Kogukondlik tarkvaraarendus

This week's exercise: "Vali kaks vaba tarkvara projekti ja võrdle neid ajaveebis arenduse vaatenurgast"

For comparison I have selected the following software:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Eclipse Java IDE

Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is an open source free web browser managed by the Mozilla Corporation. Also, an army of volunteers can contribute to browser's development by creating plugins. Recent statistics show, that Firefox is used on almost a quarter of the user personal computers. Mozilla has it's own wiki, where developers post previews of the features of the future versions. Since version 3.0.6 Firefox browser's source code is under the GNU GPL license. The license allows everybody to view the source code, modify it and distribute the software.

Eclipse Java IDE
Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment and a integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system. It is developed in Java programming language, and by various means of plugins, the platform can be used to develop software in other languages, such as C/C++, PHP, Java. This means that anybody can create a plugin that will support any programming language and even create a new one, which only the developer knows about.

To summarize, I would like to say that both projects look similar. Everybody can contribute and make the software better by writing their own plugins and spreading them to the masses. By doing so, I believe, that this will allow better knowledge and experience sharing between the developers.

Jagamiskultuur: motivatsioon, ärimudelid ja häkkerieetika

This week's exirsise: "Loe läbi Raymondi Hacker-HOWTO ja kirjuta selle kohta hinnang."

The given article is interesting and and I would definitely recommend my friends reading it. Especially the part "What is a hacker?" should be read by everyone, who is somehow related to the IT field. In my childhood I thought that a hacker is a person who tries to break the code, write a virus. But I would never would have thought that this is a person who is capable of building an entirely new system. It was later that I discovered, that there is another similar type of person, named "cracker", who feel the urge to break the computer program. The rest of the parts should be given to the young ones or the ones who are making their first steps towards the computer world. 

All in all I enjoyed reading this article.

Tarkvara- ja sisulitsentsid

This weeks's exirsise: "Kirjeldage üht vaba litsentsi lähemalt (kust pärit, kes seda kasutavad, mis on eripärad jne)."
Today I will take a close look at the Apache Licence version 2.0. The Apache Licence is a free software licence, which was created by the Apache Software foundation in January 2004. This licence requires that copyright notice and the disclamer would be preserved.
The Apache License allows the user of the software the freedom to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software, under the terms of the license. The licence, however,  does not require the user to release the software under the same licence. In every licensed file, any original copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices in redistributed code must be preserved. 
If the work includes the NOTICE file, then the derivatives must include a readable copy in one of the following places: in a NOTICE file or withing the source code of the derivative work.

Paragrahvi-papi ja Interneti-põnn: intellektuaalomandi hiilgus ja viletsus

This weeks's exirsise: "Kirjutage ajaveebi omapoolne hinnang autorikaitse ja intellektuaalomandi temaatika hetkeseisule."

This is quite a hard topic for me, for an IT guy. If I would want to create some software nowadays, then most probably something similar already exists. And most probably it is already copyrighted and somebody already owns the patents for it. Today it is quite hard to create something new and unique. Here are some examples from the IT field, proving that.

Apple vs Microsoft (year 1994). Apple had agreed to license certain parts of its GUI to Microsoft for use in Windows 1.0, but when Microsoft made changes in Windows 2.0 adding overlapping windows and other features found in the Macintosh GUI, Apple filed a suit. The court insisted on the analysis of the user interface of both operating systems. Apple listed 189 elements in the suit, but the court has decided that 179 of the elements were licensed to Microsoft in the Windows 1.0 release. Turned out , that the remaining 10 elements were not copyrightable.

Oracle vs Google (ongoing). In August 2010 Oracle has filed a lawsuit against a search-engine giant Google "for developing Android". Oracle insists  that Google has infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. The case has been going on for more than a year already, and it is still not clear if Google is guilty or not.
These examples are only a drop in the ocean compared to the million other patent suits. Today it is very hard to defend what is yours and to prove your authorship.

Vaba tarkvara

This weeks's exircise: "Kirjeldage ajaveebis enda kogemusi mõne vaba tarkvaratoote kasutamisega."

What is freeware? Freeware is a software that is available to use freely and at no extra cost. I will try to share my experiences with this typo of software.
OpenOffice. I remember my childhood, when I got a new computer, it had a lot of pre-installed software. Microsoft Office was one of it. It was a very good text editor for me , and helped me to do a lot of  stuff for school. But for some reasons, not understood by me then, it required some activation. To do that, i took me to some Microsoft page and required me to pay a considerable amount of money. Ofcource, that time I was not pay for it, so i started searching for something, that is completely free. I searched and searched, until I hit OpenOffice. It was an MS Office alternative, even though it offered a bit less functionality and had a little unusual interface. But for school purposes - creation of basic report, presentations, it was enough. Nowadays I still use it for work, but not as much. For personal stuff I use Google Docs, which is also free to use.
Gimp. Gimp is the free Photoshop. I remember, back in the days, when a lot of people used Photoshop to create cool pictures of themselves. I also wanted to try the cool software, but it also required some activation. Nowadays I do not do graphics editing that much. Gimp is the picture editor that mostly fits my needs.
Audacity. During work time, I needed to fix a couple of sounds for a game. It was unreasonable to wait for a couple of days until the sound designer would make the sound a couple of seconds shorter. So I asked a friend if he knew a sound editing software, that I could use without paying. His answer was - "use Audacity :)". So I followed his advice, and after a couple minutes the sounds were of needed length. The client was happy with them and the game itself turned out to be a big success.
These are the stories that I have so far.

Virtuaalmaailmad

This week's exercise: "Tutvu mõne vabalt valitud virtuaalmaailmaga (Second Life sobib, aga soovi korral võib ka mõni muu olla) ja kirjelda ajaveebis oma kogemusi."


I personally have not dealt with Second Life virtual world, and nowadays there is not enough time to devote them some time. However, as games can also be considered as virtual world I would like to describe my experiences with a game named Counter-Strike.
"Counter-Strike" is a first-person multilayer shooter. Players have an option to join one of the teams: terrorists or counter-terrorist. Players can also join to be a spectator. The team tries to complete the mission, for example: plant a bomb or rescue hostages. The mission can also be completed by eliminating the opposite team. The round starts with both teams spawning simultaneously, usually, in different areas of the map.
As the round starts, players are allowed to buy weapons of different categories inside the buy zones, like pistols, shotguns and rifles. When the round ends, killed players are resurrected and all players  respawn at their base.
Players can communicate among themselves using a chat. They can write messages to everybody or only speak to the team. There is also a possibility to use a microphone. But the shooting should stay inside the game, inside the virtual world, but the communication should be in the real world.

Märgendamine ja folksonoomia

This week's excirsise: "Otsige veebist kaks näidet folksonoomia kohta - üks selline, kus see väga hästi töötab, ning teine, kus see eriti ei taha toimida."

The term "folksonomy" is new to me. I will try to give the definition in my own words. It is a way of categorizing information using special words, called tags. But when does tagging information work?
A bad example where tags can not work are blog hosting websites, like Digg or Blogger. If you are searching for some blogs through a search engine, then it already will find you some material based on the content of an article. Instead of using tag words, the words can be used in the article itself.
A good example, where tagging works is a website for storing pictures. By this, I mean something like Flickr or Picasa. Picture filenames can be "DSC00001.JPG", or similar, but for a search engine it is not clear what the picture contains. Ofcourse, algorithms can detect faces and the color of the picture. But what better way to describe a picture by tagging it something like "City of London skyline from London City Hall - Oct 2008.jpg". This will make the picture easier to discover.

Wiki-maailm

This week's exercise: "How can Wikipedia be improved?"

Wikipedia is a web-based online encyclopedia, where every user can contribute their knowledge. Whenever I need some information on any subject, I always turn to Wikipedia, because it has information on almost anything. But can it be improved somehow? Here is a couple of thoughts how this can be done.

Even though there may be a lot of text in every article, there is almost no way to verify, that what you are reading is reliable. This is a big drawback, because you cannot use it as a reference if you are doing some research. The problem is that everybody can edit the page anonymously, even without giving a reason why he did this or that change.
One way this can be improved is giving the person the ability to comment on the changes done, thus describing his motives.
Another way how this can be done is to restrict public editing. Everybody who would want to make a change, must log in first. Would be even better logging in with user's real name. This way users can be traced as individuals thus making them think first before article harassment.
One more way is that users would give opinions on articles. This can be done by commenting or "Like"-ing, as it is done with all activity on Facebook. 

Another problem with Wikipedia arises when you first hit the "Edit" button. If you would like to make a simple change, you will get a lot of cryptic text, semicolons, brackets, tags, also known as Wiki-markup. This may make it hard to orient for less experienced users. It would be better if there would be the possibility of using a WYSIWYG editor, to see your changes instantly.

But so far I, personally, have never encountered neither the reliability nor the editing problems.
 

Blogosfäär

This week's exercise: Descrbe the possible blogging motives and give examples.

 There are lot's of reasons why people can blog, but most of them can be put into categories, described below.
Fun. This reason can be for a lot of youngsters. They can be doing this because their friends do it also, they are bored or they just want to experiment in this area. Teenagers may want to start receiving money from their posts, but mostly that is not the case. They post random pictures about themselves, their lunches or pets.
Money. Greed motivates us to do many things. There are a lot of top and professional bloggers who are paid to do reviews to keep the conversation going. Good examples of this can be blogs about technology, like http://www.engadget.com/ and http://gizmodo.com/ who do just that. There are a lot of affiliate tools like Google's AdSence, that pays for placing ads directly into the blog. After all, it's not such a bid idea to earn a couple of euros for sharing your views with the world. We can't deny that some extra cash is always welcome.
Public relations. A lot of companies, especially start-ups, start blogging to reveal themselves or their products or services. An example of that can be either http://www.ignite.ee/display/IGNITE/Blog or http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
For a cause. The digital revolution has allowed people to promote their causes and connect with the like-minded. A lot of blogs can be found from the people of Libya, who are asking help in fighting for their freedom, or, for example, from the people of Japan, who wrote blogs asking for medical help after the earthquake hit them in April 2011.
Desire to become an author. Some people want to write and publish their book(s). But this is quite a long and expensive process. First you must find a publisher, market the book and wait for reviews. But with blogging this goal can be reached almost instantly and without spending any extra cent. Just get your laptop, write down your feelings and click the 'Publish' button. Soon enough people will read the blog, write reviews and give feedback.

Sotsiaalsed võrgustikud

This week's exercise: Analyze any social network according to the Matt Webb's criteria.
Selected social network: http://facebook.com

Identity: Most users use their real names to identify themselves, even though it is not mandatory. However, using real names makes it easier for people to find other people.
Presence: . Users can see if the other is online or not by the presence of the green dot next to the the other user's name. However users can go "offline" and turn this feature off.
Relations: Until not long ago, everybody in the contact list was a "friend", regardless of who the person in real life. Recently Facebook has introduced the "Lists" functions, where users can manage their contact list, creating their own lists, like "Classmates", "Co-workers", etc. Another type of relations is "Family", where users can make other user their relatives, such as father, mother, sister, etc. One more type of relation is "Relationship status", where users can define their maternal status with other users, such as "Married", "Divorced", "Engaged", etc.
Conversations: Users can chat among themselves using the "chat" function. This is useful, because one can not always install a particular instant messenger to chat with other users. Also, users can write on other users wall for everybody to see the message.
Groups: Users can create groups, based on some common interest. After that people can either join themselves, or they can be invited my other group members. Each group has a wall, where people can post news, links or videos. As soon as it's done, other group members get notifications about the activity.
Reputation: Facebook does not provide any special indicator about a person's reputation. However some may judge a person's reputation by the amount of friends: the more friends, the higher the reputation.
Sharing: Facebook has a rich set of sharing capabilities. People can share statuses by writing them on their own wall, links, pictures, videos and events. People can even watch videos without leaving Facebook. Users can upload their own photos and videos to the site. Access to the information can be defined by the user and changed at any time.