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I just released my first free software project: CL-HEAP. It’s a small library implementing some heap data structures and priority queues. I wrote it for my phd and thought that it would be neat little thing to release into the wild. I’d say, “Download it and try it out,” but it’s really not that exciting unless you’re implementing algorithms in Common Lisp.
Hopefully someone other than me will use it!
I’ve had a chance to use Office 2007 for the paper that I’m writing. The journal I’m submitting to somehow expects it to be “typeset” in Word, which is an interesting exercise in futility.
But I like Office 2007. I’m not 100% sure, but it seems that the equation editor has been revamped, although it’s been years since I’ve had to use it. For the limited use I put it through this time round, it seems to be doing a semi-reasonable job at typesetting the equations, although inputting them is still something I’m glad I don’t have to frequently do.
And Office 2007 has a built in citation manager! That made me quite happy to see, although I’m still having a lot of teething-pain with it. For instance, I often land up with author surnames and first names switched around, even when I’m using their built in “edit name” tool that has separate fields for adding first name, middle name and surname. It also doesn’t completely handle citation styles, like how to cite page numbers and so on: it just lets the user add arbitrary “page number” text to the citation; nor does it let you easily add text to a citation (such as Ackermann, 1998), or combine multiple citations into one entry. Gah! Maybe I’m just missing something. It also, sometimes, in what appears to be an arbitrary decision, adds the document’s title to the actual, in-text citation — I have never seen that done in anything except footnote citation styles (which I am not using), and I have no idea why Office feels that this “feature” is something that an author would automatically want. And while I can thankfully use unicode characters in the citations, I don’t seem able to use different font faces, such as italics, which you do actually need when, for instance, an article name contains the name of a species (specific names being written in italics, such as Homo sapiens).
Anyway, I like it, although typesetting a large document in it is probably still a nightmare. Trying to easily deal with the various styles, indenting and so on, even in a 25 page document, is an irritating hassle, and I’m not sure I want to deal with over a hundred references in its citation manager — I’m also pretty sure that there’s no way to use those citations in a sensible, non-mechanical way that isn’t going to drive someone insane in the long run.
Paper progress: it’s now down to 25 pages, and all the citations have been added. I just need to fix up the tables and then I can send it off to the other authors.
I’ve been using facebook for a while now. But it’s slowly becoming increasingly useless and irritating. The news feed area has stopped telling me what my friends are doing, and is now, instead, just listing what application X has just installed, that Mr. so-and-so has rated someone a perfect ten with the the hot-or-not application (although I’ve got a feeling that Mr. so-and-so probably didn’t want that advertised to all of his friends, but hey, you never know), and that Ms. Y has just received a new fun wall post. Like I care.
Rudy is using the Notepad application. Wow! Whoopee! Squee! Only not even my mother cares.
I hate it when I’m stuck on someone’s machine and the only web browser that they have installed is Internet Explorer. I’m stuck in just such a situation at the moment.
While the missing tabs are the most obvious frustration, the most subtle thing is the spell checker. When typing a word that I’m not sure about, I’m always conscious of whether my browser flags it as misspelt. And if I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing in IE, I forget that it isn’t checking my spelling as I go along.
And that’s how myriad spelling mistakes can creep in to things I post from IE.
I recently posted about Bill Hilf speaking of the death of the free software movement. He has clarified his stance towards the free software movement, even going so far as to say that he is rethinking his stance on free software: “But I’m rethinking that last part. Mostly because I don’t think it matters. If the software is open, it’s open, that does not change based on who developed it or why.” I assume that when he speaks of “open software” he’s confounding it with “free software”.
Bill Hilf, Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategy, has apparently said that the free software movement is dead:
“The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn’t exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today.”
He goes on to say, “They [linux kernel developers] are full-time employees, with 401K stock options. Some work for IBM or Oracle. What does that mean? It means that Linux doesn’t exist any more in 2007. There is no free software movement. If someone says Linux is about Love, Peace and Harmony, I would tell them to do their research. There is no free software movement any more. There is big
commercial [firms] like IBM and there is small commercial [firms] like Ubuntu.”
Now the main goal of the free software movement is, of course, the freedom of the software — which I suppose could be very loosely characterised in a snide and unrealistic manner as being about “Love, Peace and Harmony” — but focusing only on the freedoms around the free software movement misses the point: free software is still just software. It’s developed for all the reasons that software can be developed for, and while most free software — especially that software developed under the banner of open source software, such as Linux — is not developed just for “Love, Peace and Harmony”, it is, nevertheless developed and released as free software.
But just because free software is developed for reasons other than to have a free alternative does not make the free software movement dead. Indeed, the movement’s philosophy remains a major driving force behind open source development. Open source development is about how developers can relate to the software while it’s being developed; the free software movement is an enabler for this as it concerns itself with how people — including the developers — relate to the software and one another. Free software, however, says nothing about how the software was developed, or who developed it. Developing software in a commercial environment, and for commercial reasons, whether at IBM or Ubuntu (or rather, Canonical), does not make the software non-free. It does not mean that free software — or the free software movement — is dead. In fact, just looking at the large commercial interest and participation in the drafting process of GPLv3 — the GPL being a cornerstone in the movement — shows how the free software movement is still very much with us.
Commercial interest in — and use of — free software licenses is a sign that free software and the free software movement is becoming entrenched. Developing free software for reasons other than having a free alternative is even a larger sign of its entrenchment: the free software movement has become integral and pervasive.
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