemies into oblivion in order to guarantee their incomes. No matter who wins, I have a sneaking suspicion we lose. Even so, we have to pick a bastard in this fight, and I'm choosing the one whose client didn't just call me a crook.

Link

Tags: Digital Freedom, RIAA, CEA, fair use, copyright, Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act, Copyright Modernization Act

I don't imagine for a moment that I'm alone this morning in trying to figure out the implications of Sun's decision to license and distribute their implementation of Java (SE, EE, and ME) under the Gnu General Public License (version 2).

Practically, it means that the code that makes up the various editions of the Java platform will be free (as in speech). I say "will be;" every line of every module must be vetted or incompatible copyrights, and those issues will have to be resolved before the code itself can be released under the GPL. Where the issues can't be resolved, Sun will release the modules as binary plug-ins. Sun expects the process to be done in 2007.

My initial reaction is that Sun is trying to get rid of any barrier to adoption on the part of the Linux vendors. By employing the GPL, Sun's essentially saying that there's no reason for Linux to ship without a Java implementation. Of all of the reasons Sun cites for going with the GPL, I think this is the most significant: Linux distros will be able to qualify and ship with the appropriate Java implementation as a default, thus broadening the footprint of the Java platform for developers.

Java, after all, is fighting a pitched battle to be the platform for the web. It's competitors are .NET (and there's no real hope of increasing Java's footprint on Microsoft's server operating systems) and the ever-mutable LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/PHP+various substitutes) stack. One look at O'Reilly's latest state of the computer book market tells you what you need to know about the rise of LAMP and the decline of Java when it comes to releasing web-architected applications. By (hopefully) shipping side-by-side with LAMP (and Mono, for that matter), Sun probably hopes to slow the defections and bring more developers back into the Java world.

The flip side of this, of course, is the health of Java itself. It's clearly an incredibly capable platform, but it would seem that to truly take advantage of the dynamics of the open source movement, you need to play nice with the GPL. The GPL is predominant among SourceForge's most active projects, so Sun has taken to heart the idea that developer community only forms around the license that afford the most transparency, reciprocity, and protection (as well as the broadest possible target platform).

In the end, I suppose I agree with Tim Bray, the really big, long-term effects of this decision aren't easy to predict. After all, Java now "behaves" like Linux; one of the Java implementations could be forked to go into some very un-traditional directions, and who knows what kind of markets that might open up? As with Linux, anyone can build a support and maintenance business around a GPLed Java. Sun, no doubt, is betting that they can fit that bill better than anyone, but that's still up to the customer.

I suppose it's safe to say that a lot of interesting stuff will be happening here.

Link

Tags: Sun, Java, FSF, FOSS, GPL, open source, free software