Week 11: Free Software vs Open Source

There are several expressions in use in the field of software licensing to describe the software and its conditions to use. Open source and free software are two approaches which are often confused. To compare to the proprietary software these two stand at one side but still they are not the same.

The founders of open source approach did not approve all the ideas of Richard Stallman - the founder of free software approach - and started their own initiation.

In 2002 to ZDNet interview Richard Stallmann has stated his view to the differences between the free software and open source approach:

The open-source movement differs from the free-software movement in that they never say we're entitled to these freedoms -- the freedom to study and change and redistribute. They never say it's particularly wrong for software to be proprietary; they say they don't particularly like it. They would rather that software is not proprietary, but they will never say that it's wrong. Whereas we in the free-software movement say our freedom is at stake here; don't you dare try to get us to use proprietary software. I don't want it in my life.

As I get it, both open source and free software enthusiasts are producing software to be used with no fee, with openly shared source and peer production. Both agree that you can make business with your products (meaning also to sell them) but not to make it proprietary. A great difference is that free software supporters do not agree with any kind of proprietary software but the open source supporters do not fight against it.

Week 10-2: Copying restrictions

With emergence of digital information making copies and distributing it has become very easy and prevention of it much more complicated. Big companies profiting from proprietary distribution have come up with numerous ways to fight for their income and rights to their products. Is it the question of digital rights or digital restriction? Are the restrictions useful?

One can agree to the need to protect the income and rights to products and the will to restrict unauthorized copying by the corporations - it is their money they will lose. "Their" in the meaning that they have already counted on it and the law formally is still on their side. But as the world is changing an intellectual property regulations under question by already great amount of users, the things have changed ant the corporations need to come up with new measures.

Tapscott and Williams in Wikinomics bring an example of Sony Corporation programming the restriction of three copies per OS user on their discs. The user playing the disc did not know that a piece of software was installed automatically to send information back to Sony where as more personal information was sent than on the copying process. Sony argued that no harm was done and a regular user had no idea anyway what was going on, so it did not hurt. The discs wre called back from market butthousands of users were already "infected". This is a measure for the company that goes way too far and for the company will be worse rather than useful as it will not be a secret for long.

The restrictions made are not acceptable the users today and the ways to go around are found. To protect against massive unauthosized copying some other new measures must be found while the restrictions that interfere to users rights and privacy won't stand still. With growing community of free and open-source software supporters and the new generation of people growing in digital world the corporations also need to find new ways.

Review of wiki on "Advertising in Video Games"

This is a post to review a group-wiki "Advertising in Video Games". The review covers the content, argumentation and formal side of the wiki.

I start with what I see first when looking at the wiki - the way the wiki is built and presented by the group. The front page consists of the list of group members followed by the title of their section of the article. From this list understanding the structure and the logic of the article is not as easy as could be - there is no logical sequence of the parts, no correct table of contents.

Derived from the tool used - Wikiversity - the wiki parts have good functional side of the content and referencing. It is easy to move inside the article and to see the references using the links. Again there is a weakness in the consistency while authors do not share the approach to references and use different styles for that. Not all the authors have made use of the wikiwersity functionality concerning the referencing.

Content

The wiki contains the following articles:

• History and the involvement
• The business of the in-game advertisement
• In-game advertising on mobile
• Impact of video games advertising - introduction and review
• Types of financing development of the games and players attitudes toward in-game advertising

History and involvement gives overview of the beginning and first advertisements appearing in games. The content is brief but comprehensive to get the understanding of the birth and following development and the ways the advertisements are used. The discussion ends up with examples of profitability to companies, developers as well as the players. The section could be better structured and have some subtitles to clarify it. The references of this part are in wiki style but not enough detailed, as the reference section give no hint to the web page listed.

The in-game advertising business section is well-built, has logical sequence and structure with subtitles. It includes target audience, numeric data about the market and different types of advertisement. The section sums up both the benefits and the controversies or weaknesses. There are some factual controversies between two authors, which indicates lack of collaboration of the authors.

In-game advertising on mobile is probably the latest approach of the field and well covered by the author. It seems to me it could be better structured or structured some other way around while the article contains several very short subtopics which could be connected to one. The whole part is a bit shorter in comparison to other authors, but it is also reasoned while being a new field and additional information on that is surely to be growing fast in coming years.

Impact of video games is a long and thorough section. The introduction is very long in comparison to other parts and could have been either shorter or left aside in cooperation with other team mates who also covered the introduction to the field. The main topic comes at the second part of the article and is covered fully and is a very interesting reading.

Players attitudes and financing development gives a lot of interesting information. Even if the connection between title and contents stay somehow confusing all together, the content is very good. The questions raised are well answered and reasoned. References are well formed and used.

All authors have reached the goal of giving thorough overview of their topic and reasoning the argumentation. The reader can find sufficient facts about the development of in-game advertising, reasons behind it, different ways of placing the ads as well as the aimed audience and their attitudes toward the games with several kinds of ads.

To point out the main weakness and strength would be - lack of coordination and cooperation on covering the topic as a whole on the one hand and giving great amount of information and analyze the variety of sides of the field.

It was very good reading and for sure with some more effort on cooperation and integration a great consistent wiki article could be constructed.


(I am aware that the group did not know there was a request for a consistent article worked on as a team, therefore their approach was not wholesome. Even though I give my critique/opinion based on how I understood the task.)

Week 10-1: The future of software licensing

The task is to predict the future of software licensing landscape in 2015... It is already in 5 years. During last five years the new version of GNU GPL was released and the amount of open-source free software has risen. Proprietary licenses stand for many products and are also widely used, in the meantime also violated. Which changes could be faced and in which direction the licesing will develop?

As the amount of people respecting the idea of free software is growing, the amount of software and products under free licenses will also grow. Even Microsoft has made an effort to step closer to the approach with its Shared Source Initiative, even though it is not so much evaluated by the enthusiasts of open source and free software.

I believe that the majority new comers would go towards open source and free software licensing and try to benefit the project from the collaboration with other programmers. But in five years time the proprietary licenses will not disappear. I guess the stand between those different licenses will change towards more free licensed software emerging but the usage of big proprietary software (like those of MS) will not drop drastically.

Week 9-2: The Millenium Bug in WIPO Model

The science business case described in the lecture was the publishing of academic journals and other materials which end up being too expensive for wide audience. As not everyone will be able to reach the materials, it has and effect on the digital divide.

I was in search of additional examples and read my course mates blogs and I must agree with the examples of medical patenting, academic and other publishing by Jakob, Norbert and Maibritt. The medical sphere might be not exactly digital divide case, but the controversy in the industry is great indeed.

What I could point out in addition is the publishing and availability of encyclopedias. I came to it while reading Benkler's chapter on The Freedom of Culture from the Wealth of Networks. According to Benkler there are six commercial encyclopedias online from which one is available for no fee - the Columbia Encyclopedia.

To take into account the fact that in academic writing Wikipedia is not a valid source to add to references, the students need the access to the academic encyclopedias. And if those are the best source of information to any citizens, having no free access therefore could be taken as a reason for increasing digital divide.

But I must say that as we do have Wikipedia, in my opinion, there will not be a bigger digital divide in that reason only. Wikipedia can fill the gap and be even more diverse, thorough and up-do-date than the commercial encyclopedias developed by selected authors.

Week 9-1: Free Licenses - GNU GPL

GNU General Public License developed by Richard Stallman in 1989 (second version in 1991 and third in 2007) is used for 70% of free software projects. My opinion on the GPL using SWOT analysis model:

Strengths
One of the strengths I find is having authorship in the focus. A developer shares the work on grounds of public license and should be appreciated as well as any other who will contribute to produce something more of it. The support to spread the modified codes as much as possible whereas GPL assures that patents cannot be used to render the program non-free assures the author that the development and usage of created product or piece continues it the desired way and there will be no situation where the genuine author of a piece will be faced with a license fee in the future.

Weaknesses
There do exist weaker versions of the license giving allowance to some parts becoming proprietary. As it is a development probably derived from the need, it must be useful and valued, but it seems to be against the initial idea of no proprietary products to be produced of codes under GPL. This is a step towards what the license aimed to avoid.

Opportunities
Through free circulation and development and again ongoing circulation of new pieces and codes, the community of developers and supporters of free software and public licensing grows and becomes stronger. The growing community can become a strong base for new innovative solutions born through the collaborative knowledge developed also thanks to the licensing systems that support it.

Threats
As the latest version was released in 2007, earlier users have still stayed to the version 2. It indicates the unwillingness to go with the changes in the known license. Therefore it may become a threat as well as the competing licenses in the field.

Week 8: Anglo-American vs Continental European

The two main systems for protecting intellectual products - Anglo-American and Continental European school of Intellectual Property - have long been considered as totally different, but since 1989, when U.S also signed the Berne Convention they have formally become quite similar. The big difference lies mainly in the idea behind the development of those laws.

The Berne convention states that a creator owns the rights to his/her works at any stage (a sketch or finished piece) with no formality and in addition to economical rights, gains also certain moral rights to it. These were the main points that U.S did not want to follow.

Another difference lied in the period of protection granted. In Continental-Europe model the minimum has been the lifetime of the author plus seventy years, whereas in Anglo-American system (in Universal Copyright Convention created after WWII) the minimum was set at twenty-five and maximum at fifty-six years since the first publication.

As the need of equalization of the rules was realized due to the export of works between different countries, U.S started making modifications (1950's-1970's) in order to join the Berne Convention. Main changes towards joining were: dispensing the Manufacturing Clause, change the period of copyright protection to author's lifetime plus fifty years. Only as late as 1988 did they agree to drop the copyright formalities and finally "join the club".

The weakness of the Berne system is the suing part, as detecting moral rights and the absence of protected works database make it complicated. For the strongest and clearest protection of ones works, it is benefitial to use the registration under copyright sign. The rights of an author are protected universally also without the sign if one can prove to be the genuine author, but to evaluate and request recovery of moral damages still stays more complicated than this of economical damages.