 All right, so we don't have a lot of time, so we're gonna try to keep things quick. And most of all, I want you all to meet some of the amazing people we have in this group and use the next four days to get to know them during the breaks, during their sessions, the evening event, or the party tomorrow night. These are really awesome people. They have lots of really valuable experience. And most of all, they can all help us think about the future of FOSS, which is why we're all here this week. So I wanna go in and just kind of go through person by person, get the photos up on the screen here so you know who these people are and you seek them out over the next few days. First, a little bit about myself. I work for the United Nations Foundation, as mentioned. I work for an organization there called the Digital Impact Alliance and run a program called the Dial Open Source Center. And our job is to support open source projects and free software projects that help make the world better by working on humanitarian issues, international development and peace building. So we're all about trying to amplify the work that so many open source maintainers are already doing. And, as I said on our panel, we have Davide, who you just heard from, from UNESCO. Michael Ducey, raise your hand. Michael is, sorry, my notes are out of whack here. The director of Community and Evangelism for Cystic. He is a great expert on how to leverage open source solutions and implement DevOps and organizations. He's got a master's degree in computer science and an MBA. Jonas, Jonas, raise your hand. Jonas works at Daimler and is responsible for blockchain and other distributed ledger technology there. He's got also a diploma in computer science from the University of Bonn and has studied metadata, data quality and neural networks. Really awesome person and he also works on hyperledger projects. So if you're interested in distributed ledgers, talk to him this week. And then Marianne, there we go. Hello. He is the head system architect at an organization called SiteGround.com. He's been working with Linux for almost 20 years. So that's quite a long time and has seen a lot of change over the years. A huge fan of FOS and is a co-organizer of Bulgaria's largest FOS conference called OpenFest. And in his spare time, as he doesn't do enough, he also teaches Linux system administration to people as well as network security. And then Anjali, can you raise your hand? Anjali is a student at the Book at View Primary School right here in Singapore. She has her works showcased at Maker Faire in the past. She's working on a project called ScienceR, which is really awesome and it uses artificial intelligence for science education. She's got a ton of awards, too many to name. Most recently at the National University of Singapore, they had a Hack and Roll Freshman Award, has won second place in a few different hackathons like Idea Shack and Code Extreme Apps. She has interned at Microsoft doing AI hacking and her skills include hardware development, public speaking and programming. So let's talk a little bit about the future. We have, we've all gathered here to kind of talk about what the role of open source is. And I wanna start with the past a little bit. And I'm gonna ask everyone, I'm gonna ask a few key people, each of these three questions. So we're gonna talk about the past, kind of the current and some of the current issues, then we're gonna go into the future. So I'll call you out by name and try to limit your responses to no more than two or three minutes each so we can kind of keep things moving and get out of here on time. So the first question I'm gonna pitch to both Michael and Marian maybe to start. And for those of you who are here this morning, you heard some talk about over the past few months, how there's been some noise and coverage in the news about companies and different organizations. And looks like we need the yellow microphone. Good. Okay. So we've heard some news about organizations and companies really concerned that maybe this open source thing isn't great for keeping their revenue coming, keeping money coming into the company over the long term. And they've been struggling with what they call sustainable business models. And there's been some gripes that the current open source licenses that are out there have actually are broken, according to some people. And we need to do some reinvention of what open source means for some of these companies. So I wanna ask the two of you and others if you feel strongly about this, if you feel that FOS is indeed broken right now and needs some reinvention or do we just need maybe some more creative thinking from other areas about how to sustain financial resources for organizations, maybe new business models for people who use free and open source software to innovate technology. And then finally, do you think that there's any value in continuing to have these agreed standard definitions like what the open source initiative has for the open source definition saying an open source license must be all of these different things. Do you think that's still valuable as we look toward the future or do we need to think differently about what open source means and how people can create business opportunities with open source? Any thoughts? That was a lot, I might need to have to repeat half of that. So going to the current issue of what we've seen with Redis and then recently with Elastic and then changing licensing models and trying to come up with licensing models that kind of protect their revenue. I think part of the problem is is the idea of creating a sustainable company has changed greatly than what it used to be. If you told someone if they were going to open a small business that was a 40, $50 million small business and that was your yearly revenues, you would be an extremely successful small business owner, right? Or even medium sized business owner. And now that's no longer good enough and that's mainly no longer good enough because as soon as you start taking venture capital, you're no longer beholden to your users, you're beholden to your investors and that changes the relationship. And that's why you see companies that are going through these licensing changes to kind of protect their bottom line and protect their revenue. Open source business models are hard and I don't feel like anyone's really gotten it right except Red Hat and they did for a really, really long time of taking that support model but should we forget what Red Hat went through 12 years ago when they closed all their binaries off and made all the binaries be something that you had to purchase. And the open source communities found ways around it with projects such as Fedora and Centos. And now they've kind of pulled those projects back in as being a core component. So I think we do need to re-look at what those business models are. I probably don't have an answer off the top of my head of one that works but I also, I think we just maybe need to calm down and not everyone needs to have a billion dollar acquisition and can we just build sustainable companies that are sustainable companies and not the constant Silicon Valley unicorn? I would add that without open source licensing that we currently have, we wouldn't have the service companies that we currently have because every service company is sitting on top of a lot of open source software and without that you wouldn't have anything. You wouldn't have the clouds and it's not possible to actually go there without all this software. No single company, whatever the size of it is, cannot build all this tech and support all this tech without the open source community. Yeah, and I think the other thing I would add to that is let's not sit here and pretend that they're all altruistic and they're motives behind why they're starting to contribute to these open source projects. They've changed their business models to where they need to drive compute consumption and that's how they make money and therefore creating healthy projects that can drive compute consumption is where their business model is. Yeah, essentially. And I want to add for the licensing and the standards. Without standards, we wouldn't have the internet. Internet started with different standards and when internet became the standard, then internet was actually built and start growing in such a space that we see now. Without good standards that are one single standard or agreed upon between different companies, we wouldn't be able to communicate easily. And Jonas, I think you had an idea. Yeah, I think we have to look at many of those areas. First of all, the sentence from my IETF is one of my favorite ones. We don't believe in kings and queens and presidents. We only believe in running, rough consensus and running code, yeah. So, and I think that's also how the standards of the futures are being made. And you can see that if you look at licenses, what kind of licenses are most used on GitHub, at least? That's MIT. And it's good to have a standards organization that says, yeah, this is a free and open source software license, like the OC license. And that's very important because if you are disputing, you always want to look somewhere where you have some standard. Furthermore, if you think about how to do the open source world, how does it change and are like MongoDB and so on aggressive with the licensees and stuff like this, yeah. Let's not forget that a lot of the business, which is currently running, has not been made real contact with the open source world. So this is maybe a lead problem here, but people discussing that and understanding that. I work for a company that has been transforming materials to cars, yeah, and selling them, luxury cars, I see this. And nowadays, in the older times, the car was just, it was just hardware. Nowadays, it's hardware and software and you cannot build anything without the right software on it, yeah, like so. And the question is with Daimler and FOS, yeah, so what are we doing with it? And I think there will be a lot of companies that go through the same process as we are currently meaning opening up, yeah, to save yourselves, yeah, because those Googles and everything, they were born in that space, yeah. Microsoft made a quite nice transition to that, yeah, in some extent, yeah. But a lot of businesses have, they have no clue about software, yeah, and so no clue about open software. And that is, I think, a step which is are going to follow and the question is, what's your business model behind that? And the business model transforming something into something else will always be there, yeah. It's a very abstract, but usually, I mean, just packaging water, yeah, it's a business, yeah. Going to Starbucks and getting a coffee, you can do it at home, it's a business, yeah. So this kind of business will always be there and the question is how do they transform also with software or to software? You're reminding me of a challenge that people in my world, which are all nonprofits and government organizations, struggle with what can we learn from the other people who are a few steps ahead of us, who've struggled with some of these problems already. So what I'm hearing from all of you are a few things that are key, I think, is, A, we've still got to work together and collaborate with each other and learn from each other, but to do so with a spirit of openness and authenticity and know that people may have other motives besides just collaboration. And I'm reminded that there are some really good organizations out there that I think we need to invest our energy in and supporting or creating more of them. There's an organization called the To Do Group, which is for companies that have focused on open source technology where those business people can learn from each other and share ideas. As well as the open source initiative, I'm hearing several of you say that it's still important for there to be a community group that defines what does it mean for us to share our technology with each other, be those open source licenses or other things. So we should try to find those types of organizations and embrace them, join them if they have membership organizations and be a part of them when we can. So thank you, I appreciate that. I want to take us now to the near term future, I think is the best way to say it. In your comments about automobiles, reminds me that we've seen the lines between hardware and software get more blurry in the last several years. Now we've got open source software specifically and everything from cars to obviously our smartphones and our kitchen appliances now very commonly, but more recently and just in the last couple of years we've started to hear people voice more and more concern about how the data that these gadgets are collecting, how is that information used? And maybe it's great to get something really useful out of it to begin with, but what happens when more and more of your data becomes stored in the cloud and with these organizations. And so we've heard a lot of calls that something needs to be done about those risks. And just in the past week, we've saw some tweets about the SUSE AI smart speakers. I think we're going to be hearing about those over the next couple of days where the FOSAsia community has actually built software and hardware to kind of compete with this and offer an alternative model. So maybe I'll ask both Davide and Jonas at least to think about this and talk a little bit about how organizations that are building devices or services that just regular people use, how can those organizations and people who are building those things, how can they earn the trust of the people using the technology and help them understand that their data will be used responsibly over the long term? And does open source software have a role to play in that trust? Not only open source software, but maybe open data licenses and other issues. Any thoughts, Jonas, since you have the mic to start with? Oh, yeah, certainly. I mean, this is a hard, big problem to solve and it's necessary to solve it. I mean, in Europe at least, we have now the GDPR, so General Data Protection Laws, that make it, let's say it easier for people like me who are conscious about what kind of data they produce to inquiry to the companies how the data is used there. And you have the right to be forgotten and a lot of other things as well there. So at least that is one part. Legislation is a very important part of how to deal with data. The consciousness of that you're producing data all day and that you're consuming data all day is very important and that is something which is a, I don't think a problem for anybody who's here, but a problem for the general user often. They're certainly surprised that, wow, this data is there. Wow, unbelievable, yeah. And then secondly or thirdly, you need this kind of data also for different kinds of business models and it's not always bad to have this data. But how can we use it? And I think you already made a point there. Open Source plays a very important role and maybe also open data access and in the GDPR there is the line that you have to make it exportable to some format. And that already helps if you know what kind of data do you have in there. And the next question is, sure, we have to improve on that. The open source also gives you benefits in terms of that because if you know how your data is processed that can give you some trust. But still, if you don't store the data right, on the right place, it can be misused. And if it's once out, it's away. So the topic we saw before with the security is also very important. So there are multiple steps that you have to be conscious, secure the data and be open with it, but not allow to go wild. Davide, I wonder if you can respond to that with a different lens. And that is how technology is often used in the developing world or countries where they may have people coming in with technology from outside and how they perceive the notion, if they do at all, of this idea of owning their own data and what do people struggle with on both sides of that equation, but the people using the technology and the people building it, what do they need to consider in terms of the people who are ultimately using the tech? Ooh, so, easy question. Now, well, I think in general, of course, I mean, observation is that when technology is exported, particularly in developing countries, that's not badly perceived. I mean, it's rather perceived as an opportunity to jump for business, for job creation, and things like that. But at the same time, the process that was put in place in Europe before the GDPR is incredibly long. And I think that this is the only way that you may really respond to these kind of needs. And it's very complicated because it's typically the response of the policy which happens when, a bit later, when things are already happened. So, I think there's a lot to learn also from countries that are not, they don't have these kind of policies to learn about the process that's been going on. Because then when the policy moves, it may be very, like an elephant in the room in the sense that, for example, we saw, as reaching to the open source, we saw the debate on the reform of copyright, which was on the copyright for authors like books or other things. And then without even thinking about that, this was actually hitting very hard, actually, still in Europe, sorry, hitting very hard the softer world because the wording that was used, denoted a complete, I mean, non-awareness about the software as a part of the creation process, as a part of the industry process, as a part of the element of the equation. And this is what is very, very complicated. So I think the response from organizations and from also the community is really to push for awareness raising. It's a long process, but it's only through this that you may hope that the policy process really takes time, takes place in a reasonable time and without creating problems more than so with them. Thank you, and Anjali, you've got the microphone. I'm wondering, especially as a younger person, if you have any ideas about all of this information that we're sharing through social media, everything else, do you have thoughts on what it means to trust others with our data over time? Yes, I do. I don't use social media much, but I've heard of cases when there's data stealing on social media, and I think it'll be good if the social media platforms can be made open source so people can look into the back end and see the data. Apart from social media, there are cases with AI, for example. I've been working on a lot of AI projects. There's Sensor, and there's this one called Mercury, which is a sign language translator. And for that, it needs to take images of the user, sometimes of your face. And with that, there's a problem for the user because they wanna see where their data is going, whether we are using it for something that's not really great. So I think Mercury is also open source now, and I think it's a good idea. Good, so quickly recapping that I'm hearing, again, the call for working with each other to learn from what other people have experienced. Sometimes people are a few steps ahead, and we can learn from that and adapt it. And again, for transparency, ultimately, being so critical, and not even if we don't take the incentive to go and look at the code, Linus's law of many eyes make all bugs shallow. The more people who are able to see things, the stronger the stuff that we build can be over time. So thank you. I wanna take the last question here, both to Anjali and to Davide, to think more about the future now. But to talk about the future, I wanna say just a quick word about the past. So if you look at the history of technology, as we think about it at the UN Foundation, there's kind of three phases when you start using technology to solve a problem. The first phase is where you have someone from the outside kind of dropping something in front of you and saying, here, use this. We think this is gonna be great for you. Enjoy. And then the second phase, we moved to this era where we had what's often called user-centered design, where you design for specific use cases, you try to understand how people want to use the technology, and you try to bring them in and ask questions about how they're doing, using that technology. And then the third phase, which is more where we are now, is you actually build platforms for people to create their own solutions to problems. And this is now where we get into the age of social networking. You have these platforms where people can do their own coding and deploy their own apps very easily, the GitHub's and the Git Labs of the world. So question for both of you. As we look into the future now, do you think it's more likely that people will stick with this kind of structured role where you have something like Facebook or Twitter and you have to create within their boundaries, or Instagram even, where you're welcome to create and express yourself to the world, but you do it within their rules, right? Or do you think what the future really holds are more in tools like GitLab or Glitch.com if you know about that, or other types of online maker spaces where people can actually create their own solutions to problems? Do you think one will prevail over the other one will be more popular in the long term? And then do you think that open source has a role to play in either one of those, whichever you think is more likely? So Anjaliya, we'll start with you. Oh wow, that's a big load of questions. So your first point, the three stages where somebody jobs a product in front of you, where the developer makes a user-centered product, and where there's a platform for users to create their own product. The first stage, I think that's not exactly false products so-called. That's usually something like PowerPoint. Somebody jobs a product in front of your space and says, use this. But for false products, the main reason why people use them is because they're accessible. Developers put them up all over the pages that get as many outreach as possible, and people use it. And the third stage. There's a platform like that. It's where I started coding, and it's called Scratch. And it uses block-based programming language. And a lot of young kids start by using Scratch. And in Scratch, it follows the... Apple has this analogy for music. It goes, create, rip, mix, burn. I think you'd have heard about it. So Scratch kind of follows this analogy. It allows users, kids like us, to create our own project. It allows us to rip off code from other people's projects. In the big world, this would be called an API. Yeah, it allows us to rip off code and use it in our own project. It allows us to remix someone else's project. And it allows us to burn our project or to publish it to the Scratch community. So would all these stages be put together? That's your question. To each stages. Well, yes and no. But second two stages. These are false products. They'll definitely be put together. But the first stage, I'm not so sure about that. Maybe, maybe not. I think, you know, the... Well, I think, first of all, let's start from the end of your question. Because also, we use Scratch a lot in all these exercises we do. But the purpose is not to write software in a closed environment. I think this is something which I really personally, it's right to fight with all means because that's not the purpose. The purpose is to learn. And you're just not allowed to... The female analysis of learning how to fish so that, you know, you can eat every day. So the thing is really this. So working on a closed environment should not be taught as a limitation because of course you may have to learn in a closed environment because you want to learn on Scratch, you want to learn on other tools, et cetera. On Facebook apps, but at the end of the day, if you learn the right way, then you're free. Because actually you learn the process, you learn that you can do it. And this is what programming should be. And this is where, you know, I was talking about being creative and being... So I think we should look at positively, of course. There are many negative signs as well because of course the industry is maybe pushing towards these streams of closed environments because that's what the business. That's normal. But at the same time, we should try to continue to push the other way around. And the community of developers is big, is growing. There are many developers all over the world. And so, I mean, things cannot be just streamed. I don't believe that it will happen like this. I think at some point, some other group will emerge with a new thing and things will not be confined in that. So, and I think, you know, she's completely right. I think she knows it already. Can I pitch in here? Yeah, sure. One of the biggest users of software is governments. And what I see is that governments will change and every software that they commission should become open source. I don't know if you guys know, but Bulgaria is the only country in the world that has a wall that says every software that is written with public money should be open source software. And this may be holding the future of open source because now as programmers, we would not only program for ourselves for our first projects, but we could actually influence how our governments work or how the work is actually done inside our governments. So, FOSS in this way can benefit everyone. If your money, your taxpayer money are going to private companies that are building FOSS projects, we would get even better FOSS projects. Yeah, agreed. And for those of you either watching online or have a laptop, go to publiccode.eu. The Free Software Foundation in Europe has a great campaign about this very topic and tells you why that's so important. So, we're almost out of time and I wish I could stay here all night with all of you because you're so awesome and inspiring. But what we're gonna do to kind of advertise what your interests are and we have three more days of the conference after today. But I'm gonna go around just straight down the line and I wanna ask you all the same question and here's the deal. The people out in the audience here and the people watching at home on YouTube are super smart. They are the people who are gonna be building the future. For many of us, we're kind of coasting down but we have a lot of young people here and so I guess the question for each of you is what one piece of advice would you give the people watching us discuss here or would you ask them maybe a question to kind of spark some innovation in their minds to result ultimately in the future that we all want to see. I think we all have a vision of the future we'd like and we all have an idea of how FOSC can be involved in that. So pose a question or offer some advice to the people out there and one or two sentences maximum. Davide? Win the prize for the incredible question. Most of the questions. Advice I think I already spoke about. That's my advice, believe in it and use of openness the right way and the beneficial will be better. The question is are you ready to make it? So basically what are you going to make it as an individual to participate in the community? So that's a bit my question. I would say that at most FOSC conferences that I visit, I speak with a lot of people that have their own projects, home projects for the car or something but they don't share these projects. So push those projects at a license that you like an open source license and push them share it and share these projects with everyone. And this way anyone else that is working on a project similar to yours can collaborate with you or you could actually help them, their project to start working actually. You know, we talk a lot at least in the U.S. tech community in Europe to an extent as well. I'm not sure too much in Asia. But we talk a lot about diversity and inclusion and other ideas like that. And I think the next generation is getting exposed to it in a much different conversation than I did. But I think one of the more powerful things that I think about like my journey through open source is that when you're interacting with somebody online and on a mailing list, you have no idea about their socioeconomic status, the color of their skin, where they're from, what languages they speak, well maybe. But all those things kind of get erased and we're just two people having a conversation about trying to solve a software problem. And I like that idea and I think as the next generation comes up, these problems are going to get better, but we always need to be remembered of like when it comes down to technology, we're all just same humans trying to solve the same problems and keeping that in mind to work together and make the world a more welcoming place is the advice I would give. So maybe my advice, but that's just my personal thinking, it's what I would really like to see is education, more education. And I mean that in both ways, meaning that not only teach kids how to code and use scratch and be a programmer or advance in open source, but also teach society something about that topic from below to the up because I have several concerns with also legislation currently running in Europe or society status for the one thing. I like your analogy, but in the end technology might be one of the problems over in there and I have, let's say, how can we retain the force and the freedom, not free as free beer, but the freedom, how can we retain the freedom because in several countries, those kind of people, how they rule, at least to my personal belief are concerning and so I would like to see more of those greatest and so on on other countries to step in for something that they like and once you have hit the world of working then it might get difficult because you're so indulged in other topics and so I would, that's my advice or my wish. Since I'm kind of the future, this advice applies to me as well, not just you. So it goes like this, follow the ABC, aspire to dream, dream big, dream until your head bursts and all your thoughts flow out of your head. B stands for be curious, sorry I got the wrong one, be brave, go off, try every single idea, don't hesitate at all and C stands for be curious, just think, every day when you come home, ask yourself, what have I learned today, what did I learn new and why is this like this, can it change, can I change it? Great, thank you all and Anjali, you just reminded me of a quote that we like to talk about at my office at the UN Foundation. There's a person from World War II named Anne Frank from the Netherlands and one of the things that she wrote in her famous diary was how wonderful it is to know that nobody need wait a single moment to make the world a better place and it's all about getting up and going out there. We've built a lot of the tools that can start to make that happen but we need to stand together and what we've heard through all these comments is we're stronger when we work together so find people who align with your values and your vision about the future and go for it. So thank you all for your comments today. I don't know, do we have any time for questions? Are we at a cut off time? Okay, so two questions. Anyone from the audience? Do we have a... Okay, so I guess just stand up and be loud and I'll repeat the question. Yeah, we're really short on time. I guess maybe I'll say this and for those of you on the video. Davide, can you speak a little bit more about the... where we see the gender gap between maybe the education system and the actual... the industry or the people actually doing technology work? Yes, true. Unfortunately, the presentation was a bit too quick. So, I mean, of course, yeah, there is a gender gap. This is unfortunately in general worldwide true. Now, there are countries where there is... sometimes proportions are reversed but this is not in many places, unfortunately. Now, therefore, the fact that of course people make choices for no studies or things or for the future, that's true but this is also true that there is a society around which is consciously or not consciously pushing towards people towards a certain kind of directions. So, we have a lot of biases in people's lives from very young age that may influence choices later on. So, in general, unfortunately and there are not many data actually on the software development, it's really low. Something like 20% of women in the let's say worldwide in this... the latest data which are very available for the free open source, but this was a few years ago was as low as 2 or 3%. Now, this was maybe a few years ago, maybe now it's certainly improved, I guess, I hope. But there is in many places a blatant gender gap in the software communities, maybe not here in this country and also the fact that one of the remedy which is taken is many times to do things only for girls so there are many projects that also we do which is not probably the best approach is to develop projects that are exactly bringing more girls into the computer science let's say job and this is maybe a solution in some places because actually otherwise the girls would not do it if men would be let's say part of it but at the same time it's maybe not really closing the gap because you are creating more divide in the sense that what would be best is to have a full inclusion and the people work together all of us so I don't think that I can be very exhaustive we can talk later about this but certainly yes there is a gender gap second the choice is not we cannot really say that the choices are really autonomous because we are guided into discovering things through our lives and in some places there are more opportunities than others so when there is counseling of teachers like you are very important in pushing people towards making some choices so I'm happy to hear that in this case this is not a problem I'm helping organizing girls' events in Bulgaria and what I hear from the girls is that diet environment is a hostile environment for girls it's like you are making a minor from a girl very intensive heavy job that is primary men are working there in IT you have the same thing even though it's not so heavy as a job but the community actually the men inside the IT are pushing out the girls they are not including them this is a big issue because yeah she may have finished the PhD in computer science they still won't believe that this code would work and this is something that we don't need to teach only the women we actually have to teach the men that this code works no matter what's the gender of the person if it works it works you don't care what who wrote it what wrote it sorry go ahead Michael I just add one thing in industry and you see a perfect 50-50 split between male and female it doesn't necessarily mean that they are equal jobs and that they are paid the same so there can still be a gender gap even if you have a perfect 50-50 split between male and female the women are still paid 75 cents on the dollar compared to men in lots of cases I would just close with another quote that we like to use and that's nobody has the right to sit down and feel hopeless because there's too much work to do not only technical problems but human problems as well and so we all have a lot to do so the young people among us don't have to suffer just bad treatment we're all peers, we're all smart and we need every single brain that we can muster to build the future that we want to see so again, thank you all please talk to all these people over the next few days and give them a round of applause