The Web, metalanguage

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My understanding of the Web is apparently not shared by everyone. Considering discussions going on about, the Web as a public resource, or the promotion of an “open” Web; I decided to give my point of view on this, and to show what issues are at stake here. So first, here is my definition,

The World Wide Web, or what we refer to as “the Web,” is all that uses a common metalanguage: the Web metalanguage.

  • This metalanguage is like every language. Nobody owns it, everyone can speak it and understand it.
  • Like every language, it has its rules: grammar and orthography. For the Web, this rules are what we call the web standards, formalized by the W3C. The W3C is like L’Académie Française for the French language.
  • However, grammar and orthography allow creativity, flexibility. You can make of words whatever you want, you can transform them, use them for other purposes, invent them. Some of your inventions will become mainstream, some will be forgotten… It’s how the language evolves over time; just like the Web has moved from a hypertext system to a hypermedia system with pictures and soon videos.

In order to read this language, all you need is a Web browser. The Web browser is just here to give an “easy version” for most people. That’s where it becomes important to respect standards. However, today, a lot of Web browsers aren’t just Web browsers.

The Web, as a metalanguage, allows hypermedia publications and for that, it uses a set of transport protocols: http being the main one currently. However, all that uses this transport protocol is not necessarily the Web. There are some things parasitizing these protocols and parasitizing the Web.

This things are clearly something else than the Web. It is software, using other things than the metalanguage. The question whether it is Free Software or proprietary software doesn’t change the fact that it’s not the Web.

When you have a Flash video embedded in a website, it is something clearly different. It’s just a proprietary applications delivering content to you through the same Internet protocols that the Web uses. And you can only read it if you decide to install a proprietary program – or a plug-in in addition to your Web browser.

The difference between proprietary and Free Software here, is that while proprietary software doesn’t have any good impact on the Web, Free Software can improve the Web because it is also something you can read, study, share and improve. However, this should not be recognized as part of the Web until it becomes a web standard.

So what’s important is to make sure that this language is good enough to prevent anyone from having to use other programs in order to communicate on the Internet.

Distinctions to make

For the reasons above, I think we should avoid some words such as “open.” To me, there’s no such thing as an “open” Web. Because there is no such thing as a “closed” Web. The Web is this hypermedia system that uses a common language. A language is neither closed nor open! There isn’t such distinction as a “binary” language and a “source” language. There is just language.

However, there is an important distinction to make. If you take into account my definition, facebook is a part of the Web just like my blog is a part of the Web. Some people however would refer to facebook as a closed Web. Here, the distinction is about public and private, not about open and closed.

That’s why I think we are mistaken when we think of the “open” Web or “the Web as a public resource.”

The Web as a metalanguage is a common good, but the World Wide Web, all these hypermedia publications are not a public resource.

Bye bye Skype, here comes XMPP!

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So far, we already had excellent reasons to refuse using Skype. Indeed, this protocol is closed, but most of all it doesn’t allow any interoperability, which is the height for a communication protocol! Imagine you could make phone calls only to people subscribed to the same telephone operator.

We already had an excellent protocol for instant messaging: an open standard, perfect to achieve interoperability. Its name is xmpp, the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. On top, a lot of services are already used by millions of people: Jabber, on which is based Google Talk (and soon Facebook Chat) among many others, but also other interesting things such as Juick.com, a social network completely based on the xmpp protocol.

But now, besides that, we also have a technical reason to say bye bye to Skype 🙂

Indeed, a lot of people were still making use of Skype because it was more convenient to have a video-conversation. It worked better and often between different operating systems. It was the only way for people using Gnu/Linux to have a video-conversation with people using Microsoft Windows: every other software was lacking stability and was often randomly working.

But a lot of effort have been put into improving this. And following the specification of Jingle, came the implementation of multimedia sessions. This implementation took time. But now, it’s getting to the end.

We can now have video-conversations using xmpp and it works just great! The main thing is that it is now possible with Microsoft Windows users! Using Empathy, you can now call people using the Gmail Web interface, see their face and hear their voice.

There aren’t any technical barriers left toward free video-conversation anymore!

Bye bye Skype, Welcome XMPP!

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Does Microsoft care about their customers’ security?

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A few days before the launching of Microsoft’s last operating system, FSFE wondered about users’ security since an important vulnerability has been silently ignored. I then asked myself the question, in what way Free Software is different regarding security?

It appears that our allegations were true and should have been taken seriously. As an article in Computerworld reports, Microsoft finally issued a security advisory about that high-risk vulnerability three days ago. The problem is still not fixed though.

What’s important there is that this vulnerability already triggered a warning (en) by the BSI agency more than a month ago! Despite the consequences, Microsoft meanwhile decided not to tell its customers in order to avoid bad publicity around the launching of Windows7.

Such despise towards their customers’ security has led me to ask: Does Microsoft care about their customers’ security less than they care about their good image? This experience proves the answer is yes. Microsoft has made the choice to keep their customers in ignorance and in the same time has put their systems at risk. This is yet another perfect illustration that proprietary software hijacks users: Microsoft is ready to sacrifice your security for their commercial purposes.

Free Software, Free Society: Of Democracy and Hacking

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When explaining why Free Software is important, one question that often comes up is: “do I really need the software freedom?”

The utility of software freedom is indeed not obvious for all. Not everyone can understand the source code of a program, and less modify it. It appears that the capacity to enjoy the four freedoms is only valuable to hackers and programmers. It’s hard to convince people to give up on proprietary software only for freedom’s sake, as long as they don’t understand the utility of that freedom.

It’s important to think of this issue not only as a singular commitment to freedom, but more as an issue of systems.

First, the fact that one cannot enjoy the freedom of something does not mean he does not enjoy its effects. The most obvious analogy here, are political systems. The Constitution is to sovereignty what a Free Software licence is to copyright. The Constitution that defines our political system gives to every citizen freedoms and rights, such as the right to run for an election.

Anyone can run for an election, but it does not mean that everyone will. Because not everyone has the capacity or the will to become a politician. This being said, would you say that Democracy does not matter because you do not want to be in politics? I guess most people would not say that.

It’s the same thing with Free Software. Anyone can use, share, study and improve the program. But the fact that you will not do that, does not mean that it’s not important to you. It’s important for the whole system. And the more important the system becomes, the more valuable is that freedom.

So unless you assume that software is not important, Software freedom is not important. But then, I suggest you shut down your computer and stop reading, take a flight and spend the rest of your days on a desert island.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the utility of software freedom. As more and more software is used in our society for important matters, more and more people should be able to understand the software. Otherwise complete control is given to others over yourself. Others will shape the system for you in order to get more control and more weight in the system.

That is why we need democratization of hacking. This will come naturally if Free Software is broadly used, because when one has the capacity to explore something, one will explore it, by curiosity at least. Just as Printing gave people the will to be able to read and then to write, computing will give people the will to be able to read and then to write. This is a long process of course. But this can be a far longer process if we use proprietary software: software you can’t read, nor modify, nor share.

Do we want a society of digital illiterates or a Free Society?