 Excellent all right folks we are now on to our next presentation the ethics of open source a critical reflection Don Goodman Wilson thank you for being here Don. Thank you. Is it the mic? The mic sounds on yeah. Is the microphone on? Excellent. Hi my name is my name is Son Goodman Wilson I've got this lovely controversial title is it not on? Is it is this better? Okay this is gonna be fun because I like to gesticulate and I don't know how to just turn this off right that's fine I'll just I'll just do this. So my name is Don Goodman Wilson I used to do philosophy I also used to do computer programming type things I used to do community now I have a consultancy that's lovely and I want to talk about some news items that have come up in just the past couple of weeks just two days ago news about a firm called Practice Fusion broke has anybody heard about that one Practice Fusion was a software for doctors to help them diagnose medical conditions that also suggested opioids far more frequently than necessary at the request of the manufacturer of the opioids the US Air Force has a new game you can play online where you can train to be a drone pilot and practice killing people and if you enjoy it they're happy to hire you because it's a recruiting tool news broke about Clear View New York Times about two weeks ago company that uses facial recognition technology to identify people from pictures that they've posted to their public news feeds Twitter and so forth it's apparently surprisingly effective not only identifying the person but showing where they are on Twitter and Vin Moe and other tools like this and although I can't prove it about Clear View we can inferred about the rest these are all powered by open source software which is a little scary and I think over the past six months there's been an increased awareness that open source software is helping to fuel injustice in the world what's particularly interesting about these examples is it's not just us who create the software who are impacted by this it's not just those who are consuming and using the software that are impacted it is actually disproportionately people that none of us have any relationship with whatsoever who are being impacted by this the people who are being terrorized by the US Air Force the people who are being prescribed opioids when they don't need them the people who would rather not have their privacy violated using the software that we create there's been a number of attempts at addressing this sort of thing recently this is from the Hippocratic license by Coraline at MK which essentially takes an MIT stylized and adds us no harm clause to it that the software may not be used in activities that violate human rights as defined by the United Nations and I think experiments like this are laudable right I think the time is right for us to start thinking about these sorts of experimentations but the response from the open source community at large has not been very positive so we see things like licenses should not be political it's not open source it's not probably like I'm willing to accept that as a claim but this is also not an argument right this is called begging the question I really want to dig into this in this talk why is the response so frequently it's not open source and why does this claim carry so much weight in our community because it does even the OSI themselves right they weighed in on this I removed the slide here because I've only got 20 minutes and I sort of have to power through the argument that I want to make but the OSI has been quite clear no this is not open source and then you know refers people to this fact on the open source org website can I stop evil people from using my program no because that's not what open is right that's sort of the opposite of open and I just feel this tension and I can't help but think we have ended up somewhere really bad right what is this tension that I'm feeling why do I feel bad about this why does this strike me and hopefully it strikes some of you as as absurd I want to dig into this question I want to do this question a lot right so how did we get here where did this come from how do we move forward from here and in particular why do we hold the word open or the concept of open and such high esteem why is the appeal to the fact that something is not open source used as a conversation stopper right as the final and ultimate argument why we should stop pursuing these sorts of explorations and I find this very curious actually and I want to dig into the history a little bit I did not touch that wire we're gonna pretend that solved the problem so so so back back in the 60s especially the United States we have this countercultural movement colloquially known as as hippieism right and this was a backlash against the authoritarian structures that existed especially in the United States at the time by the youth of the era boomers as it were their goal actually was to overthrow the establishment right through a DIY mentality and individual liberation their goal was the creation of a new utopia where we could live together and harmony and peace man and it was it was actually I mean it's a lot of a goal right we want to change the world for better we want to make the world a good place we want to like we not want to see World War two again we'd like not to see Vietnam again as a war and there is a there's this thing that came out at the time called called the whole earth catalog are you familiar with the who's heard of the whole earth catalog so it's not a whole lot of you we're digging way back in time so the first edition was in 67 I think and it was printed more or less continuously up until the late 70s and then all the way like the last edition was published in the late 90s of the early 2000s this is from the introduction of the first edition where's God's and might as well get good at it okay Boomer in response to the power of government and big business a realm of intimate personal powers developing power of the individual to conduct his own education find his own inspiration shape his own environment and share his adventure with whoever is interested this is a catalog right this is like the hippie sears catalog is what this is this is literally like meant to disseminate information about how to acquire tools to create a new foundation for civilization tools like things to build geodesic domes because these are interesting things to use as houses but also tools as intellectual tools right and the idea was that this movement inspired by the whole earth catalog was that as we find new tools we share them with other people right because only together can we can we create the community to bring about the world that we want to see is starting to sound familiar this should sound very familiar to people in the room it's it's no surprise that many of the people who are involved in the whole earth catalog were early contributors to wired magazine right Stuart brand comes immediately in mind he's a guy who created the whole earth catalog and wired promulgated the twin views that technology was leading us to an invent an evitable future of personal freedom so more technology please and a new capitalist order of nimble San Francisco startups was going to get us that technology it is no coincidence that San Francisco is the center of the tech world because San Francisco was the center of the hippie world these two things led one into the other right a lot of the early startups were founded specifically as an attempt to overthrow the existing capital hierarchy as it existed let's overturn how businesses are created let's overturn how business is done right this all stems directly from this this counter cultural movement of overthrowing authority empowering the people without power and using that to create a better world this view was summed up in a critical essay called the Californian ideology that I highly recommend that you go read that information technologies empower the individual enhance personal freedom and radically reduce the power of the nation state existing social political and legal power structures will wither away to be replaced by unfettered interactions between autonomous individuals and their software right it's not a huge leap to see a connection between this ideology I mean this this this essay was critical right of this of this view highly highly critical of this view but this is how they summed it up it's easy to see how this blends into something like hey I got a broken printer I'd like to write the I'd like access to the software for the driver so I can make it do things that the manufacturer did not intend right because the idea of proprietary printer driver software is runs extremely counter to this to this notion right of liberating people through technology through open access to tools to create the world that we want to see this is a reference to Richard Solomon I know not everybody in the room is familiar with the the history of the FSF and the OSI but we don't really have time to get into it what I want to point out is that there's a there's a very strong continuum between the early 1960s counterculture and the origins of the open source movement in the 1980s and 1990s so that sounds well and good so open source isn't political right I don't think so the value of openness here's the claim that I want to make because I want to question our assumptions and really dig into this the value of openness is that openness is a tool for creating a liberated world a more just world the world where people feel more empowered right why then are we so afraid of moving in a direction that creates more justice in the world or that is aimed at creating more justice in the world why are we insisting on sticking on a track that we know is creating injustice in the world so I want to introduce this concept the openness or sorry the paradox of openness and I'm going to do this by talking about the paradox of tolerance are people familiar with the paradox of tolerance this has become very popular in an American political discourse at the moment because American political discourse is having a bit of a similar crisis so this comes from Carl Popper ironically the philosopher who first popularized the idea of openness as a path to justice we're not going to go there just now but this is a very interesting quote unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance if we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who were intolerant if we're not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them we should therefore claim in the name of tolerance the right not to tolerate the intolerant now it doesn't quite work but we can substitute openness for tolerance here right and we get very similar argument structure that has the same validity as this argument and I believe it's I believe it's actually quite valid and make that point what what what do we tolerate in the name of openness so open source exacerbates existing injustices right those who are at the receiving end of the software that we create have no say in its creation have no say in its deployment have no say in the code itself because they may not have access to computers or the technical skills necessary right they have no say in the the contracts that we form with other entities using it in the form of open source licenses software is used as a tool by the powerful to assert control and very frequently the control and power that they assert is at the detriment to to the most helpless in our society in the world right and we're contributing to this we're contributing to this by making it easier than ever to create software I mean that was the goal right here we are open source is to playground of the privileged you and I we learn how to code we have free time to convince like this to contribute to software projects many in the people many people in the world don't many people in the world that we want to be part of our communities cannot be because they don't have the time they don't have the money they don't have the experience they don't have the equipment they don't have the privilege to participate in the communities that we want to create and that very fact creates an ever-growing wall for those without the privilege to joining our community I have a whole other argument about this but open source incentivizes exploiting a volunteer labor force I had to cut out a whole lot of slides that led up to this in order to slice us down from an hour long talk but you see and many of you in the room probably are maintainers who just don't have the freaking time to answer all of your issues and how frequently is your software in turn being used by large corporate entities who are extracting value from your free weekend labor some of us don't mind that like that's not a judgment if you're happy giving away your labor to those who are able to extract massive value from it but not all of us are comfortable with that right it's not a just it's not a just contract that we've entered into so I want us to denormalize this state of affairs I want to make the world a better place we want to make the world a better place right let's stop asking the wrong questions and start asking the right ones so instead of asking is it open source is it politics-free is it enforceable these are question-making questions that are designed to shut down conversation and shut down forward progress I don't want to hear these questions they are not productive this one will be enforceability will eventually be I think productive but frequently when it's asked right it's asking the context of it doesn't matter we can dismiss it because it's not enforceable it's not really a question it's more of a comment that was snark so what question should we be asking this is a really good one by the way as a philosopher like I love this question because I'm gonna I'm not gonna lie philosophy doesn't have answers falsely only has more questions and it always starts with with this one and I want to encourage you especially if you take nothing else away from this talk take this away ask yourself this every day every day but here's other good ones what are the forces that have led us to this point in time so I tried to line out some of them it was a very biased history right I got some of the details wrong I came from a very personal point of view it's multifaceted it's long it's got lots of people doing lots of things with lots of motivations it's not the only history right but understanding why we are where we are now will help us understand better how to how to move forward in the future what do we owe to each other's people I'm a huge fan of Scanlon's ethics if you've read the the summary of my talk you may be a may have been expecting me to talk a bit more about that but again time but as we're writing software we should be thinking about not just what does my community need my community of contributors and maintainers what not just what does the the community of people who depend upon my software need but you should be thinking about what are the what are the downstream effects of this software because it's going to have downstream effects whether you like it or not right and we should be thinking very very seriously about what justice looks like in this context because our software has a much much bigger much much bigger effect on the world than we realize that it does and then finally how do we evolve as a community right and this might well mean evolving beyond open source right abandoning the OSD looking for new ways of building communities new ways of building software as a community and finding something that allows us to continue to extract what's good about open source because there's a lot of good about open source don't get me wrong right and apply this in a new context where we can increase the amount of justice that we're creating instead of just maintaining the status quo and only worrying about the relatively small circle of people that our software has an immediate impact on because I believe I believe we do have the power to make the world a better place I believe we have a responsibility to leverage that power to actually make the world a better place and I'd much rather see us succeed as a community than go down and flames in an ensuing tech cultural war if you enjoyed this talk here's some resources that I've collected PRs are welcome right so feel free to to drop other links that you find in there that might be might be interesting to other people and I think we have like two minutes they're all gone I have seven minutes for questions oh my god I thought this is gonna be a 30 minute talk that's fantastic seven minutes for questions I'm gonna have to pass around this mic aren't I I have no idea how these things work is this oh this is working now I think I two minutes okay that's that's what I thought all right okay I tried to go fast yeah thank you very much for this very interesting talk actually very I agree with you on the symptoms that you show but not so much on the diagnosis of things to me it looks more like open source is one thing one solution that was taken at a time where as you say well problems were different but trying to change it may actually just be ignoring what is actually causing open source to be used in such ways actually which to me is really down to economics and politics you can actually ask what to the licensees to to include something about harm no harm and and so on you always have ways to go around that's what is harm if you go for repression and you in a country you you harm some people but you you know you I'm gonna stop you right there this is an abdication of responsibility on our part and I think that's exactly the wrong kind of response to have we have a responsibility as much as everybody else in the world to create something that's more just and by saying well we were not that powerful enough to do it sorry what I say that you could target something a bit higher up than that we should target every level including ourselves we must hold ourselves accountable because we are part of the system even if we're at a low level in the system even if there are machines that have much out much greater much more outsized impact on this we are nevertheless responsible in some small part and to the extent that we are we have a moral obligation to deal with it I understand and it's a very good thing to do maybe you should discuss after that because I mean I'll be around thank you last question one more question very interesting should we even go further just you mentioned the no harm clause should we have it like a do-good good clause like you can't even use this for benign you have to actively do good things that would be interesting so so I don't again I don't know what the right solution is I am advocating a position of open experimentation so we can find the right solution to this right all I know is we haven't found the solution yet that sounds like an interesting direction to experiment yes let a thousand flowers bloom right