Digital divide conference papers available
Recently we had a conference dealing with several digital divide related topics: citizen participation, free software, biopatents, copyright, and sustainable information society. Some papers are available. Keynotes by Colin Lankshear and Rishab Aiyer Ghosh may be of interest to FLOSS researchers, as well as the papers in the “Open and Collaborative models” session and Tere Vadén’s paper from the IP session. My presentation is missing from the conference site; you can read the slides while I’m finishing my paper. I think the conference was succesful. I met some good people to work with in the future.
Also, hello to people reading Planet FLOSS Research.
Long-term Approach to Software
In his essay Software That Lasts 200 Years, Dan Bricklin calls for an approach to software that takes into account long-term consequences. Bricklin compares software production to building projects - houses, bridges, roads - that are planned and built to last for a very long time. By contrast, “software has historically been built assuming that it will be replaced in the near future (remember the Y2K problem)”.
