 So yeah, we are rushing a little bit today I want to take you on a like a thought experiment about software being a resource of our current societies and What we can do to have this resource sustainable and available for future generations So let's start with the resource part Software is a resource of our current society and basically everything we are doing from communication to transportation to organization basically everything we are doing software and hardware is involved and There are some differences Especially to natural resources if you think about software as a resource about digital resources the most obvious is it's in theory unlimited, so Every human on the planet can have access to the same resource and I can use and reuse and share it as many times as I want and Still the resource is available also the It's basically the more I'm using the resource So the more users I have of the resource the more resource I have in the end the more amount of the resource I have so if I have in comparison to natural resource if I have a forest Normally the more users I have from the forest at some point the forest will be gone But if I think about a software If I think about one installation being one unit of the resource the more installations I have the more units I have the more resource I have available So in theory it's unlimited, but in practice it's often limited This is for example for legal issues. This is for copyright for patents There's also technical measurements taken to limit the resource DRM and other copy restrictions This is here shown with the red Traffic signs. I have the black traffic signs also to highlight The resource can also be damaged so there could be a bug for example And the resource will not work anymore Which is also a little bit different to a natural resource What else is different the resource can be designed in a way, so especially the authors they have possibilities using a license about Yeah, they have the ability to decide how available this resource will be Here's I show from copy left to copyright including of course also CC0 I can decide about the availability of the resource What else is different the resource comes in dependencies we see here Different new Linux distributions there and their forks So basically every fork has some dependency on its mother But also if you think on different layers Basically every new Linux distribution has a dependency on the Linux kernel So to sum up this part What I want to take for the next part about the sustainability is the more users I have the more resource I have Resources can be designed so I can take decisions about the availability of the resource and These resources depend on each other Now talking about sustainability. There are a lot of different definitions out there about What is sustainable? What is sustainability? I? Used now here the one from the United Nations written down in the Brunthland report That says sustainability is a development that meets the needs of the present Without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs thinking about natural resources normally this Shall this means so we should consume nowadays in a way that there is something left for the future generations from this resource In as we were saying that is vice versa with the digital resources We basically have to prevent that the last installation will be deleted or gone or something because the more installations I have the more resource so I have to prevent basically deleting the last installation so in a modern way we could also say Everything not saved will be lost How can I lose software? We were all I was already saying this so The of course I can delete the last installation then the software is gone basically Also very common thread is the The threat of proprietary software, so I have closed sources. I cannot see the code The company behind goes bankrupt the knowledge behind goes lost no one is able anymore to read the code and Maybe cannot run it anymore. So this is also a threat model here and The magnet here basically is To symbolize also there can be informational attacks technical attacks virus other things that makes my Software not runnable anymore To prevent this kind of loss There's already a great initiative. It's called a software heritage They basically I mean the mission our ambition is to collect preserve and share all software That is publicly available in source code form So basically what they do is they look for public available Source code they make backups of it So to preserve this for the future And what we should take here from is or what you can already see is that the public availability is very crucial to To make to safeguard this for the future and to not have any legal or technical Problems doing that Okay, this is one solution to keep it for the future then We can maybe Get the code back at one day we have lost it but Even more preferable would be to keep it alive because and here comes the point with the last installation that one struggle or one big problem for a software is The underuse of software. So while natural resources have the problem to get overused digital resource a big threat is the underuse of it and And this is the part where the Where the people come in so software is made is still made by people and it's made for people and As long as we have people who I have interest in the resource the resource will be maintained it will be It will be tailored for the future and Community is not just as we maybe typically think about the users or the developers It's much more as much wider. There's also companies using the resource there are third parties using resource and other all kinds of organization using the same resource and They have an interest in keeping this alive. So if I think for example, I take wordpress Then I have users who use wordpress for the blog then I have developers who like to create add-ons for WordPress or Develop wordpress itself then have companies they sell Installations of wordpress for users to use third parties who basically maybe sell web space and as an additional service on top they sell Wordpress installations and so on and so on All of them have the interest that wordpress stays Alive that wordpress goes on with the time with a switch from html4 to html5 From desktop to mobile platforms they have a high interest in In wordpress being able to go with the time because they have invested so much efforts and have a lot of data in it and So they care about the resource being able to Challenge the future and these communities they can be governed So this is mainly true. I mean from it. Let's say from the Owners point of view. This is mainly true for the users and the developers because for third parties You might not have a lot of influence on them But for the users and developers you can have So there are different things you can measurements you can take a common goal for example Is it's very helpful for the different parties to align with like we want to produce best free CMS system out there or something like this You can create knowledge exchange between the different parties you can have for example conferences waiting lists documentations things like this social exchange You have mentorships you have a code of conduct you invite new generations to join your ongoing project and keep it alive and Again at the very core is the free licensing model because this is the the free licensing allows you to Allows everyone to participate to create to to share knowledge to Use it and yeah to get the thing rolling on There's one more point. I want to make here. This is about forking So forking is on one hand a threat to sustainability because it breaks an ongoing development at some point and On the other end it can also be positive that depends a little bit What the main branch is basically doing I want to have more a look from the technical point of view and So yeah, because not every fork is the same and So this is basically maybe The fork you you are looking for so you have a parallel branch and you exchange Code and knowledge with each other So you do not have so many redundant efforts In practices normally it looks like this so you have a main branch and you have a Maybe a specialized branch Bringing your software on another platform. For example, I mean, this is also of course a lot of forks are more technical reasons What you want to avoid is the privatization of a branch because in this case They take basically your code and efforts They privatize it and then you get again into the problem that we have discussed before with the proprietary software if the organization behind this privatized branch then goes bankrupt or Loses its knowledge to By some way the knowledge again will be lost So this is unsustainable. That's why So to keep your basically To have your to keep your sustainability and keep your knowledge available for the future generations Even with the threat of forking This is where the copy left license helps you to keep the knowledge available publicly so from this part I would Take the following Out of it so the free licenses are fundamental for software sustainability. We see this From soft from software heritage from archiving software. This is fundamental to Archive it without any limitations But also for the communities to work with your software to work with the documentation I mean, it's not just only about the code is also about Everything surrounding the software because it's not only code the software So but only free license allowed it basically to to make the most out of it Community governance. I mean communities are in the core of keeping software Alive and by this making it sustainable and available for future generations so community governance is very helpful for keeping a project alive and due to the Always present threat of forking a copy left license helps you at least to even if your project gets forked and And your project maybe damaged or something I mean from the organizational point of view to keep your knowledge alive Copy left helps you with sustainability So much my thoughts now In time