rwmtest

My article discussing why I believe a Canadiana.org and CRKN.ca merger could be great has received more page hits than my article discussing why "Copyright-free" material is not edging out Canadian educational texts . I consider this to be great news that interest is high. For anyone dropping in on my blog for the first time, I should clarify who I am.  I've been involved in the Free/Libre and Open Source Software  (FLOSS) movement since 1992 when it was simply known as Free Software. From this I grew to become active in the related Open Access, Open Education, Open Government, and related Open * movements.  I increased my policy work in 2001 due to a consultation on Copyright which included "technological protection measures" , and spent more than a decade speaking with fellow authors (software and non-software) as well as some of our political opponents (often representatives of intermediaries who in my opinion falsely claim to represent the interests of au...

As part of the discussion of how electoral modernization is hard, but worth it, I want to discuss the claims that alternate-vote exaggerates false majorities. As mentioned, there are individuals that are most concerned about geographic representation and others demographic representation.  Of those focused on demographic representation, most believe that political parties are an appropriate proxy for demographic representation. In short there are two groups who believe: MPs should represent riding constituents, and they may be a member of a party for convenience (subject to change) MPs should represent political parties, and they may be assigned a geographic constituency for convenience or because of a historical requirement of how parliament is structured I've found a number of interesting ideas that come from those focused on political parties. A belief that after electoral reform the parties we see today will likely remain intact. This appears to be the basis of this "exag...

A press release from CRKN launches a dialog about the potential of a closer relationship between CRKN and Canadiana.org. I've been at Canadiana for 5 years, starting in January 2011 as a consultant and then September as staff (See photo of me receiving 5 year recognition from our previous board president Leslie Weir ) . My beliefs come more from my personal political advocacy work on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), Open Access, and Open Government than it does from being a staff person.  As staff I can can clarify what Canadiana.org is doing from a FLOSS/OA perspective if there are misinterpretations (See: Good News Canadiana & LAC project spun into bad news? , Why is a license required for a Canadiana project built from public domain material? ) What I believe to be the source of some of the potential benefits. For funding reasons, Canadiana has had a bit of a dual identity ( Alter Ego ?) between being a charity created by the Library, Archive and Museum (LAM) ...

As a long-time advocate for electoral modernization, I was happy to hear the commitment from the Justin Trudeau Liberals that they "are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system" ( Liberal party website ).  There is near consensus from those who have given voting systems much thought that First Past the Post (FPTP) doesn't work for votes where there are more than two choices. While this is true, there are disagreements about what the best alternative would be.  It is useful to be aware of why there are disagreements, and why there is a need for compromise if we are ever to get away from the flawed system we have now. Criteria for success I've observed two common ways people evaluate voting systems: Geographic Representation The focus is that from each geographic region (riding, electoral district, etc) the candidate that can best represent the views and interests of that region is sent to pa...

One of the things I like about working at Canadiana.org is the links between what I'm paid for (systems and software design,administration,maintenance) and other aspects of my life. A project we have with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) is an example. A Linked Open Data Internet Hosting Project Canadiana's primary involvement in the project is to host the Artefacts Canada Linked Open Data website . The platform was developed by another contractor for CHIN, and is built upon two NoSQL database servers with Solr for text search and Blazegraph  as a graph database .  The 'aclod' (Artefacts Canada Linked Open Data) application is written in Java , and runs within a Jetty . Part of why we wanted to partner with CHIN is that we are growing our access platform and need to explore graph database technology for Linked Open Data (LOD) projects.  The graph database would be in addition to our existing use of Solr, CouchDB and MySQL. Our metadata architect, softw...

The misinformation campaign about the minor clarification to educational fair dealings is ongoing. This includes fictional claims about kids suffering , abusing the standard "why won't they think of the kids" in a way that I believe is harmful to the education of Canadian children. As my minor contribution to the education campaign about the reality of the situation, and who is actually promoting the interests of foreign interests, I sent the following letter to Nigel Hunt about his oddly by-lined Copyright-free material edging out Canadian educational texts . While this article accurately portrays the narrative often spun by John Degen, further investigation into the issue reveals a very different story. Prior to modern communication technology like the internet it was very hard and expensive to get licensing for copyrighted works. To solve this problem Collective Societies were created that offered blanket licensing at fixed fees no matter how many works required licens...

Apple's perspective on computer security and encryption This is the third in a series that started with discussing the FBI and my own use of security and encryption technology. Apple's most lucrative product line at the moment is their iOS based distributed content delivery platform. This includes the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iWatch, and related hardware.  While this hardware is distributed to customers, the platform is similar to the platform I manage for my employer where hardware is distributed geographically but control remains in our hands.   This is the platform which Apple has been marketing to the content industry for decades as a safe secure platform for them to distribute their multimedia where it is Apple and not the end users which control the technology. These devices are intended to be connected to the network, and the ongoing work to secure them is similar to any other network connected device.  The network and exploits carried out on the network don't diff...