one small voice

stpeter's blog on jabber, technology, history, philosophy, et alia

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2003-04-27

Still Drafty

The XMPP saga continues.

Just a few minutes ago I submitted newly updated revisions of draft-ietf-xmpp-core and draft-ietf-xmpp-im (versions 11 and 10 respectively, to be precise, available here as always). We really are getting close, I promise!

Posted on 2003-04-27 at 22:40. File under jabber.

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Interplanetary IM

The pathos of distance.

Once humans start colonizing other worlds, instant messaging won't seem so instant anymore: this post explains that Earth-to-Moon communications introduce a latency of only 2.6 seconds, but Earth-to-Mars latencies are typically 25 minutes. Looks like we'll need to develop that FTL transport for Jabber. ;-)

Posted on 2003-04-27 at 22:37. File under technology.

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The Club of Greece

Do we need nature?

Over the last several weeks I've been working a bit on an essay for submission to the 2003 Shell Economist Essay Contest. This year's theme is the human relationship to our natural environment. What I've come up with so far is a dialogue between the Greek gods regarding whether or not to destroy the human race for its ecological sins. You can read what I've written so far here. Personally I'm rather fond of it (the dialogue form is lots of fun), but feedback is always welcome.

Posted on 2003-04-27 at 15:02. File under society.

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Triumphalism

My way or the highway.

In his essay Existentialism and Human Emotions, Sartre asserted that "In choosing myself, I choose man." This implies that there are no purely personal choices:

When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also chooses all men. In fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.

I was reminded of Sartre's claim while reading an essay by Bernard Lewis in this month's issue of The Atlantic. Lewis contrasts two approaches to religious matters: triumphalism (the worldview to which I subscribe is right, and all the others are wrong) vs. relativism (there are many paths to God or heaven or happiness). Judaism is an example of a relativist religion, since it holds that one can be "saved" in faiths other than Judaism (with the caveat that such faiths must be monotheistic). Old-time Christianity was triumphalist (everyone but good Christians would go to hell), and the main stream of Islamic thought is triumphalist to this day (although both Islam and Christianity have, like Judaism, traditionally tolerated other monotheistic religions to some extent).

For a long time I too was a triumphalist, although in the realm of philosophy rather than religion (I ceased believing in a god at the age of nine). Turning monotheistic toleration on its head, I thought that only atheists were on the right path. Even further, I held that only adherents of the philosophy I had come to accept (Ayn Rand's philosophy of "Objectivism") were correct, and that everyone else was wrong. Randian triumphalism is the rule in Objectivist circles, and among orthodox followers of Rand the harshest criticisms are reserved for those who dare to express toleration for alternative viewpoints. Yet moving beyond triumphalism involves more than merely "tolerating" others' ideas -- it means actively respecting them as sincere attempts at coming to understand reality and human experience. Unfortunately, not every viewpoint results from a sincere attempt at understanding; but I've found it valuable to try to see others' viewpoints in that way, at least until proven otherwise.

Not that I'm a complete relativist. After all, there is this little thing called evidence...

Posted on 2003-04-27 at 08:51. File under philosophy.

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2003-04-24

Jefferson Again

Bringing libertarians into the Democratic fold.

Kos has posted a thought-provoking entry about remaking the Democratic Party into the party of personal liberty. Stranger things have happened. (Some of the comments are pretty darn insightful, too.)

Posted on 2003-04-24 at 22:22. File under politics.

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Memberbot Delenda Est!

Requirements for a new Jabber voting engine.

I just posted a first draft of requirements for an application to replace memberbot, the bot that we use to handle voting by members of the Jabber Software Foundation. As I note in the requirements, memberbot is utterly sub-optimal (and I can say that, since I wrote it). Yes, memberbot must be destroyed. Please, someone put it out of its misery.

Posted on 2003-04-24 at 22:03. File under jabber.

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2003-04-22

Gaia

Thoughts on Earth Day.

I've long thought that the environmental movement really began on December 7, 1972. Why? Because that's the day that the following photo was taken by the crew of Apollo 17:

Posted on 2003-04-22 at 22:13. File under society.

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The Graves of Academe

Theory is dead! Long live theory!

Wow. Emily Eakin of the great grey lady reports that a recent pow-wow of postmodern intellectuals could find no compelling justification for, well, postmodern intellectuals. Some juicy quotes:

Sander L. Gilman: "I would make the argument that most criticism -- and I would include Noam Chomsky in this -- is a poison pill. I think one must be careful in assuming that intellectuals have some kind of insight. In fact, if the track record of intellectuals is any indication, not only have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways."

Stanley Fish: "I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people against the decision to go into the academy because they hope to be effective beyond it."

Even the emperor admits he's naked.

Posted on 2003-04-22 at 21:59. File under society.

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Starbound

Ad astra per aspera.

As reported in RocketForge, HobbySpace, and elsewhere, famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan has unveiled a vehicle that will make possible privately-funded flight into space. The most detailed coverage is in Aviation Week and Space Technology. Cool!

Posted on 2003-04-22 at 21:43. File under technology.

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WLW

The Internet comes alive.

Doc Searls seems to have coined the phrase World Live Web. As usual, he's onto something important. The new Web is not about visiting sites, but connecting with people. That's part of what makes weblogs so fascinating and so important. But they're just the tip of the iceberg. We don't know what shape the Web might take as it becomes more personal, but I can guarantee it's going to take us all by surprise. :-)

Posted on 2003-04-22 at 21:32. File under technology.

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The Ultimate Penalty

Thoughts on capital punishment.

Amnesty International reports that governments of the following countries passed down the most death sentences in 2002:

China
United States
Pakistan
Kenya
Sudan
Bangladesh
Iran
Egypt
Vietnam
Rwanda

What a gruesome "top ten"! I'm ashamed that the USA keeps company with such vile and benighted regimes, especially when you consider how often prosecutors and juries get it wrong. (And that's aside from the immorality of the State killing people.)

Victor Hugo once wrote:

"I know no aim more elevated, more holy, than that of seeking the abolition of capital punishment."

Amen, Victor.

Not that throwing offenders in prison for life is the answer, either, since it costs a great deal of money and provides no compensation to the victims. Restitution, anyone?

Posted on 2003-04-22 at 21:24. File under politics.

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2003-04-21

Havel

A voice for freedom.

Matt Welch has written a powerful essay about Czech playwright and former president Vaclav Havel. Required reading.

Posted on 2003-04-21 at 13:19. File under society.

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Thinkbot II

It's not just for experts.

Alf Eaton provides more information about Thinkbot. And no, it's not just for experts -- it's a way to find anyone who's interested in the same topics you are. I just tested it out and it's kinda cool. Definitely something that the Polish Jabber contingent will install on one of those huge servers in Poland, I bet.

Posted on 2003-04-21 at 10:06. File under jabber.

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2003-04-20

Lethal

The supposed benefits of perpetual war.

In his most recent essay, Victor Davis Hanson writes:

The United States military is now evolving geometrically as it gains experience from near-constant fighting and grafts new technology daily. Indeed, it seems to be doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling its lethality every few years. And the result is that we are outdistancing not merely the capabilities of our enemies but our allies as well -- many of whom who have not fought in decades -- at such a dizzying pace that our sheer destructive power makes it hard to work with others in joint operations....

Such unprecedented military power brings with it enormous moral responsibility as the world -- its utopians especially -- in the decades ahead will vie for a hand in the decisions on how to use it and for what purposes. There quite literally has never been a single nation that has exercised such colossal military force to change almost instantly the status quo, and used it under the auspices of a consensual government to free -- Grenada, Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq -- rather than to enslave peoples. How long it will last, we do not know, but we should at least realize that we are living in one of the most anomalous periods in recorded history.

Sophocles would warn us that hubris -- not enemies in the here and now -- is the only real danger to us on the horizon. But so far we have avoided the gods' nemeses precisely because our soldiers have put their power in the service of good by toppling odious despots -- Noriega, Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein -- and leaving the seeds of freedom in their wake. We of an often cynical and ironic society at the least owe them a commensurate idealism.

Indeed we don't know how long it will last. But what is "it"? The tremendous superiority of the American military -- or its ability to use overpowering force for good rather than ill? No one disagrees that Saddam was a fascist. But I have yet to see intelligent conservatives such as Hanson make a strong argument that it is the purpose of the American military to remove despots from power all over the world. And those who celebrate such victories are curiously silent about intervention by the CIA in hot and cold wars on every continent (after all, they're the ones who installed Saddam in the first place!), or the role of the American military in destroying crops in Andean nations (admittedly the farmers are growing coca, but since when is it written in the United States Constitution that destroying farmers' livelihoods in other countries counts as national defense?), or a hundred other interventions that have nothing to do with defending American citizens and everything to do with the blatant exercise of raw power. Right-wingers in favor of intervention abroad continue to use the language of "national defense", but their arguments have worn just as thin as those of left-wingers who use the language of "the common welfare" as justification for the minutely meddlesome regulatory regime under which Americans suffer. Unfortunately, intervention by both left and right leads to the necessity for confiscatory taxation, increasingly-open thought control, and an ever more brazen trampling of individual rights. Hanson claims that the soldiers of the United States military have been "leaving the seeds of freedom in their wake". Yet our government interventionists (of both foreign and domestic varieties) seem blithely unconcerned about stamping out the seeds of freedom at home.

Posted on 2003-04-20 at 21:25. File under politics.

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Thinkbot

Another way to find people on Jabber.

Turns out that GlobeAlive is not unique: unbeknownst to me until the developer poked me about it today after reading my last blog entry, there exists something called Thinkbot, which uses Jabber to provide an "easy way to find other people who are thinking about the same things as you". No, it doesn't read your mind -- it searches its database of registered users who, as with GlobeAlive, provide information about the topics on which they consider themselves experts (or at least knowledgeable). I don't really understand the emphasis on finding experts, when folks probably just want to find other people they can chat with about a topic in which they have an interest. But maybe that's just over the horizon...

Posted on 2003-04-20 at 20:51. File under jabber.

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GlobeAlive

Looking for a few good people...

In addition to weighing in on wire protocols for messaging and presence, Doc just pointed me to GlobeAlive, a search engine for people, not pages. This is extremely intriguing from the Jabber perspective, since one of the areas that is under-developed in the Jabber community is the ability to find people (in fact Michael Bauer and I have been working on the beginnings of a "personal description language" to help fill the gap). So GlobeAlive and Jabber could be a strong combination, either through a Jabber gateway or through native support in standard Jabber clients. I wonder: do they have an open protocol?. Further research required...

Posted on 2003-04-20 at 15:06. File under jabber.

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POGE

The good doctor on SIMPLE and XMPP.

Following up on Cathleen Moore's article in InfoWorld, the ever-wise Doc Searls analyzes some differences between SIMPLE and XMPP:

SIP/SIMPLE is a big company effort, whereas XMPP/Jabber is a small developer and open-source community effort (with recent big company adoption).
XMPP/Jabber comprise simple infrastructural building materials, whereas SIMPLE is anything but simple.
SIP/SIMPLE is far from complete; XMPP/Jabber lets you do everything you need for presence and messaging, plus it's easily extensible (via XML) so you can add whatever you need (either on your own or through the Jabber Software Foundation's JEP process).
SIP/SIMPLE violates the "Principle of Good Enough" (POGE); XMPP/Jabber doesn't, which is why it deserves to be ranked in the good company of protocols like TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, and SMTP.

Posted on 2003-04-20 at 14:54. File under jabber.

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Between the Bushes

Re-assessing the Clinton years.

Not long ago, I saw a bumper sticker that read: "Clinton. The guy who did it between the bushes." I know people who are pretty much party-line Republicans, and who loathed Clinton for his moral failings. While by no means am I a party-line Democrat -- they've strayed too far from Jeffersonian principles for that -- I've always said that I prefer a president who screws interns to one who screws the country. Unfortunately, George III and his Republican majorities seem to be doing a bang-up job of the latter. As noted in this analysis by Veronique de Rugy, the Clinton years saw passage of welfare reform, founding of the North American Free Trade Agreement, deregulation in the areas of agriculture, telecommunications, and financial services, and benign neglect of the Internet. By contrast, she notes that "in less than two years, President Bush has presided over more government expansion than took place during eight years of Bill Clinton", including wrong-headed policies in the areas of education, farming, commerce, and health care. And that doesn't even count the rapid erosion of civil liberties foisted upon American citizens in the name of "homeland security". It's enough to make me doubt the viability even of an innovative idea like the Free State Project and to contemplate moving to New Zealand -- at least they have a free economy, a peaceful foreign policy, respect for civil liberties, and a burgeoning libertarian movement.

Well, enough political musings for today -- the XMPP Internet-Drafts are calling me.

Posted on 2003-04-20 at 09:58. File under politics.

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Defense

On the legitimacy of the armed forces.

In his First Annual Message to Congress, Thomas Jefferson said the following:

A statement has been formed by the secretary of war, on mature consideration, of all the posts and stations where garrisons will be expedient, and of the number of men requisite for each garrison. The whole amount is considerably short of the present military establishment. For the surplus no particular use can be pointed out. For defence against invasion, their number is as nothing; nor is it conceived needful or safe that a standing army should be kept up in time of peace for that purpose. Uncertain as we must ever be of the particular point in our circumference where an enemy may choose to invade us, the only force which can be ready at every point and competent to oppose them, is the body of neighboring citizens as formed into a militia. On these, collected from the parts most convenient, in numbers proportioned to the invading foe, it is best to rely, not only to meet the first attack, but if it threatens to be permanent, to maintain the defence until regulars may be engaged to relieve them. These considerations render it important that we should at every session continue to amend the defects which from time to time show themselves in the laws for regulating the militia, until they are sufficiently perfect. Nor should we now or at any time separate, until we can say we have done everything for the militia which we could do were an enemy at our door.

It may seem incredible in this day and age, but Thomas Jefferson's administration made deep cuts in the military establishment because it was not considered "needful or safe that a standing army should be kept up in time of peace", even for the purpose of defending the nation against invasion (yes, in those days it was common wisdom that citizen militas were sufficient to "maintain the defence until regulars may be engaged to relieve them"). Now the U.S. government not only keeps standing armies in time of peace, and not only keeps them in a hundred nations of the world, but indeed is engaged in the kind of endless war that the founders so loathed about the English government of their day. Our forefathers overthrew the tyrannical rule of a hated empire; now the American government is itself tyrannical and imperial. We have met the enemy, and it is us. Welcome to the new American century.

Posted on 2003-04-20 at 08:52. File under politics.

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2003-04-18

Making a Connection

Jabber and Social Software.

According to a page on the Social Software Alliance wiki, two of the guiding principles for social software are to "connect people together" and "to facilitate the inter-connection of different 'systems' together". Yes! This is what Jabber has always been about, right from the beginning. Years ago, Jeremie Miller and I wrote something of a "Jabber Manifesto" that drove this point home quite strongly. We wrote:

People talk. Talking is how we learn, how we share knowledge, how we connect with others. And most of that talking takes place not randomly but in the form of conversations. The reasons for this are obvious: conversations provide rich context, a flexible structure, and the rapid exchange of important information.

Technology has long been used to facilitate human conversations and to get us closer to the direct interactions we experience "in real life". Letter-writing, most forms of transportation, and the telephone have all been used for the purpose of conversing with others. Most recently, conversations have shifted to Internet technologies such as e-mail and chat, both of which enable people to increase the range and scope of their conversations and to reach people they may not have been able to reach before.

The Internet is, as we all know, a new communications medium, connecting people, applications, and content. From its earliest days, person-to-person conversation played a huge role in the growth of the Internet. With the invention of the World Wide Web in 1990, the driving force behind the net became the Web as a content delivery platform. Then applications took center stage, so that people started signing up for Internet service just so they could use web-based applications like E*Trade, Amazon.com, and eBay.

Recently the buzz has returned to using the Internet for conversations. But the range and depth of conversations has expanded enormously since the early days of the net. For one, most of the exciting new conversations are happening within the context of a particular Web community or application. And conversations aren't just person-to-person anymore, but increasingly include conversations between people and applications, and even conversations among applications with no people directly involved.

Unfortunately, these conversations are in many ways in the same situation that content was before the advent of the Web. One of the most powerful things about the Web is that it increased the value of all content by unifying the technologies surrounding content creation and delivery. In the same way, the disparate conversations happening on the Web today stand to benefit from the introduction of a common messaging platform that's capable of natively supporting the rich context, flexible structure, and rapid knowledge-exchange of human conversations.

It's precisely such a platform that we're building here in the Jabber community.

Jabber is not just a set of open protocols or a particular implementation or even a community -- it is a state of mind, a passionate commitment to interoperability, communication, connection, and conversation. As Stowe Boyd just noted, my previous post is a strenuous response to what Stewart Butterfield wrote about Jabber. And the reason it was strenuous (though I hope diplomatic -- I do strive to be diplomatic) is that I care not only about Jabber technology but also about the mindset -- even the "worldview" -- behind that technology.

And I'm not the only one who cares. As I type this blog entry, I'm chatting with someone in Poland who -- at 1:00 AM on a Friday night -- just finished translating issue #10 of the Jabber Journal for posting on a website for the Polish Jabber community. Every day I receive emails and Jabber messages from people all over the world who are running Jabber servers, translating documents, writing articles, coding software, helping out on mailing lists and in chat rooms, talking to Linux User Groups, and otherwise devoting their precious time and energy to Jabber. Why? Because they care. It's not just a technology, it's an active attitude of openness, freedom, and connection. Standing as I do at the very nexus of this community, I can tell you: it's a powerful thing. And it's only growing stronger with each passing day. Since that first Slashdot story over 4 years ago, thousands of people have contributed code and docs and assistance, hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded Jabber servers, and millions of people have used Jabber clients.

And the scary thing, it's only the beginning...

Posted on 2003-04-18 at 17:26. File under jabber.

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Puzzled

Yes, standards do help.

Thanks to a poke from Stowe Boyd, this afternoon I joined the wiki site of the Social Software Alliance. I've just discovered this "social software" meme and have much to learn, so I won't post anything substantial about it quite yet. However, I did feel the need to comment on a Jabber-related thread on the wiki. In particular, Stewart Butterfield of Ludicorp posted the following:

Some areas where standards would help

Identity (this is the hard one -- if you think it can be decentralized, good luck)

Presence (location-based, rather than simple on/off/away/busy is preferred)

Messaging (instant messaging and multi-party chat)

Jabber is a good place to start with this stuff, though after a long evaluation. We (Ludicorp) decided to build our own (Jabber is extremely verbose and the open source server did not scale very well, though I hear that it has improved lately -- for services handling less than 1,000 concurrant users it is probably an excellent choice).

To which I replied as follows:

This perhaps is not the place for protocol discussion, but I simply must dispute several assertions made by Stewart. For one, he asserts that "Jabber is extremely verbose". Compared to what? Packets in SIP/SIMPLE (the only other open format for instant messaging and presence) are on average 3-4 times larger than the comparable XMPP/Jabber packets. He also asserts that the open-source JabberD server is not scalable. Well, there is a successful effort to create a scalable version of the JabberD server, which currently runs at least one server (jabber.wp.pl) with over 500,000 registered users (not sure how many concurrent, I would expect over 10,000). I'm curious to hear about Ludicorp's implementation of IM and presence -- did you folks come up with your own protocol and proprietary implementation? If so, why? The Jabber Software Foundation has published strong specifications for multi-user chat (everything IRC does with a strong security model), and the core Jabber protocols are being adapted by the IETF through the XMPP Working Group, including additions for high security via SASL and TLS. Plus the fact that XMPP/Jabber is pure XML makes it highly extensible, so it's easy to layer on things like geographical location extensions in presence information (a protocol proposal has just been published for that, see JEP-0080). Both in the IETF's XMPP Working Group and in the Jabber Software Foundation, we have open discussions underway regarding development and extension of standards for many topics related to instant messaging and presence, and I invite people to participate in this active community.

I didn't say it on the wiki because I'm new there and I'm trying to be nice, but how does it help the drive for open standards to "build your own" (as Ludicorp claims to have done) rather than join the protocol conversation in the XMPP/Jabber community? I'm puzzled.

Posted on 2003-04-18 at 15:23. File under jabber.

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Jazz Friday

A musical tradition returns.

Last year I started a tradition of "Jazz Fridays" at work, wherein I brought some of my favorite CDs in for a colleague to listen to. Now he's restarted the tradition by loaning me a few of his favorites. I just finished listening to "Jazz Sambas" by the Leviev-Slon Quartet, and now I'm moving on to "Starlight Cafe" by Dmitri Matheny. And speaking of good jazz, I heard some really tasty playing on Jazz Set last week, courtesy of KUVO in Denver. The music was provided by pianist Peter Martin, but it was the drumming by Greg Hutchinson that really blew me away. From the few tunes I heard, he's a creative force on the drums, and has an almost-melodic style that impressed me a lot. I'll need to find some recordings on which he's featured....

Posted on 2003-04-18 at 13:52. File under music.

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JJ

More jibber-jabber.

From number nine to number ten: the other night I published issue #10 of the Jabber Journal. Writing JJ is a lot of fun for me, and a relaxing break from writing Internet-Drafts, since it's a chance to let loose and write in an informal way about everyone's favorite XML messaging technology. I pity the poor guy who tries to translate the Jabber Journal into Polish -- he pokes me on Jabber every once in a while to ask me about the meaning of some American idiom I've used.

In other Jabber news, Cathleen Moore published a balanced overview of XMPP/Jabber and SIP/SIMPLE in InfoWorld today. I always appreciate it when a journalist really tries to be objective and get the story right.

Posted on 2003-04-18 at 13:43. File under jabber.

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Number Nine

The latest and greatest XMPP docs.

Late last night I submitted draft-ietf-xmpp-core-09, an Internet-Draft that incorporates all the latest feedback from the XMPP WG mailing list. Many thanks to working group co-chair Lisa Dusseault for her detailed comments -- she's like a one-person Working Group Last Call! :-)

Posted on 2003-04-18 at 13:13. File under jabber.

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2003-04-15

Linkfest

Things I don't have time to read.

I often use this weblog as a personal reminder service -- I post links that I haven't had time to read or fully absorb yet in the hope that tomorrow or the next day I'll return to the relevant URLs. In the meantime I suppose the three people who follow this space might find something of interest. So, in that spirit, here are some intriguing essays and weblogs and such that I've found of late:

Posted on 2003-04-15 at 19:52. File under politics.

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2003-04-13

TJ Again

A birthday celebration.

Today is Thomas Jefferson's birthday (he's only 260 years young!). Thanks to Claire Wolfe I just found a page that proclaims old TJ as the patron saint of the Internet. I'll go along with that (despite how far wrong the patent system has gone -- I don't think we can blame TJ for that).

A while back I was wont to offer regular quotes from Victor Hugo. I think perhaps I'll start doing that with Thomas Jefferson. We sure could use his wisdom these days...

Posted on 2003-04-13 at 21:59. File under politics.

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2003-04-11

By George

On some niceties of libertarian theory.

I've been delving some more into the Democratic Freedom Caucus and related movements. In particular I followed the links from an essay by Todd Altman and came upon his pages on neolibertarianism and geolibertarianism. I'm not sure what's so "neo" about neolibertarianism -- it seems to be standard libertarian theory along the lines of Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand -- but geolibertarianism definitely contains a bit of a twist. In particular, it absorbs quite a bit from the economic theories of Henry George (of whom I must admit to being ignorant). It seems that the Georgists make a distinction between man-made property -- that is, created wealth -- and law-made property -- that is, title to land as granted by a State (or other law-making entity). Georgists, or at least geolibertarians, seem to maintain that land titles are unnatural because they are, Altman's words, "generally used as a means of assuming exclusive possession of land without adhering to John Locke's proviso" (i.e., without ensuring that there be "enough and as good left in common for others"). Now this is a factual claim, and as such should be falsifiable. Its truth is doubtful when population is low, though it becomes more plausible as population increases. Locke's notion of "good" here also introduces some difficulties: if I discovered San Francisco Bay and claimed the area around the Presidio (as the explorer Fremont did), one could claim that I've left "enough" but not "as good" (in fact, the land Fremont claimed was confiscated by the state for military purposes). One would need an objective definition of "good" (at least applied to land) in order to clearly define the scope of the Lockean Proviso.

These reservations aside, there does seem to be some prima facie plausibility to the Georgist position that land ownership is created by the law whereas what I produce by my own labor is free of any legal shadow. Concerns over the legitimacy of land title lead geolibertarians to advocate a tax on land but not on property -- improvements such as buildings are man-made property, whereas the value of land is essentially inherent (e.g., insurance agencies usually counsel one to not insure the land value, only the improvements, since the land value is as solid as the earth). Application of Georgist principles also would lead to a repeal of all taxes on labor and on returns on capital investments.

I'm not quite convinced by the Georgist arguments, since I have my doubts that all or even most property ownership violates the Lockean Proviso. But if one must have taxes (a claim that I dispute), I suppose the "Land Value Tax" is a relatively less harmful tax than an income tax or even a sales tax.

Posted on 2003-04-11 at 07:48. File under politics.

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2003-04-09

Open Here

The intersection of protocol, source, and community.

There's a good conversation happening in the blogosphere right now about the interplay of open standards and open source (a topic on which I'm speaking at this year's OSCON). The conversation started with an article by Sun's Jonathan Schwartz and has continued with weblog entries by Kevin Werbach and Dave Winer, among others.

Jonathan Schwartz sets up an opposition between standards and source (that little word "versus" in his title), but in reality there is no such thing -- the two are mostly orthogonal to each other. Kevin Werbach points out that open-source projects depend on open standards (think Apache and HTTP, Mozilla and HTML/CSS/etc., Sendmail and SMTP), but that proprietary products do, too (IIS, IE, Exchange). And Dave Winer, while cautioning against the often-obfuscated output of the major standards bodies, celebrates the diversity that results from open formats and protocols -- developers are free to create closed implementations and are not tied to restrictive licenses such as the GPL.

Yet the landscape is more nuanced. For instance, closed protocols do not necessarily keep out open (or merely unapproved) implementations. We see this in document editing with AbiWord and OpenOffice (which will read and generate Microsoft's closed document formats with a fair degree of accuracy). We see this also in the instant messaging space with open-source clients like Gaim and closed-source clients like Trillian (both of which enable the user to communicate with the open Jabber network as well as the closed services of the legacy IM providers: AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo). So closed protocols are not the death knell for open source, although they do quite effectively limit implementations to mimicking the original (which is one of the traditional criticisms of open-source software).

As with so much else in life, the issue comes down to a question of power. Big companies would prefer to control formats and protocols, which is why they often dominate the official standards process through their overwhelming involvement in ostensibly open standards organizations such as the IETF and W3C, let alone industry consortia such as MPEG or the Open Mobile Alliance. Too often, official standards processes keep smaller companies out of the loop, as Dave Winer legitimately complains. His approach is to develop open formats and protocols outside the auspices of the large standards organziations, then evangelize them independently to both open-source and commercial developers.

This approach points to the critical importance of the "third leg" of the stool: an open community. An open protocol or format that is dominated by big companies (with only one marginal open-source implementation or a few token offerings from smaller developers) is not a healthy ecosystem. To really thrive, a protocol needs a wealth of implementations -- some closed, some open, some from big companies, some from smaller development houses, some from open-source projects -- and a community in which the real people who do the work and use the software can share information and learn from each other.

So what is a standard? Some people think that when the IETF or W3C approves a proposal, it thereby becomes a standard. But that's far from the truth. A format or protocol or technology becomes a standard when the market decides it is. And what is the market? It's a complex stew of projects and organizations who develop and use the emerging standard -- in fact, it looks a lot like the ecosystem of developers and users, except written on a global scale. Eventually, if a technology is technically strong and enough people adopt it, it will become a standard. Indeed, a particular implementation of a certain technology may become a standard -- for example, Apache is the standard for webservers, and a protocol like HTTPng failed to catch on because it lacked support in the Apache community. We see the same phenonmenon in the Jabber community, where the jabberd server is the dominant player. So although diversity is a good thing, it's much better for the health of the ecosystem if the dominant implementation is open rather than closed.

The Jabber community has pursued something of a hybrid approach -- first creating open-source implementations of an emerging protocol, then growing the developer community and user base (as well as the number and range of companies involved in development and deployment), and finally seeking standardization of the core protocol through the IETF's XMPP Working Group while maintaining a more nimble Jabber-specific community standards process managed by the Jabber Software Foundation. Only time will tell if Jabber/XMPP becomes a standard for real-time messaging and presence. Right now we're focused on strengthening all three legs of the stool: protocol, source, and community. But given everything that's going on in the Jabber world, I have a good feeling that we're seeing the emergence of an Internet standard.

The conversation continues...

Posted on 2003-04-09 at 17:19. File under technology.

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2003-04-06

Jeffersonian

A return to principles?

A week or two ago, former (and perhaps future) presidential candidate Gary Hart started a weblog. One of the early comments was as follows:

I was a very low-level volunteer for you in NYC in '84, though I fear that my views have evolved in ways that make supporting a Democrat fairly implausible. (Please prove me wrong. Let there be someone from your side with fiscal and military sense, who addresses real social problems with something other than my checkbook, and whose "liberal" social views involving getting the government out of the morality business. In short, let's see a Libertarian Democrat.)

Amen. Those in the Democratic Party like to say that they're the "party of Jefferson", but unfortunately I see precious little evidence of Jeffersonian principles in their policies. Sure, there is a small group named the Democratic Freedom Caucus, which claims to be the last hope for the Democratic Party. Heck, they even call themselves progressive libertarians. But all too many members and leaders of the Democratic Party would find many of the following words deeply foreign:

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti republican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people--a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

Now that is true Jeffersonianism. We have now indeed wandered far from this touchstone of American political principles -- so far that it will take a long time to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

Where have you gone, Thomas Jefferson? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

Posted on 2003-04-06 at 21:48. File under politics.

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MAD Again?

An alternative explanation for the current war.

Thank to Bryan Field-Elliott, I just found this fascinating essay by John Perry Barlow about the possibility that there is a method to the seeming madness of American foreign policy. In essence Barlow argues that maybe, just maybe the point of the current war is to convince the rest of the world (or at least all the world's thugs) that America is dangerous enough that its wrath must be scrupulously avoided. The result would be a Pax Americana that makes the world safe for global capitalism. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but perhaps it's just crazy enough to be true.

Posted on 2003-04-06 at 20:57. File under politics.

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Spacing Out

Some sites for explorers.

Surfing around in the last few days, I found some fairly good space sites:

I especially like the current poll at RocketForge. The question is "why do we want to go to space?" and the answer options are "science, settlement, emigration, adventure, exploration, spinoffs, wealth, environmental protection". I wonder how many people chose "emigration". :-)

Posted on 2003-04-06 at 20:17. File under society.

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2003-04-05

Havel the Politician

On the art of the impossible.

I've just started reading a collection of speeches by Vaclav Havel, longtime president of Czechoslovakia and (after the Velvet Divorce) the Czech Republic. Havel was president while I lived in Czechoslovakia and I have tremendous respect for him, since he was one of very few people to openly oppose the communist regime. Havel calls politics "the art of the impossible", which certainly seems to fit his own life story (on October 27, 1989, he was thrown in jail for the fourth time by the communists; less than 6 weeks later, he was president of his country). Havel is a playwright, a thinker, an intellectual; yet he accepted the presidency. Why? He writes as follows:

We still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine core of all actions -- if they are to be moral -- is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be properly judged.

The interpreter or mediator between us and this higher authority is what is traditionally referred to as human conscience.

If I subordinate my political behavior to this imperative, I can't go far wrong. If, on the contrary, I am not guided by this voice, not even ten presidential schools with two thousand of the best political scientists in the world could help me.

This is why I finally decided -- after resisting for a long time -- to accept the burden of political responsibility.

I'm not the first intellectual, nor will I be the last, to do this. On the contrary, my feeling is that there will be more and more of them all the time. If the hope of the world lies in human consciousness, then it is obvious that intellectuals cannot avoid forever assuming their share of responsibility for the world and hiding their distaste for politics beneath an alleged need for independence.

It is easy to have independence in your program and then leave others to carry out that program. If everyone thought that way, soon no one would be independent.

I think that Americans should understand this way of thinking. Wasn't it the best minds of your country, people you could call intellectuals, who wrote your famous Declaration of Independence, your Bill of Rights, and your Constitution, and who -- above all -- took upon themselves the practical responsibility for putting them into practice?

Quite a challenge to a hermetic intellectual like me.

Posted on 2003-04-05 at 22:06. File under philosophy.

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Greenspan the Scholar?

Some questionable assumptions.

Alan Greenspan is a smart man. That doesn't mean he's right all the time. In his early years he was part of Ayn Rand's inner circle and wrote articles about things like the morality of the gold standard. Later on he got involved in government work, which many libertarians see as selling your soul. Certainly you never hear Greenspan talk about the evils of fiat money anymore (after all, he is Mr. Money now). And he's not necessarily a great scholar, either. Case in point: a recent talk he gave at the 2003 Financial Markets Conference. Greenspan argues as follows:

Market economies require a rule of law. A society without state protection of individual rights, especially the right to own property, would not build private long term assets, a key ingredient of a growing modern economy. Yet an excess of rules--in the extreme case, central planning--has also been shown to stifle initiative and produce economic stagnation.

Since its early stirrings in eighteenth century Britain, modern economic development has been characterized by an ebb and flow in the intensity of state involvement in shaping the economic environment. According to the legends of the early American West, the only law west of the Pecos River was administered by Judge Bean. I am not sure how much law that was, but I do know that much protection of property in sparsely settled western communities just after the Civil War had to be privately provided. Understandably, trade was limited in such an environment. Economic growth was greatly facilitated by the emergence of civil government, which provided consistent and predictable enforcement of property rights, among other things.

There could be many reasons for the absence of trade in the Old West: sparse population, self-sufficiency, distance from large markets, and so on. But Greenspan attributes the rise of trading to the extension of monopoly government into the West. Sounds like some historical research is in order.

Posted on 2003-04-05 at 21:43. File under politics.

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Opsound

Open music.

Opsound is a new music label that is bringing the principles of open source and copyleft to the world of music. Intriguing.

Posted on 2003-04-05 at 21:23. File under music.

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Gadsden

Don't tread on me!

Radley Balko recently posted about some congresscritter's misuse of the Gadsden flag. Shame on the congresscritter from New Jersey. But at least this gives people a chance to study up on the history and meaning of the Gadsden flag (thanks to Chris Whitten for the informative website!).

Posted on 2003-04-05 at 21:12. File under politics.

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2003-04-02

CodePsych

On the psychology of programmers.

I found this article on the psychology of programmers to be mildly interesting. Unfortunately I'm not a good enough coder to understand this first-hand. ;-) (Thanks to GeekPress for the link.)

Posted on 2003-04-02 at 21:59. File under technology.

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Thoreau Revisited

Another alternative lifestyle.

Recently I posted about "PTs" (perpetual travelers, permanent tourists, etc.), who never put down roots in once place and thus live a life of freedom from interference by meddling snoops and such. Another lifestyle choice is akin to living as a modern-day Thoreau. It seems that Claire Wolfe, whose weblog I recently added to my shortlist, lives in this manner. I have to respect her for building her own cabin in the woods, simplifying her life down to the bare essentials, refusing government identity numbers, and so on.

Posted on 2003-04-02 at 21:41. File under society.

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SimpleCare

Restoring sanity in medical care.

Little-known fact: we owe our current crazy medical payment system to "temporary" wage-price controls during World War II (the crisis has passed, but the solutions linger on). Why in the world is medical insurance still tied to employment? It's ridiculous. You don't lose your home or auto insurance if your company goes out of business. We need to restore some sanity to medical care, and the folks at SimpleCare are doing something about it: direct payment from patient to doctor. Makes perfect sense to me.

Posted on 2003-04-02 at 21:32. File under society.

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How To Fight Terrorism

A realistic approach to homeland security.

No, we don't need Patriot Act II or Total Information Awareness -- this article explores a more effective approach. Hint: it involves .45 automatic weapons in the hands of citizens on the scene. This gives new meaning to Hayek's observations about "the particular circumstances of time and place"...

Posted on 2003-04-02 at 21:26. File under politics.

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Jabbering Away

Some recent Jabber stuff.

Other than the XMPP Internet-Drafts, recent Jabber activities by yours truly include a Jabber backgrounder and technical overview (intended for an outreach/press kit and temporarily parked at http://www.jabber.org/tmp/), a radical and surprisingly uncontroversial email to the JSF members mailing list about restructuring of the organization, and last but not least the all-important JEP-0076 -- of course, that one was published yesterday! ;-)

Posted on 2003-04-02 at 21:20. File under jabber.

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Lucky Seven

More XMPP progress.

I just submitted 07 versions of draft-ietf-xmpp-core and draft-ietf-xmpp-im (find them here). Next: a thorough update of draft-ietf-xmpp-e2e (on end-to-end encryption in XMPP using OpenPGP and S/MIME).

Posted on 2003-04-02 at 14:44. File under jabber.

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