Free Culture and Web 2.0
Student Society of Computing of OUHK
Presented by Dr. Haggen So
Project Manager
Creative Commons Hong Kong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_2.0_Map.svg (CC BY-SA)

Introduction
A Vision of Students Today
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=119 (CC BY)

Introduction
I did not create the problem
But they are MY problems

Introduction
Freedom and Survival

Computer History - MainFrame
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Honeywell-
Bull_DPS_7_Mainframe_BWW_March_1990.jpg (GFDL)

Source Code
• Computer Instructions are coded in binary
format 00101...
• A more human friendly method to program
computer:
/* Hello World program */
#include<stdio.h>
main()
{ printf("Hello World"); }

Source Code (Cont.)
• Convert source code into binary instructions by
a computer compiler
• Vertical market – one supplier for all computer
needs
• Source code by itself own had no commercial
value -> freely distributed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Apple_Computer_Logo.svg

Apple ][+ Clone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Taiwanese_Apple_II_clone
_Cosmo.jpg (GFDL)

Changes in Computer Industry
• Personal computers - hardware and software
could be sold separately
• Money could be made by closing up source
code
• Some programmers sold the copyright of the
source code of collaborative projects and stole
of work of others
• AT&T Unix incident

Richard M. Stallman
http://www.stallman.org/saintignucius.jpg

Responses to the Theft
• Release source code that could not be used
commercially
• Release source code that must remain freely
available -> Software Freedom
• 1983 GNU project, Unix Clone
• 1985 Free Software Foundation, Free as in
Free Speech, General Public License (GPL)

Free/Open Source Software
20+ Years Down the Road
• Linux
IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Track
–2008 2Q $13.9 billion total
–Microsoft $5.1 billion 36.5% Growth -1.7%
–Linux $1.9 billion 13.4% Growth 9.4%
(http://practical-tech.com/infrastructure/linux-server-share-
keeps-growing/)

Free/Open Source Software
20+ Years Down the Road
• Apache
–Most popular web server
–Always more popular than IIS
(http://www.netcraft.com/)
• Foundation of Web 2.0
–Facebook: Apache PHP
–Twitter: Ruby on Rails

Why the Trend
Choices

Why the Trend
Firefox, Chrome… Internet Explorer
Thunderbird, Evolution…Outlook Express
OpenOffice, Abiword…Microsoft Office
Pidgin, aMSN… MSN Messenger
Linux, *BSD… Vista

November 2008 Top SuperComputer
http://www.top500.org/

http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/linuxw
atch.html

Why the Trend
Choices that are important for Survival

Why the Trend
Search for “Open Source Financial Crisis”

Lessons to Learn
Know your Freedom
Exercise your Freedom
Share your Freedom