Author Archive for stevelee

Freedom through a clear governance model

Published by stevelee on April 4, 2011 in Community and Development. 1 Comment

A while back, Mark Webb of the Met Office Hadley Centre for climate change described in a guest post, how his Cloud model project COSP introduced a governance model, based on one of our templates. This was a result of a few informal chats over beers and his exploration of OSS Watch public resources. Mark also described some of the immediate benefits they experienced.

Well recently I met up with Mark over skittles and beers (this time some excellent Otter Ale on stillage), and he described how the project has become more animated as a result of introducing a meritocratic governance model. Mark explained that having a clear decision-making process is allowing them to move forward as a project. For example they are starting to explore release processes in more detail. So the COSP is clearly maturing through having the governance model in place.

But the observation that I found most telling was that the governance model has actually freed up blockages in the decision-making processes. This is despite initial concerns expressed by some project members that a governance model could be unnecessary bureaucracy. For example, the project lead has been able to point to the model document to clearly state policy when there has been debate or a decision needs to be made.

In particular it appears that lazy consensus has already sped up progress by allowing action to occur when it could previously get bogged down in fruitless discussion. For example, one team member has set up a Google code project. While this is excellent, I would add a cautionary comment that clear discussion about such decisions needs to occur on the public mailing list or there is a risk of introducing decision by fait accompli, rather than lazy consensus.

This ‘unblocking’ reminds me of an analogy I once heard for the benefits of moral/spiritual frameworks that seems to apply well here. If you watch kids playing a game like football, they enjoy it more if there are rules in place and an authority to reference (the ref). Having no ‘governance model’ to define the roles and rules in place can result in frustration and long discussions, rather than getting on with the game. Many kids will quickly self-organise some basic rules and process so they can enjoy the game while quickly resolving debates.

So the take-home here is that if you don’t yet have a governance model in place, it’s time you did. Otherwise you could be holding your project back unnecessarily. You can even use one of our templates to speed up your adoption.

UK Government Open Standards Survey

Published by stevelee on March 23, 2011 in Business, Development, Discussion, Procurement, Standards and Strategy and Policy. 1 Comment

There’s no date on his introductory post, but Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, has provided an opportunity for us to state which open standards for IT we want the UK government to use. This takes the form of an on-line SurveyMonkey survey that is open until 20 May 2011.

Government must be better connected to the people it serves and partners who can work with it – especially small businesses, voluntary and community organisations. Government ICT must play a fundamental role in making life easier and I want to ensure that it does.

One of our first goals is to organise Government data and systems using an agreed set of standards that make our ICT more open, cheaper and better connected.

If you’re a business or community organisation, helping us choose the right standards will make it easier for you to do business with Government.  It will also help us open up data, better informing your decisions, and hopefully prompting innovation.

There’s a lot of detail in the very long list of obtuse standard numbers, but fortunately a mechanism is provided to skip sections you aren’t interested in. Otherwise you can vote on each standard on a scale between mandatory and don’t use. Refreshingly for a survey, there are spaces for you to add your own thoughts (though you can’t add each on a new line as requested).

I spotted couple of typos and more seriously, the Microsoft originated ISO/IEC 29500 Office Open XML is incorrectly called ‘Open Office XML. This is bound to lead to confusion as the alternatively listed ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) standard was originally implemented in OpenOffice (and is now implemented by LibreOffice).

Open standards play well with open source software developement and we encourage you to take the survey. However do bear in mind the government’s past record in implementing open technology policies. You might also want to look at Glyn Moody’s related post about the Government’s definition of open standards provided in the procurement policy note.

TransferSummit – making open accessibility connections

Published by stevelee on July 8, 2010 in Community and Event. 0 Comments

Being involved with the TransferSummit was one of those experiences that I will look back on with great pleasure for years to come. Not only was the theme of innovation and collaboration through open source something  I have for long time wanted to see become reality in the accessibility arena, but being part of such a great team has been of enormous personal benefit. If only I could have concentrated more on all the talks and BOFs, but that would have required the TransferSummit to run 3 times so I could attend everything.

Of course one of key values of such conferences derives from the connections and discussions that go on between the presentations. Having spoken to some of the people who attended from the open accessibility space I’m really pleased to hear they wasted no time in connecting up. For example Garry Paxton of Straight-street.com said he found it extremely valuable and hooked up with folks like Matthew Lee of Pengwern Mencap National College. I’m extremely pleased to see the strong community of open accessibility collaborators that is forming in UK HE. I understand from those of the community present, that they found TransferSummit provided them ample food for thought and discussion opportunities.

Equally pleasing was that the TransferSummit hosted the rather impromptu introductory launch meeting of REALISE, a new JISC funded project exploring open innovation in accessibility software. EA Draffan and Peter Cudd from the lead institutions of Southampton and Sheffield met with Ross Gardler of OSS Watch (and chairman of the conference committee). There could not have been a more perfect setting for this first REALISE meeting.

I’m sure there must be other stories of successful connections made at the TransferSummit. Please do let us know about them in the comments to this post

BarcampOxford – making our own conference

Published by stevelee on June 10, 2010 in Community, Discussion and Event. 0 Comments

This year I’m tasked with being the lead for the BarcampOxford. Given the great success of the previous BarcampApacheOxford and my newbie status this is a little daunting. Fortunately Barcamps have the mentoring sorted and we have a team consisting of the someone local, someone experienced, someone new and everyone else who volunteers to do something. That way the experience gets passed on and we have more great BarCamp events.

Ross assures me that as Barcamps are self organising on the day the key is to make sure folks turn up and the resources are in place to make the day run smoothly. Mind you, there’s plenty to do, and leaving so much to be decided on the day is a little scary. However having been to a few BarCamps and similar events I know they provide attendees with  a much more valuable experience than a traditional ‘passive’ conference. However you do need attendees who want to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. Well at least, attendees who want to discuss topics that matter to them. That’s not often a problem with those with open source or geek leanings, as are our target ‘barcampers’ .  The reward is a feeling of something achieved through new connections made, new ideas formed or new projects started.

If you’ve never experienced a BarCamp then I highly recommend you go to one the very first chance you get. Why not join us as a taster? To whet your appetite here’s an introductory email that was sent out recently.

Building on the great success of last year’s BarCampApacheOxford, OSS Watch and Torchbox are again running the popular BarCampOxford unconference at the Oxford University Club on the 26 June. Expect many great conversations, including topics such as open source, open development, open innovation and web 2.0 mashups. Full details are on the BarcampOxford wiki page [1]

If you’re not sure what a BarCamp is, fear not. It’s a friendly, flexible and informal event where everyone who attends has a say in what happens on the day. The idea is to come with a topic you’d like to present, discuss or even hack-on. We figure out exactly what happens in the morning, and then get on with it.

We already have people who like to get together on topics as diverse as; open source, cloud computing, semantic web, mobile tech, agile development, UIX and accessibility, Python, Dojo and Javascript. If something else takes your fancy, then just a look at the wiki [1] and add your interests in the attendees list or come up with an idea on the day.

We’ll have food and drink to keep you energised. This year the TV goes on and club bar opens at 3 for those who just can’t bear to miss the World Cup football. Those who want to carry on a great conversation or hack session can do so in the upstairs spaces.

So why not join us – just add you details to the wiki page [1] or email us [2]

This year the Barcamp follows on from the TransferSummit [3] open innovation conference being held at Keble College, and a number of attendees will stay on for the Barcamp. They will no doubt have a lot to talk about after the Summit which promises to be exceptional given the programme [4]. Note: there are still spaces at the Summit, you can register on the website [3].

1: http://barcamp.org/BarCampOxford
2: info@oss-watch.ac.uk
3: http://www.transfersummit.com
4: http://www.transfersummit.com/programme

We hope to see you on the 26 June.

Build a better Facebook through open innovation

Published by stevelee on May 13, 2010 in Business, Development, Event, Standards and Strategy and Policy. 0 Comments

There is a rapid groundswell of concern about Facebook. The main issue is privacy, or rather Facebook’s attitude to individual privacy and data ownership. Over the years the default settings have relaxed from most items being private, to virtually none being so. Unless the user makes a concerted effort to change settings. Accordingly, there is a lot of talk about creating an alternative to Facebook. As is often the case, many are looking towards a more ‘open’ version, though what they mean by that may not always be clear.

One example that currently stands out is Diaspora*, a project idea to create a distributed system where each person manages their own data rather than trusting it to a central hub run by a business. In a few days the four NYU students behind the project have gained a lot of interest and an awful lot of micro funding pledges. As noted above, it is not surprising that they propose to use open standards, open source and open development in their descriptions. But could there be a better form of ‘open’ to consider here?

As Social Hacking points out, if you are going to build another open Facebook you might as well make sure it is an improvement. While the author makes several points for how to make sure you surpass the existing Facebook, one really stuck out when I read it.

3. Learn from Academic Researchers

Many people in the academic community are producing research that addresses how people interact both offline and online, as well as how people understand concepts of privacy and social networking. As websites continue to reshape the fabric of our society and Facebook in particular affects notions of privacy, you simply can’t afford to ignore these studies.

My interest was piqued not only because we at OSS Watch are based in academia and support research projects. Rather, I was interested as it hints at, but does not make explicit, a powerful opportunity from being ‘open’. Taking it at face value it’s possible to interpret the comment as a suggestion to read papers and be influenced by the ideas they contain. I was struck by a more powerful way to embrace the ideas, namely through open innovation in software, or open development of open source software.

Open Innovation allows companies and developers to directly engage with academics in a collaborative relationship likely to be much more fruitful than just consuming papers. This can lead to a win-win where the project gains from the theory, leading to more profitability, and the academic gets a working implementation of their work, not to mention exposure and validation. Hopefully the Diaspora* project will take steps to actively engage some of the listed academics in their project, and so reap the rewards.

There are some hurdles to overcome on the road to open innovation. Not least are issues of trust and cultural differences, along with the need to find the right people. However there is growing understanding of how to manage these issues, building on the wealth of experience learnt in those open source projects that have successfully crossed boundaries. JISC are also encouraging pilot studies of open innovation through the recent JISC Grant Funding 1/10: Access to Resources and Open Innovation.

On June 24/25/26 in Oxford there is an excellent opportunity to directly explore open innovation with the people who are actively engaged in it. The TransferSummit, provides a forum for business executives and members of the academic and research community to discuss requirements, challenges, and opportunities in the use, development, licensing, and future of Open Source technology. I hope to see you there.

Using version control to manage Intellectual Property

Published by stevelee on April 23, 2010 in Development. 0 Comments

Intellectual Property (IP) management is one of the least glamorous activities required when running a software project. And yet it may just provide critical evidence for a quick resolution when a project is forced to defend itself against an IP dispute. A recent example of an attack on a open source project can be seen in the high profile JMRI.org defence against fraudulent claims of patent violations. Proper IP management not only provides peace of mind for the core project team, it also ensures contributors are not individually liable for costs. IP management is particularly important in healthy open source projects as they may received contributions of uncertain copyright status from a wide range of people of varying and possibly unknown background.

Fortunately, while IP management may seem daunting, not to mention complex, in actual fact a large chunk of the requirements are met almost for free as a side affect of using common development tools. When used wisely, version control systems provide the auditing required to keep track of IP, especially copyright. This is indeed fortunate when you consider that a single contribution may touch a very significant number of the files or other constituent components of a large mature project.

When contributions are accepted into the project code base there is the possibility that some of the code was in fact not usable for legal reasons. Such contamination may come from IP violations such as the process being covered by an enforceable software patent (in the USA), or the contributor being neither the copyright holder nor having been granted appropriate rights. Even if, as recommended, contributors are required to sign a Contributor Licence Agreement to assign ownership to the project itself, there is still a need to track individual contributions in case of dispute.

So a project needs to track who contributed each individual bit of code as it is accepted into the core code base. As a brief aside, the projects governance model will describe who can commit into the core and under what circumstances. The other requirement for IP management is the ability to make various queries about who made a change and when. Any decent version control worth it’s salt will provide the basic facilities which when combined with simple processes provide basic IP management.

Version control tools by their nature keep track of changes and allow queries to be performed. A project need only ensure that every change is clearly marked with the contributors identity, bearing in mind that the commiter may not be the same person as the contributor. This also implies that commits should be carefully managed so as not to mingle changes from different authors; but that is bad practice anyway for basic auditing purposes. A simple approach is to insist that all modifications include the email address of author. Some tools such as the distributed version control system git make it possible to get such owner stamps to appear automatically in the patches made and submitted as a contribution.

For auditing purposes it may be useful to generate a list of dates of change per contributor and merge that with a list of IP agreements. If any specific part of the code is disputed then the facility to see who made a change and when is useful (often call the ‘blame’ feature). If a particular change is in dispute it is easy to find out the extent and which files are effected. Finally most version control systems allow notifications to be generated on commits which can be useful for notifying those responsible for checking IP.

Our article What is version control? Why is it important for due diligence provides more detail on using version control.

More open source accessibility news from CSUN10

Published by stevelee on April 5, 2010 in Community, Development, Event and Software. 0 Comments

In my previous post on the CSUN10 conference I concentrated on the GNOME accessibility team hackfest and booth. An audio version of that post recorded while at CSUN has also ended up in the new Access Collective podcast from David Banes of AbilityNet. This time I want to describe the exciting activity of the Project:Possibility who encourage computer science students to work on open source accessibility projects through competitive events. I’m on the board of Project:Possibility and this year we worked with the GNOME accessibility community to offer the students a chance to work on established projects to the teams, gaining sort after skills. Accordingly this post is largely written with my Project:Possibility hat on.

However before that I like to mention news announced at CSUN that Adobe will be adding support for IAccessibile2 to Reader and Acrobat. IAccessible2 is an enhanced accessibility API for Windows that is an open standard maintained by the Linux Foundation, so the announcement by Adobe is a good affirmation of the standard’s position.

At the other end of the corporate-to-personal scale, BryenY who was with GNOME at CSUN and also used a number of signing interpreters, describes how these interpreters clearly explained all they had learnt about open source through performing their work.

As for the Project:Possibility student teams from USC and UCLA who won the SS12 accessibility coding competition? Well the CSUN organisers arranged for 2 events to showcase the programs they had created. The first was an informal ‘meet and greet’ requested by Dan Hubbell of Microsoft, who sponsor of CSUN. Dan wanted to meet us all and suggest the students also consider the Microsoft Imagine cup for future activity. We invited the GNOME accessibility team and others who we thought would be interested and the event was very successful. The students presented themselves very well indeed, stimulating interested discussion. Project:possibility gave a brief introduction to our work as well.

After the meeting, Willie Walker presented the students with Friends of GNOME t-shirts and the CSUN students stayed with Ben Konrath, Caribou maintainer, to work on further improving their winning code to make it suitable for submission into to the GNOME code base. This was key as the reason for offering GNOME projects to this years SS12 teams was to make sure the code they produced did not stay on the shelf, but rather lived on as something useful for users. Although we were concerned the students might find it daunting to work with an existing open source project, we were very pleased to find the students said this was actually a positive draw, as was the chance to have a mentor experienced with existing code. We are hoping that the USC team complete the work getting their code submitted, and indeed they expressed a great interest in seeing their code in a standard Linux distro like Ubuntu. If they do we’ve arranged that they will get a GNOME certificate from Stormy Peters that will bolster their resumes.

The students were also given an opportunity to present their work on the Saturday along with students from San Diego State University. I tried out both the mobile currency scanner running on a Nexus One phone and the new binary input mode for Caribou. There was quite some interest and again the students gave a very good impression.

CSUN University have stated they will definitely enter the SS12 next year and we hope to see their students in the finals. There is also much interest in the idea of having the SS12 finals as part of the CSUN conference next year. Other ideas include working with high schools and having many more SS12 competitions. So along with the clear interest we saw for GNOME’s accessibility solutions, I’m pleased to say Project:Possibility are also raising awareness of open source accessibility and the benefits it offers to users and developers alike.

Finally I’d like to thank OSS Watch for sponsoring my visit to CSUN10 and so enabling me to experience and contribute to the success of open accessibility this year. We also raised the profile of OSS Watch as a experts in open source development.

The growing popularity of open source assistive technology: Interview with Will Walker

Published by stevelee on April 1, 2010 in Community, Development and Discussion. 0 Comments

The day before I discussed the importance of open source screen readers with Joanie I interviewed Will Walker about open source accessibility and development of assistive technology. At the time of the interview Will was still module maintainer of the Orca screen reader, a role Joanie has since taken on after Will had to step down. Will also vacated the position of GNOME accessibility lead, a post that is still open. Will gave some of his insights gained through many years working in open accessibility software development and serving user needs.

We cover the recent growth of interest in open source assistive technology and its relevance to users (01:20), how GNOME accessibility features help developers (04:25), the ease of developing when open collaboration is possible between projects (06:05) and simple ways to encourage users to become, and stay, involved (08:15).

Listen to the audio below or download it in mp3 format.

[audio:http://fullmeasure.co.uk/Stuff/Will.mp3]
Running time: 13 min

Note: If you’re wondering why I checked that Will was not going to sing a song then this post by Eitan Isaacson will explain all.

Importance of open source screen readers for accessibility: Interview with Joanie Diggs

Published by stevelee on March 31, 2010 in Community and Development. 0 Comments

Right at the end of the CSUN conference I cornered Joanie Diggs, newly appointed module maintainer of the GNOME Orca screen reader. We flopped down in a quiet corner to chat about open source and screen readers.

Topics covered include Joanie’s journey to becoming Orca maintainer (03:10), the benefits of open source development for accessibility (07:08), collaboration between projects to fix problems (13:40) and how others can be encourage to take a more active role (25:30). We also discussed Joanie’s thoughts on the important issue of gender imbalance in open source development (18:10).

Listen to the audio below or download it in mp3 format.

[audio:http://fullmeasure.co.uk/Stuff/Joanie.mp3]
Running time: 28 min

Report from the CSUN conference in San Diego

Published by stevelee on March 25, 2010 in Community, Development and Software. 2 Comments

I’m taking a quick break from the whirlwind of activity to mention some of the open source highlights at the CSUN 2010 conference, or the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference, to give it’s full title. I’m here wearing several ‘hats’ in addition to the main OSS Watch ‘topper’, and already I have met a very wide selection of people and had many interesting conversations. The common factor has been open accessibility, as you might well expect.

As a member of the GNOME accessibility community I’m helping to man the booth and supporting presentations (although I’ve not actually been at the booth that much yet). So far Willie Walker and Eitan Isaacson have presented. I missed Will’s but Eitan did an excellent and humorous presentation of how open source allows engagement with a project in order to fix problems. A couple of weeks work, including audit, turned the largely inaccessible user interface into something with working theme support and keyboard access. He clearly demonstrated how he worked with the Banshee media player and Orca screen screen reader teams to audit and fix the accessibility issues. There was a lively discussion, including how to get institution IT departments to accept open source.

The GNOME booth is festooned with the contents of the large GNOME event box, including the necessary swag collection. We’re running presentations and demos of the complete accessibility stack that GNOME provides. We also have a stack of OpenSUSE CDs and shirts form Bryen is a on the board and a GNOME a11y member. As Eitan tweeted today there is some Buzz around GNOME and I suspect that is partially due to the increased interested in Open Source. It’s 4 years since Mozilla first mildly perplexed the CSUN visitors by flying the open source flag through running a booth, thus preparing the ground for GNOME’s arrival this year. The use of Twitter to raise profile no doubt also helps. Another contributing factor is likely to be the CSUN team’s interest in and support of Project:Possibility SS12 competition students; one of the teams worked on GNOME Caribou with first class mentoring from Ben Konrath, module lead.

So far I spoken to 2 people who are keen to introduce open source participation to their students as part of the course work, and with an accessibility angle. One is a CS lecturer from CSUN Northridge itself, the other is introducing a new education technology PhD in Michigan. Both are excited about the possibilities that GNOME accessibility offers.

On Tuesday, before the main conference started, we held the GNOME accessibility hackfest, which despite is name was more of a face to face meet-up in order to discuss critical matters. The GNOME accessibility team are under resourced and Willie Walker has had to step down as lead due to being made redundant by Oracle. In Willie’s words he will ‘turn into a pumpkin’ from next week as he needs to focus on job hunting and family. Ben Konrath is also unsure how long he will be able to maintain Caribou. Thus a large part of the agenda was taken up with how the community will move forward. Another large discussion was around what to do for the next release of GNOME 3. The issue is there is a huge list of work to do and very few people to do it. To give a flavour of the problems, a large part of the accessibility plumbing has been rewritten, with obvious knock on effects. Another high risk factor is the new GNOME Shell redesign of the desktop which is being done with almost no reference to accessibility. A boost is that couple of developers said their employers have given them around 20% time each to work on GNOME a11y. At the end of the day we had a lot of useful discussion and the future looks OK, if not exactly ‘rosy’.

A real high at the end of the day was a surprise presentation ceremony organised by Peter Korn (Oracle, AEGIS). Peter had organised a large framed ‘graduation’ certificate for Will Walker and signed by members of the community. Willie was suitable ‘choked but soon recovered as we all enjoyed the accompanying bottle of 16 yr old Lagavulin single malt whisky, served in cups embossed with Braille (it was German Braille so no one could quite work it out).

I’m now heading back to the GNOME booth and to track down Willie Walker for an interview. In my next post I’ll provide more details of the Project:Possibility students activity here at CSUN.

[Update] Bryen and Eitan also posted reports.