still in the slow process of trying to put together my more comprehensive 'metacritique' of the whole 'open source' domain as some web-based reference material that could perhaps at some later point be folded in to an h20 'hosted' reference/archive section... but since things are really moving in this area, and to keep some list activity going, i thought i'd follow up w/ some comments on several recent posts as well as adding a few things that might have been missed...
first, many thanks to alex for the open science/ open source notice:
http://openscience.bnl.gov/
this is very important i think for several reasons: i mentioned this before in reference to the narrower domain of drug development, but it applies generally to all of the scientific disciplines that they (along somewhat ironically w/ the digital media area) are a perfect target for a very vigorous effort at establishing a wide range of 'open source style' projects. for reasons that they have a pre-established government/academic component that makes this easier to establish 'socially' and psychologically; because of the residual 'natural scientific ethos' and history of sharing knowledge; because of their centrality as 'value sources' in the developing global economy; because of the way 'intellectual property' issues are highlighted; and also because ( and this is central to an ax that i fear i will have to grind for a long time... but w/ the pain worth it) the basic 'objects of science' are already 'open' (for the most part) as a result of the 'normal' peer-review, publication, validation processes operating in scientific domains...
the ax to grind is this and it's so important that i'll even set if off in a brand new 'paragraph':) ::
what's important is NOT the implementation in 'code' or the 'source', open or closed, as in actual program codes in C, FORTRAN, JAVA etc.-- which are one or even two levels too 'low' (not even the trees in the forest but maybe the bushes) but what i am generally now calling ( and you can roll your own jargon if you wish ) 'open semantic object models' ... in the above case these would be 'open objects of science' or 'open scientific object models' perhaps and would be (hierarchical, structured) EXPLICIT specifications (coded perhaps in the 'unified modeling language w/ real time extensions' or some other 'knowledge representation language') for the 'semantics' of the objects in the domain in question (molecules; genes; etc.) ... this META level is where the knowledge in these systems is really 'coded'... the real 'source'... this is also the place of maximum re-use and knowledge sharing potential... and these should be the building blocks/ targets for development of new kinds of 'open network applications' ... now this distinction might seem 'technical' or 'semantic' or even incomprehensible in this shorthand... but concentrating too much on the (low-level) 'code' is (IMHO blah blah...) an absolutely FUNDAMENTAL ERROR in the framing of the entire 'open source' movement that is leading to a lot of confusion and missed opportunities so i feel it has to be addressed and hashed out as soon as possible if these efforts are to achieve their maximum potential power... i don't want to take the time now to 'argue' this as a 'case' since as mentioned i'm in the process of trying to lay all of this out in another form... but i wanted to get the ball rolling toward thinking at a 'higher level' (of design, behavior, relationships, functions, interfaces, architectures, uses, meanings etc..) as soon as possible, since h20, open science, and of course 'opensource.org' and every other place you look all assume the 'code' as the ur-source writ of common wisdom... this 'materialism' is understandable for a variety of historical reasons but it's exactly what has to be jettisoned ASAP... this is the real 'letting go'... more on that later...
very interesting and sort of in that direction, promising a shared directory and other goodies, but still hanging on too hard to the 'code' is:
CNET News.com - OpenAvenue seeks to harness open-source power
on other fronts, thanks to tuyet for the opencontent update... it is becoming clearer i hope how central and interwoven all the various 'intellectual property' related threads are... and that any ostrich-like attempt to ignore this fact by 'apoliticals' or those who are deluded in imagining that something like a 'free market' exists or that merely 'technical' solutions will be enough, must be strongly resisted... it doesn't matter if you have open source or content (or even 'open distributed dynamic network application objects!) to share if someone is going to sue your pants off when you try to use them... for an idea of just how ludicrous the area of software patents is check out:
CNET News.com - Software maker Corel draws patent lawsuit
down in the text somewhere you will find that the dispute involves a patent on a feature:
that allows the comparison of documents in original and
modified versions in split-screen format.
wow!! that's striking originality that deserves protection under the law ... and in the absurdist cinema verite mode i should mention too that i am now, wearing hat of ceo of zeitgeist y2k01 ltd., under threat of suit by AOL because i registered some domain names for a project (e.g. opendigitalcity2k01.com) that contain the string 'digitalcity', and this registration ALONE, is asserted as infringing on their 'mark' 'DIGITAL CITY'... imagine the degree of 'net free speech' that's allowed by the 'AOL doctrine': nearly the entire 'namespace' gets knocked out!... basically don't even show up w/out your lawyers...
i guess lawyers like that... but 'we' should be MUCH less enthusiastic
and what's going on at harvard????
ZDNN: Harvard caught in hacker crossfire
take care
mark