I will be speaking Wednesday June 4th 2008 at the FOSS Aalborg - Free & Open Source Software Conference on:
Martin von Haller Grønbæk - Legal aspects of reverse engineering
When are you allowed to reverse engineer a protocol, a piece of software or hardware, and how may you use the obtained knowledge? Martin tries to clarify the aspects of reverse engineering from a legal point of view.
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fossaalborg, reverseengineering
During one of my last vacations in Tuscany I took a picture of my favorite pizza - the nepoletana - and posted it on my Flickr account. The other week the nice people at San Pellegrino ask me, if they could use my photo at their new web-site at http://www.sanpellegrino.com/. Of course, the could. And the work of the great photographer is now online.
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pizzanapoli, sanpellegrino
Det er i hvert fald påstanden i de to artikler fra Information den 3. maj 2008:
og
Jeg er selv i artiklerne citeret for følgende:
It-advokat Martin von Haller Grønbæk, der også er medlem af bestyrelsen for Foreningen af open source leverandører, kalder situationen absurd og mener, at en del af problemet er, at Microsoft sidder for tæt på beslutningerne.
“Det er jo absurd at være i en situation, hvor open source er mindre udbredt i den offentlige sektor end i den private. I alle andre lande er det omvendt, og det er, fordi vi har lagt os i en sele: Hvis du ser på Innovationsrådet og IKT-rådet og alle de råd, regeringen har, så sidder der en Microsoft-chef som formand eller rimelig tæt på beslutningerne. Det er grotesk, at landets it-indkøbspolitik i den grad baseres på en benovelse over, at en stor leverandør har lagt en udviklingsafdeling oppe i Vedbæk,” siger han.
Martin von Haller Grønbæk mener dog, at de idealistiske forestillinger ubetinget hører fortiden til.
“Sådan var det måske, da det startede, men det er det ikke i dag. Det er bestemt ikke kommunisme eller socialisme, det er snarere omvendt. Det er kapitalisme på steroider. For når indgangsbarriererne er meget mindre, betyder det, at der er enormt mange, der kan komme ind på markedet og konkurrere. Så hvis du ikke kan levere varen som leverandør, bliver du bare udraderet, og det er jo kapitalisme eller markedsøkonomi, der vil noget. Alle de her almindelige mennesker, de ejer jo produktionsmidlerne, og det eneste råstof, du har brug for, er det, du tilfører ved din hjernekraft. Det er meget, meget socialt retfærdigt, det er meget demokratisk, og det er fantastisk for værdiskabelsen i samfundet, fordi en masse potentiale bliver realiseret, når folk ikke først skal spare op og spørge om lov, før de kan realisere deres ideer.”
- Det lyder meget positivt?
“Jamen, overordnet set er det fantastisk. Det mener jeg virkelig. Strengt politisk er open source virkelig en gave til demokratiet. Det omkring bevægelsen er selvfølgelig interessant, men det er lidt irrelevant i dag. Når det er stort i Brasilien og Kina og i u-lande, så har det ikke noget at gøre med realisering af alternative samfundsmodeller. Det er fordi, det får markeder og ideer til at blomstre, så landene virkelig udvikler sig. ”
- Hvor stort er det?
“Altså, der sker en masse lige nu, og for mig minder det lidt om internettet i 93-94. Det er et paradigmeskift på mange områder, som kommer til og allerede er ved at influere stort set alle forretningsområder, der har noget med it at gøre, og det er jo stort set alle. Jeg er meget optimistisk, men det er forbandet, at vi i Danmark ikke får det fulde potentiale ud af det. For det er helt sikkert et område, hvor vi kunne være førende.”
Martin von Haller Grønbæk mener, at politikerne burde gøre meget mere for at ændre billedet.
“Det er helt åbenbart, at i stedet for at sende en masse penge ud af landet til en amerikansk virksomhed, så skulle man satse meget mere radikalt på at udvikle en open source-industri herhjemme. Det er absurd, særligt for en liberal regering, at man ikke vil gøre noget, der sikrer mere konkurrence og gør op med det forhold, at vi er utroligt afhængige af en enkelt udenlandsk leverandør. Men ud over Morten Helveg fra de Radikale, er de eneste, der tager det her alvorligt, de to poler i dansk politik, Dansk Folkeparti og Enhedslisten. Enhedslisten gør det, fordi de tror, det er socialisme, og Dansk Folkeparti gør det for at drille regeringen, og fordi en person som Morten Messerschmidt er it-kyndig,” siger han.
I have start reading Janet Hope’s book Biobazaar that basically asks if the open source approach can do for biotechnology what it has done for information technology. So far it is an excellent read!
The book has introduced me to the idea of the Tragedy of the Anticommons as opposed to the more traditional theory of the Tragedy of the Commons.
I am looking forward to thinking about during the next couple of weeks to what extent the theory of the anticommons is plausible and if so whether it can be applied the information technology setting. And as usual there is already a lot of good stuff available on the topic freely accesible at the net (e.g. The Anticommons Problem, theory and practice).
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biotech, anticommons
Here is a very interesting - and scarry - story of the Diebold voting systems possible influence on the fatal result of the Florida votes in the 2000 US presidential election.
I am not sure what to make of these conspiracy theories. But I think that it is pretty obvious that the public needs to have full insight into the workings - and that means the source code - of the electronic voting software and hardward that we here in Denmark eventually will use in our electronic elections.
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electronicvoting, diebold
Here is my own attempt at a web 2.0, semantic web application with the potential of exploitation of the “power of many” and of changing the way that people find information on the Internet.
This is Nodeville
Nodeville visualizes data relations such as bookmarks, social bookmarks, XML, documents etc. Our system will determine the relation if a node has a shared id (globally unique identifier (GUID)) or let you decide the relation.
You can collaborate with people you know and people that shares the same node id (GUID).
We will soon release an API that lets you utilize our system and build some innovative web applications.
Register at http://www.nodeville.com/register. By invitation.
All the technical work is done by my friend - Jacob Friis Saxberg - a talented Danish hacker. My contribution is at the concept level.
BTW, if anyone has 100.000 USD to invest in an extremely risky but potentially very rewarding project, send me an e-mail 
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nodeville, jacobfriissaxberg
I am the proud board member Goldberg & Mor ApS that publishes Goldberg, a magazine on jewish art, culture, religion society. I do not - as far as I know - have any jewish ancestors but a lot of good friends of mine are jews. Among these the founders of Goldberg.
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goldberg
The recent (10 April 2008) survey in the Economist on The New Nomadism is a must-read.
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economist, digitalnomads
Interesting and very operational post by Brad Fitzgerald with Thoughts on the Social Graph.
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bradfitzgerald, socialgraph
One of the things that I don’t like about all these much hyped social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and so on (don’t get me wrong I am a heavy user and addict of these myself) is that they are not really “social” in the sense that their users do not control their personal data and more importantly their “social graphs“.
The use of social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn is entirely based upon private standard form contracts (sometimes referred to as an adhesion contracts or boilerplate contracts). Of course, sometimes a number of users while acting together will be able to “force” the service operator to change its standard terms and conditions such as was the case with Facebook when the community strongly objected to its completely unfair terms of use that gave Facebook almost unlimited use of photos uploaded by users. But such actions remains the exception.
The fact is that merely on the basis of these private contracts the service operators can more or less at will decide to terminate with immediate effect users access to the services. This also applies to access to data through APIs. The terms and conditions covering API will normally also allow the operator to shut down access with in effect no notice.
Yes, it might be that you will be able to get access to your raw data such as contact info of the people that are listed as friends in the social network. But all other information, in particular all the knowledge about your relation with your friends, will be lost. And you will have to rebuild these from scratch when you migrate to another services. This creates an unhelpful user lock-in.
So in my opinion these social networks cannot be considered open in any meaningful sense until users get more control over not only their raw data but also the metadata that make up their social graph.
I don’t know when we will see a succesful social network based on users’ full data control. I am sure that we will see such emerge in the extremely competitive private market for web 2.0 (maybe web 3.0) services. But until then a possible alternative (at least for people related to Copenhagen, Denmark) to Facebook and the likes might be Kbh.dk, a non-profit social network for everybody that live in or care about Copenhagen that will launch in May 2008.
Here is the Kbh.dk development team consisting of good people from Signal Digital, MitKbh og Webcom.
Full disclosure: My law firm Bender von Haller Dragsted is advising Kbh.dk on certain legal aspects of the service.
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kbh.dk, signaldigital, mitkbh, webcom
