For all the (right) reasons

OSCON was a bit of an eye-opener for me. For years, we in the Open Source community have been trying and trying to get companies to open up their code; to shift the paradigm that software and information is and should be free. What I had failed to recognize is that it goes much beyond that. I heard it several times while attending various talks, from different people, but always the same message -- THE DATA MUST BE FREE.

This hit me like a ton of bricks so I had to, of course, delve deeper into this. After all is said and done, what I have come away with is much like we have worked to ensure that software and the code behind it is open and part of a larger community involvement we must also make sure that the hardware, networks, protocols, services and most importantly the data is open and free.

Every day, I use various services as part of my daily routine: Google, Yahoo, Twitter, etc; and all of this sits in giant data centers that I have no access to, over networks that I have no control over, with software that I can't personally audit, and via trusts that I have no way to verify.

The scary thing is that I don't live by all of these social networks and services nearly as much as a lot of people I know. What I have to ask myself, and everyone else for that matter, what would you do if one of the companies that controls the service(s) you use just closed up or went away? For a lot of people, that would be a huge deal. We call keep an enormous amount of our lives out there with very little actual control over the data itself.

Luckily, there are alternatives -- you can get your fix and still have control. It's not everything, but its a start.

Identi.ca -- Just like Twitter, except that it's Free Software, uses the open XMPP protocol for all of it's back end communications, doesn't crash all the time, and supports logins via OpenID It runs the Laconica microblogging software, so if you feel like it you can run your own installation and it will link up with other sites because it IS open. I will be keeping my Twitter account for the time being, but only for keeping up with my friends that haven't switched yet. I'm ryanc on identi.ca.

The second alternative, I was initially kind of sad about. I've been a big fan of Mugshot for a long time, but unfortunately they don't seem interested in opening things up and their updates are really slow. In fact, my last update to show up on my page their is from five days ago. What is disappointing is that Mugshot is run by RedHat, an Open Source company. I've looked around and places like FriendFeed offer great functionality, but they all suffer the unacceptable (to me) problem of not being open. So, I was very happy to come across Whoisi. What is particularly interesting about Whoisi is that you don't log in; anyone can go on the site and type in anyone else's name and then add sites (blogs, photo sites, etc) to their profile and start following them similarly to the way Mugshot does. What is better is that it is a very simple site and doesn't require proprietary plugins such as Flash. In order for you to come back later and see your page and who you are following, you are given a unique URL. This site introduced and interesting bit of trust on the community as anyone can add/remove resources from your profile. Then again, that is a misnomer; the "profile" isn't really yours so much as it is a public timeline of things associated with your name. Give it a try. I'm ryanc on whoisi.com.

My last bit to talk about deals with hardware. I've been using OpenBSD for my server for quite a while now. OpenBSD has the interesting reputation of being zealous towards openness, a reputation that I am happy to be a part of. Long story short, a few releases back, OpenBSD decided that they would completely remove any and all hardware drivers that weren't completely open. What this meant is that any hardware vendor that hadn't been proactive with providing documentation, APIs, etc to the community in order to help develop open drivers would be removed from the official distribution. The side effect was that with this released, the project actually went backwards in total amount of hardware that they supported, but also gained in terms of being truly open and took a hard stance where no other open operating systems have been able to. This alternative of mine was a bit different, because it cost me money. In this case, however, I was glad to do so. I replaced my 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID card for an Areca ARC-1200 RAID card. I did this because Areca is a big supporter of the Open Source community, whereas 3ware has decided to be luke warm at best and only distribute their drivers in binary only -- very similar to how Nvidia and ATI choose to do. The only thing I gained from this move was a good feeling.

Oh! I almost forgot, apparently my new RAID card is not just a true hardware card, but a Ture hardware RAID card...and it's from the Future!