 So we're here at the Lenara Connect, and who are you? I'm Karen Sandler, I'm the Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. So what does that mean, conserving freedom for software? Yeah, it's a conservancy, it's a fiscal sponsorship organization, and what that means is that we're the non-profit home over 30 free and open-source software organizations, including a lot of things you've heard of like Git, Samba Wine, Inkscape, Selenium, PHP My Admin, the list goes on. We also are the... Sugar labs, that's all. Sugar labs, yeah. And we're the home of Outreachy, which is formerly Outreach Program for Women, which is a diversity group, and we are perhaps most famously known for our GPL Compliance Program for Kernel Developers and the Debian Copyright Aggregation Project, where we defend the GPL. So defending GPL, is that possible? That means there's a contract out there, people make software, they have to share what they do, and that's the law? How does that work? So when you choose the copyright law, so when you create code, copyright arises. You don't have to do anything special to get copyright. Copyright simply arises as soon as you fix your creative expression, and this is the lawyer in me, and you express the creative expression in a tangible medium, and you don't necessarily have to put any notices in order to have copyright, but what you do is you assert copyright by telling people that you own the copyright and the terms by which they can use it, and in the Kernel community, that is most often GPL v2, which is the prevailing license for the Linux Kernel, and so by choosing that license, you choose which norms and expectations you have for the use of the license going forward. And so by defending the license, we basically, on behalf of copyright holders, tell people who are out of compliance with the license that they must comply, and here's what it entails, and please do a better job. So what does it mean? It means if they take Linux, they do stuff, they have to put back what they changed, I don't know. How does it work? Like I do videos with lots of different, and I get comments once in a while, people say, hey, where's the source code or something? So are they right? For your videos? Yeah. It depends what license. So I prefer when I'm interviewed for, and when I create anything for my work to be under a free license, regardless of whether it's content or code, so I would prefer to be quoted under CC5SA or even CC5. And what that means is that there are expectations about what to do with that material. So if you were the person who created the video, then you get to choose what license you want to put it under. So if you choose to have it under a Creative Commons license, then people can create, under a Creative Commons sharing license or free license, then you basically tell people that they can do whatever they want with it, but if they do, they have to follow the terms of that license. What I want to mean is I go to Shenzhen a lot, and there's all these cheap phones, these cheap everything, and there's design houses making awesome stuff very quickly. And then people go to my video, when I film that, they say, hey, where's the source code? So it could be all winter stuff, a rock chip, and all these Chinese stuff. Are they doing something illegal if they don't publish the source code? So if you take code that is released under GPLV2 or GPLV3, and you distribute that code in a product, then you must distribute the complete and corresponding source code, or give an offer for source that's valid. And so there are terms that you must follow in order to use that code. And so different countries have different norms and expectations, but a very high percentage of those products won't make their way into the United States. So the United States has this kind of laws, but all the other countries might also... Most countries have, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm only a U.S. lawyer admitted in the state of New York. So I'm limited into what I can speak to, but there are treaties that the U.S. assigned with other countries. And so while there are different facets of copyright law from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, most of the basic tenants survive from place to place. What can you do with China? Can you go to China and say, hey, where's the source code? I think that in China, the biggest question is education and explaining the benefits of software freedom and really also explaining the mechanisms that sharing code, the mechanisms that need to be put in place in order to satisfy the requirements of licensing, how much more opportunity there will be for the company when they do share their code. So there's a real pragmatic argument for copyright and for sharing. So I was sitting with some Shenzhen guys making a phone with MediaTek and stuff, and I was like, hey, it'd be so awesome if your phone was... People could root it and install other and stuff, and the software would be open source and then they smile that they look at me and they smile and they say, there's no way any design house will share the code in Shenzhen because they're so competitive and they don't understand, they don't use it that way. They want to be, I don't know, they're like a week or two in front of the other one and they don't really share. It's very short-sighted, and what's interesting is that because they're only a week or two ahead, in those areas, that's a perfect example of where copy left really works because you have the first mover advantage, and you're going to... Your period of time where you're the new guy and you have that new thing is very limited anyway and you're the hot thing and everybody wants what you have. And then people move on to some other product or some other company, and if you were collaborating together, that meant that your next product would be stronger based on what the other person who was using that code came up with. So really, in a long-term way, it's all the reasons why the Linux kernel ecosystem has developed so strongly in the United States. So if they were sharing all the code, they would actually get more customers, they'd get more business. Yeah, I believe so. All right. And the industry is a whole wood benefit. So what have you been talking with these guys about here, the Ninar Connect? Yep, I have been talking about people are very interested in compliance, they're very interested in the work that Conservancy is doing to help defend the GPL. There's been a lot of really interesting talk about security and about the role of copy left and security and how important it is. Copy left. Copy left. What is that? Copy left is, I love that term, copy left is basically the term whereby you use copy right, which is a monopolistic framework, but instead of using it to be restrictive, you use it to share. So instead of copy right, you have copy left and it's a sharing license. And the idea behind its connection to security is that if you're not sharing completed corresponding source code with installation scripts, then over time you're going to be out of luck because you will have problems maintaining your products, making security fixes, the end of life. We've already had all these amazing disasters. Just because software is free to put through software doesn't mean it's automatically safe, secure and better, but over time it has a chance. Cool. And the stuff that they're doing here in Leonardo, all these companies working together on improving Linux and ARM is cool, right? Yeah. I mean, I love these collaborative communities and all of the Linux kernel-based communities are just really dynamic and developers are such extraordinary people. And what is cool is that I think developers are starting to really understand their personal role in the ideological component. I think developers have for a long time been quiet in their ideology and they basically let the company's legal departments be the most vocal proponents for the decisions that their companies have been making. And I think that's starting to change as developers are starting to see in my talk I mentioned Volkswagen because it just came out this week that Volkswagen had this solution in software whereby they were hiding their real emissions so that they passed testing and that was a huge a huge rift in the faith that the consumers had and what's happened is that the Volkswagen stock has plummeted. So by not doing the right thing, the company has in fact hurt their bottom line. So translating that to our space, as developers sort of see that their companies should be doing the right thing, getting more invested, getting more active helps the company stay on track, which will also help it be profitable and articulating those technical reasons to legal and to management becomes incredibly valuable over time and is one of the most important things that developers can do for software freedom. Nice and they don't need to worry too much about the lawsuits and everything, you just manage everything for them? Well we do represent a coalition of criminal developers and bring lawsuits but we tried, not we were rather we funded a lawsuit by Chris up Hellwig, but we've as you noticed there haven't been very many lawsuits. We tried not to bring lawsuits, to try to get compliance in a friendly and cooperative way and try to use lawsuits only as a last, really a last effort, but it has to be available because if you're not willing to bring a lawsuit, you can't start at step one in compliance. So the first step you go you say hello, how about the software being open or something? Yeah I mean our first step is we try to find the right contact for companies that are involved in our in our ecosystem. It's much easier, we find the right engineer, the right manager and we contact them and say hey there's a problem. Sometimes those companies say good point, I'm going to work on that and they fix the problem. Sometimes we actually have one thing that got turned around within two weeks. So sometimes companies that are in the know it's it's it's you know it's quite fast and it works out great and then companies there are some companies who are just unknowled you know just don't have any knowledge about it and then we recommend that they get up to speed and we we ask them to produce better source candidates and then there are some companies that wind up just willfully doing the wrong thing and that's what that's when we have to really get involved and and eventually there has to be a mechanism for a lawsuit because if there isn't there won't be any incentive for companies to do the right thing. I hope you can get to China and send some guys over there or some other people talking with the you know that that they get on board with the whole uh opening everything and and that people like Google should also develop Android in the open and not have these secret partners and stuff. It's a little bit anti-competitive for the people that are not in the secret group, secret meeting rooms right? I mean developing out in the open is you know I think that's what we've learned in the kernel community in the US and in Europe during you know the the last 25 years is that we're we're actually all better off if we collaborate as much as possible and and I think that a lot of these Chinese companies will come to the same conclusion and there are a lot of pragmatic arguments for a copy left that are not ideological although there are the important ideological points too.