Where was FOSS at Davos?

The World Economic Forum is held at Davos. Historically, its relevance has been questionable, but this year, the focus was on collaboration, a topic close to FOSS. So I asked Brian Behlendorf, who attended, Where was FOSS at Davos? Here is his more or less unedited response, which Brian graciously allowed me to publish here; all rights, of course, remain his.

Where was FOSS at Davos? On one hand, in its most abstract form, it was everywhere - the theme of the conference this year was "the power of collaborative innovation", after all. And of the people I talked to, the idea that businesses would find it in their own self-interest to work jointly on projects with passionate individuals, the government, or other businesses, even their competitors, was relatively uncontroversial. Jimmy Wales's presence at this year's conference and last was also proof that this was a concept that went beyond software. Though, a couple of people were surprised to hear that Wikipedia was a non-profit - which suggests that further ideas about IP ownership and the role of non-profits isn't as well understood.

The more specific sessions at the conference dealing with collaboration - you can find links to them, often including video, at www.weforum.org - often were discussions less about collaborating with the open public and more about collaborating with business partners in a private setting; or with customers but in a still very controlled way. One example given by Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, was their collaboration with Apple: they have a set of running shoes that can communicate back with an iPod information about distance, speed, and calories burned, which then feeds a desktop app back at home and a web site where reportedly 40 million miles had been collectively burned. The runners can see each other's totals, compete for the most miles ran or calories burned, and message each other on the site. This, of course, is a long distance from the kind of collaboration we know about in the FOSS world... maybe I am damning with faint praise here, but it seems better than nothing.

But back to FOSS. As Davos is often best thought of as the Olympics of networking, finding a way to describe FOSS and its attributes crisply was important. Everyone had heard of Linux, 99% had heard of Apache, and of those I asked about 80% had heard of OpenOffice. That's the good news. On the downside: twice, I mentioned ODF vs. OOXML in conversations with people, and each time, there was a lack of awareness of the issue. I really don't want to embarrass them so I won't name names, but they were people who really should have known; one was a leader of a business that has been around for years and has serious document management and longevity issues, the other a government official who was charged with preserving his country's culture but sadly non-technical. In both cases, the initial response was along the lines of "this is a mess that you techies have created, I expect you to clean it up", as if it was simply a matter of defects in code that a company like Microsoft would be cleaning up quickly. If it turned out that valuable company data from 1993 were in a Word file format that couldn't be properly read by Office 2008, then they'd simply hire someone or a firm to dive in and repair it by hand. I believe I brought both of them around to understanding how it's not just a matter of bugfixing or outsourcing the problem, that it is a knowlege and institutional threat, and the role they need to play as informed customers in pressuring vendors to do the right thing. But, Microsoft's judo-move with OOXML of appearing to do the "right" thing that isn't actually right in practice has more power than I think you or I would wish were true.

Most of the time, though, Davos isn't a place to have difficult conversations about situations and events that appear to be beyond the field of the people in the conversation - it's often simply a place to meet and build bonds with people in your field and, more importantly, beyond; bonds that later can be used when a crisis hits or some need arises. I found myself preferring to discuss possibilities and potentials rather than what's wrong or looming worries. I know that sounds impossibly frou-frou, and I could blame the rarified air, or the overabundance of champagne. Instead, though, I think it's because this is for most people a one-week escape from the harsh realities of their daily business world, into a world where they can relate to others as people, to be stoked by new ideas. They'd much rather talk about the potential for Open Source software on the OLPC as a means to democratise technology; or Open Source software in disaster relief operations as a means to increase flexibility.

Perhaps it's my own failing of marketing, but I need to improve the way I talk about the ODF/OOXML debate so that it sounds less about conspiracy paranoia (no matter how well deserved) and speaks more about possibility, choice, freedom, economic opportunities, and growth. The Extremadura story is a beautiful story about free software, for example - especially when it's told in a way that shows how it could have never had a similar impact had they chosen to use proprietary software, even if "donated".

Deadline for OOoCon Extended

The deadline for OOoCon has been extended until 10 Feb. As John McCreesh (Marketing Lead) wrote,

"Last month we set a deadline of January 31st for the receipt of
proposals for hosting the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008 - see
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=345.

"In response to a number of requests from organising teams, we have
agreed to put back the deadline to midnight UTC February 10th. We will
aim to open the community voting process a few days later, and announce the winning bid on March 1st.

"We hope this will enable all teams to put forward their best possible
bid. Good luck and thanks to those working hard on their bids!"

OOoCon has gained importance each year. But it remains a definitively community event, a place where those who know each each other through mail lists can finally meet--or meet again. And it's also, of course, the place where developers can present on the work they are doing, will do and want to do, as well as the place where business people come to learn more about OOo--and to promote their own works. Last year, in Barcelona, OOoCon lasted one day longer than usual, and I feel it wasn't long enough (and not just because I wanted to stay longer in Barcelona). I am sure that this coming year will be even more intense and interesting, and be the place where we can see what IBM, Redflag Ubuntu, Google, and others have been doing.

Why MS Office for Mac 2008 fails to impress

To say that I was surprised to read Matt Asay's blog on CNet extolling Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 is an understatement. Asay likes MS Office for Mac's UI and integration and despite its downsides, like the fact that it uses OOXML, not ODF, and does not synchronize with his Blackberry (or much else, though I'd guess it does fine with Microsoft products, but that's just a guess), he believes that the "upgrade was worth the price."

Really? I guess when I think about an application I think, to be sure, about the pleasure of using it and whether it is easy to use. No one likes an application that obtrudes and prevents fluid thought (which is hard enough to get, anyway).

But I also think about how my work using it will affect others. Would my colleague, for instance, be able to read what I send? Would I be able to read what they send me? How long can I trust the format to last? Ie, will I (or others) be able to freely access it decades from now? And this raises the question: Why would I want to use something that implicitly is exclusive? Sure, I use a Macintosh, but the work I do on it that is public employs free software and open standards, and that's where MS Office for Mac fails. Okay, I confess I have not personally tried out MS Office for Mac 2008--I cannot justify buying it--but I am aware that MS Office hasn't really changed from earlier versions in a crucial way: It still doesn't play well with others and in fact, as Matt admits, effectively forces the user to dive into the MS universe and close the door after him. That isolationist attitude is predicated, to be sure, on file format, but also on the philosophy of interoperation that differentiates MS's logic of development from Foss' and in particular OpenOffice.org's.

Our philosophy is to work with others. We do not insist that our application must do everything. We do insist that it be open--use open source and open standards, so as to allow (and indeed encourage) effective interoperation of different applications, big and small. The result is that there is no real limit to OOo and the application ecosystem (on the desktop, on the Web) it centres. And there is a limit to what MS Office (and others of its ilk) can do.

But can OOo match the UI that Matt loves so much? Yes. Can it also have the level of integration (or interoperation) that he likes? Yes. Okay, when? Well, 3.0 is slated for the end of summer, and when released, it will be able to work with Mozilla's Lightning calendaring application--which integrates with Thunderbird, the email client. And as OOo already supports lots of extensions and will support even more as time goes on, the wealth of options and tools can only increase. And most are likely to be free.

Freedom here is not the price one pays for mediocre software. There is nothing mediocre about Mozilla, OpenOffice.org or so much other Foss. Freedom is rather the tool that underlies the working of superior software, and that includes making it as pleasurable to use as to develop.

No macro or VBA support for MS Office's Excel 2008

A first look by MacRumors at MS Office 2008 for Mac gave a surprise: No VBA for Excel.

This is quite important. It's important because the business community has come to rely on MS's VBA for macros and other scripted actions. To be sure, Microsoft is evidently going to use Apple Script more, but there is no translation from VBA to Apple Script, at least not that I know of.

The result: a very costly and hobbled application of dubious merit, too, using a file format that is racing backward even as it tries t keep up with ODF.

In contrast, OOo uses the ODF and also uses OOo Basic, which works in much the same way as VBA. There is even an effort underway to translate VBA to OOo Basic, and for many macros, I have been told, it is successful.

The point: Any business, large or small, or even individual, with many macros already written (or that intends to write them), ought to think twice if not thrice before spending absurd amounts of money on an application that removes such a tool. And they ought to look at OOo which is not only free, but does have built-in macro tool that does, to a degree, translate from VBA. (BTW, there is a project furthering the interoperability between VBA and OOo Basic.)

Education as a project

For about a year, maybe two, the education project seemed to languish. In fact, since I first thought of the project, in Crete, several years ago (after a fine dinner of goat and resin wine and olives, animated by the conversation of friends, inspiration came easily and fluently), and even after, when I formed it with Sophie Gautier. There was a lot of interest but little public action. I would make contact with all sorts of education officials--professors, administrators--but nothing came of, and I think my co-lead, Sophie, was finding the same; and nothing was appearing on the public project pages or lists. This was our fault. Thus, if at the Symbiosis society of colleges in Pune, India, I may have been warmly received and heard from faculty and students alike keen interest in including OpenOffice.org coding in classrooms, there was, in the end, no evident result. It seemed all a show, or perhaps there was something simply missing I wasn't aware of. Being invited to give yet another presentation or workshop on the same topic is just not enough. What I wanted was for students to start working on OOo and even begin appearing on the public lists, and that was simply not happening.

There are several reasons that come to mind for the lack of continued activity. One is that any community formation, especially one of this nature, where I am asking students and professors to work on complicated code with little obviously in the way of payoff, does not come easily. It's hard enough to form participatory communities among those interested in participating and in participation's outcomes. It's even harder when both what counts as participation and outcome challenge the status quo.

And that challenge to the status quo in the make up of curricula and their basis is from one perspective what I was (and am) asking for. (Although my suggestion is by no means as radical as Eliot's in 1885, when he proposed the free elective system at Harvard.) Curricula are established--accreted--over decades and implicitly represent a culture's very idea of knowledge, practical or abstract. They do not change immediately, at least not those supposedly teaching fundamental, canonical, truths. And how could they? The very notion of a truth is that it's not susceptible to change. So if from one point it seemed I have been asking for professors to relinquish not just control over the class's pedagogy, replacing her with the community, but also the very content to be taught, it's no wonder that there has been little traction.

But, no, I was and am not asking for a big change, just a small one with big effect, and one that, for that matter, trades on what is already going on. My notion is not a Toffler-eaque merging of the the academic with the industrial and commercial, or more accurately, the replacement of academic knowledge with trade school skill. That would be a replacement of, say, truth and theory and principle with effect and how to produce that effect: a loss of knowledge and the very substance of innovation and newness, or the logic underlying the effect. (I won't enter into the interested/disinterested debate here, though it is of course relevant, especially as large companies increasingly determine the coursework in areas that are costly to maintain, such as the sciences.)

But what then do I mean by including OOo and other Foss code in education? It means to me as much the teaching of software collaboration and open source tactics of communication as the canonical teaching of code using Foss in classic (obligatory) and elective programs. It can also mean the inclusion of Foss in certain vocational college programs, as at Seneca College, in Toronto, where students are instructed on how to work on Firefox extensions as part of their basic instruction in coding and where collaboration is taken very seriously. In short, it means involving students and professors in Foss projects as a means of teaching collaboration and code. The satisfaction to be gained by this is immense, or so I believe, as students will learn not only how to code better but how to work with others in more or less real-world environments. They will not be abandoning the perimeters of the classroom; not at all. They will rather be including, in certain cases, the dynamic of Foss participation.

An example could be writing papers and giving presentations in the humanities. At one point, it used to be thought that the student's presentations--at whatever level--were essentially empty exercises and not at all related to professionalizing the student. That is, what the student learned could be thought of as being useful, but more in the abstract sense of becoming a better citizen and abler at presenting his views. The idea that a presentation given in a classroom could actually be a means of professionalizing the student and making her abler to get a job, say, or otherwise perform in real world situations, has only in the last generation become more present. When I was in graduate school, it simply wasn't clear, for instance, that my presentations were actually a kind of practice, or could be thought of as such, nor that I should be thinking about presenting at real conferences. All that was over the horizon.

But had it been on the horizon.... well, I would have been far better prepared, and I would have had a far better understanding of the process. Would I have lost out on the liberal luxury of learning at my leisure anything I chose? I don't think so. One learns best discursively, by talking and thinking about something with others, by engaging in dialogues and by taking what one thinks seriously. I think I would rather have been more serious about learning in general.

And I think that including Foss in classrooms will have a similar effect of encouraging students to take what they are learning seriously--not as empty exercises in abstract learning but as something that has real effect, both for them and for the world.