Jan Ainali

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My Wikimania 2024

Posted on by Jan Ainali

The week before last I was in Katowice in Poland for the annual conference Wikimania. Overall, it was well-organized, but as in any big conference, there are always things to improve. Unfortunately, there always seem to be some things that have been done better in the past that are regressing (for example, not using multilingual menus). I wonder how we can not only capture the learnings from every year, but also successfully transfer them over to the next.

Overview

As usual, I used the learning pattern Documenting your event experience, continuously documenting what I was doing, watching and participating in, along with notes of thoughts that I got. In total, I partook in 24 sessions and as organizer/speaker of another 3 myself during the conference. I have later watched another 6 sessions and have 7 still on my backlog, so the conference will stay in my mind for quite some time. I will delve deeper into the different aspects of my Wikimania experience below.

Podcast

This year I tried to get people together, but it was difficult to get hold of people as they were so busy with all the sessions. I did record one session, but it has not been edited yet. Per Wikipediapodden tradition, we did record one episode leading up to Wikimania and one episode summarizing it. These two are, alas, only available in Swedish.

My sessions

Open as a Prerequisite for Solving the Climate Crisis

I participated in this panel as part of my work in the Open Climate Data project for Creative Commons that I do in Open By Default now. The session was overflowing with people, apparently a huge interest. Many of the questions were specifically about the intersection with Wikidata, and I think there are some things Wikimedia needs to do to really enable this. First, create a connection from the Wikidata Query Service to the Data namespace on Wikimedia Commons. Second, enabling Structured data in the Data namespace on Wikimedia Commons so that provenance and attribution can be solved.

My slides.

Add your country to the Wikidata Govdirectory

While I had a workshop session with this title last year, this year it was a poster session. I think at least a few people got inspired to take a closer look at their countries when back home, and I got some good sources immediately when standing there.

Full size version.

Climate policy in Wikidata

This poster really sparked many interesting conversations. It was inspiring that so many attendees were so knowledgeable about Wikidata and also found it important.

Full size version.

Wikimedians for Sustainable Development

While the user group Wikimedians for Sustainable Development didn’t have any particular sessions by themselves, many members were organizing sessions and even more people in the community had sessions related to the sustainable development goals. They were so many that I just to get an overview for myself, I created a subpage where I roughly categorized them by SDG goal and type of session.

What’s next?

As usual, a Wikimania leaves you with loads of inspiration and ideas. So what will I try to do next?

  • As mentioned before, follow the discussions about Data on Commons and provide feedback where I can. I already started with some input on Phabricator.
  • Help design a more welcoming Video landing page on Wikimedia Commons.
  • Investigate if there is a bug with Related Changes on Wikidata.
  • I emailed the organizer of next year’s Wikimania that I would like to volunteer on making it a good hybrid conference.
  • Start a discussion on Swedish Wikipedia to turn on some of the new event tools.
  • Continue watching the talks on my backlog.

Course in Sustainable Knowledge Dissemination through OER and Open Science

Posted on by Jan Ainali

This summer I took a short course in Sustainable Knowledge Dissemination through OER and Open Science 2.0 ECTS credits, remotely at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The course was fully self-paced through an LMS. I have to admit, I mostly took the course to formalize the knowledge I had already acquired by being active in the open movement for a long while and through my work at Open By Default. The grades have now been reported to the central system, LADOK, and I passed!

While I perhaps didn’t learn so much for myself, I still recommend the course for anyone wanting to get the basics of Open Educational Resources and Open Science. Clear and concise information, and a plus for the self-pacing.

My sustainability July 2024

Posted on by Jan Ainali

July was not as busy as June, but I still felt like good progress was made.

User group meeting

The meeting was yet again organized by another member of the user group, and sharing responsibilities is great. While not many attended, we decided to mode forwarded with the strategy work, which will be a fresh air and sorely needed. Minutes are published.

Wikimania

Wikimania is coming up in a week, and I have started organizing a meetup for anyone interested in sustainable development.

I also looked through the entire program and made a list of all sessions related to the SDGs. Hopefully, that can help people navigate to impactful sessions.

Newsletter

I sent another monthly newsletter! This time I also got some input from more user group members, which is promising for the future.

This is the second half of my seventh monthly report of my New Year’s resolutions.

My Fediverse July 2024

Posted on by Jan Ainali

This month has been largely similar to the last one. I have continued to boost information about Fediverse apps, news and tips and tricks.

The new development I have made is that I have started researching where I could buy a service to self-host a Mastodon server for my company Open By Default. Any tips of lived experience are appreciated.

This is the first half of my seventh monthly report of my New Year’s resolutions.

Some thoughts on real open source Artificial Intelligence

Posted on by Jan Ainali

We are in the midst of a hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the market is trying to get ahead of each other in all sorts of ways. One way is to claim that their AI is open source. So far, there has been a lot of open washing, meaning that they claim they are open but failing to apply common practices, like licenses approved by the Open Source Institute (OSI) to make that clear. This is so common, some weekly newsletters even have recurring segments listing all perpetrators.

Adding to this, there is an ongoing discussion about what open source for AI should mean, and OSI is even drafting a new definition for this. As late as today at the OSPOs for good conference, some big companies tried to claim that there is a gradient of open source, and if not, threatened not to be supportive of open source at all, and that seems just disingenuous to me. Through various venues, webinars and chats, I have tried to make a point of something that seems obvious to me, which leans back on the original four software freedoms. So before going further, let’s just remind ourselves of these.

The four freedoms of free software

  • The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
  • The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

These freedoms are not a gradient, all four are needed, or it is not free and open source software.

It might be worth mentioning that OSI’s definition of open source is quite aligned with the spirit of these, and in some of their points even clearer. For example, their second point about source code includes the following clarification:

The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

The Open Source Definition – Source Code

These two definitions have led me to the following arguments.

My arguments about the freedoms

In various venues, I have had arguments essentially like the one below.

Me: So to be able to study the AI and to modify it in any way, I need access to the data that the models have been trained on. If I can’t see, remove, add, or modify the data, I don’t have full freedom to study the AI or change it to suit me. Essentially, it is a black box, and it doesn’t matter if the weights are free because I can’t change what is weighted.

Them: But we cannot open source the data because we don’t own the copyright of the data we trained the models on.

Me: …

So they openly admit that the system as a whole is not free.

In my opinion, such AI systems per definition are not, and cannot be, viewed to be free open source software.

Another similar discussion starts with me doing the same rant, but is followed in a slightly different way.

Them: But we cannot publish the data because even though we made sure we own the copyright of the data, it includes private data and personal information.

Me. …

Now, I have to give it to them that we are a bit closer. But I still don’t have freedom 1, I can for example not clean the data from biased or erroneous private data to make the model better. There is also a risk that distributing the model would distribute access to these private data if I change other parts of the system, and thus the risk of me breaking laws doesn’t really give me freedom 3.

Where will we end up?

In conclusion, the essence of truly open source AI lies not only in the accessibility of the code or the weights but also in the freedom to access, modify, and distribute the data upon which these models are built. Without freely licensed and fully accessible training data, the promises of transparency, collaboration, and improvement inherent in the open source ethos remain unfulfilled. The four freedoms that define open source software are undermined when data remains proprietary or restricted. As the discourse around open source AI continues to evolve, it is imperative that we push for these clear values of freedom and openness, or we risk heading into a future we rely on black boxes, blind trust and reduced possibilities to shape the software as we wish.

In addition, we should perhaps find a term that can be used for other types of AI systems. Reusable, gratis, or shareware might be terms to use for that. If you have ideas, please let me know.

My sustainability June 2024

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June was busy and fun! Just check all the things that happened.

Vodcast

WikiAfrica Hour had the theme: #36: Does the Wikimedia movement contribute to the SDGs? and I was a guest representing the user group. It went well in my opinion and I think it might be an inspiring episode for people who see it.

User group meeting

We had a good and productive meeting, and another member of the user group organized it. That was a lovely feeling. Minutes are published.

Affiliate health

The Affiliations Committee published new criteria for judging the health of the affiliates, and based on that I made a table to see how well Wikimedians for Sustainable Development meet them. The table makes it clear that we have some room for improvement, and makes it very actionable what we need to do.

Goals and strategy

One very concrete thing we are missing are measurable goals. So I started a page for us to collect them. When doing that, I thought it would be necessary to connect them to the movement strategy, and set up a strategy page for the user group to do that connection. Of course, both of these are just empty placeholders for now, but at least we have some concrete things for the agenda for our upcoming meetings.

Voting on the Movement Charter

The user group may vote on the adoption of the Movement Charter, so I started a page for our vote and got nominated as the person to submit it on the behalf of the user group.

Newsletter

I sent another monthly newsletter, and this one was full of stuff, both from the user group and from around the movement.

This is the first half of my sixth monthly report of my New Year’s resolutions.

Course in Climate Leadership in Politics and Public Administration

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This spring I took a short course in Climate Leadership in Politics and Public Administrations (archived), 3.0 ECTS credits, remotely at Uppsala University. The course was inspiring, and some of the professors were excellent. The grades have now been reported to the central system, LADOK, and I passed!

It feels good to know a bit about possible regulatory instruments, and even if this may not be directly applicable in any of my current assignments in Open By Default, I would love to help on issues in this topic space in the future.

Re-launching Open By Default

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In 2016, I started a sole proprietorship in Sweden that I called Open By Default. It was a lot of fun, but when I got full-time employment in the European Parliament and moved to Brussels, I closed it down.

But recently, on 15 May, I started it up again, now as an “eenmanszaak” in the Netherlands. So if you need any help with anything related to openness, you can hire me.

My Fediverse May 2024

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This month has been my least active so far this year. Even so, I have continued to boost information about Fediverse apps, news and tips and tricks. But besides that, I have not much to report.

What I am currently hesitating on, is setting up a PeerTube place to stream to. I am still not sure if I should host one myself, or just join an existing instance. A bit more research is needed.

This is the second half of my fifth monthly reports of my New Year’s resolutions.