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China Tech On shared intellectual wealth
China Tech On shared intellectual wealth | On shared intellectual wealth |
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| China tech | |
| Monday, 25 September 2006 | |
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If there are images in this attachment, they will not be displayed. Download the original attachment I will shortly be living in Zurich doing all sorts of interesting things for the Free Software Foundation Europe. This means a shift from wet, miserable Ireland to icy, beautiful Switzerland. It's an excellent and exciting opportunity for me both personally and professionally. The best thing about Zurich is that it's really central. In a few hours I can be in Germany, Italy, France or Austria. With a little stretch I'm in Spain, Greece and Poland. As a technology person that's exciting. There's a massive amount of innovation going on in mainland Europe these days. Perhaps the quickest growing aspect of Europe technology is that stuff I often cite here; Free Software. Lots of people in lots of countries are making software that is socially empowering. It's designed to power computers, run databases and send emails. I'm interested in a particular sub-set of this development called localisation. That's when you translate software into local languages to ensure as many people as possible can use it. With the enormous variety of languages in use in the Europe sphere that's a pretty important thing. It's also not an easy thing. Making software is like making a complex diagram. Adding languages into that increases the complexity. Now, if you think about something like an email program you can see that language is really important. You have labels for all the buttons and menus. You have help files. You have the dictionary for the spell-checker. If you want to get that application out across the EU you need to make it in between fifteen to twenty five (or more) languages. Ouch. It gets worse when you make 'world' software. If you make a really good email program in Europe and you want to get it to China you suddenly hit a problem. How do you get the Chinese characters into the program? Previously we used to have regional projects. You know, China made its thing. Japan made its thing. Europe and America made their thing. Now we're seeing rationalisation. We're converging. That means we have to think differently about how we put stuff together. It's no longer theoretically possible that some guy in Korea will want to adapt my email program for his market. It's almost a certainty. A new generation of software is gradually emerging. This is software based around infrastructure networks and communities rather than strong individuals. It's when a good idea is taken, placed in a development framework, and lots of people from lots of nations ultimately contribute to its emergence as an on-going project. I believe this is a social phenomenon that is currently underrated. We're seeing hundreds or even thousands of individuals contribute to projects that used to be the domain of massive companies. These people are from vastly different cultures and yet they find a way to work together according to planned time-scales. An example of this is the GNOME project (www.gnome.org). This is something like Windows XP for computers. It's a massive collection of tools and applications to make computer work in a simple and effective manner. The GNOME project has regular releases of technology (far more regular than Microsoft make of theirs). GNOME has people from all over the world working together to accomplish these releases and to ensure that everything ships in multiple languages. It's amazing and what's even more amazing is that GNOME is Free Software. You can use it, modify it, improve it and redistribute it without restriction. I think projects like GNOME are an example of shared intellectual wealth. People clubbed together to create something that could be worth billions if sold but is worth infinitely more if given to people. Because of the GNOME project countless computers around the world can be run without expensive licenses. Because of this men, women and children have access to technology that might otherwise be denied to them. Intellectual wealth has more social worth than financial wealth because it ensures people can both understand and utilise something. We saw this a hundred years ago when free libraries allowed generations of people in the UK to become more aware of the world around them; freed from the requirement of purchasing expensive texts poorer people could ask questions and find answers in a way previously reserved for an elite. That's a pretty cool idea. What we're trying to do now is ensure that we can scale projects upwards. You know, make sure they really can be global. Make sure they really can be translated into two hundred languages. Accessibility and design is critical in reaching these goals. I'm looking forward to the emergence of large projects developing digital infrastructure that don't have their roots in America or Europe. It'll be interesting when a really great Chinese web browser takes the world by storm, or a really nifty Japanese instant messenger client is adopted by teenagers in South Africa. If you know any emerging projects like this please let me know; I'd love to write about them here. In the meantime, if you're passing through Zurich, drop me an email and we'll do coffee. |
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