 Great. Well, we're going to get started with the first of our collaboration sessions. So, I'm really excited to introduce to you Italo Vignoli. Okay. So, the idea is that I will tell you my position on the topic. I believe I'm a user, and I believe that in this room there are only developers and lawyers and no users. So, this is... So, who am I? I have a degree in Humanities. I got a degree in 78, so it was typewritten. My thesis was typewritten. I've always been involved in marketing. I hate Outlook, and the reason why I am in open source is that I hate Outlook. So, because I was trying to find a software that allowed me not to use Outlook. So, I just basically thrashed Microsoft Office and started using OpenOffice, and Eudora at the time, and then Thunderbird. And believe me, I cannot use Outlook really. It burns my brain. Since 2004 in the OpenOffice, actually using OpenOffice since 2002, since 2004 in the community. And I entered the community saying, I'm a marketer. I can help you in doing something. And the answer was marketers are completely useless in free software. So, you are basically useless. But if you understand and know English, you can do some translations. And I said, okay, I can do translation, but I think I can do better if I do marketing. And so, I think we demonstrated with OpenOffice and with LibreOffice that marketing can work. In 2010, I was one of the group of people that launched LibreOffice, and actually this is the 10th anniversary of LibreOffice. And in the PR industry, I'm still a member of the PR association in Italy. I'm considered a geek. So, they say, oh, you understand technology perfectly. And developers consider me an idiot in technology. So, I basically don't know who I am. And this is how my main issues. So, the first number, users starts counting from one, not from zero. And when I said freedom number zero, and I said freedom number zero is not. For me, zero is no value. So, freedom number zero for a normal user is no freedom, no value. Sorry. I've talked with many users, and when you say freedom number one, they say, oh, I understand. So, freedom number one is the first one is very impossible. So, shift one in term of numbering. If you want to talk with users. Chat, I cannot use IRC, sorry. I start sweating when I use IRC, and I do some mistakes, I'm sure. In a five-minute chat, I can do ten mistakes using IRC without any issues. So, I telegram, but I use riot, I use matter. I need icons. I need icons. Marketing is important for me. I cannot use the terminal. When I present, I say that I have a strange religion. My religion doesn't allow me to use outlook and the terminal. They told me, oh, I wrote my thesis with Lattec, and I said, what? That's for geek, not for normal human beings. And, of course, the presentation, they use Lattec. Prezi, I don't use Prezi, of course. But there is a huge amount of users that use that kind of trash software, and we have to educate them to use real software. When you file a bug, people say, what's a bug? I thought it was a feature, OK? And when I find a bug in LibreOffice, and unfortunately there are bugs like in any software, the first thing that I do, I talk to another one and said, is this a bug or a feature? Because for me, it could be a feature, but if it's a bug, I will file the bug. And now, after so many years, as I'm not completely stupid and not lost all my neurons, although I've been officially losing them for 43 years, as I'm 65. So we start at 22. I can start to understand, but after 14 years, I can start to understand what's a bug and what's a feature. But at first, it was really hard. So to summarize, and that's my last slide, then it's up to you to ask questions. Users are not idiots with exceptions, of course. But there are some users that are normal beings. So they are not idiots. In their profession, they might be extremely knowledgeable, like some lawyers here, but lawyers are not users, they are not developers. They live on a different planet. But they may not be interested in using computers. So for them, using a computer is a tool, but they are not willing to invest their time in understanding the tool. And I think that open source has never been friendly to this kind of users, that unfortunately are 90% of users. So it's kind of, at the moment, 6.8 billion people in the world. So there is a world of people outside FOSS that might be interested in FOSS, but FOSS has not been friendly. And I think even if it has progressed in being friendly with users, there's still a lot to do, a lot of ground in terms of really inclusiveness. It's not the question that documentation is missing, but it's missing for every software. The fact is that people should feel welcome, and not like I did. And I stayed in open source because I'm a very stubborn person, and I said I'm sure that I can help, but at first really the idea is that people wanted to kick me off. And I think that was not nice. And that's all. So if you have questions, of course, debates tell me that I'm completely wrong. Tell me that lawyers are human beings. That's also something that I would like to understand better. Did you want to talk about users and their standing in free software? The way that licenses work right now is only if I am... Let me just focus on copyright for a second. Only if I am using the code under copyright or I hold copyright more specifically if I hold copyright in software, do I have a right to enforce it? I think are you talking about how, wouldn't it be nice if users, even though they don't have copyright in the code, could have standing in open source software and possibly hardware? We have to educate them. The problem is that a normal user does not even think that there is a license behind software because I'm sure when I talk to people about the end-user license agreement of Microsoft Office, they tell me, but are you really sure that they signed it? I've never seen it. Of course, because when you saw the small screen, you said accept. So you read only the first sentence that is Microsoft Corporation. You didn't read the 48 pages that follow and that are full of clauses that are against you. But that's not possible. Microsoft could not do this. There's such a nice company that could never do this kind of stuff. And then I usually send them the PDF of the 48 pages and say, just for your amusement when you are on a beach, print it and read it. And I have people sending me emails and say, is that true? Yes, it's true. You've signed it. So either you send a letter, stamp, say I recuse that, and of course I never use Word or Office anymore, but you're bound by that license. But the problem is that people do not know that there is licensing, that there are these kind of issues. You know, I think that the perception of people in open source, which is absolutely right, is that they give for granted that people as a knowledge of software that the reality is not there. So my wife is the typical 95% user of the world. She hates having a computer, but she knows that she has to use one. Well, my wife, just because it's my wife, we are not even Christians. So the miracle of transustanciasione, which is passing competencies through the air, we don't even believe to that. But in the companies where my wife is working say, come on, with your husband, you must understand this kind of stuff. And now she starts to understand that there are licenses, that there are legal constraints, that there are technical constraints, but it's after being my wife for now 35 years and listening to me talking about technology for all that time. And I can tell you that, although of course it's my wife, but my wife is a smart lady. And so let's say that she's in the top 5% of smart people. She's in the top 5% which is less smart and would never understand that there is a license associated. So I think to get the users in open source, we should give for granted less things, help them to understand that software is based on licenses, is a, of course is a, I'm not, but it's like having a piece of, a piece of software is like having La Giaconda of Leonardo in term of rights of the author. But no one in the real world would tell you, come on, that's a masterpiece and a piece of software is a piece of shit, sorry. Because they, in many cases, they suffer from using the software. This is the real issue. And I think, you know, we are too much far away from the normal user. I speak too much, sorry, I know. So just a slight quibble with your first statement. Developers themselves are usually users in open source because the reason we develop is because we want to use what we developed. The specific problem is that if it's developed by developers for developers, somebody who's a pure user with no development skills doesn't get a look in in the development process. But the solution for this is supposed to be a business model. So this is a business opportunity for a corporation to make money by bridging the gap between users and developers. Now, I know it's popular to this Mark Shuttleworth, but his vision for the Unity desktop in Canonical was pretty brilliant. It was basically, I will represent the needs, I will canvas users, do all the stuff, translate all of the impedance mismatches and employ teams of developers to represent those users' views as code and we will build something that users want to do. So the problem isn't that you're ever going to get users directly franchised in the developer community. It's just that all of the business models where people have tried to make money doing this seem to be failures. We need to find a way of making this business model successful. Of course I was extra mystic. I'm a friend of many developers as human beings know that. But it was just to kind of be provocative because I think that we really need, it can be a business model, but in some cases we really have to attract users because it's true that developers are users, but they are users with a heavy technical background, which is a different story. If you take a user that is not a technical background, and there are many that are not enthusiastic about technology, they're enthusiastic about other things, but this is a factor of the human being. So they may love arts and not love technology, but then they use the computer and the fact is that the proprietary world has been better in some senses than attracting these users. In some cases with heavy technical issues behind it, but the reality is that some proprietary company looks more friendly to users than the free open source environment. And I don't like it because I've been in my life, I've been a consultant to many companies that started doing PR and marketing professionally in 81. So from 81 to 2002, I've been a consultant to most proprietary company. I've worked for Apple for 19 years as a consultant for Adobe. So I know very well what these companies are doing and in some cases they are really more friendly. They are more enthusiastic in attracting users. And we should, of course, find a business model because that is an imperative, I think, to sustain the open source environment, but also a way of being more friendly, attracting more people that are outside our world. Our world is growing, but the world outside is just huge, incredibly huge. So if you have a question there, Patrick wants to hit me from behind. Thank you. It's just a little question, really. You said it can be a business model and I find that a little bit worrying and I may misunderstand. I think there's a lot of confusion around free and open source software and a lot of it comes from that very statement it can be a business model and I think it's something maybe, if you don't mind, we could clarify what we're saying is that there are business models around open source, but open source or free software of itself is not a business model, right? Or am I misunderstanding? Not sure, but the gentleman was talking about the business model that closes the gap between users and developers and was making Unity as the example. Of course, a business model around open source and open source is not a business model, but the reality is that we are talking about people that do not even know that there is an open source environment and business model associated. So the education gap is huge and unfortunately it's an education gap and in the schools it's terribly bad because at least I know Italian schools because I'm based in Italy and I talk in many schools in Italy and university as well, but I think that the situation is similar everywhere. The fact that in the schools there's no education at all about proper education at all about technology. There is about tools, but that is not about technology. Showing people how to make a presentation doesn't mean that you are teaching them to understand technology. That's the next step. I was just wondering, you mentioned that we need to get more users involved in actually using some of these tools such as LibreOffice or... No, just open source software. Of course, I'm a LibreOffice founder and I'm keen about LibreOffice, but don't consider me as a representative of LibreOffice in this case. It's just open source. Why would you believe that? Why do you think that in schools and government institutions and various different types of offices that may be public sector that we don't actually see operating systems being used of a Linux nature and also applications just as an example LibreOffice or any other one being used by those particular users? Okay, so my personal opinion is that unfortunately today there's Patrick there that wants desperately to ask me a question, Richard, so that's... I think that... and this is a personal vision and it's based on my experience. Unfortunately, the political world is driven by lobby in an increasing way all over the world, not just in Europe, not just in the States. If you think that here in Brussels there are three official lobbyists for each member of the parliament. That's an imbalance and they are not working for open source software. They are working for the other world. I cannot see what you're... Ah, okay. It's a little bit far away. So you started off by identifying sort of two communities, the developer community and user community, and they appeared to be individuals, so individuals within those communities. And then are there... So I guess I'm wondering around the messaging that we give in the different communities because advocacy for adoption could be specific to those groups or often it's seen geared toward corporations, governments as the previous question was, and that's a different community. So I guess I'm wondering around messaging and the messaging that we might use to advocate for adoption among individuals is different than what we would present to governments or businesses. I don't think the average, in my opinion, my friends, families, colleagues probably aren't going to be concerned as much around open source increasing the pace of development or driving innovation or reducing total cost of ownership or all of those other things that we traditionally cite to get adoptions within companies. So I guess the first question is, is the investment in individual adoption worth doing versus going after large corporations and government? And if those are both equal in what we should be doing, shouldn't we be developing different messages for those different constituencies? Of course, I mean, the answer is of course yes. The environment that we have around us is a lot more complex than I depicted, but it was just to simplify the story. I think that the basic idea is that we should be more welcoming and more helpful to external publics to help them in first understand what open source is because I think the big gap is that they don't have a real idea of what open source means and the first question is, and this is a question that you get in all Latin countries. If it's free, it must be buggy or there is a trick behind it. And of course, we know that it's not the reality, but that's unfortunately might be the perception and we have to fight this kind of perceptions and of course then we have politicians and we have lobbyists and we have organizations that are more complex to tackle. Hi. So my impression is, and I'm curious if you agree with this, that the public has been starting to realize all the things they've been agreeing to in these license agreements with a lot of recent news coverage about the large tech companies. I'm wondering if you think there's an opportunity there just for us to, and I don't know how exactly, but to take advantage of that and just tell people like, hey, we exist, we make all these things that you don't have to agree to all these crazy license agreements to use. Of course, the more there is debate about around open source, the better it is for open source in a sense, but on the other hand, some of the debates that we have seen over the last couple of years are not entirely positive because they are representative of a huge friction inside open source that the reality is probably not there, is a friction of some companies versus open source. At least this is my personal opinion. And of course, but I think we should do more outreach ourselves and do outreach, not being prepared to have people that do not understand at first what we are telling them. And then be patient and start really from the basic, from scratch and show them that there is high professionalism behind open source as there is behind any other software, but actually, if you look at it in a really good way, there is a lot more professionalism behind open source than behind proprietary software. At least this is my point of view. I know the time is over, but I would like to say one thing. We in Italy, and this is about LibreOffice but could be about any other open source software. In Italy, we have migrated the Ministry of Defense. So they have 100,000 users which is not trivial. And we told them, we help you in going through the process. And we, as a kind of nice gesture, we do that for free as volunteers. But you have to follow our training program. And the training program starts with four hours about open source software which is not about how you use Ryder, Calc, or Impress but is about open source software. And it's usually me doing that. And they said, okay, but we are not interested in the first four hours. And we said, okay, if you don't do the first four hours, you won't do the other 32. So we started, and I started in a pact. There were over 50 people, some of them with medals going up from here to there because they wanted to show that they were generals. And when they showed up, they had question mark in their eyes. We know we have to lose four hours with that stupid idiot, old Italian. And at the end of the four hours, most of them thanked because I told them normal things but things that they were not even supposing could be behind open source software. Like how we do security, how we do development, how we coordinate development. And they thought that we were all ponytail, working in a basement without light at six o'clock in the morning, developing or solving the last bug, which is not really the reality. So I think we have really a task of educating people, and I'm over, and I know that I talk too much. Thank you very much.