 Get that microphone pointed away Is there another microphone that's off now? Okay. Oh, okay. That was on great that was a fitting introduction to my talk Which is about sort of Stewardship and and what to do in our community as As we we deal with some of realities of life So I I spoke yesterday, and I think many of you are here, so I won't do my My full intro again, but I'm executive director of the software freedom conservancy Which is the nonprofit home of a lot of fantastic Software projects and also the home of the Debbie and copyright aggregation project I'm a lawyer, but I only do pro bono work now to volunteer work And my clients include the free software foundation and the GNOME foundation I co-organize outreach II which Debbie and participates in which is an internship program for women and other Underrepresented groups in free and open-source software Super into free software and I'm a cyborg because I have a Defibrillator that has proprietary software in it that is literally sewn into my body and screwed into my heart and For which I cannot review the source code and it is insane These are this is a slide with all of conservancy's project many of which you're hopefully familiar with so the Obviously first disclaimer For for a talk like this is that while I am a lawyer This is not legal advice, and I am not your particular lawyer It's you'd be surprised how often people get confused about that and I Just wanted to point that out And it's my my status as a cyborg has had me thinking a lot about issues around sort of making sure that initiatives survive beyond the individuals that started them and that communities are healthy and thrive and It's been sort of interesting confronting my own mortality while being a part of such a cool and vibrant community that is developing and and an aging too So the good news first right like happy birthday Debian 23 years amazing, I think that's in in April is the anniversary of the release How many people were like How many people remember the release of Demian? Okay, but you how many How many people here are Younger than Demian more people here Where people here are younger Demian than remember it Demian, which is amazing And and just because we have a birthday cake up how many people are celebrating their birthday or have celebrated their birthday here at Deb There's just a paw these people So 23 years is a long time in my country that means that Debian can drink and Debian can vote And And we're we're but the thing is we have people Who have been involved in this project the whole time and and and we as a community looking around are generally Well, no one is getting any younger, right and with that comes a lot of considerations and I know this is a Really kind of heavy topic to have so early in the morning So I have a small mechanism for dealing with this which is baby penguins Okay, we're gonna have some pictures of baby penguins as we talk about some of the more difficult Topics and and I thought penguins were appropriate because we can see them nearby, which is super cool So the really serious topic is that we've already lost a lot of people who are important to us I may have missed some names. This is from Looking around the internet and Some of the the deaths have been more publicized than others and so I may be missing them But I wanted to take a minute to remember the Demian contributors who are no longer with us and I felt like Having a talk about what to do in the future is not complete without thinking about those who we Who are no longer here? So Many of the the names on that list were people who who died quite young and We Tragedy can happen to any of us at any time It's just sort of the nature of life and Debian is fortunate enough to be such a rich community with so many people that it's statistically going to happen at any point but But we as a as a community and as a free software community have have been aging and we see overall more gray hair and and We we have a hard time Finding people who have all of the t-shirts for all of the conferences in the previous years and and it makes it a fun a Fun challenge But but there are a lot of things that I think we haven't thought about very deeply as a community And we haven't figured out ways to to address them The good news is that we are already doing a lot of things right free software inherently is Planning for the future because we're developing everything out in the open and there are good records and repositories for what we're doing I think as we make sure that we have archival resources And there's gonna be an interesting talk about about that Here an announcement around that I think that that's that's part of it, but But also the ways that we handle our community and invite newcomers in we have You know mechanisms for how we interact with each other we've got discussion channels everything can be logged and when somebody When somebody dies it doesn't mean that their work dies with them because their work is a living part of Demian that's a living part of our free software project. So It's pretty cool because inherent in the way free software is operated is Some mechanisms for making sure to make sure that we can all work with each other We're making sure that our our legacy is built in and that we can continue working with each other But you know sometimes things like Things that we take for granted actually need some attention So a lot of the the legal mechanisms around free and open source software is copyright Is there anyone here and so who here is this their first dev comp? Awesome cool. It's yay And how how many people here this is their first free software conference at all So a couple of people it's great And Does anyone here not know and it's totally understandable because this you have to learn about this How many people don't know about what copy left is? Does anyone not know what copy left is? Okay, so so copy left is a mechanism whereby we use copyright But for sharing so free software is is actually predicated on a legal framework while it's all about the software In order to make sure that we share software We use copyright in order to share and there are two major license styles. It's gonna go super fast. Sorry everybody Two major license styles to oversimplify everything There's permissive licensing which basically says you can do whatever you want with this license And there's copy left licensing which says that You can do whatever you want with this license provided that if you make modifications and distribute those changes that you do So under the same license so detractors have called it viral, but it's like a snowballing effect of forever free software that basically Make sure that the software is forever free and and it's it's because of using these legal mechanisms that we are able to have this amazing rich technological collaboration and It's a really interesting legal half But it basically comes down to copyright No matter what kind of community that you're in to have assurance that you can build on the software that you use before You have to know that you have the permissions to use it and that those permissions are are ones that that will survive scrutiny so Sometimes it's simply not enough to know that the software has been licensed freely Sometimes there are interesting things with licenses that happen. There's license compatibility All these are deep legal concepts that concepts that are there are plenty of places to discuss online and and get really deep into it but there are but there are some things that There are times that you need to be sure that you have you have the ability to review your licenses So has anybody here been involved in a relicensing where a project had to re-license their Okay, so like like a quarter of the group have it how many people here Choose not to license their code when they write it under An or later so how many people here prefer to do like GPL v2 only or never to do or later So so you do right so that's like a maybe like an eighth of the audience won't do or later How many people deliberately try to do or later? So like okay like a third Okay, this is really interesting stuff and you think that this stuff doesn't really make that much of a difference but it turns out that if you if you choose a particular license that has no upgrade clause and with The GPL has no upgrade cause and that means that the GPL when you choose GPL v2 or GPL v3 Or any of the GPL family licenses. There's no automatic like if there's a later version of the license it automatically Gets upgraded to that license other licenses have that cause but the GPL none of the GPLs do And so this is resolved by having a when people choose a license they say GPL whatever or later, and that's kind of like meta licensing. It's all like a kind of you guys are all licensing experts coming out But but I so What happens is that if you've chosen a particular license and there's no Upgrade clause or if there's some reason that a license is incompatible with other software that it needs to be combined with You could be in a situation where you need to do a real licensing You can do a real licensing provided that all the people who fold the copyright are available to Relicense it and so I have been involved More baby penguins I have been involved in a couple of realicensing where a number of the contributors Had died and I was in the situation where I was talking to the surviving spouse in three occasions to Explain to them why we needed to do a real licensing What like what why it was important what the what copyrights were and why The person spouse had taken so much time to contribute to free and open-source software and what we were trying to accomplish overall and In two of those situations I was successful, you know, I was able to explain. This is what free software is it's really cool your spouse cared deeply about what we were working on together and Wanted you know, this is a really cool legacy that you know that this person had and By relicensing it it means that their software will be included in software, you know in in the ultimate product even though there's a relicensing and even though This person is no longer alive and contributing to the project But in one situation I couldn't convince the spouse this the spouse said well You know He wanted me he wanted to provide for me in this instance he wanted to provide for me and so and So I know that he wouldn't want me to relicense it because he would have wanted you to pay me and I said well He was contributing his software to this community because he cared about it and it's it's world-changing software And she said well if it weren't important for me to be Relicensing it you wouldn't have called me and you wouldn't have gotten in touch and obviously it's extremely important to you and therefore you should pay me and I went again and and and and and in the end I was not able to convince her and We had to write that software out of the the project which surely Wasn't the right result and I couldn't figure out how best to explain it and at the end of the day you know, we did the best that we could but She wasn't involved in our community and she didn't under she she didn't understand the goals that we were trying to accomplish and I I failed to explain it in a way that was convincing to her and I think that Probably is not that unusual that I think that maybe most of the time Significant other spouses will understand what the what the the goals are of free software because we spend so much of our time doing it That we talk about it, but sometimes it simply doesn't you know, it not everybody shares the same understanding or the same values And there are surely not there's surely issues that we haven't anticipated So there are a lot of reasons why we might want to relicense whether it's because we're using different software that we hadn't anticipated and combining it from one project with with incompatible licensing terms to another But there are surely things that are down the road that we don't even know are going to happen The laws are changing rapidly. I mean we live in a world where we could wake up one morning and The UK is leaving the European Union You know like and and and we'll have a lot of work to do on determining their you know how Their intellectual property regime shakes out from all of this. There's a lot. There are a lot of areas that could change there could be you know new laws in Places where we're we're already familiar with how things work or we could wind up having Countries become much more critical like much more involved in free software Higher percentages of population from places where there are laws that we're not even that familiar with that turn out to be obstacles participating together There are a lot of reasons why we might need to have mechanisms over the control of our copyrights and our code that we Haven't even thought of and I think what as as time goes. I think it's amazing to me You know, I still feel kind of like a newcomer But I've been around a lot certainly long enough to see that already there have been some major changes But it's amazing to me how the legal structures have held up and how our basic presumptions about how free software works and how we operate together have in fact You know played out and continued so one of the things that that companies have said they needed to handle this was Was CLA's or copyright assignment or copyright licensing agreements, and I I was on a panel at the desktop summit in 2011 they'd just become executive director of GNOME and That's Mark shuttleworth there sort of Introducing some of the ideas around why canonical wanted copyright assignment and that's Bradley Kuhn and Michael Meeks who were there basically teaming up and saying we won't have copyright assignment We won't have CLA's but but what was amazing is that following that panel there was like a Huge outpouring of vitriol for copyright license agreements and copyright assignment agreements and the reasons why there were those reactions was because the idea that That a company should be a steward of the licenses sort of You know people didn't didn't like they did a single company could be in in so much control over Over free software and choose how to relicense it so So in a world where we don't want our companies to be the the sole Steward of what we get to do in the future and how we relicense it it comes back to us as individuals so one of the things that I so I when I was a new lawyer in the field in I guess it was already was 2006 I Was I came I saw this problem immediately and I thought oh, it's just so easy I'm gonna write a white paper to like this week With like language that we could put into people's wills and then developers can basically handle this all With no problem like the there'll be no problem at all I'll just put I'll get some magic language and I'll publish it and you can put it in your will and you can bequeath There your copyrights to the free software foundation or wherever you thought that your copyright should go whatever entity that you trust but I called a trust-and-states lawyer and and she started to laugh and She said well, I don't know I mean, I'm just a trust-and-states lawyer in New York, but that that's not really gonna work You know that and I was like, I don't know that that's not gonna so I I called I Called trust-and-states lawyers in in other major jurisdictions in the United States like in this is all state-by-state in the US so I called a you know trust-and-states lawyer in Oregon and in In Massachusetts, you know the places where a lot of free software people live and the answers were mixed But at the end of the day, it's clear that it's not a silver bullet that you can simply bequeath your copyright to someone and have that work out it What happens is that there's a chance that the copyrights so that the will will be probated and Probated is basically reviewed by a judge like the Will have to go through legal mechanisms in order to test its validity and determine how it needs to be implemented and And if the will is probated there's a chance that there could be taxes levied on The copyright that are bequeath so it's possible that if you if you just like Like sort of say in your will I want my copyrights to go to the free software foundation Then there's a chance that while the free software foundation may be the right place for it that and and everybody wants your Copyrights to go to the free software foundation. I keep gesturing to John But but what while that might be the right thing to do if there are taxis Well, it could come out of the money that the estate had so that means that whatever money you had when you died Could be reduced by a portion for taxes just for copyrights That are valuable because they're part of a free and open source software project but that you would never even consider selling and You know, so it's a it's this strange situation where Where bequeathment simply Won't won't do the trick because all right, I needed some baby penguins here where we thought about the fact that The money that we left behind for our loved ones might be reduced by taxes simply because we used a currency mechanism and When you think about all of this It's You start thinking well, you know, even even if I could Even if so even if I can't bequeath it well, then what happens to my copyrights if I do nothing And the answer is generally that it goes along the same the same pathways to our next of kin So if you do nothing with your copyrights, that means that when you die it will flow through the ordinary course also there may be taxes but But if you putting that issue aside Thinking about who who would be the next recipient or cover it so I You know when when I was originally talking and thinking about copyright license agreements and assignment agreements the the sheer vitriol for them I Was trying to get a handle on it and why people didn't how many people here have a strong feeling They never want to assign their copyrights to anyone ever Okay, so not that many people. It's just the four people in the audience I've experienced that in in many many more numbers than that Where people have no doubt and I sort of go back to them say well, you know Who will inherit the copyrights and do they understand it and one friend of mine? Who's a Debian developer had never thought about this before and I said well does your mother understand free numbers for software normally? I avoid trying to say Mother or grandmother because they're you know people never but but in this case this particular case it was his Mother is his next of kin and I do use your mother understand Free and open-source software and while she's an extremely smart lady She doesn't she's never not really had that much experience and because of their relationship They don't really talk about like have you talked to your parents it up free software But but but they hadn't had occasion to talk about it and his mother would be the one who would receive the copyrights in the instance that anything happened to him and Where many of us are are working on really critical pieces of free and open-source software Where that copyright could transfer to someone who doesn't have the the background doesn't have the experience Doesn't have the interest and doesn't have the knowledge It really puts it could potentially put a progress a project at risk So part of this is okay because you can assign today with no problem. You know if I were a Perhaps a better salesman I would say and this is why you need to sign your copyrights to the Debian cover aggregation project with conservancy But but that's simply an oversimplification and what we're looking for here is the best solution for free software and for Debian And making sure that we choose the right mechanisms overall But what's interesting about the fact that you can assign today with no problem is that if you don't have issues around like They call it consideration making sure that the contract is valid It's pretty much understood in on every jurisdiction that I have researched that there is a way to do it today You may have to figure out a way to deal with moral rights depending on where you are but We pretty much understand that that will is very likely to be upheld and you can assign it today But most people many people don't want to assign it today And so I've been noodling around in a lot of these questions because for like a decade Because what we need is something like perpetual care for copyright, right? We need something like you know perpetual care is one if you and I hope that most of you have not had this experience before but when you Very somebody in a cemetery. I need another baby penguin and I don't have one here When you bury someone you can you can Purchase what they call perpetual care So they do plantings and they agree that they will continue to maintain the grave site and And water the plants and you can buy this for yourself It's there you can do like what is like a living will and I highly recommend everybody to think hard about their What they want to happen when they die because it's like one of the best gifts You can give to the people you love to already have arranged these things before you You know before before you you die and these people are left in the situation where Where the people you love are left with the situation where they're they're dealing with the shock and the grieving that you've died But then they also have to make all these decisions and figure out what you wanted and what you didn't want We need more baby penguins, but but instead of thinking of it as perpetual care and thinking in terms of funerals We can instead think of it in terms of potatoes because Because because really copyrights are not are not things that we don't need a mausoleum for our copyrights Right what's cool about our free software copyrights is that the hope is it will only be a problem if they continue to be useful right if they're going to continue to be used and so what I love about this is that is that each of those potatoes is Potential or is sprouting right and ideally if we write code that is great and useful It'll be used again and again in a number of different ways And what we need is is is a way to handle these copyrights. That's a way to help them living and vibrant And so the copyright Aggregation project that we put together Handles this in part right it handles it for people who want this who don't want to think about this now So if you want to just never think about your copyrights again You can assign to something like the the Debbie and copyright aggregation project and Bradley is going to do a whole talk on That on Thursday, so you can go check that out if if you're interested and we'll have agreements and all that stuff But if you want to If you and that's perfect, especially if you are interested in having your copyrights enforced or having Debbie and Some copyrights and Debbie and enforced And not having to and having whatever involvement you want in that process But if you want to be a part of a group effort to do that But that is that's a problem. That's a solution for now and so I've been kind of thinking about what to do for the future and And it finally like a year ago I had this lightning bolt that we need a trust and I am so legally geeky that this is like I was like a trust We can have a trust. Oh my god finally we can solve this and I was like running around. We could do this, right? you know it's and so I So what we can do is we could set up a trust so that we Assigned today. So so you want it so many people want to keep some of the rights They don't want to Assign their their copyrights because they want to keep some control for some people that means the ability to control Enforcement and they definitely don't want to win a trust anybody else to go anywhere near enforcing their copyrights for some people It's just the idea that they want to hold their copyrights and it's a it's a principled conceptual thing and so With this idea you could assign it today But you get a grant back of all or some of the rights, which are all of the things that you really care about So basically you could put your copyright in a trust today So that is physically like it's it's not physically but it's it's legally held by a trust and then they the trust then grants back to you the right to Enforce in some circumstances or you're right to you could realize you could sub-license it So you could license it under something else up a lot of times. That's not particularly meaningful because you the self-worth part of a project that has a particular license but the idea that you could Sublicense it you could you could do that and you could have all the rights that you would have had if you kept the copyrights that you care about but then The copyrights are held by the trust and when you die that grant expires so it's like this like kind of springing mechanism even though it's not actually a springing mechanism and I got really excited about this and I think that That it really has a chance of working and I'm mentioning this half-baked idea to you now. I'll tell you At this point because I think that this is the kind of thing that can't be solved by some external legal entity all of a sudden this can't this isn't a project that can be taken on You know by me alone and offered as an option it's something that we need to design with with everybody's input and I think that It could be relevant for Debian and every other free software project, but Debian is the you know is Such an important leader in the is thought for free and open-source software and so I'm gonna to you develop like telling you where this idea goes and Think about it and tell me What you think how we how it the idea could be improved and then also where it could possibly be funded But what's cool about this idea is that if we have a trust that's holding the copyrights and it's a and where we're doing the License back and that expires when you die and then the trust holds it Is that you could have a checklist of things that you think are okay for to be done with your copyrights going forward So you could say for example that I I'm okay with the trust Realicensing it so long as it's real licensed under a copy left I'm okay with it realicensing so long as it's under only a lax permissive license I'm okay. If it's Realicensed by any license that under any license that's stewarded by the free software foundation or or another entity that you particularly trust and Or I only want it to be Relicensed for a change in the law so it's cool because we could do like a creative common style simplified checklist of what you're okay With being done with your software going forward and I think that that's but then if we do that We also have this really cool opportunity for a registry for free and open-source software so in order to assign your copyrights to this obviously the trust will have to maintain contact information for everybody and And keep track of of of what they hold in the trust which means they'll have the infrastructure for a registry And one of the things that we have had a problem with or that we've come across with an outreach II and bringing in People from diverse backgrounds is that not everybody wants to be identified. I mean how many people here? Are reluctant to put their real name in a public in any public place So like yeah, like quite a number of people and there are probably people who didn't want to identify themselves So what you could do with the trap with this that particular idea is that they the trust could hold up You could register a handle and have it in one place or or two handles or three handle And then you have the the benefits of anonymity While having the legal structures in place so that there's not the danger of having copyrights that can't be tracked and can't be And aren't looked for And also it helps people who have reason to change their name so they can contact it in one place one with the relicensings that I have done There have always been pieces of software that you couldn't That we couldn't realize this because we never got we were just simply were never able to get in touch with the person again Because they were using an old email address so here you would only need to keep your address up to date with one particular entity And then I got all thinking what's even cooler about it is that it might not have to be just for individuals So if companies did this we could have the same kind of springing arrangement where copyrights could Where companies could Put their copyrights in a trust and get all the rights granted back to them but that could terminate upon for example an acquisition or Some kind of change in policy if a company it could be whatever The company wants to do in terms of showing its good will to the environment so for example if it files for you know If it if it prosecutes a patent So it's a really interesting legal mechanism. I'm almost done actually and then we can open it up for questions And so This whole so there's a lot of possibilities with this and I think that That I have to admit that it's totally vaporware I've been working on this for a very long time, but there's nothing there's no there there We don't I think that once we design it They'll be very easy to put it in place legally but if we put something in place to care for our copyrights and stewardship of our projects for If we put a project like this in place We need to make sure it's right we need to make sure it's really great And we need to make sure we have the right public mechanisms for talking about Whether this is the trusted entity that everybody can believe in or not we need to design its governance. It's a huge project And one that is uncomfortable Because we absolutely have to talk about the fact that we are all going to die It's it's easier baby penguin. It's easier for me. You know, it's like sort of it's been easy for you It's been hard Well, it's been I've been thinking about these issues in part because of being public and talking about the fact that I have a Hard condition Which is something I would never have liked to do if I and I would never do it If I didn't think that it would explain stuff or freedom so well, but having so many people say to me Oh, that's so horrible for you Like are you you're gonna die soon? And so it sort of made me think a lot about these issues and how You know and and how we are simply while we're really good planners and free and open source software We're not confronting these issues around the legal mechanisms and the fact that that we're going to have a big change over At some point soon. I did the meantime We have to continue doing all the things that we're we're doing to tend to our social structure and expect turnover in our In our participation for all kinds of reasons including death so in the meantime the fact that Demian participates in summer of code and how many people here are our summer of code Graduates and outreach to graduates Yeah, or participants or participants participants is good and yeah so a lot of people and it's we finding ways to get to get new people involved is It's gonna be a really important part of the social mechanisms of staying vibrant and staying relevant and also Continuing to talk about our ideals and a freedom and not taking Those things for granted and then also there's a lot of opportunity with age Aside from all of the the cliche things about the experience that one gets with age, which is surely true There are is anyone here willing to admit that they're thinking about retiring like or yeah so that quite Actually quite a number of people in the audience right or thinking about retiring and so there's tremendous opportunity because you know like Free software is so much fun And so when people retire who are free software people they're probably gonna write a lot of code Like there is they're gonna be a really cool opportunity if we make it if we continue to make it fun and are Excited to get people who are retiring into our community. They might contribute a tremendous amount and like keep rocking dev comps like having a conference where people are really excited to come where they'll travel all The way to whatever location that dev comp is hosted in is a really important part of maintaining culture and Passing on the ideals so that the project continues to be vibrant That's the end of the proper talk I should mention that conservancy is having a fundraiser here and we're we have a matching Ananos donor has generously agreed to match donations for dev comp attendees so if you if you donated indicate that you Signed up at dev comp it will we'll get double which is really really cool So thank you very much, and I think I have like a few minutes for questions and there was a question back there James hey, thanks for your talk just a question from their corporate side of you Not for my employer, but So the question is again not for my employer just in general Trying to understand like corporate law which I'm quite new to wouldn't it be sort of fiscally or responsible and thus open a company to liability Especially if they're publicly traded if they had some sort of contractor cause that automatically transfers away Their copyrights on bankrupt to your acquisition or so on You know it depends on it it sort of depends on how they're structured and what their plans are and what the project like what the product is if there's a business case that the that the Product will be more successful if they're you know For example if you're building a product from a product a product that relies on free software for the beginning And you believe that you will get a lot of an investment a lot of successful external R&D If you'll get a lot of benefit and a lot of buy-in and it's a product where where collaboration is essential and Then Then you can sort of set these things up in the in a similar way It's a it's part of the overall risk analysis for the company It's just like your question is very similar to questions that were shortly asked originally about free software licenses to begin with isn't it? irresponsible and opening company up to liability to to Grant a sharing license over our software So it's sort of companies will have to come and it and it's sort of a tiny bit of a flight of fancy because I don't think that I think it Will be somewhat unusual at least initially for a public company That's a large company in our space to jump into this And you know, but I think that especially for small companies starting out or for new products especially for free software projects that are collaboration efforts that it's a demonstration of good faith To do this and provided that all of the rights that are necessary in order to protect the company's interests are built into it I think it should be possible. I guess I think it's a good idea I'm just saying that I think companies are very risk-averse and even getting companies to copy left is turned out to be quite difficult so this might even be even insurmountable in many cases it might be but but I would say that people definitely thought that copy left was insurmountable and pretty much they're all using the Linux kernel So it's that it's it's all a risk analysis if the come it's so as per my talk yesterday It's a company's can convince the can convince everybody that permissive licensing that whatever holds the most rights for them is best for It works then they'll they'll you know, they'll take advantage of that if we can convince them that there's an advantage to to Participating in something like this just like it there's an advantage in participating in the Linux kernel. I believe they might do it especially for For new initiatives, I think that it could be a very innovative show of good faith So hi Sam Harman, um first of all, this is really interesting stuff and thank you for presenting it so I'd like to ask you to consider something when developing this trust I'm as I've been thinking about what I would like to happen to a lot of my stuff You know when I'm no longer in a position to make decisions whether I'm dead or simply incapacitated At least in American jurisprudence the copyright was supposed to be a limited time right that you know In exchange for this purchase limited time monopoly, you're more willing to share your stuff You know maybe by selling it or whatever Um, and you know for a variety of reasons copyright has gotten to be a fairly long-lived right um, I Think that behind being able to have an option like where? You know Say some number of years after my death like order of five as opposed to what is it 75? No? It's like ridiculously long Now may as well be forever. Oh, yeah, but I mean it's not officially forever. Oh, no, no, no But but you know, I mean we've seen the Supreme Court case, you know, but um We're effectively a few years after my death Basically things were licensed under the most permissive license as possible effectively as if there was the copyright had expired I at least would find that sort of option very appealing because I think that there's a balancing act between grabbing power and copyright is a form of power um and Also accepting it that I don't want to control the future that I want to let the future do its own thing Yeah, I think that's absolute 100% agree with everything you said and that's one of the things that we could do with the with a trust is we could have a an automatic like a an option to have your works License under CC zero, which is effectively as close to the public domain as we can get in many jurisdictions So yeah So I think we just have some time for some more questions because there's no talk directly afterwards And if anybody feels like they need to get coffee because it's early feel free I can't hear you My job to do this Okay, this comes from a Jatan what might be some so some reasons why people involved in free software projects Not want to license their code with GPL despite its social virtues Wait, I'm sorry. I missed about the A why people involved in free software projects do not want to license their code with GPL despite its social virtues Why don't people want a license under whoa? I can't possibly understand why anyone wouldn't want to Know I'm actually I should say conservancy is licensed agnostic We have projects that are permissively like permissively licensed and we have projects that are are our copy strong Copy left and want to want to enforce those licenses. So from conservancy's perspective. It's very neutral for me I'll tell you that I started out being also very Licensed agnostic and then part of it was that I had a lot of clients who were Part of permissively licensed projects where they really felt you know I mean I was counseled to a couple of the BSD's originally like felt passionately that it was a different kind of freedom and You know that that it was you know free if you impose restrictions But now I've sort of you know and that the GPL was a form of restriction But as time has passed and I have understood sort of and I've gone through my own personal struggling with not having the source code to my defibrillator and connecting my reliance on that software to To our use of software and the fact that we don't even know what software We're going to be relying on I have come over strongly to the GPL camp And I think that that that I think that once you realize that if you don't have the The access to the to the complete and corresponding source code and the scripts for installation Which is those are like the words from if you don't you're not going to be able to deal with a security problem And so you're not you're not necessarily but anyway So you nobody here needs me to convince them about the virtue of copy left But I think that a lot of people don't really understand the long-term implications of the of these licensing choices And we're going to need some failures Unfortunately, and more baby penguins somewhere, but we really need failures in order for people to understand Why copy left is so important and we're going to need what's happening is that is that we're already starting to see some of the some problems from the Fragmentation around some of the permissively licensed projects and developers will be frustrated that they no longer have access to The the projects effectively that they were a major part of earlier because it's gone off in a proprietary fork And so I think that that there are a lot of reasons why people choose Permissively licensed projects. I have to say I don't understand why why there's why the folks that have vitriol for copy left Have vitriol for I think that is simply not thinking I think that to me That's not really thinking that deeply about the project if you make a choice because you've thought reasonably about these different licenses And you choose One thing or another that's totally fine, but the the hate that had been exhibited for the GPL. I I think Probably means that we need to talk more about in a calm way about why copy left is so important And it's not about polarizing personalities. It's not about Tribe it's about a licensed choice This is from a purely and from a purely Human reaction standpoint It is frustrating To be forced into a decision Um, and basically g the gpl is all about Creating incentives that are so strong that Um That you you will chew that you know that in some cases there have been people who have Had to use the gpl because The there was a large enough commons and that's in a specific design goal of the gpl to create that commons and Feeling like you are powerless Feeling like despite the fact that you would really like to do something else That some other entity is forcing you into a decision Which is what a commons does which is what a commons like the gpl does can be a very um A very emotionally negative experience Um on the other and I I I I do understand the other the flip side of that, but I I mean that kind of force When it's applied to you is is Something that may get a really strong negative reaction But people uh, I know this this topic can go on for a very long time Lots of things to to ask and I'm sure this can uh with this community this can lead to a Endless debate which will be very productive, but uh, well currently still here We could maybe do a buff on another day if people are interested So please we we we are over time already. So I'll have to cut this session short and well. Thank you very much