DoctorMo's Blog

Recently I’ve found myself having to balance more precariously how I approach local community based activities. Say if I’m going to be teaching Free Software use, then should I be putting to one side my obvious and oblique “Ubuntu is easy” agenda and just go with what is already there?

Even if I know that other people are using events to promote other focuses of interest. If I think the event is worthwhile in it’s own right then I think I ort to be involved and help out where I can.

I know I’ve looked more like an Ubuntu only fan but personally it’s much more about getting the best and quickest Free Desktop in front of as many people as possible, whatever that turns out to be. Making sure that users have tools that work and are respectful of their rights as users under the Free Software definition. That is perhaps my agenda, perhaps trying to spread principles is part of it too?

So long as it’s an event to promote Free and Open Source, I can’t see a reason why I shouldn’t be involved if needed. Weather it’s Debian, Fedora or Firefox.

Thoughts?

Yesterday I posted an entry about how I felt that commercial economics should be more widely employed in the FOSS world and that it’s our failure as a community to engaged appropriately with non-material-contributing users in such a way as to make our material contributions more economically sustainable.

Some took this to mean that I was a dangerous capitalist (ironic for those who know my as the dangerous socialist).

OK let’s make one thing clear, I do _not_ advocate for the sale of something that is already paid for. And by that I mean that someone else already put the money or time into making something FOSS and has graciously licensed it for download.

If you need to spend full time on a project to make it a success then you have no choice but to find a way to make money. My proposals so far have been more about promoting the idea of paying for the _creation_ of software than about the rather more impossible _distribution_ of software. To do that would be to make something artificially scarce.

There must be a way to see users in different lights, they are: users, potential contributors, potential inverters and a source of problems. If you can turn every Ubuntu user into a contributor then that’s great, it’s healthy for the ecosystem and it’s growth and I know it’s great for the education of the contributors. On the other hand if you don’t have time to contribute then the next best thing to invest is damned money. Paying for someone else’s time can get you that contribution and it can even be more meaningful since the people who your paying can be highly skilled and your simply saving them from a life of non-foss development.

I’ve not yet given up the hope that we _can_ find a way to have fair Free Software development that pays the bills and delivers freedom.

I was watching the amazing tedtalk by Isabel Allende as she described some of the women who dedicate their lives to making the world better and the incredible cultural sexism they faced in their journeys.

Near the end of the talk Isabel talks about the world as it is and how unsatisfyingly bad it is and how much better it could be if we could promote women’s rights and embrace women in jobs.

What’s striking to me is that I’ve noticed the tendency of not just the lack of women in various job roles, but also that any women that do get into those jobs tend to need to act like men in order to advance. I’m not just talking about sexism, but about aggressive social interaction, bullying and inconsideration for the wider implication of action. Their patriarchies are not familiar matriarchies or tribal relations.

There is an interesting thought that we should be investing more in enterprises run by women, especially in the third world where women can really make a difference for their families and society.

Isabel also mentions teaching young men how to understand and embrace their feminine energy. something I assume is code words for social organisation such as the idea that the people we talk to may actually be important enough to care about, empathise with and think about in a less self serving manner. I know it seems hard to think of people as people and not as ways to further one’s personal agenda, but it’s possible to teach I think.

I guess I’d be a feminist if I thought it should be a movement and didn’t just think of it as common sense. Rather than thinking I need to join a social group of people, I think I’m rather more comfortable imagining everyone a feminist and anyone who behaves sexist is simply that: outside the realm of acceptable behaviour.

Thoughts?

Interesting thought I got via email today:

Open Source will happen with or without us I believe. The production model is already taking over. Red Hat is now the backbone of the NYSE that is a barometer.

Yes Red Hat is looking after the NYSE and did release record revenues, they’re doing quite well with business up 19% this time. So this part is obvious to me:

I have no doubt that FOSS will take over software production, it’s just an economically more successful model of production. I repeat that this is an industrial revolution, but too few want to believe that we might actually be living in such an exciting time as that.

But the question on my mind is whether individuals, home users and small businesses will be in on this ride of freedom or whether they will be left behind by a corporate culture that only want to take money from OEMS, large enterprises and other easy sources of revenue.

Not only is it apparently impossible to make money from individuals, but it’s equally impossible to listen to them. A set of enigmas which are most certainly of the same knot and I’m looking forward to picking over the problem in the future.

Perhaps we’re just waiting for the big success, but I don’t hear FOSS being praised in the media or seized upon in OEM advertisements as loud as the production line was back in that revolution (I’m looking at you Android). It’s disappointing to me that there are still so many people even in our Ubuntu community that continue to explain that “home users don’t care how it was made”.

It’s disappointing because it’s wrong, it’s wrong to think that people are only consumers. It’s also wrong because it’s that same culture of ignorance of where our wealthy possessions come from that has driven the wrongs that laid a path to child labour and environmental problems. We’ve only begun to start fixing some of these problems and yet still a culture of “ignorance is good and normal” keeps FOSS down, that perhaps it’s something worthy for just the self-chosen few.

I do not subscribe to that notion and I will gladly tell every person, even my dear ol’ mum and granny what it’s about, reforming the words I use and the imagery I employ to help make it even easier to communicate. The market isn’t just about business it’s also about perceptions, only when individuals understand FOSS will the market solidify around the best of what we have and not the worst of what open source is according to a few bad Apples.

My thoughts are obviously long and ranty, but I’d still like to hear your thoughts?

Debate goes on about the political nature of Ubuntu. Nothing new there you might be thinking, well I want you to consider two examples of external factors that push and pull at “Dictatorship vs Meritocracy vs Democracy” and I’ll conclude with some of my own thoughts. First the prologue:

I didn’t get to see Jono Bacon’s post Ubuntu: meritocracy not democracy until today. Shame I missed it, I like reading this stuff.

I’ve been a critic in the past that the DX and Design teams have not been in any way resembling a meritocracy. I’m happy to report that I think that’s changing and there is a real appetite from Canonical to work towards having a community of merit not just a community of business appointment. The mood is set…

It’s the Economy

We want to decide who is more important because we can not reasonably listen to everyone, nor can we reasonable expect to be able to invest our time or money into the personal ventures of every commentator online. So there has to be models to limit who your going to listen to. One way is to listen to the money, you don’t care how dumb the idea is so long as your being paid to do it, economic necessity and a way to create a nice authoritative decision making process.

There is no doubt in my mind that economics drive decision making.

Currently in Ubuntu we have a handful of major economic investors: Community Members, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s Customers, the extended community and Upstreams[5]. Each investor has their own rationales, thoughts on direction and motivations, upstreams don’t tend to care too much what happens in Ubuntu even though they have a large economic input and in the other extreme the extended community has a low economic input in development but want large decision making. Ubuntu Members fall somewhere in between and Mark Shuttleworth falls in a very interesting large impact, single person category.

Who would I say has the majority of the clout? Mark Shuttleworth followed by Ubuntu Members then Canonical’s Customers and finally upstreams and the extended community. The reason OMG Ubuntu polls and brainstorm ideas have no effect? They’re mostly polling the extended community who is hardly involved economically in development.

Of course humans are not always able to conquer their own egos sufficiently to realise their shortcomings and economics has a way of sustaining bad decisions via ego. So we still need to discuss problems and we need to talk to people who have no economic dependence on us, otherwise we’re liable to simply get nodding heads. These discussions must be selective though since we need peer review of our dialectic, but do not have the time to listen to everyone in a very large community of users…

I’m not that Stupid

Users can feel like when they’re told to stop commenting that they’re not welcome in the community. I think it’s hard to tell a user that their point of view is valid but that their input is badly formed and their social awareness makes their opinion of minuscule importance.

No one likes being told they’re too stupid to be listened to, or that because they’ve got a full time job and can’t devote every spare hour to Ubuntu development that they aren’t worthy of someone’s ear and a few minutes of time.

Of course if you just speak a little louder, shout a little more aggressively, say more absurd and conspiratorial things, then maybe someone will listen. Because posting on your blog is helping the Ubuntu community right? Somewhat, if what you have to say is read by the right people, but then they might just ignore you anyway because of the confrontational language.

Of course scale that up to 12 million users and you suddenly see why some people want to start having democracy or at least hierarchy. Users can’t reasonable expect to be listened to, even though their input is vital to drag Ubuntu out of the programmer paradise and into the mainstream.

It’s frustrating being a user and noisy as hell being a developer.

Conclusions

I like the balance that basic Meritocracy brings to the community, Mark could easily be more fallible, more human and simply demand more and talk less about it based on his huge personal investment (est $50m a year). Having and treasuring the idea that any person can become worthy of listening to is important for proper peer review and it’s not a coincidence that this is a very similar process as in traditional natural sciences.

We could improve somewhat the ability for none-developers to have more say simply by allowing them to pay for Ubuntu’s development. It’s scary, hard to organise and damn near impossible in the current banking world. But if we want users to be served right, then we need users to give us the imperative to serve them. Taking money for Ubuntu development is one of the best ways to get the largest numbers of people contributing and thus giving them each a small voice with the developers they do business.

We could all be a little better at involving ourselves in multiple communities and cross pollinating, I know lots of people and most are not in the Ayatana mailing list so when people talk to me about design and dx decisions I can filter, mull over and then re-communicate the most important parts. This is a vital form of social organisation that we must account for, in a good Meritocracy it’s not just what you know or how much good work you’ve done in production but I think it’s just as important to consider the varied social networks we’re apart of that can add depth and experience to our communication.

Of course we could just elect everyone, but I’d rather not have to fight a popularity contest.

What are your thoughts?

Today in Boston there was a right wing gathering in the Boston Common which called it’s self “The Boston Tea Party”, it was basically a platform for the anti-everything authoritarians to have a go at the “liberal” everything and a lot of counter protesters who threw vitrol right back.

But, far from us disagreeing with any one’s politics, we took a greater offence at all their uncivilised and rude manner. So as crazy New Englanders are likely to do we organised a counter protest called “The Real Boston Tea Party” where we got together and had a very large picnic on the Boston Common, tea, biscuits, scones and cakes.

It was a fantastic day for a picnic too. Lots of people came either for the whole day or for lunch time (weekday). My lovely wife took the day off work and we all dressed up in costume. The protest was mainly against the uncivilised rowing, the arguments and bickering that are irrational and unproductive. But it was also great way to organise a mass public tea party/picnic on a beautiful day.

If you watch the BBC you may have seen a recent episode of “It’s only a theory” where they had as a guest Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur”. His theory was that The internet (and in essence Free Culture) is killing our culture and our economy.

I won’t go into the narcissist arguments, we could all be better at considering others and being more humble. I’m also going to ignore the irony of writing a blog post which is a part of the problem in Andrew’s eyes.¹

The theory managed to squeak by on a change of vote from Reginald D Hunter. His argument was very interesting though, he said that Andrew was afraid of the changes and that we hadn’t learned how to “make money” from the internet yet. That there changes were good and that killing the old culture was a good thing and we just need time to figure it all out.

Of course I was hoping to see the fear-inspired conjecture thoroughly rebuked. But after seeing why it was passed, I’m actually more impressed with Mr Hunter.²

Big media needs to die because it’s just an inefficient and too centralised way to make media. I find myself more and more simply enjoying content online and trying to pay for it. I have no problems with paying for content of course, but I’m altruistic, so of course I’m going to pay for content as much as I can, I actually commission plenty of artworks for Free Culture.

Free Software is sort of like the older brother of the free culture philosophy. Software has the advantage that it has a few extra advantages to being participatory, the fact that more of it can be compartmentalised and mixed together with other code without having to consider context as much. But just as much as Free Software has to find it’s way from the proxy funding of support contracts, Free Culture has to find it’s way from the proxy funding of advertising.

Thoughts?

¹ I write this blog to get better at writing, it’s nice to get readers, but it’s not why I do it.
² Of course recent episodes of Andy Hamilton’s overruling and general incompetent silliness has reduced my respect for the guy, so I was expecting him to vote silly.

I read today a fascinating interview with some Tea Party politicos about how they were perhaps planning on taking over the Republican Party. For those not in the USA, the Tea Party movement is a ultra far right wing group dedicated to authoritarian ideals of increasing the police and army, the destruction of social services and economic anarchy in at attempt to get a free market.

All rather silly and naive since the people in the party are the very people such policies will hurt the most, but what is interesting is their want of taking over. This is interesting because the traditional Republican philosophies are not present in the modern day republican party and I believe are missing _because_ of the move towards the exact authoritarianism that the Tea Party personifies.

If the tea party can purge the ranks of moderates (normal conservatives to me and you) then it will futher pressure the USAs ridiculous federal two party system. Since there will then be a whole set of conservatives without a party. Perhaps then they can remake the Republican party with it’s original, less destructive, more distrobutionist ideals.

Thoughts?

My thanks goes out to MeNTaLGuY who has brought more material about distributism to my attention and as such reading Sanity by G. K. Chesterton. While I may not agree with his views on the idea that the constitution of socialism is an effective authoritarianism over the means of production, I’m still fascinated by the critique he has for both socialism and capitalism.

“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”

An odd bit of news from the xorg foundation. During some discussion on their mailing list about missing funds it became apparent that PayPal had simply taken $5k of their money because PayPal thought xorg foundation were some sort of scam.

This has lead to more people boycotting paypal and a general unease about the liberty of financial transactions online.

For me it demonstrates a core corruption in the way our governments tackle law enforcement online. Instead of improving the police and the judiciary so that they can effectively cope with online fraud, copyright infringement and illegal computer entry, the governments are instead creating laws which force service providers to be the police, judge and executioner of punishments.

Everything from this PayPal misappropriation to the infamous three strikes internet connectivity laws currently being discussed in Europe. All of it shows the same disregard for impartiality, fair, open courts with a proper objection process. Instead we can replace courts and police with companies who’s job is providing us goods and services we pay for, so they can’t really be impartial.

Mix in heinously badly written laws like the DMCA who vagaries rank right up there with bible quotes. Who’s job it is to spread around the job of criminalising the general population so that everyone is responsible for watching and reporting on everyone else…

Wait that sounds awfully familiar…

There is no replacement for the judiciary for criminal activity, if the majority of people are tipping up over a law it’s because the law is wrong, not the majority of people. Most of these laws that grant corperate policing powers are so vague that even the mere hint of infringement or suspect activity is dealt with same severity as the worst offenders of real criminal activity. (if real criminals get caught by these schemes at all)