Reviewing the Groundswell

One danger of reviewing a book is the reality that the reviews ultimately say more about the reviewer, and the book he or she wishes had been written, than they do about the book which actually was written. It’s in that context that I offer this review of Groundswell, by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, published by Harvard Business Press (note: disclaimers at the end of the post).

To start with the positive: This is a really solid business book, which sets out a clear methodology (including the Social Technographics Profile and the POST method with which Forrester clients / subscribers are already familiar), walks through a broad range of well explained case studies, and situates the business benefits of the different approaches.

(more…)

Cultural Significance of Free Software: Two Bits

I’ve mentioned Chris Kelty’s Two Bits as part of my summer reading list. Although I have the PDF sitting in my “to read” folder I think I’m waiting on the hardcover I ordered from Amazon. Seems like the kind of book that requires more reflective reading.

In the meanwhile, here’s Chris presenting at a Berkman Luncheon Series event on June 17th, 2008:

(more…)

Summer Reading List

Updated 5/31/08 - Like The Wealth of Networks, Two of these books are also available online: Two Bits and The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It.

Here’s my summer reading list. Tell me what I’m missing.

• The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It, by Jonathan Zittrain
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, by Clay Shirky
• Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World, by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
• Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, by Chris Kelty
• Designing For the Social Web: Voices That Matter, by Joshua Porter

It’s a bit heavy, I know, but this is the kind of stuff I find interesting.

What are you reading this summer? What key new text have I left out?

Preparing for the Future(s) of the Internet

Lots of good quality discussion on the question of the Future (or Futures) of the Internet. There’s the upcoming conference to celebrate the 10th year of the founding of the Berkman Center, which is titled “The Future of the Internet.”

There’s Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It. (In addition to buying a print copy, you can download the pdf version under creative commons license). Presenting on that book, there’s video of Zittrain at Princeton on March 26th, at ISOC-NY on April 11th, and at the Berkman Center the following week. You can also read and comment on the book.

Finally, via Biella Coleman I found this fascinating video from an event April 16th (between the above two videos), from a meeting of the NY Chapter of the Internet Society, talking about “The Futures of the Internet.” The discussion was sponsored by the NYU Information Law Institute, Free Culture @ NYU, and ISOC-NY. (Shirky’s presentation is on the same cognitive surplus theme from his web 2.0 expo keynote I recently blogged about).

(more…)

Open Source, Freedom 0, and Mac OS X

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on this blog post from Coding Horror: Why Doesn’t Anyone Give a Crap About Freedom Zero?

Atwood argues that:

when you buy a new Mac, you’re buying a giant hardware dongle that allows you to run OS X software.

and that:

When the dongle– or, if you prefer, the “Apple Mac”– is present, OS X and Apple software runs. It’s a remarkably pretty, well-designed machine, to be sure. But let’s not kid ourselves: it’s also one hell of a dongle.

I’m a Free Software Foundation member, and a big supporter of Free and Open Source Software. But I’m also a Mac user. More accurately, I use - at various points and for various projects - Windows XP, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux - typically Ubuntu. But I recently switched back to Mac OS as my primary environment, on a new MacBook Pro.

So is it that I don’t care about Freedom Zero?

Not at all. I think Freedom Zero is important - in fact, using Mac OS and VMWare Fusion lets me run all three operating systems named above on the same machine, and that’s part of what attracts me to it. I refuse to buy songs from the iTunes store because they contain and encourage DRM (and hide the urls for podcasts to make it difficult to switch podcatchers), and run Rockbox on my iPod.

But Atwood’s right, that in switching to a MacBook Pro I’m supporting (indirectly, since it is really an Optaros laptop I get to use) proprietary development models, paying Apple Inc. for software I don’t get source code to, can’t run on my other machines, and can’t (legally) modify even for my own use.

But the combination of Apple’s user experience smarts and a BSD core, which lets me run X11 apps from the GNU/Linux world, is seductively attractive, and I can run the GIMP and NeoOffice (based on Open Office) and Firefox and Miro, and do PHP/MySQL development.

It’s a weird kind of lock in - I can bring virtually anything in (running many open source apps and frameworks in OS X directly, or worst case running them in virtualization) but there are some things I can’t take out (the proprietary Apple bits, other third party software).

Any piece of software I might write (yeah, like I’ve got time these days to create a software application) or contribute to (that may be possible) can retain Freedom Zero - I wouldn’t necessarily want to create or contribute something that only other Mac OS X users could run.

So, to get to the point, does the increasing popularity (at least perceived - look around at the crowd next time you’re at a *camp or an open source conference) of the Mac as a hardware platform reflect a general lack of concern over Freedom Zero, even among groups of developers who are otherwise insistent about freedom in the FSF sense?