"wisdom of crowds" entries
FLOSS Manuals books published after three-day sprint
Joining the pilgrimage that all institutions are making toward wider data use, FLOSS Manuals is exposing more and more of the writing process.
Day two of FLOSS Manuals book sprint at Google Summer of Code summit
As a relatively conventional book, the KDE manual was probably a little easier to write (but also probably less fun) than the more high-level approaches taken by some other teams that were trying to demonstrate to potential customers that their projects were worth adopting.
Day one of FLOSS Manuals book sprint at Google Summer of Code summit
Four teams at Google launched into endeavors that will lead, less than 72 hours from now, to complete books on four open source projects.
FLOSS Manuals sprint starts at Google Summer of Code summit
Four free software projects have each sent three to five volunteers to write books about the projects this week. Along the way we'll all learn about the group writing process and the particular use of book sprints to make documentation for free software.
Software patents, prior art, and revelations of the Peer to Patent review
Besides the greater openness that Peer to Patent promotes in
evaluating individual patent applications, it is creating a new
transparency and understanding of the functioning of the patent system
as a whole. Problems with prior art disproportionately affect
software.
Crowdsourcing and the challenge of payment
How can you set up crowdsourcing where most people work for free but some are paid, and present it to participants in a way that makes it seem fair? This situation arises all the time, with paid participants such as application developers and community managers, but there's a lot of scary literature about "crowding out" and other dangers. One basic challenge is choosing what work to reward monetarily. I can think of several dividing lines, each with potential problems.
The fate of WIPO, ACTA, and other intellectual property pushes in the international economy
Intellectual property wars are fiercer than ever, although the institutions most affected (including the media) prefer not to talk about them. But we may be in for a pendulum shift. I recently put out a tweet on this topic and was asked to expand on it. The issues are too big and complex for me to give them a proper…
Peer to Patent Australia recruits volunteer prior art searchers
The Peer to Patent project has already earned its place in history.
But I've been wondering, along with many other people, where it's
going. It's encouraging to hear that a new pilot has started in
Australia and has gathered a small community of volunteer patent art
seekers.
Worldwide Lexicon: matching up technologies and culture to end the language barrier
Essays by Brian McConnell of
World Wide Lexicon
and Ethan Zuckerman
of
Global Voices
describe the technical and cultural sides of developing communities of
volunteer translators.
World Wide Lexicon Toolbar changes the reading experience for the other 99% of web pages
World Wide Lexicon Toolbar meets my criterion for a piece of critical infrastructure: after two days with it I can't get along without it, and I plan to avoid any
browser that doesn't have it installed.