Hacker Visions

This morning, WordPress published some advice I gave them on CMS packages and themes. They also had some good thoughts on what the GPL means to the WordPress community:

If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’s license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.
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So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

By coincidence, Joomla also made some changes regarding GPL and extensions today. Their extensions directory now only carries GPL-licensed extensions. This fulfills a promise they made back in 2008. Amazingly, this action is the end of a long arc that began with meetings we had in 2007.

The communities that have grown around the various GPL-licensed CMS packages are breathtakingly passionate. I’m continuously impressed by their ability to discuss contentious issues in an atmosphere of universal respect. And their commitment to the GPL warms my heart. Congratulations to both projects on taking some big, positive steps today.

Yesterday, I testified before the New York City Council Committee on Technology in Government. You can read my written testimony, which talks about all the wonderful things we can do with raw feeds of government data.

Everybody at the hearing, including the bill’s opponents, agree that city government should be giving data back to the people from whom they collect it. The question at this point is what form that information sharing will take. The Bloomberg administration wants to provide simplified, polished web services that are fit for use by end users. Councilwoman Gale Brewer thinks that’s a fine idea, but she also wants to create feeds of raw data for people to do with as they please. My testimony made a practical case that if the city freed the data, the citizenry would provide the end-user services.

Not a lot of freedom talk in that testimony, mainly because it wasn’t a good forum in which to reframe viewpoints. A lot of us mentioned Free Software, but nobody really got down and offered the full sermon. The format simply wouldn’t allow it, which is, on some level, disappointing.

At any rate, I’m told that it would help the legislation’s chances if we had more examples of what people would do with city data. Send me any good ideas.

If your ISP blocks outgoing port 25 connections, you’ll probably want to tell your SMTP server to listen on a port other than 25. For some reason, there is is no clear documentation of how to do this on the web. Here it is.

On Debian exim4 (I have version 4.69-9), the easiest way to do this is not to change your exim4 config. It’s to edit /etc/default/exim4 to change the commandline options used to start the server:

# options for daemon listening on port 25 and port 2525
SMTPLISTENEROPTIONS=’-oX 2525:25′

That will tell the exim4 listener started by init.d to listen on port 25 as well as port 2525.

Also, while this page is aimed at Sarge’s version of exim4, it was a good guide for SMTP auth on Lenny’s version too. To debug your smtp session, see these excellent instructions.

In the age of perfect digital copies, musicians have it easy. No home entertainment system can replace live performance. But filmmakers are increasingly competing with swank home theaters featuring plush seats, lush sound, pause and rewind for bathroom breaks, and any other amenity your heart desires. Many home media rooms even offer the authentic movie experience that newer, cost-cutting chains gave up on long ago: soda fountains and popcorn poppers salvaged from old theaters.

So how do theaters offer something that can’t be had at home? At least one guy is working on the answer. Brett Gaylor stopped by last night’s CC Salon to talk about his new documentary, RiP: A Remix Manifesto. He mentioned that he recuts the film for specific audiences. Tonight’s screening at 92Y Tribeca, for example, will include shots of Times Square with New Yorkers covering up the all big brand logos on the street. Brett is hoping that offering a version of the movie that will never be seen again will give people a reason to see this screening instead of watching it at home (which they can do for free since he distributes the film as a free CC-licensed work).

I’m guessing it’s difficult (and expensive) to customize film content for audiences and locations, but if it can be done in a compelling way, I’d love to see it. I’m excited that the changing environment is pushing artists to explore new directions with their works. If they can get me to brave the sticky floors and stale popcorn at my local megaplex, they must have something pretty special up their sleeves.

One of the persistent arguments from what Eben Moglen calls econodwarfs is that if file sharing replaces some album sales, we’ll enjoy less music because musicians will turn to more lucrative pursuits. We’ll lose those marginal singers and marginal albums. This argument is based on the assumption that file sharing only has one effect on the music market (reduced album sales), that it doesn’t change the way people relate to music and musicians, and that no business models and methods will not evolve to match the new environment.

Of course, it turns out that the econodwarfs are wrong. Just as the iPod has changed the content of music, online distribution and file sharing is changing the business of music. A new study (summarized here) of file sharing concludes that file sharing technology increased concert ticket prices, which induced performers to tour more, which raised their income. Sounds like the musicians are more adaptable than we thought.

The study also notes that more music, movies and books are being made today than ever before. And this matches my experience: digital technology has made production of professional quality music easy for my friends. They’re small-time musicians with day jobs, but it’s easier than ever for them to make songs, mixes and albums and get them into the hands of fans and friends.

The most important part of the study is this:

Weaker copyright is unambiguously desirable if it does not lessen the incentives of artists and entertainment companies to produce new works.

The companies arrayed against the Freedom to Share need to prove that file sharing is going to impoverish musicians and dissuade them from making music. So far it just isn’t happening.

It also might be the case that different artists will see their incentives change in different ways. The market for music isn’t going to grow or shrink so much as change shape. I’m guessing Britney Spears is sitting on a giant pile of producer’s surplus. If the music market redirects that surplus towards fans (by giving them free music) or even other, more marginal musicians (by shifting the market toward dynamics that favor them), that’s a win for almost everybody, including Britney’s fans.

Via Slashdot.