source code access
Source Code Access - I’m late reporting this one, but DDJ had streaming video and audio of the “Open Source vs. Shared Source” debate within hours of the presentations. Check out the action; the panel and both keynotes are very interesting. Brian Behlendorf and Clay Shirky brought up some interesting perspectives. And I am pretty sure this is the first time that someone from Microsoft has spoken to such an audience. Although I attended this conference only virtually, the vibes reminded me of the first time that a federal agent spoke (rather than being undercover) at a Def-Con convention. There is a lot of overlap between the hacker and Open-Source communites, with perhaps the main difference being that one distrusts the government and regards Microsoft as bumbling at best, and the other distrusts Microsoft and regards the government as bumbling. In both cases, however, these subcultures tend to make (and reinforce amongst themselves) judgements about the “evil factor”, essentially in a vacuum isolated from the big bad thing. Of course, familiarity with feds has not made Def-Con attendees like the federal government particularly more; especially since the FBI have now twice made high-profile arrests of attendees at the conference. Interestingly, the most recent arrest at Def-Con of Dmitry Sklyarov is fuel for both the government-haters and software-company-haters, and a galvanizing factor for both of the aforementioned communities. It is classic fodder for Ralph Nader speeches. But is the outrage over Sklyarov’s imprisonment confined to people with reputations for being extremist? It doesn’t take a paranoid genius to look at this case (and the DMCA) and become extremely uneasy. Society is undoubtedly wrestling with some difficult questions about intellectual property laws, and there are some extreme positions out there. This year, Tim O’Reilly deserves praise for getting together some of the opposing opinions. Maybe next year we’ll get to hear from the people who think it should be a crime to “decrypt” ROT-13.