Fly by wire, courtesy of BMW

Posted on 13. March, 2006 by Georg Greve

Most modern cars tend to be packed with electronics, including the accelerator and steering wheel, which are often serving as slight indications of the passengers’ will to the onboard computer that really controls the car.

The Register carries an interesting article about the effects of buggy software in today’s world: Apparently a BMW 318 decided to “fly by wire” in the UK and was determined to accelerate fully regardless of what the driver thought about that idea: 

     Nicolle explained: "I was travelling down the motorway and I came to traffic in front of me. I took my foot off the accelerator because it's automatic - but I wasn't slowing down at all." "I hit the brakes. They were braking ok, they were keeping me at about 70mph. So I phoned up the police after I called the AA and they said straight away 'stick your hazard lights on and headlights on - we've got a helicopter en route to you'." Nicolle attempted unsuccessfully to stick the Beemer in neutral, but found the gears jammed. "Then the brakes started burning out - I could see smoke coming from the brakes," he said.

While the “satanic BMW” is a funny read, the idea of sitting in such a machine with both feet on the brakes, accelerating like crazy when the brakes finally died, is anything but funny.

It also serves as a nice example of the real-worldly effects of buggy software. And people really ask me why I want to be able to control this software myself by demanding Free Software?

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IP-Watch Monthly Reporter on Development Agenda and IGF

Posted on 13. March, 2006 by Georg Greve

In case you are interested to follow what is going on at the United Nations: Despite its name, which unfortunately adds to the confusion around this area, the articles by the Intellectual Property Watch (IP-Watch) Team are a very useful resource to follow the proceedings in various fora.

The March issue of their “Monthly Reporter” covers both the WIPO Development Agenda talks and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

IP-Watch also — among others — quotes from my presentation at the IGF and an evaluation of the Development Agenda talks I gave for IP-Watch and quote here for your information: 

     The negotiations have moved forward in substance, but it is not clear that the United States have given up their blockade on issues of analysis and review at WIPO level. The cycle of any organisation includes planning (norm-setting), action (implementation), and analyis (impact review). WIPO is mainly concerned with the first two, but not the last, and thereby ends up with a lot of faith-based legislation about more monopolies always meaning more innovation and more intellectual wealth. The United States only focus on more effective implementation, and do not acknowledge that norm-setting and impact review also require improvement -- otherwise a more effective implementation will only mean more effective implementation of bad policy. This is a necessary effect of insisting to conduct studies only on a national level, which the United States have been doing with fervor. While national studies are necessary and useful, they are not sufficient. Review has to take place on the level of norm-setting and implementation to be effective. That is why it will be necessary for this process to address all three areas of activity if it is to come to the desired outcome of a WIPO that addresses the needs of all of humankind. Whether or not it will do so remains to be seen. 
    


							

	
			

												
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Debian: GNU FDL without invariant sections is Free


			

				Posted on 12. March, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
Ever since it was first released there was a very controversial discussion about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) by some people of the Debian Project. The escalation did not end before some people repeatedly asked to remove all DFSG licensed documentation from Debian, a step that would leave Debian rather poor in documentation and make sure Debian would lose many people to other distributions, e.g. Ubuntu.


One of the central points of criticism are the so-called "invariant sections", sections that cannot be modified by anyone but the original author of a piece of documentation. These sections are defined in the GFDL as: 


    

    The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles
    are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice
    that says that the Document is released under this License. If a
    section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not
    allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero
    Invariant Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant
    Sections then there are none.
    



 in other words: If something is related to the substance of the documentation (e.g. the DNS system), it is not possible to declare anything about that topic (e.g. a part about root servers) invariant. You could, however add a small poem about butterflies and declare it invariant.


 


The point many people are making is that it would be incredibly inconvenient if people were to include political opinions, poems, pictures and other things in technical documentation — especially since all later versions will have to maintain all the invariant sections of all the previous authors.


Indeed this would seem extremely burdensome, and I think it could effectively make documentation useless in some cases. But then: Who determines one has to take a certain downstream version? We could simply choose upstream versions with fewer invariant sections and work on those. Also, noone can forbid an author to do stupid or useless things with their work. But does "useless for me" automatically mean "non-free"?


I don’t think so, and explained this on debian-legal three years ago, where I proposed the following policy in 2003: 


    

     1) The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is a free documentation
     license; recommended for use in Debian without invariant
     sections.

     2a) Documents without invariant sections go into main.

     2b) Documents with invariant sections are to be reviewed by the
     Debian Documentation Project whether the invariant section makes
     the document technically unmaintainable. 
    



  It even leaves room for the assumption that some people might stretch the license by trying to make primary sections invariant — which is not really allowed by the GFDL, but was the fear that many people at Debian had.


 


Unfortunately it seemed that this approach was not to the liking of some people who wanted to see the GFDL excluded entirely, and for a time it seemed like this could be the official Debian position. So it was with some relief that I saw the results of the vote and therefore the new official position of Debian: 


    GFDL-licensed works without unmodifiable sections are free


This is good news for everyone in  Free Software, and will hopefully help to bridge a gap that — in my opinion — should never have been allowed to open.


So I thank all who participated in the vote, which was conducted in the usual Debian manner, which is based on the Condorcet method and sometimes makes the election results somewhat hard to understand at first sight.


In this specific case, I was also confused by the different majorities needed for different options: 


    

    [ ] Choice 1: GFDL-licensed works are unsuitable for main in all cases
    [ ] Choice 2: GFDL-licensed works without unmodifiable sections are free
    [ ] Choice 3: GFDL-licensed works are compatible with the DFSG [needs 3:1]
    [ ] Choice 4: Further discussion
    



 So the option "GFDL is compatible with DFSG" needs a 3:1 majority, while "GFDL is incompatible with DFSG" needs a simple majority. According to the Debian constitution, that is the necessary majority to amend the constitution, but I could not see any request to amend the constitution in the proposal for "GFDL-licensed works are compatible with the DFSG" — it merely seemed the opposite of "GFDL-licensed works are unsuitable for main in all cases".


So at first sight I have to admit it looked a little bit like the equivalent of 


    

    [ ] Choice 1: Bush for president of the United States
    [ ] Choice 2: Kerry for president of the United States [needs 3:1]
    



 to me. Discussing this with Fernanda, she told me the reason for this was the recent change of the Debian Social Contract to classify all "works" as "software",  but that does not seem to make a lot of sense: 


I understood this vote to be precisely about determining whether Debian developers consider the GFDL to be compatible with the DFSG, or whether they think the GFDL is incompatible with the DFSG. Selecting the majorities based on the assumption that GFDL is incompatible with the DFSG — and thus accepting it would be equivalent to changing the constitution — seems odd to me.


But maybe I simply don’t understand the Debian voting system well enough, so if you can point out where I’ve gone wrong in my thinking, that would be appreciated.

							

	
			

									
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Got Freedom?


			

				Posted on 9. March, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
Georg Greve @ FSFE's FOSDEM 2006 Booth with 'Got Freedom?' shirt Those of you who visited FSFE’s Booth at FOSDEM in Brussels already know, but for all the others this might be news: FSFE has a new t-shirt model that was presented at FOSDEM 2006 for the first time.


On the front it has "Plussy", the Fellowship mascot, asking "Got Freedom?" and on the back it carries the URL of the Fellowship site: www.fsfe.org. The picture was taken by Richard Ibbotson, a Free Software advocate from the UK, and he was so kind to allow me to share it with you here. You can see me in front of the Free Software Foundation Europe booth holding one of the new shirts. As you can also see in the background, we took the idea of "raising the flag for Freedom" rather literally.


We have these shirts both for men and women, and if you want one of these really cool shirts, you can send email to order@fsfeurope.org, letting our office know how many shirts you want, of which size, and whether you want the male or female version.


The shirts were produced on "Clean Clothes", which means they were produced with sustainable growing and working methods and come at high quality. We felt that the ethical basis of Free Software matters in the physical as well as digital world, and wanted our shirts to reflect this basic conviction. But as so often, holding convictions comes as a cost, in this case a financial one, which is why the shirts come at 20 EUR each plus shipping depending on where you want them sent.


We hope that many people will agree with us that we should live in the physical world what we preach in the digital — and wear these shirts that raise their question in a dual sense: 


Got Freedom? 

							

	
			

												
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Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition


			

				Posted on 6. March, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
Georg Greve, Pablo Machon, Xavier Reina, Richard Stallman 


Imagine you are sitting with a couple of friends, watching some Monty Python movies and having a fun time, when suddenly the telephone rings. Richard Stallman is on the phone: "I am at the airport now, will you pick me up?"


Blank stares all around.


"Yes, my travel plan said I will sleep at your place tonight."


You obviously knew of nothing, noone told you anything, and you already have myself (Georg Greve) staying at your place for a few days. So you cannot help but feel that the Monty Python movie has not yet ended — or rather, that it has taken over reality.


In any case, this is how Pablo Machon, FSFE’s Spanish coordinator, must have felt last Saturday, as he was driving in his car to fetch Richard Stallman from Madrid airport who was in need of a place to sleep before going on to Zagreb.


As Monty Python taught us: Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition.


 Anyhow, next morning found us sitting in the kitchen with some cheese and bread, which gives a rather nice picture, even though it is slightly fish-lensy.


 But there was not a whole lot of time, because RMS had to fly on to an event in Zagreb, before he’ll participate in the events in Belfast and Torino which are organised partly or entirely by FSFE. So all of us went to the airport together to drop RMS off for his flight and RMS gave another demonstration of his infamous device to use a laptop while standing — a.k.a. neck strap.


In any case, Pablo made an extraordinarily puzzled face when Richard called that night — it was around 22:00 or so. So he now set up his blog and prmosed to write a few words about his feelings once we get back from a round of tapas that is now awaiting us.


 Madrid Airport: Pablo Machon and RMS, using his famous laptop device 


Update: Pablo’s entry is now up: “Unarmed but dangerous“

							

	
			

												
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Update: Fellowship crypto card with PCMCIA and for SSH logins


			

				Posted on 4. March, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
After figuring out how to use the Fellowship crypto card with a PCMCIA reader and then setting up SSH authentication with the card, I had a lot of fun with my card at the United Nations and elsewhere. And so did many other Fellows, it seems.


Andrea Borgia figured out simpler udev rules for his USB SmartCard reader, which I could not yet play with, but I still wanted to share with you for your own experiments: 


    

    -cut- ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="04e6", SYSFS{idProduct}=="e003", GROUP="scard", MODE="0660" ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="04e6", SYSFS{idProduct}=="5115", GROUP="scard", MODE="0660" -cut- 
    



 


Jan Niehusmann caught a bit of debugging code that I accidentally left in the udev script for the PCMCIA smart card reader setup, which might be exploited for symlink attacks — so I updated the package.


And finally Werner Koch, FSFE’s crypto god in residence, fixed a few bugs in GnuPG and stabilised the PCMCIA support, so I created a couple of new packages and put them online: 



 


From the things I have seen so far, there is a lot more coming, too. So keep your eyes open and encourage others to experient with the Fellowship card, as well.

							

	
			

												
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Meeting of FSFE’s Spanish Team in Miraflores de la Sierra


			

				Posted on 4. March, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
Thanks to snow chaos in Munich, I spent most of yesterday on planes and airports to finally get to the beautiful Spanish town Miraflores de la Sierra, home of FSFE’s Spanish associate organisation, the Free Knowledge Foundation (FKF) who organised today’s open meeting of the Spanish Team of the FSFE.


The meeting was organised and hosted by Pablo Machon, FSFE’s Spanish coordinator, and there were around 24 people at the meeting from different parts of Spain, including Jose Marchesi and others of GNU Spain, Xavier Reina and many others.


After a couple of introductory words by Pablo, I explained a little bit about the Free Software Foundations, the global vision and structure, how Free Software Foundation Europe came into being, and what considerations went into its design. The focus was on giving an idea of the overall context of the Spanish Team and its activities, trying to give an idea of how FSFE functions and how to get involved.


Pablo and the rest of the Team then started to identify and classify obstacles to Free Software adoption and spreading in Spain, and discussing the setup of working groups to address them. A brief introduction of the Fellowship then ended the official part of the meeting.


A little more than half of the group that had participated in the meeting then went on to continue discussions over extensive lunch, after which I briefly enjoyed one of my personal favorites in terms of cultural achievements: Siesta.

							

	
			

												
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WSJ’s “Patently Absurd” and how it relates to the Development Agenda


			

				Posted on 1. March, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
Today’s Wall Street Journal Online carries a very interesting article that should also be on page 14 of the printed edition, titled "Patently Absurd". The article shows how the patent system, once set up to further innovation and strengthen economy, now does the opposite — and is becoming a threat to the U.S. economy.


Starting from the patent litigation of NTP against BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM). NTP seeks "$450 million or more in payments to" from RIM, while "NTP offers no product that competes with BlackBerrys. It sells nothing at all."


As Wall Street Journal further writes: 


    

    Patents are supposed to protect intellectual property and spur
    innovation, and once upon a time in America they did. But like
    everything else the legal system touches nowadays, U.S. patent law has
    been hijacked so that it now operates nearly in reverse, deterring
    research and penalizing innovation.
    [...]
    Testifying before Congress last June, Josh Lerner, a Harvard Business
    School professor, summed up the problem: "In the past two decades, the
    U.S. has strengthened patent rights, while weakening the standards for
    granting patents." The result is that the patent system is fast
    becoming a detriment to U.S. competitiveness, not to mention basic
    fairness. So if your BlackBerry ever does go dark, don't curse the
    company. Blame the lawyers.
    



 


WSJ also quotes other cases, involving BCGI and even Microsoft, which has recently fallen victim to the patent monstrosity it helped unleash in the U.S. — and still does outside the United States.


What WSJ fails to recognise is that the basic weakness is not only in the way patents are granted, challenged and enforced, although the U.S. system (like many others) has severe weaknesses in these areas. The fundamental weakness is in overburdening the patent system, by letting it reach outside the areas in which it can be a useful tool by extending it to algorithms, vague ideas, business models and software.


All of these areas do not have hard physical demarkation lines, one of the necessary prerequisites for patents to be useful. All software patents apply to all areas in which software might be used, not just the area for which a certain application was originally concieved. A patent that originally covered game console software suddenly becomes an extortionist’s gold mine because it happens to cover an algorithm that nuclear power plants are critically dependent upon.


Also, software incorporates thousands of incremental ideas, each of which becomes effectively blocked innovatively and economically for decades when patents are granted. Since software patents require nothing but a lawyer to write highly complex descriptions of vague ideas which one might concieve possible one day, even if one has no idea how to implement them at the moment, companies like NTP are spreading patent minefields in our collective future, to be triggered by the first company to build successful business on an innovation that the patent holder was not capable of achieving themselves.


Only strong and effective limits on the patent system can avoid the problems we experience today. That is why we need to push back the limits of patentability to where the patent system can be useful, and revise the working of the system to do an effective job at furthering and promoting innovation.


Unfortunately, the global trend — mainly pushed forward by the United States, often supported by Japan, European Union and Canada — still appears to be geared towards a further extension of the patent system and thus a worsening of the situation. The blockade of the United States to establish a WIPO Evaluation and Review Office (WERO) in the Development Agenda (DA) discussion is a very good indication of this.


The WERO is the single most important part of the DA discussion, and while the original Friends of Development proposal called it "WIPO Evaluation and Research Office", I believe "WIPO Evaluation and Review Office" is more to the point. We need a review of these policies on a global level before mindlessly copying the U.S. system to the rest of the world.


As usual, it is the weakest on whom the price is most taxing and who suffer the most from injust and ineffective systems. If the United States are already feeling a negative economic impact of the system, how do you think the economy of, say, Namibia will be doing with such a system?

							

	
			

												
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FOSDEM and back


			

				Posted on 28. February, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
After two meetings at the United Nations in Geneva I made my way to Brussels to participate in FOSDEM, which took place at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles on Saturday and Sunday.


As usual, FOSDEM was a place of great chaos and great fun. Some things have become long-established FOSDEM tradition by now, like the pre-FOSDEM beer at the Le Roy d’Espagne, or the fact that network connectivity only started to work reliably on Sunday afternoon when FOSDEM was essentially over.


As usual, the Free Software Foundation Europe had its traditional spot with three large tables bearing an impressive amount of t-shirts, including our new “Got Freedom?” Fellowship shirt. No less than 16 people, most of them volunteers, helped to make FSFE’s booth at FOSDEM 2006 a great success.


Some of them at times take days of their vacation and travel thousands of kilometers without seeing any reimbursement for their trips or hotel rooms only to spend two days talking to hundreds of people, explaining FSFE, it’s activities, the Fellowship, as well as selling t-shirts and referring people to the right points of contact for more complicate requests. The importance of this work is often underestimated, and too often does not get the praise it deserves.


Their work too often remains silently expected or accepted, and rarely gets the credit it deserves. Therefore: Thanks to all of you for what are doing, I am your biggest fan! I am truly grateful to be working with and for such a great team.


As for myself, FOSDEM was mainly spent running around and talking to many people, some of which I had not seen in a while, some I never had the chance to meet before, including the great team behind Asterisk, which I had a lot of fun with.


For monday, FSFE had been organising a media round table about software patents for which we had invited various parties in favor and against, including SAP, Microsoft and the BSA. Ultimately, only the BSA came in the person of Francisco Mingorance to argue in favor of software patents. On the other side it was planned to have Pieter Hintjens, president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, one of FSFE’s associate organisations, and myself for the Free Software Foundation Europe.


Unfortunately, I must have had some very bad luck with the famous mussels from Brussels on Sunday night. In any case, Monday morning found me in rather bad shape with all the unpleasant side effects you might imagine now, including some fever.


In the old days, I would have had to do this event regardless, and did so on previous occasions. This time however I was able to profit from the growth of FSFE’s Team: After a call to some of our people on the ground, it was clear that Ciaran O’Riordan could join the discussion in my stead. As our Brussels representative, he is intimately familiar with all the issues around software patents and such discussions are part of his regular work.


I myself made my way to the airport together with Pablo, Maria and Xavier from our Spanish Team. When I finally boarded my flight to Hamburg, I found out how much luggage you can fit into the Canadair jet, because it turns out that Liza Minelli was on the plane with her entire entourage for tonight’s concert in Hamburg.


Fortunately the flight was short and I soon arrived in Hamburg, where I now have to catch up with a mountain of paperwork, laundry and other not exactly trivial things before my next trip on Friday.

							

	
			

												
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WIPO PCDA1: Thursday and Friday, conclusion of the meeting


			

				Posted on 25. February, 2006 by Georg Greve			


					

				
The fourth day of the Provisional Committee on a Development Agenda (PCDA) for WIPO became saw even more excitement than the morning session during which Romania and Brazil got in a struggle:


Chaired again by the Paraguayan Ambassador, the NGO statements on the Friends of Development process became an issue of protest when the chair cut off several groups in mid-sentence: Consumers International (CI) and Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) were interrupted for not having spoken in relation to the proposal of the Friends of Development, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was cut off for time. Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and IP-Justice were able to finish their statements managed to finish their statements significantly below three minutes, but all statements of NGOs were moderated by the chair with comments including multiple use of the term “propaganda.”


Whether or not the statements were proposal-specific is a question that can be argued, and something people could have different opinions about, although that certainly applies to almost all statements made during the entire meeting. Cutting off for time is arguably acceptable and in extreme cases the job of a chair, but public interest NGOs were the only ones such treated. During the previous days, all NGOs were given more leeway; some rights holder and business interest NGOs spoke up to 10 minutes with very general statements. Commenting repeatedly with derogatory terminology on statements made was definitely a first and entirely unacceptable, though.


After expressing my disappointment to the chair during the break, the chair apologised profusely for any offense, and emphasised multiple times how much he appreciated all NGOs and their participation. Apologising is not a common behaviour for someone in such a position, there was no formal need to do so, and many chairs would never have done no such thing, and even if they did, definitely not in such a way. That Paraguayan Ambassador Rigoberto Gauto Vielman did apologise so unusually profusely speaks very highly of him, and I expressed my heartfelt thanks after the meeting.


It also goes to show how much conflict was in the room, and how much the stress to possibly see this meeting end without any result affected everyone in the room. That stress did not seem to subside until the end of the meeting on Friday and will probably continue throughout the next week-long meeting in June.


Whether specific or short enough, all NGO statements deserve to be read, which is why I recommend reading them now: 



The rest of the day was spent finishing the discussion on the Friends of Development proposal, followed by a discussion of the procedure to move forward. The chair suggested putting together all the proposals in one consolidated document which would list the substantial parts in actionable language without a reference to their source, avoiding a regional tagging and to break up the groups.


The exercise on Friday was to put together all the different parts of the proposals under these headings, which apparently proved a difficult exercise, in particular as the Friends of Development had the longest and most substantial proposal, and apparently did not manage the 10:00 deadline for Friday that the chair had set.


After some commotion about supposedly “late additions” by the United States and rights-holding industry groups, it appears the consolidated document is now on its way, however. Some discussions will take place between meetings, although it does not seem likely that the outcome will only become clear when the meeting in June starts.


More Information


With the help of others, including Thirukumaran Balasubramaniam and Teresa Hackett, Gwen Hinze of the EFF has been tackling the tough and not very glorious job of documenting the proceedings, which she cannot be thanked enough for. You can find the transcripts for day one, day two and the conclusions, more will follow soon. All transcripts are published as public domain works. 


If you wish a more journalistically consolidated form, the IP-Watch has very interesting articles up about Thursday and Friday.


And of course I recommend taking a look at Thiru’s blog, as well as the WIPO reports of Karsten.

							

	
			

												
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