A few years back, in 2004, Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno launched a Musicians' Union called Mudda to stand up for the rights of the musicians who were having their music stolen in the 'post-Napser' age of p2p downloads.  One of the taglines of Peter Gabriel's mission was the title of a confidential debate, How to compete with Free? As time has moved on the music industry has gained a few scalps by suing many organisations and individuals proactively sharing music over these peer to peer networks - the most recent casuatly being the Pirate Bay.

The initial victim of peer to peer sharing was the Music industry, but as bandwidth and disk space have got much cheaper, it has enabled users to share films and much larger files just as easily as downloading mp3s in the early days of Napster.  Rather than the industries going into meltdown, they've come up with innovative ways to get users accessing their information.  LoveFilm, Sporify and Last.fm are all solutions to the intial problem, however, as yet theyre not seen as 'perfect' solutions.  Too much power has been given to the consumer - the only problem is that it's only the industries affected who see this as a problem.

At the weekend's festivities at the Hop Farm Festival, I was lucky enough to watch 2 Many DJs play a set on the Sunday night.  Up til they I'd always been one for listening to pretty 'mature' music; mature as in age rather than maturity.  I grrew up with most of my Dad's music - and it's a good job he had good taste! :)   I'd never really 'gotten' the dance scene - loops and stuff were things that I did as a teen messing around on Software such as Sibelieus, Capella and Voyetra Midi Orchestrator.  Writing a drum beat and adding a synth track on top didn't sppear to be so hard.  However, with 2 Many DJs - these guys were remixing classic and modern tunes, and making them sound awesome together.  It wasn't just the music they were mixing, but they also had a monty-python-esque video screen with animated remixes of the original album covers blending into each other.

2 Many DJs have caught the essence of community and 'Creative Commons' in their approach to producing music.  They can use other people's tracks and beats in the way that software architects use difference software packages - put them all together and come up with their own unique packages.  It's a bit like lego - the blocks are all the same - but it's the way they are arranged that makes them unique.  If someone's already designed a car and you design a garage - doesn't it make sense for you to share your ideas to come up with a better model?  Needless to say I was looking at their music differently.

So when it comes to making money - if 2 Many DJs are simply remixing other people's work - where does the money change hands.  They remixed Michael Jackson, The Gossip, AC/DC, Daft Punk, Queen, amongst others - so how do these artists get paid?

When it came to the end of the night, I asked a mate who was familiar with 2 Many DJs how to get their tracks - can I buy a CD, or what if I want to do my own remixes.  His respose was that people simply download their music.  They like people remixing their stuff and want to hear more music made - so they actively support downloading via what most would say were illegal methods.  I need to get more information on whether this is 100% true, or just a 'laissez-faire' approach by the band rather than a pro-active promotion - but if it is true it's sure pretty.

So if 2 Many DJs can get round and survive giving stuff away free, then it's not a business model unique to the 'Open Source' world.  2 Many DJs have had plenty of success doing it, and get asked to headline at Gigs all over the world. When it comes to programmers, the high life of programming infront of thousands of people dancing to your programming isn't really a viable option (unless you're Air). So Open Source programmers have to sell 'free'.

That takes me back to the original question: How do you sell 'Free'

Since 2004 I've been successfully using Open Source Software to complete essays, do accounts, run websites, and update my mp3 player and listen to music.  I've been able to do practically everything I ever did using Windows - though much of it has involved alot of effort and a steep learning curve.  As time has gone on, the operating system I use, Ubuntu, has seriously improved its ease of use - up to a point when I can do a fresh install of ubuntu and know that I won't have to spent a few hours tweaking sound & video settings getting everything to work.  I know I can get it installed and all up to date in under an hour - and 90% of the software I use is already installed.  It also enables me to know the price of my computer.  Whereas before I was counting the cost in £s, I now count it in hours.

The problem is, that the majority of people count in £s.  OpenOffice.org may well be free, but thye've got to download and run an exe file - or even worse work out how to open a zip file.  Sure - to the intiated it's easy, but to the uninitiated they may just as well go and buy a CD and put it in the right hole for a little paperclip to tell them what to do.  That's life.

Free needs to be sold as simple.  We're getting there - but the truth of the matter is that people don't care.  As Rory Cellan-Jones commented earlier today regarding Google's Annoucement of 'Google Chrome OS'

but my point is that most people never choose to install an OS. they just live in a windows world. Only sophisticates choose..

That's the truth.  As much as people may like to choose Ubuntu or any other OS, to convert people they need to make a proactive decision.  Apple have solved that problem by generating some kind of cult following.  I'm not sure how they managed it - but the perception is that macs are easy and cool.  People don't mind the difficulty (or the price), when they know that the perceived view is that it's easy. No one wants to be seen as a fool.  Linux distributions are still seen as the realm of the geek, therefore it's not painful to claim it's too difficult.  When you're selling free - it's easy if people already want it.  If people don't want it already, then why should they want to want it?

I can't see Gnugle Linux (as I'm sure many of the FSF-ers would have liked it to be known as) being a massive break from the traditional Linux Distribution.  Microsoft probably think the same thing - Google might have a good team, but they can't design an operating system from a blank slate.  Google have already said they'll be using the Linux Kernel.  However, what they can do is implement HTML5 and CSS3 to enable the browser to draw.  Up til now, adding curves to a box in HTML meant using 4 pre-drawn graphics (or fewer if you were clever) - however, it still required a graphic to be placed upon a page - rather than drawn. Google are coming into the frame just as the 'browser' take over from the operating system.. and right now they're creating a hybrid as a means of migration from OS-based computing to browser-based computing.

Will Google OS 'Sell'?

If people want it - yes.  Right now Google have got to focus on marketing this as a viable alternative to the status quo - something that the traditional Open Source vendors have been unable to do through lack of capital, and a lack of ability to stand up to the false claims made by Microsoft.  However, the bigger battle is happening behind the scenes.  As was seen with OLPC v. Intel, the majority of decisions are made behind closed doors where representatives of Open Source Communities have never really stepped.  Google have been there before and have that extra arrow to their bow.  I just hope they don't turn into MS 2.0 in their quest for domination.

I recently watched a presentation done by Martin Seligman, ex-president of the American Psychology Association. He's the main man behind something called 'positive psychology.' It's a fairly new branch of the discipline, and one in which there's alot of positive interest.

Ever since the 50's, psychology has dealt with illness. Medical solutions to psychological problems have been the 'norm' of psychology as a science. As such, psychologists got the reputation of being a little scary. Talking to one meant they'd analyse you to find problems. Your repressed memories and assumptions could be read from a single conversation - therefore psychologist were those to be ignored.

Well, according to Mr Seligman, this is no longer the case (at least with him). Since the mid-90s, there has been an increase in interest in psychology as it has diversified into new fields of practise. One such field is this positive psychology.

The talk I watched was done at something called TED (www.ted.com) - it's a conference organised whereby experts in their field are invited to share their ideas. The best thing though, is that they're then asked to move their ideas into a different field. To throw it out there for all the other brains at the event to understand. Sometimes these sparks can light a fire.. that's the idea anyway.

Well, Mr Seligman's talk was on happiness. It's a fairly new area, and one open to massive interpretation: so here's mine.

Seligman talks of three types of happy lives.

Pleasant Lives

- Celebrity, Indulgent, Experince

Good Lives - Appreciation, Focused, Commited, Engagement

Meaningful lives - Pensive, Broad, Faith.

They're not mutually exclusive or inclusive. It's interesting, it's possible to have all three.

His studies have led him to find the opposite of what he'd expected to be true. The most 'happy' life to lead is the Meaningful Life, then the Good Life, followed by the Pleasant Life. His reasoning is that although the pleasant life is something we all aspire to; it's also extremely habituating. If you have air conditioning, then a fan is no replacement. The step up is great - but once you're there you've got to enjoy it and appreciate it, else it becomes the habitual norm and anything less is sub-standard. Ironically the pleasant life is the most depressing, as improvements are finite - and more often than not they happen in big steps, rather than incremental changes.

The interesting thing was is that he applied this 'happiness' to technological development (not necessarily electric). Sure, you can put out a "pleasant" application and people will be happy with it. However, it's got to be constantly improving. If you create an application that people can get engaged with, it moves up a step to the "Good"applications; people are happy just using it. The third stage is the 'meaningful' application; one that gets the user interacting meaningfully with it. A great example is facebook.

Now, the interesting thing to me is that this group of 'three' is very similar to another group of 'three' that I read about at University. There's replacement, enabling and ubitiquous technology. The three categories seem to fit nicely as pairs.

Replacement technology

- that which replaces a process we already have, but makes it easier.

Enabling technology

- that which enables us to do things that were either not possible, or too time consuming to be worthwhile before the technology.

Ubitiquous technology

- technology that becomes so widely used and pervasive that it becomes a part of the fabric of society, and is taken for granted.

Reading Zeth's blog post, Zeth cites commentators that say the time is over for the Open Source World, that development is slowly stalling and the exciting ideas of the 90's that came out of Open Source are being commercialised and exploited. I don't think that for one second. Software has (unnecessarily, one may argue) become far more complex. Sure, improvements in programming have been made and there are better skilled people out there than before - but packages are becoming far more complicated.

I'd ask, is this needed. The 'Pleasant Life' of Seligman talks about how having too many pleasures can be depressing. The constant expectation rather than fulfilment is lost on people who fail to appreciate. The same can be said for software consumers.

The ideas that have made people rich are rarely complicated. It's a simple idea, executed well that succeeds. The problem now, is not in "integrating all these fantastic packages and solutions," but in the realisation that perhaps that's not what is needed. Perhaps we need to look again to the simple things in life. A hammer doesn't come with a screwdriver attachment, in the same way a phone doesn't have to come with 'twitter integration.' Sure, it's a nice feature for thos that want it... but for those than don't it becomes a barrier to using the original 'simple' aspect of that technology.

Clay Shirky provides a fascinating insight into how a collaborative approach utilises more skills, and empowers more people than the old institutional model. Rather than coming from an Open Source background, he uses the example of Flickr to convey his point (and then takes a stab at Ballmer). It's an interesting presentation, and shows how you can make the most of the information/data available in a field.

However, there's an angle to his talk which isn't covered in this short presentation; which I imagine is due to time constraints. That's the opportunity for cross-discipline collaboration, and what that means for us.

One of the more interesting points made by Clay, is that he poses the current '$1 million question' - Are Bloggers Journalists? - and then turns it on its head.

Journalists, and journalism came about to fulfil a societal need. How to communicate with the majority of the population. Gutenburgs's printing press was a percursor to European journalism, and for the last 400 years or so, journalism has been an integral part of mass communication.

However, we now have a little something called the internet - which, as Gutenburg's printing press did all those years ago, revolutionise access to information. The infrastructure required to become a 'messenger to the people' is in place for people to with it as they wish - create facebook pages, youtube videos, or wordpress blogs. Once the infrastructure becomes freely accessible, the applications of it become massively varied.

In Clay's talk, he mentions a ratio. 80% of people do 20% of the work, and vice versa, using a lovely graph of the long tail:

Though a graph illustrating a different set of data, the concept can be re-applied to Open Source Project contribution. The Green area applies to the 'core' developers, who may even be employed by the project. The Orange applied to the people directly involved with the project, and perhaps some power users, and the Red section applied to everyone else.

The wonderful thing about the Red section, is that you get lots and lots of people contributing very little. However, it's these people who can really add value to a project.  With so many projects now existing across different distributions, each system becomes pretty unique.  Where bugfixes and irrationailities can be spotted and reported on by end-users running their unique system - the value added is huge.

There's also a question of expertise.  The guys in the Red Section are the programming experts, who are commiting code.  Those in the Orange Section are the users/implementers of the code - so will typically have a clear understanding of the direction of the project and the needs that the project needs to fulfil. Whereas in the Red Section are people who use the package, but often alongside other packages of greater interest/relevance to their line of work.  It's this cross-discipline collaboration that is unprecedencted.

Getting average non-geeky end users to use Open Projects is a massive challenge, but one that is going to bring massive benefits to Open Source Software.  Some people talk of the digital tipping point from a technical standpoint - "Woo, when we get this critical mass we'll overtake Microsoft within the next 5 years."  To be honest that doesn't bother me. Judge MS as you wish, but that's not why I'm here.  I'm here because the potential contribution that end users can make to Global Knowledge, through Open Projects.

It's going to be possible for a biological scientist and and engineer to be reviewing the same problem for different purposes.  It's unlikely that these two disciplines would ever communicate were it not be for this open project, and it's also possible that only with the combined knowledge and expertise of these two disciplines, the problem can be solved.

This is what excites me most about free software, and to think we're only just at the beginning.

Too many D's for my liking... but a fantastic marketing point.

After David Davis resigned from the Commons today, the speech he gave focused on where technology and policy collide.

We will have, shortly, the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictator should have with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it.

We witness and assault on jury trial - that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state, short cuts to our justice system will make our system neither firm nor fair and the creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.

It's definately time for the debate to happen.  Just because we can do things with technology doesn't mean we should.

It's a massively important area of discussion, with huge social implications.  However, because it comes under the "geek umbrella" - most people choose to ignore it or 'switch off' from the conversation.

"Digital Rights, and what "feature creep" can achieve in terms of illegal/immoral operation."

It's something that I think needs to be put in the forefront of the public psyche - in so far as legal issues are regarded by the majority.

Leaving social issues to a group of people often stereotyped as having negligible social skills doesn't seem to be a sensible idea.