Daily Archives: Friday, March 27, 2015

  • Godwin 0, Vandals 1

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    Early this morning the demolition crews finally starting their assault on the 1860s school in Marybush Lane, Bristol (posts passim).

    Within a couple of hours the demolition contractors had all but flattened the Pennant sandstone and Bath stone structure built by eminent Victorian architect and Aesthetic Movement member, E.W. Godwin, as shown in the photos below.

    views of the demolition of Marybush Lane school from two angles
    More of East Bristol’s heritage turned to dust

    One less of Godwin’s works now survives for people to appreciate. In Bristol his only remaining works are – to the best of my knowledge – the grade II*-listed Carriageworks on Stokes Croft dating from 1862 and his refurbishment of St. Philip & St. Jacob Church, which lies just across Tower Hill from Marybush Lane and was contemporaneous with the building of the school.

    The efforts of The Victorian Society and local campaigners to save the school from demolition by the vandals from the site’s owners, the Homes & Communities Agency, have therefore been in vain. When objections were first raised to its demolition, the HCA displayed both ignorance and arrogance. Firstly, it denied that the school had been designed by Godwin. When presented with incontrovertible evidence by opponents, it then had the arrogance to deny its initial ignorance.

    I shall shed a tear into my beer tonight for this loss of yet another part of East Bristol’s history and heritage. The east side of Bristol, traditionally its poorer side, has long been treated with contempt and disregarded by both the city’s great and good and outsiders; and this latest vandalism just confirms that.

    During the 1930s the city’s unemployed, in the form of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) used to hold their meetings at the school.

    If a future walk by Bristol Radical History Group is ever done on the unemployed, a halt in Marybush Lane – no doubt in front of some cheap and nasty residential development, will be prefaced by the words, “On this site used to stand…”, a growing phenomenon in a city where only the heritage of the great and good seems to be valued.

    So in conclusion well done Mayor George Ferguson and Bristol City Council for failing to lift a finger to save Godwin’s school and well done HCA for an act of heritage vandalism committed without compunction.

  • World’s less spoken languages get a boost with Openwords

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source

    Over half of the world’s people, i.e. those that speak a language with less than 100 million native speakers, do not have a language learning mobile app suited for their language or needs, according to Opensource.com.

    Most of these languages are disregarded by mobile app developers, but Openwords is a start-up that aims to address this problem.

    Openwords can mine massive, existing public data resources such as Wiktionary or the Apertium open machine translator and will thus be able to provide content quickly for populations without language learning apps. Other companies would need to build this content themselves, but Openwords uses pre-existing open data.

    Openwords has already proved this concept can work by collating content for more than 1,000 languages and will be running a campaign to raise funds to complete the Openwords app that will provide a language learning platform for this open content collection.

    Emphasis on freedom

    The Openwords app will emphasise freedom. Whereas many existing apps do not allow learners to decide what they will learn, whereas Openwords will give learners this freedom while also allowing them to follow a default curriculum. It will also be free (gratis) for learners.

    Most importantly, Openwords’ content is in the public domain. This means all Openwords’ educational content is copyleft and owned by the public. This is the major philosophical difference between Openwords and proprietary language learning apps. The Openwords app will function as a reader of open content. Whenever Openwords content is added or improved, contributors will be building something for everyone’s benefit.

    Openwords aims to provide:

    • Free, open domain, educational material.
    • Diverse education material for populations without electronic foreign language learning content.

    Openwords is asking the open source community for guidance on how to fulfill all obligations to the open source community successfully. Openwords has made a lot of progress in making the Openwords database available and has constructed an HTTP API available through Openwords.org, which hosts the Openwords word and language problem database.

  • EU Commission updates its open source strategy

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    EU flagThe European Commission has announced the updating its strategy for internal use of open source software. The Commission, which is already using open source for many of its key IT services and software solutions, will further increase the internal role of this type of software. The renewed strategy puts a special emphasis on procurement, contribution to open source software projects and releasing more of the software developed within the Commission as open source.

    Highlights

    The specific objectives of the renewed strategy are:

    Equal treatment in procurement

    The Commission will ensure a level playing field when procuring new software. This means that open source and proprietary software will be assessed on an equal basis, being both evaluated on the basis of total cost of ownership, including exit costs.

    Contribution to communities

    The Commission services will increasingly participate in open source software communities to build on the open source elements used in the Commission’s software.

    Clarification of legal aspects

    To enable easy collaboration with the open source communities, Commission developers will benefit from appropriate legal coaching and advice on how to deal with the intellectual property aspects of open source software.

    Open source and interoperable software developed by the Commission

    Software produced by the Commission departments, and particularly software produced for use outside the Commission, will be released as open source under the European Union Public License (EUPL) and published on the Joinup platform. The software produced should aim to be interoperable and use open technical specifications.

    Transparency and better communication

    The updated strategy emphasises improved governance, an increasing use of open source in the field of security and this strategy’s alignment with the EC’s ISA Programme, enabling the modernisation of cross-border and cross-sector eGovernment services.

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.