From Russia to London

The great thing about the area of London where I am (Hackney/Shoreditch, staying at the very cool Hoxton Hotel on Great Eastern) is that there is a lot of free wifi, including at my hotel and in the many bars, cafés and other venues. (Of course This characteristic was not shared by the airport lounge at Frankfurt, where I spent 6 hours after missing my flight to Moscow (visa issues), but it did have endless quantities of unnourishing but tasty and even inebriating comestibles. I arrived in Moscow at 5:05, and was spirited to my hotel, the Izmailovo, by a taxi driver I got after dickering and who believed that it was *okay* to go 160 km/hour down the freeway. The cost of the thrill ride--1500 rubles--seemed almost worth my life. The hotel was interesting--large, near the folk market (the Vermisage), popular with Russians and the stray tourist, and a lot unlike where I've stayed before; it had slot machines in the lobby, as in Vegas, and I should have played: my lucky day, for I survived the ride and was there, in Moscow.

But I had only a couple of hours or so to get ready for the conference, Moscow Interop, where Brian Behlendorf was also speaking (we were on some of the same panels) and that time could have been better spent ironing my very wrinkeled shirt, drinking coffee, eating (the cafeteria for breakfast offered an amazing smorgasbord of Russian food, and I tried it all), having a shower, shaving. It was already, at 7, about 30--Moscow's been having a freakish heat wave--and humid, too.

Brian and I got together, and with him leading, made our way via the magnificent, triumphant subways to the event. Muscovites don't really believe in air conditioning--they should (and at some point I thought I could make a fortune selling fans)--and the hall where the event was taking place, though auspiciously modern looking was only slightly less hot and only slightly less humid than the blazing moist outdoors. But it was tolerable, and the coffee was good, as was the cake, and there was lots of water. For our first panel, which included Eric Allman of Sendmail, as well as Brian and me, I'd gone only about 26 hours without sleep, but this is (unfortunately) not too unusual for such events; for the event in São Paulo, in April, I also presented right off the plane, and I went probably 30 hours without sleep. It's fairly easy to do, and adrenaline does a good job of keeping one awake.

So, the panel went well, though the questions by the moderator and audience ran all over the gamut. Quite a lot of them focused on OOo and ODF, a few on starting open source projects, and things related to their management: fairly normal, in other words. The second presentation could have been more interesting, but I will chalk it up to translations effects; normally, I wake people up, as tend to be animated. Anyway, the presentation ended, and then it was a series of meetings--the real point of being there, to be the community ombudsman, and see what I could do to resolve issues and focus attention on the RU community, and viewing a brilliant presentation (it merits its own entry) of Gnosis, a very cool implementation of the ODF for presentations--concluding with a dinner with the community members, to which Brian was included. That went quite well, and was rather fun, even without vodka (indeed, no vodka at all this trip!). And by this time, it was more than 40 hours without sleep.

The terrible thing about Moscow, is that the internet in hotels is so horribly expensive. By the time we returned to the Izmailovo, both Brian and I were likely really needing to catch up on things. Not only did I have a pile of things to follow up on, but also had to do my usual work. But internet access cost--get this--1200 rubles (25/dollar) for 600 minutes!! In cash. But I decided to do it anyway: there were too man pressing things.

The return to London the next day was accelerated by the heat: it was too hot to wander around Moscow with a suitcase and though I wanted to meet with some Sun people, they were busy in the morning. So I just headed for the airport an hour early. It too was expensive and lacking in efficient air conditioning, though it was cooler than the 36° outside, on the runway.

Since my return, I've been doing follow up and also further organizing the upcoming OOoCon. Actually, come to think of it, that's what I've been mostly doing: OOoCon. (Plus lots of other things.) OOoCon entails contacting would-be sponsors, such as Google, which promised money last year but has yet to pay up (Zaheda Bhorat of Google was a keynote speaker), and Intel, which is also delinquent. I find it amazing that such extraordinarily rich companies should have such a cavalier attitude... Especially in cases like Google, which in many ways is the largest ODF implementation (via Google Docs and Spreadsheet) and which claims to help open source projects. It would be nice to see concrete evidence of that help.

As well, I've been organizing a strong education push. Both Brian and I know that you don't just find FOSS developers, though that is always possible. But you can help yourself by helping to make them. (Or, you get companies to allocate them.) To this end, I've been working with numerous colleges, universities and the like in Canada, the US, Europe, Russia, India, China, Brazil (wherever I have been and then some) to see about getting OOo and other FOSS projects taught as part of the curriculum, as well as implementing GSoC kind of programs. It's also a lot of work, as it entails, again, an investment. But the payoff is huge. GSoC programs are great--call them fellowships--but they will only ever select a few students, though they will affect the course material, as professors and students seek to maximize their chances. Nevertheless, we need a stronger effort, the inclusion of OOo and other FOSS projects in regular course work. Mozilla (and to a degree, OOo) now have students work on extensions for Firefox and OOo in class, as part of their coursework. It's just a start. We need to move documentation, content, workflows, sample curricula, etc. to environments that are available to all; and we need, too, to have material and mentors to help teach the collaborative techniques that characterize FOSS. I started something like this in 2004, and in 2006, Sophie Gautier and I formed the Education project. But we need to move ahead, both on the OOo and more generally FOSS front.

In Memoriam

I learned Monday morning that my friend G. Roderick Singleton had passed away, felled by a heart attack. I knew Gerry through OpenOffice.org; he was one of the leads of the Documentation Project and a staunch supporter of OpenOffice.org. At his demise, he and I, along with a few others, had just embarked on a new and interesting project.

Gerry was gruff, grizzled, honest, smart, experienced; never cynical, never inconsiderate. Did the community know that he spent an enormous amount of time caring after his aged and frail parent? We tend to forget that people in the open-source community also have real lives. Gerry's integrity was exemplary, his work inspiring, at least to me. When my wife and I moved to Toronto from Berkeley, he made an effort to introduce me to the local Toronto open-source groups and to make me feel at home; he succeeded. Our schedules, however, made close work difficult, but he tried, all the same, to keep in touch with me, and possessed a quality of patience I hope one day to have.

I will miss him, the community will miss him.

Libre Graphics Meeting

The Libre Graphics Meeting is taking place 4-6 May in Montréal (now). I spoke there Friday, at 09:45. I'm fairly excited about the conference, which touts itself as being, "all about participation. Artists and developers, feel free to bring your laptops and show us what you can (and can't yet) do. Organise a BOF about your favourite project or feature. We're aiming for a bazaar."

The conference's aim was true. Unlike a lot of other conferences, this one was for developers, not marketers or sales people. Louis Desjardins, the lead organizer, arranged it so that people actually spoke to each other, crossed boundaries, learned about what other projects were doing; it was terrific. I'm not a developer, but I was able to establish liaisons with the KOffice (Krita) leads, the Scribus people, and numerous others, all with the aim of bridging differences and collaborating, technologically and socially, so that users and developers can learn about FOSS solutions and use them that much easier.

I pointed out that all compatible FOSS projects can consider working with OOo and exploiting ("leveraging") its immense momentum and popularity. Even having links--friendship or partnership--on our website to these FOSS projects would help not only the projects *and* OOo but also users. The user wanting, say, a desktop publisher, can think about Scribus; she might not have if she hadn't learned of them because us. And that's just one example. And, from my perspective, having ODF implemented by Scribus and other relevant applications seems desirable, though not as compelling as perfecting import functionality. What is important here is ultimately making it easier for users and developers to use and work on the code without the mystery shrouding proprietary applications. One other possibility for collaborating with Scribus: the application is very discriminating regarding fonts; they have to meet specifications that go far beyond what most other applications demand. We discussed, over lunch, the possibility of establishing a library of fonts ("library" in the old sense: a repository) that have been vetted according to Scribus' standards but can also work with other compliant applications, such as OOo. This would not only help Scribus but also, if feasible, OOo. It is worth following up on.

Along these lines, I discussed (or vice versa) open fonts with SIL.org leads Nicolas Spalinger and Dave Crossland. Nicolas was brilliant, and showed me what his project has been doing. OOo already works with them, though given the importance of fonts I'd expect that more collaboration will occur. I asked Nicolas to send me more information about the project, as I am sure it will make an interesting article.

But back to the conference. One of the coolest things about the event (aside from the fact that it was in Montréal, during one of the most beautiful set of spring days I've seen, situated at the peak of the Université de Montréal), was the superb broadsheet published by the conference team. It shows how *good* Scribus is (I assume it was made using it--Louis D. is a project member) but also showcased the seriousness of the effort put into the event.

I only wish I didn't have to leave. The conversations I've had here have been tremendously useful and productive--but of course, that all remains to seen. One thing to talk, another to do.

Updates on MS Protester

Xinhua has more on the protester who demonstrated against Bill Gates's Beijing performance. Evidently, the protester was none other than the esteemed "WangKaiyuan, chief China representative of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI)." According to the article, "Wang was said to be the first to introduce the international free software day to China. Before joining the LPI, he was with CSDN.net and worked for the Open Source Software Promotion Union in 2006."

FOSS is important in China. As the article states, "Industry experts say Linux has taken off in China, largely because of massive government procurement, but the Chinese software firms have yet to see the explosive growth experienced by their Western competitors due to lack of skills and customer credibility."

Let's change that. I'm going to be visiting Beijing later this May in part to discuss how to develop local communities that can work with the international ones. The virtue of FOSS, after all, is that it starts with the premise that all we do is done in the context of horizonless collaboration.

Miscellany - 20 April 2007

Probably like most people I make notes throughout the week about subjects to write on. For good or ill, I never get around to acting on these. But I thought I'd change my habit. So, a miscellany of interesting things for this week.

• There are now more than 800 signatories to the OpenOffice.org Joint Copyright Assignment form (formerly, in a different incarnation, the Copyright Assignment form). Why is this an interesting datum? By signing, each signatory has indicated an intention to contribute code or other work to the project. As with many other open-source projects, we require contributors to jointly assign copyright to the copyright holder of OpenOffice.org, or Sun Microsystems. The author (or original copyright holder) is free to retain copyright over her work, so she (or, as is often the case, the company) can do what she wants with her property. Assigning copyright however allows OOo greater agility. Among the stakeholders who have signed, one can note Novell, Intel, Redflag, Good-Day, Red Hat, and many other large and small companies. You can see who all has signed; the information is public. Signing is not the same as contributing, and contributing is not the same as developing code. Given the nature of OOo's source, most of those (the vast majority) who contribute code, who develop it, are employees of companies which have a stake in the application. But this is the nature of FOSS today: it is by no means the domain of the radical and rebellious individual, though he exists in numbers, but it is a strategy of production and distribution, and one that many companies, large and small, are embracing.

• Earlier this week The Register had a short article and an accompanying poll on what we use on our desktop, "MS Office versus the browser." The poll is now closed, and the data are interesting, and of the 4,800 who responded:

• MS Office 2003 or earlier is used by more than 60%; OpenOffice.org by nearly 20%, and MS Office 2007 by slightly more than 10%. That latter figure surprises me, as I can't really figure out why anyone would use 2k7. Shifting to it, to Vista is not trivial; it requires, in fact, the switcher to suffer more pain than a migration to Linux or Mac OS X, only it's a whole lot more expensive. I am however reassured by the large number of OOo users.

• MS Office 2k7 is not the only languishing MS product: there is also Vista. The Inquirer has a rather good article on MS in China and its more or less desperate attempts to get people to buy Vista. Evidently, it's lowered the price to 3 USD for a bundled edition. The situation is still hopeless, I'd imagine, as pirated versions of XP and earlier versions will prove very effective competitors, I'd imagine, especially as there seems to be a withering lack of compelling reasons to actually *buy* the thing. The author of the article, Charlie Demerjian, argues that MS can't bully effectively anymore, and as there are real and better alternatives out there, it has lost the game. I tend to agree, but am not about to hold my breath while the Titanic of 20th century software sinks. It will take a long while and its sinking cause a lot of damage. Rather, I'd like to force attention on what we can do now, in the anticipated wake, how we can reclaim the desktop, how we can shape it in ways that are more interesting and more open.

• And it is by no means the case that MS is without power. In Florida, there was a State Senate bill that would mandate open standards. It was killed, Robin MIller tells us, by MS "Men in Black":
        "It was just a bit of text advocating open data formats that was slipped into a Florida State Senate bill at the last minute with no fanfare, but within 24 hours three Microsoft-paid lobbyists, all wearing black suits, were pressuring members of the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations (COGO) to remove the words they didn't like from Senate bill 1974."

MS is frighteningly powerful; money buys influence, allows influence to circulate. It costs money to go to the legislature, to hang around there, to be informed, to take people out to lunch, and so on. But, the citizen's vote can level a great deal, and letters by informed citizens are also very powerful. As Robin writes, "And arrayed against Microsoft's financial muscle we have ... you. That is, we have Linux users and open source advocates and public-spirited citizens who know enough about this issue to explain to their representatives why open data formats are important." If you live in Florida, write your state representative. State your desire for a level playing field, for a democratic format, for the reasonable and responsible expenditure of your tax dollars.

• Of course, one can also protest, in the classic political way. In Beijing, the AP reports, a "protester calling for free computer software and open source programming crashed a speech Friday by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates at one of China's top universities." He was silenced by security and apparently unharmed. But it seems as if Gates is, according to the AP, "very popular on Chinese campuses." This makes me wonder. Do they know what he represents elsewhere in the world? Or is it just the amazing success of the company, abstracted from its context--how it got so wealthy--that evokes the admiration?