Yesterday I incidently decided to attend the bi-weekly TWiki release meeting. Release meetings with TWiki were more than suggested by just the name: over time they became general meetings where the community discussed the state and future of TWiki. Lucky me, since tonight turned out to be pretty historic: TWiki.net gave the community the finger, and forced a fork.

A short run down for those of you who haven’t been following this blog for that long (i wrote about it twice already):
TWiki is an open-source wiki, a project that was founded about a decade ago by Peter Thoeny. He forked another product, and built on that to create one of the first ‘structured wiki’ platforms. Over the years, Thoeny’s coding contributions declined in favour of a motivated and skilled group of people that carried the TWiki project to maturity.

About a year ago, Thoeny founded the company TWiki.net. Initial skepticism turned out to be justified. TWiki.net decided to forego the community, and force a governance model on the project that met with a lot of resistance from the community. This resulted in a TWiki community summit in Berlin that Thoeny did not attend, and left Tom Barton (TWiki.net ceo) red-eared by taking in the displeased frustration of the community.

So what happened yesterday evening?

At the beginning of the meeting, at which even Tom Barton (who normally showed only a passing interest in the community) showed up, Thoeny introduced a new agenda item: what he dubbed the ‘TWiki.org relaunch‘. I am still mulling over the finer points and implications of this move. An important fact is that the entire community content on the twiki.org site is locked down. Only by signing the ‘terms of use’, one is allowed to contribute again (or remove earlier contributions).

Needless to say, i did not sign those yet. And I don’t think I will.

Although the events are sad in one way, it is refreshing to finally see twiki.net take a definitive stand against the community, making explicit what has been implicit in their behaviour. The project can now be taken out of limbo. Most (if not all) of the active contributors have jumped ship and gotten on the fork bandwagon. There’s a great number of features lined up that people didn’t commit during the governance crisis, for fear of being taken advantage over by TWiki.net. They have proven again and again that marketing the hard work of community volunteers as their own is not below them.

Obviously, TWiki.net’s recent action forced the active community to continue the project under another name (as the TWiki trademark is owned by Thoeny and licensed to TWiki.net). With the active contributors locked out of the TWiki project home site, it is being used as a propaganda platform. Thoeny has already threatened the community to sue when the fork mentions the T-word in its name or otherwise. It’s sad to see the last throws of a dying power-hungry dictator. It is sad to see TWiki die. It is sad to see hardware donated to the community by SUN and others being reappropriated by TWiki.net for their own marketing strategies.

But there is hope. The project is free of its shackles again! There will be a lot of work getting the new project infra-structure in shape, and it is truly a pity that Thoeny forces the community to this duplication of effort. On the other hand, there is much room for improvement, improvement that now can be made. The same goes for the project itself, which will not be known as TWiki anymore. The next few days will give us the projects new name, and a first release is expected in the very near future.

TWiki is dead, long live TWiki!

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It is that time of the year again, the worst EU lobby awards vote has opened! I’m passing along the message verbatim below:

Worst EU Lobbying Award 2008 — Vote Now — www.worstlobby.eu
http://www.worstlobby.eu/2008/home_en

Vote now for the 2008 Worst EU Lobbying Awards — the annual award for deceptive, manipulative or unethical lobbying.

This year you can vote in two categories:

1.      The ‘Worst EU Lobbying’ Award for the lobbyist, company or lobby group that in 2008 has employed the most deceptive, misleading, or otherwise problematic lobbying tactics in their attempts to influence EU decision-making.

2.      The special ‘Worst Conflict of Interest’ Award for the MEP, Commissioner or Commission official whose background, side-jobs or other liaisons with special interests raise the most serious concerns about their ability to act in public interest.

Select your winners now in both categories and cast your vote at http://www.worstlobby.eu

The nominees for the 2008 Worst EU Lobbying Award are:
*    the Agrofuels lobby (MPOC, Unica and Abengoa) for greenwashing agrofuels;
*    European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicine for hiding the involvement of big pharma;
*    European Business and Parliament Scheme for EP indoors lobbying;
*    Gplus and Aspect Consulting for spreading war propaganda;
*    the airline lobby IATA for deceptions to avoid CO2 reduction obligations.

The nominees for the Worst Conflict of Interest Award are:
*    Dr Caroline Jackson MEP – appointed advisor to a waste company;
*    Piia-Noora Kauppi MEP – lobbies for her future employer;
*    Klaus-Heiner Lehne MEP – doubles as a lawyer;
*    Ex-Commission officials Petite, Klotz and Kjølbye – now lobbying for industry;
*    DG Trade Director Wenig – slips inside informations to lobbyists.

The candidates were selected out of 54 nominations by citizens and groups from around Europe after thorough scrutiny by the organisers. For more background on the individual candidates, check out http://www.worstlobby. The voting website is available in English, German and French.

Help us expose the worst lobbying in Brussels and cast your vote at http://www.worstlobby.eu

Please spread the news about the awards! Tell your friends via our website or put banners on your websites. Banners can be found here: http://www.foeeurope.org/corporates/banner/wla.html

Online voting closes November 30. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Brussels on December 9.

The Worst EU Lobbying Awards are organised by Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, LobbyControl and Spinwatch.

Sign at entrance of PGday.

I’ve been in Prato for the last two days (well, actually, only two nights) for the first official european PGday! PGday is a gathering of PostgreSQL geeks from europe and beyond. For those that might be wondering what PostgreSQL is, it is the leading open-source database software. Whereas most people might know mysql from their website hosters, PostgreSQL is used by anyone with serious database needs (say, databases with sizes in gigabytes to terrabytes) and increasingly is the choice for enterprises using oracle or informix before.

So i’m once more visitting the country of icecream, pasta, using the car horn instead of the blinkers and a requirement to put your ID on file before being allowed to go on the internet. The venue is Monash university, in a nice old building not far from the local castle. I haven’t seen that much from the city though, as the hotel is only 5 minutes walking distance. On my first night, i had the company of two mosquito’s in my room. I didn’t get much sleep until after i terminated those.

PGday is like a warm bath, the PostgreSQL community is one of those communities that just feels good. I see a lot of familiar faces, people i already met at fosdem 2008. But a lot of new faces too. The european PGday is a combination with the Italian PGday. In fact, last year it was called the Italian PGday. But it had such attraction to non-Italians, plus the fact that in february the European user group was formed, that this year it is truly european. The intention is to make it a yearly event.

We are now on the beginning of day 2, with a lecture by David Fetter about one of the many great new features: recursive queries. Yesterday, there were already some lectures on more new features: windowing functions among them. They’re great for time-series analysis, among other uses. Later today there will be a talk about in-place upgrades, which I hope promises to enable upgrades between major version numbers (eg. 8.2 to 8.3). Upgrading to a new major version is now more often than not delayed (or even skipped) because the down-time that comes with a dump-restore cycle on big databases is not acceptable in mission-critical databases.

Next to those DBA-targetted talks, there is a track for developers too, that starts with the next talk (the one i’m waiting for now in one of the nice bars in the building). What I personally would have like to have seen is sort of an introduction to the PostgreSQL code base. I haven’t yet gotten my hands dirty on any serious PostgreSQL development, apart from some small tours in the codebase to check why a certain feature did this or that.

Back of program leaflet.

One thing that became clear from the keynote speech is that the development model that has been in use for the 10 years that PostgreSQL is in existence so far is not suited for the continued growth of the project. As more and more developers and users are getting involved with the development process, a new model is needed. Changes are being made currently to accommodate the growth of the project. And this is perhaps a way for me to start a career as a PostgreSQL developer too: there is a need for patch-reviewers. Initially, one would review the patch on the basis of some basic rules (i’d guess mostly syntax and style). A great way to get to know the various parts of the codebase from up close.

I’ve been a PostgreSQL user and DBA for a while now, and recently I decided to make it one of 2 specialisations of my company Sonologic. As you can see on the leaflet on the right, Sonologic is one of the sponsors of this event. It is a small chance to do something back for all those people that created and still maintain PostgreSQL. Hopefully, in the future I will be able to do even more!

At least the meeting has instilled some fresh enthousiasm in getting something like a DBPUG off the ground: a Dutch-Belgian PostgreSQL Usergroup. At the very least, i’ll be manning a PostgreSQL booth at T-Dose together with one or two other Dutch PostgreSQL enthousiasts. I must nog forget to ask whether I can take some leftover shirts and other swag to sell. But now, the talk about custom indexing with GiST indices is starting so time to log-off!

It’s nice to have an ABC right around the corner! Because that means you can restack your supply of sci-fi with a short walk. Added to my list: I finally got a copy of Alastair Reynold’s latest: house of suns. Also picked up a copy of his short-story collection ‘galactic north’, which to my surprise i did not have in my library yet. While browsing the shelves, I also noted more Charles Stross. He writes em faster than i can read em. The last one of his novels I read was Accelerando: something i want to recommend to every geek/nerd out there! With Glasshouse (an oldie from ’06) and and Halting State, he continues to explore the genre which i would (probably incorrectly) dub ‘post-cyberpunk’. In his novels, consciousness and the virtual are so intertwined that the disctinction vanishes.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about is an older novel from (I believe ’89) by Alan Steele. I’ve enjoyed his coyote-series, and Orbital Decay is his first non-coyote work i’ve read. Although, really, the style is not that different. Steele describes the folk who are pioneering the expensian of the human race into space. Apart from the crazy commander and maybe the doctor, these are common folks: construction workers, bikers and fishermen.

An interesting twist to the story, around which Steele unfolds his expose on those common men, is the prediction that in 2010 (at or about, which is when the story is situated; remember it was written in ’89) the US government will roll out a network of satelittes allowing them to tap into any phonecall made. Not only long-distance and international, but local too. And what’s more, the system is able to transcribe those phone-calls and alert the NSA whenever something fishy is being said. In the examples, the fishy things include a conversation between a mom who complains about how the current administration sent off her boy to war, afraid he’ll get killed.

I don’t know whether Steele realized at the time of his writing that his prediction was spot on. In the ‘war on terror’ the US has breached its constituents privacy in ways very similar to what Steele predicted. Perhaps even more so. I won’t go into detail on that here, if you’re curious about it browse eff’s site or aclu’s for a bit. Maybe it isn’t that much of a surprise though, as it turns out he was inspired by earlier such tendencies. One of the characters mentions the McCarthy witchhunt, and something termed the ‘Accuracy in Academia’ movement. The character furthermore points out the arrests of many people in the US during world-war I for saying anything that even slightly smelled of agreeing with the Germans.

And this is why all this surveillance crap is so dangerous: it is (in this case) the NSA that decides when you’re suspicious. You might have an innocent chat with your neighbour about the middle-east or Osama bin Laden or whatever. A slightly careless phrasing of your thoughts and voila: you’re on the suspect list! Scary stuff!

All in all, a good read. The surveillance stuff is actually not a central part of the novel, but more of a motive around which the stories of the people that work and live on the earth-orbitting space station unfold. A thought-experiment about living with tens of people within the cramped confines of a space station. The irony of being in space, stretching out endlessly beyond the small confines in which human life can be sustained.

Vandaag stond ik samen met wat GroenLinks-collega’s een kraam te bemensen op ‘t Plein, alwaar de volksopstand 2008 was georganiseerd. Een demonstratie, dachten wij, tegen de inperking van de privacy en het afbreken van de burgerrechten. Een korte opsomming: wet bewaring verkeersgegevens telefonie en internet, ongebreideld afluisteren van telefoongesprekken door de amerikaanse overheid, ov-chipkaart, identificatieplicht, nationale vingerafdrukken en dna database en ga zo maar door.

Allemaal onderwerpen waarvan te weinig mensen doorhebben dat ze een serieuze bedreiging vormen voor onze democratische rechtsstaat: de drie-eenheid van wetgevende, uitvoerende en rechterlijke macht (trias politica) wordt kortgesloten doordat opsporing en vervolgen volledig voorbij gaan aan rechterlijke toetsing.

Daar kun je allemaal erg rationeel over nadenken, en D66 europarlementarier Sophie in ‘t Veld doet dat ook en haar toespraak was dan ook prima te verteren. Ook de opsomming van problematische wetgeving door Stephan Ockhuizen was prima in orde, en de toespraak tegen de identificatieplicht goed te volgen.

Zweven

Dat we intussen in onze stand werden aangesproken door mensen die zich ernstige zorgen maken over ‘chemtrails‘ en nulpuntsenergie, verbaasd ons nog niet eens. Je hebt dat wel vaker bij het actievoeren.

Plots wordt echter e.e.a. duidelijk, als de volgende spreker op het podium verschijnt: Marcel Messing begint een verhaal over de facistische nieuwe wereldorde, Mensen worden geimplanteerd met chips die gedachten manipuleren, nazi’s zijn door het vaticaan beschermd en maken binnenkort hun comeback, regeringen zijn massaal mensen aan het vergiftigen, UMTS masten worden gebruikt om ons DNA te manipuleren, en ga zo nog maar even door. En dat allemaal vanwege het buitenaardse complot.

We voelen ons nu wat ongemakkelijk. Dit is allemaal niet meer serieus te nemen, en heeft niets meer te maken met de aanleiding van de demonstratie! We pakken snel onze spullen in, en houden het voor gezien.

Vrijbit ontmaskerd

De organisatie van de demonstratie is in handen van vrijbit. Vrijbit belooft een organisatie te zijn voortbordurend op het enkele jaren geleden ter ziele gegane Bits of Freedom (BOF). BOF was een uiterst capabale en rationele organisatie, welke zich inzette voor privacy en digitale burgerrechten. Een belangrijk onderwerp in deze tijd waarin ICT een zo centrale rol in het dagelijkse leven inneemt.

Vrijbit, schaart zich echter na vandaag in het illustere rijtje van niburu, scientology en andere sekte-achtige clubs die de meest bizarre complotten menen te ontwaren in ogenschijnlijk willekeurige gebeurtenissen. Nu begrijp ik ook waarom een goede vriend van me, die in het bestuur van vrijbit zat, zich onlangs heeft teruggetrokken.

Het is jammer dat op deze manier een belangrijk onderwerp wordt vertroebeld met, ik zeg het maar recht voor zijn raap, gestoorde samenzweringstheorieen. Het is maar goed dat er weinig mensen op de demonstratie af kwamen en er geen pers bij was.

Terwijl wij onze kraam voortijdig ontruimden, vroegen enkele verbaasde passanten ons nog waar dit nu allemaal over ging. Ik kon het ze niet uitleggen. Vol verbazing keerde ik huiswaarts, om nog eens in de uiterst vermakelijke materie te duiken. Sites als wijwordenwakker.org, niburu.nl, nulpuntenergie.net en chemtrails.nl. Voor wie van drogredenen, paranoia en samenzweringstheorieen houdt een oneindige bron van vermaak!