blog de notas de juan freire

… Los ministerios pierden las competencias para “abrir webs”. No habrá nuevos sitios web, salvo excepciones estrictas que deberán pasar el filtro del despacho de Maude y ser apobadas por Danny Alexander, ministro del Tesoro...

Francis Maude trabajará para transformar los sitios web que sobrevivan en una auténtica red “al servicio de público” y que permita también aumentar el número de personas que sean capaces de utilizar Internet. Su propuesta pretende compartir recursos y hacer obligatorio el uso de productos de bajo coste y código abierto. Para esta tarea, el nuevo gobierno, cuenta con la colaboración de la carismática empresaria, Martha Lane Fox, fundadora de Lastminute.com.

Martha Lane Fox, fue el prestigioso nombre de consenso que Nick Clegg y David Cameron pactaron para determinar una estrategia de comunicación digital de vanguardia junto con el Consejo de Transparencia que prepara un informe para liberar contenidos y agilizar la revolución informativa que predica el nuevo gobierno.

El Consejo de la Transparencia digital o “consejo asesor digital” está formado por reconocidos partidarios del open-government. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor de la World Wide Web, el profesor Nigel Shadbolt de la Universidad de Southampton, un experto en datos abiertos, Tom Steinberg, fundador de mySociety y el economista Rufus Pollock (en la foto) de la Universidad de Cambridge.

Rufus Pollock es fundador de la Fundación Conocimiento Abierto y miembro destacado deCreative Commons UK. Su nombramiento y el de los otros citados se plantea como la mejor evidencia del “cambio en las relaciones del poder y los ciudadanos”. En tiempos de guerra el gobierno británico confía al joven profesor que dijo “Queremos los datos a granel y los queremos ya”, la agenda de la “liberación de contenidos”.

Francis Maude ha insistido en la idea de que austeridad no significa falta de ambición en una nueva política de comunicación pública. Al contrario. La austeridad forma parte, con la transparencia y eficacia, de los nuevos modos de hacer política que deben impregnarse de la filosofía “abierta”. La prioridad del nuevo gobierno a corto plazo (septiembre) será la definición y aplicación práctica de unos principios claros y concretos, “hasta en los pequeños detalles” para el cumplimiento real de los compromisos de transparencia en el sector público …

The public domain, as we understand it, is the wealth of information that is free from the barriers to access or reuse usually associated with copyright protection, either because it is free from any copyright protection or because the right holders have decided to remove these barriers. It is the raw material from which new knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created.

After decades of measures that have drastically reduced the public domain, typically by extending the terms of protection, it is time to strongly reaffirm how much our societies and economies rely on a vibrant and ever expanding public domain. The role of the public domain, in fact, already crucial in the past, it is even more important today, as the Internet and digital technologies enable us to access, use and re-distribute culture with an ease and a power unforeseeable even just a generation ago. The Public Domain Manifesto aims at reminding citizens and policy-makers of a common wealth that, since it belongs to all, it is often defended by no-one. In a time where we for the first time in history have the tools to enable direct access to most of our shared culture and knowledge it is important that policy makers and citizens strengthen the legal concept that enables free and unrestricted access and reuse.

We invite you to read the Manifesto and sign it, if you wish to show your support. We also invite you to share this site (http://publicdomainmanifesto.org) with your contacts and friends. The Public Domain Manifesto is also onFacebook. Also remember to celebrate the Public Domain Day every year on New Year’s Day.

Here’s a thought experiment: try to imagine what it would have been like to create Google before the era of the Internet and open standards. You would probably have had to pay millions of dollars to create the necessary software on a proprietary operating system. The effort would have required a huge team of people taking many years. Since Google is a search engine, it most likely would have been given to the phone company to design and run. If you were using X.25, the international networking standard (the Internet equivalent of its time), you would have been charged for each packet of information that you sent or received, in a network in which each network operator had a bilateral agreement with every other network operator. This total project probably would have taken a decade, cost a billion dollars, and not have worked very well.

In fact, the actual cost of building and launching the first Google server was probably only thousands of dollars using standard PC components, mostly open-source software as the base, and connecting to the Stanford University network, which immediately made the service available, at no additional cost, to everyone else on the Internet.

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… the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge announced the winning design for a sustainable classroom of the future, concluding a competition with over 1,000 registrants from 65 countries around the world. Of the 400 designs entered, the winning design was developed by Teton Valley Community School and Section Eight Design…

The winning design is not the only outcome of this challenge, however, as all other designs are openly available online via various Creative Commons Licenses (the winning design is CC BY-NC-ND) for others to improve, adapt, and implement themselves, which calls for additional support in much-needed areas. The massive response by schools and design companies around the world also signifies how learning has evolved, and how the old brick and mortar classroom is no longer considered sustainable. By redesigning our learning spaces, we are making concrete the new technologies and pedagogies of the 21st century.

… Creative Commons New Zealand reported that their national government released an open access and licensing framework draft (NZGOAL) for public feedback:

The framework will enable greater access to many public sector works by encouraging the New Zealand State Services agencies to license material for reuse on liberal terms, and recommends Creative Commons as an important tool in this process.

The release of NZGOAL is part of the Open Government Information and Data Re-use Project led by the State Services Commission. To get involved, join the official discussion page, contact CC New Zealand, or catch up with the Open Government Ninjas.

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