Meetings/2009-01-28

= Meeting 2009-01-28 =

Details

 * When: Wednesday 28th January 2009 from 1930 GMT
 * Where: #okfn irc channel on oftc.net (connect via Mibbit)

Agenda

 * General Discussion

IRC Log
#!irc 18:42 yes definitely 18:42 hey rgrp 18:42 -!- slef [~mjr@serene.ttllp.co.uk] has joined #okfn 18:42 hi 18:42 sorry i'm late 18:42 i'll pop it on the blog tonight.. 18:43 I did email okf, org and the usual suspects 18:43 yes that would be great. thanks 18:43 i know - i saw but still on todo pile 18:43 :-) 18:43 what is this item? 18:43 to blog this: 18:43 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WLA@V&A 18:43 wikipedia event @ V&A 18:43 to take photos of V&A collection under an open license... 18:44 great idea - wish more museums/galleries did things like this! 18:44 some in the states are. 18:44 always thought that it would be good to do this at the asian art museum in sf.. 18:44 really interesting collection there... 18:44 This is one of the things that got me into free culture, I used to take photos in the tate... 18:44 yeah 18:44 interesting! 18:44 i didn't know that.. 18:45 i wonder if anyone has a directory of photo friendly galleries 18:45 :-) 18:45 ..and then the "no photography" signs went up, and artists started getting really silly about copyright. 18:45 oh that would be good! 18:45 do you think anyone has one? 18:45 ah ok, yes i remember 18:45 boing boing may have covered something like that in the past, an international list would be good 18:46 btw rob openhogarth and openarthistory have been registered 18:46 i'm pretty sure asian art museum in sf is photo friendly.. 18:46 oh kewl 18:46 oh great! 18:46 I have downloaded some Hogarth in high res, and errrr I dropped the ball a bit, sorry 18:46 but that's great 18:47 should do something with flickr + wmf for this.. a bit like community-driven flickr commons 18:47 how is it going rgrp? 18:48 I worry about flickr getting bought by microsoft via buying yahoo. and I wasn't too happy about yahoo ;-) 18:49 is there an agenda? for the meeting I mean 18:49 not that i'm aware of.. rgrp? 18:50 not specifically 18:50 we should finalize anounce for okcon asap 18:51 robmyers: so the thing to blog would be the whole wikipedia loves art project.. it all takes place feb 09? 18:51 on that topic: what is happening with rooms, has prodromos sorted this out? 18:51 jwyg yes 18:51 rgrp: not heard from him yet.. 18:51 rgrp: can't believe it 18:51 jwyg although obviously my personal interest is the v&a one 18:52 robmyers: i'll be sure to mention that! 18:52 thanks 18:53 also could be worth pinging london list: http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ok-london-announce 18:53 ooh yes. could you do that please I don't think I'm on that list? 18:53 nods 18:53 will do.. 18:53 :( 18:53 thanks 18:54 rgrp - what's up? 18:54 robmyers: what would you like to get started on openarthistory 18:54 sounds like best idea would be host pictures on flickr or archive.org 18:54 nods 18:54 (perhaps archive.org better here: I think they have a decent API ...) 18:54 for basic site could start with plain html or wordpress or ... 18:55 also note that microfacts.org/weavinghistory in now alpha/beta 18:55 I really want to avoid flickr lockin. archive.org is a bored millionaire's plaything, but at least it isn't for sale yet. ;-) 18:55 http://www.microfacts.org/ 18:55 so archive.org 18:55 oh kewl! 18:55 nods 18:55 rufus: what are you plans re: release for this? 18:57 there's a whole bunch of stuff we should announce ... 18:57 yes it sounds like it 18:57 I think though not yet perfect we should definitely announce asap as an alpha stage thing 18:58 we should at least write to discuss to ask about it -- get user feedback 18:58 there are some niggling things wrong like lack of support for BC dates 18:58 turns out this is really non-trivial to fix ... 18:58 really? 18:59 how does simile deal with it? 18:59 or perhaps to complicated to discuss now.. :-) 18:59 *too 18:59 a universal date library would be interesting ;-) 19:00 simile wrote its own parser for iso 8601 dates 19:00 the problem is we want to use python + std dbs 19:00 ah.. 19:00 almost all computers have limits on the dates they store (because they store as ints, basically offsets from some date) 19:01 heh. they need to be like quickdraw gx colours, but anyway... ;-) 19:01 rgrp: perhaps we should release in any case.. early and often, right? :-) 19:01 thus e.g. postgres does not stores dates before 4317 BC (as dates at least) 19:01 then perhaps someone might have a cunning plan 19:01 solution is to use strings ... 19:01 ahh.. 19:02 ok 19:02 or bignums in seconds since one million years bc? ;-) 19:02 but then that messes with your ability to search (e.g. -2317 comes after -1000 as a string) 19:02 see http://knowledgeforge.net/microfacts/trac/ticket/44 19:02 for more on this ... 19:02 ok 19:02 hmm 19:03 anyway i think we should definitely announce 19:03 nods 19:03 did you also see: 19:03 http://www.historycommons.org/ 19:03 shame they use an nc license 19:03 erk 19:03 -!- jgay_ [~jgay@pool-96-233-30-249.bstnma.east.verizon.net] has quit [Quit: Ex-Chat] 19:03 oh cc are holding focus groups on nc at the moment 19:04 I've got onto one of the online ones 19:04 jwyg: I have now ... 19:04 the main thing holding me off announcing was fact anyone could edit anythign 19:04 there was an art history video site I saw recently but I lost the URL ( 19:04 i am still uncertain as to how to go here ... 19:04 should people be able to edit any thread or only their 'own' 19:04 is there a way we can track changes? 19:05 not at the moment though that could be introduced 19:05 what about factlets? 19:05 i think that would be really useful.. 19:05 is the best way just to make the thing versioned? 19:05 i think so.. 19:05 roll back changes.. 19:05 it would also be fun to monitor a timeline you were interested in.. to see if someone added something etc 19:05 robmyers: what do you think? 19:06 jwyg: yes i agree. I think we probably need versioning ... 19:06 would that be much difficult? 19:06 not that hard to do now we've written versioned domain model 19:06 cool ;-) 19:06 however we have a serious lack of coders atm ... 19:06 nods.. 19:06 i guess thats partly why i think it would be good to release.. 19:06 surely there are people out there keen to work on this sort of thing.. 19:07 one other thing I've spent a bit of time on recently was producing 'pretty' versions of our shakespeare texts using latex 19:07 e.g.  19:07 also didn't someone mention possibility of integrating this with semanticwiki? 19:07 or mediawiki? 19:07 oh kewl 19:07 I think jgay mentioned this but ... 19:07 just moving to the shakespeare stuff for a mo 19:08 I've thought for a while it would be really nice to produce an 'Open Shakespeare' edition of Shakespeare stuff 19:08 hey - the pdf version looks really nice! 19:08 we could produce nice frontpieces, typeset nicely etc and perhaps even have copies for sale via lulu or similar 19:08 could tie into fundraising ... 19:08 i've thought about this before.. 19:09 also getting illustrators.. 19:09 front page is lamest part at the moment ... 19:09 i know a few people who might be keen 19:09 also pd images 19:09 I thought maybe we could either go for ultra traditional but with a whole bunch of open knowledge stuff on the front 19:09 or even nice smallpress editions 19:10 or for something quite irreverent e.g. Hamlet by 'Bill' Shakespeare, with a funny ('pun') drawing ... 19:10 I don't know but it would be a fun exercise ... 19:10 :-) 19:11 perhaps an illustration competition for a short work? 19:11 exactly 19:11 something with a really nice physical edition 19:11 robmyers: what do you think? 19:11 limited in some way 19:11 jwyg: exactly 19:12 wow a nicely boung open knowledge edition would be great 19:12 it would be great to put together a circular for st. martins, london college of communications, relevant blogs, etc. 19:12 boung -> bound 19:13 a mashup edition would be good afterwards 19:13 i thought even a title page like that on p.110 of  19:13 would be quite nice 19:13 robmyers: exactly 19:13 we could have a system where people customize their edition, e.g. a new frontpice, or choose the exact text (this folio, or that edition) 19:13 it might be good to get someone to do a latex style and release that 19:14 can also extend to other stuff such milton 19:14 that would be cool.. 19:14 particularly if there's constructs that would be useful 19:14 could have mix and match editions where people choose the texts, we typeset and they get a bespoke 'open' edition 19:15 the other thing i'd really like to do is parallel editions 19:15 here's a torrent (licenced, free culture) of the pdf, source files and commissioned free fonts for the FLOSS+Art book - http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4671426/FLOSS_Art_v1.1 19:15 i did this with novalis: 19:15 http://www.co-ment.net/text/497/ 19:15 so that's a good example of a book that has paid for good design work and shared the results 19:15 rgrp, robmeyers, yeah, once we flush out the ontology a bit more we can map them onto semantic mediawiki -- I'm starting to do a bit more of that. 19:15 wow 19:15 jgay: cool! 19:16 robmyers: i saw this.. looks great! 19:16 :-) 19:16 if you could plug that it would be great - http://robmyers.org/weblog/2009/01/27/flossart-release-sources-and-offer/ 19:16 i think i saw this on your blog.. did you ping okfn-discuss? 19:16 err no. not yet 19:16 I have an essay in it so I'm all conflict of interests about it ;-) 19:17 haha :-) 19:17 it looks very interesting.. 19:17 but in my unbiased opinion whatever the rights and wrongs of the last essay in it, they are paying for free design (book layout and fonts) and sharing the results. 19:18 and that model of commissioning layout and fonts might be a useful precedent for an openshakespeare print book (the floss+art book is printed by openmute using POD) 19:18 yes that is what we'd like to do here ... 19:19 cool 19:19 kewl. well floss+art is a good case study. grab the torrent... ;-) 19:20 ok. could we find a volunteer to mock-up a front-piece for an example 'Open Shakespeare' edition of say Hamlet or Anthony and Cleopatra? 19:21 do okfn have a designer? 19:21 umm.. 19:21 :-) 19:21 we don't atm no 19:21 fsf and cc both have designers. It's really handy. 19:22 it is indeed :) do they pay? 19:22 basically you go to a bar in shoreditch and hit the first person who comes out over the head. then when you have set sail it's too late. ;-) 19:22 ;-) 19:22 btw I notice someone sort of volunteered to help on this kidn of stuff for "where does my money go", see comments in  19:23 CC do I think. ping mlinksva 19:23 i know.. that was a friend of mine i think.. 19:23 rgrp: i will ask a few people about illustration... 19:25 robmyers: do you know anyone who might be interested in this sort of thing? 19:25 we were also thinking of re-vamping okfn.org 19:25 i think we should also try and create a list of things we need help with (maybe just make todos on wiki) 19:25 maybe some things are only 10m for someone with photoshop/gimp/inkscape knowledge ... 19:26 jwyg not me atm unfortunately, I'm snowed under 19:26 hi robmyers what does CC do? :) looking back 19:26 you could see if jon philips knows anyone, or try the openclipart list 19:26 robmyers: good thinking.. 19:26 CC have done cartoons, t-shirts, animations and presentations. they are good stuff on the design front. 19:27 they may have a staff designer in fact 19:27 nods - lovely design 19:27 we do have a designer, Bovinity in #cc on freenode 19:27 the FSF has design volunteers (I think I'm in charge of them at the moment) apart from anything else 19:27 hey mlinksva! 19:27 thanks mlinksva. and hi. 19:27 in general i think we probably need, initially, to go out there with a specific request 19:27 sure 19:28 that's why maybe the shakespeare frontpiece is kind of a nice example 19:28 and book design is a well defined design task 19:28 yes 19:28 i'm still reading the backthread, but wikimedia's illustration projects (some funded by phil greenspun) might be relevant 19:30 mlinksva do you have a url? that would be interesting 19:30 interesting.. 19:30 hmmm, ok i need to run 19:30 okeydokey 19:31 rgrp: nice to see you! 19:31 rgrp: still on for sat? 19:31 just to summarize: 1. robmyers should announce book and v&a to discuss list 19:31 right 19:31 2. I should fix versioning in weaaving history asap and then we announce 19:31 nods 19:31 (or maybe we announce and then we fix it ...) 19:31 3. open shakespeare design 'competiton' or something 19:31 could we go for an announce mid next week - whatever the weather? 19:32 4. plus i think we start circulating  to all and sundry (we probably need to set up eventbrite page though) 19:32 re the above, yes cc's designer is paid staff. a lot of cc jurisdiction projects do their own design work, some with paid people some not 19:33 jgay: glad to hear you're getting into SMW. always warms my heart 19:33 mlinksva: been using it for a year 19:33 ok, got to run. really great to see people and don't people leave on my account :), maybe try for same time next week 19:33 robmyers: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project 19:33 would like to get the RDFa output that CCLearn did over summer of code last year, working 19:34 rgrp: *waves* 19:34 mlinksva thanks! 19:34 jgay: yeah a lot of people want that ... feel free to bug paulproteus and nyergler about plans. has been discussed on smw dev list i know 19:39 robmyers: who has been helping to organise wikipedia/v&a event at v&a's end? 19:39 I don't know, I've only had contact with the wikipedia people 19:39 whats the history there? 19:39 were any other galleries/museums approached? 19:40 mlinksva: do you know if any sf places are participating in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Loves_Art ? 19:40 there's some in the US. I don't know the UK details. but V&A is a coup ;-) 19:40 its amazing! 19:40 whats the plan for sunday? 19:41 errr again no idea. in fact I'm going to email the wp guy to ask and put the results on the page 19:41 planning to go to taking liberties exhibition at BL in morning, but may head over to v&a pm.. 19:41 nods.. 19:41 no details of prizes yet :-) 19:41 freedom is the prize ;-) 19:42 the basic idea is to photograph things and their placards so the details can be tied to the catalogues. I'm taking a camera and laptop... 19:42 looks like london will have a pretty good turnout.. 19:42 yes 19:42 (compared to others so far..) 19:42 I can forward you the wikipedia guy's email? 19:42 nods 19:43 yeah, I was shocked just now looking at the US entries. I hope they are more spontaneous.... 19:43 i'd be really interested in starting a list of photo friendly museums/galleries.. can you think of any lists to ask about this on? 19:43 its would be *really* good if this went well 19:44 then others might be encouraged to do it.. 19:44 esp. if it might be seen as a way of getting visitors engaging with collections - publicity for holdings etc. 19:45 err not off the top of my head. netbehaviour, okfn (obviously), maybe some of the academic lists 19:45 yes I'm pretty stoked about it 19:46 jwyg: there's a discussion on the wikipedia-sf or whatever it is called list. i believe cary bass has contacted some places 19:46 some museums to be more specific 19:47 jwyg emailed you the contacts 19:47 mlinksva: brilliant 19:47 robmyers: thanks! 19:48 mlinksva: as i mentioned earlier - pretty sure asian art museum has pretty liberal photography policy.. 19:49 mlinksva there aren't many names on some of the US location lists at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WLART#London :-( They are recommending a CC licence (BY-SA) for images. 19:49 err not #london, the page... 19:50 idea of a competition + teams is really sweet ;-) 19:51 yes 19:51 oh yes, wrt openhogarth (as I have just accidentally said on #gnu) 19:52 I found a portfolio of fresh prints of "the harlot's progress" at a shop in london but it had a copyright notice on it so I didn't pick it up. :-( 19:52 I forget the rules on new pulls of prints of pd works... 19:53 robmyers: i'll get it in the cc blog queue, definitely a great project. in the past we've mentioned the similar wikipedia takes manhattan project http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/9610 19:54 mlinksva oh kewl. thanks. 19:55 robmyers: yup.. 19:56 robmyers: i guess it would be great to have more/better examples of how material can be re-used.. 19:56 i think we've spoken about cutup stuff before.. 19:56 yes. I'd imagine the claim is bogus but it's so hard to remember all the special cases. :-( 19:57 we need more like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Une_Semaine_de_Bont%C3%A9 19:58 or animations using pd images! :-) 19:58 you see again Dover books have a (c) on their print of semaine 19:58 that's why I call overreaching copyright claims on pd collections "Dovering" ;-) 19:58 yeah 19:59 :-) 19:59 those images are very specific historically. the catalogue and penny dreadful images would have been out of copyright by then. 20:00 the contemporary equivalent would have to us US govt. or free culture images... 20:00 or assert fair use, and so be American ;-) 20:00 a few things at http://ckan.net/tag/read/images 20:00 flickr commons especially 20:01 yeah 20:01 i've been keen to get into a library to get some scans of pd images at some point.. 20:01 beware the library's access conditions... 20:01 nods 20:01 and archive.org has hi-rez scans of some good illustration books 20:01 i used to work at several libraries in cambridge 20:01 nods 20:01 tis true 20:02 I grabbed a complete hogarth bok scan 20:02 book 20:02 to avoid such problems, I just make my art available as SVG versions of the original vector files. Now all future generations have to worry about are the colour profiles. ;-) 20:03 :-)