i < 3 theopenweb - January on the Web

The second installment of the i < 3 theopenweb . In it I go over recent events and give you some of my favourite links related to the Open Web and the Federated Social Web.
 
Links of the week
 

• Open*Life: 2011 in review
  • A second great year on opensource.com has proven even more that openness can improve just about anything. No matter what you're interested in, we've had a story for you.
• Mozilla Public License 2.0
  • Congratulations to Mozilla on the release of the Mozilla Public License 2.0 after a two year versioning process. As Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker writes “Version 2.0 is similar in spirit to the previous versions, but shorter, better, and more compatible with other Free Software and Open Source Licenses.”
• Facebook Poses a Far Greater Threat to the Web than Apple
  • Facebook’s goal is to consume the entire web, like a social media analogue to Matt Taibbi’s now-iconic “vampire squid”, giving users little reason to venture outside of the service. Facebook is collecting the entire Internet for its midden pile: social gaming, email, Skype, Netflix, Spotify, cloud documents, and now news
• Richard Stallman Was Right All Along
  • Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.
• Google open sources new HTML5 video tool
  • The 'search giant' has pushed its latest HTML5 video tool to open source.

    The new Video Player Sample is built with open web technology and is designed to allow developers (and other users) to wrap video up in the required code to be able to release it as a web store application.

    It acts as a basic video player too, if that's all a user is looking for.

• Unhosted -- freedom from the web's monopolies
  • Web applications usually come with storage attached to it, users can not choose where their data is stored. Put plainly: You get their app, they get your data. We want to improve the web infrastructure by separating web application logic from per-user data storage: Users should be able to use web services they love but keep their life stored in one place they control .
• Enhanced Privacy and Security for Web Browsing
  • One thing many people agree the FreedomBox should do is web filtering for privacy and ad-removal. Toward that end, the FreedomBox will act as a web proxy to clean up and protect web traffic.
• January 18 captured: A SOPA blackout gallery
• Thank You, Internet! And the Fight Continues
  • Working together, we sent a powerful message to Big Media and the misguided proponents of the Internet blacklist legislation: we will not stand idly by and let you hamper innovation, kill jobs, wreak havoc on Internet security, and undermine free speech. Supporters of SOPA and PIPA say the Internet Blackout day was a "publicity stunt." We say it was a wake-up call.
• The top 20 HTML5 games
  • HTML5 is quickly turning into a great game development platform. Rob Hawkes, creator of multiplayer space shooter Rawkets, highlights some of the best online games built with HTML5 (and JavaScript) out there and the technologies that they’re using.
• Google announces privacy changes across products; users can’t opt out
  • Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do on the Web.

    The Web giant announced Tuesday that it plans to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTube, Gmail and its leading search engine.

• Help Protect Gadget Jailbreakers and Video Artists from Legal Threats
  • EFF Launches Petition Campaign for Expanded DMCA Exemptions

    San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the public to join the campaign to keep and widen exemptions EFF obtained in 2010 to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to help remove a cloud of legal uncertainty hanging over folks who modify electronic gadgets and make remix videos.

This is only the second installment of the i < 3 theopenweb so if you have ideas for improving the newsletter or would like to make a contribution to the next installment please leave a message in the comments. Thanks.

Mozilla from the outside.

• Every moment counts in Mozilla's bid for mobile relevance
• Mozilla could soon release a beta version of its dramatically overhauled Android browser, a crucial step in the organization's attempt to stay relevant in the tech industry's mobile transformation.

 
From next week we will start taking a look at the OStatus protocols starting with OpenID
 

Track of the week
John Foxx & The Maths – A Falling Star on Spotify