 Today I'm sitting down with a very interesting guest because this guest is not a Linux distro maintainer It's not a programmer or developer by trade today I'm gonna talk to a theology professor who has a real love for free and open source software and is a strong advocate for free and open Source software, and I'm talking to Corey Stefan professor Stefan. Please introduce yourself Yes, thank you for that great introduction So I'm really pleased to be on distro tube I've been a fan of this channel for years since since back in the obscure window manager project days Before DT got all of his fancy equipment at all that so so and it's really I've really learned a lot from it So so as he said my name is dr. Corey Stefan Corey for good old Derek here and I I Currently serve as assistant professor of theology and fellow of the core at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas So I'm a Catholic historical theologian professionally and by education But I also and together with that Do some advocacy for free and open source software? I've given a talk for the free BSD foundation I've written a couple of articles for the free BSD journal I've given a talk for the free and open source developers European meeting FOS stem. I blog about this stuff and Perhaps most directly related to my work. I always tell my boss that we should be using free software and I have a statement on software freedom at the end of all of my class syllabi where I promise my students that I will work to Ensure that they're able to have software freedom As much as reasonably possible within the context of being at the University within my classes, so People say I'm a free software zealot, but you are the real diehard here Well, how did you get into? Linux and BSD free and open source software and how did you discover that philosophy? Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's a great question. So When I was a freshman or sophomore in high school in the Ubuntu 8 days, I Had of my first laptop computer and it was it was slow It had I think 500 megabytes of RAM which to the gray beards will sound like well That's rather a lot, but you know even for that time that was quite low The standard was two or yeah, it was because I also had a machine during the Ubuntu 804 time and I was running 512 megabytes and even then web browsers would just run at a snail's pace. Yeah, exactly So it came it came with Microsoft Windows That I almost say something crude I'll censor that out. No, I'll leave it in It came with Microsoft Windows and I I was looking for something better something that would be more efficient Something that had a lot more customizability also with regard to workflow because even then I did not like being limited And how I set up my working environment I was only doing high school work things, but I didn't like being limited and I You know did what I did what any Millennial does When you what do you want to find an answer to something with regard to computers? I think I was still using Google in those days What's interesting? Yeah, the 2008 period was a real explosion in Linux desktop popularity back then because that was The Vista days where people That were using XP and loved XP really hated Vista Right it was Vista and so I found Ubuntu and it was on GNOME 2 then and oh my goodness Did I ever fall in love with it and with the compius desktop or are they out in the effects? Yeah, that was great And then you know, I went back and forth with different things. I I was a Mac guy for several years, but basically Macs became worse and worse over time too and once again, I found myself dissatisfied and they went wait a second I have all this background. I already did some of this like work in high school and so let me pick this up again and That's how I found distro tube and that's how I how I found Robo Nuggets free BSD channel and just kind of bit by bit. I I grew You know all self-taught and I went from zero to hero so I went from you know using menjaro GNOME addition to to Using a combination of having read every word on every page of Michael Lucas is glorious absolute free BSD Great book by the way for anyone interested in Unix like OS is it all it makes you better at Linux and better at everything to do with this stuff and a combination of that and and Derek's videos, especially those about Specter WM and window management Window manager Regulations and things like that and I wrote my own dot file dot files from scratch I called them a theological dots. They're on GitHub and I've in the FAQ I have a little imaginary FAQ. Of course, nobody's asking me questions about this I did get an email or two about them, but I've an imaginary FAQ And one of the questions is why are these called theological dots and I make a little joke, you know Well, they're not blessed by a priest or something. It's just I'm a theologian Uses my dot files for a research and writing and it's great, you know Because you know things like having a database of of ancient Greek texts and a Bible study tool with six texts open in parallel So tarot for reference management library office with a bunch of extensions The best of those definitely is this little known, but really powerful ancient Greek extension for library office It does spell checking even on Byzantine Greek. That's quite accurate. It's amazing And so I can have all this stuff open in parallel all, you know tiled for me and oh, it's just wonderful And so yeah, it's been it's it's and I just love exploring things to you I think that's probably a trait that that just about all scholars share in common is, you know, we're nerds and we were You know, I was just telling my students yesterday How do you know that the kid who's going to become a scholar? It's the four or five six year old who won't stop asking his mother and then his teacher. Why why why? And so that was me and it still is me Yeah, I would say that's very similar to my path as far as time frame and then some of the reasons Behind why I got into Linux and a lot of this stuff is really just to learn It's just I was interested in in it and I wanted to explore it. It wasn't necessarily out of Necessity, I wouldn't say, you know, I had to move to Linux. It was more of Yeah, I just wanted to explore this avenue and the more you go down it. It's just such a deep rabbit hole You'll never learn everything like there's it's impossible to learn everything It really is impossible to learn everything getting back to your work at the university I know one of the big reasons why you advocate so strongly for free and open source software is because you want to really champion Privacy especially for your students because these days here in the u.s. Especially in the schools and universities more and more Really ever since the lockdown but even before the the lockdown started These schools are forcing their students to use proprietary software proprietary spyware in many cases Where students have to keep a camera and a microphone on them all the time even when they're doing their school work at home And of course, there's some serious privacy concerns related to that and not to mention Proprietary software when you force kids to buy into one particular piece of closed-source proprietary software You don't necessarily know what that company is doing with this information Because they're also getting the video feed and the audio feed from your students What's happening with that information? No one knows so you want to speak a little bit on that? Oh, that's exactly right. So I actually a blog post I wrote early in the days of the COVID-19 pandemic um, I wrote um a part of it was writing about this problem and it's you know instructors at at colleges and universities found themselves saying Oh, well, I've never done any kind of remote testing before and so I'm just going to default to using something like a lockdown browser where You know, you're you're letting your computer system be hijacked by proprietary code and There are people monitoring your every move even if your pupils in your eyes Dart one way because you're thinking well, there are all kinds of problems with this Um, I mean, of course, it's running proprietary code. You don't know anything about it hijacking a person's private computer running on their own home private You know internet connection Who wrote the chrome extension that these kids had to install? I mean, that's another thing the universities They don't even think about that stuff. It's not um, and it's not equitable So I actually recently had a student write to me in confidence to say Dr. Stefan, I'm really glad that you're doing this because I have a sibling who has autism And he's always flagged by remote testing services as a cheater Because he can't keep his eyes focused in one direction and I'm going well, how is that that's not even remotely pun intended fair I mean, that's absurd. I mean he should you know, he or she should be able to have You know the same educational experience as everyone else is having and that shouldn't matter And so there are you know, lots of alternatives for remote testing There uh essay writing always works and something that I really like to do is have Face-to-face video chat oral exam kind of like this and just have it be very Welcoming you can have your notes open. I I don't want to see your bedroom I just want to talk to you And students really thrive doing that and um, and they appreciate that I'm not saying I'm going to be You know, I appreciate they appreciate that I specifically say I'm not going to be taking over your systems But oral examinations require the teacher To work a little harder and I think in some cases, you know that that part of the problem is just The school system is trying to be economic as far as their time, you know, unfortunately No, that's exactly right. So I said the university of st. Thomas is a small liberal arts college And so I'm blessed that I don't have hundreds and hundreds of students Um, I may have a hundred or students, you know total or something like that So it's hard to schedule all that but I'm able to do so. Yeah a full professor at a big state university who has You know, 2000 students in, you know, three conglomerate lecture halls Well, that person's not going to be going to be able to do one-on-ones with every student But that there are still ways, you know, where you don't have to be Well, I even think at the really big institutions You know, you could have enough graduate assistants also To to give some of these oral examinations where it could I don't know. It's tricky, right? It's it's it'll be a tough problem to solve But I do think having a camera having to be on a person in their home Is also a tricky situation. I know technically they're at school but In real life, they're at home and we've had court cases here in the u.s. here recently Especially Involving the workplace where companies have fired people from working at home because they refused to put on a camera on them While they were working at home because for privacy reasons. They're like, no, I'm not turning on the camera while I'm in my house And companies have fired these people in courts have Ruled in favor of these people that got fired saying no, you can't force your employees to have this camera on in their house No, that's exactly right. And um, I've heard of cases where companies are hiring say from silicon valley who are doing this And um, I can wow can I ever commiserate with that because of course software development is You know 10 it's nine parts planning and one part executing and it's the exact same for me as as a historical theologian It's nine parts gathering all of my resources reading them taking notes on them and one part writing And so if I had somebody, you know spying on me while I'm working and saying, oh, you haven't typed a single word in the last three hours Well, that would be very damaging because I might not have typed a word in the last three hours But I might have been working really hard, you know to figure out what some obscure piece of greek is saying Or whatever it is, but but um, and I think another important point is the cost The fact that so many college students obviously Are not wealthy. They have to borrow money to even go to school borrow money to buy books And and forcing kids sometimes to pay for proprietary software. I think is really unfair No, that's exactly right. So so at the university of st. Thomas I have a lot of first generation students and they're really bright and very hard-working. I love my students. They're great But you know, they they not all of them can afford very much some of them, you know, they come in and You know, the best piece of technology they're able to have is a beat-up old Retired, you know work laptop that an uncle gives as a gift, you know, something like that um, or it's an old, you know iPad 2 or something like that and you know, if if the tools that that we're requiring them to use do not run on those devices That's not equitable. And not only is it not equitable I actually am of the opinion that it's breach of of at a catholic university of our own Ecclesial law regarding the fact that we're supposed to strive to make our educations Accessible to as many people as possible now tuition is the greatest hurdle to that And part of that involves getting more donations and all of that But things that we can do as instructors to help with it are include things like well Not requiring brand new multi hundred dollar textbook purchases, but rather not not forcing students to buy a mac book Which is something many. Yeah, exactly. You know, all of those things we can so so yes You have to buy resources to be a student but Making sure that it's it's limited and sensible and that it's all these are things that you actually need You actually need this textbook, but you can buy used and it maybe Can be a lower cost version or you can you know, you have to have a laptop computer or something You can use for writing, but you don't need to be running anything high powered You can just use laboon to and fire up You know abby word and write your paper write, you know something like that, you know, very simple So so that's exactly right. Heck, you don't even need a graphical environment on linux to use text editors There's so many command line text editors Like there's literally not a machine that doesn't have enough power to run the command line No, that's that's right. That's right. Just about anybody can write a beautiful school report using wattack with phim That's exactly where I was going. You know, once you get into to them and la tech at the command line. I mean, that's so many Especially once you get into the math and sciences, especially require students to eventually learn la tech anyway Exactly. So even in theology, I I make a strong point of of really strongly encouraging students to to Um start learning The tools that they're going to need to use in their respective majors and really in their chosen career fields Even within my class. So I'll say things like, you know, you're doing a skit a group skit for class today Well, if you're in communications, go use, you know, this this open source script writing tool that you might use If you go work in multimedia, uh, you know for a news network or something and figure it out And that'll be a part of your grade. You know, I I it doesn't you know, I want to see you flexing your Stepping outside of your comfort zone Knowing, you know with regard to computer usage, you know points and click. That's not that's Very rarely the most efficient way to make use of a computer It's it's only most efficient with dialing a phone number or something like that And there's no awareness of that among students today Um, and so I try to get them to have that awareness Yeah, there is this thing called la tech and if you're in computer science or chemistry I want you to go Dabble in it if you if you have that desire to do so to to you know, be somebody writing lab reports or Or you know, that sort of thing. I want you to dabble in this stuff. And uh, yeah, that that's that's another thing that really um, I make a point of doing that And and I try and it's just it's a weird kind of flex too because now you have some of your students That are also taking a physics class and they tell their professor they know la tech now. Where'd you learn it? Well Dr. Stefan, I'm not teaching. I'm not teaching them la tech. I'm just saying I encourage you just pushing them in that direction, right? To be totally clear, but but um, but I like that weird flex. That's really funny. Um, yeah I and and then also, you know, I try to put into practice what I preach. So, um, I I contacted the head of it and I said, can I install a new linux on this laptop that you've given to me? I know that kde will work out of the box with the docking setup you put in my office and um, You know nice people, but the answer is no so I brought my raspberry pi from home with free bsd on it and that's what i'm using in my office right now because um, you know on the on the microsoft windows set up set up ire it provides I can't even install anything No, so how am I supposed to do my work if I have to make a phone call when I want to install zotero or librae office or or uh the terminal emulator that I want to use so I can be keeping an informative IRC open on the side and this is the problem with with the workplace in general these days and so many Places of business have their computers locked down, especially their windows machines locked down in such a way many times they're running inside virtual machines And you you really can't do anything you're you have no permissions at all to do anything on that particular operating system on that machine And it really does limit The amount of work you're able to do sometimes I've run into this situation before as well Yeah, yeah, it really it really can be now. Let's talk about uh, some of the free and open source software Not just for your students that you think is important for your students, but for you personally What what free and open source software is important to you and in your work? Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's a great question So I think it's always just about what the best tool is for the given job So right now i'm talking to you in manjaro kde with um Bismuth so I can have all of my tiling window manager key bindings and all set how I like them and all of that Is that uh, is that manjaro arm on the pie or is this on a no, this is on a think pad So it's it's the 64 You know, okay amd 64 um, but uh But I have you know Previous d on my pie in my office and that that ends up being mostly like for doing emails and things like that But so yeah, because I was asking because if you were on manjaro on the pie I was going to have to rethink uh what the pie could do because this has been a great Stream so far as the video feed and all oh no, no, no, no this is this is this is orders of magnitude more powerful than a pie The pie doesn't keep up with video conferencing not at all not even the pie for I bet the pie five will but I hope so. Yeah, yeah um It's close. It just skips a beat Um, it's the pie four does the pie four is so close to being able to be a desktop replacement Yes, other than the cpu is the bottleneck. Really. It's just not quite. Yeah, that's right. That's right um, so anyway at that level I I I really believe in using the tool for the job So manjaro katie because I'm on I'm docked with my think pad here and docking works out of the box Everything does with the latest linux kernels and manjaro makes it really easy to set up the latest kernel and all that I'm even able to choose what kernel I want, which is pretty nice You don't find a rolling release distribution unstable because that's what I get asked all the time Well, uh, I do um, actually you do. Okay. Yeah, um, I've had some problems actually with the rolling release in the past so, um There was a libre office fresh branch Update that was pushed as a part of a manjaro update that made my whole dissertation uneditable for a day That's not fun I've run into the same problems because I depend on obs Caden live and gimp. I use those three tools almost every day to do what I do So I've decided I can't have those rolling anymore I don't install them through pacman anymore. I have app images for them all and I just never go get the new version If the version I'm on is working. I just keep that app image I never want that thing to update because the update the only thing it's going to do is potentially break something It's not going to give me anything If what's working is working. There's there's no need to have it rolling. No, that's right. So I So I like it and I don't there are pros and cons Yeah, I think with this exact setup here basically as soon as like, uh Debbie and stable has has a newer has a newer kernel I'll just stick with I'll just switch to that and stay with that for time eternal and you know, it's just different needs I don't I really don't need the rolling other than that's Everything works out of the box right now with this exact setup. So again It's all about the best tool for the job and then this for this job. That's minjaro right now Yeah, if I didn't do what I do with videos and didn't need sometimes to test out the latest and greatest software I would be a Debbie and stable user. That's kind of What I was before starting youtube I always ran Static release distributions the idea of running a rolling release just seemed ridiculous to me Until I needed to actually test some of this software and then it kind of makes sense Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. If I ever retire from youtube though. I'm going back to debian That's going to be the quotation that everyone places in the comments. I'm going to get hate comments I'm being very I'm trying to be very politically neutral with regard to what Unix like operating system is best and then and then you know, you just said that it's kind of a Anyway, as far as some of the tools that I that I use for myself those software applications that are available That are all free and open source. I've talked about zotero. That's really really potent for citation management and one thing that's great about that is I mean, there there's a firefox extension and a libre office extension And so all three then of those great open source tools just work together seamlessly I'll be you know, if most library database websites are running the same software and Or the same database rather. Um, I didn't say that quite correctly. Anyway, There most of them are running the same stuff and zotero detects that stuff automatically in the extension So you just click add to library in the firefox extension and then poof It's there in zotero locally and being synced with zotero's secure server and then it's just, you know a quick either keystroke command or one click in the libre office document to add that citation and it is so Seamless and powerful and it's all completely free and open source software. Um, and then within Firefox, I use a ton of extensions that are really useful for work It is very straining on the eyes to read student work for example on a computer screen So being able to switch everything to dark mode. I mean just simple things like that That sounds so obvious, but they're just so useful in libre office. I normally am running a A venerable suite of extensions a latin language spell checker the greek extension that I was talking about earlier It's it's just called ancient greek and it's available for open office in libre office One of the things about with free and open source software. We have a ton of really good spell checkers We have a ton of good translation programs Like a lot of people that come from like the proprietary software world I think would be shocked at how well we do in that particular area. No, that's right. So so another yeah A couple of things right there. I use a bunch of command line utility tools. There's one called whitaker's words that's existed for Decades now, but it's a latin word parsing tool and it is so potent that it's unbelievable and uh, You know, you can compile it in any unix like os it's in the a u r You know so on and so on and so normally I I just type latin Enter in my terminal emulator and poof. I can I get this great word parsing where I get the declension I get a short definition and wow does that ever sit? I mean the number of hours saved from doing that Versus opening a big physical lexicon and flipping through the pages is absolutely uncanny I use a greek bible in the terminal So and and latin bible in the terminal luke smith actually Here's here's another one that's going to invoke some comments for this video But just to talk about his repositories that he hosts in github Some a couple of things that he hosts that are really great For community service as a whole are these terminal based Bibles and you just I can type grb for greek bible and then say, you know mark one and poof There's mark one in in the the original new testament greek or in the latin fall gates By the way for people looking thinking about this stuff. Oh, I'd like to do some of this alacrity is actually almost essential to use because You really have to be using a modern Terminal emulator that has full modern unicode built into it from the ground up Or the polytonic greek text, for example, just doesn't show correctly. So it doesn't show in the in the in the is it Uh, the suck suckless terminal. It doesn't show an s t is pretty good with unicode code But it's not alacrity and I can tell you one that's terrible URX vt, which I know is popular is like the worst terminal for unicode That's right. Yeah. Um, yeah, actually I've tried both urx vt and s t and polytonic greek doesn't show correctly in either of them But it shows beautifully and in any any monospace font that has polytonic greek The uh, the hack font has a really nice polytonic greek. Um, um hack nerd whatever And so those those um, and that all shows really nicely in alacrity So, um, that's just an aside, you know for people who are listening thinking Oh, I might like to get into the sum of this You're you're gonna have a really bad time unless you're using the right Software that has full modern unicode built from the ground up because it won't it won't display all of the characters So then you just get annoying boxes or nothing Well, that's that's another thing with the terminal emulator getting back to not just the special characters But also drawing boxes or you know, some of the mathematical stuff people like to do the ligatures You know, if you pick the wrong terminal emulator a lot of that stuff is just not going to render Oh, sure. Um, let's see. What else? Oh, um So i'm not a bible scholar I'm dealing with the history of christianity mostly in my work And then my teaching is mostly in kind of theology as a part of Traditional catholic liberal liberal arts But of course I deal with biblical texts all the time as a part of my work And there's this cute based free and open source tool that runs on the sword project called bible time And bible time it seems like nobody knows about it, but it's available in every unix like os's Repository and it is super powerful and the developers are really responsive to comments to the work in github I've made at least a couple of points of feedback that they've said. Oh, yeah, we love this idea It's nice to hear feedback from somebody who's using this professionally Let us work to improve that You know for you and that's sort of that sort of thing is really great And is something that I encourage people to do as as you're looking to get into the free and open source software world Always give that feedback something with free bsd that i'll just point out that relates to that is I was getting really annoyed with LibreOffice and free bsd because it wasn't compiled with java by default And you have to have java the java flag enabled at compilation of LibreOffice to use just about any extensions But I thought you know what this is a really friendly community And so I went into irc to the free bsd desktop channel and one of the the People who maintains the LibreOffice port for free bsd was right there And I said look for anybody who's going to use a full-size office software suite rather than a lightweight something else extensions are a big part of that because we're probably using it professionally and we probably need the extensions that Let us do our jobs professionally and within a matter of two to three hours He had enabled that flag for all builds of LibreOffice for all of free bsd And that is just really cool to have those community connections And I think a lot of people imagine that some of these software Maintainers dev some of the package maintainers for various Linux distributions or for the bsd operating systems They imagine that these people are not going to be friendly Yeah, but that's usually not the case because I've seen people I've seen people go to like a linux distributions forms or irc chat and say hey, I really depend on this program It's not in your repo and within hours somebody will package it just because that one person has for it You know people do this in their free time too, you know for you know just out of the goodness of their heart That's exactly right. Um funny Another related story to that and just a real testimony to the friendliness of the free bsd Ports maintainers and kind of community overall In the talk that I gave for the free bsd foundation. I said, you know zotero We run it in wine We there is there's a group of us running a free bsd forum thread about how to keep zotero running But I said look we need either zotero or jab ref Which is another open source citation management tool just for the sake of people Doing professional work whether it be in the natural sciences or the physical sciences Or mathematics or history whatever doing this kinds of these kinds of professional You know scholarly work or writing We need one of those two tools to be In the ports in the ports tree and packaged And so I I issued a little challenge a little call to arms And i'm really proud to say that now there are not one but Ports of zotero in the free bsd one that's based on linux later on the linux compatibility later And a layer and one that is a native build and they're both available So you can just do pkg install zotero pkg install librae office and they both work together now But you know that responsiveness um and you know rather than complaining If if you're not a person who's writing the code first here are a few really key rules to live by that Are somewhat prevent professionally inspired by me I guess by just because of the kinds of things that I do but also just being human If you're not writing the code always just say thank you And um and if you don't know how to make the change Find a really respectful targeted way to ask the question for the change to happen So don't just you know go on some tirade in a public facing forum about something Join a private irc room and say you know Hey, mr. So and so I love that you're doing this Can we talk about an idea to make this better for people doing this kind of work? And that's a great way to make positive change Especially when you're not paying these people anything to help you When some cases these people are not asking for payment. They're just there As just a service to the community really it's just In a lot of ways it's altruism, right? They're just trying to Which probably now that I think about it you being Catholic Part of your faith altruism. I think maybe that's probably why you gravitate maybe to free open source software. I don't know Maybe i'm making a connection there that isn't there. No, there is a connection there. Um, it's um, you know inspired inspired By faith and by just the kinds of things that I do that for example all of my educational Video lectures that I release on odyssey. I have under a creative commons license, right and it's you know I want there to be academic freedom and I like the idea of the free exchange of ideas. I like that It's very important to me that we all be working together to it for the work that I do supporting people's education You know that sort of thing and um, yeah, and I should mention that uh, absolutely, right? I had actually met you on odyssey that's how how we Did this interview set this up because of my channel on odyssey and you're on odyssey No, that's exactly right. And um, yeah in in y odyssey. This is a great a great line to go down. Um, So when I was going I'm very deliberate about all of these things I I was going to find um in my new so in my new position I needed I knew I needed to make a lot of video lectures and Lessons and help guide students through really challenging dense Readings and things like that a lot of students where maybe their parents You know english is not their first language and so getting into really dense readings It's just a matter of guiding and I'm really I love doing that It's so rewarding and so much fun But I wanted to pick I needed to pick a platform that was accessible to students and immediately intelligible to them while respecting their software freedom and not putting me at risk of corporate censorship because Being a catholic theologian. What are the kinds of topics that I have to talk about all the time? Well, I have to talk about matters of dogma and doctrine I have to talk immorality and sin and there's a lot of things that could get flagged on youtube I have to use words like fornication right damnation And those are all words that are not going to be received well In a corporate platform like youtube just because of the nature of what it is So odyssey I think that it gets misunderstood as like oh, this is a place where you know paranoid persons or hate mongers go It's it's all conspiracy theorists. Yeah But but actually why am I there? I am there because I could not think of a better way to protect my own academic freedom And my students software freedom simultaneously than being in odyssey. And so is it perfect? It's absolutely not perfect. The whole cryptocurrency thing there is It's it's goofy to be frank, and I'm really glad that my students just ignore that and and I What they've moved away from it recently because now you can actually take donations and us dollars and I think that's going to become the preferred See on the platform now that that's available Right. See that's that's not why I'm there. I'm not looking to get paid extra by being there But yeah, just the idea of having um, it was built from the ground up with with with Freedom in mind is just very potent. Well as people imagine that like there's nobody Moderating odyssey if there's nobody in charge. That's not the case Certainly they have to take down anyone involved in any illegal activity because it is a u.s. Based company. They have to follow us law but unlike youtube They don't have a bot that goes around That's triggered by certain words or images and thumbnails And that's the problem with youtube is it's all automated and 90 percent more than 90 percent of the stuff that gets flagged in youtube Did not need to get flagged. It was false positives essentially and that's what frustrates creators Because you put in so many hours of work in something and then youtube just deletes it or sometimes they delete entire channels Band people kick them off the platform for no reason And that's really that's right. That's right. I come to think of it Maybe I shouldn't have used those words because this video is also going to be on youtube Well, it'll be all right thankfully I'm to a size where they're not as quick to jump to Where I they'll still demonetize a video but I can appeal And they it always gets reversed. I've never actually had anything that was actually striked on my channel It was striked for a legit reason and thankfully I've been able to get all of them reversed at some time or another one of them It took me almost two years though for them to finally monetize one of my videos on q-tile Because something triggered the algorithm on a video where I was scripting in python I don't know what I said while I was you know writing the python code, but something triggered Oh, you know those tiling window managers. They're so they're you're hacking so so therefore you're doing something You know mischievous. Well, I think that's great that you're on a free and open source A platform like the library protocol odd is odyssey being a front end to library So when I say you're a free and open source zealot and a diehard I mean that's that's really the case because you're not on youtube at all. Are you I well, I mean I have a google account and right well everybody has to everybody has a youtube account I guess technically but but so I so I you know I I am on like I subscribe to some channels there, but generally I don't I won't comment there or anything like that and And also here's you know youtube has just become less user friendly over the last couple of years I've seen the comments. Yeah, if you're not using uBlock origin You know or another effective ad blocking tool some videos are unwatchable because the problem with youtube too is It's a social network. There's a social aspect to it with the community and the comments but when youtube removes so many comments because of their algorithms and Again, more than 90 of the comments they remove or just false flags that For whatever reason google decided to remove these people's comments for for no reason really benign comments And that frustrates people that are trying to have a conversation when you can't have a conversation because the comment You took time five minutes to write this paragraph and then it just instantly gets deleted You know that that's that causes people to explore alternatives No, that's right And um, yeah, and you know, maybe somebody watching this video in five years will be in a situation in which there are better Alternatives or better places to host video content, but for right now. I just decided on odyssey Well, Cory one last thing I wanted to talk about with you for free and open source software Getting away from the software you use for work and you know for business essentially right to earn a paycheck What about software for fun for an open source gaming? Oh, what a great question. Um, so obviously zero ad is the best free and open source Computer game and maybe the best computer game that exists So I I love zero you have a point with that one. Yeah, I think it's one of the best I think it's the best real-time strategy game out there. Oh, it's so fun. Yeah, it's you know, it's built So I don't get much time for to do that sort of thing I'm just so busy with work and uh, my wife and children and uh, so on but um The historian though you being you know really as a theology professor you deal a lot with history Yeah, you probably love the historical aspect of all the various historical figures in the game all the heroes, of course are Real people that you know led these civilizations Yeah, the the the makers of zero ad Something that I love about the project and and one reason why I really say yeah, it's It's definitely the best free and open source game out there right now Although there are several that are really great and fun to play I mean there are flight simulators and space simulators and all these things, but I mean One thing that's so great about it is there they have a really fanatical attention to detail and I love that I mean there's you it couldn't be like that with a proprietary project because it You you really just have to have a community-based project where a bunch of eyes are looking over it And it's people doing it for the love of the thing for for there to be such fanatical attention to detail I mean in the forums people are citing Scholarly publications about ancient civilizations as the reasons for You know making certain decisions about what their units ought to look like or what characteristics they ought to have The the and the greek civilizations There's three of them in the game that the fact that the characters speak greek Would you click on them greek the romans? They speak latin that and and the pronunciation for those things is it's all of it is actually Exquisitely done as in I am I don't know Um who the people are behind that I I I want to look into that But i'm certain that they've that they've had professional consultations that I think this is a situation where being open source Helps them because they can source all of this pronunciation from people all over the world that would be much more Familiar, you know for example the correct Greek and latin and persian, you know all these languages that are in the game That a proprietary company would actually have to go probably pay people to do where You could just put out a call to the community and they'll take care of translation for you Yeah, and it's not just that I mean it's It's it's restored or the what we typically call restored ancient pronunciation So it's even at the level of we want it to sound as close as we can approximate to how the people sounded In you know in antiquity speaking these languages and oh my goodness. It's just so much fun It's so fun. In fact that um, I I've been asked to teach a greek class this spring And I'm planning on using zero ad if my dean is listening to this video lecture I'm using going to use zero ad as a highly effective educational resource So that's for my boss but um, but but you know, there's team building in there The um, and the greek is grades and and it's just yeah, it's a lot of fun and you can run it on anything It's available in every, you know, it's available as an app image. So you can run it on any gnu linux distribution It's in the free bsd repositories open bsd net bsd mac os microsoft windows if basically if a person is running a computer that has a reasonably Recent graphics card or an integrated one from a recent processor the person can run Can run zero ad and that makes it a lot of fun too because you can like, you know, I can play, you know Against like my brother and I will play against each other and You know, totally different. I can host it on a think pat for heaven's sake, you know, that's that's something Well, I love zero ad so that's great to hear and I again, I think but yeah, if you're a fan of history You'd love the game. I think everyone should check out that game. Yeah, and you have my professional imprimatur that it's That it's that it's um that wow have they ever done a good job with the attention to detail I mean, it's a game so fun is first but those other the attention to detail with with making the heroes and And all their characteristics that they have and the architecture and everything is just It's really good One minor gripe I have with the game is the name of the game zero ad People often make the mistake of thinking there is actually a year zero ad Because I even back in my school days, you know, people would talk about the year zero or zero ad Or and it's like no because one bc the year after that was one ad. There was no zero. There's no year zero Right, which is why they named it that was to be clever because it's imagined time that never existed Just you know, just like for example, you know, it was you know, it was never the case that Most of these civilizations were at war with each other the romans the romans were never at war with you know with with You know like the egyptian civilizations like you have right and the chinese and the indian civilizations and yeah But um, but it's what you can do the spartans and the persians and that makes sense Right, right. So you can relive the movie 300 We are sparta. So, uh, oh, it's so much fun. Um, you know One other thing that I just like to point out. I know that we're winding down here Is that while I tend to stand alone right now in the world of catholic theology It's not as though The things that i'm advocating and the reasons for them are entirely without precedent I mean at the vatican archives There are 80 000 manuscripts that are being digitized. This is a multi decade long process And the file type that's been chosen for that is the open imaging file type that nasa produces And why well, it's really high quality And it's an open standard that will never go obsolete So so if you're going to go through this extremely expensive extremely technically Um, precise process that takes years and years and years with a whole team of scholars and so on Well, of course, you need to have it be an open standard Now you can't use a proprietary format not for something that you want to Be able to be Opened centuries from now. Yes, and if you choose proprietary software, it's going to be obsolete within a few years The company that made that proprietary format could be bankrupt within your lifetime, right? So it's not like it's going to be around 500 Thousand two thousand years from now those documents will be lost if you depend Yeah, that's that's exactly right and and it's supposed to be the end goal for that project is to have basically all of the Vatican archives available For the whole world In a digitized format and of course they really have to be largely locked down in their physical form Because that's the only way to protect many of them, right? But once you've digitized them Then anybody can look at them in really high quality graphical images from anywhere in the world with a high speed internet connection And you know that project is under is under work and there are other projects like that where it's well, of course It's it's just using open standards because the open standards are what are have the best odds of security They're one of the best odds of Long-term usability. They're you know, um so on and so on the list just goes on of the benefits of you have Employing open source software never dies. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It'll still be yeah So those images the idea is that somebody could could write a tool to use them on whatever, you know Quantum computers were using you know, 250 years from now So right which is really beautiful to think about building that for posterity now Well, that's a good point. Well, Cory, would you like to disclose any contact information? Where can people follow you online? You got any social media accounts? Obviously you have an odyssey channel Sure. So if anyone is is interested in watching videos from from a free software geek But they're instructional videos about catholic theology and history and liberal arts. You can of course go to my odyssey page That's my channel is just cory stefan phd But but the website which is where I blog and I blog about using free software and I kind of keep everything consolidated there Is just cory stefan.com c o r e y s t e p h a n dot com I like to keep things nice and simple. Um, I don't like to manage a huge online presence. I like to manage one tidy Uh, little professional presence. And so that's what it is. Um, and so that's the best place to go I'll be sure to link to those in the video description for this video as well Sure. And oh and if somebody wants to write to me to ask questions about anything I have a little contact form right there and um, unlike a lot of Private website contact forms. I keep that up to date and I always respond immediately when somebody writes to me there So that's the best way to get in touch with me. Great. Well, Cory Thank you for talking with me today and thank you for all your hard work in promoting free and open source software And I especially appreciate that you're fighting for your students as far as privacy rights and in our school systems and university So I want to thank you for that Well, thank you so much and thank you for the work that you do. Um, I always I know that some people might think oh, you know, Derek Taylor of distro tube He has just this really cool job where he just gets to sit around and talk about Canoe Linux and free software all day and it is a really cool job And he does there's an there's a degree to which that's what's happening But I always Describe you first as an educational content creator as in you are teaching people how to be Really empowered to take ownership of our digital lives and wow is I mean thinking about it in those terms It's it's so much more than just a really cool job. It's also a really important job I appreciate that Cory. Well, thanks for hanging out with me and I hope you have a great rest of your day Yeah, see you too. Take care. Thanks. Peace