Xanadu vs. the web: Part VI - Wikipedia and GNU

I've spent quite a few words on why Xanadu, sometimes called the original hypertext system (Vanevar Bush's Memex proposal and Doug Englebart's work notwithstanding), is not, in fact, the hypertext system we use.  With that as background, I'd like to take a look at two pieces of what actually developed, namely Wikipedia and the GNU project.

Wikipedia would seem very much in the spirit of Xanadu.  It seeks to create an interconnected collection of documents surveying humanity's store of knowledge.  It is not only freely accessible to anyone with a net connection, it is editable by anyone (or at least, anyone who can get along in the Wikipedia community, which is a great many people).  It remembers past versions.  Indeed, the edit history is an integral part of Wikipedia, not only technically but culturally.  It can be approached from any angle, read in any order and quoted freely.  It even has two-way links of a sort ("what links here").  One might think that, for example, the "Transliterature open standard" would have something to say about it, or at least wikis in general.

Your search - wiki site:transliterature.org - did not match any documents.


That's not completely fair, as Nelson's work is scattered across many sites across the web and off it, and I'm quite sure he's had at least something to say on the project, but whatever it is doesn't exactly leap to the fore.  You can plug xanadu.net and other sites into the search above and still find nothing.

Wikis are probably the most Xanadu-like, most hypertextual parts of the web.  They're not Xanadu, though.  They do not provide true transclusion, or the side-by-side, interconnected views that Nelson advocates, much less "flying islands" or more exotic presentations.  All they do is provide millions of people the means to explore the world's knowledge in personalized, non-linear, cross-referenced and interconnected ways.

Two conclusions one could draw from this:

1. Wikis, because they are not transclusive and appear much like traditional media on the screen, merely "simulate paper" and are thus detours on the true path to Xanadu.  We must fight on.
2. Easy editing, wide access and the ability both to follow links and to search are more important than strictly adhering to any particular vision of hypertext.

Xanadu, unfortunately, seems firmly in camp (1).

(It occurs to me that the back button on a browser would probably get the same treatment.  A one-way link with a generic way to navigate back is obviously not the same as a two-way link, but it turns out to provide significant value nonetheless.)

How did Wikis (or at least Wikipedia, which has by far the lion's share of Wiki-related traffic) get to be what they are?  People put up servers and people used them.

Project GNU and Xanadu would seem to have much in common.  Persuasive, eccentric founders (by eccentric I mean simply "far from the center") with radical, ambitious visions.  A strongly-defined subculture with vocabulary and practices all its own.  A strongly ideological bent (GNU even has its own manifesto) and a willingness to say that mainstream thought and practice are simply wrong.  A conviction that computing must be liberated from narrow-minded corporate constraints.

I've taken issue with GNU founder Richard Stallman's ideas myself (particularly here and to some extent here), but I certainly don't dismiss them out of hand.  To this day Stallman commands a degree of respect and attention, for a simple reason:

GNU shipped useful code.

If you run Linux, you're almost certainly running the GNU tools (among others) on top of the Linux kernel.  The kernel itself is built with GNU tools.  Even if you're not a Linux geek, if you use the web you've interacted with any number of servers running GNU tools.

Actually, there's a second reason, not quite as simple but even more significant.  Tons of code outside the GNU project has shipped under the GNU public license (GPL) or licenses heavily influenced by it.  Because of this, it's easy to, say, download Eclipse and a bunch of Apache libraries and start doing interesting stuff.  Stallman literally pioneered a whole new form of software development and distribution [There had been "shareware" and similar arrangements already, but the GPL is a completely different beast, particularly in its brilliant use of copyright law].

There are a lot of reasons why GNU has been so influential, even if not every hope or prediction has panned out, but none of them would have had much effect at all if Stallman and company had not produced actual, useful running code, particularly GNU Emacs and gcc.

Ironically, the GNU operating system itself, which prompted the whole effort, has fared less well.  Stallman announced in the original manifesto that an initial implementation of the kernel had been written (as indeed it had), and the actual work started around 1983, even before the manifesto.  Nonetheless to this day there is no stable release.  If that had been the whole story, we might well have another depressing tale of non-delivery (or in the case of GNU, not-quite-delivery).  Happily, though, that's not the whole story.  In the event, the kernel itself was effectively supplanted by the Linux kernel, which may or may not be the better result, but other development went on.

This willingness to shift tacks when the winds change is the hallmark of every successful project that I'm aware of.  It's a big reason we have the web we do.

In defense of mad schemes

In these pages I've cast a jaundiced eye on such matters as the Attention Economy and the notion that information wants to be free, generally arguing that when Everything is Different Now, it probably isn't. Pixel advertising, anyone?

It may come as a surprise then that I still think it's worth something for people to try to re-imagine the basic tenets of economics and society. Occasionally something does come of it, albeit not always what the innovators expected. When it does, the whole mechanism lurches forward another small notch.

For example, the GNU Manifesto didn't kill commercial software or supplant the model of software developers making a living by writing proprietary code as employees of commercial software houses. It has, however, led to the development of a lot of good code that's readily available, and the ecosystem is better for it.

It's also worth noting that the prospective shaker-uppers are generally acting on their own initiative, putting up their own money and using their own time, and/or convincing others to do so willingly.

That said, it still seems important to remember that of all the arrows shot at the moon, most fall to ground harmlessly (and some harmfully), some snag a wayward goose, and few if any actually reach their intended target.

Revolution OS and thereabouts

OK, so I just watched Revolution OS (on the Roku/Netflix box, of course), which I'd been putting off out of concern it might be more propaganda than information. The opening minute or so did little to allay that, but it turned out to be a pretty good documentary, and as even-handed as you could expect from something that interviewed Open Source folks entirely. It did this by getting in touch with several of the principals, including rms, esr and Linus, and pretty much just letting them talk. This is often a good idea, especially when the principals involved are thoughtful, creative, articulate and intellectually curious.

What emerged was a clear picture of the history of Free Software/Open Source, how "Open Source" came to be the dominant name, and the essential differences between the two: Free Software advocates want all software to be free because it's a Good Thing. Open Source advocates want particular software to be open because it's a Useful Thing. It may not surprise the attentive reader that I tilt toward the latter.

There are ironies along the way, for example a small one in Netscape adopting Open Source not through grassroots activism by engineers -- though this did occur -- but because it was eventually imposed from the top down by management; a large one in that the entire Open Source movement, which is at best indifferent to rms' s central goal of making all software free, depends crucially on GNU code and even more crucially on the GPL [more precisely: on the GPL and licenses directly influenced by it]. Rms himself points this out in his acceptance of the Linus Torvalds award at the 1999 Linux world. Linus's daughters trot back and forth behind him on stage all the while.

If you're looking for a spirited debate over Open Source vs. not-open, you won't find it -- except for an early quote from Bill Gates (who did not directly participate), there are no dissenting voices. If you're looking for knock-down, drag-out Linux vs. Windows, as the marketing collateral implies, you won't find that either. And a good thing. Revolution OS is a much more a chance to put a human face on the names you see floating around and get an idea of what they were thinking. Considered from that point of view, it succeeds nicely.


But I didn't really set out to write a movie review here. I really just wanted to share something amusing I ran across while chasing a link from a link from a page I looked up out of curiosity after watching the movie. This is from Jamie Zawinski, who has done more Open Source development than most of us, I would wager. Zawinski says:

But now I've taken my leave of that whole sick, navel-gazing mess we called the software industry. Now I'm in a more honest line of work: now I sell beer.

Specifically, I own the DNA Lounge nightclub in San Francisco. However, it takes quite a lot of software to keep the place running, because we do audio and video webcasts twenty-four hours a day, and because the club contains a number of anonymous internet kiosks. So all that code is also available.

This all sounds fine and noble, and I like the design decisions, but I have to wonder: Just how anonymous can an internet kiosk be in a nightclub full of webcams? Checking sports scores without having to establish an account anywhere? Sure. Plotting world domination? Maybe not so much.

By the way, this turns out to be post number 300. I made a production of 100 and 200, but from here on out I probably won't until some more significant milestone. Hmm ... 100π is about 314 ...

Musopen: Making money on free music

Also on the UCSD music blog I mentioned (which, on closer examination turns out to be, ahem, the "music" category of the UCSD Arts Libraries blog) is a post on a Musopen, a free classical music site that, among other things, will let you pledge toward getting someone to record the public domain work of your choice and place the recording in the public domain (They call it "bidding", but I'm not sure that's quite the right term to use -- generally a bid is for the whole price and the highest wins).

The performer sets the price (e.g., $60 for Für Elise or $3500 for Mozart's Requiem). You tell them how much you'd be willing to pay to see it recorded. When the total pledges match the asking price, the transaction goes through, the performer performs and everyone in the world can listen for free, whether they contributed or not. This is effectively one of the business models Stallman mentions in the GNU manifesto.

The economics of this look interesting. I doubt anyone is going to get rich off of it, but there would appear to be some value to people in making a recording happen and free riders be damned.

[Museopen is still around, but without the business model.  The business model is still around, without Museopen, under the name of KickStarter, of course --D.H. May 2015]

The GPL and copyright protection vs. copy protection

One interesting thing about the material on the GNU website is that much of it is copyrighted. This is a bit counter-intuitive, but it makes perfect sense. Copyrighting something doesn't mean prohibiting copying. It means laying claim to the right to set the rules for copying content and creating derivative works from that content. [I'm speaking from a US perspective here. International copyrights are a matter of international law and treaties, of which the US is a signatory]

The GPL (or "copyleft") and its descendants are a perfect example. Putting something under the GPL is not the same as putting it in the public domain. Something under the GPL can be copied freely just like something in the public domain. Unlike something in the public domain, it can only be modified and copied so long as the modified version is also under the GPL. In particular, this prohibits removing the notice that something is under the GPL (in general, something can be under copyright without carrying a notice at all). It also ensures that improvements to GPL software will be publicly available.

The basic concept of the GPL has stood up to (intense) legal scrutiny over the last twenty years and enabled the production of large quantities of useful software, including much of what I'm using to put this blog on the web. It has done so because it fits with the basic idea of copyrights, both in the literal sense of regulating the right to copy, and in the larger sense of promoting the production of useful content.

I still fondly remember the feeling of "wait ... that can't possibly work ..." followed by the gradual realization of "hey ... that might just work ..." and "wow ... this is really working ...". Definitely a neat hack.