 So, I'm going to talk about passing the torch. If you want, I have Twitter. I just signed up for Mastodon today. I have no friends there yet. It could be my first friend on Mastodon, if you want. And I'm on IRC, and I work at the Open Invention Network. I also like cats, so we can get rid of the obliterate cat picture right away. This is Martin. He's a rescue kitty. And I spent a lot of time thinking about movements and communities. I have been a community organizer. I really like legal issues around free software. I like karaoke. I like cooking. I like making events happen. I really appreciate all of the work that goes through an event like this. That's all onto your run, which is awesome. I also want free software to win. So, when I think about communities and I think about how you build movement, I look at it now with an eye of how can we make sure that free software wins, not just for our generation, but for the next generation. And the one after that, if we don't end up in some kind of giant singularity, or maybe especially if we end up in some kind of giant singularity situation, the one after that. So, I think about what is already winning. And I look at some of the institutions that have been around for a really long time, like universities and schools, and especially private schools. They do this great job of passing on traditions like ridiculous logos. They have special songs, maybe some of this sounds familiar. And I think one of the things that's key there is that they have like sort of an intergenerational role model kind of situation. Fraternal organizations, even secret ones that I probably won't even know about, always do a great job of building the next generation. So, they have benchmarks at which you get more access and more responsibility. And it's very systematized. Some things maybe not so great, but they've been around for a really long time. So, keeping a really tight cohesion about what they're passing along to the next generation is really key. And then another group that does this is churches. And I think, you know, they have regular meetings. They talk more about values than return on investment. And even if people don't come to church anymore, they take that set of values out into the world with them. So, I'm not saying we should take these passes like, you know, uncritically, like perhaps, you know, we won't take the dangerous hazing rituals or the inquisitions. And we don't even have to get up early on Sundays. But we might look at some of the ways that they built these generational inter, you know, communities that last for hundreds of years. So, in thinking about this talk, I started pondering like the torch and what a torch is and why that is such a, like, a potent metaphor. And then a heart that's a stick, right? And sticks are great. Sticks are like our first tools, right? We use them to bump food off trees. We use them to spearfishes, although maybe you need a little... Not everyone is good at spearfishing the first time they try it, I think, so you might need a mentor there. But it's one of our first tools. And then we add fire. And fire is the meaning of technology for us. People are familiar with the Greek myth of Prometheus, right? So, he's this guy, Greek mythology. He brought a fire down from Mount Olympus and gave it to us slowly human beings, right? And, you know, depending on the way you read it, like, there's different versions of the story. And, like, some of them you can read have, like, a very authoritarian, like, pro-Olympian stance and use the word stealing when they talk about what Prometheus did. I would like to think of it more as liberating. Maybe, like, the way that we did with Unix. It decided, like, you know what, that is a human endeavor. That doesn't belong to just one company or one handful of companies. That belongs to the people. So, I'm, you know, pro-Prometheus, I guess. So, power. And power is great. Things that fire provides is the ability to grow larger brains. So you have, like, a kind of a resource allocation situation happening in your body. Whereas, if you have to constantly break down raw foods and, like, grainy stuff and constantly spend a lot of your time getting food, your brain doesn't get so large. Once you can cook food, which makes it more efficient to process for your body or brain stuff bigger. So, we don't only owe, like, fire to the start of technology. It's our ability to even create it. And then, of course, you know, we started building all these steam turbines and things. I'm told this one was probably, like, a novelty. I'm not sure. Like, I'm trying to imagine, like, sort of the first century A.D. house where it was like, ooh, let me show you my Alilo file. Like, this thing, it turns around and it blows steam in your face. It's a fantastic thing. You know, it eventually became, like, more than a novelty. We built all kinds of great stuff with steam turbines and locomotives and boats and things that would take us all over the place. So that's, you know, so fire is exciting. Be dangerous, right? Anything that's super powerful is, of course, also going to be dangerous. And one of the things we don't really notice anymore is that a lot of our, like, modern systems are arranged around fire safety. So this is a picture of a hydrant in Baltimore. There was a fire there in 1904. And it, like, got way out of control. All of the fire engines from Baltimore showed up and there were still not enough fire engines. So they caught other towns around. Like, can you come help us out? And so all the fire engines from other towns showed up. But it turns out they had an interoperability problem because no one had thought about it before. And so those fire trucks from the other towns weren't able to help because they weren't able to connect to the fire hydrant. You can bet that changed right after that. Now, you know, in general geographical areas, there is a lot of high interoperability between fire trucks and fire hydrants. This is a picture of the Coconut Grove, which is a famous fire in Boston where I live. And, you know, you could look at this two ways. A lot of people died on this fire in 1942. And the reason is that they have this, like, revolving door because they thought it looked cool and they wanted to make sure that people couldn't sneak into the club. But the doors didn't open out, they opened in. And they were locked to the patrons. And so now it's illegal to have only one revolving door as the main entrance and to not have outward opening doors. So we have a situation where tragedy begets change and makes better policy. It's a powerful motivator. But I would love to see us looking more forward when we think about how to make policy, right? So when we build software, I think the key is that safety is part of our job. Like, if we want people to use the software that we build then it has to be safe to use, right? And without trust, we're not going to win. Like, it's also possible that there might be like what we would call a market niche for software that you can trust and a computer platform that's not spying on you, which is a great opportunity for us, right? So I think making sure that when we teach people like, hey, we've got a free operating system, it's super cool. We're making code ourselves. We have this stuff in the repo to let folks know that also part of our job when we do the software is to think about user data and to be realistic about security. And infrastructure is one of those things that it's hard, it's not as, I don't know if folks saw this thing from John Oliver like maybe two or three years ago where he was talking about physical infrastructure and like it's the same problem. Like people were like, oh, fixing bridges isn't as much fun as designing new bridges. But then like bridges fall apart and it's not good. So he was trying to figure out like how do we make infrastructure cool and you have this thing for like infrastructure, the movie. And people were like, I'm hanging out over the bridge. That's a small crack. And so maybe we could get him to make one for software infrastructure. I don't know, it would be like, I'm over here in the best show. I think the buffer's overflowed. Maybe, but he's got to run out of stuff eventually, I guess. So maybe we could lobby him to do this show. So when we think about it, they don't want the paperwork. They don't want any sufficiently advanced technologies indistinguishable from magic. So a TV's sort of like this in an old wooden thing. They took good care of their stuff so they had old stuff for a long time. And with a VHS camera, and we did like, hey, talk into the camera. And they're like, yeah, yeah, okay, we know how this goes. And then he goes and he fusses behind the TV for a couple minutes, and he puts them on the TV and they're like, how did we get on TV? Because for them, this has always been an output, and never an input device. But as soon as it happened, they're really excited. They're like, cool, do it again. And that's the thing. It's very easy to get excited about the technology and then forget the parts where we're like, don't forget to eat or whatever. Or, you know, don't forget to sign your keys so that people aren't packing your mind or something like that. We, you know, what I think is we're basically wizards, right? Everyone agree is what kind of wizard are we going to be? Right? That's great. Have you guys read Sturgat Nona? I don't know how popular this book was. Okay. So it's just Lady for Wizards. And so she decides to get into Sturgat Nona and she gets big Anthony. Last thing in her house is a magic pasta pot. And he is a huge fan of pasta, right? So she's got this pasta pot and she says magic words over it and pasta happens. You know, you're not to boil water. It's like real great hot, right? It's pretty good. And then big Anthony saw her do this, but he didn't see how she turned it off. She turns it on with another set of words and then three kisses. So she goes away. You can see where the story is going. She goes away and says, whatever you do, don't use the pasta pot while I'm gone. What do you think happens? He uses the pasta pot while she's gone. Of course he does. Of course he does. At first, everyone comes over and then they have two plates. They have three plates. They have four plates. And then the pots don't go away. And he is trying to do the words for the turn off, but he forgot the kisses. And so it keeps going and it like flows out the door of the house and it goes down the hill and it fills up the courtyard of the town. And everyone's like, oh man, you were my favorite person like now because you didn't turn off the pasta pot and now the whole town is filled with noodles. So what does that mean? What are two lessons there? One, you should not show people stuff and then not teach them how to use it, right? So that's for us. And then two, obviously if you're going to show people then the documentation has to be complete. So what I'm saying here is that our magic noodle pot is deviant, right? That is our app. You got any of them, you know, like the three kisses. Maybe a stack overflow in the deviant user forum and linuxquestions.org. You can't just be like, here's a pot. Like fill your town with noodles. So something, when we pass this torch that we're talking about, we want to pass it completely because if we don't pass it completely it's going to be a mess. Maybe a mess with a lot of noodles, right? So we're talking about not torch, like complete documentation, like letting people know like here's where all that legacy infrastructure stuff is. Maybe you will get in there, maybe you won't, but at least you know what it is and where to look. And then the second piece of that is to be transparent about how decision making and power gets used in the project. And this is a big one. It's, even in projects that do a really good job of having like a governmental structure have like kind of a, well, let's go ahead and say it. Secret cabal, separate structure that happens. I think that everyone, somehow everyone showed up and they were going to vote this way in the meeting with projects and to develop software with you and you don't truly share power for them, they're going to leave. People do not stick around for those racks very long even if they're really good noodles. So these people, these apprentices shall we say that are coming into our projects, how are we starting this project of passing the torch up and clean stuff for a long, long time? Eventually they'll automate it and they might do a good job and they might not, but they're going to get bored, right? Always be like an upward cycle towards more exciting stuff, more power, more responsibility. But I do want to say not be what we think it is. These folks say like, oh yeah, I would really like to mentor because like I have all these annoying boring tasks that I would like to fob off onto somebody else. Which is not really the greatest mindset for mentoring. So like we might be thinking about what our funnel is for getting people, you know, maybe this core, this is Dev Concrete here on this side here. And so this is our funnel. So we're thinking about it from this perspective, which is great. We should be thinking about like, how do we bring people across from users, to recommenders, to bug filers, to contributors. And we might even spend some time thinking about like do we have like imaginary boundaries in that funnel process? Like, you know, is it really hard to find the bug tracker or something like that? And those are really great thoughts to have. Those are great things for us to think about in our projects. Coming to potentially, you know, enter this funnel, losing this world with like a ton of funnels all over the place. They could be doing any kind of project at all. And so they might come here and then maybe they go and they volunteer on something else. And that's okay. Like we talked about how like, you know, if you share your values with people, maybe they take them somewhere else in the world. Maybe one of those funnels is a university where they decide like, I am going to have us all run deviant on all the school's machines. I don't, that's all I do. I left, which is fantastic. Or maybe you go somewhere and you're like, tech store just happens to be running a free software for everything. And that was another funnel with cats and puppies in it. And they go take it somewhere else, even if they don't do all the annoying small tasks that we were hoping to delegate to somebody. You know, so we should mentor people even if we think they're not going to stick around is what I'm saying. You're like, maybe I don't have time for that. Right? I can feel it. You're like, that sounds like a lot of work. But I'm going to tell you right now that it's not, it's work we should do. And it's work we should do not only because it's like nice but also because it's good for us. So I had to look for a long time to find this on the internet. So this lady, the showering, this is a fictional representation of shampooing your hair. Okay. And so what it looks like is all these pellets are dropping on her head and trying to interrupt her. Like maybe in the future we'll coat in the shower. But like, you know, she's trying to like tell something and everyone's like, where is it? These are vitamins. They're enriching her hair. They're making it stronger, softer, and silkier. It can only be a good thing for our projects, right? Part of a stronger, softer, silkier project, don't you? I'm going to file one bug. They help you figure out what's not working. Like, hey, I'm going to find a bug tracker. They represent, like, ten people, like, skittered off that were like, eh, no bug tracker, whatever. So, you know, they help us partner processes. They help us figure out, like, where the holes are in our documentation. Like, oh, I tried to teach and I couldn't find it. Or there was nothing on this year's version, or whatever, the link is broken. So these potential new contributors, or maybe just drive-through contributors, are vitamins. They're good for us. And who knows, maybe they go, like, after they learn how to file bugs here or make a small patch here, maybe they go somewhere else. We could be contributing to a world full of roving gangs of unaffiliated patches. How amazing would that be? I don't want to live in that world, don't you? I'm putting you on the head in the shower. I say these new folks that come to our communities to wash up on our shores, we treat them all like they're ours. Okay? And so, the first bit, probably you don't know about me, is that I had an idea. We had a little book when I was a kid that said I'm special, I've adopted. I actually felt it was so normal that when my sister was born, I asked when someone was going to come and take her away. There's a woman in Maryland who takes newborn babies. Like, so, who takes newborn babies over and over and over again for somewhere between four and 12 weeks, all the time. She never has them for more than three months. You know this about newborns? They're not very gracious guests. They're cute. They're cute. I'll give you that. But they're, you know, poof. And they don't clean up after themselves. But she takes them all in with like a favorite toy and a detailed list of when they like to eat and how they like to be held in all the circuit. And she does this over and over and over again. Not because she expects them to come back or like, you know, buy her stuff for Mother's Day or whatever, but because she wants to live in a world full of adults who felt loved for the first few weeks of their life. And that's a great thing, right? You can consider our mentoring in that spirit. Like, so this brand new person comes to our project, torch, and they might not stay on the Internet. I hear you guys have lots of them. I've seen them like congregate. And so, you know, they might not have the same experiences as us. They may have learned a programming language that you don't particularly care for first, right? And I think we have to be gracious to them anyway. We have to say, come on in. Maybe you will take this experience back to some other project or some other community or some other field of endeavor. But you'll remember us finally because we taught you that free software is great and that we're friendly and that it's fun to contribute to free software. So, if we are sharing our knowledge and our values and our power, remember we talked about building an intergenerational support network. And we talked about how churches do a great job of sharing their values and sending them out into the world. There are lots of people who consider themselves members of some particular religion even though they don't go to church anymore. And that's free. That's fine. And then, particularly, the power. If we really mean like everyone is welcome and we want everyone to come in and be able to work with us and contribute to free software, then we have to share the power. We have to illuminate those structures so that they're obvious and we know they are all the time. So, I would like to build this world full of unaffiliated, moving bands of patchers. I would like to see Debian and other projects be stronger and softer and silkier and I hope you'll help me because that's what I hope we can accomplish this week. I have a reference. I'm going to take questions because I wanted to talk with you all, too. If you want to read this story about the magic noodles started known by Tommy DiPiola. I mentioned briefly about the being realistic about the security stuff. And Matthew Garrett may talk about this tomorrow, I don't know. But Brett Smith did a recent talk at Leveray Planet where he discussed the your responsibility of saying like, here use this. It might get updated sometime in the next year. He was talking about mobile services in particular, but I think especially when we talk to other organizations that have a mission-based kind of work ignoring what their mission base is and saying you got to use free software. It's like, well, but it doesn't work for our other social justice cause here or our other charitable organizations' goals. And then the mentoring. This is from a bunch of years ago actually I think 2012 but this is more specifically on how the mentoring because you want lackeys or minions or people to pick up your dry cleaning is not going to help us build the exciting free software utopia that I hope will build. And then more specifically we need particulars on how to make a project that is great for drive-through contributors the pellets we talked about then have it your way maximizing drive-through contributions by making research is a great talk to look at. So I have a picture of credits and then I would be happy to take your questions. Thank you. I'll go back to the copy. That's also fine. Or if people have ideas on how to like different specific ideas on how we could do a better job of making our project great for drive-through contributors here specifically. That would be cool. We can go back to having coffee and chatting once ourselves. Thank you so much.