An irrevocable patent pledge is intended to be precisely that; it's a legal document that is written to carry weight regardless of changes of ownership or management. Whether it will stand in court when tested remains to be seen, but that problem applies also to free content and open source licenses and other legal tools for sharing of information and ideas. KA can be expected to at least do one thing, which is to use the best available legal tools to create a broader framework of reuse consistent with its mission. It should reach out to experts, such as Creative Commons, to determine which tools to use, rather than relying on a weak implementation drafted by Twitter.
KA can also reject the idea of patents entirely. It has enough goodwill globally that any patent lawsuit against it, aside perhaps from highly protected areas such as video codecs, would likely to be suicidal for the entity bringing it, and a fundraising boon for KA.
Although Blackboard has filed patent lawsuits against competitors (and was briefly boycotted for it), it at least has issued an irrevocable patent pledge not to sue open source projects. I suspect ignorance, not foul play, on the part of Khan Academy is the cause.
Ironically, nonprofit Khan Academy's Twitter pledge is less permissive than that of the corporate behemoth, since it reserves the right to sue anyone, for any reason, provided company and "inventor" agree. Not sure OIN is a good fit for its needs given its close tie to usage of patents within "Linux systems". Something like CC's model patent license or a simple, broad pledge never to use patents offensively against anyone may be a better fit.
KA's policy error here is likely the result of swimming in the Silicon Valley ideological soup, where Twitter's pledge is considered remarkable. KA has never been an especially awesome organization when it comes to open source citizenry. For example, it uses the "non-commercial use" restriction for its materials, which is widely rejected within open source and free culture circles like Wikimedia, Linux, etc. Hopefully this will change over time as the organization becomes more aware of the policy discussions around these issues, since a lot of its work is otherwise excellent and world-changing.
As the summary states, Khan follows Twitter's patent pledge. This is a good first step as far as it goes, but it still explicitly allows for offensive litigation if the "inventor" agrees. That's not sufficient. At the very minimum, Khan should adopt a clear, irrevocable policy never to enforce patents against open source projects, like many Patent Commons participants. Ideally it should partner with Creative Commons to work out an even stronger patent license, consistent with its mission. CC has previously developed model patent licenses and I'm sure they'd be happy to help.
If the Khan Academy user who originally posted in Slashdot in response is reading this -- please bring these resources to the attention of management.
Videos/podcasts and similar formats are definitely not for every setting, but they do allow you to get to know a person a bit better than a simple transcript does. In a video, you can see a person's facial expressions, you can hear emphasis, and you may be able to make more of an emotional connection. For a podcast, you can listen in the background, during your commute, etc. Each format has its advantages/disadvantages.
I agree a transcript would be awesome though; sorry that I've not gotten around to that yet (I do these in my spare time and suggested to Roblimo that he might want to run a shorter version). If you want to help, I've set up an Amara import here. In general, Passionate Voices is a community project (the videos are under CC-0, i.e. free to reuse), and help is always welcome, including with doing itnerviews.
A few days ago, Sumana released this video, Pipeline, a critique of the tech industry's treatment of women. It's relevant to the overall discussion re: hospitality and worth watching (the main point being, "getting women into tech" doesn't really solve any problems if the actual experience in the industry is a terrible one).
Thank you for giving it a spin and reporting back, glad your tests worked.:-) Our policy is to not execute JS at all on older browsers like IE6 and IE7 (for security and maintenance reasons), which has the side effect of keeping us honest in ensuring all core features work without JavaScript.
Hey gl4ss, these are fair points, but I stand by my original estimate, including overhead & travel. A couple of things to keep in mind: 1) Although WMF is based in the SF Bay Area, it is a non-profit, there are no bonuses or stock options, and base comp is good but not as high as you can get elsewhere. We also hire internationally and our teams often include remote folks in regions with different pay scales. For positions like community liaisons, we often hire younger folks who don't get quite as high an hourly rate as an experienced engineer would. 2) Yes, managers need to get involved, there are meeeetings, etc., but our engineering managers tend to be responsible for pretty large groups (20+ folks) since teams working on user-facing features have their own dedicated Product Managers and most of the day-to-day decision making exists at the team level. This reduces the risk of micromanagement and keeps managers focused on supporting teams rather than getting in their way. 3) The delta in compensation between engineering managers and engineers is not as high as you might think.
Hi TuringTest, thanks for your comment! Contrary to your past tense, Flow continues to be in active development, and continues to be deployed to new use cases, most recently a new user help forum on French Wikipedia, and a technical support forum on Catalan Wikipedia. Since the only way to roll out a system like this is to replace existing use of wiki pages, we're proceeding conservatively to test it out in social spaces where people want to try a new approach, and improving it in partnership with real users in those venues.
It's true that talk pages, being ordinary wiki pages, support "making your own workflow". I love the Douglas Engelbart reference, though I doubt Engelbart would have remained content with talk pages for very long. The lack of a discrete identity for separate comments makes it impossible to selectively monitor conversations you're participating in (you literally have to use diffs to know what's going on), or to show comments outside of the context of the page they were added to. This is a pretty tough set of constraints to work with. At the same time, you're absolutely right that a modern system can't simply emulate patterns used by web forums or commenting systems like this one.
Like wiki pages, Flow posts have their own revision history. Flow-enabled pages have a wiki-style header. Each thread has a summary which can be community-edited. Threads can be collapsed and un-collapsed by anyone. All actions are logged. In short, wiki-style principles and ideas are implemented throughout the system. At the same time, we believe that as we add modern capabilities like tagging, we can replace some of the convoluted workflows that are necessary in wikitext. Already, Flow adds capabilities missing from talk pages -- notifications for individual replies, watching specific threads (rather than a whole page), in-place responses, etc. More to come.
Hello metasonix! First, congratulations on the successful article submission. In answer to your question, I was referring to LQT development. LQT was put into maintenance mode in early 2011, so of your "10 plus year project", about 7 years elapsed with a little bit of paid effort dedicated to the development of LQT. $150K max spent (not all of it by WMF) on LQT is really a high estimate -- Andrew Garrett, the only dedicated developer, also worked on other projects during that time, including the widely used AbuseFilter extension.
Flow development kicked off in summer 2013, about 18-19 months of development effort so far by a team that's fluctuated in size but currently comprises three full-time engineers, about half a person's time for UX design and research, a product manager and a community liaison. During that entire timeframe, I would estimate money spent on the project so far at less than $1M. Even if you combine both efforts, "millions of dollars spent" is pure hyperbole, and adding up elapsed time to exaggerate scale and scope of these efforts is equally misleading.
The article summary speaks of "millions of dollars spent" on a new discussion system for Wikipedia. The article actually tells a very different story -- the LiquidThreads extension started out as a Google Summer of Code project, was funded for a while by an interested third party, and then received a little attention from the Wikimedia Foundation (one designer, one developer) before development was put into maintenance mode. I would ballpark the total money spent around $100-$150K max. Elapsed time does not equate money spent. LQT continues to be in use on a number of projects, but its architecture and UX needed to be fundamentally overhauled.
Flow, the designated successor to LQT, continues to be in development by a small team, and is gradually being deployed to appropriate use cases. It is now running on designated pages in a couple of Wikipedia languages, and old LiquidThreads pages are being converted over using a conversion script developed by the Flow team. Contrary to the article's claim, WikiEducator upgraded to a recent version of LQT, and will be able to migrate to Flow in future using the conversion script.
You can give Flow a try in the sandbox on mediawiki.org and see for yourself whether the article's claims are hyperbole or not. Disclaimer: I am the person referenced in the headline of the Wikipediocracy article, so take my view with a grain of salt, as well.;-)
(PS: To be fair, though, there'd be one reason for a guy like me to get a Kindle: flat fee access to Wikipedia from anywhere where there's EVDO. Then again, an offline wiki reader that can auto-update when you have a net connection would do just as well.)
The theory of e-ink is that you want something that lasts for endless hours so that you don't have to recharge it. In return, you'll be willing to accept page turning delays, type lagging, strange user interfaces, no backlighting, and a monochrome display.
I think that's a fallacy, because we are already used to carrying one or two devices around with us that we have to recharge: a small mobile device and a larger laptop-sized device. In both cases, the trends are clear: people want longer battery life and screens that work under sunlight. The market will satisfy these trends. And these devices won't be limited by DRM or strange wireless plans. The iPhone or N800 form factor does indeed support eBook like reading. And, as noted, since we use these devices constantly, we're used to making sure that they are charged.
That is not to say that there won't be a niche for e-ink devices, but I am very doubtful that the Kindle can kindle much anything. It's an interesting gadget, and at $150 or so it might have a sizable market -- but not at $400.
Once again, restrictions on redistribution of the software in question have nothing to do with the GPL.
Yes, a software publisher may not permit Ubuntu to include copies, or impose onerous requirements. I've not overlooked that at all, in fact, I referenced it in my comment.
Yes, there's some places to get one but they cost the same, or more, as a computer with Windows.
Not true. I did a price comparison today of Dell's German Ubuntu laptop offer and it was about 40 EUR cheaper without Windows than an equivalent Windows configuration. My brother operates an Ubuntu PC online shop, and he also sells for the same or less than Windows configurations (including a 600 page Ubuntu handbook). Note that this only sells to Germany for now, though he is looking for franchising partners in other EU countries (hence the EU domain name). I like the way he works; he only sells systems he personally would buy, and only if they work really well under Ubuntu.
It's time to stop whining; many choices are out there now. In my opinion, the focus should now be on pressuring hardware manufacturers to better support Linux, and to clearly identify hardware which works under recent Linux versions out of the box. (I've recently seen peripherals sold with penguin logos, so we're getting there.) Ubuntu itself also still has some way to go to become a true consumer product; for example, recent versions have seen regressions on things like scanner and sound support.
Another issue is the handling of proprietary software and codecs. In my view, Ubuntu should do three things:
Bundle or make it super-easy to obtain proprietary software which many people depend on (Skype, Flash, etc.). If the makers do not give permission to do so, say so clearly to the community. For each proprietary tool you include, create an open fundraising site to build a viable open source alternative. (And yes, that includes VoIP - I still haven't found anything open source that's nearly as powerful as Skype, esp. the Windows version; the Linux one is poorly maintained.) And before you start going on about the GPL, there is no GPL issue with including proprietary software in a Linux distribution. This falls under "aggregation" in section 5.
At the very least, try to obtain permission to include proprietary codecs like MP3 from the patent-holders. If they refuse to grant it freely, say so clearly. I've seen lots of worries that someone might get sued, or that someone might have to pay, but no clear and unambiguous distinction between "X has asked us to pay fee $Y per user for this" and "We're not including this for ideological reasons, and because we might get sued." Of course you would promote Theora, Vorbis and other free codecs in the relevant tools.
Openly violate the DMCA until there is a high court ruling that clearly shows that making DVDs freely playable under Linux is illegal. Make this a cyberrights issue. If you don't do so, this issue will never get the visibility it needs.
Divorce dogmatic ideology from free culture pragmatism. We all know that we want a system that's as free as possible, but to get there, we'll have to deal with the reality as it is today. Having a system that is entirely and perpetually "free as in beer" is a great first step before we can have one that's entirely "free as in speech".
Once pirated, always available. That principle will hold unless the operating system starts doing watermark analysis before permitting playback, and if it does so, such mechanisms can probably be cracked easily. The threats from the kind of measures Vista implements are twofold:
Crippling functionality to support braindead DRM schemes. Peter Guttman's article provides a good analysis of the problem. The main impact will come from the widespread use of Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs, as the quality of such media will be crippled when played over unencrypted channels. But, as Guttman's article points out, other common uses such as VoIP echo cancellation are affected by the DRM.
Implementing, step by step, a DRM framework that is the ultimate censorship tool. Imagine that all content you create by recording audio or video is encrypted by the operating system. It is DRM-protected, but with global "read" permission. All the DRM mechanisms of key granting, revocation, tracking, and so forth can then be used to control a) who has permission to create content, b) what content can be played on a PC without circumvention of the encryption.
You may say that the second scenario is alarmist, but people would have said the same thing a few years ago if you had predicted that an operating system would artificially decrease the quality of output signals purely for DRM reasons. This has happened, and is part of exactly the kind of infrastructure you need to use DRM for censorship purposes. Of course it would not be called censorship. The first official use of the technology would be copyright violations by amateurs. Then one would argue that key revocation is a good way to stop distribution of new child pornography. And so forth. The best protection against such a scenario is the widespread use of open source software.
But Microsoft's partnership with the content industry is designed to kill open source on the desktop. Today, you can simply not play DVDs on Linux without breaking United States and European laws that make it illegal to circumvent DRM. The same will be true for HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray, but also, increasingly so, for downloaded content of any type that comes with DRM restrictions. Microsoft knows quite well that its current implementation does nothing to stop piracy. But they are feeding the wet dreams of studio execs because they know that any technology that can only be legally implemented in proprietary form is like a license to print money.
So the censorship scenario above is probably not their motivation to go along with the industry's demands. And it is not really in the industry's interest either -- they just want to track down the evil pirates (though some of the smarter ones may also be thinking about ways to stop the "threat" of user-generated content). But it so happens that the only viable technology to prevent copyright violation is also perfect for purging content of any type. The problem is of the same nature, and so is the solution. Protesting against DRM is not just about protecting your right to download Hollywood movies, if you believe there is such a thing. It's about preserving the open source ecosystem, and guarding against a technological framework for censorship.
The Nokia N800 is a pretty nifty device, a WLAN-enabled "Internet tablet" with a nice high resolution screen, running the open source Maemo platform based on the Linux kernel. Maemo has a very healthy open source developer community, and tons of the best applications have been ported to it. What is missing, however, is a GSM chipset, or indeed any non-WLAN networking capability. Nokia apparently does not want its "Internet tablets" to compete with its smartphones. I am waiting, then, for an "N1000" that combines these capabilities. Perhaps OpenMoko will be successful, but it doesn't have the WLAN chipset.
Any device that combines these three factors - open source and full hackability, phone, and regular networking - will be a killer app. Hackability does not mean that it has to be difficult to use: with a Debian-like system for software management, users can experiment with new apps easily. Of course, many of the current economic models around cell phones (ring tone downloads, background images, specialized content portals) are not really sustainable, and so the market may be biased against that innovation. But a smart company will recognize that by maintaining strategic leadership within an open source ecosystem, they will create many more business opportunities for themselves than in a proprietary, locked down market. It's too bad that Apple doesn't appear to be that smart company. I hope that Nokia is.
As an elected Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, I can assure you that your opinion is incorrect. The Board of Directors of the Wikimedia Foundation has 7 members, of which Jimmy is one. He is the Chair Emeritus, which is a title we have given him to recognize his historic role, but which does not have any legal powers or responsibilities associated with it. The Chair of the Foundation is a nice French woman named Florence Devouard; I am the Executive Secretary.
As a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation also maintains a strict conflict of interest policy. So, Jimmy is not permitted to make any propositions which would advance the corporate interests of Wikia, and has indeed been completely excluded from discussions where his involvement in Wikia was relevant. (This, of course, also goes for any other corporate interests Board members may have.) In this way, Jimmy actually has less influence to promote Wikia as a Board member than he would have as a mere community member.
Jimmy retains some community influence specifically in the English Wikipedia, but that influence is not legally anchored. He speaks frequently to the English language press, though Florence has also done a lot of interviews lately. People seem to construct from this all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories which have no basis in reality. This is a shame, because the WMF is truly committed to making the world a better place, and needs all the support it can get.
To understand why this happened, you have to appreciate the full background of Essjay's activities on Wikimedia. He made around 20,000 edits, especially in an administrative function. Imagine seeing a single person showing up in the Recent Changes of Citizendium every day, making hundreds of diligent little edits, chasing vandals and trolls away, sending friendly messages... a person willing to help at every opportunity whenever you need someone intelligent and reliable to work with. That was Essjay; nobody in this whole story has claimed otherwise. His reputation was flawless, his work respected by all. When he revealed his identity to Jimmy and others who had long worked with him, he probably did so in an underhanded way, slightly embarrassed, with the rationalization we all know ("protection against trolls"), one which (for a mere pseudonym) would actually be credible given Essjay's role in the community.
In other words, the conditions were perfect for many of those who trusted Essjay to accept this deception and ignore it. And so they did. I agree that doing so was foolish and wrong. It was also human nature. Look at the story of any exposure of fraud, and you will find that the people closest to the person being exposed are often the ones who will defend them beyond reason. There are some who continue to defend Essjay even now, including people in the community I have a lot of respect for. I barely knew Essjay; if I had worked with him as closely as many in the community have, I might be inclined to defend him, too. This is not specific to the nature of the deception, but to the strength of the emotional bonds that were established.
For the most part, I am happy with the way Jimmy has responded now. Not entirely, because I would have preferred it if he had also acknowledged the error of downplaying false credentials as a "pseudonym." But I agree with him that we should also be capable of showing forgiveness to a person like Essjay. I can easily see how a young, gay Wikipedian found it "funny" to create a fake persona diametrically opposed to their real lifestyle ("All my students must read ''Catholicism for Dummies''", paraphrased, was one of his earlier comments), and then (getting increasingly addicted to the project) becoming trapped in their deception and rationalizing it. That doesn't make that person a criminal, or someone we should never permit to contribute again. It makes them someone who has made a mistake, who should acknowledge that mistake, and then make a renewed effort to establish trust in the community.
The Wikimedia Foundation is not a one-man show. This is a difficult situation, and we are collectively dealing with it in the best way we can. As we so often do, we will have to balance openness and control, and implement reasonable mechanisms of oversight. I am confident that we can only improve through this experience. What we are not going to do is jump to conclusions, place authoritarianism above reason, and dogma above human beings. Truth is not black and white; it is often subtle and elusive. I have much more confidence in the open, noisy, passionate, but ultimately human debates that are characteristic for Wikipedia's culture, than I do in the approach you have taken.
Wikipedia is not built on credentials. That Essjay occasionally pointed to his hoax bio when editing articles may have influenced other editors, but did not gain him special privileges. The privileges he does (to this day) have are janitorial, not editorial, and were based on the fact that he made thousands and thousands of edits, most of them administrative in nature (of the 19891 edits he made, only 1372 were in the article namespace -- see edit count tool). There is no process by which a person with an academic degree can simply go in and say "I am an authority, therefore I'm right." This kind of model was abandoned when Wikipedia replaced Nupedia, where contributing academics did indeed have to validate their credentials.
Instead, Wikipedia is built on content policies such as Neutral Point of View and Attribution. A typical featured article will have dozens or even hundreds of references for every key statement that it makes. The authors of the article, on the other hand, are not even mentioned; Wikipedia is largely egoless.
In this way, Wikipedia is the least harmed by a revelation of fake credentials. Unlike Larry Sanger's Citizendium, Wikipedia does not grant special privileges to those who claim to be experts. This explains Jimmy's initial "bleh" reaction: "So he faked his bio -- like that actually makes a difference in Wikipedia!" I disagree with this initial reaction (faking academic credentials is seriously unethical), and as noted above, the fake bio may have subtly influenced other editors who deferred to him instead of researching the topic on their own. But these are social dynamics, and if anything, this revelation will improve these dynamics.
I don't believe there is a strong need for us to validate any statement someone might make on their user page. I do agree with you that Essjay's claims should have been verified before he was given the janitorial roles that he ended up with, and recommended to the media as an interviewee. Here, we have been careless and are already discussing internally how to deal with this in a reasonable fashion. For example, there's nothing wrong per se with a Wikipedian wanting to remain pseudonymous, but they should disclose this to the reporter interviewing them. And faking credentials is certainly unacceptable in all circumstances.
As a massively volunteer-driven project, Wikipedia's community represents the entire breadth of humanity. The community rewards good behavior and ostracizes or even bans those who violate the written and unwritten norms. Now that Essjay has violated the community's trust, it is doubtful that he will ever regain it. If we were more credential-driven, then it would make sense to strongly call for validation of any claims like the ones Essjay made. As it is, verification when users cross certain thresholds of internal importance, and a renewed skepticism for anything a person might claim about themselves, should be sufficient. Certainly, this episode is a cautionary tale--but it is so especially for those who rely on identity, rather than the quality of a user's contributions.
Free Software was a bad choice to begin with, because of the obvious freeware ambiguity. This is why Open Source gained traction so quickly -- people found it difficult to communicate about "Free Software" without constantly being misunderstood (and then having to resort to the "free as in freedom" spiel which isn't exactly what you want to do when you want to convince your manager to switch to a different software solution). But Open Source completely neglects to mention the notion of "freedom" and, hence, has become diluted. "Open Source" is a nice wishy-washy term that can mean anything to anyone. The OSI's attempts to avoid this with a clear definition are laudable, but have failed outside the context of well-defined open source communities.
The adoption of the word Libre into the English language may represent a way out. Simply speaking about "Libre Software" makes it clear that this is not about freedom of price, but doesn't make it necessary to become any more explicit if one does not want to in a particular context. But I don't think such adoption is likely to happen on a large scale unless both OSI and the FSF throw their weight behind it.
Yeah.. because it's of course very sound reasoning to generalize from one story about a policy under discussion in a single European (non-EU) country to a "US vs. Europe" comparison.
If so, on this basis one would accept a company boiling babies for soap, provided that it was highly profitable and they could get away with it.
Contrary to popular belief, boiling babies is simply not a very economic way to make soap. Forced labor, on the other hand, is quite popular and common where corporations can get away with it; so are death squads against unionists or protestors. And as to evidence that corporations collaborate in even the worst crimes in history, look to the Holocaust -- from the machines used for processing and killing, to the valuables of the victims (including their teeth), corporations and banks got into as much of the action as possible. Including American ones.
The UCS, which has it's own agenda and pushes it at every opportunity, is upset because someone on the opposite side wants their view heard as well? To bad.
UCS has released a 68-page-report that details how ExxonMobil has systematically funded advocacy organizations and individuals in order to undermine science, based on leaked documents. This report even demonstrates some of these individuals and organizations were the same who, in the past, tried to tell us that smoking does not, in fact, cause cancer while on the payroll of the tobacco industry. This has nothing to do with a "view" being "heard", itis about the protection of commercial interests by means of a well-funded propaganda effort that is targeting the public, rather than the scientific community, exactly like similar efforts around tobacco or creationism. We're not talking about individuals who are just interested in a reasoned discourse and who happen to be on the other side of the issue more or less by accident. As Upton Sinclair put it: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
There are certainly alarmist environmentalist organizations. As for UCS, I see no evidence that it is one of them, only rhetoric.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have mod points right now, so thank you for taking the time to write a sensible comment on a very fraught topic. :)
An irrevocable patent pledge is intended to be precisely that; it's a legal document that is written to carry weight regardless of changes of ownership or management. Whether it will stand in court when tested remains to be seen, but that problem applies also to free content and open source licenses and other legal tools for sharing of information and ideas. KA can be expected to at least do one thing, which is to use the best available legal tools to create a broader framework of reuse consistent with its mission. It should reach out to experts, such as Creative Commons, to determine which tools to use, rather than relying on a weak implementation drafted by Twitter.
KA can also reject the idea of patents entirely. It has enough goodwill globally that any patent lawsuit against it, aside perhaps from highly protected areas such as video codecs, would likely to be suicidal for the entity bringing it, and a fundraising boon for KA.
Although Blackboard has filed patent lawsuits against competitors (and was briefly boycotted for it), it at least has issued an irrevocable patent pledge not to sue open source projects. I suspect ignorance, not foul play, on the part of Khan Academy is the cause.
Ironically, nonprofit Khan Academy's Twitter pledge is less permissive than that of the corporate behemoth, since it reserves the right to sue anyone, for any reason, provided company and "inventor" agree. Not sure OIN is a good fit for its needs given its close tie to usage of patents within "Linux systems". Something like CC's model patent license or a simple, broad pledge never to use patents offensively against anyone may be a better fit.
KA's policy error here is likely the result of swimming in the Silicon Valley ideological soup, where Twitter's pledge is considered remarkable. KA has never been an especially awesome organization when it comes to open source citizenry. For example, it uses the "non-commercial use" restriction for its materials, which is widely rejected within open source and free culture circles like Wikimedia, Linux, etc. Hopefully this will change over time as the organization becomes more aware of the policy discussions around these issues, since a lot of its work is otherwise excellent and world-changing.
As the summary states, Khan follows Twitter's patent pledge. This is a good first step as far as it goes, but it still explicitly allows for offensive litigation if the "inventor" agrees. That's not sufficient. At the very minimum, Khan should adopt a clear, irrevocable policy never to enforce patents against open source projects, like many Patent Commons participants. Ideally it should partner with Creative Commons to work out an even stronger patent license, consistent with its mission. CC has previously developed model patent licenses and I'm sure they'd be happy to help.
If the Khan Academy user who originally posted in Slashdot in response is reading this -- please bring these resources to the attention of management.
Videos/podcasts and similar formats are definitely not for every setting, but they do allow you to get to know a person a bit better than a simple transcript does. In a video, you can see a person's facial expressions, you can hear emphasis, and you may be able to make more of an emotional connection. For a podcast, you can listen in the background, during your commute, etc. Each format has its advantages/disadvantages.
I agree a transcript would be awesome though; sorry that I've not gotten around to that yet (I do these in my spare time and suggested to Roblimo that he might want to run a shorter version). If you want to help, I've set up an Amara import here. In general, Passionate Voices is a community project (the videos are under CC-0, i.e. free to reuse), and help is always welcome, including with doing itnerviews.
A few days ago, Sumana released this video, Pipeline, a critique of the tech industry's treatment of women. It's relevant to the overall discussion re: hospitality and worth watching (the main point being, "getting women into tech" doesn't really solve any problems if the actual experience in the industry is a terrible one).
Thank you for giving it a spin and reporting back, glad your tests worked. :-) Our policy is to not execute JS at all on older browsers like IE6 and IE7 (for security and maintenance reasons), which has the side effect of keeping us honest in ensuring all core features work without JavaScript.
Hey gl4ss, these are fair points, but I stand by my original estimate, including overhead & travel. A couple of things to keep in mind: 1) Although WMF is based in the SF Bay Area, it is a non-profit, there are no bonuses or stock options, and base comp is good but not as high as you can get elsewhere. We also hire internationally and our teams often include remote folks in regions with different pay scales. For positions like community liaisons, we often hire younger folks who don't get quite as high an hourly rate as an experienced engineer would. 2) Yes, managers need to get involved, there are meeeetings, etc., but our engineering managers tend to be responsible for pretty large groups (20+ folks) since teams working on user-facing features have their own dedicated Product Managers and most of the day-to-day decision making exists at the team level. This reduces the risk of micromanagement and keeps managers focused on supporting teams rather than getting in their way. 3) The delta in compensation between engineering managers and engineers is not as high as you might think.
Hi TuringTest, thanks for your comment! Contrary to your past tense, Flow continues to be in active development, and continues to be deployed to new use cases, most recently a new user help forum on French Wikipedia, and a technical support forum on Catalan Wikipedia. Since the only way to roll out a system like this is to replace existing use of wiki pages, we're proceeding conservatively to test it out in social spaces where people want to try a new approach, and improving it in partnership with real users in those venues.
It's true that talk pages, being ordinary wiki pages, support "making your own workflow". I love the Douglas Engelbart reference, though I doubt Engelbart would have remained content with talk pages for very long. The lack of a discrete identity for separate comments makes it impossible to selectively monitor conversations you're participating in (you literally have to use diffs to know what's going on), or to show comments outside of the context of the page they were added to. This is a pretty tough set of constraints to work with. At the same time, you're absolutely right that a modern system can't simply emulate patterns used by web forums or commenting systems like this one.
Like wiki pages, Flow posts have their own revision history. Flow-enabled pages have a wiki-style header. Each thread has a summary which can be community-edited. Threads can be collapsed and un-collapsed by anyone. All actions are logged. In short, wiki-style principles and ideas are implemented throughout the system. At the same time, we believe that as we add modern capabilities like tagging, we can replace some of the convoluted workflows that are necessary in wikitext. Already, Flow adds capabilities missing from talk pages -- notifications for individual replies, watching specific threads (rather than a whole page), in-place responses, etc. More to come.
Hello metasonix! First, congratulations on the successful article submission. In answer to your question, I was referring to LQT development. LQT was put into maintenance mode in early 2011, so of your "10 plus year project", about 7 years elapsed with a little bit of paid effort dedicated to the development of LQT. $150K max spent (not all of it by WMF) on LQT is really a high estimate -- Andrew Garrett, the only dedicated developer, also worked on other projects during that time, including the widely used AbuseFilter extension.
Flow development kicked off in summer 2013, about 18-19 months of development effort so far by a team that's fluctuated in size but currently comprises three full-time engineers, about half a person's time for UX design and research, a product manager and a community liaison. During that entire timeframe, I would estimate money spent on the project so far at less than $1M. Even if you combine both efforts, "millions of dollars spent" is pure hyperbole, and adding up elapsed time to exaggerate scale and scope of these efforts is equally misleading.
The article summary speaks of "millions of dollars spent" on a new discussion system for Wikipedia. The article actually tells a very different story -- the LiquidThreads extension started out as a Google Summer of Code project, was funded for a while by an interested third party, and then received a little attention from the Wikimedia Foundation (one designer, one developer) before development was put into maintenance mode. I would ballpark the total money spent around $100-$150K max. Elapsed time does not equate money spent. LQT continues to be in use on a number of projects, but its architecture and UX needed to be fundamentally overhauled.
Flow, the designated successor to LQT, continues to be in development by a small team, and is gradually being deployed to appropriate use cases. It is now running on designated pages in a couple of Wikipedia languages, and old LiquidThreads pages are being converted over using a conversion script developed by the Flow team. Contrary to the article's claim, WikiEducator upgraded to a recent version of LQT, and will be able to migrate to Flow in future using the conversion script.
You can give Flow a try in the sandbox on mediawiki.org and see for yourself whether the article's claims are hyperbole or not. Disclaimer: I am the person referenced in the headline of the Wikipediocracy article, so take my view with a grain of salt, as well. ;-)
(PS: To be fair, though, there'd be one reason for a guy like me to get a Kindle: flat fee access to Wikipedia from anywhere where there's EVDO. Then again, an offline wiki reader that can auto-update when you have a net connection would do just as well.)
The theory of e-ink is that you want something that lasts for endless hours so that you don't have to recharge it. In return, you'll be willing to accept page turning delays, type lagging, strange user interfaces, no backlighting, and a monochrome display.
I think that's a fallacy, because we are already used to carrying one or two devices around with us that we have to recharge: a small mobile device and a larger laptop-sized device. In both cases, the trends are clear: people want longer battery life and screens that work under sunlight. The market will satisfy these trends. And these devices won't be limited by DRM or strange wireless plans. The iPhone or N800 form factor does indeed support eBook like reading. And, as noted, since we use these devices constantly, we're used to making sure that they are charged.
That is not to say that there won't be a niche for e-ink devices, but I am very doubtful that the Kindle can kindle much anything. It's an interesting gadget, and at $150 or so it might have a sizable market -- but not at $400.
Once again, restrictions on redistribution of the software in question have nothing to do with the GPL. Yes, a software publisher may not permit Ubuntu to include copies, or impose onerous requirements. I've not overlooked that at all, in fact, I referenced it in my comment.
Not true. I did a price comparison today of Dell's German Ubuntu laptop offer and it was about 40 EUR cheaper without Windows than an equivalent Windows configuration. My brother operates an Ubuntu PC online shop, and he also sells for the same or less than Windows configurations (including a 600 page Ubuntu handbook). Note that this only sells to Germany for now, though he is looking for franchising partners in other EU countries (hence the EU domain name). I like the way he works; he only sells systems he personally would buy, and only if they work really well under Ubuntu.
It's time to stop whining; many choices are out there now. In my opinion, the focus should now be on pressuring hardware manufacturers to better support Linux, and to clearly identify hardware which works under recent Linux versions out of the box. (I've recently seen peripherals sold with penguin logos, so we're getting there.) Ubuntu itself also still has some way to go to become a true consumer product; for example, recent versions have seen regressions on things like scanner and sound support.
Another issue is the handling of proprietary software and codecs. In my view, Ubuntu should do three things:
- Bundle or make it super-easy to obtain proprietary software which many people depend on (Skype, Flash, etc.). If the makers do not give permission to do so, say so clearly to the community. For each proprietary tool you include, create an open fundraising site to build a viable open source alternative. (And yes, that includes VoIP - I still haven't found anything open source that's nearly as powerful as Skype, esp. the Windows version; the Linux one is poorly maintained.) And before you start going on about the GPL, there is no GPL issue with including proprietary software in a Linux distribution. This falls under "aggregation" in section 5.
- At the very least, try to obtain permission to include proprietary codecs like MP3 from the patent-holders. If they refuse to grant it freely, say so clearly. I've seen lots of worries that someone might get sued, or that someone might have to pay, but no clear and unambiguous distinction between "X has asked us to pay fee $Y per user for this" and "We're not including this for ideological reasons, and because we might get sued." Of course you would promote Theora, Vorbis and other free codecs in the relevant tools.
- Openly violate the DMCA until there is a high court ruling that clearly shows that making DVDs freely playable under Linux is illegal. Make this a cyberrights issue. If you don't do so, this issue will never get the visibility it needs.
Divorce dogmatic ideology from free culture pragmatism. We all know that we want a system that's as free as possible, but to get there, we'll have to deal with the reality as it is today. Having a system that is entirely and perpetually "free as in beer" is a great first step before we can have one that's entirely "free as in speech".This is incorrect. Stable versions do not yet exist on the German Wikipedia.
You may say that the second scenario is alarmist, but people would have said the same thing a few years ago if you had predicted that an operating system would artificially decrease the quality of output signals purely for DRM reasons. This has happened, and is part of exactly the kind of infrastructure you need to use DRM for censorship purposes. Of course it would not be called censorship. The first official use of the technology would be copyright violations by amateurs. Then one would argue that key revocation is a good way to stop distribution of new child pornography. And so forth. The best protection against such a scenario is the widespread use of open source software.
But Microsoft's partnership with the content industry is designed to kill open source on the desktop. Today, you can simply not play DVDs on Linux without breaking United States and European laws that make it illegal to circumvent DRM. The same will be true for HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray, but also, increasingly so, for downloaded content of any type that comes with DRM restrictions. Microsoft knows quite well that its current implementation does nothing to stop piracy. But they are feeding the wet dreams of studio execs because they know that any technology that can only be legally implemented in proprietary form is like a license to print money.
So the censorship scenario above is probably not their motivation to go along with the industry's demands. And it is not really in the industry's interest either -- they just want to track down the evil pirates (though some of the smarter ones may also be thinking about ways to stop the "threat" of user-generated content). But it so happens that the only viable technology to prevent copyright violation is also perfect for purging content of any type. The problem is of the same nature, and so is the solution. Protesting against DRM is not just about protecting your right to download Hollywood movies, if you believe there is such a thing. It's about preserving the open source ecosystem, and guarding against a technological framework for censorship.
The Nokia N800 is a pretty nifty device, a WLAN-enabled "Internet tablet" with a nice high resolution screen, running the open source Maemo platform based on the Linux kernel. Maemo has a very healthy open source developer community, and tons of the best applications have been ported to it. What is missing, however, is a GSM chipset, or indeed any non-WLAN networking capability. Nokia apparently does not want its "Internet tablets" to compete with its smartphones. I am waiting, then, for an "N1000" that combines these capabilities. Perhaps OpenMoko will be successful, but it doesn't have the WLAN chipset.
Any device that combines these three factors - open source and full hackability, phone, and regular networking - will be a killer app. Hackability does not mean that it has to be difficult to use: with a Debian-like system for software management, users can experiment with new apps easily. Of course, many of the current economic models around cell phones (ring tone downloads, background images, specialized content portals) are not really sustainable, and so the market may be biased against that innovation. But a smart company will recognize that by maintaining strategic leadership within an open source ecosystem, they will create many more business opportunities for themselves than in a proprietary, locked down market. It's too bad that Apple doesn't appear to be that smart company. I hope that Nokia is.
As an elected Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, I can assure you that your opinion is incorrect. The Board of Directors of the Wikimedia Foundation has 7 members, of which Jimmy is one. He is the Chair Emeritus, which is a title we have given him to recognize his historic role, but which does not have any legal powers or responsibilities associated with it. The Chair of the Foundation is a nice French woman named Florence Devouard; I am the Executive Secretary.
As a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation also maintains a strict conflict of interest policy. So, Jimmy is not permitted to make any propositions which would advance the corporate interests of Wikia, and has indeed been completely excluded from discussions where his involvement in Wikia was relevant. (This, of course, also goes for any other corporate interests Board members may have.) In this way, Jimmy actually has less influence to promote Wikia as a Board member than he would have as a mere community member.
Jimmy retains some community influence specifically in the English Wikipedia, but that influence is not legally anchored. He speaks frequently to the English language press, though Florence has also done a lot of interviews lately. People seem to construct from this all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories which have no basis in reality. This is a shame, because the WMF is truly committed to making the world a better place, and needs all the support it can get.
To understand why this happened, you have to appreciate the full background of Essjay's activities on Wikimedia. He made around 20,000 edits, especially in an administrative function. Imagine seeing a single person showing up in the Recent Changes of Citizendium every day, making hundreds of diligent little edits, chasing vandals and trolls away, sending friendly messages ... a person willing to help at every opportunity whenever you need someone intelligent and reliable to work with. That was Essjay; nobody in this whole story has claimed otherwise. His reputation was flawless, his work respected by all. When he revealed his identity to Jimmy and others who had long worked with him, he probably did so in an underhanded way, slightly embarrassed, with the rationalization we all know ("protection against trolls"), one which (for a mere pseudonym) would actually be credible given Essjay's role in the community.
In other words, the conditions were perfect for many of those who trusted Essjay to accept this deception and ignore it. And so they did. I agree that doing so was foolish and wrong. It was also human nature. Look at the story of any exposure of fraud, and you will find that the people closest to the person being exposed are often the ones who will defend them beyond reason. There are some who continue to defend Essjay even now, including people in the community I have a lot of respect for. I barely knew Essjay; if I had worked with him as closely as many in the community have, I might be inclined to defend him, too. This is not specific to the nature of the deception, but to the strength of the emotional bonds that were established.
For the most part, I am happy with the way Jimmy has responded now. Not entirely, because I would have preferred it if he had also acknowledged the error of downplaying false credentials as a "pseudonym." But I agree with him that we should also be capable of showing forgiveness to a person like Essjay. I can easily see how a young, gay Wikipedian found it "funny" to create a fake persona diametrically opposed to their real lifestyle ("All my students must read ''Catholicism for Dummies''", paraphrased, was one of his earlier comments), and then (getting increasingly addicted to the project) becoming trapped in their deception and rationalizing it. That doesn't make that person a criminal, or someone we should never permit to contribute again. It makes them someone who has made a mistake, who should acknowledge that mistake, and then make a renewed effort to establish trust in the community.
The Wikimedia Foundation is not a one-man show. This is a difficult situation, and we are collectively dealing with it in the best way we can. As we so often do, we will have to balance openness and control, and implement reasonable mechanisms of oversight. I am confident that we can only improve through this experience. What we are not going to do is jump to conclusions, place authoritarianism above reason, and dogma above human beings. Truth is not black and white; it is often subtle and elusive. I have much more confidence in the open, noisy, passionate, but ultimately human debates that are characteristic for Wikipedia's culture, than I do in the approach you have taken.
Wikipedia is not built on credentials. That Essjay occasionally pointed to his hoax bio when editing articles may have influenced other editors, but did not gain him special privileges. The privileges he does (to this day) have are janitorial, not editorial, and were based on the fact that he made thousands and thousands of edits, most of them administrative in nature (of the 19891 edits he made, only 1372 were in the article namespace -- see edit count tool). There is no process by which a person with an academic degree can simply go in and say "I am an authority, therefore I'm right." This kind of model was abandoned when Wikipedia replaced Nupedia, where contributing academics did indeed have to validate their credentials.
Instead, Wikipedia is built on content policies such as Neutral Point of View and Attribution. A typical featured article will have dozens or even hundreds of references for every key statement that it makes. The authors of the article, on the other hand, are not even mentioned; Wikipedia is largely egoless.
In this way, Wikipedia is the least harmed by a revelation of fake credentials. Unlike Larry Sanger's Citizendium, Wikipedia does not grant special privileges to those who claim to be experts. This explains Jimmy's initial "bleh" reaction: "So he faked his bio -- like that actually makes a difference in Wikipedia!" I disagree with this initial reaction (faking academic credentials is seriously unethical), and as noted above, the fake bio may have subtly influenced other editors who deferred to him instead of researching the topic on their own. But these are social dynamics, and if anything, this revelation will improve these dynamics.
I don't believe there is a strong need for us to validate any statement someone might make on their user page. I do agree with you that Essjay's claims should have been verified before he was given the janitorial roles that he ended up with, and recommended to the media as an interviewee. Here, we have been careless and are already discussing internally how to deal with this in a reasonable fashion. For example, there's nothing wrong per se with a Wikipedian wanting to remain pseudonymous, but they should disclose this to the reporter interviewing them. And faking credentials is certainly unacceptable in all circumstances.
As a massively volunteer-driven project, Wikipedia's community represents the entire breadth of humanity. The community rewards good behavior and ostracizes or even bans those who violate the written and unwritten norms. Now that Essjay has violated the community's trust, it is doubtful that he will ever regain it. If we were more credential-driven, then it would make sense to strongly call for validation of any claims like the ones Essjay made. As it is, verification when users cross certain thresholds of internal importance, and a renewed skepticism for anything a person might claim about themselves, should be sufficient. Certainly, this episode is a cautionary tale--but it is so especially for those who rely on identity, rather than the quality of a user's contributions.
Free Software was a bad choice to begin with, because of the obvious freeware ambiguity. This is why Open Source gained traction so quickly -- people found it difficult to communicate about "Free Software" without constantly being misunderstood (and then having to resort to the "free as in freedom" spiel which isn't exactly what you want to do when you want to convince your manager to switch to a different software solution). But Open Source completely neglects to mention the notion of "freedom" and, hence, has become diluted. "Open Source" is a nice wishy-washy term that can mean anything to anyone. The OSI's attempts to avoid this with a clear definition are laudable, but have failed outside the context of well-defined open source communities.
The adoption of the word Libre into the English language may represent a way out. Simply speaking about "Libre Software" makes it clear that this is not about freedom of price, but doesn't make it necessary to become any more explicit if one does not want to in a particular context. But I don't think such adoption is likely to happen on a large scale unless both OSI and the FSF throw their weight behind it.
Yeah .. because it's of course very sound reasoning to generalize from one story about a policy under discussion in a single European (non-EU) country to a "US vs. Europe" comparison.
Contrary to popular belief, boiling babies is simply not a very economic way to make soap. Forced labor, on the other hand, is quite popular and common where corporations can get away with it; so are death squads against unionists or protestors. And as to evidence that corporations collaborate in even the worst crimes in history, look to the Holocaust -- from the machines used for processing and killing, to the valuables of the victims (including their teeth), corporations and banks got into as much of the action as possible. Including American ones.
UCS has released a 68-page-report that details how ExxonMobil has systematically funded advocacy organizations and individuals in order to undermine science, based on leaked documents. This report even demonstrates some of these individuals and organizations were the same who, in the past, tried to tell us that smoking does not, in fact, cause cancer while on the payroll of the tobacco industry. This has nothing to do with a "view" being "heard", itis about the protection of commercial interests by means of a well-funded propaganda effort that is targeting the public, rather than the scientific community, exactly like similar efforts around tobacco or creationism. We're not talking about individuals who are just interested in a reasoned discourse and who happen to be on the other side of the issue more or less by accident. As Upton Sinclair put it: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
There are certainly alarmist environmentalist organizations. As for UCS, I see no evidence that it is one of them, only rhetoric.