Category: Digital Rights

Simon Phipps: from “hub and spokes” towards a “mesh” society

I just listened to another fascinating edition of Floss Weekly. They had an interview with Simon Phipps, Sun‘s Chief Open Source and Open Standards Officer.

His outlook on the way that the Internet changes society and how this will affect business is inspiring and thought provoking:

If you look at what is happening in society around the world ever since the Internet became endemic. There has been a topological shift in the structure of society: Society used to be structured on a hub and spoke basis with people controlling rare resources and communications at the hub and citizens, employees and consumers at the spokes. What the pervasive nature of the Internet made happen was that the topology of society gradually changed from hub and spoke to mesh. And as that has happened, the way that business interests have been conducted has gradually been migrating from a world of secrecy giving confidence and security to a world of transparency with privacy giving confidence and security.
We have looked at that trend and are convinced that if we want to be a leading technology company in the 21st century we have to adapt the company to live in that mesh society and to fit in with the emerging norm of transparency with privacy.

What does this have to do with open source? According to Phipps:

Open source is the natural consequence of a society that is heading in this direction. Because, what characterises open source is the synchronisation of the self-interest of many parties. And to create an environment like this […] there has to be transparency.

He also talks about how hard it is for businesses to make this shift, the “succes trap” for businesses: you cannot make a profitable and succesful company do worse on the short term to become a better company in the long term. Companies have to exploit their fallow periods to reinvent themselves: “the blessing of failure” (like IBM in the 90s and Sun early in this century).

This interview is a must-listen for all managers in technology companies. So please don’t hesitate and download the mp3 file or listen online.

Finally let me try out the new poll feature in WordPress:

[polldaddy poll=1013281]

Why we should stop using Twitter and switch over to Laconica

The biggest implementation of Laconica
The biggest implementation of Laconica

A lot of my colleagues at Stoas Learning including myself are having a lot of fun using the microblogging service Twitter. It has changed the social interaction between some of the team members and we have gotten to know each other better through a very simple service delivering 140 character messages at a time.

I like the service a lot but have been worried about one thing: the fact that all this information is only on Twitter’s server. This point is extra poignant whenever Twitter is down (which happens quite often).

Imagine a world in which people with a Hotmail email address could only email somebody if they also had a Hotmail address. There would be no way for somebody who is registered at Gmail to email somebody at Yahoo. Luckily this is not the case: email is collection of open protocols which can be implemented by anybody. Unfortunately we cannot say the same about instant messaging. I personally have a MSN account, a Skype account and a Yahoo account and there is no way for me to talk to a Skype user with my MSN account.

So what about microblogging? Will we go towards a future which is similar to instant messaging with multiple microblogging services which are not connected to each other? Will Twitter be so dominant that there will be no alternative (creating a monopoly with all its disadvantages)? Or will we move towards a future where microblogging is like email: you can choose the provider you want and connect to people using other providers?

I prefer the last option and feel that I should be principled about it. That is why I will stop using Twitter, temporarily abandoning the people I follow and the people that follow me and switch over to Identi.ca, currently the largest Laconica installation. Here is how Identi.ca explains in what way it is different from services like Twitter:

Identi.ca is an Open Network Service. Our main goal is to provide a fair and transparent service that preserves users’ autonomy. In particular, all the software used for Identi.ca is Free Software, and all the data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, making it Open Data.

The software also implements the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, meaning that you can have friends on other microblogging services that can receive your notices.

The goal here is autonomy — you deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence. If you don’t like how Identi.ca works, you can take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one).

I will spend the next couple of weeks trying to convince everybody around me to make the switch and maybe even get Stoas to start its own Laconica server.

If you are interested in hearing more about Identi.ca and Laconica I can recommend episode 37 of Floss Weekly where Evan Prodromou, the creator of both is interviewed and explains how Laconica works and what the plans for the future are.