 All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Devian Down. I'm a developer at the local organizers. And I'm going to be introducing Devin, DebKrump, as well as some of today's events. And this is Hans Christoph Steiner. Do you want to... He'll be talking after me. I'm also a Devian user since 99 and finally getting around to becoming a, well, maintainer first and then hopefully developer. Okay, great. So well, on behalf of the Devin project, the local and global team, and Columbia University's computer science department, I'd like to welcome you all to Devian Day. I'll be talking a little bit about what's going to happen today, but in the context of the Devin project, just in case there's some folks who don't know about it. So for those that may not know, Devin is composed of a worldwide group of volunteers who work on the GNU Linux operating system. It boasts over 1,000 developers, as well as many, many other thousands of contributors who contribute documentation, bug patches, and so on and so forth. It's also composed of over 25,000 pieces of software. So the developer body embodies the spirit of craftsmanship and craftsmanship. And so if you spend some time with developers, as I hope you'll do today, you'll soon note three characteristics. Pride, obsession, and passion among developers, which they channel towards producing a very high-quality operating system, which also makes them believe that all operating systems kind of suck, except for Devin. So the Devin distribution is also a kind of mothership of sorts. It's a base for over 120 derivatives, including the N2 operating system. And then there's, of course, derivatives of derivatives. But Devin is not only famous for its technical merits. It's also famous for its fierce and vocal commitments to the principles of free software. These are enshrined in documents such as the social contract, the Devin free software guidelines. It also manifests in the many debates that developers have over licensing and other issues. It's also a project that's managed to grow over time into an institution with social policies with a constitution that has a very kind of complicated governance system and policies that help to ensure that there's kind of consistency among developers concerning ethical, technical, and legal issues. It also ensures that an anthropologist like myself, who has studied Devin for many years, is kept quite busy. Devin is also quite a strong community, and I actually don't use that word lightly. I feel like it's the case that today people think that any sort of interaction that happens online on a social media application constitutes community, which is not the case. Devin, on the other hand, over its 17-year history, has built a very strong social common wheel. Its developers have built an institution, they've built an operating system, and they have built friendships that span many time zones, continents, nationalities, and so on and so forth. And there's probably no event that helps to ensure tighter community bonds than this one, the DebConf Developer Conference, which is now in its 11th year. It's called DebConf 10 because they start with zero. It was DebConf 0, DebConf 1, and so on and so forth. So held since 2001, DebConf brings together developers, users, other interested participants to spend a week together. They attend talks, they socialize, they hack, they stay up very late at night, they bring cheeses from all over the world and wine, and share both their passion for hacking as well as their passion for each other. For those actually interested in attending the DebConf talks, which are happening all this week, you're welcome to actually do so, so long as there's space. So you don't need to do anything else, but show up. The schedule is online. I would just recommend to get here early for certain talks, like Eben Moglen, who is the Director and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center as well as a Professor here at Columbia will be giving a talk, but once the room fills, it won't be letting anyone else in. And the schedule is kind of shifting day to day a little bit, so definitely check in online to see whether it's changed or not. It's also important to note that Debian obviously does not exist in a silo. Debian is not alone. It's partly responsible for inspiring other like-minded projects. It also is situated within a wider milieu of similar initiatives, both technical as well as political. It is for this reason that we've also scheduled events at Debian Day as well as DebConf to reflect this wider context. And now I want to talk a little bit about the talk we have in store today. But I can't sort of give you a sense of all the talks that we're doing, so I just kind of urge people to look at the schedule. Who here has a schedule? All right, great. So here it is, check back to see what's going on. We've got one talk later on that conflicts with no other talk, which I'll talk about in a moment. But let me just give you some highlights. So first, there's a number of Debian-specific talks. For those that know nothing about Debian or know a little bit about Debian or know a lot about Debian, these are all quite relevant. So one of my favorites or potentially favorite ones has to do with the fact that many geeks are actually kind of shy. And Ashish, who's a Debian developer, is leading a session on Debian for shy people. So to enter Debian requires jumping through some gatekeeping poops. It requires learning about a project that's quite complex with a deep history. And so he's going to give a little bit of a sense of how to navigate that. Francois will give us tips as to how to support friends and family who use Debian. There's a presentation by Obey Arthur Liu on the Google Summer of Code at Debian. And many, many others as well. There's also a talk by the Debian project leader, Zach, who will lead a session on how to inject some serious fun when squashing bugs for Debian. So there's also a number of talks that are not Debian-specific but have to do with free software. There's going to be a talk on how to improve design for free and open-source software. There's going to be a talk on Floss manuals, which is quite an interesting project because it's a project that has developed both social and technical tactics and techniques for ensuring, for documentation, and for writing documentation in a kind of short period of time. So Andy Orham is going to be talking about that. John Sullivan from the Free Software Foundation will be talking about Free Software Foundation's campaigns for freedom, activism, development, and education. There's a number of other talks on free software and government as well as free software and education. But I would like to highlight one talk in particular that's going to be given by the Honorable Gail Brewer. She's part of the New York City Council and she was the former chair of the Committee on Technology and Government and current chair on Committee on Government Operations. And she has worked for quite a long time on the question of how technology in government can further kind of the cause of freedom of openness. And so we're really excited and honored that she'll be giving a talk at four o'clock here in this room called How Government Can Foster Freedom in Technology. So now I just want to provide a few logistical some logistical information. For DEBCOMF attendees who have paid for their lunch, you can pick them up, which are sandwiches at Carman Hall, correct? Okay, so Carman Hall, if you've kind of prepaid sponsored food. For Debian Day participants, there are a bunch of cafes right off campus as well as a number of cafes on campus. Although I'm not too sure how many are open on Sunday, but there's quite a bit of food around this area. We also, as part of DEBCOMF, always have a kind of a field trip and this year we're going to Coney Island on Wednesday. So you can imagine what that will be like, 300 geeks running around the beach, the amusement park and a baseball game. And in fact, we've got 25 extra tickets for the Cyclones game which is going to start at six o'clock on Wednesday. And for those who may want to go, come find me during the day and the first 24 get a free ticket. And the Debian Project leader will be throwing the first pitch as well in a kilt. So if nothing else, that will be worth going for. Alright, so I think that's it in terms of the logistical concerns. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me or anyone in a black DEBCOMF tent shirt, which I'm not wearing and I see some of the other local volunteers are not wearing but maybe we'll put them on a little bit later so we can answer your questions. And now I just briefly like to thank our sponsors although really we're going to thank our sponsors in full tonight. We have a welcome event for DEBCOMF tent but I just want to mention thank you sponsors. They're listed on our t-shirts, on our banners, on our websites but we'll do that in more detail this evening. But there's one person in particular who will be thanked today. She'll be thanked tonight, which is Daisy Wen and the computer science staff at Columbia University. She has gone completely out of her way to make this possible along multiple, multiple fronts. We are extremely grateful to her and her staff. So please join me in thanking the computer science department and Daisy Wen. Alright, so Hans is now going to talk a little bit about something he'll explain. Hi. If you've missed me before, I'm Hans Christof Steiner. I'm going to talk a little bit about what motivates me to work on free software and hopefully this is something that's interesting to people here. Debian is something that I've used Cine9 and has been an inspiration to me in many ways all along. So let me get to my slides. I've got a little heavy breathing. Can you still hear me? Last breathing? No, still breathing. Let's try that. Just don't breathe, okay? Okay. I want to start with a quote of a person most people here probably know but most importantly is the message. Free software means that you control what your computer does. Non-free software means that someone else controls that and to an extent controls you. It's something that I think is becoming more and more important when we think about computers. I'm really interested in how do we make every person who uses a computer think about this question or this statement. To start with, I think we need to talk about why we use computers and how we use computers a bit. For me, what I see as the roots of why computers are so widespread is that really humans want to interact. It's built into us. It's essential to our humanness. We want to communicate. We speak. We dance. We sing. We play games. Interaction is really part of what it means to be human. Another thing that is essential is that we make tools and we use tools. There really isn't any human there that doesn't use tools and I think doesn't really make tools as well. Every human society has made tools and used tools and every person now is making tools and using tools. More and more we are now communicating through these tools that we've made. Starting with things like, is it that bad? Maybe I can do it like... Okay, how's that? Alright, I can breathe. Okay, so back to tools. Once I get this on my pocket. So, we use tools. More and more we are communicating through these tools that we've made. Things like the telephone. We're now communicating via text all the time. Typing, voice chat, mobile phones, our little computers. I think there's a lot of people now who communicate more through their tools than through with their voice. Really, we look at... Atronic tools are really becoming instrumental in so many aspects of our life. So, not only on the communication side, but things like more and more we're voting through electronic tools. Entertainment is somehow involving electronic tools. Certainly, we're all working. So many, it's huge. It's like warehouses of people sitting behind computers. And that's what most people in the world think of as work. And our government runs on computers and et cetera, et cetera. One of the things that has been a kind of a long dichotomy with this history of computers and even technology is this idea that, well, you have some highly skilled engineer that creates these tools and the rest of us just use them. And that kind of splits us into these two categories of the creators, the people who have the skills or the knowledge or the wherewithal to create these tools. And those of us who just have the means to use them, to buy them, to get access to them, to change them. So, I think about democracy. Reading and writing I think is a big part of it. Everyone having an equal access to both being able to hear the communication of others, but also express themselves as well. And I think this is an essential aspect of democracy. And when you only have a handful of people that can express and the rest just listen, you can't have democracy. Free software. Now we have all these electronic tools that we're using and a lot of people out there have realized, I don't want someone, I have these skills myself. I can also contribute and make my own tools and I want the freedom to do it. And free software is, to me, what is the essence of it. And really it's this idea that when you have the tools, when you're using tools, something like OpenOffice here, that you have the ability to customize it in any way you want to, as you see fit to make it work for the way you work. The problem is, so something like OpenOffice, it is open source. It is free software. You can download all the source code and yes, you can modify it. Is there anyone in the room who's modified OpenOffice that uses it? So we have maybe three. How many people have you used something like Word or OpenOffice and have not modified it? So we have like three people who've modified it and a bunch of others who haven't. So right now I think, so we have free software here, but we have a different barrier. It's a very complicated piece of software. It's written in a language, I believe it's C++, that a lot of people don't really understand all that well, so people can understand the software. But really the barrier for them to own tool is no longer any proprietaryness. It's an issue of accessibility. So really what I'm saying, now we know free software is here to stay. And I'd like to say that is just the beginning of what, if we really believe in this idea of that we should do our tools. So really what we need to do now, I see, this is a community of people that has really lived, really lives the power of free software. We're coming together because we all want to build this operating system. So I think what I really think a lot about is like, we need to change how we think about computer literacy. Right now, mostly when we talk about computer literacy, we're talking about how to use a computer and not how to program a computer or modify it. And it's something, you know, as all these tools become just central to all so many aspects of our lives, we are creating generation of people that can really only read and they cannot write. So for me what I see is the next step is thinking about our tools as read-write tools and that whenever we're teaching anyone how to use a computer, we should also be thinking about how teaching them how to program a computer, how to modify a computer, how to make the tool fit their needs. So of course one of the barriers is programming itself. Programming for the most part has been designed by engineers, for engineers, and to make engineers more efficient. And this is definitely a useful goal. I don't argue that we don't need, I'm not saying we don't need engineers. Just like we have with reading and writing, just like with reading and writing we have specialists, we have language that works for basically everyone. There are specialized systems of writing, like in court reporters and stenography and all sorts of systems, for people who need to be able to write extremely fast. But we have the system that is somewhat cumbersome, but it's a system that works for everyone. So when we look at the kind of, I guess for me I think the core of writing a computer is programming. So I think that we, a big next step is to think of how do we make programming something that everyone can and wants to do. But of course it's not the only way to contribute. This is a, some statistics, there's many ways to contribute like submitting bug reports is a very valuable way to contribute writing documentation, organizing things like dev camp. All of these things are what it takes to build a complete operating system. And so one of the things that can happen is like how can we get everyone to feel a sense of ownership so that they want to somehow get involved and have some influence in the software that they use. So not necessarily say like I'm going to become an engineer, but say well I'm going to become involved to help the engineers I know maybe have some influence over them build this system that we all share. So I think Debian is this great example of ways of making an operating system more accessible and ways of making free software more accessible in both the read and the write, in both in reading and in writing. So by having this big, by having all sorts of ways to contribute and having a mentality of welcoming people to contribute is really an essential thing to making sure that it is really this kind of community that people want to join in. So I guess now it leads me to some questions and I have my point of view and it's not really up for me to decide this I think, but this is the kind of things that I hope to leave you all with and hopefully generate some discussion on this. The first question is, should Debian be the operating system for computer literacy for everyone? Debian is this great example of a group of people who for the most part are quite technically skilled and are very much wanting to have a level of control over their computer that only free software can provide. But then I hear a lot in the Debian community that it is accessibility is important, but it is a bit of a shift of focus. You say, well, we're going to make this tool something that everyone can use and we lose something in the process and it makes it slower for engineers, for example. Then the other question, if we think that Debian is really this system for general computer literacy or it has the potential for it, then how do we make that happen? I have my point of view from being kind of an accidental computer nerd that there is a pretty big... On one hand, the attitude of people is very welcoming, but it's the technical wall can be like... which is what I'm hitting sometimes. So for what I see a lot of is like, well, if we want to try and get newbies to submit bug reports from people who have just started using computer, then is Debian going to be the place for this? So we're going to give up this kind of highly technically sophisticated tools in order to make a simple interface or can we find some balance in the middle? And then there's kind of the third model which Yela mentioned is that Debian serves as the foundation to many different branches where other people can say we're going to build on the stand on the shoulders of giants and take this and remix it. Ubuntu is an example of that without the same type of organization, so it's not a clear comparison because we have to compare a company to a... more of a democracy. But I think that that is one of the reasons that... that is one of the reasons that we have this multiplicity of Debian derivatives that hopefully we can make sure don't stray very far from the core. So that's what I have. Thank you for your time. Hopefully that generated some discussion. I think next, in a few minutes, we have talks. Are you going to... I can repeat it. Just two locations of the other auditorium. Oh, right. 414 Shapiro is just around the corner here. It's a smaller room as you walk towards the glass doors. The inter-school lab is on the seventh floor. We're currently on the fourth floor, which might be misleading to folks who aren't used to Columbia. So you'll go through the glass doors and there's a bank of three elevators. If you're moving between rooms, I advise you to go right when the talk ends because we have five minutes to use the three elevators to shuttle folks up and down. So you'll go up the elevator and then there'll be signs to inter-school lab. You basically are heading north and then south and then there's the inter-school. The inter-school lab. Go left. There are no stairs, unfortunately. I mean, I'm going to be around for the whole... So you said what's the process for continuing this discussion? The most basic level we can meet up. The Hack Lab is over here in mud, I guess it's called. And then there's also the possibility, I believe we still have a couple open time slots for Boxer. Over the next week, there's something known as a bird of a feather, which is an open discussion. And we have a couple of time slots that are open. Okay. So that we can organize a session about this discussion if there's enough interest. But I'm certainly interested in talking about it more, so then find me. I will definitely be around the whole time. One of the footnotes that you had in your slides that you didn't talk to was, no mobile phone to keep me hacking. What was that about? Oh, I didn't know you could read those. Funny. Well, I think that free software is done a very good job of describing the ideas of freedom around software, but we're not really paying attention to other issues like networks. And I think for the most part, telecoms are really corrosive to the freedom of networks. So I've avoided devices with GSM modems. So I use, this is Nokia N810, which is kind of a Debian derivative, and it only has Wi-Fi, and so I can use VoIP, and I survive without a mobile phone. So that's what it's about. And I've done a lot of mobile device hacking. How about wireless phone named OpenMoco, that was once advertised as the one with the spirit of Linux? Yeah, so the OpenMoco has a GSM modem, so you don't have to use it, but if you want to use GSM modems, you have to deal with the telecom. There is no DIY GSM networks. But it's open hardware, as far as I know, and it's open software for sure. Specifically in the United States, you also are under the problem that our Federal Communications Commission, which licenses broadcast antennas for things like mobile devices, has this thing about not wanting people to be able to change them. They like black boxes for manufacturers, in the United States. Yeah. There's many things. You're just saving yourself one layer of the problem when you go over to networks, because as sooner or later, most of the networks are still in the hands of telecom. That's for sure. You've got a buffer now. The difference is that we control the protocol, but we also control the... If people were organized, we could build Wi-Fi, backhaul mesh networks across this country, and then we wouldn't have that issue. It's one step at a time, yeah. Maybe I can add to that GSM network business. The European community just passed a bill where they state that networks that are used for GSM, et cetera, must be open to any other provider. It's completely different as in the United States, where I notice that if you buy a cell phone in one town, it doesn't work in the other town where they have another provider. Whereas if you have a cell phone in, for example, if you buy it in the Netherlands, then you can use it in Spain or in Greece, or even in the United States. That's the kind of openness that is somehow lacking here, I'm afraid. But if we could do something about that, that would be nice. That's not really a U.S. issue because that affects a lot of devices, like TOO is the classic, where even free software, like an Android mobile phone, they're still trying to prevent you to put your own software on it. And even if you, as a consumer, can switch between different providers in Europe, where I also am from, the issue I hear that is the crucial one is can you act as a provider, can we have our own network, can we control it? And we cannot control any of the providers. Sure, you can become a provider, you have a gazillion of money, but there's still the big gap of, sure, they have some things that, so it looks nice that every provider is able to be there, but you have to buy in to be part of their network. So we're out of time, but this sounds like we might have a bof in the making also about free networks and GSM. Thanks again. Next we have Andy Orham.