Almanac: 1 November 2000
By J.D. Hildebrand
Greetings, and happy All Saints'
Day! Today is the 306th day of 2000; 60 days remain in the year.
November 1 is a big day in the history of the arts. In 1512, 488 years ago, Michelangelo's
paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel were first exhibited. (Check out Stanford University's amazing
Digital Michelangelo project here.)
In 1604, William Shakespeare's Othello
made its premiere at Whitehall
Palace in London. The
Tempest premiered seven years later, on November 1, 1611. The Library
of Congress opened its doors on November 1, 1897. The first issue of Rolling
Stone magazine hit the streets on November 1, 1967. It's no wonder
November 1 is when Author's
Day is celebrated in the U.S. Hug a writer today!
Celebrating birthdays
today are Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick
Buchanan (62), publisher Larry
Flynt (58), country crooner Lyle
Lovett (44), Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony
Kiedis (38), and Def Leppard drummer Rick
Allan (37). Happy birthday!
On November 1, 1952, the U.S. exploded the first
hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok atoll in
the Marshall Islands.
NAPSTER THROWS IN THE TOWEL. In a move that both sides are calling a
victory, Napster has negotiated an agreement under which it will continue to
make copyrighted files available to users, but will charge users for downloads
and share revenues with copyright holders.
German media heavyweight Bertelsmann AG has entered into an agreement under
which Napster will collect a fee -- widely reported to be $4.95 per month --
from users of its service. A portion of the collected user fees will be paid to
Bertelsmann as royalties for Napster-transmitted music files whose copyright
Bertelsmann holds. Bertelsmann is expected to post its entire catalog on the
Napster service.
Bertelsmann, meanwhile, is making an investment -- apparently they're calling
it a loan -- that will make it an owner of Napster. Napster will use the money
to develop technology that will let it track downloads over the service, a
necessary bit of bookkeeping if the company is to pay royalties to copyright
holders.
I'm all in favor of any move that brings Napster and its users into
compliance with the law. But I'm skeptical about whether Napster will maintain
its 38 million-strong user base once it imposes a fee for its services.
Here's is some coverage from around the Web:
HAS THE OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT SUCCEEDED TOO WELL? I've noticed a
handful of stories lately suggesting that "open" is on its way to
becoming a meaningless marketing phrase, losing its precise technical meaning as
part of the phrase "open source."
Bill Gates, for instance, joked to a conference crowd that he didn't think
any marketer at Microsoft would ship a product box that lacked the word
"open" on the side.
I'm not sure it was really a joke.
NewsForge's Jack Bryar has analyzed this trend and provided a bit of
surprising historical context in "The
half-way covenant: companies aim for 'partly' open source." It's a
pretty good snapshot of the trend, along with some new ideas that jogged my
thinking a bit.
While we're straightening out movements whose popularity have directed them
awry, maybe it's time to tell Richard Stallman that the word
"free" just doesn't cut it. Yes, we've all read his explanations of
the difference between free speech and free beer...but the truth is, most people
still think free software is software you don't have to pay for. Why not rename
the Free Software Foundation something less ambiguous. Like maybe the "Unenslaved
Software Foundation" or the "Unfettered Software Foundation"?
Those are among the suggestions NewsForge news editor Tina Gasperson makes in
her humorous, thoughtful article, "Information
wants to be autarchic."
THE WAY OF THE BAZAAR. The leaders of the open source movement insist
that it isn't open software's low cost that's significant, nor even the
availability of source code, but the new development model that allows the open
source community to harness the efforts of many geographically distributed
programmers efficiently. This, they say, is the real power of the bazaar and the
reason open source software will be with us for a long time.
Outside of newsgroup postings and Eric Raymond's canon, however, there are
few reliable sources of information about just how this remarkable development
process works.
Monty R. Manley seeks to fill that gap with "Managing
projects the open source way," his article at Internet.com's
LinuxProgramming site. The article's too brief for my tastes -- it made me
hunger for a full book on the subject -- but it's a start, at least.
A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING. LinuxWorld has launched a
new column that explores bleeding-edge issues in computer hardware, software,
and communications. The first installment is devoted to amorphous computing --
or "swarm computing," a phrase I find irresistibly evocative. The idea
is that many, many autonomous computers -- a hundred thousand nanocomputers, say
-- will collaborate on solving a problem. Cameron Laird's article (click here
to read it) is just an appetizer on the subject, but luckily it contains some
links at the end to get you started if you find, as I did, that the subject gets
your imagination wiggly.
Keep hacking!
