newspeak

hardware – h-node.org.

The point here is finding hardware that can be configured as you like with free software. Naturally, I recommend Apache OpenOffice as a start. Runs on Linux, etc. But–and this is actually important–it’s software that exists now because of its contributors, who contribute as an act of rational choice.

One can find this sentence true in many locales: “However, it is unclear how much savings the centres are yet making, with a number of departments bound by legacy contracts.”

Legacy contracts live long after their signing. And as the ICT world tends to move in spurts and incoherently, the legacy contracts warp not just the holder but also a good part of the ecosystem into the wasteland.

via Government locked into £330m Oracle contract until 2016 • The Register.

Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness, by Nathaniel Tkacz | Books | Times Higher Education.

Open or Fauxpen? Use the OSS Watch Openness Rating tool to find out | OSS Watch team blog.

There’s been an interesting discussion on open source project maturity. (See the initial message, http://goo.gl/zUqAkQ). There’s a point to having a good understanding of what open means when it comes to making things, and that point is most obviously pragmatic but also more abstract. Trust, the ability to work with someone or some company in good faith, is as important for open source as it is for any other environment, and arguably even more so. In the world of contracts, where future labour is guaranteed by contract, trust is enforced and policed by force. In open source….

Does Cheap Access Encourage Science? Evidence from the WWII Book Replication Program » infojustice.

Abstract: Policies that reduce the costs of accessing prior knowledge (which is covered by copyrights) are becoming increasingly prominent, even though systematic empirical evidence on their effects continues to be scarce. This paper examines the effects of the 1942 Book Republication Program (BRP), which allowed US publishers to replicate science books that German publishers had copyrighted in the United States, on the production of new knowledge in mathematics and chemistry. Citations data indicate a dramatic increase in citations to BRP books after 1942 compared with Swiss books in the same fields. This increase is larger for BRP books that experienced a larger decline in price under the program. We also find that effects on citations are larger for disciplines in which knowledge production is less dependent on physical capital: Citations to BRP books increased substantially more for mathematics (which depends almost exclusively on human capital) than chemistry (which is more dependent on physical capital).

Best of open government on Opensource.com this year | Opensource.com.

The Problem With Apple’s iPad Strategy – Business Insider.

Frustratingly, there is actually a solution to this seeming problem, and I’ve been trying to tell IBM and even Apple about it. I refer to the technology that runs UX Write. It works on the iPad and can be made to work on the desktop; and it already works quite well with MS Office Word. (Other modules coming, but these’ll cost.)

The point is that the office worker would not have to ditch the horse she came in for the new, untested one somewhere in the middle of the stream. Rather, there’d be an augmentation of tools. A better experience, not a deeply annoying one.

Xen Project Contributor Training | Lars Kurth | LinkedIn.

Do public bodies in Europe have an obligation to move from closed source and lock-in to vendor independence and free software? In general probably yes, but is it also true for the European Parliament? Definitely! This is the stark conclusion of the study “Ensuring utmost transparency – Free Software and Open Standards under the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament” by Carlo Piana and Ulf Öberg.

via Free Software and Open Standards in the European Parliament – Content – The Greens | European Free Alliance.

Apple and IBM Introduce First Offerings in Line of Mobile Apps for Business – NYTimes.com.

This could be–no, it is–interesting for a range of projects related to productivity.