TechCrunch

Ben Brown, co-founder of CNET-owned Consumating, just announced that they will be releasing “every single line of code” for Consumating within the next month.

Consumating is a dating and social networking website for “geeks” that CNET acquired back in December 2005.

SteveB just called my attention to this. I guess this post is more of a reminder to myself more than anything else. Here’s why:

1. I should talk to these guys and review this software.
2. I need to get some stuff posted about Open Web and distributed social networks. I just noticed Canter started talking about this recently and it’s driving me crazy I haven’t posted anything on this topic yet. Maybe I’ll get something posted while traveling to Community 2.0.

Ethan finally resurfaced. Above is his nifty new Nagios tshirt.

MindTouch is helping to organize, what I’m told is, the first San Diego Bar Camp. We’re calling it SanDBar and I encourage you to read more about it and register to participate.

MindTouch’s office warming party was Friday, March 2. It was great fun meeting folks from around San Diego. We entertained at our office for about an hour and then headed out to the Princess Pub for pints. We finished the evening with dinner at Vincenzo. MaxM made some wicked White Russians at the office. I heard Damien say that he would unconscious after six of them. I think it would take considerably less than this. I want to thank everyone who came out and introduced themselves. It was great meeting members of the local tech community. I especially enjoyed meeting and chatting with Chris and Ted who both work at Eventful.

I recently blogged about the modified MPL attribution licenses, Alfresco’s excellent choice to become open source, and companies like Socialtext that have been claiming to be open source even though it took them almost four years of selling their software to release their source code under a non-OSI approved license. I’ve suggested that OSI should have a wall of shame and a formal censure process. A couple days after my previous post I spoke with Michael Tiemann, the President of OSI and I shared my opinions with him. Michael is thoughtful, intelligent, funny and just plain cool.

I hope I get this right because it’s been several days since we spoke. Michael feels OSI should be a positive force rather than a negative one. He believes the open source community, mostly, does a good job of policing itself. Also, he thinks there is a  trend among the companies using modified MPL attribution licenses toward a return to the fold of open source, as is evidenced by Alfresco and others. I understood his point and I shared with him that it’s probably a good thing he’s more reflective and not as reactive as I am. Michael blogs on these topics on the new OSI website (he calls it the OSI 3.0 website) that hasn’t yet officially launched. Allegedly the board will be blogging regularly here. I hope so. 

In our conversation Michael I concurred on several items not least of which was: 

One particularly insideous subversion of the movement is the meme that “open source is about creating a commercially successful software project, so any licensing change believed to be more commercially defensible is, ipso facto, more open source.” Commercial success is a predicted side effect of open source, but open source is not defined by the commercial intentions of a software project.

My biggest concern  is the proclivity for the many newly VC backed “open source” companies to create their own licenses. In fact, I just read the lengthy piece Berlind wrote regarding this topic way back in November. I suppose it was right after our email exchange and my first post in which I accused him (perhaps inappropriately) of being too scared to take a stand on the topic. I want to highlight:

The reason for my neutrality is not that I don’t believe I could make arguments for one side or the other. In fact, if I were in the position to use or host SugarCRM (and I am, but that’s a different story), I’d have no objection to the attribution requirements. My problem is that focusing on the attribution argument right now is a distraction from what in my estimation are the more pressing issues for ZDNet’s open source-using readers (and developers) and the open source community as a whole.

Berlind goes on to assert that if this trend continues “the total number of unblessed licenses will at some point out-number the number of blessed ones.” Thereby rendering OSI and open source meaningless. David, I’m with you 100% on this. I suppose I may have been a tad harsh with you and I should provide you with kudos on, at least, two points: 1). you’re talking about this very important issue 2). and you’re addressing the real problem. I know this is a little late, but hey, I don’t spend all my time reading/writing in the blog-o-sphere. By the way, I too don’t particularly care either way about attribution. Well, that’s partially true. I do think attribution licenses are silly. However, the more important issue here is that if the spawning of non-OSI approved licenses continues unchecked it creates confusion and demeans open source. 

Finally, I’m still more than a little confused as to why Mayfield and Socialtext is being heralded as a good and noble comprimising champion of open source as Berlind, among others, have asserted when the fact remains, and I know I’m being repetitive here, this company claimed they were open source for years of selling their software without releasing so much as a stitch of code. Has everyone overlooked this because there are perceived greater evils?  

In addition to our photos being stored on our NAS (network attached storage device) and most of them being uploaded to Flickr Tara likes to print them off and make photo albums. She used Target.com for a while, which charged like $0.15/photo for 4×6 prints. Now she’s discovered York Photo, which charges $0.08/photo for 4×6 prints. Wow, who would have ever thought that 308 prints would cost you just $24.64. Killer.

United States Comptroller General David Walker was on 60 Minutes tonight. He has some health care fun facts:

• The United States health care system is a 5x greater problem than social security.
• Medical costs are, and have been (didn’t catch time frame) rising at more than twice the rate of inflation .
• The Bush administration’s prescription drug bill added $8 Trillion additional dollars required to the already $15-20 trillion dollar underfunded Medicare program.
• To fund the Bush administration’s prescription drug program we need $8 Trillion invested today at today’s treasury rates to pay for it (I think he said over the next 20 years), we have $0 saved to pay for this.
• The United States is #1 in the world…in health care costs.
• In the United States we spend 50% more of our economy on health coverage than any other nation on Earth.
• We also have the largest percentage of uninsured of any major industrialized nation.
• We have above average infant mortality in the United States.
• We have below average life expectancy.
• We have much higher than average medical error rates among industrial nations.
• It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that health care is:
  • The #1 fiscal challenge for federal government.
  • The  #1 fiscal challenge for state government.
  • The  #1 competitive cchallenge for businesses.

Who is this guy? Surely not someone we should listen to, surely everyone thinks he’s crazy? No, not exactly. The Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute, and the Concord Coalition, among others, all agree with David Walker’s figures and projections.

I have been insisting for some time now that the social security is a lesser issue to health care. More importantly, gays, immigrants, and flag burning are non-issues. And yet I’m often asked my opinion on these topics. Moreover, shockingly the latter three are more often discussed “issues”. Anyone who insists these are issues are either a). complete idiots b).  attempting to employ a modern day version of race-baiting.

My blog has a new name and a new domain. Fourth time in four years. Also, its performance has improved by an order of magnitude.

Matt Asay.Weblogs.Infoworld

Alfresco just released their source under GPL with a FLOSS exception.

This move is about choice, in other words. Choice for our customers (Freedom of access to the world’s best content management system). Choice for our partners. Choice for our competitors (join us or get run over :-). Choice for the community.

…The GPL is open source’s best business license. It is open source capitalism – the free market at its finest.

Freedom pays great dividends.

…the proprietary software companies we compete with have a limited shelf life. 🙂

Welcome Alfresco and kudos. Enough of this non-OSI-approved modified MPL bullshit. If your license is not approved by OSI then you’re not open source. Real simple. Worse yet you have companies like Socialtext. I think I’ve remained silent about these guys too long. Socialtext has claimed to be open source and fervently waved this banner since their founding in 2002. However, they didn’t release a stitch of source code until July, 2006. Four years later. WTF? When they did release their source they did so under a non-OSI-approved modified MPL license. WTF? Most recently Mayfield suggested that because they’ve allegedly "supported Kwiki for years" this makes Socialtext open source. I’ve been using Kwiki at every O’Reilly event (I love O’Reilly) and to the best of my knowledge Kwiki hasn’t changed in three years! I’ve kept my mouth shut because they’re competitors and I assumed others would have cried foul over their behavior long ago. Oddly, no one has. Then a few months ago (around Thanksgiving 2006) murmuring started about attribution licenses, which really is of lesser concern as far as Socialtext is concerned. Berlind blogged about how he can see it either way blah blah. In the end he called for "disclosure" as to whether the license is OSI approved or not. If you’re not, you’re not open source! What’s there to disclose? I responded here. Shortly thereafter Berlind sent me an email titled: "Laughable." It may have been a tad condescending, but in general he stated that disclosure is a good thing he didn’t see how anyone could disagree. Sure, I was a tad harsh, but I didn’t get the impression he was saying anything of use and I was also a tad offended by his statement: "the supposed keeper of the official definition of ‘open source’ and the consortium to which open source license authors typically turn to have their licenses ratified as adhering to that definition". Supposed? Typically turn? Read his post, read my response, you be the judge. As a side note, isn’t Berlind on the advisory board for Socialtext? I know one of those ZDNet blogger dudes is and I thought it was him. I’m not certain. UPDATE: I don’t think it’s Berlind, but I know there is a ZDNet journalist/blogger guy who is on Socialtext’s advisory board. Update’: My bad, it’s Mitch Ratcliffe.

Nat Torkington while organizing OSCON (which I love and is where we launched www.opengarden.org, OSCON06) recently asked: "Is ‘Open Source’ Now Completely Meaningless?" Well, if we continue down this road I don’t see how it couldn’t become meaningless. By the way Nat, I don’t think you should make a hard and fast rule as to whether you should disallow closed source companies to participate in OSCON. Do it on a case by case basis because surely there will be some worthy exceptions. Anyway, back on subject. What I propose is that OSI manages a wall of shame for companies that behave inappropriately with respect to use of the term "open source". It could work something like this. 1). The accused company receives a public warning via email and it’s also published online (posted on a wiki perhaps). Along with the warming the company is asked to cease their inappropriate use of the term open source and provided clear steps for complying with OSI. 2). The accused follows the steps for compliance in the provided timframe or they receive public censure, which starts with a public admonishment of their actions and could be escalated. All this is archived (hence the wiki suggestion) and indexed. Perhaps OSI could work with SourceForge.net and other sites to create a coalition that could perfrom the censure.

Why is this better than the current process? Well right now it’s very ad hoc. Only geeks know what’s going on because we’re the only ones willing to participate in a rabid discussion list. Ultimately OSI has no stick to wield and everything is pretty quiet outside geek circles. Even within geeky circles people are confused and it’s unclear if someone is violating the will of OSI. Also, this way when someone performs a web search for the aformentioned accused company the warning and censure would be found in the search result set. Thus providing a monetary incentive for compliance with OSI’s will. I very recently emailed these thoughts (mostly) to Tiemann. UPDATE: Michael and I spoke. I talk about it in this blog post. Something needs to be corrected though because this is a growing trend that seems to be spurred on by the flood of cash resulting from the venture capitalists’ interest in open source. And to compound the problem you have very media savvy folks with deep deep pockets that are very clearly manipulating public perception by injecting their will into journalism (mostly bloggers).

Anyway, enough soap-boxing. Back to Alfresco. What’s the intent of the Alfresco FLOSS exception (also employed by MySQL and others)? It’s meant, as far as I can tell, to maximize freedom in extending and integrating with dissimilarly licensed FLOSS software. Meaning, whatever you extend or integrate can continue to maintain it’s own licensing as long as it’s OSI approved (or on a list of OSI approved licenses that Alfresco provides). We achieved the same end result at MindTouch by providing DREAM under LGPL. DREAM is our Distributed REST Application Manager and what we’re building MindTouch DekiWiki on top of. In fact, we’re slowly discarding MediaWiki PHP logic for C# on Mono/Net 2.0 in the form of DREAM services. And as you would imagine DREAM is also powering our API. It will should be technically feasible that ultimately one could install just a PHP layer on their shared server and have a very sophisticated Service Oriented Distributed Architecture (SODA) powered by DREAM providing all the business logic. Think about that for a moment. It has huge benefits and enormous ramifications. Anyway enough about us. Is this FLOSS exception OSI approved? I saw one reference to it being an OSI approved exception, but I really don’t know if it is. It’s exception is only for other OSI approved licenses, it’s got to be.

Review: MindTouch cleverly packs wiki in a virtual appliance

MindTouch Deki
Availability: Now
Pricing: Free (five-user, unsupported); starts at $995 for supported version with advanced features.
Verdict: MindTouch Deki’s packaging as a VMware virtual appliance greatly reduces setup efforts and IT resources, while providing the security of in-house installation. As a business wiki, Deki’s also notable, providing easy page setup and editing, multiple collaboration features, and the possibility of integration with other enterprise systems because of its XML underpinning.

I should have posted this weeks ago but I didn’t think of it. Infoworld recently reviewed MindTouch Deki. We were supposed to be in the print publication along with a comparison of us against the competition, which I’m told was quite favorable, but some snafu happened because the editor didn’t get the updated version of the story until rather late. 😦 Anyway, thanks to Mike Heck for the review.