 Hi and welcome to the last session of the legal and policy dev room. We're so glad you came to participate in this remote conference at FOSDEM and participate in our track. We are the organizers of the legal and policy dev room. I think we can go around and introduce ourselves. I'm Karen Sandler. I'm the executive director of the software freedom conservancy. I'm a lawyer and I am really happy to be here. Alex, do you want to go? Sure. I'm Alexander Sandler, FOSDEM policy consultant and I'm with the FOSDEM. I'm Bradley Kuhn. I'm the policy fellow at the software freedom conservancy and one of the organizers of the dev room. Yeah, and I'm Max Mehl. I'm program manager at the Free Software Foundation Europe and mostly concerned with technical issues. So we're here to talk about hot topics. Every year we do an organizers panel at the end of the day or at the end of the session because often we have two days. No, I'm contradicting myself though. There have been some years where we've had two days in the dev room and some days where we've had one. Last year when it was remote we had two afternoons and this year we just had one afternoon and we're going to probably get into that a little bit when we talk about the things that we are going to cover in this panel. The point of the panel has always been to talk about the issues that were raised over the course of the different talks. And also to cover anything that we think is really important going on and software freedom right now that we think that we can shed a little light on and get folks up to speed it. So I think we're going to jump in. Does anybody have anything else to add to that. Thank you and introduction. We should we should also thank Matias from F stuff here who helped us somewhat with getting the dev room this year I think he's going to be more involved next year. And we should also thank Richard Fontana and Tom marble, who helped go organize the dev room for many, many years and every year we try to get them to come back and and I think they might come back next year, maybe. We can hope. So, so let's jump into it. I think there are will probably start out covering some of the issues that were raised in the talks, and, and then we'll go on to cover a few other issues that that we think we should look at. And so I think, honestly, the biggest issue that was raised today that I think we all have a lot to say about and it's probably on everybody's minds as you are there watching this remote talk. This remote conference, which is about the pandemic and its impact on software freedom and proprietary software and the tech industry as a whole. And so, you know, I think in Edelow's talk, he, he took a really particular stance, which was quite negative as to how things went for free software in the pandemic. And so he called it a major loss. Alex, what do you think about that? Well, I mean, I see his point and it's definitely not a major win. Let's say it like this, but they're also I think good things happened in the last two years in the light of free software and we discussed heavily the use of these tracing apps for example to be free It was in the main news and it was really a huge issue that they have to be free software to be able to read the code for data protection reasons, but also to modify it and to reuse it everywhere in the world. So that was, I think, a very good discussion and a helpful discussion. We have also seen a lot of papers on this like the World Health Organization that that all of these apps need to be free software in order to make sure everybody can use it. We can translate them easily and use them around the globe and also the eHealth network in the European Union, which is the member states and European Commission had a saying in the paper on this and also referred to security reasons. So that it's good for security to have free software in place for these apps. So we've we've also seen some good papers and also some some good solutions in the end and people are heavily using free software these days. And that's also a good thing. I think what's key is to make something good out of these papers we have at the moment so that we not only have the papers in the World Health Organization's library for the next years but that we make sure that it is going into legislation and concrete steps for free software. And I think this is also something we will discuss later with DMA for example. But yeah, I think we had good debates on this and it helped a lot to make people understand the benefits of free software in the last two years. So this is, this is what I want to add as a more optimistic thinking to to Italos talk maybe maybe Bradley you have some ideas on this as well. I do I'm I'm I'm I know you're very much an optimist Alex I am I'm a pessimist and always always have been so so I can give the pessimist side of it I was really struck by Italios talk, because I in the United States, we tend to idolize the Europe is being much more friendly to citizens. We have a lot of problems here in the US with that and with lobbyist influencing everything in in our lives and technology adoption in particular. And Italio did a good job of pointing out that you have the same lobbyist problems from big tech in Europe that we do here where where it's very difficult to get government officials to pay attention to the issue of freedom. And it's a struggle with big tech to get them to pay attention. And I think the real thing that really concerns me about the pandemic is it feels like a repeat of the early 2000s late 90s and 2000s. When we saw a high adoption of technology, a moment in history where regular people average people not computer geeks like us started to adopt technology, or new technologies like video chat for example. There were proprietary software companies like zoom, in the case of video chat that were poised and ready to take advantage of that market very quickly, and made us playing catch up with things like big blue button and jitzy, where we feel like we're trying to catch up to them constantly, when they have a solution in the market. And, and, and that's a really unfortunate thing and disturbing thing where where we have again where where where it's used to be nobody ever got fired for using Microsoft now it's nobody ever got fired for for doing their meeting on zoom. And that's, and it's, it's, we have a lot of work to do, I think, for free software to get individuals to be willing to even try a free software solution during the pandemic. And so that's, as you can see, I'm much more pessimistic, but wonderful that people keep trying. And we have to keep trying there's nothing else we can do that then try hard. And so I was going to say, like, I'm somewhere in between, I'm a natural optimist but as a lawyer I'm a trained pessimist. Right, so I'm somewhere, I'm somewhere in the middle and I felt the exact same thing as you did Bradley which is that that it seems to me like the pandemic has been a replay. All of the winds were so winning, and all of the losses were so painful. We were so ready with free software solutions and yet we've we've we've failed to get major traction. I mean, there are a lot of small success stories that we can point to or there are success stories. We can point to where people are using, you know, free chat solutions. I have to take a moment to really applaud the FOSM organizers for setting the gold standard on these conferences. And having done it last year and I'm sad that we're doing it remote again but it's such a relief to be able to participate in a conference at such a large scale that is done with free technologies and with such commitment to those principles. So, like, I find that it's it's somewhere in between where like, you know, we had a lot of opportunity but just like just just hearing the reference to the failure of the desktop to a top in the pandemic is just like it's all of our losses all over again, just like laid out in front of us. What do you think Max? I'm also split. I mean, beforehand I've been rather on the optimistic side and I would have agreed more to Alex. I can see what you said Bradley that yeah this is a replay and that we are catching up. But I'm not sure whether the conditions are the same as we had in the early 2000s. I can only speak here from from the EU where things like the DMA are currently going on and yet actually also to my surprise it's it went through and also features like the rise mentality went through and despite all the the lobbying that took part. So I'm not sure whether this levels the playing field again, or whether big tech as I think at least two speakers showed us is already too large and can find ways around these new legislative thresholds for them. That can level the playing field again. So I'm not sure how things will turn out to be in five or 10 years. I'm optimistic that something happens at least so all these that gives me a really good feeling and I think we had the same debate last year I remember speaking about the zoom. And yeah, I have to say, at least here in Europe I see a lot of good examples where these bad developments get turned back and where free software solutions are installed and where people excuse themselves that oh that was a rapid decision that we had to make but now we we learned and now we applying free software in our infrastructure. So I'm not sure whether this is a zero like like a zero sum game basically, or whether this whole pandemic gave us a lot of chances and started a really good debate and also learning process within institutions within schools and so on, that they really now understood the the value of free software and then software freedom meant that it's really important to have. Yeah, I'm really excited about what will be heard from multiple talks in the step room this year and last year about the DMA. I'm, you all know my big question is, is the device neutrality provision actually going to work. Right. I'm curious to ask every European I talked to do you think it will work will actually be the case that you have to be allowed to install your own operating system on your phone in Europe is that going to happen for really work. I mean, if you take Apple's view on this, who just recently started some serious lobby activities. After the European Parliament passed it, I would say yes. But I mean for sure it's, it's just like every legislation it's, you will never get a 100% bin. And I mean we had the chance to talk about this we had the chance to have a debate and in the end I think we found a good compromise. For sure we would love to see open standards in the legislation and we are also trying to still be active around the trial looks happening now between the parliament and the council. I mean, it will be hard to to get something in but at least be discussed it we had nearly majority on this and this shows us that we are on the on the right track and that people take care about it and this is, this is why I still stays optimistic. That we that we are able to reach out with our points to a majority and that we are really close to a majority position even in the European Parliament and in the council and that we are able to have good or better compromises that we thought about two or three years ago I think and and this is something which keeps me optimistic even if we have some downsides and if we make it happen that Apple folks are starting this heavy lobby activities then we also did something good. I've always felt that the things can be more optimistic in Europe because I think it's easier for Europeans to see the dangers unfortunately here in the United States. I think we have a sad tradition of basically being okay with companies US companies anyway controlling us. And, and that goes back to the, you know, to the time of big oil in the early 20th century, I think it's easier in Europe to see because these are from your companies coming in and making trouble for you in Europe and I think in the United States people are, are unfortunately willing to accept these companies having a lot of control, because, because they're sadly because the US companies and that's unfortunate. Max, do you want to come up on it. Yeah, right. So, yeah, we got regarding the, whether we can now like in two years install free operating systems on all devices that there are on the market. I doubt that. And I think a lot of this depends on the proper implementation and also on enforcing these rules. And that will be a whole new arena that opens right so that actual authorities in Europe and in the national states are actually enforcing the device neutrality. And that will be interesting but I mean, as with GDPR, I'd say in the first one or two years, the actual effect was minimal on on users on their digital freedoms. But now it's really starting to trickle down a little bit and I hope the same for device neutrality but yeah of course it's a completely new topic and it's painful for many gatekeepers. And yeah, I mean, on the other hand, we have a lot of thresholds to becoming such a gatekeeper. I think Vitorio covered this. I mean, you have to turn over of 8 billion and yeah, being active in so many countries. And that's a high threshold, not every single small company that produces proprietary software and devices will be covered by this but I mean it's a start and yeah. So let's see. I'm again here slightly optimistic. You know, I just wanted to fend the US situation a little bit I'm with you Bradley that it's incredibly frustrating and I would say like, I recently have been trying to push a US open source policy discussion to use a free solution for open source for their conversations and and they took a free solution and they they spent 5 to 10 minutes with it and said oh this can't possibly work because like, you know, one or two people had some issues or their their browser crashed or, or they had some problems joining. And I was, you know, the reaction is like, Oh, seriously, do you remember when everyone started to use zoom, and you're meeting on zoom. Do you remember when you started to use zoom, it took people, you know, 30 minutes to get their setup, but they did it because that's what they had to do to participate in the discussion. And you're not willing to even do like the first five to 10 minutes it's like, very, very frustrating and so I hear you because I think that there's a lot of that going on in the United States. But, and I also agree that we have a legislative and cultural history of of seating a lot of control to corporate entities and we have seen that nowhere more readily in big tech but what we are seen in the last two years. And what I think is like echoed in this in our talks, even though they weren't US focused is the willingness to call out big tech and even just the use of the term big tech and couching these issues in terms of users rights the impact that technology has on the public has become mainstream here in the US as well. And so I'm, I'm quite optimistic because I think that there's like a lot of possibility to change the way that we look at our legal policies, just over the fact that people are willing to talk about these issues in a way that they weren't before. I think that that's a striking difference for our dev room this year than a previous years and I think it's, it's really, I wouldn't say vindicating but reassuring to the four of us in this room I would gather that we've been talking about users rights and about the impact of the technology in our work every day. But in the free and open source software, like general ecosystem, there was more of a focus on developer rights, which, you know, and, and, which I think is important but I think that in this dev room this year we saw much more of that focus shift to how what are the impacts of that technology do you all find this the same thing do you do you see that trend. I mean I do see the, I do see the trend in our dev room for sure I see the trend in our community, and which is great because I think that in our community there's there's been, I think historically husband too much focus on developers and the developers some sort of almost I think that's something that we're seeing in our communities, and that's that's a problem that we had in in free software communities, going back to some of the earliest days. I think there's much less tolerance for that in the free software community so I do see that as an improvement in our community. I think, obviously, we, there's, there's a lot of bias here of our community is is talking about this and I wonder if the rest of the world is is talking about it as much as we are. But it's course I find I find being pessimistic very, very motivating to continue work for free software. I realize most people don't so I'll stick of being being the true pessimist among us and working towards free software. That's a great counterpoint then from pessimist optimist Alex. Yeah, I mean, as Bradley already somehow addressed I think, for me, the most important point is that others community talk about our topics as well so and and this is something which is new and which is still keeping me optimist so and that people reach out to us and say, Oh, we are writing this piece here on mostly then open source and we say, Hey, first of all, let's talk about free software and then we can introduce the concept and then after 30 minutes. And they really enjoy and like what we are doing and understand why we are doing this so and, and this is this changed a lot in the last three years so that completely other communities are reaching out to us trying to understand what we are doing, trying to get tools trying to get help but also try to understand the principles that drives us to to advocate for free software and this changed and so also others are raising our demands now. So it's not only us in our community but also other communities understand our demands and bring them up by themselves because they think it's good and this helps a lot and this is the thing which still keeps me optimistic. But maybe Max, you also have some middle position here again. I think I completely agree to you. On the other hand, I think that the the positive things that are going on right now are that you described are more happening on the higher level. So institutional level, decision making level because they know we got to change something right. But I think we should not lean back and say well everything's handled now the decade of free software has come. I think we really have to do a lot of outreach and public awareness and and also perhaps do it differently. And as you Bradley said, not only target developers but actual like normal human beings right so so everyone the the the white masses more or less. And I found this quite interesting that we had one talk covering a course in the university. And I think we need more initiatives like these that we go out of our bubble and start educating people much earlier like and perhaps in schools and here in their younger years. So they really learn the concepts and the benefits of technology and also the threats and why it's important to control technology. So therefore I think we have a lot of work ahead, especially because digitization takes place so much earlier in schools and with all these video calls and e learning courses and so on, where unfortunately still many students get indoctrinated with a proprietary software and hardware. So, I think we have still a lot of work ahead, where we have to be active and for this, fortunately, the developments on the higher levels on the political levels, at least in the EU, and also in the US as you said, are helping us but there we have to pick up this good developments. Maybe maybe I can add to this to this education part because I think that's also very important to educate people and to bring fun and free software to young people. And so that's why we for example started also this use heading for freedom contest where we are trying to bring young people to code whatever they want as long as it's free software and we give a price to them and invite them to process and although show them then how the EU works and how legal things then work and this is something we should definitely do more I think so like to connect free software also to fun and yeah educate people on on it and that's that's an optimistic thing. And Karen you've been teaching you've been teaching law students and bringing in some free software concepts to them over the last two years in your adjunct faculty position right. Yes, I have and I just I guess I what I wanted to comment on to pick up a slightly earlier thread is that is that we need to be bringing these concepts to young people we also need to protect young people. And so, like, it's essential that we're bringing these concepts to university students but I was going to give you broadly the opportunity to make a comment about some of the tools that are used to bring the these conversations to in the university setting are are often zoom and slack right where people are being forced to use proprietary tools in order to engage in that learning which is really difficult. You know as a parent, I see that in the pandemic, you know, all the kids in my child's class all got Chromebooks that all have cameras that I walk around and you know I pick up and I start putting tape over all the cameras, because that's what I can do. It's just it's incredibly alarming that surveillance devices are being just deployed into children's home and they trust them because they're coming from their schools. And there's this massive power dynamic where I've talked to other digital activists you feel as I do where you know you have to really carefully choose when and how you raise these topics so that you don't like invite retaliation against your child. You know that you don't, you don't say too much that you're so, you know, you make it so difficult for for for teachers and for schools to educate children and we have to do something to upset that power dynamic because we're effectively just in alternating a whole generation in tools that that surveil them and also take away any ability that they have to to like expect to engage with their technology in any kind of control kind of way. Yeah, I agree with that and I struggle with the irony of teaching things about open source and free software using proprietary technology when as FOSDM running all on free software has shown that you can do these kinds of massive education events online with video chat with all free software. So, so it's, it's a little bit disturbing to think about using proprietary software to teach people about about open source because it does, I think, create a sense of, well, the old sense that we've always had is that is that open source is either for, you know, low lying infrastructure and it's actually proprietorized when you when you change it, and it's just put into proprietary projects like Android, you know, Android being open source when you get it from the Android open source project but most people's instances of Android that they're running as Luca said in a stock are proprietary when they get them. And so, and so I really struggle with the promotion of open sources so as one, which is what a lot of organizations without their saying but that it just means that the non copy left open source stuff has ended up in a lot of proprietary products. And I'm sure zoom has lots of lots of non copy left open sources part of their part of their infrastructure and part of probably even part of their client. So it's really tough to watch to watch that and to watch the people are in these situations where they're basically required by their university or their school or anybody else to to use proprietary software. I mean, you can't even abstain anymore, which, which is, which is frightening for me. But I just want to highlight what you've said, in part because I also don't want to be too unduly critical of our speaker or other people who are teaching using proprietary software because often faculty members, especially adjunct faculty have no say over the ways in which they are allowed to teach their students. And so, you know, just because someone is it's it's not it doesn't cancel out the good just because they're using the proprietary solutions. It's just a bit tragic. Right. And they shouldn't be forced to make that choice is really it's an unfair choice to force everybody into. So, I think that means we like I think we could we could honestly talk about I mean we we've covered quite a lot of the themes that were raised in our, our dev room through the lens of the wins and losses in the pandemic but honestly we will not be able to let go of this topic. And while we're still doing remote conferences and while we're, you know, while we're still living through it. So I expect this to possibly come back but I want to take a moment and specifically move to a different topic which is that of the the the general theme and I think this we sort of touched on a little bit earlier where we talked about the impact of GDPR on a global scale and we talked about the DMA and different jurisdictions within Europe and I think there was a little bit of a theme to some of the talks today. As, as well about, you know, sort of like, internalize a international lawmaking and policymaking. And so I don't know if, if, if anybody wants to sort of like, pick off some thoughts on a very high level about that. I mean, yeah, we had this. Oh, Alex, do we want to cover this. I mean, you can also go ahead. I mean, I will start with the optimistic one. As already said, and I think the way we somehow found at the moment like with starting the legislation in Europe with GDPR but also now with DMA helps a lot to have also international debates on it. So I think the DMA is not only discussed in Europe but also in the US and will have effects for all over the world. And so I see the wish for easy international rules, but it's very hard to get there and it's like getting there with international treaties and maybe in transparent court somewhere. So I think that ruling on something might be not the best solution. I mean, still we can discuss these ideas. I think that's also good to to address these points. But however, I think the way we are trying to address all of these issues somehow at the moment. For example, with EU legislation, which then will also have effects on legislation somewhere else or at least not only legislation but the reality. Like if you want to sell your products in Europe and it is a big market, then you have to make sure that it's, yeah, that you can hopefully install your own operating system and your free software apps if you want and also online with GDPR and things like that. And so this is what we are doing here in the moment. And as you've seen, we have chances to bring in our positions, even if there is a huge lobby coming also from around the world trying to influence our laws here in Europe. But we are still able to have good compromises in the end and it's not a tech pro law which we get here with with DMA, for example, so consumer rights are in it. Our voice was here in the debate, even if we are a small NGO with a tiny budget compared to Apple and Google in the world. And to stay optimistic, this gives me hope and also this shows that it's possible to change something even if you are not big tech, but to do something good for consumers. And this is something we should keep in mind when it comes to international rulemaking, let's say it like this, not lawmaking. I was a little bit wondering in the one talk that we are now referring to by Christopher. I was mentioned that there are free software licenses like the GPL that are not actually in front of court where the software violation or the copyright violation perhaps took place, but actually in other US digital legislative systems. So I was wondering, Bradley or Karen, you have a lot of things to do with copyright enforcement, license enforcement. How do you perceive it from the US that so many court cases are, for instance, taking place in front of German courts? Would you prefer having international law or an international arbitration court for this or do you prefer it to be like this? I think this was a feature, not a bug of the GPL, ultimately. I think the fact that copy left licenses were designed as their own international system for assuring software freedom, and that they had this nice feature that they would kind of operate in whichever jurisdiction they were under. I think there has been historically some obsession with talking about copy left licenses, if they need to be standardized internationally, that we need to look to always to the Bern convention as the only way to interpret and think about copy left licenses. I think that was an error by our community and the resilience of the German courts looking at the GPL and getting some, so we've got good decisions and not so good decisions in Germany, and we've had good decisions and not so good decisions in the US, and we're continuing to push forward. Obviously, everyone knows we have a lawsuit in the United States working on a mechanism that hasn't been tried before in the United States to assure copy left compliance. I think that sometimes we miss the fact that we were able as a community to create an internationalized system that assures software freedom. It needs to be maintained and we need experts in every jurisdiction, looking at the question to make sure that the copy left is complied with and maintained, but it has this resilience of being a valid license in all these different places and different legal systems and under different legal theories. So I think we actually, we actually already have that internationalization with copy left at this point. That's my view anyway. Yeah, I mean, I think that even if you the way things are now, even if you lose in one jurisdiction all is not lost. I mean, and this is one of the things that we can see about and why I refer to GDPR in my introduction of the topic. Because even though it's hard, I wish that we could have some kind of comparable legislation in the United States but we are very far from enacting that. But US citizens have benefited from GDPR because multinational corporations are looking to satisfy the requirements in the easiest way and it's easier in a way to give everybody the same rights. And so where there are jurisdictions that stand up for their citizens rights that often percolates in an international way and it's the same with with GPL interpretation, I believe from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. So once in one place courts find favorably that to protect users and recipients of GPL code that will percolate other jurisdictions and to centralize an approach like that I think could be very dangerous because then you could have just one misinformed body making decisions that, you know, basically ruin it for everyone. Yeah, I have the same feeling about this. What we all we know about arbitration courts is that they're quite instance parent and actually not really benefiting citizens at all. So I find it interesting that you say like this that that basically court like like a GPL violations from the US are taking place in front of German courts is actually the internationalization that that was wanted for and that that's an interesting interpretation. Yeah, and it came from bottom up which I think is the best way to create this kind of structure because it came from from the free software community into the courts rather than having a kind of top down approach, because you have to have the ability to influence policymakers at the highest levels to get anything done. If you do it from the top I'm reminded of six or seven years ago in the dev room a speaker suggested that what kind of what was wrong with us why weren't we getting software freedom at it as a as a fundamental right under the universal human rights at the UN. And, and it was it was said is almost if it was like going to the groceries grocery market, like we could just go to the UN and ask them to add it to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and they would. I would certainly love to see it. But I think it's probably not worth doing the effort because because it's unlikely we can succeed. I think the trying mechanisms that have a bottom up approach as I think free software did from the very beginning has says where we've been successful it's when we've done it from that approach. Alex do you have anything to add. No, not really I mean I like the idea of this button up approach so that's that's interesting thinking to to come to the conclusion to go through this way. I'm a bit new to me like this thinking but I really like it and yeah I mean in general I said I also don't think that it's that it's worth the effort to try to get to such a system, because they are way easier possibilities, working at the as we are not like having so much resources we should focus on activities where we can make a change and where we can work for the benefits for free software. And so therefore I think it's way better to to invest our resources like we are doing it at the moment and this is a successful way and that's why yeah. We have natural eyes doing this bottom up approach I mean I think the ups, the upcycle Android approach that Lucas talked about of getting individuals to to who are environmentalists who are concerned about devices ending up in landfills, showing them that free software is a way to keep their devices out of landfills this is this is a place where we can form a coalition and the environmental movement has done a much better job at bottom up approaches to a global crisis that needs policy change definitely. But, but in the meantime, we can learn from them and work with them in the bottom up approach. Max, we didn't have many talks in the dev room about actual enforcement actions that are happening are there any we should talk about now, you think, or Alex, or I mean, I'm not sure I'm aware of one that takes place I'm not sure about the which organization it was something with software freedom, perhaps, you know what. Yeah, so, so yeah, I mean, it's it's it's tough. It's tough when you're your own organization and you personally were involved with something of course you're going to think that's the biggest thing that happened in the year. So certainly the biggest thing that happened in my year in free software was we filed a lawsuit against a Vizio a TV manufacturer here in the United States. We're a contract theory in state court. We are currently continuing our work. Actually, somebody asked me recently if we were just, we were doing ping pong in the courts at the moment and I thought that was a reasonably good way to describe it and but we really think we're going to be successful in that case we're very confident. We feel that this is the right approach, because it focuses on the rights of individual consumers receiving source code and asking a court to provide that source code as the GPL requires to individual users. So our lawsuit is filed as software freedom Conservancy as a purchaser of TVs with our desire to make an alternative firmware as is our right under the GPL because they're Linux based devices and so we were going to continue that kind of action and action similar that we can find to do to help uphold a copy left because I think that at this point we are in the situation where Android is proprietary and it's not just because Android is a non copy lefted the middleware of Android is non copy lefted but the one GPL part of Android which is Linux the GPL violations are so common that many people get their Android device without the source code of Linux too. And so we're very dedicated to doing that at Conservancy and we're continuing on that work. Yeah, I would just like I would call it ping pong with the courts actually. And the reason why I'm focusing on that is because I think that what's interesting about where that case is right now is that the, the, the legal details that have happened actually go to the part of the very subject that is at issue so it's not just procedural machinations that are driving the case right now. The, the, the case has, has actually zeroed in on, you know, like, who has the right, you know, like, like, Visio didn't just come into compliance when the lawsuit was filed instead. So we're trying to use those, those legal mechanics to basically deny that right, and, and to get the case dismissed, really like completely zeroing in on the issues that are at stake and so I think often when there are procedural moves in a lawsuit particularly in the United States, they are long and drawn out and they are besides the point of the case they don't really address what's an issue whereas here, I think that, you know, will, you know, we're, we're really like, really like dealing with that straight on. But it's just like an update because people who are, are coming to our dev room are really interested in the, like, getting the advanced details and the inside scoop. I think I can say that, that, that we're, we are now in a situation where we're, there will be more, more responses to motions filed in the next few months, but there won't be any motion on them until until June. Yeah, I want to be clear. It's very high stakes table tennis because if we win the table tennis match, we win software freedom for all the users of business devices. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's a very high stakes game. And we're glad to be playing it to, to win software freedom for everybody. And what I'm most excited about that case is connecting the dots between consumer rights and, and the, and copy left and, and being able to, to, to draw in the environmentalist movement and the things that you were talking about before broadly so I'm excited to see where that goes. You know, are there any other cases that we should talk about that happened over the, the year there, I think there's been there, there was a decision in, in Italy, and there were a few other cases that were filed and possibly settled or without decisions. But I think nothing that that requires a focusing on. Yeah, and there's a full Carlo Piana gave a full talk on the Italian case last it wasn't decided yet, but gave a full talk about that last year. So people could watch that talk and then I'll just read the press release about it and I think they'd have the full story. Hopefully we will have some updates in real life for stem next year on this. So that will be both cases on your case as well that would be would be lovely to have a maybe a talk on this. Okay, I think there will be plenty to talk about regarding the Visio case next year. And probably there will possibly be a submission on it but but but I think speculating about whether Fawesome next year is going to be in person. That's the really dangerous thing. I think we don't want because we did that last year, because we thought last year. So I don't think we should assume Fawesome is going to be in person next year, although we all hope it will be. I think we could possibly wrap it up. Now we're close to the 45 minute mark and we want to leave time for you all to ask us questions. What do you think are the most important topics happening now and, you know, ask us about them. Is there anything that you wish we had talked about that was covered in the talks today. Is there anything you wish that we had talked about just now. Thank you so much for joining and I'm sure we're going to thank you again as soon as we are talking to you live. And I know that you have been in a lot of trouble with your kids. And I know that you have been in a lot of trouble with your system and hardware systems in schools, particularly during the pandemic. And Karen, I know you've struggled a lot with the situation for your own kids and what they're being required to be used. And it sounds like you have more stories than what you were able to tell in the thing of stuff that you faced with your kids being mandated proprietary software. All of the other parents in that are here in the chat could probably like rant at each other for like a full day, but we could have a full FOSM, just of talking about how frustrating it is to have children in any kind of schooling system and I'd say that the most frustrating thing that I experienced is that I mentioned that the kids all got Chromebooks, but the most insidious I don't know which is the most why pick what the most insidious part of it is. One of the things in addition to the cameras that has been so unsettling is that is that it drives kids towards search. It drives kids towards the web. And so, when my child wants to do basic computing things instead of looking for software that is native to the computer or learning a package manager, which of course they know. They're using their Chromebook and so they immediately go to the web where they are subject to all different they're just funneled into this user mode where there's all kinds of malicious software waiting for them to like funnel them towards consumption. There's no aspect of creation and there's no engagement no ownership of their computing experience and I think that's the most frustrating part and so it's like, there's, of course. They have their, you know, like there's even if they have their own laptop that has, you know, a free distribution on it. The Chromebook that they get from school is like they have they have to use it for some things and so it's the thing they go to first and it puts them in the places where they're most vulnerable online instead of empowering them in a way that they can actually learn something about computing and coding and and and bring that to the rest of their lives and it's literally the opposite of when we were kids where when we use computers like we really we had the best experience when we were tinkering when we were engaging with it. Go ahead, Alex, please. It was me. Yeah. I'm back. Sorry. I saw Alex Alex is in a different place that like it's the it's my layout. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, just that. Yeah, I also wonder why why do you think is that the case that so many schools are opting in to proprietary hardware and software like here for instance in Germany I know enough cases where the the federal states granted schools money to buy it equipment because digitization in Germany is, as you might know, not really up to speed and all they buy is mostly Apple hardware. Is it because it's discounted or is it because teachers don't know other hardware and operating systems or why do you think this is the case. It's some combination right like here in the US in the city that I'm in the city made a deal with Google. And so there it's basically subsidizes this theory of like, well, you know it's worth putting our corporate funds behind this because if the kids get hooked on, you know, on our software then that's what they're going to choose to use and I think it's the same with Apple and all of the other choices right like as many as there may be other than that but. But yeah so like I think that that's, that's just, you know, I'm sympathetic to the problems that these large municipalities have because it is a lot of kids to figure out how to get on a system and if you standardize them on something, then that means that like teachers can support the kids when they have their computers and it's problematic. It's just it's such a it's such a huge disaster, and it's not it's doing just a massive disservice to kids and to teachers. And the worst is that every single digital rights activists that I've spoken to around the world who has kids feel so hopeless, because we each I mentioned this in the panel we can we can basically rate we have to choose our the times that we're raising the issues and we like, we see our kids be told the message that what we're fighting for is more fringe everybody else is comfortable with making these agreements and in the US. There was emergency regulation during the pandemic that's still in effect where schools can consent to sharing information about kids with third party vendors. So that's that's new for the pandemic and it's like parents parents literally have no control over that it's outrageous. Yeah, so so many things have gone, gone wrong during the pandemic, and including the impact on this conference. And, and I think, I think that it's been a while I'm very thankful that we have a free software platform to do it. I, I feel like we have to start saying that the truth of the matter which is sadly in the pandemic in remote conferences are not as good as in person conferences and improns per se conferences are better. I don't drink beer so I don't miss the Belgian beer but I but I miss the other stuff about going to Brussels, including including waffles for example. I have even more bad pandemic news that I have to give the Karen. Last night, I made an entire batch of waffles and sent them overnight to Karen. And as you'll see I just put in the chat. It sadly says there's a flight delay in New York it's supposed to be there in about an hour, and I don't know when it's getting there now. I mean, more, more bad entire batch of waffles in a UPS overnight package, but I just put in the chat the bad news about the delivery. They are, they are not there yet I don't know when they're getting there. I hope they're still good when they finally do get there but I tried to get them there for right now I was hoping you would have them to hold up as we did our Q&A but oh well. That's hilarious. Well, we do have some questions in the, in the channel that I wonder if we should get to. Yes. So somebody asked about why so many permissive licenses. I have lots of that. Curious about something they want to add about that. Yeah. I think there are a lot of answers to this. And that worries me the most is that many developers, especially the ones that are just starting to get into the coding business, let's say like this, are more or less just copying license text from other repositories. So they think oh cool this software by some big tech company I like it so I just, it has to be good so I just copy over the license file, and I'm good. Perhaps also facilitated by some source forges that where you can select the license and you have some license choice and you could, you could argue this is biased but anyway people then choose a license and they think no no I'm good right. So I can pull in all third party software. And as you might know with the reuse we are working on this that people get aware about the licensing that they pull into the project. Again you could argue whether this is the right approach but I think it's important that people have awareness and it's important that we teach people about licensing and copyright. And again back to the to the first talk that we had it's really good that this is also taught in university and also outside of it classes, because so many different students and classes are doing programming now I mean so many different classes are doing this, they're creating software. In the best case than the university mandates that this software should be open access so under free software licenses, and well then people just do mistakes or are not fully aware of what they're actually doing when they choose the one license over the other. So this is where I think we have to really increase. Yeah, awareness among people. I agree with all that and the thing I'll be because because I'm always the one who likes to say the controversial thing, but but it's true that you mentioned co hosting sites. We just have to be frank I think with the free software community and say GitHub is against copy left. They literally have GitHub employees who go to projects and try to talk them out of a copy left license into a non copy left license. The people are being paid at GitHub to do this is is ludicrous and GitHub has a long history of saying negative things about copy left so if you have the most popular code hosting site in the world which by the way is a proprietary software system, telling people don't use copy left to use these other licenses. I don't know how we beat that. It's very frightening to me. I think that the message also of like, you must use a permissive license for you know you must use a non copy left license for adoption has like really. It's just taken hold. And I think that we can't shout the successes of copy left loud enough. But, but we're still that the disasters of non copy lefted software are spun into like they're they're not talked about in the same way like there are a few people talking about it. Keith Packard gave a great talk about this. I think we need to we need to do more analysis of where the non copy left licenses have failed and failed to do their stated goal even if there was successful proprietary software that came from that that result how does it actually impact people. And this is also true. I mean, I'm talking a lot to administrations, especially in Europe around our public money public code campaign and I mean we ask administrations to lease their project as free software and one of the main questions I always get is, what about this licensing. So it's really hard for them to to understand the different licenses and they're also afraid of doing something wrong here. And especially as these are public bodies, they want to be legally safe whenever and they do something and that we are also educate them, which license is the best for public bodies to use. And I mean, we have this license for from the EU, but this is also I would say not perfect. And yeah, we should also make sure that administrations when they release a software use good licenses and do maybe also use the reuse tool and also share their code on proper platforms and not just randomly somewhere where they think it's a good thing to do. Yeah. So what he also mentioned, as I was talking about like in person conferences being better about the carbon footprint issue of in person conferences which I think what he is correct that that's a huge issue. I struggle with this question, because it's become very clear to me over the pandemic that the in person contact is something human beings expect to be able to have and it's, it's part of human bonding to be able to interact with people in person and I think the technology is an appropriate substitute for that. And so, you know, I, I, I'm sympathetic to the carbon footprint thing but also I think that our community really relied on meeting in person because we were already remote I feel like the free software community had figured this whole out whole thing out like remote almost the whole year, but we have all these conferences throughout the year you know 10 or 15 conferences that people go to and see each other. And I don't know how we solve the carbon footprint problem but I think the, I think free software has been really negatively impacted by no one being able to go in conferences and I haven't seen any of my colleagues in Europe in person for for years. At this point, and I don't know if others feel the same about this but I struggle with that question of the carbon footprint with in person conferences. I agree. I think the silence here is agreement this is it's so tricky and we, you know, like, Conservancy is a software freedom Conservancy is a fully remote organization so it's like really tough for a fully remote, like to work at a workplace where you don't see anyone. There's something to the fact that relationships to grade and it's, I think it's especially hard for activists because we're not getting that like a conferences we see you and you're there in the chat now and it helps so much. But when we see that you care about the work we're doing it like lifts us up and allows us to be able to do that work, and it gives us courage and faith. And so I don't know I'm glad you're here. Thank you. Fossum is one of the few conferences that shows us that while giving us letting us to be in a free format. The main room is going to end but we're going to continue chatting there'll be a link in the chat in just a moment you can click over and we'll hang out.