From tomorrow on all Europeans and their data shall benefit from the new General Data Protection Regulation. This puts a lot of Internet services currently in need to update their data and privacy regulations, to inform their customers about it and re-ask for their agreement on the new regulations. In my opinion this should be done every other year, because it sheds an interesting light on some of the companies pretending to do “business as usual”.
To pick one, if you visit yahoo.com (now part of the Oath family) in these days from within Europe you are asked to agree to the updated privacy policies and to receive personalized adds delivered to you with the help of “trusted partners”. “Trusted partners” out of which each one of them comes with their own privacy policy again. Means, that if you agree to Yahoo, then you also agree to the terms of these “trusted partners” except you explicitly reject from doing.
If you then have a closer look who are these “trusted partners”, you will see two lists. One is the list of “trusted partners” who have signed the GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework. These are already 48 companies! Each one of them of course again comes with their own privacy policies. Means, by clicking ok you have already signed 49 different privacy policies, approximately written on more than a thousand pages.
Then, even worse, in the second list you find “additional partners” who have NOT signed the GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework but who have “mutual agreements” with Yahoo to “protect your data” … these “additional partners” are 273 companies!
273 individual companies with whom your data will or might be shared with and that have not signed the GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework. 273 companies with each one of them individual privacy policies, written on thousands and thousands of pages with none of them necessarily having to be in line with the new GDPR regulations.
In sum, by clicking ok to Yahoo now, you immediately have 321 “trusted partners” and their individual privacy policies that you share your online life with.
Unfortunately, Yahoo is just the tip of an Iceberg and similar arrangements are true for countless companies out there.
This post is for those who who are allowed to vote for the “Abgeordnetenhaus” next Sunday, September 18, but do not speak German and therefore have no clear idea about the different political parties and what they stand for. If you are interested in Internet policy issues, however, I translated the content of a press release by the “Koalition Freies Wissen” (means the coalition of free knowledge) for you, to help you choosing your favorite party.
Today, 10 years ago, I made my first substantial edits into Wikipedia about documentary photography (“Dokumentarfotografie”). It was the same day I started for the first time an article from scratch, about the large passion (“Die große Passion”) by Albrecht Dürer. Looking into the version history of these articles today is interesting from a biographical point of view but also from a technological one.
99% of science happens before its final publicationRecently, the EU ministers responsible for research and innovation decided unanimously that by 2020, all results and scientific publications of publicly and publicly-private funded research must be freely available. This shall be ensured by the mandatory use of Open Access licenses that guarantee free access to publications. In addition “the data must be made accessible, unless there are well-founded reasons for not doing so, for example intellectual property rights or security or privacy issues”.
This important decision is long overdue and a good step towards opening up scientific results. And to give back to the public what they indirectly paid before with their tax money. However, this EU minister’s decision misses the opportunity to declare and understand software as a part of the research. Means to also include the free availability of the software used for publicly funded research. Indeed, there is not a single word in the press release to cover any informatics, software, “computer aided research” or anything alike. Everything that the ministers seem to care about is the final paper that is published as an article.
But we are in year 2016 and it is time to understand that software is information and knowledge – just as any article is.
Software as integral part of modern research
Software is an integral part of nearly all modern research. Beginning from metering, calculations, demonstrations to following stages of statistics, writings, publications … nearly all steps involved in a research project are in need and covered by the use of software.
What does it help the information society if a scientific paper is published in Open Access but all the steps involved towards creating this publication are built by investments in intransparent, closed and proprietary software solutions and data formats? Especially as the creation of a paper often involves many years of investigation and millions of Euros of fundings.
What does it help the science community, if the software that was used to achieve a result is not transparent? Software is really not without fail: miscalculated prison sentences, hardware scanners that randomly alter written numbers or professional software abuse to cheat on emissions by car manufacturers … – How can a researcher really believe in any result of a software that no one is able to look into and prove it to work correctly?
If the EU ministers responsible for research and innovation really aim at opening up scientific knowledge but keep software out of their scope, they do a very selective choice and only open up the very final stage of any research process. Articles are only able to list outcomes and results of a research process. Not including the software to be freely accessible means no one can see, reproduce or test the process itself or the mathematical methods that have been used to achieve these results.
Most researchers would love to have the software free as well
To understand a result you often need to analyze all parts of itThe EU ministers decision also seems not to be in line with what a majority in the scientific world is waiting for. Because having the software and data that is used for research freely accessible is definitely in interest of many researchers.
As an example, at the end of 2015, I was lucky to have been invited to shape the outcome of the JPI Climate symposium “Designing Comprehensive Open Knowledge Policies to Face Climate Change”. JPI Climate is a collaboration between 17 European countries to coordinate jointly their climate research and fund new transnational research initiatives. Given this transnational, European background, JPI Climate was setting up common Open Knowledge Policies. These shall help to find sustainable ways of archiving and ease the exchange of data and results – which in turn shall boost innovation in climate research. Naturally, JPI Climate was calling their members to publish under Open Access. But in contrast to the EU ministers, the JPI Climate does understand that all the way of the research process until the publication of the final article is just as important as the publication itself:
the symposium’s results confirm that access and availability issues are just one issue within the “openness” approach of “Open Knowledge”/“Open Science”; therefore, comprehensive policies (i.e. tackling the whole research cycle) should encompass measures related to “reuse and re-distribution” of data, information and knowledge and “universal participation” when designing, creating, disseminating and evaluating such data, information and knowledge.
Hence, participants on the common symposium agreed that
4. Research data, metadata, software, methods, etc. funded by public bodies should be open/public. Open licensing for data and software avoids collusion with legal restrictions at national or international level.
[…]
6. Open software/formats (independent from vendors) should be mandatory for data repositories and Data Management Plans (DMPs). Research Funding Organisations should take the lead and foster changes of business models when dealing with data
[…]
In addition to research results and data, open source software (used in the research process) should be mandatory and published under a free license.
Open Science needs Free Software
Obviously, the science community is large steps further than the EU ministers responsible for research and innovation. Many researchers all over Europe already seek for the mandatory use of Free Software in research process and the publication of software whose development was publicly funded. If EU ministers really like to realize their now proclaimed vision that “knowledge should be freely shared”, they should listen to their community and keep to their advise.
It is time to understand that software itself is knowledge and an integral part to create more (scientific) knowledge. And it is time for the European Union to note: There is no Open Science without the use of open standards and Free Software!
I am a traveller, a person who spents his money and spare time to leave home and see the world. That is why I am in need of a good Free Software navigation system. For IloveFS Day 2016 I like to thank all Free Software contributors and highlight my personal favorite OpenStreetMap-based navigation app: Osmand
For me, Osmand is the perfect match between simplicity and complexity. You can choose to use it for a simple map illustrator or as an offline navigation system including voice directions. Also, you can choose to see a simple map or show multiple layers to also see transportation systems, points of interests, hillshades, wikipedia entries and much more. Or you can enable a variety of plugins to customize your application or to enable advanced features. One of them is to edit and contribute to the source of OpenStreetMap.
Since this makes contributes anytime spontaneously to OpenStreetMap very easy, on #IloveFS, I like to thank the people behind Osmand by sharing a how-to add locations to OpenStreetMap with Android (or an Android custom-ROM). It is fun, easy and free.
This way I also hope to inspire other people to take their mobile once in a while and to map the world together.
First, I love a lot that it comes with a very easy-to-use interface that is composed of simply one line where you can enter for example an address that you are looking for. Or two lines in case you look for a route. Basically like openstreetmap.org itself. This interface is so much easier to use than the one from my beloved Osmand, which has a much more complex and unintuitive interface. Actually, every time I look for an address in Osmand, I wish there would be something like an easy “one line interface” to find the address I am looking for …
However, I think the difference in search usability derives from one of the most important features that Osmand offers and Cartes not, at least not yet: Offline maps and navigation. Offline maps are much more powerful than online searches, they are faster and work without any dependency on your internet connection. Which is especially important when you are travelling and like to have a full navigation system without roaming charges – anywhere in the world. Also I have to admit that Osmand~ offers multiple times more features and functionality than Cartes, for example OpenStreetMap editing on your device.
But hey, Cartes is a good start and I would love to see further development to give Firefox OS users easy-to-use freedom to OpenStreetMap for their navigation instead of being tied to proprietary services. And, as I can see from updates, there is already a “First attempt at offline use, now viewed tiles are cached an can be reused offline”. Thanks, Maël Lavault, keep the good work going.
BTW: Interesting to see, that Cartes can display satellite images? Where does it take it from? Bing?
Since I realized how easy it is to contribute anytime spontaneously to OpenStreetMap with your Android device, I wrote a how-to add locations to OpenStreetMap with Android (or an Android custom-ROM) in my OSM-profile. It is fun, easy and free.
This way I hope to inspire other people to take their mobile once in a while and to map the world together. This blog post is a duplicate of my profile information:
F-Droid is an “alternative market place”, that only offers Free Software (as in Freedom). Others call it “Open Source”. For various reasons, Free Software is to be considered a good thing : )
Inside F-Droid, search for “Osmand”
and install “Osmand~”. Don’t get confused by other apps : )
To pick one, if you visit yahoo.com (now part of the Oath family) in these days from within Europe you are asked to agree to the updated privacy policies and to receive personalized adds delivered to you with the help of “trusted partners”. “Trusted partners” out of which each one of them comes with their own privacy policy again. Means, that if you agree to Yahoo, then you also agree to the terms of these “trusted partners” except you explicitly reject from doing..jpg)
