Darwin's Theories - Open Source Software category

iPhone catching up to OpenMoko

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:21:00 GMT

People who know I'm involved with Openmoko ask me how the new iPhone will affect the Openmoko project. But as we've seen, the reverse is already happening. Openmoko pioneered having a completely-accessible GPS in the GTA01, and have maintained this in the GTA02 FreeRunner. Apple have seen the light and have included some kind of GPS in the iPhone 2 (I'm assuming, subject to counter-information, that when you you paying a ~~carrier tax~~ access fee for using it, as you do with most carrier-beholden smart phones such as the RIM Blackberry). But Openmoko remains a customer-beholden smart phone, one of the very few.

In fact, there really is little point in comparing the phones directly. The most obvious difference is price: the iPhone costs ($199 plus 24 months of contracted tenure at maybe $50), for a minimum TCO of about $1400, whereas the FreeRunner costs about $299 with no contract so you can use it on any of the very-economical pay-as-go plans that you have to look around for, say $10/month for a light user, for a total TCO of $540; so the TCO for this user would be about 3:1 in favor of Openmoko :-) (late note: my iPhone guesses are low; see this Yahoo Blog analysis for better figures). But that is not why people buy the iPhone or the Openmoko. People buy the iPhone for the glitz, for being cool, for being able to show off.

No, really. A week after the iPhone was released in the US and people were smuggling them into Canada, I was buying a coffee at a Starbucks in Toronto. Some dork dressed up as a Hollywood director left his shiny new iPhone right in the way where he knew anybody who wanted to get at the cream dispenser would either risk splattering on the iPhone, or have to move it. I very gently picked it up with the respect due such a device and moved it out of the way, whereupon he tried to launch into a tirade about how much he'd (over)paid for it. I wasn't in the mood to discuss it so I just said "if it's that valuable, keep it closer to you" and left (Seriously, I do have friends with iPhones, and they are reasonable people...).

Yes, really, the iPhone is sleek, and sexy. It is also almost completely a closed environment. People keep trying to open it up, because that's a challenge. People buy Openmoko not because it is sleek (the current hardware is, but the current software is not, yet; far from it) but because it is open. Open hardware. Open software. An open process company. The iPhone is a thing to give joy those who don't care how a thing works and have no care that they have paid $1400 to surrender control of "their" device to Apple and to the carrier. The Openmoko Freerunner is a thing to give joy to those who love to tinker, who want to be able to (even if they never get around to) write their own applications in any of half a dozen programming languages. To make it do whatever they want, without regard for what the hardware supplier or the carrier wants. Openmoko.com encourages you do go "higher up and further in". Apple tries to prevent you. And that, I think, makes all the difference.

Seam Leaves Home (on good terms)

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:58:00 GMT

In addition to cranking out a new stable release (2.0.1.GA) and a new early access release (2.1.0.A1), The JBoss Seam framework has been renamed to "The Seam Framework" and has a new website, http://www.seamframework.org/. This represents a "growing up" of sorts, similar to e.g., Jakarta Tomcat becoming Apache Tomcat, and differentiates Seam from the many smaller projects that are also part of JBoss - see the new diagram at http://labs.jboss.org/projects/, and note that Seam is right there at the top of the web tier. While still funded by RedHat/JBoss, with this new domain Seam is obviously being positioned to compete head-on with similarly-named project The Spring Framework.

As part of "moving out", Seam has been given a new logo, see http://www.seamframework.org/Community/GetASeamIcon. This is used in their new web site, which is of course running on Seam and available as part of the downloads (http://www.seamframework.org/Download). Speaking of downloads, if you're using a version older than 2.0.1.GA, now would be a good time to download and upgrade.

Also, there is a new book about Seam, Seam In Action (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933988401), which you can now buy in Early Access (http://www.manning.com/dallen/) - you get EA PDF's now and the final version when it's released, and optionally a paper copy then too.

Finally, JBoss Tools - the all-encompassing Eclipse tools for developing Seam and Hibernate projects - has been upgraded to 2.0.1.GA. You might want to download this as well.

Bit o' good news, The real 'An Enemy of the State', etc.

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:45:00 GMT

In the U.S. Congress, the House Democrats finally stood up to be counted, voting through their own bill which does not provide a unilateral amnesty for all the law-breaking that went on after 2001-09-11 by the big telecoms violating everybody's privacy. Although this bill is rather unlikely to get signed into law, it's a big baby step forward for a Democratic majority that was voted in, in large measure, to oppose Bush's crushing of the constitution.

The title "An Enemy of the State" is most often associated with a popular 1998 Will Smith movie. But it was used several times before that. The most relevant one for me is Justin Raimondo's 1992 biography of Murray Rothbard, entitled of course An Enemy of the State. Lew Rockwell has finally done this book justice with a detailed review, entitled "Still the State's Greatest Living Enemy".

I also note that Benedict D. LaRosa has written a gun control article that's worth reading. Written shortly after the Virginia Tech murders, this article lays the blame squarely on the University Administration and the state government, but brings in other American examples. It could be read in conjunction with this UK information (UK government lied about gun crime to try to make the populace think that their draconian gun control was "working"). And this Canadian item that shows gun homicides actually on the decline, which also points out that criminals don't obey gun laws any more than any other - they are criminals, after all.

Speaking of lies, this article notes that the US Government was using prohibited weapons in Iraq and lying about it. But that should surprise nobody who's got an IQ greater than that of a wheat germ.

To end on a lighter note, here's a piece entitled The REAL Reason We Use Linux, which applies just as much to BSD.

RepRap and The End of Want

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:40:00 GMT

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series, one of the most pervasive inventions was the "replicator", a device that could magically create any object, including a mug filled with "Earl Grey Tea, hot". This device ended poverty on planet Earth and on all planets that were allowed access to "Federation" technology. Need food? Just ask for what you want. The replicator has post-WiMax access to vast databases with the molecular formulae for every known food and drink, as well as every known object. It also apparently ended economics and economies, since the study of economics has as its deepest basis, its most secret heart of hearts, one person's need voluntarily to trade with another for something of value. If one can replicate anything one needs, why trade?

We are a years (if not centuries) away from being able to create such a replicator. But the first steps are being taken, and some of them with the same communal attitude that pervades ST:TNG's discussions of economics. RepRap is a project that is building simple "3D printer" replicators today. The project's web site has a subtitle of "Wealth without money..." These replicators can make small objects by a process known as fused deposition modelling (FDM for short). Commercial FDM machines cost around $30,000; the RepRap "Darwin" would cost about 1% of that, around $300-500 depending on how much you buy and how much you build.

The brainchild of Adrian Bowyer of the University of Bath in the UK, the RepRap project is not only building simple replicators, but giving away all the technology to make them, and even encouraging everybody who builds one to build the key parts for two more and pass them on. All the plans are freely downloadable, so you could build one without spending a nickle with the project. Though you'll find that their buying-in-bulk policy will save you money over buying some of the components directly. All the software, similarly, is freely downloadable from SourceForge. Written in Java so that it can run on almost any computer, the main driver software is covered by the GNU Public License which allows anyone to use it freely, and prevents it, or software based on it, from being re-sold in proprietary form. A far cry from patenting the ideas and charging license fees. Although, given today's idiotic patent system, I have encouraged Bowyer to patent any key innovations and either dedidate them to the public domain or assign them to a free-patent trust. But in fact the original idea for the replicator is neither from Bowyen nor from TNG. As the RepRap web site honestly points out, the general idea seems to have been invented by famed computer science pioneer John Van Neumann, under the name "Universal Constructor". I like "replicator" better.

To be really useful, this project needs a way of creating the computer files that describe objects. There are many CAD (Computer Aided Drawing) programs around that can be used, but this is time-consuming. What if you break a cup and want to replicate one to keep a set (relatively) intact? What you want for that is a "3D Scanner." Such things exist, at around the cost of a good computer server; see this 3D Scanner advertised at US$2,500 (web site is dysfunctional without some proprietary plugin). Presumably, the cost of these will come down, or mayhap some worthy RepRapper will publish a low-cost design for one that can be built on your existing RepRap replicator.

There are, of course, many other projects going down similar paths to openness. Open Source has been around for thirty years (long before Stallman). Open Hardware is clearly similar to early Ham Radio and do-it-yourself computers (there was even a home-made PBX). Asterisk is open-source software that lets you more easily turn a PC into a PBX. The OpenMoko cell phone project which I have written about here and here) has always made its software available under the GPL, and recently released the CAD files for all the mechanical (e.g., case and mounting) components of their cell phones.

Keep in mind, though, that today's replicator is to the ST:TNG replicator as, say, Leonardo da Vinci's glider is to the Space Shuttle. While TNG's replicator works at the molecular level, today's RepRap is purely an electro-mechanical "3D printer", recognizably a direct descendant of the "numerical-controlled machine tool" works of the 1960's and the inkjet printers of the 1980's. The first version (named after me, or more likely, one of my more famous distant relatives) can only make things out of thermal plastic. And a given object is likely to be all the same color. It cannot even deposit metal, thus, it cannot make circuit boards, and cannot be called "self-replicating", one test of Von Newumann's "Universal Constructor" (another key test is self-assembly). In short, RepRap could make the tea-cup (in about a quarter hour), but not the tea. In fact, it has made shot glasses that hold whiskey, though I haven't even started building a RepRap yet, so I don't know if the particular plastic used imparts any taste to the beverage. That said, it has made many of its own parts. And never forget that the US Space Shuttle is "recognizably a direct descendant" of da Vinci's glider. Nor, that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Ian's Top Ten Today, #1

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:51:00 GMT

Here are some links that I found worth passing on recently. This is not a monthly or even a regular listing; I'll repeat this when I have another ten.

End Software Patents
Jacob C. Hornberger: Hillary Should Have Apologized for Waco in Waco
Building a Green PC at ArsTecnica
Canadian Politics: Let Elizabeth Speak (although, despite the noble-sounding URL, it only pleads for one of our minority parties)
Managing Your Inbox courtesy of RIM
Microsoft dupes consumers into buying crappy hardware just to pinch Vista out the door (Caveat: this blog contains statements admitted in evidence but not "proven" by trial, and doesn't know how to spell "dilemna")
Free book downloads in CS/Eng/Programming from www.freetechbooks.com/index.php
Senator denies $40,000 in telecom corporate donations could affect vote on telecoms immunity bill (I can just see Jay Leno delivering that line, can't you?)
MPAA lies about college downloading, agitates for legal interventions, and laughs its $10B profits all the way to the bank
Humor: PHD Comics, especially this strip (thread continues about 8 strips later).

Like I say, tha-tha-that's all (for now), folks. When I get another ten, this'll be back.