Making Elections Open and Transparent

A group of concerned citizens called the Advocacy for Open Systems in Elections is offering a free, open source solution for automating the counting of election results. Ito Gruet, a member of the group, was interviewed by Erwin Oliva of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the video of the interview is available on the Inquirer website as “Pushing open source solutions for elections“.

Gruet revealed that the group advocating the use of open standards and open source software for the automated election system, which would help ensure the transparency of the electoral process. Gruet explained:

Basically it’s to ensure that we are able to track and trace back to a source document and audit the results of the elections. And what we are proposing is the we make this process tranasparent to the public… to all the voters. Transparent in terms of the technology to be used, so we should be using open standards. We believe that the software should be open source so that people in the know can look at it, can review, and see if it’s really a working system. Transparent in terms of the data itself, which means that results should be easily verifiable by the public, and anybody can do their own tabulation.

Ya Gotta Hear This (Updated)

I thought that I had heard the worst ravings and silliest nonsense from some of SCO’s people concerning their claims about Unix and Linux. SCO, after all, claimed that some of their code was in Linux, but never managed to prove it.

(Image on the right is from the film “Reefer Madness.”)

After over six years, it seemed that the case was winding down: Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell, not SCO, still owned the copyright to Unix; and SCO filed for bankruptcy. Despite some news that SCO might be bought out and get enough money to continue the case, to me it pretty much boiled down to when — not if — SCO would just plain lose once and for all. Now, like some bad gas emanating from a crypt, we hear this latest whopper from SCO CEO Darl McBride, as reported by Ars Technica in “Deluded SCO CEO on witness stand: ‘Linux is a copy of UNIX’“:

McBride said that SCO holds the rights to UNIX and that “many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers.” Specifically, he said, “We have evidence System V is in Linux,”—directly contradicting what Sontag had previously testified. Due to the witness exclusion rule invoked by both parties, McBride was not present during Sontag’s testimony and wasn’t aware of what had been said. McBride’s claims also directly contradict internal SCO memos from 2002, which reveal that the company’s own extensive source code audits had uncovered no UNIX code in Linux. McBride attempted to reinforce his argument with analogy. “When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there’s books on ‘How to Program UNIX’ but when you go to the Linux section and look for ‘How to Program Linux’ you’re not gonna find it, because it doesn’t exist.” Then came the real humdinger, and my jaw dropped when I heard the following come out of his mouth: “Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them].”

OLPC Caves In

Looks like the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project may abandon one of its most important features: free, unfettered software.

(The photo on the right is by Mike Mcgregor licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.)

Computerworld, in “Report: OLPC may eventually switch from Linux to Windows XP” noted that:

One day after the resignation of the One Laptop Per Child project’s president was publicly revealed, the OLPC’s founder and chairman said that the group’s XO laptop may evolve to use only Windows XP as its operating system, with open-source educational applications such as the homegrown Sugar software running on top.

OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte also told The Associated Press on Tuesday that an insistence upon using only free, open-source software had hampered the XO’s usability and scared away potential adopters.

This turnaround — and it’s clearly compromising justification — drew immediate comment from Michael Tiemann, President of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). In his post “Damn disheartening news from OLPC“, Tiemann said:

I believe that without open source, the fundamental purpose of OLPC will fail, because it will create another generation of slaves to proprietary technologies and corporate largesse. In other words, it will perpetuate the status quo, rather than rearrange it.

He ended his post in this manner:

But if OLPC abandons its open source roots, then I do not see the project accomplishing any of its goals. And while I can afford to throw away the three XO laptops I bought, the world cannot afford to throw away the goal of ending poverty in favor of preserving monopoly control of technology.

A Quick Look at the Low-end: Sony Ericsson K320i

Now that I’ve been using the Sony Ericsson K320i for around a month, I feel I can write fair pocket review of this product. My verdict: it works well, but could sure stand some useability improvements.

This device comes with the bells and whistles that you would expect from a low-end phone with a camera. At best, the camera takes only VGA-quality (640×480) images so don’t expect much. The video and sound recording features are extra. The phone also boasts an Entertainment suite with sound and image editor, as well as a decent media player. Too bad the speaker isn’t all that great. There’s also an organizer with notes, calendar, calculator, stopwatch, file manager and to-do list. Pretty standard stuff.

One useful touch is the 1000-entry contact list with multiple fields for different information. I also like the fact that it uses a USB cable and is seen by my PC as a simple USB storage device. And, no, I did not have to install any device drivers.

Real-world security

Many people who know or care about computer security probably won’t be surprised to hear claims that Linux or BSD is generally more secure than Windows. That conventional wisdom seems to have been confirmed yet again by the results of a hacking challenge last March 28, Friday, at the CanSecWest 2008 conference. This was reported in the InfoWorld article, “With Vista breached, Linux remains unbeaten in hacking contest“:

Earlier this week, contest sponsors had put three laptops up for grabs to anyone who could hack into one of the systems and run their own software. A $20,000 cash prize sweetened the deal, but the payout was halved each day as contest rules were relaxed and it became easier to penetrate the computers.

On day two, Independent Security Evaluators’ Charlie Miller took the Mac after hitting it with a still-undisclosed exploit that targeted the Safari Web browser. After about two minutes work, Thursday, Miller took home $10,000, courtesy of 3Com’s TippingPoint division, in addition to his new laptop.

It took two days of work, but Shane Macaulay, finally cracked the Vista box on Friday, with a little help from his friends.

Macaulay, who was a co-winner of last year’s hacking contest, needed a few hacking tricks courtesy of VMware researcher Alexander Sotirov to make his bug work. That’s because Macaulay hadn’t been expecting to attack the Service Pack 1 version of Vista, which comes with additional security measures. He also got a little help from co-worker Derek Callaway.

Go GPL!

The GPL has won another victory — its biggest so far. Linux-Watch, in the article “Biggest legal victory ever for GPL“, reports:

The Software Freedom Law Center filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Dec. 6 against Verizon Communications on behalf of its clients, the two principal developers of BusyBox. The suit alleged that Verizon violated the GNU GPLv2 by distributing Actiontec MI424WR wireless routers–which contained unsanctioned GPLv2 code–that were used with Verizon’s fiber-optic Internet and television service, aka FiOS.

On March 17, the SFLC announced that Verizon has come to an agreement with the SFLC and the BusyBox developers, which enables them to dismiss the GPL enforcement lawsuit. BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems. The popular development tool kit is licensed under GPL. Verizon and Actiontec violated the GPL condition that redistributors of BusyBox are required to ensure that every user of the code, or a device containing the code, must be provided access to the program’s source code.

To date, Verizon is the biggest company to be accused in court of a GPL violation. The fact that the case has ended in a settlement should set a good example for others to follow should they ever find themselves in the same position. Hopefully this will also send a strong signal to those who may think that they can get away with not complying with the terms for using GPLed code.

To learn more about the GPL, its history, and its terms, here are some important resources:

• Here’s the GNU General Public License (GPL) itself: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
• The GNU GPL on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License
• The Open Source Initiative (OSI) page for the GPL: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php

Microsoft’s Interoperability Propaganda

Microsoft-Watch columnist Joe Wilcox is at his best when he tells it like it is. He’s a bit like John C. Dvorak but with less crankiness. In his March 6 post entitled “Interoperability by PR Is a Gambit“, Joe pulled no punches when he gave readers the lowdown on Microsoft’s commitment to interoperability:

Microsoft’s idea of a Document Interoperability Initiative is to put together a bunch of businesses that profit from file format incompatibilities. And that is supposed to demonstrate — quoting from the press release — “Microsoft’s commitment to implement a set of strategic changes in its technology and business practices to expand interoperability through the implementation of its interoperability principles.”

The Document Interoperability Initiative is shameless propaganda along the lines of Monday’s Internet Explorer 8 standards announcement. Real initiative (pun intended) would be a group that included Adobe, Apple, Corel, Google, OpenOffice, Sun and other developers of software that produce documents and/or have their own desktop file formats.

Other forms of “openness” and “interoperability” on the part of Microsoft have been found to be far less substantial than the hype contained in the company’s announcements. You have, for example, Microsoft’s promised release of voluminous documents on the APIs of its major applications, apparently to comply with the directives of the EU Commission. In its February 21, 2008, press release, Microsoft announced:

DRM in the Philippines?

Has Philippine Senator Edgardo Angara become a proponent of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM, also deceptively called Digital “Rights” Management by its proponents)?

Last July 3, 2007, the Senator filed “AN ACT AMENDING CERTAIN PROVISIONS OF REPUBLIC ACT NO. 8293 OR THE “THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CODE OF THE PHILIPPINES” AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES”, also known as Senate Bill 880. The bill’s short title, “AMENDING R.A. NO. 8293, TO INCLUDE INTERNET PIRACY”, can give you an idea of its general purpose.

For much of the bill, the focus is on minor changes to existing laws on copyright enforcement, fair use, personal importation of copyrighted works, registration of copy right, copyright infringement, and related procedural matters. In the beginning and at the end of the bill, however, definitions and measures are introduced which give legal protection to DRM techniques by prohibiting ways to circumvent them.

At the beginning of Bill 880, the terms “effective technological measure” and “rights management information” are defined as follows:

SECTION 229A TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES

“EFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURE” MEANS ANY TECHNOLOGY, DEVICE OR COMPONENT THAT, IN THE NORMAL COURSE OF ITS OPERATIO N, CONTROLS ACCESS TO A PROTECTED WORK, SOUND RECORDING, OR OTHER SUBJECT MATTER, OR PROTECTS ANY COPYRIGHT OR ANY RIGHTS RELATED TO COPYRIGHT AS PROVIDED BY THIS ACT.

171.13 “RIGHTS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION” MEANS INFORMATION WHICH IDENTIFIES THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE; THE AUTHOR OF THE WORK, PRODUCER OF THE SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMER OF THE PERFORMANCE; THE OWNER OF ANY RIGHT IN THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE; OR INFORMATION ABOUT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE USE OF THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE; AND ANY NUMBERS OR CODES THAT REPRESENT SUCH INFORMATION, WHEN ANY OF THESE ITEMS IS ATTACHED TO A COPY OF THE SOUND RECORDING OR FIXATION OF WORK, PERFORMANCE OR APPEARS IN CONNECTION WITH THE COMMUNICATION TO THE PUBLIC OF A WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE. NOTHING IN THIS ACT REQUIRES THE OWNER OF ANY R IGHT IN THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING, OR PERFORMANCE TO ATTACH RIGH TS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TO COPIES OF IT OR TO CAUSE RIGHTS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TO APPEAR IN CONNECTION WITH A COMMUNICATION OF THE WORK, SOUND RECORD ING OR PERFORMANCE TO THE PUBLIC.