Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. I know that lunch can be a hard act to follow, but I'm going to do my best. I'll just quickly introduce myself. My name is Ashley Samet. I've worked sort of on and off within open source and tech for most of my life, either

in law enforcement or tech. And my mentor and former boss used to work in law enforcement as well. And he had made a joke once about how the two jobs that we had done working in law enforcement and open source were actually very similar. And he suggested that I should

do a talk on it one day. So I thought about it and I did a little tweaking. It wasn't originally going to be Biker Gangs, but it is now because there was a lot more similarities between Biker Gangs and you folks than you think there are. So without further ado, we're just going to get into it. So one of the reasons that I said, well, obviously,

it's going to be closer related to Biker Gangs than any other form of group criminality is because of the open road and open code analogy. There's more similarities than I thought. And as I started working through this presentation, I really got a bit carried away with it and

thought, holy smokes, these are basically the same people. The most interesting thing that I found about working in open source, especially compared to other sort of sections

of tech, was that there were unwritten rules. And these unwritten rules didn't generally get shared with people outside of the community, much like within outlaw motorcycle groups or OMGs or MCs, as I might refer to them. And the first rule of both groups, so whether you're

in boss or whether you're in an OMG is, of course, you're going to protect the community. Safety and wellbeing are paramount in both communities. And this goes to whether you're patching code or you're pulling over to help a biker with mechanical issues. And one of the

things that I learned when I was working in BEU, that stands for the Biker Enforcement Unit, was that if you are a biker in trouble, you pull over and you put your helmet on the ground behind your rear tire. And this is an international sign, globally recognized for

biker needs a hand or, you know, if you're a biker, you are obligated to pull over. So there's this decorum that sort of outlines how you're supposed to be responding. And the interesting thing is you're supposed to stick your hand up out the window, give a thumbs up or thumbs down. And if the biker says, yeah, thumbs up, you can continue and

if thumbs down, then you stop. And I can't count the number of times when working in OS where we'd be at a meeting or an event, just sitting at lunch, for example, and someone would mention, I'm trying to figure something out. I'm trying to get this code to work, or I'm trying to get this PR action. And without fail, someone would say, oh, I'll look into that. Or I know

a guy, or, you know, I know who to talk to about this. Or if you're trying to get your project some attention, well, tell us about it. Maybe we can get you some more attention. And it's always a we or an us situation. It's we will figure it out. Well, I will see if they

can help us. And I love that about it. There was all of this camaraderie immediately. And similarly, it was thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs up. Great. Thumbs down. Yeah, we'll help you out. The second part was the brotherhood. Now, we don't have jackets as cool

as this in open source. And actually, you're not allowed to have a jacket with a three-piece patch on it unless it's been approved by the Hells Angels, which I'll get into later. But I think that it's time that we start, you know, considering maybe some fancier swag. I know AWS is handing out patches at some events recently. But maybe we need to start

with the jacket. Brotherhood is number two. And it can also just reference community, right? You're looking out for the hang around if you're a biker or the noobs if you're an OS. You're taking care of the little guy. There's support beyond the bike or beyond the binary,

right? It's not just where you are at that time. It's where else is this going to go? I've never seen a community in person or online where people see each other so consistently and are so excited to see one another. And it really is like a big family.

And you know if you've watched something like Sons of Anarchy or another poorly constructed biker show, that there's levels to it, right? There's a president, a vice president, treasurer, sergeant at arms. And these are actual roles. And there's often a vote involved. These are very formalized processes within motorcycle clubs.

And as I was going through my list of folks that I knew in all of their roles, I was like, huh, well, we've got presidents of the ASF. We've got all of these presidents of PSF. And it's kind of like OMGs are different software foundations. You have all of these people taking on work and responsibilities that are in addition to their regular work.

And it's often not paid or it's not paid very much. And you probably complain about taking on extra work for a little bit until you get surrounded by your people again. And you're like, right, this is why I'm doing it. So that was another thing that I thought was

pretty interesting. And generally, there's a bit of a learning curve as well when you join these communities. You don't really know what OS is about until you're in OS. And much is the same for these motorcycle games. A lot of interviews that I've seen or sat in on, a lot of folks are

saying, I didn't know what I was getting into until it was too late. And I'm assuming that's probably a sentiment about 80% of the people attending class this week as well. The support I've worked in law enforcement, academia, finance and tech, and I've been very spoiled by the employment gods. But I've never been as spoiled as I was working in the

open source community. Everyone that I met through the role, not just specifically within that employer, but everyone through the role, there was so many people that worked for other organizations or other communities or other foundations. And everyone had so much time for

me as I was asking to explain a project or a program, or can you demo this? And everyone in open source is really good at a lot of things. But everyone also has this quiet assumption that you have to be really good at sharing all of those things you're good at. And

so many people have shared with me. And then lastly, the nicknames. Every guy who I profiled who was a biker had a nickname. There was always a biff or a whitey or a junior in every single motorcycle game. I don't know why, I don't know how. And within the OS community, I've met several people that no one knows their real name. And they just go by their nickname. I've

checked into hotels with my old team. And they were like, Oh, do you know when Tom is checking in? And I was like, I have no idea who Tom is. I'm sorry. And then I realized that they meant spot. Then I was able to go on with my day. But nicknames are also really fascinating to me because I see them in organized crime. And it's generally a way of designating someone

as ours within a community or brotherhood. And as soon as I saw that this was something that happened within OS, I was like, okay, this isn't just technology anymore. This is something different. As well, you're recognizing this right now sitting in a conference room in a

country that you may or may not live in the acknowledgement of shared experiences and different experiences but under the same banner. And I saw this a lot within out on motorcycle groups, but not with other organized crime groups. You have groups that have similar ideologies for different street gangs across the province or a state. But the

only things that were consistent with them were very shallow identities. With motorcycle gangs, there is a completely different level. There's a sponsorship between groups to get members from one country to another, to support each other. They put each other up in their homes, even if there's a language barrier. They help each other get jobs in certain industries.

They vouch for one another in a way that most organized groups don't, except for within open source. The lingo. The lingo. These things still make me giggle to this day or there's

inside jokes around lingo that people outside of open source just won't get. The readmes, the PRs, the forks, free puppies, not free like beer. I think that's one of my favorites. In OMG world, we had cuts and tabs and hangarounds and prospect. And when you start

throwing these words around without thinking about them, I think that's when a lot of people realize that they're like, oh, I'm part of the fold now. I'm saying these things. I know what they mean. I don't have to ask questions. We're working in three word acronyms half of the time

and you know what's going on. And you hear someone else say one of these words from across the room and you're like, oh, that's my people over there. Rule number three is the need for speed, respectfully of course. We never want to think of ways to slow down a process or interrupt

a process. So what are we doing? We're modifying. And this is one of the biggest commonalities that I saw between these two groups. Everyone's proud of what they're building, whether it be a Harley Davidson iron 883 or if you're contributing to a readme or trying to create the perfect TensorFlow tutorial. There's something about a DIY ethos that is very, very

unique to these communities. And people can sometimes get frustrated or discouraged when things that were once within reach suddenly aren't available to them anymore. So they start going

back and figuring out, okay, how am I going to make this work like it used to or the way that I liked it working for me? That's when you start your modifications, right? There's a couple of bikes called Bobbers and Choppers. And I know that there's a big fork joke in this picture somewhere. But post World War II United States, the servicemen that came home and eventually

ended up sort of starting the house angels, they started removing all of the things from their bikes, from their motorcycles that they thought were too big or too heavy or not essential to the basic function of the motorcycle, like fenders and turn indicators and front brakes in some

situations. And I'm sure some people have built tools the same way. Maybe we don't need these things. Let's take them off. These machines were lightened so they could improve their performance when they were racing. And basically what these individuals were doing, we're looking at an existing product and saying, these are the ways that I can change or further develop

functions in it that are going to be more important to my end user experience. And then what do you do when you finish your creation? You show it off, of course, usually to other enthusiasts in your community. So for motorcycles, generally, they would gather in large

drive lake basins in California. But here we get together at conferences and events and online. And we share those things. And often there's feedback, right? There's a feedback loop. We're getting people to do second checks, getting people to give suggestions or offerings.

And then what happens when the big manufacturers find out what we're doing? The same thing with motorcycle manufacturers. They started developing chopper-influenced bikes, but they weren't willing to go as far as foregoing things like rear suspensions and brakes. So you got something that was a bit in the middle. It looked like a chopper, it sounded

like a chopper, but it didn't quite trust riders or maybe their brand reputation with something that they felt could lead to an injury or a lawsuit, right? So we had to play nice, but we wanted to share things too. Patches, of course, this is a very easy analogy to make,

right? We know patches within software are very, very critical. And oftentimes people spend a lot of time on patches, contributing to patches, things like this. But they're almost as integral to motorcycle clubs. So maybe a bug fix is a bit more important than putting on a tab that says

OS forever, forever OS. But when I was investigating motorcycle clubs, the first thing I did when I saw photos of them or when I saw video of them was look at their jacket for your patches. And it's like wearing a GitHub on your back. How have you been involved? How

many stars do you have? Who do you know? And I know that stars can be an arbitrary unit of measurement on GitHub, but still, we need to pay attention to it. Who within the community are you cool with? Who do you ride with? And it's kind of the same thing with OS patching. There's this theme of quality assurance that we're trying to achieve. And when we're trying

to reinforce that when we make something last, when we're making it reliable, and when we're learning from each other, right? We're trying to learn who's who within the community, you know, what everyone does, what they're good at, how we can help each other. When I was working at Blackberry in the CERT, as a communications manager, that's

inspector and meltdown hit. And seeing how everyone came together within OS environments, as well as major companies and cloud providers, they came together to try and problem solve and roll out these emergency patches. And online communities were huge in this regard. Not only

were they keeping everyone up to date on what was happening or what was not happening, which is equally important, but the collaboration was really, really remarkable. Also, as someone who used to be in charge of the swag, I did not understand the importance of stickers

until recently. Stickers are table stakes at conferences. And in doing these slides, I realized, oh my gosh, there are so many amazing sticker and booth designs that could have gone along with this theme. But it's incredible what something like a sticker does for a community. Working in law enforcement now, we trade patches. I work for a small service.

So when I go on a conference or a course, I bring my services like shirt patches with me, and we swap them. And it's so similar that we see the same thing within open source, and within these outlaw motorcycle gangs. We don't have laptops to stick them on,

unfortunately, but it's really neat that you could be sitting in a space with someone and they have an Oasis open or a Foslice sticker on their machine, and then you end up being on your friends with them. And traveling to these places, traveling to conferences, I'm sure that you look at backpacks of people that are on the same flight with you and say, I'm going to buy myself a beer if that person ends up at Fos.

Next rule is know your limits. We all can get a little bit cocky sometimes, maybe something works perfectly last time, so you're certain it's going to work again, or you're in a rush to do the thing before someone else does it, or you skip over some

of your usually rigorous testing procedures, and then we have heart bleed all over again. And one of the biggest, I don't want to say challenges or issues, but one of the biggest things that I saw working in OAS was that there was not enough recognition. And I don't

think there ever will be for what the OAS community does. And I think that's just because of the people that work in it. They're not working for recognition. I truly hope that maintainers inherit the earth because they're responsible for keeping a lot of it going, or at least the frameworks for it. But because there isn't that overt, this person is doing a lot from external sources, people can burn out quite quickly.

And I know the personalities that find their way into open source, you need to be doing something always. And we often learn best by doing something, so you should be doing everything all the time. And we don't often realize our own limits. And a ton of good open source is ensuring it's sustainable. And we need to make sure that

we are sustaining ourselves too, and the commitments that we're making are sustainable. I got this really neat card. I don't know if you can see it. The front of it says, make sure to maintain thyself. When I was at an RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology open source

convention. And on the back, there's little stamps, and you give yourself a stamp every time you say no to something. So once you've hit saying no to 10 things, then you get to treat yourself with something. But I thought that it was brilliant because these are the things that we rarely think about is the saying no, right? Evil-kneveling yourself over a dozen flaming

school buses sounds really cool and makes for a great challenge point image. But there isn't a lot of respect for boundaries and individual capacity there, right? Evil-knevel had an entire team of people behind him, so he could focus on just one thing. And even then, out of 275

jumps, he lands to 60 of them, meaning that even when things were perfect, the potential to crash was still there. So you have to make sure that you're taking care of yourself, knowing your limit, and knowing that you can slow down, things will get taken care of. And it's good

to treat yourself because unlike a motorcycle, we can't just go for digging for parts if you burn out. The code of conduct or how to deal with the one percenters. So one of the things that

I adored about OS was there was an immediate code of conduct for each event that you went to and projects had codes of conduct on them. Everything that you worked on had this code of conduct, which allowed these places to be very transparent about what was expected of the participants. Within outlaw motorcycle groups or MCs or OMGs, there's this notion that if you

are within the group, you are going to be a law-abiding citizen. 99% of motorcycle enthusiasts are law-abiding citizens. This was said by William Berry, the president of the American

Motorcycle Association in 1960, which then leaves you with one percent of the biker or OS community that can be kind of a jerk or that doesn't always adhere to the code of conduct. And even among that group of people that are not going to follow the code of conduct, usually

they're reminded and then everything is fine. But sometimes there are things in a community that can make interactions uncomfortable. And just like the Hells Angels and the Outlaws, OS communities have developed this code of conduct that makes sure that everyone gets

along. So we know that there's expected behavior, right? At FOSS, be authentic, collaborate. We know what's unacceptable, right? And we know that there has to be consequences for something.

It's interesting that when we're talking about collaboration before conflict as well, generally that's sort of a tenet. We saw this a lot within, not a lot, but we saw this several times within Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. There was conflict between two groups, usually a very well identifiable group and a smaller group. And instead of having a fight between

them over turf or membership, the smaller group just patched over, pardon the pun, patched over to the other gang who had better support, more clout, stronger membership. And then you have more support for your project or your legal drug operation. And you have more

people to go up for whoever is causing you trouble, right? You've got a larger power behind you. We know that if there's unacceptable language being used or dangerous situations, we report it. And I will say that I've seen people get banned from both OS communities

and from motorcycle clubs. And frankly, the responses from both the career criminals and the career open source are very the same. There's denial, there's disbelief, there's shock, and then you change your name and try and refill your way back in. But because of these tight-knit communities within motorcycle clubs and OS, it's often someone within that group saying,

no, this person doesn't belong here for this reason. And it's not gatekeeping. I think that it's far from that. It's this constant thought of the collective over the individual, which we'll get to in a moment. Also licensing and attribution. Obviously within open source, this is fairly commonplace. We need to know what we're using or building on. We need to know

who we're giving credit to. But did you know that the Hell's Angels logo, the name, the three-piece patch is all owned under Hell's Angels Incorporated. And if you want to start a motorcycle club or an MC, then you need permission from Hell's Angels Incorporated. So it's neat that you see these things and you're like, oh, that's interesting. All of a sudden

a group is a riding club and then they become an MC and that's owned. They have to get permission and then everything shifts. It's like when ZenSource was developed and then acquired by Citrix. There's Hypervisor itself, which is like a riding club, so anyone could do it.

But then ZenServer is like the motorcycle club. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, things change when you align yourself with the Hell's Angels, and I'll just leave it at that. Respect or tolerance for other clubs. When we say other clubs, we mean basically all the other languages. Not everyone's going to do it the

same way, and that's okay, right? It's fairly certain that there's probably one or two people who hate one of the languages that I put up there, or love one, and that's okay. Because you're allowed to do this the way you need to, as long as you adhere to the previously mentioned codes of conduct. With outlaw motorcycle gangs, as long as you're not intentionally

getting into trouble or intentionally getting into unsanctioned trouble, then generally you're all okay within the OMG community. Participating within the community is the biggest element of that, right? And that's something that took me a while to learn, but regardless of who you are, everyone has something to contribute to open source, which is one of the most compelling

things about this community. Some people contribute code, some people write the readme, some people do the community management, some folks champion the maintainers. Whatever it is, it's getting done by different people. And I think when people hear open source, they immediately jump into that's too technical for me, which I am very guilty of until I realized there was more

than just code contributions. But within motorcycle clubs and riding clubs, it's similar. Everyone has a role, even if they're not a sexy role, but much like open source, those less sexy roles need to be filled, right? Imagine a biker party without a bartender, security,

the guy who takes down wall-to-wall tarps to make sure their mom's carpet doesn't get ruined. I'm sure that there is a role specifically within OS that is just like that guy. Show up authentically, this is our second last rule. And until you're part of the community, you probably don't understand it. And even when you're in it, there's probably going to be

challenges and things you can't quite figure out or parts of this community you may not feel like understand. And that's cool, because we always talk about it. I will say that most of the folks that I've investigated in OMGs and Outlaw Motorcycle Games all have their different reasons for joining. And I find it fascinating hearing about how people end up as a member

within a club. And not everyone has the same reasons for being within that community. And not everyone has the same goals. And not everyone believes the same thing. But we are always sharing spaces, whether they be in person or online, on Slack, Discord, X. We understand that

these spaces and these interactions are only possible because we're showing up as ourselves and have the space to do so. And I've met the most incredible people with the most incredible backgrounds and stories and lived experiences in so many countries around the planet. And it's because we're given this opportunity. I feel like open course is almost a sacred space,

because this is where we truly get to be ourselves. And with that exception of the 1% that can screw it up for people, it allows us to get and grow into versions of ourselves that otherwise we wouldn't have been able to without our club, so to speak. And lastly, whether it be the

Hells Angels or whether it be open source, you cannot go back to your own life. I asked my boss in the Biker Enforcement Unit about some of the members that he saw in OMG. And I said, you know, they haven't been around for a while. And I noticed we were doing some

OSINT searches, and I found a baby registry for one of these Hells Angels members and his old lady. And my boss said, Oh, yeah, he'll probably step back for a little bit. And I said, is he going to leave now that he has a family? And then I got the impression that this wasn't something that happens. No matter what, you're in. There are two ways to leave a motorcycle club.

You can be in good or sorry, out good or out bad. And no one wants to be out bad. Usually that last one comes because you've done something really bad against the club or the member of the club and you've been exiled. Out good means you've left the club for legitimate reasons. So maybe

the baby for example. But no one actually ever leaves. People are out good, but they still show up to things that require a little less bandwidth than full membership. So charity rides and barbecues and, you know, you're probably still kicking in some dues. And I dare say, the exact same thing happens within OS. I've been out good, I hope, out good since about

the summer. And I'm still kicking around. I'm explaining to the gentleman that I work with why they need to push updates to their mobile phones. And I'm working with other analysts, crime analysts to develop OSBI tools that will let us clean data faster than we can do it in Excel. And generally, I don't think you ever look at software the same way again after you've

had a bit of the OS Kool-Aid, right? And you just end up being an OS fanatic. Some of us are just more subtle about it than others and make it really digestible to the masses by wrapping it up and stuff like outlets, motorcycle group comparisons. But for the most part, you never

get out of this. And frankly, I don't think any of us really want to get out anyway. Thank you. Any questions from the audience? Yeah, please. There's a microphone so I can speak up. So I'm looking to switch from open source to motorcycle

bike or gangs. Can you recommend a path for me to migrate from one community to the other? Absolutely. They're a very welcoming group. So I would just suggest walking right after them and introducing yourself. That's what, you know, I've always seen people do. Goes really well for them. Cool, thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, no problem. Let me know how it goes.

Any more questions? I'll just add to what you said about respecting other communities and you showed languages on the list. So yes, more good words about JavaScript developers

because I think there's a lot of bad words about JavaScript developers out there. PHP developers as well. I agree. I actually just saw it in this month's WIRED or last month's WIRED how they were talking up quite positively JavaScript and how more people should give it

the credit that those developers deserve. So absolutely, kudos to JavaScript. I don't see any more questions in the chat online. Still any questions? Oh, there's one more question.

Comment on the stickers because that's a topic I have been thinking a lot about. I'm an anthropologist. I'm like always interested in those symbols for group membership and what I noted is that stickers are not that easily accessible like for many of the really interesting ones. You need to know the right people even in open source and with all

the sharing and global online community. So you need to physically be at places with people to get certain stickers and I found that fascinating that if people are in the know they can see it on the back of the laptops kind of where they have been or at least where people they know really have been. Absolutely. Mine is still covered and people look at it and

you know it's crazy to see how much you can give up about yourself when people see the stickers on your laptop and it's very much like the oh you're in with these people so you you must know this person based on this sticker and I agree I find that fascinating right

like there's some things that are very niche and it's like oh I know that you got that sticker at you know open source 2017. It builds that camaraderie even further like we are an open source community. It's a very sort of like almost secret society at times

because there are things that only those within the community understand and I really think that that's fantastic. Any more questions? Again thank you a lot. Thank you so much.