 Hi everyone, I'm Karen Sandler, and I'm Bradley Kuhn, and we are so happy to be here at Fozden with you We both are Hi, we are both We both work at the software freedom conservancy Raise your hand if you've heard of software freedom conservancy. It's about yay. It's about half the room We are a charity Organized to promote free and open-source software. We are focused on the ethical and idea I just have to stop for a second and tell you everybody that the sound here in this room is extremely challenging so you get like a little bit of an echo and in particular during the The Q&A section you cannot hear any of the people questioning So I just saw Frank give his talk and he kept trying to lean over to hear what everyone said because it's so awkward Anyway, I just wanted to just stop for a minute and and just mention that because Hearing my own echo is a little confusing anyway I'll kick it to you Bradley for a minute So we spend a lot of time Trying to do the right thing for free software and we try to live a life in software freedom Last year the organizers were kind enough to invite us to give a keynote talk where we spoke a lot about that And a lot about the challenges today what we'd like to do is give you a follow-up on that and really lay out some concrete plans of How we as a community Can approach this question of how do we do what's right for software freedom? How do we live a life in software freedom in what is becoming an increasingly challenging world? Of course It is very very difficult to be purists now And in fact it is difficult for me to ever be a purist at all I have a pacemaker defibrillator because I have a heart condition and I can't see the source code in my own body This is the whole reason why I have become so passionate about software freedom Because when you realize that you have no control over the software that is literally Stoned into your body and screwed into your heart you start to see all of your technology a little bit differently and having this this this Struggle with proprietary software Really flushes out all of the issues That that we face so again we talked about we're not going to repeat the talk we gave last year it it Was the summary of all of the thinking of a year ago and today we are going to tell you about All of the work that we've been doing over the last year and where things stand now So one of the things that we have tried to do and we want to do is to provide moral leadership About software freedom we believe in ethics of morality We believe that ethics and morality are a central component of why most of us are here because we have things that we believe in I've been thinking quite a bit over the last year in part because of this television show and I Apologize that people don't like examples from television shows But if you will make an exception for one this show called the good place is probably worth it It is the first time I've ever seen deep moral philosophy addressed through a comedic lens In the history of television Raise your hand if you've seen the good place A large audience and either half the people have seen it Well, that's good to know because it makes our examples much easier to explain So this main character here his name is cheaty and it's not a spoiler to know that he is a moral ethicist by training He's a PhD in philosophy and spends his time thinking about moral questions in this particular scene He's spending about an hour and a half to decide which muffin to buy for breakfast The reason he spends an hour and a half considering this question is because he's considering the entire long chain of Moral decisions that occur to bring this muffin to this little stand here near his university in Australia He's trying to decide what is the most environmentally conscious muffin to buy? What is the most properly resourced muffin to buy what is the way stream questions with regard to the wrapper that the muffin is in and This kind of moral freeze That constantly occurs for people who care a lot about morality particularly people who focus from a what's called a conch in from Immanuel Kant ethics point of view is very difficult and Historically, I've noticed upon reviewing the history of moral philosophy of free software over the last few years that the influence of Immanuel Kant and Conch in ethics may have been a bit overdone now I was a huge fan of Immanuel Kant when I first read his work as an undergraduate at university But later I saw this This movie and Broadway show Called head wig and the angry inch which can this quote from that Show convinced me that perhaps we have spent a little too much time Allowing Kant to always get what he wants There's other ways and other methods to look at how we engage in morality Yeah, and I think that when we think about the the moral leadership of free and open-source software We see that things have been coming to a head there have been different ways of thinking about software freedom and the Quite a lot of the controversy that we have had in the last year as referenced by Frank and his last talk Have centered around this idea of ethical licenses And it's this idea that we have we've we've chosen to address some of our social issues with software freedom and with copy left and free software licensing generally and There's a group of people who want to use that theory to apply it to other spaces And it's completely reasonable to think this because we have as a movement Been really going out there saying that our movement has this philosophical and ethical component And yet at the same time I think it's been our historic failure to lead as a movement that has caused some of this division that we have today Because we have failed to connect software freedom with some of our other philosophical problems We sort of wind up in the situation that we're in today Where we have to figure out where we are and what are the underpinnings of what we're doing Yeah, in some sense, we've been standing deciding which muffin to buy while other people have been coming forward saying well, which moral question Are you most interested in and they're more interested in climate change and other issues which we think are incredibly important and they see natural alliance with software freedom and Their first effort to build that alliance is to say well We're going to use licenses just like you did to chase those issues and we haven't built the kind of coalitions That we had hoped we would build historically in part because we've spent a lot of time thinking about Relatively simplistic moral questions instead of looking at the complexity Here's a scene from the good place where they're considering what is called by moral philosophers the trolley problem You're on a train moving quickly down a track You have a track switch option But if you go one way you are sure to murder a single person who has tied to the tracks And if you turn the other way you're likely to seriously injure a number of people who are Attempting to repair the tracks although there's some chance they might be able to get out of the way and This kind of moral question is very good to teach students about how to consider moral philosophy questions But in the real world things are not always that simple although in some cases maybe they are I was gonna say you know When I look at the issues around my heart device some of those are very life and death I guess the closest equivalent to my trolley problem is that if I refuse to get proprietary software in my body I'm sort of choosing between getting a device that Might kill me or not getting a device that would save me maybe and sort of not knowing what the result of that is But either case could result in death and at the end of the day You know it's a it's a it's a life or death situation And of course the question of whether you can actually examine the source code of that device is Salient because you can't assure yourself further that it's safe because you can't review it That's right And one of the things that I mentioned last year is that Often these devices are not necessarily made for the use cases in which they're deployed So for example when I was pregnant My defibrillator thought that my palpitation which is totally normal in a pregnant woman was a dangerous rhythm And it shocked me Unnecessarily I totally didn't need that shock But it shocked me to to save me multiple times And the only way I could get it to stop was by taking drugs to lower my heart rate so much that it was hard to walk up a flight of stairs and You know, it's one of those situations where You know no one had a bad intention, right? The people who work for device manufacturers are are people who are working on devices that are meant to help people Right and it's a total nightmare to have pregnant women getting shocked but My use case wasn't necessarily an anticipated use case which stands for the proposition that All of our technology will be deployed in unexpected ways What else we'll be using our devices for that haven't been anticipated by their makers So last year we talked extensively about the question of proprietary JavaScript particularly in relationship to Google Maps We got a tremendous amount of useful feedback where people pointed out that well There's all these great street map open street map based mapping applications We took the feedback seriously at but even when we dig down It's like the onion where you peel away and the next thing is just another layer Again, we discover even if you get the free software replacement You're still trapped by certain proprietary software in the same after that talk I started using osman a lot more which is which was made such great beeps and bounds that it's fantastic But without using the GPS drivers I still have a lot of the same problems I have before and there's of course lots of other proprietary bits in there too That I try to avoid right and when you begin to look all the way down the stack in any device these days Even if you've replaced the application layer with free software you find proprietary software in your firmware You find proprietary software in the broadband or the the mobile network Firmware's and so this problem is so complicated And it is basically as we said last year impossible to use completely free software a new problem I discovered in the recent in the last year. This is extremely common in the United States I hope it's not common in Europe yet But it is coming if it is not here yet So this is a sign from a local grocery store near me and you notice the word digital deals Well, what that means is there are now certain coupons discounts that you can only receive From a grocery store if you have their proprietary software application installed and if of course you've authenticated with your personal data so there's not only a proprietary software component, there's a data privacy component and When I think about the question of well, you know, okay I'm I'm a privileged person who doesn't have the absolute need to chase every sale Although I was raised to always find the best price and use every coupon you can find so it's in my Basic DNA to search for the discount But I think about poor people under privileged people who are now forced to find a device to use Which they may not be able to afford to get these discounts and of course their privacy is being compromised in everything else so we're in a situation where the the this freight train of Proprietary software and data privacy are just running right into each other. It's very similar to what happened with DRM so we had this moment about 15 years ago where there was a question of whether we were gonna accept DRM on Free software devices. There was kind of two camps. There was one camp that said well we would really like to be able to use Netflix on Linux and That wasn't possible and there was another camp I was in this one of course which said no we should stand against DRM. We shouldn't have it on Linux based systems Even if it means we don't get as much adoption We should take a stand in the end DRM has won and became ubiquitous. We're having a very similar crash of Privacy and data rights and proprietary software if this app were free software That I download onto an Android device I could modify it to remove the privacy Compromising stuff and still have it work with the coupons. I'd figure out a way I'm sure I'm a good enough programmer to do that Of course they are not gonna give me the source code to this application because they know that's what I would want to do with it That I want to be able to use the coupons without giving up my data privacy So we're in a really tough problem and this is impacting The underprivileged much more than the privilege because they're the underprivileged people are the ones who need these discounts the most and Really we should be making sure they can get them in here. They can't So it's not surprising to hear that when I refer to a relatively recent pregnancy that I have little kids And we went on a family trip to Disneyland I see some reaction to Disneyland. I feel exactly the same way Disney is is certainly a Problematic actor when it comes to a variety of subjects However, when you have little kids, it's really fun to take them to Disneyland And we plan for this trip. We happen to be in in LA for a family event And we decided to go to Disneyland. It's expensive to go to Disneyland and so we saved up our money to go and And we made our plans in advance This is one of those things where you know the The example that your parents set for you sometimes really influences you and my mother is a Very serious planner type and so when she took me to Disneyland when I was a kid She did all of the research that she could do she planned a route through the park She was amazing what we would eat what we would do so that we would make the most of our day and have the best time and For me, you know, I feel that that pressure to also step up and give my kids the same experience And so I did the same thing and I did all of this research I planned it out. I spent way longer than I should have I have a lot of things to do But I spent way longer than I should have going and I bought we bought the tickets in advance We were all set to go we get there and I remember that the ticket said something about How with that kind of ticket you had the ability to skip some lines Some cues in the park and the lines for rides at Disneyland can be very very long and now Everybody here is probably aware that we've given up the our talk so far that I won't put Unnecessary proprietary software on my phone so of course and I don't have the ability to do it on the fly anyway, and so When I found out that Disneyland requires their proprietary app in order to skip the lines. I Was like, oh, no, I don't have that app on my phone And there's no way for me to do it my husband who? You know has a an older Android phone sometimes will put apps on his phone And so, you know, I said why don't you try to download that app and we can use it turns out His phone is too old to use that app So we get there and we realize that in fact because we have old devices or because of my Ideological choice to not use proprietary software that we were going to have to wait in these long lines While other people like literally walk to the front of the line And I was thinking this can't this can't be right and you know what? Karen You're a free software activist, right? You're an executive director like you should say something about this You're a Karen talk to the manager So I went to there's this like customer service area of of Disneyland where you can go and talk to To people who will help you the women that were there bore a striking similarity to the Janet character in the good place I am pretty sure that she's based on these Disneyland customer service representatives They were so nice so helpful Impeccably dressed in kind of a similar way with like tweed vests and things I can't remember exactly what they were wearing, but wouldn't Disney have the bad Janet These these these janets look like good janets So I went and I got worked up I was hesitant, but I went over and talked to them and I said, you know, I explain the situation about you know I you know, it's always a good time to talk about free software So I first lead with I I don't like proprietary software Here's why I told them the story of my heart divide you gave them the whole thing and And and and they were you know, they were a little a little surprised And and and then I explained that my husband's phone was old And so even though we were willing to overlook these ethical concerns to just get through a nice family day We couldn't and the janets were really surprised They said they had they'd no one had ever complained to them personally about this before And I realized that it's because if you don't have the money for a current phone and You've saved to go to Disneyland and you get there and you realize that you don't have the access that other people have It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to go and admit you can't afford a new phone Not everyone is saying it's about software freedom and therefore I can go and talk to you No, you know, most people aren't not most people aren't gonna do that and they're gonna be a caring right They're gonna sink back into themselves and and just wait on the lines And they and their children will wait longer just because they're poor and it was this fascinating thing the janets were great They did the right thing. They gave me a new They give me a like a like this something that was like a notice that was attached to my paper ticket So that I could go on a special line at a few of the rides and skip them So they had the right result in my case, but it was such an interesting way of Realizing that these issues around proprietary software are Designed into every aspect of our lives and in places that you just don't think about why on earth Would this be necessary to go on rides at Disneyland, you know And the class issue about it was really interesting Especially when for all of the things that Disney does wrong They really have thought about issues of trying to make all of their customers feel You know feel not feel bad about about not being able to afford things like if you go and order a Food item at one of the food carts, you know Unlike other places in the United States where they'll say would you like to supersize that or would you also like the special Cup or would you also like this or that when you order something like I'll just have I'll have the popcorn they just say great I'm going to give you the this regular popcorn and it that's very meaningful if you're there with little kids because if you're there with Little kids and someone says oh well There's this Elsa popcorn that costs five dollars more the kids are going to say oh I want that special fancy popcorn So it's clear that Disney has thought about these issues because they're very unified and all like if you go and buy Any kind of swag but at the at the end of the day They had not thought about this aspect of this of their their digital technology And these thoughtless decisions are being are being woven into all kinds of technology in all kinds of ways Yeah, and while I heard all these groans in the audience when Disney was mentioned there was a story last year that the Largest search on the internet even though it was only around for three months of last year was Disney plus right, so we're in a bubble here as Free software activists as people who care about free and open source software and most of the people in the world are facing these kinds of choices on a regular basis and It is our job to explain to them Why and how these choices? Mix in with the issues of software freedom how they're making choices about software there bad for their software freedom bad for their data Privacy bad in a number of different ways So we as activists of course are gonna sometimes have to live in that real world We've just given you two stories of how Karen and I have lived in that real world And I'm sure you all have many of your own One of the strategies that I talked about briefly last year And I'll give a little more detail on today is this idea of just having that one device Where you put all your proprietary software? This is an idea is actually somebody who is in the audience right now who suggested this to me It's like well just get one device. We get some Android tablet Which is in fact what my dad gave me as I talked about last year unrequested by the way and That particular device is where I've slowly started putting all the proprietary software like the The grocery store apps I talked about on there Now the problem with this is in a number of different directions But one problem I want to identify that I didn't mention in previous talks is that in some sense This is kind of the worst approach for your data privacy Because now I have the one place where all the spying apps are in my life Which means they can all talk to each other and I'm sure they all are Telling each other all about all my habits all my things giving all my data back to all of the folks who do Massive data collection to market more things to me and indeed even at my IP number level The level of marketing accuracy has shot up Unbelievably simply because I have this one device so even when I see ads on my fully free software browser Notwithstanding proprietary JavaScript, of course It knows because I've used the same IP number that all the stuff that I've done on these various Proprietary things so I actually think the proprietary dumping ground while it seems like it's a good option It's like oh, I just have this one little boxed-in sandbox where I allow proprietary software in some sense It's worse. I'm actually starting to think maybe having one proprietary program on a different free devices might be a little better with regard to Davis to data privacy Yep, and to avoid those apps is to pay more, right? I mean so I I when I choose to avoid them as I do often it means that I have to pay more and not everyone can afford to Do that? So there's been this Hypocrisy that we've talked about quite a bit in our in our in other venues With regard to how free software advocacy was done historically I think this idea of telling people that they should be pure telling people that they should be ashamed if they're using proprietary software Is something that is quite frankly toxic? I Am certainly still willing to tell people who write proprietary software they're doing something wrong because they're actively participating in the production of new things that are bad for people but someone who's using proprietary software is facing a difficult moral choice and We shouldn't tell them to stand there and decide between two muffins neither of which is really the best option We should tell them they have to pick one but really think about what the implications are. Yeah I mean last year Here at Fosden was the first time Bradley and I confessed that we were using Any Real amount of proprietary software at all that was the purpose of last year's talk and and the the outpouring of of Confessions from people in the audience and and the gratitude of people who? Were living in shame because they care so much about software freedom But are relying on so much proprietary software every day was really overwhelming. I think a lot of people You know don't understand these choices that we make they're invisible just like in a muffin You don't often know whether you have you know what what the ingredients are inside the muffin It's the same kind of issue with software freedom I think people don't really think about the ethics of their technology. They just see something really glossy and And know what they have to use but once you know it's it's so hard to make those choices and now that that we've Now that we've Admitted that we use some proprietary software. I think it's been amazing to hear how Everyone else is also using proprietary software and how we have to just simply accept it and be thoughtful about it So if you take one thing away from this talk I Would like to ask Shaming people for using proprietary software should end here and it should end now don't do it anymore And it's an inspiring and exciting thing to say and it's such a relief But it doesn't make us feel any better It sucks because we should still be talking about Proprietary software and we should never stop working towards using as much free and open source software as we can So instead we need to start educating people respectfully So as I said, it's never a bad time to talk about free software. I spent about 15 minutes in Talking to an immigration official on my way into Belgium Just about like what conference are you going to well? It's all about software freedom and so he was really you know He hadn't really thought about it and really heard it and there were so many of you coming through immigration That that he was really excited to hear what it was about and I think people are are curious about it They understand it that there's something going on. This has changed over the last few years We have had so many issues that have been connected to software freedom that are connected to issues around ethics and tech That people understand they should have a vague distrust of the technology they rely on so there are so many opportunities that we never had before and so We shouldn't be ashamed, but that doesn't mean we should in any small way give up But don't feel that you have a Constant moral obligation to do this in a conscious system This is not a high moral imperative to put it in conscious terms. Do the best you can to talk to people Karen is a person who's particularly good at meeting people where they are and is exuberant and able to talk to people So she's able to do that to be quite frank about it The only thing I said to immigration was please stamp on page 12 because I already have a stamp there And I'm trying to save pages So you don't have to advocate at every moment But look for them and when you're comfortable when you feel safe doing it when you feel able To meet someone where they are and tell them about why you care about free software do so But don't feel any shame or any bad feelings about not being able to do it as much as you would like just keep working on it There's been a lot of discussion about sustainability. How do we state sustain this field? How do we pay maintainers how do we avoid various disasters and What I found is that often those discussions Wind up being about how to sustain for-profit interests in open source We need to talk about sustainability from a movement perspective We need to talk about how Ideology fits with making a future for us and our technology the sustainability discussion Cannot be about how money flows around in this space while money is important It has to be about how can we make technology that we can control in the long run and how can we function as a community? How can we work with companies so that they they do things on our terms so that we don't have a distrust of our basic Devices the approach to sustainability which has just become such a huge but buzzword and I often say in talks I thought that sustainability and free software was going to be about Connecting up to other ethical issues for example how to help prevent climate change with free software because that's usually what I think of when I think of sustainability Karen is quite right that most of the discussion has been about how do we fund developers at the same level to which Silicon Valley is funding Proprietary software developers we're going to talk in a minute about some of the ways that we're looking at ways to fund developers Which we agree is incredibly important But sustainability if we're going to talk about it in terms of how to keep our fossil communities going has to be Holistically approached we have to think about how do we sustain our moral? Band with how do we sustain ourselves from becoming burned out? How do we continue to care about our cause while figuring out what trade-offs we have to make every day? We have to look at it from all those different angles. Our technology is not sustainable unless it lets us live in freedom The fact of the matter is I think the biggest sustainability problem is that not that we're not writing enough Foss tons is getting rid of every day more Foss is being written as ever existed in history However, I feel that most for proper companies from my point of view are basically writing the wrong free software The priorities are in the wrong places They're focused on software that is going to increase their ability to move forward in their businesses They're focused on software that they can use as a component or as a base system Open-core style for some larger proprietary system that they're creating while that software is good And it's good that we make constant inroads. It's very good that Linux has won on the server market It's very good that people have at least some base software freedom with regard to their base operating systems There is still lots of stuff being written that is not the thing that people face most in their daily lives trying to Deal with the proprietary software they have to use in some weird sense because of the corporate interest in Foss Companies have a lot more software freedom than individuals do each day Yes, and I think it's not terribly surprising that that companies have jumped on board This is a jumped on the sustainability discussion and have pushed forward these questions about the flow of money and less About how do we create technology that we can rely on? It's not a huge spoiler to say about it's a tiny spoiler to say about the good place And please if you come up to talk to us after this, I have not seen the end But it's not a huge spoiler to say that the characters in the good place Get better over time as they know each other and as they work together One of the things that struck us after our talk last year when we came and we confessed to you all of the things that all of the proprietary software that we use that Together we can we can we can support each other It was it was the one of the most surprising things to see how unifying it was amongst people who were all so Rot about all of the proprietary software that they're using when they are software freedom activists Yeah, and I feel that that's the most important thing I got involved in free software because there were communities people doing things together There were people that I respected and became my friends that I worked together with I wouldn't be able to do the work that I do as a free software activist if I didn't have Folks like Karen who is not only my colleague, but a personal friend whom we stand together and work together and support each other and doing this and I think as a larger community we have to do that for each other and Talk to each other and be willing to admit to each other where we're struggling with how to make Our work sustainable how to continue our projects. It's okay to say to somebody. I'm a maintainer and I don't know how to do it anymore Rather than run to some company quickly and say give me a bunch of money because I'm a trainer don't know how to do anymore Tell your friends first in the project try to figure out how to work together to interact with those entities one of the things that's happened with Free software funding is companies have discovered that Hiring a maintainer bringing them inside and kind of getting control of their workflow Has become a method for controlling and changing the direction of free software projects Your colleagues and your peers are the people that can support you best and this is the only way we're going to write those alternatives Right like I applaud the sustainability discussion overall because it's important that people will be able to create livelihoods And I didn't mean to sound like there was you know, there's no value in that But we have to think big picture and we're never going to solve those big problems unless we really band together and work hard because we're already behind So we keep saying well, that's not about money But we know that funding your work funding free software work is essential like people need to get salaries That's been the debate in the free software world the obsession with free software business models We heard Frank talk about that in a previous session which folks on the video can find in the FOSTA video archives We believe deeply in funding free software We think that there are careful ways you have to go about it We do a tremendous amount of funding free software developers through conservancy and the reason that Karen and I Put so much work into making conservancy successful was so that there could be a place That the important free software projects that are focused on individual user rights and freedoms and to make users lives better Could receive funding in a way rather than through a for-profit company who ultimately has to chase Making their company profitable and successful. We have to survive, but we don't have to make a profit We are required in fact by the USA Charity regulators where we're based to act in the public good and to fund work in the public good So we're able to fund developers in a way that we tell them go out and do what's right for the project It all has to be free software. That's our rule. That's our mission But do it in a way that's making people's lives better that's helping people That's the accountability we want from the developers we fund Yeah, it's a it's a it's a question of control and when you have this happening in a charitable environment It makes it much easier to work on the issues that matter and I'm proud to say that we have about Something like we pay around 120 Contractors to work on free software every year Yeah, in fact, I might give two brief examples of projects that we've worked with so the inkscape project Which is one of the oldest free software projects. We have they have been amazingly dogged in their determination to replace proprietary graphics proprietary graphic design programs and To be frank about it that space has gotten even more Horrible with regard to how licensing works many of you may not know because you don't use because like us You don't use proprietary software most of the time You may not realize that the adobe illustrator Business model change from being you could buy the software in the old school proprietary model You bought a box set of the copy and you paid a certain amount for it You could install it and run it for as long as you want They ended that years ago All the current versions are subscription models if your device doesn't connect to the internet once a month to confirm that You've renewed your monthly subscription to adobe illustrator. It stops working until you do There are people out there that are having that moral choice between two muffins They're looking and saying well I have my old copy of adobe illustrator from years and years ago that has some bugs and problems But at least it is the one that I don't have to pay monthly for or I can use inkscape, which is great But doesn't have all those features yet So we're trying to make inkscape the easy choice We're trying to make it easy to say we can use inkscape and it has all the features that illustrator doesn't Not only is it free as in price So we don't have to pay these monthly subscription fees But it's free as in freedom to assure that you're not going to be exploited by a proprietary software company in the way that adobe is exploiting its users and the impact is amazing because You know, we'll get tons of tiny donations from people who are so grateful to use inkscape You know $10 donations from people saying this changed my life Similarly, so to give an example with with inkscape we do we fund all of their hackfests and send people around the world to Do the hackfest in the case of this other project Godot Which has a booth here that you can go and see them and they also have a I believe Karen They have a conference coming up soon. Yeah, good joke on it's it's right after Fosdown and We are funding I think four different contractors some of them full-time on a monthly basis to work on Godot And it's disrupting how game engines how it game software is being built because there's a fully free software game engine now That people are using and it's often the toast of some of the otherwise proprietary game development conferences that they go to to talk about because it's reducing the barrier to entry into the gaming world in the same way that Lots of different Technologies for cloud and so forth reduce the barrier of entry into those places. So we believe Chasing these new locations where free software is by far not the default where free software is rare is Absolutely essential and putting funding there and funding the developers in a charitable way is essential to getting Towards software freedom funding contractors isn't the only way that we that we work on this Can you move the next slide? Yeah, so our our enforcement work is a really important component of this It's amazing that so many people buy so many devices where they should have the right to see the source to To receive the source code on those devices in such a way that they could replace the software on those devices But because violations on the GPL are So common it means that that's almost never the case So these rights are are baked in and they travel with this software and yet they are being included in Surveillance devices that people are using in all way all kinds of ways in their lives and so being able to use GPL enforcement as a lever to To help us replace those devices with ones that we can we we can rely on is is important And it's so that's one of the things that that we focus on what keeps me going every day in this work is quite frankly The fact that Linux changed my life. I downloaded Linux in 1992 and installed it on the laptop that I just bought and discovered software freedom and Linux is the most important free software project ever written from my point of view and It breaks my heart to see the next generation of Linux users Not able to do what I was able to do because when I downloaded Linux It was under the GPL and fully compliant. I got a bunch of floppies. I got all the source code I was allowed to modify and improve it most people who get Linux today can't do that because quite frankly most devices Running Linux today are violating the GPL and you don't have the source code and the ability to modify and reinstall it And that's why we work on this because we believe Linux is important for the future of software freedom and for all software users everywhere We have a lot of exciting announcements coming soon and and we'll keep you posted. Yeah. Oh, sorry No, we don't have much time. We're fighting now on slides Tomorrow we're gonna have a lot of conversations about copy left and how it impacts us and our sustainability It's you can register a copy left off. It's here in Brussels. So Yeah, I want to just go back for a moment to this point to say that we're looking this year about how to marry these two approaches We we believe that GPL enforcement is essential GPL for enforcement for Linux is essential to software freedom We believe funding software development is essential and we're gonna look at some projects of how to marry the two together We have a podcast faith.us and Thank you so much for listening to us and for supporting Conservancy and our work and for all of the work and software freedom that you individually do So so I want to remind everyone with Karen said at the beginning if you watch lots of old Fosden videos You will you will wonder why the speaker in Janssen that never answers the question that was asked You're gonna ask a question. We probably won't be able to hear it up here Give it a try, but if we answer the wrong thing, please understand And you can ask us anything about Conservancy about enforcement about outreach II There's a question. I scared everybody off by saying we wouldn't be able to hear them We're being told to go to the middle one is together. They want us to get oh Yeah Hi, I had a quick question about you mentioned using the priority software like apps on phones and things like that Something that friends and colleagues have mentioned to me recently is sort of taking a more active approach to So protesting having to use them by deliberately feeding bad information So I deliberately feeding bad information to What's your moral take on that? I mean, I would never encourage anyone to Violate something that they agreed to so if you've agreed to terms of conditions that say you won't do that You should not violate it But one thing I do encourage you is to check the terms of conditions of what you're agreeing to to find out if that's in there I noticed that a lot of people it's just become so common to click yes all the time that Millions of pages of legal mumbo jumbo that everybody's had to agree to is Very disheartening so read those agreements at least and see if you're see if it speaks to that issue if it does not speak to That issue I think it's absolutely fine to feed Incorrect data into system that allows you to do it Also always exercise your offers for source if you get a product that says There is gpl code in here or your this has open source and it has rights always ask for the source code Always ask and if you can check that it what they sent you is is right Questions over here. Okay. Yeah It's like okay two questions first question if if for example, there is a voting or a referendum app in us in a town in Germany already out and it's closed source and What could could could the essence of free software freedom conservancy kind of help in any way to Get that get get the weaknesses exposed and the the app replaced by open source software or free software actually If not, what would be an alternate an European alternative to help there? That's the first question What do we do the question was what do we do for times when there's implementation of proprietary software where there really should be free software like in voting Apps as they're voting software as their husband recently. What can software freedom conservancy do to help with the situation? Yeah So we we try to do a number of things public education is one of those the major things that we try to do I am so frustrated because I thought when I started in this field Longer ago than I would like care to say I thought it was just a matter of waking people up to this problem I thought so naively that I would just say look at the fact Look at this look at this situation and that as soon as we would have one failure Everyone would realize oh actually if we had access to our source code over time We'll have be able to make the fixes that we need and we'll be so much better off that we shouldn't entrust single Corporations blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and I think I think another to your point another important thing to look to is Is how to get things done with a strictly like with voting where you're interacting with the government? By doing it without using the software so an example that we use we file our paperwork with the United States on paper Which is more work for us But we choose to do that work rather than electronically file because there's no way to a lot Electronically file in the u.s. Without proprietary software so as a individual Standing up and saying complaining to the voting authorities in your country that I don't want to use this proprietary software up to vote You should give me an alternative and collective action is really important Yeah, and the only way you'll get people to change in an individual way is when you get personally involved in their community You get you get as involved in the community as you can and you build trust and we have to be honest that a lot of our Solutions are not as or you know are not at the point as proprietary software and so, you know I find that for example going into schools, you know, you have to have suggestions for things to you differently So you would go on the record to recommend the citizens of tubing and to vote not by app, but by paper Go for it. Yeah. Okay. Second question. There's a this is a complex problem because it's distributed if it's up close and personal like Pace maker a defibrillator Okay, there are no kneeling benches here. This is not the Catholic University, but how could you help with that? Trying to get a a defibrillator Built by just bypassing the entire The entire software stack and doing it in hardware. Okay, this is a loaded question And so we'll move on to another question This the medical device space is fraught with difficulties and there are a number of initiatives to now that are now working on medical devices with with free and open source software, which is a Great move. Yeah, and I think taking the smaller steps like a lot of times you can't jump right to the most complicated and you know Inside body embedded medical device. There are people on more peripheral Medical devices where the regulations are a little more lax There's a community of free software developers who work on CPAP machine firmware for example So those are places where you can look to get involved with those communities and in my observing of those communities A lot of them are not very well versed in the traditional issues like free software licensing that community I just mentioned had a huge complicated licensing argument recently And I was really hoping someone who had more knowledge about that would get involved to help them through those issues There's lots of places where people are beginning to write free software that didn't traditionally write it And they don't know the history and how things work in our community There's lots of opportunities to join those communities and help even in the open APS community where it is the Diabetes community where it's very regulated. There's a lot of opportunity The only problem is that the medical device companies are Wising up because they see that people are getting a better result with their own Technology in their own software and so they're introducing some of the features that cause that to begin with That was the next. Yep. This is the last question. Thanks Hey, I've just been to a workshop yesterday, and it was about the open source observatory from the European Commission I don't know if you have heard of it. They are looking for feedbacks about how to build guidelines for Open source communities in the public sector, and I believe that you guys have a lot of nice ideas That they should listen to have you linked to them? I Heard some of that but not who ran the workshop We'd be glad to talk to you after to get linked up with whoever it is, but we didn't hear you because of the audio So yeah, I couldn't hear exactly who you said But there are a number of initiatives to create policies, and we're happy to participate in any and all of them It's tough because there are so many and it's hard to know which ones will result in You know in the policies that actually move forward But we have to we have to participate in ever and this is where you all come in where we can't we're a tiny organization at Conservancy our full-time staff is only five people and we run outreach. We have all our physical sponsorship We do we're trying to do contract patch where we help people We negotiate their employment agreements with some collective power, you know where we do GPL enforcement So we need volunteers. We need people to get involved and we need to do so in a coordinated way I just point your attention on that because they are looking for feedbacks now Beginning of February and they have an online survey you can take if we can't really hear you unfortunately So please talk to us later. We have a stand on the second floor of K So please come by there to tell us about it later And anybody else who would like to become a supporter of Conservancy to help us have more resources Please come by there as well and join as a supporter. Thank you so much