Free Culture and Web 2.0

Student Society of Computing of OUHK

Presented by Dr. Haggen SoProject Manager

Creative Commons Hong Kong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_2.0_Map.svg (CC BY-SA)

A Vision of Students Today

http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=119 (CC BY)

Introduction

I did not create the problem

But they are MY problems

Introduction

Freedom and Survival

Introduction

Computer History - MainFrame

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Honeywell-Bull_DPS_7_Mainframe_BWW_March_1990.jpg (GFDL)

Source Code

• Computer Instructions are coded in binary format 00101...

• A more human friendly method to program computer:

/* Hello World program */#include<stdio.h>main(){ printf("Hello World"); }

Source Code (Cont.)

• Convert source code into binary instructions by a computer compiler

• Vertical market – one supplier for all computer needs

• Source code by itself own had no commercial value -> freely distributed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Apple_Computer_Logo.svg

Apple ][+ Clone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Taiwanese_Apple_II_clone_Cosmo.jpg (GFDL)

Changes in Computer Industry

• Personal computers - hardware and software could be sold separately

• Money could be made by closing up source code

• Some programmers sold the copyright of the source code of collaborative projects and stole of work of others

• AT&T Unix incident

Richard M. Stallman

http://www.stallman.org/saintignucius.jpg

Responses to the Theft

• Release source code that could not be used commercially

• Release source code that must remain freely available -> Software Freedom

• 1983 GNU project, Unix Clone

• 1985 Free Software Foundation, Free as in Free Speech, General Public License (GPL)

• LinuxIDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Track

–2008 2Q $13.9 billion total–Microsoft $5.1 billion 36.5% Growth -1.7%–Linux $1.9 billion 13.4% Growth 9.4%

(http://practical-tech.com/infrastructure/linux-server-share-keeps-growing/)

Free/Open Source Software

20+ Years Down the Road

• Apache –Most popular web server–Always more popular than IIS

(http://www.netcraft.com/)

• Foundation of Web 2.0–Facebook: Apache PHP–Twitter: Ruby on Rails

Free/Open Source Software

20+ Years Down the Road

Choices

Why the Trend

Why the Trend

Firefox, Chrome… Internet Explorer

Thunderbird, Evolution… Outlook Express

OpenOffice, Abiword… Microsoft Office

Pidgin, aMSN… MSN Messenger

Linux, *BSD… Vista

November 2008 Top SuperComputer

http://www.top500.org/

http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/linuxwatch.html

Choices that are important for Survival

Why the Trend

Search for “Open Source Financial Crisis”

Why the Trend

Know your Freedom

Exercise your Freedom

Share your Freedom

Lessons to Learn