mnem's blog

Problem's we've got to keep this bastard burning

2006-08-14T13:31:00.000+02:00

'Truth' and 'reality' are two words that are generally grouped fairly close together. But time and again I realise that there is no rock bottom and no roof in the sky in the world of abstractions. We just choose a set that is conventient and functions to a satisfactory degree. And then you can move up or down or sideways as you please (within certain norms and rules of course, this is not "anything goes"), but you never truly "get" anywhere. Of course, this itself being an abstraction (or rather the attempt at a meta-abstraction) makes the observation just as useless as the observed. And of course, this is a purely spiritual problem, not a rational one.

Open Source does not exist

2006-06-22T15:02:00.000+02:00

There are right now 76538 ISO-approved open source projects on sourceforge. Of these 54899 are licensed under the GPL. 9777 are licensed under the LGPL. 1361 under the Artistic license. 1701 MIT license. 6207 BSD license. 1170 MPL. And 1414 are other/proprietary licenses.

In other words, roughly 70% of the software projects on sourceforge are licensed under the GPL. And of course Linux is under the GPL as well. But then we have the Apache server, which isn't, if you want to get into the usage and spread of programs, rather than number of licensed projects. If you go deeper into the numbers, you'll find a great deal of abandoned one-man projects, obscure hacker projects and generally copies of other programs that are either proprietary or work better already. It's the hidden space of forked projects that never really forked, because they never were part of the original project.

One important thing is that there are alot -ALOT- of overlapping projects out there. There is no "technical rationality" here. Hackers don't want to avoid doing the same work over and over. It's the opposite, the -want- to do it, so they can learn something from it. Hacking is not about optimizing a development process. This is something that occurs in larger projects, when there is more than enough work for everybody...or something like that.

So you could say that Open Source doesn't exist, it's just GPL and free software without the zealous edge. It's a softening of the same concepts, but with a market and potential income in mind. It's pushing the playful hacking in a more ordered direction, one that doesn't involve crying out "free as in freedom" every five minutes.

But Open Source is larger than that. Open Source -is- a part of the Open Culture, Freedom Movement, Commons, privacy and "freedom yay - censorship and "insane patent copyright"-schemes nay"- balooza.

But after a moment of reflection, one realizes that his doesn't change anything. Saying that Open Source is more of this and less of that doesn't really "get you anywhere", you've just changed one set of abstractions with another. Now, this does not necessarily have to be a problem. That depends on what you're looking for. Me, I keep forgetting that I should look for opinions where I search for truth. Long live the social sciences.

The hacker ethic

2006-06-16T14:29:00.000+02:00

Crap. Just wrote my longest entry so far with the Flock blog thingy and as I published it, all that survived was the title. Flock writes a backup of your blog entry to "My Documents", but only the title made it there as well. So this has absolutely nothing to do with hacker ethics, since I can't be bothered to recreate any of my ramblings. Jeez, I'm getting old and gullible trusting beta technology like that.

Blogged with Flock

Flock is your friend

2006-06-16T13:14:00.000+02:00

Flock is a free web browser that makes it easier than ever to share photos, stay up-to-date with news from your favorite sites, and search the Web.

Flock — The web browser for you and your friends

Well, this is just a test of the new Flock Beta blogging feature. Johan recommended it to me the other day. I haven't checked it out since some early alpha-ish version, and I have to say that I'm quite impressed. Amongst other things, it integrates your Flickr account, del.icio.us, blogging and what not. Well, it's nice, it's clean and it's free, so check it out.

Blogged with Flock

Hackers...

2006-06-01T17:22:00.000+02:00

Are Open Source developers hackers? In the old "beauty of the baud" sense? There are arguably many elite characteristics connected to Open Source hacking. But is there a culture? Are they 'one' in all their heterogeneity? Are only Free Software people hackers ('true' hackers)?....

Ah, screw it. Let's go out and play in the sun.

My thumbs have gone weird!

2006-05-26T13:46:00.000+02:00

Once again. You don't know where your head's at, and you don't know where to start. There are a million things that need to be done, and about 850.000 of them are boring or difficult.

So what else is new? breathe in. breathe out. let go. pick one. more action, less reflection. I've been doing lots of non-research related stuff lately, but it's actually been useful non-research stuff. Come to think of it, most stuff is useful as long as you put a little mind to it. But today wasn't what you would call a smooth transition, and before the day has started, it is already over. Am I freaking out? Mu!

Intentionality and source code

2006-05-11T13:31:00.000+02:00

When I was little I believed that various objects around me where alive, that they had some sort of core, some sort of soul. And it lives on in some sense today (I'm not the kind who names all his geek toys (well, my computer is named 'wintermute' but that's something else) and tucks them in at night) when I become attached to the things that are "mine". However, the intentionality that often follows from giving a thing of some kind the status of an actor (usually someone who has any active influence over a given situation (never mind the crappy def)) is a bit controversial. In my lovely interdisciplinary field, actor-network theory (ANT) has been the fiercest proponent of a general symmetry that permits everyone and everything to emerge as an actor (or actant). For a better introduction, check out the wikipedia entry on ANT. The point here is to throw out the idea about the source code's role as an actor in open-source projects. And what kind of models you can make from different ideas abo|ut its role.

Now, one can hardly deny that source code is important for open source, but what we mostly hear about are the legal implications of open source licenses and the effects of sharing the code and so on. But I'm not talking about the purely technical aspects either. Comparing proprietary and open source code is one thing (although that often proves difficult, given the closed nature of proprietary software). But what about the role of source code as an actor (or actant)? Ok, so the code is up for grabs, but what am I going to do with it? Something dies when community and code are separated. To say that it is only the community that matters, that (after all) it is developers who write code and not code writing developers, a piece of the picture has gone missing. It is like staring at an Escher drawing that twists your sense of reality and somehow expect that persistent staring will straighten out the paradoxical image. Given a (reasonable) general symmetry. What does the code do? What about the relationship code<-->developer and code<-->developer<-->user? My sole intention at the moment is to ask questions. And to stop writing before I attempt to answer them anyway.

So you're suffering from Senioritis?

2006-05-09T14:10:00.000+02:00

So the blog was announced, proudly claiming to deliver nonsense and theoretical and hypothetical discussions about absolute twaddle. But what happens? Absolutely nothing. It actually took an insult from my (also good) friend Johan before I got off my arse and did something about it. Actually that was quite a feat, considering my serious medical condition. Last week, I think it was Thursday, my prefrontal cortex shut down as the temperature rose steadily.

Since then, I have been running around in a confused state of bliss. I have talked to the trees and the wind, played with my friends, climbed rocks and gone on long walks. All of this while Sol kept a good distance between herself and Skoll. Now, This may not explain the long delay between the first post and this one, but it's all I got. And after all, this is a blog and it has already been announced that there will be a fair amount of nonsense here, so what do you want?

Anyway, I went for a swim this morning, and it seems to have cooled down my brain and kickstarted my prefrontal cortex, because today is a fine day academic-wise. As you may not at all be aware of, I'm writing a thesis about Open Source. Well, I'm brainstorming around the concepts of writing of an academic paper about Open Source sometime in the near future. One of the problems I have with Open Source is that, although you may define it rather precisely, it always remains sort of empty. It's just a container for whatever the hell you want it to be. Academics are fighting to have Open Source play on their team, be it economics, sociology, anthropology, interdisciplinary flimflam or political protagonists. Of course, this applies to a lot of cases (all?), and may even not be regarded as a problem at all (in academic circles and otherwise). On one hand it is a necessity, since one is (and often wishes to be) bound by the academic discipline in question. On the other hand it is a problem, since one gets blinded by the theoretical walls and structural castles that protect a discipline.

I know that there is a lot more to it, but I can't be bothered to go down that path today. But my brainstorming seems to have gotten me somewhere, because the idea of the developer-user relationship has re-triggered my interest for Open Source. Open Source is characterized as open and more user-friendly than proprietary software, but is also criticized for being very developer-centric. Now, there are tens of thousands of projects out there, a myriad of licenses in all shapes and colours, so there really is no answer to what Open Source is or is not. More than one, less than many. Anyway, the thing that struck me as interesting is how 'users' and 'developers' are defined and grouped, and why their interests may be in conflict with each other. It needs a lot more thinking and refining and questioning and so on. But at least it's a start.

more clueless wittedness

2006-04-18T15:41:00.000+02:00

Since my good friend Gunnar has fallen into the habit of writing blog entries, I see no reason why I should not follow in his footsteps. So, in the same spirit as - nothing clever - this will be a place for nonsense and academic research. Enjoy.