Post Peeves

Great Crimes, Again and Again

Friday, April 24th, 2015

Title refers to Medz Yeghern (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, “Great Crime”), a name for the Armenian Genocide (April 24 is remembrance day), and the empty slogan never again.

I recommend the English Wikipedia article on the Armenian Genocide. It’s a good long read; I learned a fair bit from it that should stick with me. I did not realize that the vast majority of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire lived a helot existence (I only knew that there were prominent Armenian elites in the Empire; indeed the remembrance day is the anniversary of rounding up of 250 Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople), that there was a mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans in the years prior to the genocide, that the genocide was widely reported in the West as it was in progress, and that it was witnessed directly by many (Central Power allies) Germans, possibly creating a direct line to some elements of the Holocaust.

I’ve only done naive searches for and skimming of genocide prevention material but my general impression is that it all takes an international perspective. That’s necessary and fine, but given how abysmal and nationalistic international governance is (including with regard to remembering genocides), I’d love to read more about how potential perpetrator and victim groups within jurisdictions have attempted to prevent genocide or its direct preconditions. I know when they have failed (documented genocides), but am almost completely ignorant of what attempts have been made, including any that have been successful, and how such attempts might inform the actions of people under threat today. I’m not talking about simplistic hypotheticals (e.g., what if someone killed Hitler before the war), nor heroic actions to save some people during a genocide. I’m wondering for example the extent of Turk liberal and Armenian elite efforts toward equal rights for all, Armenian elite efforts to protect Armenian helots, Armenian helot efforts to organize, and how such efforts could have been made more effective.

Previously regarding the Armenian-Assyrian-Greek genocide.

“Within jurisdictions” implies “improve yours” (in my case, the U.S.), which indeed I take as highly effective and necessary. A few past posts: Stop Killing Them and Invasion Ethics (present), Robot Gang Memorial Day (future), and Independence′ Day (remembrance).

Addendum 20150501: The English Wikipedia Signpost’s traffic report for April 19-25:

And much more sobering, but also in the Report for the first time, is the Armenian Genocide (#10 added: 631,960 views), which commenced 100 years ago this week. Farther down the list on the Top 25, it is worth noting that Adolf Hitler (#23), who famously asked who remembered the Armenian Genocide, also appears in the Top 25 for the first time. While World War II related topics often make the charts, for some reason Hitler himself has not since the Top 25’s debut in January 2013.

uBlock now blocks newsletter tracking links

Wednesday, April 15th, 2015

A year ago I wrote that most email newsletters are spam, file accordingly. Glad to see that someone agrees. Sometime between versions 0.9.10 and 0.9.30 of uBlock, the ad-blocking extension started blocking the tracking links commonly found in email newsletters (the ones I mentioned in previous post and many more are matched by the EasyPrivacy list included in uBlock). If you mistakenly subscribe to such a newsletter and click one of its links with a recent uBlock version installed, below is what you’ll see.

The Firefox Addons site has an old version of uBlock. Get it from the uBlock releases page instead.

Newsletter senders, including many from well-meaning organizations, please read my previous post and stop being jerky to your customers, fans, constituents, subscribers, patrons, or however you think of people receiving your newsletter — give them transparent, untracked links.

Or you could play cat and mouse with the uBlock and EasyPrivacy developers. This would be further evidence that your organization is a misallocation of resources.

Annual thematic doubt 2

Tuesday, February 17th, 2015

My second annual thematic doubt post, expressing doubts I have about themes I blogged about during 2014.

commons ⇄ freedom, equality ⇄ good future

Same as last year, my main topic has been “protecting and promoting intellectual freedom, in particular through the mechanisms of free/open/knowledge commons movements, and in reframing information and innovation policy with freedom and equality outcomes as top.”

Rather than repeating the three doubts I expressed last year under the heading “intellectual freedom” (my evaluation of these has not much changed), I will take the subject from a different angle: the “theory of change” I have been espousing. This theory is not new to me. Essentially it is what attracted me to following the free software movement circa 1990 — its potential of extensive, pro-freedom socio-economic reform from the bottom up. That and wanting to run a unix-like on my computer — a want satisfied without respect to freedom as soon as I could use a Sun workstation at work, and for many years now would have been satisfied by OS X. I never cared very much about being able to read, modify, and share all of the software on my computer — the socio-economic implications of those capabilities make them interesting, to me. The claimed ends of the theory are in the ‘for a good future’ slogan I’ve occasionally used at least since 1998. I occasionally included the theory in blog posts (2006) and presentations (2008). Much of my ‘critical cheering’ last year (doubt) and before has largely been about my perhaps unreasonable wish that ‘free/open’ organizations and movements would take the theory I do and act as I think follows. I could easily be wrong on the theory or best actions it implies. Accordingly, I ratcheted down critical cheering in 2014; hopefully most but not all of what remained was relatively fun or novel. Instead I focused more sharply on the theory, e.g., in Sleepwalking past Freedom’s Commons, or how peer production could increase democracy, equality, freedom, and innovation, all of them!

The theory could be attacked from a number of angles — I’d love to see that done and learn of new vulnerabilities. For example, commons might not significantly affect freedom and equality, these may not be the right values, and one might consider a ‘good future’ to be one with maximum hierarchy, spectacle, even war (I repeatedly argue that future tech and culture will be marvels in most plausible futures, and that is a reason to reject ones that do not have freedom and equality as top values, but also something that makes it hard to see how a future — or present — could be different or better with more knowledge economy/policy-driven freedom and equality). But this isn’t a cheap refutation post (see below) and I don’t have very practical doubts about those values and what they imply constitutes a good future.

But I do have practical doubts about the first leg of the theory. Summary of that leg before getting to doubts: Commons-based knowledge production simultaneously destroys rents dependent on freedom infringing regimes, diminishing the constituency for those regimes, grows the constituency and policy imagination for freedom respecting regimes, and not least, directly increases freedom and equality.

Doubts:

  • Effects could be too small to matter, or properly attributed to generational or other competition among firms, not commons-based production. Consider Wikipedia, a success of commons-based production if there is one. Such success may not be possible in other sectors, especially ones that command top policy attention (drugs and movies) — policy imagination has not been increased. The traditional encyclopedia industry was already mostly destroyed by Microsoft Encarta when Wikipedia came along. The encyclopedia industry was not a significant constituency for freedom infringing regimes, so its destruction matters not for future policy. Encyclopedias were readily accessible at libraries, vastly more useful info of the sort found in encyclopedias is accessible online now, excluding Wikipedia, and ‘freedoms’ to modify and distribute are just not relevant nearly all humans.
  • I claim that the best knowledge policy reform is that which favors commons and that the reforms traditionally proposed by copyright and patent reformers are relatively futile because such proposals if implemented would not significantly change the knowledge economy to produce freedom and equality nor grow the constituencies for such changes — rather they are just about who, how, and for how much the outputs of production under freedom infringing regimes may be used — so-called balance, not the tilt I demand. But perhaps the usual set of reform proposals is the best that can be hoped for, especially given decades of discourse and organization-building around those proposals, and almost none about commons-favoring reform. Further, perhaps the usual set of reform proposals is best without qualification — commons-based production is a culturally marginal (in software; wholly irrelevant in most other sectors) arrangement that ought be totally ignored by policy.
  • Various (sometimes semi-) free/open movements within various sectors (e.g., software, education, research publication) are having some policy successes, without (as far as I know) usually considering themselves to be as or more central to shaping knowledge policy as usual things fitting under ‘copyright reform’ and ‘patent reform’ but this could be just what needs to happen. The important thing is that commons-based knowledge production entities act to further their interests with minimal distance from current policy discourse, not that they have any distracting and possibly discrediting theory about doing so relative to overall knowledge policy.

Only the first of these gives me serious pause, though my discounting the last two might be a matter of (dis)taste — my feeling is that most of the people involved thoroughly identify with the trivia of copyright, patent, and similar law, even if they think those laws need serious reform, and act as if commons-based production is something to be protected from reform in the bad direction, but not at all central. Sadly if my feeling is accurate, the second and third doubts probably ought give me more pause than they do.

Despite these doubts, the potential huge win-win (freedom and equality, without conflict) of reorienting the knowledge economy and policy around commons-based production makes robust discourse (at the least) on this possibility urgent, even if tilt probability is low. One of the things that makes me favor this approach is that reform can be very incremental — indeed, it is by far the most feasible reform of any proposed — we just need a lot more of it. Push-roll towards tilt!

The most damning observation is perhaps that I’m only talking, and mostly on this very blog. I should change my ways, but again, this is not a cheap refutation post.

Software Freedom/Futurism/Science Fantasy

I recently wrote that “it’s much easier to take software freedom as a serious issue of top importance if one has a ‘futurist’ bent. This will also figure in a forthcoming post from me casting doubt on everything in this post and the rest from 2014.”

How important are computers to human arrangements, and how large is the range of plausible computer-involved arrangements, and how much can those realized be changed? Should anyone besides programmers and enthusiasts care about software specifically, any more or less than they care about the conditions under which any tool is created and distributed? (Contrast with other tools would be good here, but I’ll leave for another time.)

The vast majority of people seem to treat software as any other tool — they want it to work as well as possible, and to be as cheap as possible, the only difference being that their intuitions about quality and cost of software may be worse than their intuitions for the quality and cost of, for example, bridges. Arguably nearly everyone has been and perhaps still is correct.

But one doesn’t need to be much of a futurist to see software getting much more important — organizations good at using software ‘eating’ the lunches of those less good at using software, software embedded in everything or designing everything (and anything else being obsolete), regulating and mediating every sort of arrangement — with lots of plausible variation as to how this happens.

Now the doubt: does future-motivated interest in software freedom share more with interest in science fiction (i.e., moralistic fantasy) or with interest in future studies and the many parts of various social sciences that aim to improve systems going forward in addition to understanding current and past ones? If the latter, why is software freedom ignored by all of these fields? Possibly most people who do think software is becoming very important are not convinced that software freedom is an important dimension to consider. If so (I would love to see some kind of a review on the matter) it would be most reasonable to follow the academic consensus (even if it is one of omission; that consensus being of software freedom not interesting or important enough to investigate) and if one cares about the ethical dimensions of software, focus instead on the ones the consensus says are important.

Two additional posts last year in which I claim software freedom is of outsized and underappreciated importance (of course I don’t usually restrict myself to only software, but consider software a large and growing part of knowledge embodying cumulative innovation, and of the knowledge economy leading to more such accumulation) and some of many from years past (2006, 2006, 2007, 2007). The first from 2006 highlights the most obvious problem with the future. I had forgotten about that post when mentioning displacement of movies by some other form as the height of culture in 2013 — one has to squint to see such displacement even beginning yet. The second isn’t about the future but is closely related: alternative history.

Uncritical Cheering

I feared that many of my posts last year were uncritical cheering (see critical cheering above and last year). Looking back at posts where I’m promoting something, I have usually included or at least hinted at some amount of criticism (e.g., 1 2). I don’t feel too bad. But know that most of the things I promote on my blog are very likely to fail or otherwise be inconsequential — if they were sufficiently mainstream and established they’d be sufficiently covered elsewhere, and I likely wouldn’t bother blogging about them.

One followup: I cheered the publication of the first formally peer-reviewed and edited Wikipedia article in Open Medicine — a journal which has since ceased publishing.

Freeway 980

I continue to blog about removing freeway 980, which cuts through the oldest parts of Oakland. Doubt: I don’t know whether full removal would be better (at least when considering feasibility) than capping the portion of 980 which is below grade. I intended to read about freeway capping, come to some informed opinion, and blog about it. I have not, but supposedly Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf has mentioned removing 980. Hopefully that will spur much more qualified people to publish analyses of various options for my reading pleasure. ConnectOakland is a website dedicated to one removal/fill scenario.

Politics

I’m satisfied enough with the doubt in my two posts about Mozilla’s leadership debacle, but I’ll note apparent tension between fostering ideological diversity and shunning people who would deny some people basic freedoms. I don’t think this one was fairly clear cut, but there are doubtless far more difficult cases in the world.

Instead of doubt, I’d like to clarify my intention with two other posts: thought experiment/provocation, serious demand.

Refutation

I fell further behind, producing no new dedicated collections of refutations of my 8+ year old posts. My very next post will be one, but as with previous such posts, the refutations will be cheap — flippant rather than drilling down on doubts I may have gained over the years. Again these observations (late, cheap) are what led me last year to initiate a thematic doubt post covering the immediately previous year. How was this one?

What is the attribution revolution?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015

Elog.io suggested tweet:

I believe in giving and receiving credit for photographs online. Do you? Join the #attributionrevolution – http://elog.io/40m/

Down with the romance of authorship and the ideas that credit is due (as suggested at the link) and that information propertization and the legal system are appropriate mechanisms for encouraging credit (as suggested by licenses mentioned in the campaign which condition free speech on providing attribution).

But I support elog.io despite a bit of ugly rhetoric in its messaging because the technology is fundamentally about making provenance available on demand — undermining the rationale for consciously giving credit or making lack of explicit credit a cause for legal action.

The real attribution revolution has nothing to do with believing that credit is due anyone, and everything to do with attribution (in multiple senses, but including work-creator relationship identification) becoming inescapable, at least not without great and very careful effort. Elog.io is the tip of the top of the iceberg of image and other huge databases (in a sense literally: elog.io apparently is an open database, while others millions of times larger are opaque, submerged beneath corporate and government seawater) and techniques like deep learning and stylometry make universal attribution not only feasible but seemingly inevitable. I don’t know whether this is on net a good or bad thing — but it is the real attribution revolution.

14 months ago I railed against the attribution condition of some open and semi-open licenses (emphasis added):

Do not take part in the debasement of attribution, and more broadly, provenance, already useful to readers, communities of practice, and publishers, by making them seem mere objects of copyright license compliance. If attribution is useful, it will be provided. If not, robots will find out. Rarely does anyone comply with the exact legal requirements of the attribution term anyway, and as a licensor, you probably won’t provide the information needed by licensees to easily comply. Plus, the corresponding icon looks like a men’s bathroom sign.

The elog.io campaign page for example: it does not “include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for, this License with every copy of the Work You Distribute or Publicly Perform” nor does it provide “the URI, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work” — in other words, it names the works it uses and the licenses it uses them under, but does not link to those works and licenses (quotes from CC-BY-3.0).

The other reason I support elog.io (yes visit that campaign page, give, and ignore the utter triviality of attribution license non-compliance) is that it is focused on provenance for open works (freely licensed or in the public domain — with caveat that I haven’t checked whether it includes semi-open works) and is itself an open source/open data project — provenance for the commons, and commons for the provenance.

Much more work in this area is needed, especially with a focus on high value open works (e.g. premium video) and creating high value open works — I mean by creating network effects around open works, not creating the works themselves. But even a still image focused project could help a bit — every frame of every open premium video could be included in the database, and any use metrics that can be extracted can be used to document and thus abet popularity.

Libre Graphics World has a long interview with elog.io founder Jonas Öberg that is well worth reading. Separately, there is big news not about but very pertinent to elog.io (which also perhaps explains why the elog.io campaign is only attempting to raise $6,000): Öberg is returning to work at the Free Software Foundation Europe (of which he is a co-founder and will be executive director; I had the pleasure of working with him a bit in between at Creative Commons, where he was European coordinator).

I don’t know the FSFE that well, but my impression is very positive, in particular its engagement in politics as public policy, not only the petite politics of individual developers choosing particular licenses and individual users rejecting proprietary software. Congratulations to Jonas on both the elog.io campaign and the FSFE position, and hoping for great success in both. Especially the latter could have an important role in making the real attribution revolution relatively beneficent.

Happy GNU Year & Public Domains Day

Thursday, January 1st, 2015

This Public Domain Day I recommend watching a 2005 lecture or corresponding 2006 journal article Enriching Discourse on Public Domains (summary) by Pamela Samuleson.

The video was only published by Duke Law (which also hosts the main U.S.-centric public domain day page) to their YouTube channel a month ago. Based on the first version (2013-01-02) of my attempted summary, I read the paper the day after my public domain day post 2 years ago, Public Domains Day, which riffed on dictionary definitions.

Samuelson outlines 13 meanings found in law review articles (see the summary for a quick listing) and points out some benefits and one cost of accepting multiple definitions:

+ avoid disputes about “the” correct or one true definition
+ broadened awareness of public domains and public domain values
+ facilitation of context-sensitive discussion
+ enable nuanced answers to questions about various public domains (eg shrinking or not?)
+ possibility of gaining insight into public domain values through consideration of different public domains (deemed most important by author)
– possible confusion concerning what a communicator means by “public domain”

In the lecture Samuelson says it took a long time for her to accept multiple definitions, in part after realizing that other fields such as property law successfully use multiple context-dependent definitions. I’d like to add a plus to the list:

+ language is fun, play with it!

Hectoring people for not using the deemed-by-you to be the one true definitions of the correct words is the opposite of fun. I do tend to use nonstandard words and phrases such as “copyrestriction”, “inequality promotion”, “intellectual freedom infringement”, “intellectual parasite”, and “intellectual protectionism” in order to make a point and have fun, but have descended to hectoring at times (and probably have been perceived as having done so more). I will from now make more of an effort to use terms other people use, or when not, give a fun and non-hectoring rationale. In the meantime, I will say that though I agree with many individual points made concerning word avoidance, I find such neither fun nor welcoming nor helpful in convincing anyone that freedom and equality need to be the dominant objectives of information policy.

At the beginning of the lecture Samuelson is given an introduction lauding her work, initially lonely but presented in 2005 as central, toward making intellectual property scholarship discourse consider the value of the various public domains and costs of expanding (scope, duration, protections) intellectual property rights. I have long been a fan of Samuelson’s work, but the introduction served to remind me of how unsatisfied I am with what still constitutes the liberalizing reform (which itself is possibly central, but I am too ignorant of the breadth of IP scholarship, which surely includes much so-called “maximalism”, to say) line:

  • acknowledgement that we can say little about the net benefits of IP
  • but it is surely “unbalanced” toward protection now
  • so it needs balancing and tuning
  • but of course IP is crucial so genuflect to drugs and movies
  • (largely through omission) commons are a band-aid and not central to reform
  • (largely through omission) freedom and equality not the central objectives

Of course not, as then we would have commons scholarship, not IP scholarship. I contend that pro-commons policy and products are the most feasible, sustainable, and overall best reforms and that freedom and equality should be the dominant objectives — I want the innovations and entertainment produced by a freedom respecting regime — surely meaning substantially less monopoly, hopefully a bit less embarrassing spectacle.

Image from last year, with ‘s’ added to ‘domain’; I’ve written enough recently about ‘GNU’ (signifying software freedom, not the GNU project strictly speaking).

Happy GNU Year & Public Domain Days

Happy UTC+0 New Year

Wednesday, December 31st, 2014
With apologies for the projection.

Smattering of followups on mostly-recent posts, posted at 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Does anyone celebrate UTC+0 New Year except by coincidence of being in UTC+0 time zone? Yes.

Software Freedom Conservancy released a video with me endorsing them (my recent blog endorsement). I self-recorded the footage and acknowledge total videography incompetence, need of a haircut, and need to be still.

PLOS Biology published a perspective by Daniel Mietchen on The Transformative Nature of Transparency in Research Funding. Riffing on his tweet, that’s early theory; practice is the Wikidata for Research proposal that he is leading creation of in the open (my recent blog endorsement).

Snowdrift.coop’s one-time crowdfunding campaign (my recent blog endorsement and others) is wrapping up very successfully. Looking forward to seeing Snowdrift.coop launch in early 2015.

Free Software Foundation’s call for input on updating its high priority projects list (my blog post) has resulted in over 100 emails to hpp-feedback@gnu.org, most of them very thoughtful and containing numerous suggestions. Some are mirrored in public posts: Antoine Amarilli, Christopher Allan Webber, d3vid seaward, Denver Gingerich, Ingegnue. Please send your feedback! I especially enjoy seeing public posts and explanations of how suggestions are on critical path toward achieving goal of software freedom for everyone.

Speaking of the FSF, they recently released a new video making the case that software freedom is important for everyone. I agree with Christopher Allan Webber’s asseessment of good progress. The video also ties into a free software futurist dinner that Webber said raised money for Software Freedom Conservancy, and some statements I make in the video above: I suspect it’s much easier to take software freedom as a serious issue of top importance if one has a “futurist” bent. This will also figure in a forthcoming post from me casting doubt on everything in this post and the rest from 2014 (last year’s version).

There’s some overlap between the above and OpenHatch’s year-end newsletter (my year-ago blog endorsement).

Finally, check out Don Marti’s below the fold announcement about Aloodo, a project to (if I understand correctly) help sites protect themselves from the long-term damage of being associated with pervasive tracking and door-to-door-like incentives (everything to make immediate conversion, nothing to build trust). I still have not gotten around to blogging other ideas for “fixing” online advertising, but very much look forward to seeing how Marti’s project plays out.

Defensive Patent License 1.1 w/diff

Tuesday, December 9th, 2014

13 months ago I wrote about the Defensive Patent License, in particular in relation to free/open source software (followup, 1993 predecessor). Today the DPL project released DPL 1.1 and announced the first licensor; see Internet Archive and EFF posts.

(The EFF post references its earlier guide to alternative patent licensing which I meant to critique, probably along lines of a partially overalpping guide to reform proposals, see patent reform, parts deficient in commons and compare with protect commons from patents. I noticed today that one of the other alternative licensing schemes, License On Transfer, seems to be getting some uptake.)

Most of what I wrote previously about the DPL concept still applies with DPL 1.1 (interesting concept, possibility of substantial good impact in long term). The new version makes one major improvement (especially in relation to FLOSS) — the exclusion of “clone” products or services from the license grant has been removed. Another small (as in a -3 words difference) improvement is that alleging patent invalidity against another DPL user no longer breaches one’s licenses (only alleging infringement does), invalidation being a defensive tactic.

DPL 1.1 also adds the requirement of explicit acceptance, which strikes me as burdensome: one must research licensed patents in order to figure out which DPL users to contact with acceptance, or regularly contact all known DPL users with acceptance of all licensed patents. I understand from the DPL 1.1 announcement telecon that formal acceptance was added because the license grant is more likely to stand up in court with such explicit acceptance, with that more likely assessment based on differences between patent and copyright, and between clubs and public licenses — and further that the “contact all known DPL users” practice will in the future be facilitated by the DPL website.

Finally, a very minor issue: DPL 1.1 reproduces the GPL’s confusing three-option version compatibility scheme (this-version-or-later, only-this-version, or any-version-if-none-specified). If one must have options, I consider less confusing this-version-or-later as default, with option to explicitly mandate only-this-version.

Congratulations and thanks to Jason Schultz, Jennifer Urban, Brewster Kahle, John Gilmore, and others for getting the DPL into production. I hope it is wildly successful; check out the DPL website and help update the Wikipedia article.

Following is a wdiff between DPL 1.0 and 1.1 in two parts (because 1.0 put definitions at the beginning, 1.1 puts them at the end) below, excluding 1.1’s preface, which has no equivalent in 1.0.

DPL 1.0-1.1 wdiff: Grant, conditions, etc.

[-2.-]{+1.+} License Grant

Subject to the conditions and limitations of this [-License and upon-]
[-affirmative assent to the commitments specified in Section 1.7 from an-]
[-individual DPL User,-] {+License,+} Licensor hereby
grants and agrees to grant to [-such-] {+any+} DPL User {+(as defined in Section 7.6) who+}
{+follows the procedures for License Acceptance (as defined in Section 1.1)+}
a worldwide, royalty-free, no-charge, non-exclusive, irrevocable (except
as stated in Sections [-3(e)-] {+2(e)+} and [-3(f))-] {+2(f))+} license, perpetual for the term of
the relevant Licensed Patents, to make, have made, use, sell, offer for
sale, import, and distribute Licensed Products and Services that would
otherwise infringe any claim of Licensed Patents. A Licensee’s sale
of Licensed Products and Services pursuant to this agreement exhausts
the Licensor’s ability to assert infringement [-by-] {+against+} a downstream
purchaser or user of the Licensed Products or Services.

[-2.1-] {+Licensor’s+}
{+obligation to grant Licenses under this provision ceases upon the arrival+}
{+of any applicable Discontinuation Date, unless that Date is followed by+}
{+a subsequent Offering Announcement.+}
{++}
{+1.1+} License Acceptance

In order to accept this License, Licensee must {+qualify as a DPL User+}
{+(as defined in Section 7.6) and must+} contact Licensor via the
[-contact-] information
provided in [-Section 1.16 and-] {+Licensor’s Offering Announcement to+} state affirmatively that
Licensee accepts the terms of this License. Licensee must also {+communicate+}
{+the URL of its own Offering Announcement (as defined in Section 7.13) and+}
specify whether it is accepting the License to all Licensor’s Patents or
only a subset of those Patents. If Licensee is only accepting the License
to a subset of Licensor’s Patents, Licensee must specify each individual
{+Patent’s country of issuance and corresponding+} patent [-by patent number.-]
[--]
[-3.-] {+number for which+}
{+it is accepting a License. There is no requirement that the Licensor+}
{+respond to the Licensee’s affirmative acceptance of this License.+}
{++}
{+2.+} License Restrictions

Notwithstanding the foregoing, this License is expressly subject to and
limited by the following restrictions:

(a) No Sublicensing. This License does not include the right to sublicense
any Licensed Patent of any Licensor.

(b) License Extends Solely to Licensed Patents in Connection with Licensed
Products and Services. For clarity, this License does not purport to
grant any rights in any Licensor’s copyright, trademark, trade dress,
design, trade secret, other intellectual property, or any other rights of
Licensor other than the rights to Licensed Patents granted in Section 2,
nor does the License cover products or services other than the Licensed
Products and Services.  {+For example, this License would not apply to+}
{+any conduct of a Licensee that occurred prior to accepting this License+}
{+under Section 1.1.+}

(c) Scope. This License does not include Patents with a priority date
or Effective Filing Date later than Licensor’s last Discontinuation
Date that has not been followed by a subsequent Offering Announcement
by Licensor.

(d) Future DPL Users. This License does not extend to any DPL User whose
Offering Announcement occurs later than Licensor’s last Discontinuation
Date that has not been followed by a subsequent Offering Announcement
by Licensor.

(e) Revocation and Termination Rights. Licensor reserves the right to
revoke and/or terminate this License with respect to a particular Licensee [-if:-]
{+if, after the date of the Licensee’s most recent Offering Announcement:+}
{++}
{+i.+} Licensee makes any Infringement Claim, not including Defensive Patent
Claims, against a DPL User; or

{+ii.+} Licensee {+assigns, transfers, or+} grants an exclusive [-license,-]
[-    with the right to sue, or assigns or transfers-] {+license for+}
a Patent to an entity or individual other than a DPL User without
conditioning the [-transfer-] {+assignment, transfer, or exclusive license+} on the [-transferee-]
{+recipient+} continuing to abide by the terms of this [-License.-] {+License, including but+}
{+not limited to the revocation and termination rights under this Section.+}

(f) Optional Conversion to FRAND Upon Discontinuation. [-As-] {+Notwithstanding+}
{+any other provision in this License, as+} of any particular Licensee’s
Discontinuation Date, Licensor has the right to convert the License of
that particular Licensee from one that is royalty-free and no-charge to
one that is subject to Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) [-terms.-]
[--]
[-4.-]
{+terms going forward. No other terms in the license may be altered in+}
{+any way under this provision.+}
{++}
{+3.+}        Versions of the License

[-4.1-]

{+(a)+} New Versions

The DPL [-Foundation is-] {+Foundation, Jason M. Schultz of New York University, and Jennifer+}
{+M. Urban of the University of California at Berkeley are+} the license [-steward. No-]
{+stewards. Unless otherwise designated by one of the license stewards,+}
{+no+} one other than the license [-steward-] {+stewards+} has the right to modify or publish
new versions of this License. Each version will be given a distinguishing
version number.

[-4.2-]

{+(b)+} Effect of New {+or Revised+} Versions

[-Licensed Products and Services-]

{+Any one of the license stewards+} may {+publish revised and/or new versions+}
{+of the DPL from time to time. Such new versions will+} be [-used, made, sold, offered for sale,-]
[-imported, or distributed under-] {+similar in spirit+}
{+to+} the [-terms-] {+present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems+}
{+or concerns.+}
{++}
{+Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If Licensor+}
{+specifies in her Offering Announcement that she is offering a certain+}
{+numbered version+} of the [-version-] {+DPL “or any later version”, Licensee+}
{+has the option+} of {+following+} the [-License-]
[-originally accepted pursuant to Section 2.1,-] {+terms and conditions either of that+}
{+numbered version+} or [-under-] {+of any later version published by one of+} the [-terms-] {+license+}
{+stewards. If Licensor does not specify a version number+} of {+the DPL in+}
{+her Offering Announcement, Licensee may choose+} any
[-subsequent-] version {+ever+} published
by {+any of+} the license [-steward.-]
[--]
[-5.-] {+stewards.+}
{++}
{+4.+}        Disclaimer of Claims Related to Patent Validity and [-Noninfringement.-]
{+Noninfringement+}

Licensor makes no representations and disclaims any and all warranties
as to the validity of the Licensed Patents or [-that-] {+the+} products or processes
covered by Licensed Patents do not infringe the patent, copyright,
trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property rights of any
other party.

[-6.-]

{+5.+}        Disclaimer of [-Warranties.-] {+Warranties+}

UNLESS OTHERWISE MUTUALLY AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING,
LICENSOR OFFERS THE PATENT LICENSE GRANTED HEREIN “AS IS” AND
MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE
LICENSED PATENTS OR ANY PRODUCT EMBODYING ANY LICENSED PATENT, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION,
WARRANTIES OF TITLE, [-MERCHANTIBILITY,-] {+MERCHANTABILITY,+} FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE,
NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF ERRORS, REGARDLESS OF THEIR
DISCOVERABILITY. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED
WARRANTIES, IN WHICH CASE SUCH EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO LICENSEE.

[-7.-]

{+6.+}        Limitation of [-Liability.-] {+Liability+}

LICENSOR SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO
THIS LICENSE, INCLUDING INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
SPECIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, OR OTHERWISE,
EVEN IF LICENSOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES
PRIOR TO SUCH AN OCCURRENCE.

DPL 1.0-1.1 wdiff: Definitions

[-1.-]{+7.+} Definitions

[-1.1-]

{+7.1+} “Affiliate” means a corporation, partnership, or other entity in
which the Licensor or Licensee possesses more than fifty percent (50%) of
the ownership interest, representing the right to make the decisions for
such corporation, partnership or other entity which is now or hereafter,
owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by Licensor or Licensee.

[-1.2  “Clone Products or Services” means products or services of-]
[-Licensee that include the same or substantially identical functionality of-]
[-all or a commercially substantial portion of a prior released product or-]
[-service of a Licensor and implement the same or a substantially identical-]
[-proprietary user interface of the prior product or service.-]
[--]
[-1.3-]

{+7.2+} “Defensive Patent Claim” means an Infringement Claim against a
DPL User made in response to a pending prior Infringement Claim by said
DPL User against the asserter of the Defensive Patent Claim.

[-1.4-]

{+7.3+} “Discontinuation Announcement” means a DPL User’s announcement
that:

{+(a)+} declares the DPL User’s intent to discontinue offering to license
its Licensed Patents under the DPL, effective as of the Discontinuation
Date; and

{+(b)+} contains the DPL [-User's-] {+User’s+} contact information for licensing purposes;
and [-is submitted to the DPL-]
[-    Website via the Websites's official email address-]

{+(c)+} at least 180 days prior to [-a-] {+the+} Discontinuation [-Date;-] {+Date is posted to a+}
{+publicly accessible website;+} and

{+(d)+} at least 180 days prior to the Discontinuation Date is [-posted to a publicly accessible-]
[-    indexed-] {+communicated+}
{+reasonably and promptly, along with the URL of the+} website [-controlled-] {+mentioned in+}
{+subsection (c) of this provision,+} by the {+discontinuing+} DPL User [-using a URL accessible-]
[-    via at least the following syntax: "http://www.NAME.com/DPL" or-]
[-    "http://www.NAME.com/defensivepatentlicense" where "NAME" is-] {+to every+}
{+Licensor of+} a [-name-]
[-    commonly associated with-] {+Patent to which+} the {+discontinuing+} DPL [-user, such as-] {+User is+} a [-company name.-]
[--]
[-1.5-] {+Licensee.+}
{++}
{+7.4+} “Discontinuation Date” means the date a DPL User specifies in
[-their-]
{+its+} Discontinuation Announcement to discontinue offering to license its
Licensed Patents under the DPL, which must be at least 180 days after
the date of an individual or entity’s most recent Discontinuation
Announcement.

[-1.6-]

{+7.5+} “DPL” and “License” mean the grant, conditions, and
limitations herein.

[-1.7-]

{+7.6+} “DPL User” means an entity or individual that:

{+(a)+} has committed to offer a license to each of its Patents under the [-DPL, or, if such entity or individual has no Patents, has-]
[-    committed to offer a license to any Patents it may obtain in the-]
[-    future under the-]
DPL; and

{+(b)+} has declared such commitment by means of an Offering Announcement; and

{+(c)+} if the entity or individual has made a Discontinuation Announcement,
the Discontinuation Date has not yet occurred; and

{+(d)+} has not engaged in the conduct described in either Sections [-3(e)(i)-] {+2(e)(i)+}
or [-3(e)(ii).-]
[--]
[-1.8 “DPL Website” means the website-]
[-at http://www.defensivepatentlicense.org,-]
[-http://www.defensivepatentlicense.com, or any future site designated by-]
[-the DPL Foundation.-]
[--]
[-1.9-] {+2(e)(ii).+}
{++}
{+7.7+} “Effective Filing Date” is the effective filing date determined
by the applicable patent office that issued the relevant Licensed Patent.

[-1.10 “Foundry Services or Products” means services provided by-]
[-Licensee to, or products manufactured by Licensee for or on behalf of,-]
[-a specific third party, using designs or specifications received in-]
[-a substantially completed form from that third party, for resale or-]
[-relicense to or on behalf of that third party. This definition will not-]
[-apply when:-]
[--]
[-    Licensee or its Affiliate owns the design or specification of such-]
[-    service or product and the service or product is not specifically-]
[-    designed for commercial exploitation substantially only by such third-]
[-    party; or such design or specification resulted from a bona fide joint-]
[-    development or joint participation between Licensee or its Affiliate-]
[-    and such third party, including but not limited to a standards body-]
[-    or community organization and the resulting products, services or-]
[-    components provided by Licensee or its Affiliate meet the definition-]
[-    of Licensed Services Product or Products as set forth herein; or-]
[-    the third party recipient of the products or services is a DPL User.-]
[--]
[-1.11-]

{+7.8+} “Infringement Claim” means any legal action, proceeding or
procedure for the resolution of a controversy in any jurisdiction in
the world, whether created by a claim, counterclaim, or cross-claim,
alleging patent [-infringement or patent invalidity.-] {+infringement.+} Such actions, proceedings, or procedures
shall include, but not be limited to, lawsuits brought in state or
federal court, binding arbitrations, and administrative actions such as
a proceeding before the International Trade Commission.

[-1.12-]

 {+7.9+} “Licensed Patents” means any and all Patents (a) owned or
 controlled by Licensor; or (b) under which Licensor has the right
 to grant licenses without the consent of or payment to a third party
 (other than an employee inventor).

[-1.13-]

{+7.10+} “Licensed Products and Services” means any products, services
or other activities of a Licensee that practice one or more claims of
one or more Licensed Patents of a [-Licensor, but excluding Foundry Services-]
[-or Products and Clone Products or Services.-]
[--]
[-1.14-] {+Licensor.+}
{++}
{+7.11+} “Licensee” means any individual, corporation, partnership or
other entity exercising rights granted by the Licensor under this License
including all Affiliates of such entity.

[-1.15-]

{+7.12+} “Licensor” means any individual, corporation, partnership or
other entity with the right to grant licenses in Licensed Patents under
this License, including any Affiliates of such entity.

[-1.16-]

 {+7.13+} “Offering Announcement” means a Licensor’s announcement that:

{+(a)+} declares the Licensor’s commitment to offer a [-license to-] {+Defensive Patent+}
{+License for any of+} its Patents
    [-under the DPL, or, if such Licensor has no Patents, the commitment to-]
[-    offer a license-] to any [-Patents it may obtain in the future under the-]
[-    DPL;-] {+DPL User;+} and

{+(b)+} contains the Licensor’s contact information for licensing purposes;
and [-is submitted to the DPL Website via the Website’s-]
[-    official email address; and-]

{+(c)+} is posted to a publicly accessible
    [-indexed website controlled by Licensor using a URL accessible-]
[-    via at least-] {+website.+}
{++}
{+An Offering Announcement may, but is not required to, specify the+}
{+particular version of the DPL that+} the [-following syntax: "http://www.NAME.com/DPL" or-]
[-    "http://www.NAME.com/defensivepatentlicense" where "NAME"-] {+Licensor+} is {+committed to+}
{+offering. It may also specify+} a [-name-]
[-    commonly associated with Licensor, such as a company name.-]
[--]
[-1.17-] {+particular version of the DPL “or any+}
{+later version” to allow Licensees to accept subsequent new or revised+}
{+versions of the DPL.+}
{++}
{+7.14+} “Patent” means any right, whether now or later acquired,
under any national or international patent law issued by a governmental
body authorized to issue such rights. For clarity, this definition
includes any rights that may arise in patent applications, utility
models, granted patents, including, but not limited to, continuations,
continuations-in-part, divisionals, provisionals, results of any patent
reexaminations, and reissues, but excluding design patents or design
registrations.

prioritize(projects, freedom_for_all_computer_users)

Monday, December 8th, 2014

Last week the Free Software Foundation published its annual appeal, which includes the following:

In another 30 years, we believe that we can achieve our goal. We believe that free software can be everywhere, and that proprietary software can go the way of the dinosaur. With the experience we’ve gained, and our community surrounding us, we can win this.

My immediate reaction: I’d love to see the last sentence expanded. How exactly?

Sadly I do not live in a world that laughs at any fundraising appeal lacking an explicit theory of change and only esteems those that one can bet on. At least the FSF has a goal. Perhaps its surrounding community can figure out what it will take to achieve that goal.

Helping “the FSF stay strong for 30 more years” is plainly insufficient, though of course I hope the FSF does stay strong for decades and encourage helping financially. The entire free software movement on its current trajectory is insufficient; some of its staunchest advocates predict a “dark ages” of software freedom (e.g., Bradley Kuhn, Stefano Zacchiroli).

Since 2005 the FSF has published a list of high priority free software projects in order “to foster work on projects that are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software and free software operating systems.”

Today the FSF announced a review of this list. Excerpt:

Undoubtedly there are thousands of free software projects that are high priority, each having potential to displace non-free programs for many users, substantially increasing the freedom of those users. But the potential value of a list of High Priority Free Software Projects maintained by the Free Software Foundation is its ability to bring attention to a relatively small number of projects of great strategic importance to the goal of freedom for all computer users.

[…]

Keep in mind that not every project of great strategic importance to the goal of freedom for all computer users will be a software development project. If you believe other forms of activism, internal or external (e.g., making free software communities safe for diverse participants, mandating use of free software in the public sector), are most crucial, please make the case and suggest such a project!

I hope the announcement text indicates the possibility of exploiting the review and list to encourage debate about how to achieve the FSF’s goal of software freedom for all over the next decades, and that the how might (must, in my view) go far beyond hacking of code (and secondarily, copyright). How can demand for software freedom be both increased and made more effective? Same for supply, inclusive of distribution and marketing?

Send your suggestions to hpp-feedback@gnu.org or better yet post publicly. (I’m on the review committee.)

Because it is undoubtedly out of scope for above activity, I’ll note here a project I consider necessary for FSF’s goal to become plausible: question software freedom.

The “dark ages” links above largely concern “the cloud”, the topic of the other FSF-related committee I’ve participated in, over 6 years ago, correctly implying that effort was not very influential. I hope to post an assessment and summary of my current take on the topic in the near future.

Libby for Oakland mayor, Len for auditor

Saturday, November 1st, 2014

How I’m voting Tuesday for Oakland Mayor: #1 Libby Schaaf, #2 Rebecca Kaplan; Oakland Auditor: Len Raphael; California proposition 46: No, 47: Yes.

Mayor

In 2010 I ranked Kaplan first among a very weak field. Jean Quan won; my recommendations/predictions for her tenure still seem pretty reasonable.

I hope Schaaf wins this time for roughly four reasons:

  • Schaaf’s position on public safety seems nearest to my plea: more quality and quantity, with priority to former. That seems approximately the position of the other two likely winners (Kaplan and Quan); the real question is delivery. Progess has been way too slow under Quan, starting with many mistakes. With Kaplan I can’t tell where bluster about “leadership” ends and effectiveness begins, but I suspect it is mostly bluster. The other candidates with a nonzero chance of winning strike me as prioritizing quantity (Bryan Parker, Courtney Ruby, and especially Joe Tuman) or quality exclusively (Dan Siegel).
  • Schaaf’s approved plan for adjustable/benefit parking pricing in Montclair. Flexible pricing for parking is always a tough sell, but absolutely the right thing to do, and one of the most impactful and beneficial things a city can implement. I hope that Oakland catches up to and preferably leapfrogs SFPark and suspect that is most likely if Schaaf wins. Tuman is the worst on this issue, wanting to increase gratis parking.
  • Schaaf has done more work on ‘open’ government than any of the other candidates; my expectations for progress in that area would also be higher if Schaaf wins.
  • The other candidates have a tendency to come off as blowhards (especially Kaplan), incoherent (especially Quan), or some combination. For the field, Schaaf is on the low end of both of these negative characteristics. I expect fewer cringe-inducing moments from a Schaaf mayorship, a slightly good thing even if it has no correlation with effectiveness.

There is one issue that Kaplan, Quan, and Schaaf seem to approximately have the same position on, but Kaplan might be better: building a substantial amount of new housing. Kaplan has said that Oakland could have 100k more people. Not nearly enough, but a large number that I’m pleasantly surprised I have not seen criticism of.

I don’t think any of the candidates take a reasonable (kick them out) position on the embarrasment of professional sports teams in Oakland. I have not investigated their positions closely to avoid triggering disgust reaction, but my gloss: Parker and Tuman most likely to beggar the city to sports team owners, Kaplan extremely eager to claim credit for keeping sports teams, city hall plastered with cheesy corporate sports team banners under Quan, Siegel possibly least likely to totally sell-out to team owners.

Lots more about the Oakland mayor contest at OaklandWiki.

An issue I don’t think any candidate has addressed.

Auditor

Now for city auditor.

There are only two candidates for Oakland auditor. I’ll vote for Len Raphael, as I did when he ran for councilor in my district in 2012. Raphael would do politically unconfortable audits. Brenda Roberts would be business as usual. Especially for a city as poorly governed as Oakland, the former is necessary.

There hasn’t been much coverage of this contest, but a recent article in the East Bay Express seems like a neutral summary. Read more at OaklandWiki.

California Propositions

Ending the insane drug war continues to be the sure thing most governments could do to increase local and global peace and justice. There’s one California state proposition that would expand the drug war: 46: Medical Malpractice Lawsuits Cap and Drug Testing of Doctors (vote against), and one that would mitigate it 47: Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative (vote for).

Non-citizens should decide elections

Monday, October 27th, 2014

Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections? (tax funded but $19.95 to read; how can that be good for democratic discourse?) and Washington Post post by two of the paper’s authors Could non-citizens decide the November election? Yes and yes — assuming pertinent elections are very close and we take citizen votes as a given. Most interesting:

Unlike other populations, including naturalized citizens, education is not associated with higher participation among non-citizens. In 2008, non-citizens with less than a college degree were significantly more likely to cast a validated vote, and no non-citizens with a college degree or higher cast a validated vote. This hints at a link between non-citizen voting and lack of awareness about legal barriers.

The authors suggest raising awareness of legal barriers might further reduce non-citizen voting. But non-citizen voting is not the problem that ought be addressed. Instead the problem is non-voting by educated non-citizens, whose input is lost. If we can begin to disentangle nationalism and democracy, clearly the former ought be discarded (it is after all the modern distillation of the worst tendencies of humanity) and franchise further expanded — a win whether treating democracy as a collective intelligence system (more diverse, more disinterested input) or as a collective representation/legitimacy system (non-citizens are also taxed, regulated, and killed).

Further expanding franchise presents challenges (I went over some of them previously in a post on extra-jurisdictional voting), but so does enforcing the status quo. Anyone not in the grip of nationalism or with a commitment to democracy ought want to meet any challenges faced by expanded franchise, not help enforce the status quo, even by means of “soft” informational campaigns.