[WSIS CS-Plenary] General Applicability of Open Source Methods

[mjr at dsl.pipex.com]

Taran Rampersad wrote:
> MJ Ray wrote:
> >Lest anyone forget, neither Wikipedia nor the IETF RFCs are open
> >source in the full sense yet.
> The Wikipedia is, actually, Open Source as MediaWiki is Open Source:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Software_and_hardware

MediaWiki is. Wikipedia (the stuff that is edited by MediaWiki) is not.

> The Wikipedia content is Free Content:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
> The definition of Free Content, while presently under dispute at the
> Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content ), is definitively
> different from 'Open Source' or 'Free Software' in that Free Software
> is... software.

Wikipedia's content is just binary digits in a computer somewhere.
That is: Wikipedia's content is software. "Free Content" there
attempts to avoid the basic meaning of free software and the
freedoms to use, adapt, redistribute and distribute modifications.
It does that with weasel words like "significantly" and so on.

> While some may hold their heads and talk about semantics at this point,
> it is important to note that the words 'Open' and 'Free' are only
> descriptors. They mean nothing by themselves, and are subjective in
> their use - in any language. [...]

Freedom and openness are universal. These concepts can apply to
anything and everything. The questions are which freedoms we are
interested in and what we want to be open. Really, the ones which
matter to me are the ones which I've needed to help use and fix.

> people get confused and expect things to work within the confines of a
> different subject ('Source' or 'Software') when dealing with some things
> that are different ('Standards' and 'Content'). [...]

In the forms that I normally get them, source, standards and
content all are just software, streams of bits. It's about as
useful to have permission to edit all of the video stream as
it is to edit all of a program. Sometimes, for other forms
of the content (say a still print), other things matter.

> > Wikipedia has restrictions on
> >what devices you can distribute it to (amongst other things)
> Please point me at where the Wikipedia license takes this stance.

There are devices where all media on them have DRM.

> >and the IETF standards (which drive the Internet) are mostly not
> >modifiable for purposes outside the IETF processes. I remain
> >hopeful that both will be repaired before it's a problem.
> I hope you bring this up with the IETF, because I don't know any
> specific examples of which you could be speaking. Could you expand on this?

Other debian developers are doing this, I believe. I will leave
it to them for now.

-- 
MJ Ray (slef), K.Lynn, England, email via http://mjr.towers.org.uk/