§ January 27th, 2006 § Filed under Identity Comments Off
It seems that several conversations regarding identity and identity-related data seem to be converging today. First, Robert “r0ml” Lefkowitz writes about his latest venture, root.net, and the belief that consumers should be able to control how shopping and purchase data collected by retailers can be used. He points to AttentionTrust.org, whose mission is in part to:
Empower people to exert greater control over their “attention data,” i.e. any records reflecting what they have paid attention to and what they have ignored. We accomplish this by promoting the principles of user control, by distributing our Attention Recorder, and by supporting the development of other appropriate tools, standards and practices.
This echoes Kim Cameron’s first law of identity, which brings me to the second converging conversation. In his identity management newsletter, Dave Kearns discusses a lengthy post by Bob “Not-a-Bob” Blakely, in which he says:
Remember the wording of Kim’s First Law:
Technical identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent.
It’s clear that this “First Law requirement” isn’t feasible – a system which actually obeyed this law would be illegal (because it would withold information in cases in which the law requires it to disclose information without the data subject’s consent), and it would be dangerous to the data subject (because it would withold personal information even in critical situations if consent couldn’t be obtained – for example when the data subject is unconscious and injured after an accident).
If you agree with most or all of what I’ve written above, you’ll agree that the “First Law requirement” isn’t desirable either, because it creates a lot of work for the individual without really solving the privacy problem.
The reason the First Law doesn’t work is actually very deep and subtle, and I’ll write more about it soon.
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§ January 25th, 2006 § Filed under Open Source Comments Off
John Mark Walker has stirred up some debate with his article titled There Is No OS Community in which he argues that the success of open source relies on economics, and not on ideology or ideological activists. I heartily agree with Walker on this point, as does Matt Asay and Nick Carr. But I do have a couple problems with Walker’s economic analysis of the software industry.
First, Walker argues that the open source is better at producing innovation. I disagree, and so does Matt:
But it’s not necessarily the most innovation-inducing way to write software, as John Mark argues. He says:
This continuously evolving collective knowledge base carries another consequence: speed of innovation. Because of the speed with which users, developers, and companies can post documentation, patches, or new software projects, the product life cycle has shortened considerably. Software vendors must work harder than ever to stay ahead of the floating software boats. This constant drive for innovation means that products released just yesterday lose value more quickly than before, due to future products already filling the software pipeline.
I don’t think it’s true that the pace of innovation has increased – instead, I think the visibility into that innovation has improved.
And I certainly don’t believe that product lifecycles have shortened. Those (like Red Hat) who tried to behave otherwise were told clearly by the market that it likes a nice and easy pace, thank you very much. Microsoft and the proprietary vendors could release as early and often as the open source vendors could, but recognized long ago that customers don’t actually want this.
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§ January 13th, 2006 § Filed under Open Source Comments Off
I have long believed that international governments would lead the curve in the adoption of open source. Andrew Leonard, author of the How the World Works blog at Salon.com, has a post on Venezuela’s move to open source:
This month, a new law goes into effect in Venezuela mandating that all government agencies migrate their information technology infrastructure to free, or open-source, software. While it has not been uncommon in recent years for nations in the developing world to cast a leery eye on the licensing fees and technological dependency associated with relying on proprietary software made by Western corporations, Venezuela’s determination to move everything to free software may be the most extreme example yet of the emerging global politics of open source.
Venezuela relies on oil revenues, and PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company, controls the oil revenues. Part of the drive to open source in Venezuela stems from a 2002 work stoppage in which INTESA, who outsources all PDVSA IT, locked PDVSA out of its Windows-based systems. SAIC, a US company with very close ties to the Department of Defense, happens to have majority ownership of INTESA. This began President Hugo Chavez’s infatuation with open source.
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