Slashdot Mirror
Interviews: Ask a Question To Christine Peterson, the Nanotech Expert Who Coined the Term 'Open Source'
Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term "Open Source software" for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998. Now Christine's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers. We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.
Interestingly, Christine was also on the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on the state of California's nanotechnology task force. Her tech talks at conferences include "Life Extension for Geeks" at Gnomedex and "Preparing for Bizarreness: Open Source Physical Security" at the 2007 Singularity Summit. Another talk argues that the nanotech revolution will be like the information revolution, except that "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms," allowing molecule-sized machines that can kill cancer and repair DNA. Her most recent publication is "Cyber, Nano, and AGI RIsks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks." Christine graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemistry.
So leave your best questions in the comments. (Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment.) We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.
Interestingly, Christine was also on the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on the state of California's nanotechnology task force. Her tech talks at conferences include "Life Extension for Geeks" at Gnomedex and "Preparing for Bizarreness: Open Source Physical Security" at the 2007 Singularity Summit. Another talk argues that the nanotech revolution will be like the information revolution, except that "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms," allowing molecule-sized machines that can kill cancer and repair DNA. Her most recent publication is "Cyber, Nano, and AGI RIsks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks." Christine graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemistry.
So leave your best questions in the comments. (Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment.) We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.
How can we more open source medical software? Given that medical devices are so heavily regulated it seems like it will be hard to get, say, an open source pacemaker system that users can hack, or at least audit.
Radio software seems to be in a similar state - cellular modems, wifi chipsets etc. are all heavily regulated and closed source, with signed code required for updates.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I heard a myth a few decades ago, that top-secret work in most fields is at least 50 years ahead of the current published state of the art. I can't begin to imagine what that would look like here.
What would that look like here? What sorts of things do you think are solidly plausible within the next 50 years of work in the field of nano-technology, and how would we detect them "in the field" today, if we were to look for them? How and where might we start to look for them, if we wanted to be likely to find something?
I know there were published discussions about silicon based listening and transmitting devices, bugs, that were smaller than grains of salt. I also know that there was great published fervor over single-pixel cameras, and, impo, I have seen a surprising gap in entangled non-return imaging. I expect "they" have working, single-photon, non-return-imaging cameras on grains of silicon too small for the eye to work with, so perhaps nano drone swarms used for data gathering/surveillance, where each drone is less than 0.1mm across?
When I look at robo-cat, and the alleged robo-squirrels or robo-insects, I think they have such swarms that can be ingested/injected/otherwise-implanted inside animals that don't realize they have become "listening posts". What would you do with a fully-functional jet-engine that was only a few microns across? I remember sub-cellular size bar-codes made by shooting proton based cylindrical holes in silicon, then lithographing layers of gold or other stuff to make the code, then removing the silicon substrate. Could we put markers into people to inform future medical reconstruction such as "non-invasive" 3d printing of organs in-vivo? How would we detect sub-cell-size tagging, or fabrication? I like the idea of nanotech-driven bio-energy harvesting. Why can't we turn trees into solar panels by hacking into their organic photosynthesis?
-EngrStudent
Cut back the max term lengths to something sane like 5 years.
Some people for whatever reason demonstrate skill at prediction. Alvin Toffler was a futurist that nailed it repeatedly. We are right in the middle of Powershift.
"His name was James Damore."
Recently big gains have been made in physical security. Many phones are encrypted by default and relatively difficult for unauthorized persons to unlock. Encrypted storage is increasingly common for computers too, although open source support for technologies like OPALv2 seems to be lagging behind closed source systems. In 2017 AMD introduced encrypted RAM.
All of these rely on special hardware to protect encryption keys and perform encryption functions at speeds fast enough to avoid any significant performance loss. It seems like hardware is necessary for very high levels of physical security anyway, e.g. tamper-proof boot ROMs.
How can open source provide this level of security when high end hardware is increasingly difficult for individuals to fabricate? Should we be thinking about how we can fabricate our own security processors and key storage, or is there another way achieve high levels of physical security?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Ummm... everything else in the summary makes her an expert on what Slashdot asks her (if they stay on topic).
It's turtles all the way down.
Ummm... everything else in the summary makes her an expert on what Slashdot asks her (if they stay on topic).
Well, no. She seems to be an expert on nanotechnology. If Drexler wanted to co-write a book with her, that definitely demonstrates her chops. But she's clearly not an expert on Open Source Software. She didn't even know that people were using the term in 1995 and prior when she claims to have coined it. Even I know that, because I was one of the people who were using it. If she didn't know that, she is about as far from being an expert on that subject as it is possible to be.
I checked her qualifications before writing this comment. How many people do you think will check her qualifications before reading this thread?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How concerned should we be about nanotechnology equivalents of the software threats we see today?
I would hate to have my circulatory system held hostage for bitcoin.
--
This is why I don't post much.
They are both behind the times. Github has done more for open source and free software in the last 5 years the FSF and others have since their foundation. It could be argued that Github would not exist if not for their prior work... probably true - put it in a foot note and let's move on.
or are you warming up for the OSI to make a run at copyrighting the phrase?
That would be sort of hard when the US copyright law disallows the copyrighting short phrases and this backed up by the USPTO. One can get a trademark on a phrase but tyat is not the same as a copyright. If you’re going to try to sound smart at least learn something about the subject before blabbing.
http://web.archive.org/web/19980422034538/http://opensource.com:80/
But it's clearly an unrelated consultancy.
Whoops! I made that same error last time I brought this up! Of course, you're an anonymous coward, and I treat you like you're all the same person, too pathetic to even log into Slashdot, so I'd say I'm doing pretty well compared to you right now. 99% of what you do is troll and spam.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some things are obvious and do not need a "Futurist" to predict it. Others just got lucky. If you have 1000 morons making predictions, somebody will be right repeatedly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Even if the premise were true, why does it seem to bother you so much ? After all, men have been receiving more praise and attention than they deserve for millenia, and that didn't seem to bother you at all.
Which one of these ladies is you?
Try one of the first few rows of images in this search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Chri...
What do you think Tyrell Corporation should do with its current batch of Nexus 6 replicants? Obviously the 4 year life span has its own problems and wasn't the cure-all Dr. Tyrell expected.
With enough eyeballs going over their source code, could open sourcing their programming find the cause of their tendency to rebel?
Trolling is a art,
Ans as usual the people making a fuss about her being female are the loud "it should just be about the code mah freeze peach" crowd, e.g. you.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I kind of agree with you that it was used before, but I think the point is that its widespread use started in 1998 from that meeting.
It was basically meant as a term to replace "free software" without the undesirable connotations for businesses.
The term "open source" was first proposed by a group of people in the free software movement who were critical of the political agenda and moral philosophy implied in the term "free software" and sought to reframe the discourse to reflect a more commercially minded position.[12] In addition, the ambiguity of the term "free software" was seen as discouraging business adoption.[13][14] The group included Christine Peterson, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann and Eric S. Raymond. Peterson suggested "open source" at a meeting[15] held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's announcement in January 1998 of a source code release for Navigator. Linus Torvalds gave his support the following day, and Phil Hughes backed the term in Linux Journal. [...]
Raymond was especially active in the effort to popularize the new term. He made the first public call to the free software community to adopt it in February 1998.[18] Shortly after, he founded The Open Source Initiative in collaboration with Bruce Perens.[15]
(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_model#Open_source_as_a_term )
(Sheesh, Wikipedia articles feel so disjointed...)
Is physical security a political problem?
At the tail end of it, there are countries acquiring anti-aircraft missile batteries, ballistic missiles or both, to guarantee their physical security. Or hypersonic anti-ship missiles or warheads. Should NATO be disbanded, and should more countries become able to sink aircraft carriers and warships full of Tomahawk missiles at will?
Should we see "national intranets" as a good thing and try to build them?
Getting closer to the subject of possible "nanobot" attacks, or "molecular-sized machines" used for nefarious purposes : we've been subject to war propaganda about a certain country committing an "act of war", consisting of an unsubstantiated allegation about using some minute amount of cold war chemical weapon with a made up name on British soil. UK and US are lying, and should have no credibility given their record about talking about other people's chemical weapons. But many vassal or accomplice countries (all Western of Five Eyes though) give them credit, and civil society or corporate media does nothing to call their bullshit.
So, how to defend against molecule-sized machines is a question, but there is a meta-question there : will we be subject to constant false flag attacks and entrapment? Year 2030 : Great Leader or Deep State accuses you of carrying a nanotech attack. You and perhaps people of your supporting network get disappeared into high security facilities, solitary confinement and all. Can we disprove the authorities' lies? Will people be able to know, but not care or do nothing, perhaps out of preservation or selfishness? Will there be anyone left to speak for you?
Nano-materials, in general, seem to be becoming a significant source of hard-to-cleanup pollution. Do you see nano-tech heading in the same direction?
she claims to have coined it. /., mentions that she has coined it. I'm not aware that she herself claims that, and even if she had coined it, why would she claim that (point it out?)?
Any reference where and when she claimed to have coined it?
As far as I can tell, some press, e.g.
What fame would there be in claiming. "I coined the term X"?
If one would stand in front of me and tell me "I coined the term X" I would dismiss him as an idiot. And I'm sure so would anyone else. Regardless what X would be.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The biggest Open Source organization is probably: http://apache.org/
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
GitHub exists because of free/libre and open source software, but primarily the former since Linux Torvalds, the creator of Linux, also created git, the software which GitHub relies heavily since its inception, hence the name GitHub.
Jesus, are you getting treatment for your autism? Your website is the sperglordiest thing I've seen in a long time.
Also, your blog sucks.
"Proprietary code! Never ever touch it! Never modify it! Don't even think about re-distributing it!" That's what Caldera's talking about -- and it's evil.
I can remember when Slashdot used to understand the difference between proprietary and non-proprietary code.
she claims to have coined it. Any reference where and when she claimed to have coined it? As far as I can tell, some press, e.g. /., mentions that she has coined it. I'm not aware that she herself claims that, and even if she had coined it, why would she claim that (point it out?)?
How I coined the term 'open source'
Christine Peterson finally publishes her account of that fateful day, 20 years ago.
In my view, Stallman created Free software as an ethical point. He didn't like that companies were selling software without source code. (To be clear, Stallman doesn't mind selling software, because the GPL allows that. Stallman doesn't like software without source code.)
And the term open source software was invented to communicate a way of working together on something. Out of the chaos of the bazaar comes something good.
Do you agree with that?
Martin. There's a certain company out in San Diego that we all know, parts maker and patent troll. They are working to put royalty-bearing patents in modern standards. They are using the exact same language as you at the standards committees, telling us that "there isn't one Open Source" and then going on to tell us that Open Source should only be about copyright, and that there should be patent royalties in standards that - regardless of what they say about its being only about copyright - Open Source would then not be allowed to implement. Unfortunately, they are gaining traction in important standards committees, especially the national ones.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not working for these guys, you sound exactly like you are. What you are doing hurts both Free Software and Open Source (they are really the same). As I fly around the world to educate standards committees about the Open Source Definition and what they really need to do to accommodate Open Source in standards, they're going to be pointing at your words and using them against me.
This is really important. For medical reasons, this is probably the last decade of my life, and I am spending a good part of it to work on this issue. You're getting in the way. Cut it out. I promise that nobody can trademark the words "Open Source" today, and you are feeling threatened for nothing.
Bruce Perens.
The OSI has a whole section devoted to the "Coining" claim. It seems pretty important to them. You should ask them why.
https://opensource.org/history
Chris couldn’t read my mind, so she had no way to know that I spotted “open source” as the winner we were looking for the first or second time the phrase was mentioned [in that same meeting where Chris Peterson introduced the term, which is what this essay is about].
Fixed that for you.
The whole point of Open Source software is you can modify it. You couldn't (and can't) modify this so-called "OpenDOS." And (as you acknowledge) you even had to pay Caldera if you wanted to pass on copies of that (un-modified) code.
As someone who worked closely with Eric Raymond (and had interactions with Jon "maddog" Hall), what were they like in 1998? I'm curious what the whole "mood" of the development community was like in 1998 at that historic meeting. Maybe you could also talk about how things changed -- what they were like before the Open Source movement revved into high gear, and what they were like after.
And how does it all compare to when you first joined the tech scene in the 1980s?
The OSI has a whole section devoted to the "Coining" claim. It seems pretty important to them. You should ask them why.
...but prepare for massive downvotes when you do. BOHICA!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You do understand that there's a difference between letting people read your code (the "open source code model") and actually letting people edit your code (and redistribute the edited version) -- right?
So the handful of people talking about viewable source code is an entirely different thing. (And it is literally a handful -- I can count them on the fingers on one hand.) Doesn't it seem weird to you that in the responses, nobody picks up the phrase "open source code model"? Because nobody cared if they couldn't actually access the code themselves.
Integrated circuits, solar panels, and GMOs are some pretty big results in nanotech these days. What are some future benefits we can look forward to that help justify further research to non-techies?
The ultimate dream in nanotechnology is a molecular assembler (atomic 3D printer) on every desktop, with a widespread community of hardware designers/developers analogous to open source software today. You'll be able to, say, download files to build a new car from GitHub. Hackaday has a good writeup (https://hackaday.com/2018/02/27/can-open-source-hardware-be-like-open-source-software/). Suppose that someone finally figures out how to build such a molecular assembler. Chances are it'll be patent-encumbered and NDA'd. How can we from here to there?
What's the current outlook for nanotechnology? Technically speaking, do we get Star Trek replicators soon, or is that still a 25+ year thing (https://www.xkcd.com/678/)? Politically, how do regulations, industry, and patents look? Socially, is it generally viewed as positive or negative these days?
Some things are obvious and do not need a "Futurist" to predict it.
Then name names. You cant. Hand waving is not an argument.
"His name was James Damore."
Do your own research. Requesting proof on ./ is not only highly impolite, it is missing the point.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I am a nanotechnologist. I've done great academic research, worked for the government, managed a few grants, and started a few companies.
It's very easy to hype the potential of nanotechnology.
On the other hand, it's very hard to get attention put on results from serious commercial efforts.
Granting agencies and our community are not good at supporting companies that do what we all tell each other needs to get done (i.e. NanoIntegris). We are great at supporting academic research groups that have a patina of commercial application (i.e. IBM).
As a field we've missed celebrating a number of major commercialization milestones. CNT and graphene electronics are available commercially! Who knew? For five years or so, you could find commercial graphene electronics in cell phone screens in Shenzhen. For the last two years, you could find commercial graphene biosensors at many big pharma companies. For the last year, you could buy CNT based high power RF electronics.
If we were interested in showing the real potential of the field, wouldn't the leaders want to show everyone that it IS working? We have actually met the NNI timeline for commercialization set in the 1990s. The goals we set out with 20 years ago seem to mean nothing to the hype machine we've created.
Simply put, how do we deal with the addiction to hype in nanotechnology, and focus a bit more on substantive accomplishment?
Thanx for the reference.
Then she actually is an idiot.
We used the term in my university long before it was 'coined'.
I simply could not believe that some people actually proclaim themselves as 'I coined the term'.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
@Anonymous Coward: "Chris couldn’t read my mind, so she had no way to know that I spotted “open source” as the winner we were looking for the first or second time the phrase was mentioned [in that same meeting where Chris Peterson introduced the term, which is what this essay is about]
:]
Fixed that for you."
I'm sure Raymond will appreciate you correcting him
Prior to 1998, had you heard anyone using the phrase "open source" before?
Or was it something you came up with on your own as the only logical set of words to describe source code which is openly shared.
I.e. how important is it for researchers and manufacturers to observe objects at the nano level, how often and how easily? What kinds of improvements in methods like atomic force microscopy would be most relevant for researchers, and what other methods/breakthroughs would be key in your opinion? (Disclosure, I work for an AMF manufacturer, just started.)
Also when will we have self-assembling nanorobots like in Michael Crichton's Prey? (J/k, that falls under "hype" from previous question. :-)