Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
http://code.google.com/oss.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html Not all of it, of course. J On 27/10/2007, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 09:27 +0100 25/10/07, Frank Wales wrote: How about Google? It's not directly open-source, but it's built on top of Linux, which is. Frank, I can't see Google releasing their source code, or their search algorithms... Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Jason Cartwright Web Specialist, EMEA Marketing [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44(0)2070313161
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
Gordon Joly wrote: How about Google? It's not directly open-source, but it's built on top of Linux, which is. I can't see Google releasing their source code, or their search algorithms... My point was that Linux is widely used as an enabling technology in things that are ostensibly more popular than it; other people made the point better by referring to set-top boxes such as TiVo. -- Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
At 09:27 +0100 25/10/07, Frank Wales wrote: How about Google? It's not directly open-source, but it's built on top of Linux, which is. Frank, I can't see Google releasing their source code, or their search algorithms... Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
Media Wiki (it's not just for Wikipedia) I know. I run at least four wikis using Mediawiki Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On 27/10/2007, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Media Wiki (it's not just for Wikipedia) I know. I run at least four wikis using Mediawiki Gordo Out of interest, why did you choose MediaWiki out of all the Wiki engines out there? Recently I've been looking at Wiki technology, as an easy way to organise make notes for some of my creative writing. From the options offered me by WikiMatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) DocuWiki (http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki) seemed most attractive (lightweight, outputs standards compliant xhtml, and uses flat-file storage so it's fast and I don't need yet another MySQL database). Vijay.
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. regards Jonathan Chetwynd Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet in many cases developers: have little or no understanding of a 'public' audience. actively refrain from user testing. These two points can be summarised as open-source developers don't care about usability. And this demonstrably isn't true. Different tools are designed for different audiences; emacs, for example, is intended to be usable by developers - and it is. Similarly, Ubuntu, GNOME and other systems that _are_ intended for regular end-users have clearly seen a great deal of usability testing. encourage feature creep Do you have any evidence that you can port to to demonstrate this? design to impress their peers You say this as if this is a bad thing! in some sense consumerism at least gives the end user some authority. To a degree, but it heavily depends on there being a free market with a number of competing alternatives. I'm not an economist, but it appears that, in computing, free markets generally cannot form if the interfaces used for data interchange are closed and/or proprietary; in such markets, one provider will eventually tend to dominate all of the others. For example: Operating systems: MS Windows tends to dominate (because nothing else can run Windows applications, as the ABIs/APIs are myriad and not fully documented); Office productivity suites: MS Office tends to dominate (because nothing else can read/write the proprietary file formats that Office uses.) To contrast: Web browsers: There are many web-browsers: Seamonkey, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx etc. (because the interfaces that such applications must support are well-documented.) Web servers: lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, IIS etc. (because the interfaces that such servers must support are well-documented.) .. and so forth. If there is a free market, then the consumer has influence. Note that in the case of the BBC iPlayer and other similar services from other broadcasters, the interfaces are not fully documented - and this is considered a feature! as you may know, the web specifications created by W3C are far more potent than the mere iplayer. I don't think I understand - how (and why?) are you comparing the W3C interface specifications and guidelines, which exist to ensure interoperability between different implementations, and the BBC's iPlayer, which is just one application? The issues are similar though there are more companies and corporations engaged in the project Than which project? The W3C? There have certainly been many more companies and corporations involved in the W3C specification development process than that of the iPlayer! Cheers, David -- David McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Computing, Imperial College, London - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 08:34:05AM +0100, ~:'' wrote: David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... You seem very confused. Easy to use and aimed at unsophisticated end-users are not synonyms. As far as easy to use I would include many open-source tools - from programming libraries, to languages, to tools, to editors, to operating systems. They meet the needs of their intended users and are no more difficult to use than their commercial counterparts where they exist. Admittedly some of them build on a different paradigm to that which some users who have grown up on Windows are used to but that is yet another issue. As for end-user tools we have Firefox and OpenOffice leading the way. Many people blog on an open-source blogging engine. I know many people from a non-technical background who use Audacity and Scribus. Of course none of these has the market share of the major player that has been established for 15 years or so. However they do have significant market share in their application space which indicates that ease-of-use to end-users isn't that much of an issue. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
~:'' wrote: David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. Jonathon are you just trolling or are you serious? Apache? Linux? Ant? OpenOffice? Mozilla/Firefox? These OS applications are popular *because* of their user interfaces (although for some the UI is an API or config file). David - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
~:'' ありがとうございました。 wrote: where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... By 'mainstream', do you mean 'commonplace among computer users' or 'commonplace among the general public'? Also, are you conceding that Ubuntu and Gnome are easy to use? the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. I'm confused about what you mean by 'open source project', since you cite Wikipedia as one and imply that Ubuntu Linux is another. Are we talking about software, or data, or services, or platforms, or what? If Wikipedia is an example, then I think a reasonable case can be made that the Internet is the world's biggest open source project, and it's pretty mainstream. Plus, web browsers are pretty easy to use, especially the open source ones. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. If Wikipedia doesn't count as a tool, how do you define 'tool'? How about Google? It's not directly open-source, but it's built on top of Linux, which is. Does such an enabling technology that's in widespread use behind the scenes not count as 'popular' or 'mainstream' when it's the bedrock of things that are? My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. Which 'process' are you talking about? Are you suggesting that software is too important to be left to programmers? -- Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
For a given value of popular of course. There are many open source projects which are extremely popular in their own contexts. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 8:34 AM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. regards Jonathan Chetwynd Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet in many cases developers: have little or no understanding of a 'public' audience. actively refrain from user testing. These two points can be summarised as open-source developers don't care about usability. And this demonstrably isn't true. Different tools are designed for different audiences; emacs, for example, is intended to be usable by developers - and it is. Similarly, Ubuntu, GNOME and other systems that _are_ intended for regular end-users have clearly seen a great deal of usability testing. encourage feature creep Do you have any evidence that you can port to to demonstrate this? design to impress their peers You say this as if this is a bad thing! in some sense consumerism at least gives the end user some authority. To a degree, but it heavily depends on there being a free market with a number of competing alternatives. I'm not an economist, but it appears that, in computing, free markets generally cannot form if the interfaces used for data interchange are closed and/or proprietary; in such markets, one provider will eventually tend to dominate all of the others. For example: Operating systems: MS Windows tends to dominate (because nothing else can run Windows applications, as the ABIs/APIs are myriad and not fully documented); Office productivity suites: MS Office tends to dominate (because nothing else can read/write the proprietary file formats that Office uses.) To contrast: Web browsers: There are many web-browsers: Seamonkey, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx etc. (because the interfaces that such applications must support are well-documented.) Web servers: lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, IIS etc. (because the interfaces that such servers must support are well-documented.) .. and so forth. If there is a free market, then the consumer has influence. Note that in the case of the BBC iPlayer and other similar services from other broadcasters, the interfaces are not fully documented - and this is considered a feature! as you may know, the web specifications created by W3C are far more potent than the mere iplayer. I don't think I understand - how (and why?) are you comparing the W3C interface specifications and guidelines, which exist to ensure interoperability between different implementations, and the BBC's iPlayer, which is just one application? The issues are similar though there are more companies and corporations engaged in the project Than which project? The W3C? There have certainly been many more companies and corporations involved in the W3C specification development process than that of the iPlayer! Cheers, David -- David McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Computing, Imperial College, London - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ * To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go to http://www.hull.ac.uk/legal/email_disclaimer.html *
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
~:'' wrote: where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. First, there are thousands of open source projects that are popular. Here are a few that i use: * Apache web server. Runs the majority of web site. * MySQL - Database * PHP - Web site scripting language * Firefox Thunderbird * VLC Media Player - Media player * Filezilla - FTP program * Many mail servers are opensource, ie Postfix, Sendmail * ClamAV - Free antivirus scanner * Spamassassin - Spam filter used by many ISPs * Gimp - Popular image editor * Open Office * Debian Ubuntu Linux * SugarCRM - Customer Relationship Management * Wordpress - Blogging * MediaWiki - The application behind wikipedia * Horde - Webmail application Currently the majority of open source software is mainly used by technical users, however with Ubuntu maturing into a great operating system this is likely to change with people becoming frustrated with the Microsoft experience and looking for an alternative. My concern is that because the process does not include users, it is difficult for their needs to be met. You can always be involved in the development process of any of these programs. They are always looking for testers and if you get involved on the suitable mailing list most developers are open to suggestions for improvements. I would argue that open source software easily meets users needs, sometimes better then equivalent commercial software. This is because open source software doesn't have to follow the demands of a company and are usual started as there is no other software then meets the needs of the developers. Regards Adam - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On 25/10/2007, ~:'' ありがとうございました。 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David, the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. NB wikipedia is not an application or tool. That would explain the unpopularity of a LAMP development envionment then /sarcasm Aside from Linux Apache MySQL PHP I can think of Firefox (over 20% of market share IIRC) Wordpress (and other blogging software) PHPbb (most online forums I've seen use this) Media Wiki (it's not just for Wikipedia) and possibly Open Office (I like it, but am not sure about it's popularity) That's just in the last 20 seconds, I'm sure people can come up with others.
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On Thursday 25 October 2007 08:34, ~:'' ありがとうございました。 wrote: the most significant issue is that no open source project outside possibly wikipedia is truly popular. I'd hardly say that the internet, email, web, DNS etc are hardly not mainstream and not popular. It's next to impossible to use the internet and NOT use open source. Sendmail (email) is older either of the terms of free software or open source, and has always been open source (was termed common sense back then). The BSD TCP/IP stack likewise has been around for a very long time and a core part of Windows for a long time. Mac OS X is underpinned by open source, and if you removed the open source elements you'd be left with a pretty shell. Sendmail, along with the original TCP/IP stack set the tone for a long time. The term free software was actually much later to the party (which started sooner) than people generally realise. (Not to do it down, but pointing out that this all started from pragmatics not politics) The Net Gear routers given away for free by Sky AOL (among others) are all linux based (meaning a very large chunk of the UK actually has linux in their home and doesn't realise it). The web itself is largely powered by open source webservers with apache the most notable, but a significantly chunk of the tail after that is also open source. This mailing list you are using to talk to people with is Majordomo which is open source, which is written in perl, which is also open source. Facebook, which has more people on its systems than live in many countries (it's into the top 40 last time I looked), is an application that again depends upon open source in many different layers. (There's more people in the UK on facebook than live in Ireland) Is facebook itself open source? No. Could it exist without open source? Doubtful. However open source becomes the commons upon which the next layer of proprietary apps get written: (cf google docs, yahoo maps, facebook, etc). To suggest that Wikipedia is the only popular open source project misses just how widespread and widely used open source is, because you're missing the fact that without open source, we simply would not have the world we live in today. I'd also contest whether Linux friends aren't mainstream when I see in WH Smiths *Computer Active* doing a Linux special. (I'd expect a number of other magazines to do that, but not Computer Active.) This is aside from things like the OLPC project distributing soon millions of laptops (entirely OSS based) to developing countries[1] and companies like Asus developing systems like the EEE PC which will be distributed in the UK by RM Machines (to schools (probably paid for by tesco...) ) among others which boasts it's Linux based. (and looks pretty cool) [1] What's the PC term for this these days? :-) I could go on, but at the end of the day, a large amount of infrastructure these days that people use (be it in Flickr, google, Mac OS X, etc) is based in open source. Remove it, and you're left largely with templates, data without databases, pretty skins and logic which doesn't control. Also, Firefox is significantly more popular with the average user than you might expect. But all that said, your mail client adds the following header: * Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) So it looks like you're using the Free BSD derivative Mac OS X. Probably the most popular incarnation of FreeBSD - with the open source base here: * http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html But then, Macs aren't popular are they ? ;-) Ever-so-slightly-teasingly-devils-advocately-ly, :-) Michael. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
Ian, the unfortunate fact is that open source is not above or beyond this type of controversy. ie who funds the developers? who are they developing for? in many cases developers: have little or no understanding of a 'public' audience. actively refrain from user testing. encourage feature creep design to impress their peers the list goes on, in some sense consumerism at least gives the end user some authority. as you may know, the web specifications created by W3C are far more potent than the mere iplayer. The issues are similar though there are more companies and corporations engaged in the project regards Jonathan Chetwynd Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet On 24 Oct 2007, at 17:23, Ian Forrester wrote: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071021231933899 Maybe of interest? Mark Taylor: My first personal, emotional reaction was frankly, I was stunned. And it's back to this 'Auntie' analogy. As I said before, the perception of the BBC from childhood right up to adulthood is 'Everybody's Auntie'. And when you suddenly find your favorite Auntie who has been a part of your life and has always told the truth, when you suddenly find out that she's telling lies, conning money out of people -- these are all topical issues in the UK press at the moment -- and then finally, if you imagine if you walked into a room and found your Auntie performing favors shall we say (laughter) with shady characters who are constantly in trouble with the law, you'd feel a little bit -- kind of a bit -- what's going on here? When we started examining the issue and had a look into what was actually going on with the iPlayer project, we found that actually there's a smoking gun leading straight to Microsoft. Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [] private; [] ask first; [x] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage BC5 C3, Media Village, 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TP email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] work: +44 (0)2080083965 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/ mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail- archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
Quick aside: you appear to have a very interesting UTF-8-encoded From name string: From: =?UTF-8?B?In46Jycg44GC44KK44GM44Go44GG44GU44GW44GE44G+44GX44Gf?= =?UTF-8?B?44CCIg==?= [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... which actually expands to (what appear to be) a number of interesting chinese glyphs! This may not be what you intended.. ~:'' ありがとうございました。 wrote: the unfortunate fact is that open source is not above or beyond this type of controversy. ie who funds the developers? who are they developing for? Actually, at least in major open-source projects such as the Linux kernel, nobody cares. In such projects, you will often have many developers paid and working for the interests of various companies. Not only is this not a bad thing, however, it's actually very good as it results in a larger number of (presumably effective) developers working on developing the code-base full-time. The open-source development process is, at its core, evolutionary. Each developer works to build new revisions of a given project. If the new version is 'fitter' than the original, then those changes will be adopted. If the new version is inferior, it won't. In such a system, the more competent developers you have, the better. It doesn't matter that they're all trying to apply evolution pressures in different directions; the project as a whole will still benefit. in many cases developers: have little or no understanding of a 'public' audience. actively refrain from user testing. These two points can be summarised as open-source developers don't care about usability. And this demonstrably isn't true. Different tools are designed for different audiences; emacs, for example, is intended to be usable by developers - and it is. Similarly, Ubuntu, GNOME and other systems that _are_ intended for regular end-users have clearly seen a great deal of usability testing. encourage feature creep Do you have any evidence that you can port to to demonstrate this? design to impress their peers You say this as if this is a bad thing! in some sense consumerism at least gives the end user some authority. To a degree, but it heavily depends on there being a free market with a number of competing alternatives. I'm not an economist, but it appears that, in computing, free markets generally cannot form if the interfaces used for data interchange are closed and/or proprietary; in such markets, one provider will eventually tend to dominate all of the others. For example: Operating systems: MS Windows tends to dominate (because nothing else can run Windows applications, as the ABIs/APIs are myriad and not fully documented); Office productivity suites: MS Office tends to dominate (because nothing else can read/write the proprietary file formats that Office uses.) To contrast: Web browsers: There are many web-browsers: Seamonkey, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx etc. (because the interfaces that such applications must support are well-documented.) Web servers: lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, IIS etc. (because the interfaces that such servers must support are well-documented.) .. and so forth. If there is a free market, then the consumer has influence. Note that in the case of the BBC iPlayer and other similar services from other broadcasters, the interfaces are not fully documented - and this is considered a feature! as you may know, the web specifications created by W3C are far more potent than the mere iplayer. I don't think I understand - how (and why?) are you comparing the W3C interface specifications and guidelines, which exist to ensure interoperability between different implementations, and the BBC's iPlayer, which is just one application? The issues are similar though there are more companies and corporations engaged in the project Than which project? The W3C? There have certainly been many more companies and corporations involved in the W3C specification development process than that of the iPlayer! Cheers, David -- David McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Computing, Imperial College, London signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
