Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today?
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00:00
SoftwareThomas KuhnCore dumpEmulationMathematicsDigital photographyMIDIMultiplication signSelf-organizationDevice driverField (computer science)SoftwareFreewareSerial portProjective planeWindowComputer hardwareMoment (mathematics)MathematicsServer (computing)PlastikkarteLaptopSystem administratorSoftware developerConservation lawOpen sourceEndliche ModelltheoriePerspective (visual)ComputerParallel portGreatest elementTerm (mathematics)Point (geometry)Variety (linguistics)Set (mathematics)Process (computing)Langevin-GleichungQuicksortCondition numberAxiom of choiceOrder (biology)Standard deviationThomas KuhnComputer animation
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Web pageFirmwareNumberSoftwareVideo gameCASE <Informatik>Conservation lawCartesian coordinate systemSource codeComputer programWeb browserWeb pageDifferent (Kate Ryan album)ComputerData miningLevel (video gaming)Condition numberAndroid (robot)Mobile appLocal ringSet (mathematics)Range (statistics)Self-organizationFreewareNetwork topologyEmailMoment (mathematics)Kernel (computing)Medical imagingBit rateDirection (geometry)Functional (mathematics)Multiplication signTouchscreenMobile WebAxiom of choiceRule of inferenceMappingProcess (computing)QuicksortInheritance (object-oriented programming)Structural loadRight angleComputer animation
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Sign (mathematics)SoftwareWeb 2.0Web browserMereologyGreatest elementRule of inferenceSoftwareScripting languageArmFreewareSelf-organizationPlug-in (computing)Process (computing)Database transactionSign (mathematics)Conservation lawTouchscreenDigital photographyFunctional (mathematics)Computer animation
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SoftwareSoftwareWeb 2.0Axiom of choiceQuicksortExtension (kinesiology)Mobile WebRight angleView (database)Multiplication signLevel (video gaming)Point (geometry)FreewareOpen sourceComputer animation
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SoftwareSoftwareLevel (video gaming)Axiom of choiceConservation lawMappingAdaptive behaviorMobile appTablet computerMechanism designGoogolMultiplication signEmailAndroid (robot)LaptopSoftware developerRight angleDesign by contractInheritance (object-oriented programming)Different (Kate Ryan album)Moment (mathematics)Information securityPressureTelecommunicationFacebookCondition numberLenovo GroupTexture mappingTerm (mathematics)Computer animation
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LaptopSoftwareParadoxAxiom of choiceUniform resource locatorLaptopCellular automatonSoftwareFreewareSystem callGame controllerCondition numberOperator (mathematics)ComputerEmailBitWeb 2.0Single-precision floating-point formatLogical constantService (economics)FirmwareAxiom of choiceCodePhysical lawMultiplication signComplex (psychology)Software industryPhysical systemProjective planeCASE <Informatik>Point (geometry)Information privacyParadoxServer (computing)Client (computing)Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopyHard disk driveArithmetic meanAreaSystem administratorReplication (computing)Different (Kate Ryan album)Internet service providerSource codeFrequencyFocus (optics)Arrow of timeNavigationCartesian coordinate systemHookingMereologyStress (mechanics)Information securityQuicksortFacebookMultilaterationBackupRight angleDrop (liquid)Entire functionSpacetimeCentralizer and normalizerComputer animation
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SoftwareAxiom of choiceLaptopCartesian coordinate systemProjective planeFreewareSoftwareMobile appCompilerInternet service providerKernel (computing)Level (video gaming)Axiom of choicePlanningSoftware developerBitKey (cryptography)Multiplication signMoment (mathematics)WritingDecision theoryOrder (biology)Different (Kate Ryan album)Time zoneSlide ruleProcess (computing)Data storage deviceNP-hardMathematicsCASE <Informatik>WebsiteBackupUniverse (mathematics)Menu (computing)Group actionBoss CorporationComputer programEmailVideo gameSoftware industryAnalogyHard disk driveInformation privacyMassSelf-organizationComputer animation
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Slide ruleRight angleDigital rights managementSoftwareMessage passingView (database)Sweep line algorithmComputerFreewareQuicksortCartesian coordinate systemMultiplication signLattice (order)Regulator geneMereologyType theoryLevel (video gaming)Computer configurationFamilyProcess (computing)Conservation lawBitInformationDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Point (geometry)Exterior algebraTerm (mathematics)Direction (geometry)MappingVideoconferencingModal logicGroup actionProduct (business)Physical lawOnline chatProjective planeComputer hardwareBit rateOnline help
46:53
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:06
Let me introduce and let's welcome Bradley and Karen. Hi, I'm Karen Sandler.
00:21
And I'm Bradley Kuhn. This is our FozTime keynote. Raise your hand if you have heard of the Software Freedom Conservancy. That's like, oh my gosh, yay, that's like more than half the room. The people in the live stream, how do they raise their hands?
00:41
About half of the people who raise their hands. I see. So the Software Freedom Conservancy is a charitable organization. We're based in the United States, but we are a global organization. We are the foundation for coming up on 50 free software projects.
01:03
Many of which you're using. I think the logos speak for themselves. So we are, we do everything that our project, we are the foundation for our project. So our project's problems are our problems, and we are partners and work together. We are also the home of Outreachy, which is a diversity initiative.
01:25
And bringing underrepresented people into free and open source software. And we are perhaps most well known for enforcing the GPL. On behalf of Linux kernel developers who have asked us to, and on behalf of our member projects.
01:43
Also, on Monday, we're having a conference all about Copyleft, called CopyleftConf, or CopyleftConf. And so that's on Monday, and you can come to our booth and buy tickets for it or buy tickets online. It's 15 euro if you're a hobbyist, and I'm excited, we're going to have a whole day to talk about just Copyleft.
02:05
So these are the kinds of things that we do. And also, Karen and I try very hard, and have for many years, to be people who use only free software for all the work that we do. So raise your hand if you try to use free software for as many things as you can.
02:24
Almost everybody. Yeah, that's like more than three quarters of the room, that's everybody here. Which is probably why you came to this talk. So we care a lot about software freedom. We care about it for a variety of reasons. We care about it from a very personal issue, in terms of the software that we want to use, and that we want to rely on.
02:45
And we care about it from a societal perspective. Because as all of our software becomes more and more connected, more of our software becomes critical. And without software freedom, we will lose our autonomy, and we will be unable to really rely on the technology that we've integrated into our lives.
03:08
And I started an industry in the early 1990s that was mostly proprietary software. So I lived in a world where I had some free software, but most of what I was using, supporting as a sysadmin, and even developing, was proprietary software.
03:25
And I became completely disillusioned with the technology industry as a whole. It's why I became a software freedom activist, because I couldn't stand anymore the problems that proprietary software created in people's lives. The way that it held developers back didn't allow them to improve their own software.
03:43
And there was a time in the late 2000s, mid-2000s, late 2000s, which I tend to think of as the golden age of software freedom. There was a moment in history where computing was somewhat rare compared to today, for most people.
04:03
And also, free software had succeeded enough that there was the ability to actually do anything you wanted to do with a computer, generally speaking, with free software. The moment this became clear to me was in the mid-2000s, the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, I built a set of servers.
04:22
And that was right around the time serial ATA became the de facto standard for drives as opposed to parallel ATA. But I bought all parallel ATA cards, and the reason I did that was because at the end of 2004, there was no free software driver for Linux for any serial ATA card on the market.
04:44
By the end of 2005, just one year later, every single card on the market that was serial ATA had a Linux driver, and many of them only had Linux drivers, no Windows drivers. That was a moment of change for free software, and was the time when, if you wanted to do a job with software, you could find free software to do it.
05:06
And it was true for laptops as well. Yeah, and I think still many of us here have standardized on some of the equipment we were using then. Many of us have used our X200s for a very, very long time. And it's frustrating in a way because so many of us are in this field, care about software, care about technology, because we love technology.
05:28
We love new technology, and it's sort of strange that we sort of wind up, because of our love of technology and our insistence on ethical technology, we wind up standardizing on old equipment and not adopting the new technology that would have drawn us to this field to begin with.
05:47
The laptops of that era, they still work with free software. They even work with free BIOSes. You can install from bottom to top in the older ThinkPad models 100% free software and drive all the hardware on the device.
06:03
But there aren't many devices like that anymore, and in fact, there are some devices that are even worse. And this is a picture of my defibrillator. Everything changed for me when I found out that I had a heart condition, and I was told that I had a very high risk of suddenly dying,
06:21
and I needed a defibrillator in order to make sure that if my heart went into sudden death, which is the actual medical term, that I would get shocked and I would be saved. And so I was someone who thought that open source software was cool and pretty useful,
06:42
and then all of a sudden I was confronted with the idea that I had to get proprietary software literally sewn into my body and screwed into my heart. And it was such a wake-up moment for me because everything that I had thought previously about the software that I relied on and my whole relationship with software changed.
07:02
And when Karen told me that she had to get this device installed in her body, we were already friends at that point. We didn't work together really yet at Conservancy, but we were working together elsewhere and were friends. And Karen asked me what I thought about all this, and it really changed my perspective as well,
07:21
because I hadn't considered in that golden age of free software that there might be tougher choices that people would have to make. I really couldn't imagine until Karen told me about this that you might end up in a situation, as she just described, where you have to choose between your own personal safety and avoiding proprietary software.
07:45
Karen made the right choice, obviously, because she chose her safety and health over the fact that she now has proprietary software in her body. Well, I might add that I have never needed to be shocked. I've only been shocked inappropriately. What does inappropriately mean?
08:02
I have only been given unnecessary treatment by my defibrillator. So there have been times where the defibrillator was calibrated wrong, or it's thought that my heart was doing something that was dangerous when it was not. So, for example, when I was pregnant, about 25% of all pregnant women have palpitations.
08:24
It's super common. I see a woman nodding. And when that happens, you know, if you were to go to the doctor, they would say, oh, palpitations are really common, don't worry about it. But for me, because I had a defibrillator, my device thought that I was in a dangerous rhythm, and it shocked me.
08:44
And multiple times. And the only way for me to deal with it was for me to take drugs to slow my heart rate down so much that I had a hard time walking up a flight of stairs. But why didn't you fix the firmware and update it? Exactly. And so it was such an eye-opening moment, because when I first got the
09:06
defibrillator and was first prescribed to get one, I thought that the real issue was transparency. I thought that the problem was that I couldn't see the source code in my own body, and that was upsetting in a very ideological way.
09:22
But when the unnecessary shocks happened simply because I was pregnant, I realized that it was something else entirely, right? The medical device manufacturers have no interest in pregnant women being shocked. None. That is the last thing they want, is for pregnant ladies getting shocked. I promise you. But when you think about it, only 15% of defibrillators go to people under the age of 65.
09:45
Fewer than half of all people who get defibrillators are women. So the set of people who are pregnant with defibrillators is tiny, and it's a temporary condition, and I was able to take drugs to deal with it. And so it made me realize that I was in a situation that the device manufacturers hadn't really anticipated and weren't prepared to deal with.
10:06
And it made me realize that there are all of these other situations that we may have where the manufacturers of our technology have not anticipated the use cases that we'll have. And my defibrillator in particular is potentially going to last me another 15 years.
10:22
And anticipating what could happen to our technology generally over that long time span, it's mind-boggling. And this is also right around the time that we began to have handheld mobile computing devices. I hate calling them smartphones because they're actually more powerful computers than my first three or four computers, even this one was.
10:44
That's the original HTC Dream, the Android G1, which was the first Android phone. And initially… Raise your hand if you had one. Who had a G1? Okay, only like a quarter, like less than a quarter of the audience.
11:03
Karen and I stopped using our G1 phones in 2010, or 2011. No, it was a lot later than that. It was 2012 for me. 2012, yeah. And there were various reasons we kept using this phone, one of which was that it was only one step in the wrong direction.
11:23
So in some sense it was a step in the right direction, because at the time the common handheld computer was the iPhone, which was completely proprietary software, completely locked down, completely unfriendly to software freedom. This phone, this device, was somewhat friendly to software freedom.
11:40
It ran Linux, it had a kernel that was free software, it had Android, most of which was released as free software. And in fact, we were able to upgrade the firmwares with our own builds on these devices, and got the thing working, generally speaking, with the only proprietary software being the baseband firmware to talk to the mobile phone network.
12:02
Now this means the device did not work as directed by the manufacturer. Specifically, there were a number of different proprietary software applications that were supposed to run on this device to make it more useful, that did not run when you installed an alternative firmware with 100% or 99% free software.
12:25
You couldn't do the Google Maps app, you couldn't do email, there wasn't a functional email app at first, someone eventually wrote one that was free software, but all of the main applications you were expected to use were proprietary.
12:41
But that wasn't so bad either, because the web browser worked. And in fact, I often use this particular device to look at Google Maps, because in those days, Google Maps didn't actually really require JavaScript. You could load a static image of a map, and it gave you just a regular image that displayed fine in a web browser.
13:02
So what happens now? Well, eventually, I started getting this page when I tried to use Google Maps. So, I think it's a pretty mean joke. Basically it says, if you don't want to run proprietary software, your life is empty. Because what it's trying to do is install a proprietary software application, written in
13:25
JavaScript, into your browser, and run it so that you can view the map. And we checked this just yesterday. Even today, if you try to load Google Maps without JavaScript enabling your browser, this is the screen that you see.
13:40
You can't use Google Maps if you're not willing to install proprietary software. Not anymore, anyway. And this isn't limited to Google Maps. This is pretty much a very wide range of applications. So something strange that happened, and something that I feel that many software freedom activists missed until it was too late,
14:01
was that slowly but surely, many of the applications that we wanted to use to get daily work done moved from being desktop applications and those sorts of things to being applications that ran in the browser. Now, a lot of people tend to think, well, if it runs in the browser, it's not really a program that I'm running.
14:22
But of course, all of you in the audience know well that a JavaScript program is just a piece of software that gets downloaded into your computer and run immediately in your browser. It's not that different from typing apt-get install something. It just all happens quickly and automatically for you.
14:41
So at Conservancy, we worry about this problem a lot. And we had a rule at Conservancy that said, well, employees are not required to use proprietary software. We permit employees at Conservancy to use proprietary software if they want to, if they feel it helps them get their jobs done. But we never wanted to mandate it. So I had this weird problem because I
15:02
was handling, we're a small organization, I was handling the banking for Software Freedom Conservancy. So I go to our bank's website and I'm greeted mostly by this bizarre stock photo of these two people at their kitchen staring at me. But when I go to try to click on that little sign in there, if I have no script on, which you'll see I have on up in the top hand corner,
15:23
which is a plug-in for Firefox that will ban all JavaScript that attempts to run in the browser, the sign-in button doesn't even work. I can't even log into our bank's website. Now, of course, under this wonderful rule that we have at Conservancy, I could tell Karen, well, Karen, I'm not going to use this software because it's proprietary.
15:43
I don't want to install it in my browser. Then my entire job would probably be going to the bank every day and doing all our banking transactions because it would probably take a better part of every day to do our banking transactions. Eventually, I decided it was going to be okay. I just have to install some proprietary software.
16:01
That's where the slippery slope begins, so I pull down NoScript to see what JavaScript is there. Look at all this proprietary JavaScript that it wants me to install just to log into the bank. In fact, you can't even see the bank's JavaScript because it's scrolling there down at the bottom off the screen. Now, it does turn out if you just allow the bank's JavaScript, it will work.
16:20
You don't have to actually use Google APIs to log into the bank. That's, I think, a good thing. It's a pretty disturbing experience. Now, I have a job at the premier free software organization in the world, probably the only organization in the world that tells people they don't have to run proprietary software for their job.
16:41
I either go to the bank every day all day, or I run proprietary software every day for my job. And this is true for so many things. If you're functional in the world, if you need to take care of things for yourself, if you need to book a flight, if you need to do anything via the web, you hit the same situation. And I would say this is the cruel reality of Firefox.
17:01
Firefox is so exciting in that it's the free software that a lot of people experience first. It brought free software to millions of people, but it's also a proprietary software delivery vehicle. In fact, I would venture to say that Firefox is the largest and most ubiquitous proprietary software delivery engine in the world today.
17:27
It's ironic, but sadly true. On the other hand... And it's invisible to many people. The reason why it's so insidious is that people don't know that this is happening, and they don't know they're making these choices. And so we're up here giving our secret confessions of all the proprietary software we use,
17:43
but for most people, they don't even know that they're installing software when they're using the web. Now, we're not up here to tell everyone that you're horrible people for installing all this proprietary JavaScript. That's why I started out by telling you at least one story, which is one story of many.
18:02
People know that I fly a lot, and I've also installed Delta's proprietary software many times to change my seat. We're not trying to tell people. Historically, some software freedom activists have said, well, you should feel bad about doing this. You should avoid doing this, and if you do it, you've made a mistake.
18:23
And then at the same time, some free software activists will happily rely on a culture where other people are using proprietary software on their behalf. And we were in that camp originally when we first started, or at least for me, when I first started trying to use only free and open source software to the extent that I could,
18:44
excepting my defibrillator software, I fell into this same camp. I would sort of let other people use proprietary software around me because it made it so much easier for me. I would try to outsource my proprietary software usage because it was so much easier to do that.
19:04
The classic example of this is everybody at a conference like this wandering away at the end of the day looking for a place to go to dinner. Karen and I would wander along, and we'd not know where we were going. Karen usually would be prepared and have a paper map that she would be quickly trying to find some restaurant on.
19:24
And we'd sort of wait around until somebody volunteered to take out their proprietary mobile device and start Google Maps and start looking for restaurants, and we'd just sort of follow behind them and they led the way. Or worse, where are you going for dinner?
19:42
Might we follow? We can't find a taxi. Are you calling a ride ship? Are you calling an Uber or Lyft or whatever? Yeah, it was really bad. And the idea that we were somehow better as software freedom activists because we stood around and waited for other people to use proprietary software on our behalf
20:05
eventually became a farce from our point of view. I think it's really, if you believe, as Karen and I do, that proprietary software is harmful, that taking people's rights to copy, share, modify, improve the software is a bad thing to do to them,
20:22
I don't want to encourage anybody to do that on my behalf or their own, so I don't want to be in a situation where someone feels they're helping me by doing something that I think they shouldn't have to do. Yeah, we're software freedom activists. We want to help people use more software freedom and less proprietary software. It is absolutely wrong for us to ask other people to use proprietary software for us.
20:42
And we realized that we needed to extrapolate that on an organizational level. So now, with Software Freedom Conservancy, if there is a choice between making somebody else have to use proprietary software to interact with us, or us having to use the proprietary software, we will use the proprietary software, because we are supporting other people in their endeavors to achieve software freedom.
21:06
So, this maps thing is an interesting one. These are the two devices that Karen and I have respectively been using to navigate around Brussels this year. The map is Karen's. Oh, you already said. I was going to say, let's let people guess.
21:20
Well, I've already pointed out that you carry a map. The map is Karen's. The tablet is mine. So, the story of this tablet is that I got a package that I wasn't expecting in the mail one day, and it was from Lenovo, and it turned out that it was a tablet that my father had bought me without telling me. Now, my father is a software developer, and he knows that I'm a software freedom activist,
21:44
and I wondered why he bought me this tablet. It turns out it was a relatively benign desire. He wanted to chat with me on Google Hangouts, and it's a reasonable thing for a parent to ask. I am sure plenty of people in this room have had the situation where a relative wanted you to be on Facebook,
22:03
or be on Google Hangouts, or be on some mechanism that they use every day to communicate that's proprietary software, and you felt a tremendous amount of social pressure to use it. So, I opened the laptop, and I installed the Google Hangouts app, and I loaded it, and it turned out I can't use Google Hangouts unless I have a Google account.
22:22
So, I created a Google account under a fake name, which I probably violated the terms of service, and they're terminating my account right now, and I was able to use Google Hangouts to chat with my dad. So, initially, I was using the device only for that. But the thing about these kinds of proprietary software technologies is they are convenient, and they are insidious.
22:46
I have thought a lot about various different sayings that I know about convenience. I think the one I like the best is an adaptation of what one of the original people in the United States said
23:00
about people who will sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither. I think it's more about people who will sacrifice software freedom for convenience probably deserve neither. At least that's how I feel bad about myself. But on the other hand, I get a lot of convenience by using this device.
23:20
Slowly but surely, I found myself, well, all the licenses are already agreed to. It's not like I'm entering new licensing agreements to launch apps on this thing that are already there. So, I started carrying it just when I traveled, and I started using the maps just when I traveled. Then suddenly, there were more apps there, and I was using it more. It's in my bag back there right now.
23:42
I'm not particularly proud of that. The first conference that I brought it to, I was like surreptitiously making sure that I'd hidden it before I got too close to the venue, because I thought, well, if people see Bradley Kuhn using a proprietary Android tablet, that's the end of the world. I don't think it's the end of the world. That's why I'm up here confessing that I use it, because all of you have made choices like this.
24:05
Even the strongest among us, which I think I would count Karen and I among those, are falling into these tracks. It's not easy. So, for me, I had this really particular moment where my father, who had
24:20
the same heart condition that I had, had collapsed, and he was in the hospital. It was the middle of the night, and my mother called and said, get to the hospital right away. The whole time that I drove in a rental car to the hospital, I thought, am I going to miss my father because I don't have mapping software?
24:43
Because I'm relying on paper maps, if I make a wrong turn, I'm going to miss that. Is that the right choice? These choices are real. They are real outcomes. It's not these esoteric questions. Despite that very emotional and deeply frightening, terrifying moment for me, I still have resisted using that level of proprietary software.
25:08
I've still got these maps, but you have to reevaluate these choices all the time. You have to make them carefully and thoughtfully. None of these choices are easy. While I have resisted for location, my confession is that I recently got a new laptop.
25:30
It's got proprietary firmware on it. This arrow is supposed to point to my laptop, which is over here. But it's plugged in, so we can't move it further. I did have a freer laptop. I had an X200, and it was having suspend issues.
25:45
I had a hard drive failure, and then I had failure of my backup hard drive. I lost a lot of time, and it was extremely stressful. This happened last month, I guess, or five weeks ago.
26:02
I got this laptop. I'm reevaluating. Just because you get the proprietary device, just because you take a step away from software freedom, doesn't mean that it has to stay that way. It doesn't mean that that's the choice forever. Just because you have french fries for lunch doesn't mean you have to eat fried food at every meal.
26:26
That's one of my confessions, is my laptop. Both of us still use phones that are much older than probably most of the mobile devices that you all use. The HTC Dream, as it turns out, does not work in the United States anymore.
26:43
They have deprecated the frequencies that it could talk. Slowly but surely, it would degrade. There's a law in the United States that everything has to degrade to base cellular 1G technology. 1G works, but it means the call drops constantly. When Karen and I talk to each other on two HTC Dreams at 1G, that is like talking on a cell phone in the 1980s.
27:06
That was the experience. Eventually, I upgraded to a phone that was two years newer than the HTC Dream, the Nexus One, running one of the original builds from the Replicant project, which seeks to create 100% free software firmwares.
27:23
Karen is running this phone. I switched to a later Replicant phone, an S3, but then in New York, 3G is deprecated. I was great when I traveled, especially if I was in Europe. The phone was awesome. But when I was home, which was most of the time, it was totally useless.
27:43
I basically had no phone, even though I had a phone. So now I'm running Lineage OS, and everything has its ups and downs, right? So that's where we are with that. So what we have observed is this fundamental paradox in how things have gone in software.
28:04
I come to FOSDEM every year. It is more people than ever. Please be careful in K today. My colleague Brett and I got trapped in K for an hour last year because you couldn't move. So be careful walking through K. That's how many people are here. That's how many people are excited about software freedom. And in fact, I think it's the case that every single day there is more free software code in the world than ever in history.
28:30
Yet every single day, Karen and I discover it's a little bit incrementally more difficult to get through the day and operate in our normal work in industrialized society without using proprietary software.
28:48
It's twofold. It means that all of our devices are less accessible than they ever were before. We are less in control of our own equipment than ever before. It is harder to run a completely free stack of software on anything anymore. It takes so much work and so much thought, which is worth doing, but it is incredibly difficult.
29:09
And then on the other hand, we also have these security problems where if we don't have the ability to replace the software on our devices, then we will never be able to fix problems when they arise.
29:23
We will be reliant on companies to first admit that they have a problem and then to fix those problems. And that is completely unacceptable. And it's completely strange that with all this free software getting written, why does this paradox exist? Why is there more proprietary software than ever? Well, generally, there's more software than there has ever been in history.
29:41
And part of what is happening is the focus of what free software is getting written is much narrower than the entire space of software. So there are cases of applications of problem areas where virtually no one is working on free software replacements for the existing proprietary technology.
30:01
And there are other places where we have a dozen different free software projects all trying to solve the same problem. So the question is how do we make the right choices in that particular world, in that particular situation? And how do we make the right choices about what we ourselves use? It's so difficult. These are questions that come up every day.
30:22
Every day, Bradley and I agonize over the proprietary software that we're using. We talk about it almost every day. We have had a dialogue about this for years. It started when we were trying to avoid proprietary software. And so we would be out somewhere trying to get from point A to point B, and one of us was lost.
30:43
We would call the other, and the other would use proprietary software via the web to help the other one navigate. And it was helpful to have that support, but it was sort of silly also at the same time because it's trading one proprietary software usage for another. But, on the other hand, not having those GPS systems with us, not
31:03
having that tracking technology, not having all of that enabled is really valuable too. And none of these questions are easy. They only become easy if you're not trying to take care of a lot of administrative stuff for yourself. And admittedly there's a complexity here which we haven't spent too much time talking about that I want to briefly mention.
31:25
Which is that these software systems are mixes of software and proprietary data aggregated usually in a large corporation. That's the problem with Facebook, with many of the Google services. But I tend to believe, and still believe, that software freedom is a necessary,
31:45
even if not sufficient, condition to assure that we handle all of these problems. It's not like if every proprietary software company on the planet were to release all their code tomorrow that we'd solve every problem of centralization, every problem of security, every problem of data privacy in computing.
32:02
But we would have taken the first step, the first most important step, to get towards that. A great example is Gmail, which is probably the most popular email client on the planet today. And if Gmail were released tomorrow as free software, it's very likely that people could quickly hook that back up to make the email system truly distributed again instead of centralized into a few very small email providers.
32:27
It's centralized because the client is centralized, not because the server needs to be centralized. Because we solved that particular problem a long time ago. The most important thing is to keep thinking about these issues when you encounter them. To make really mindful choices about the technology you're choosing and when.
32:45
We know, of course, you're all going to sometimes choose proprietary software. After all, we sometimes do. But we hope that we can impart a certain amount of mindfulness. Perhaps you will not be as obsessed as we are. We wouldn't really expect that. But a certain amount of mindfulness could help everyone, I think.
33:02
And if we all get a little bit out of our comfort zones and take one more step towards software freedom, this is the next slide. If we all make those small choices en masse, we can really make a difference. It's a completely different thing if we all are pushing a little bit more towards freedom.
33:26
If you could spend time explaining the problem to others, spend time pointing out why choosing proprietary software is not ideal, as best you can, especially to those that aren't in the software industry, people who don't know as much about software freedom,
33:42
that can go a long way. Ask people to take it seriously. I know Karen does not like this analogy, but I became a vegetarian at a time in the early 1990s when it was considered very, very strange to do so, at least in the United States. In fact, I was on the university meal plan and they couldn't provide meals for me,
34:02
so I had to wait one year until I could leave the meal plan to become a vegetarian. The world doesn't operate that way anymore. I go into almost any restaurant in the world and there's at least one item on the menu these days that does not have meat or fish or poultry in it, but it wasn't always like that. It got better because people who weren't vegetarians were willing to say,
34:23
well, we should be accommodating to people who are making that kind of moral choice. As people become more familiar with the dangers of data aggregation and the surveillance that we've built in our technology, it's more important now than ever to tie the software freedom issues into that narrative.
34:40
As Bradley said before, those issues are all completely interwoven and inseparable, and so we need to be clear and we need to really put our foot down about software freedom and talk about it and explain to people why it's so important. This isn't about making all of us feel bad.
35:03
I spent a lot of time in my life feeling bad when I would use proprietary software. I don't think that helps anybody. You don't need to feel paralyzed from the shame of, well, gee, I couldn't find a free software solution, so I just used proprietary software. My confession is that I still feel ashamed.
35:21
Every time I use any proprietary software, I feel deeply ashamed. I feel so ashamed to have this laptop in front of you at Fosse. This is why we proposed this talk, because these are such hard choices and if those of us who are working at the charities that are dedicated to software freedom have to make these hard choices, then we have a really big problem.
35:43
But we can't let these kinds of problems lead us to do nothing. I think we're at this moment where proprietary software is more common than free software again, at least at the end user level, at least at the application level. It's really disturbing and there aren't a lot of people working on the problem,
36:03
but it's actually relatively easy to start working on the problem. It's actually relatively easy to take some action, because free software succeeded because of hosts and hosts of little actions that people took. One of the simplest things you can do is try to give some of your developer time
36:21
to projects that are not necessarily what companies are willing to pay for, but what seems to be the most important free software job to get done. Very few people work on Android apps that are GPL'd and available on the App Store under free licenses. There are some, but the majority are not.
36:42
There are very few people who work on full websites that are 100% free software with all free JavaScript. You can do these things. It's unlikely that you'll find tons of funding to do them, but remember that most of the key free software programs like GCC and Linux that we rely on every day now were initially written by volunteers who were working on nights and weekends.
37:04
They weren't funded by big companies in those days. Developers made choices to prioritize their time because in the late 80s and early 90s, writing a compiler and a kernel was the most important job that needed to get done for software freedom. That's not the most important job anymore,
37:20
so taking your time to focus on those kinds of jobs is a way to get forward. Asking questions at work is a really great way of engaging with this. It's a very non-confrontational way to ask if you're working at a company developing software,
37:42
just asking about the consideration of the business case for including copy-lefted software. A lot of companies are unnecessarily veering towards lax permissive licensing even when a copy-left license might make more sense simply because of company policy.
38:00
Asking questions about whether that makes the most sense can really raise awareness and cause a change in a very non-confrontational way. If you have a little bit more gumption, I can tell you a story about a developer. I believe he is here at Fosham. I'm not going to name him, but if you want me to introduce him later, I will. He went to his employer. He was assigned to work on a free software project under a copy-left license,
38:23
but he made the decision that that wasn't the highest priority project for software freedom. He found another project that he felt was much more important, much more strategic to the future of free software and data privacy. He sent an email to his boss and said, I think the company should be focusing on this project.
38:42
I've decided starting tomorrow to switch what I'm working on. I'm going to go ahead and do that. Let me know if there's any problem. He doesn't work at that company anymore, but he found a way to fund his work to continue working on that other project. Now, that takes a tremendous amount of bravery, and he took a tremendous amount of risk to do that. It's not what everyone can do,
39:02
but I hope you'll take his story as an inspiration of being willing to do at least the little bit you can to try and convince your companies, your employers, other people in the community, that there might be bigger priorities out there for software freedom that we need to be working on.
39:20
Support each other. Because I tell you, when my laptop failed and I lost my backup hard drive, that was bleak. That was so sad. And at moments like that, you just want to throw in the towel. You just want to give up. In order to stick with software freedom as much as possible,
39:42
you have to make choices that sometimes make you a little bit antisocial, right? I'm often turning up late to things because I'm lost. I turn down video chats. I turn down a lot of other opportunities for socializing because they involve proprietary software, and it's hard. And the only way we can overcome this is by helping each other,
40:03
by talking honestly about the proprietary software we're using, and by making sure that we help each other to use less of it. And so we at the Software Freedom Conservancy, at least, in coming to terms with the proprietary software we're using and being honest about it, our job is to support software freedom.
40:22
So we feel you, and we've got your back. So you can talk to us about it because we know how painful it is, and we're hoping that it's going to get better. So one final thing that we want to tell you about is that we did something, I've never seen anybody do with the talk before.
40:43
We recorded all of our prep meetings in designing this talk. So all of the stories that were left on the cutting room floor of all the times that I and Karen have used proprietary software, which might have some interest to some folks, and generally how we work together and design this talk to try to communicate this message to you.
41:02
We've recorded that. Over the next couple of months, we're going to be releasing those as podcasts on our podcast, which is called Free as in Freedom. Thank you. So if you want more of this, you can feel free to listen to that, and I think we have five minutes left for questions if you'd like to ask some.
41:26
There's a mic here that will need to be run to you, wherever you are. Some people are very enthusiastically raising their hands. So guys, please raise your hand,
41:41
and I'll try to spot you and bring you a microphone so you could ask a question. There's some in the front here, right there. While we wait for him to take the microphone, I just want to say thank you so much for listening to this talk, and thank you for caring about software freedom. We really appreciate you.
42:03
Hello, thank you for your talk. Well, it's an interesting idea to focus on some specific necessities that are not covered by free software, but your main example was mappings and directions, and we already have free alternatives for this. Do you have any other examples so we can focus on some priorities?
42:27
So this is the same problem I had when I keynoted two years ago, that everybody gets up when the Q&A starts, so I wasn't able to hear most of the question, but I think you were asking for more examples of different types of things. I think basically the best way to look at this
42:41
is to look at what your broader family, the people who aren't geeks, the people who aren't computer-obsessed, what are they using every day? What applications are the most important to them? What do they rely on every day to operate in the world? And look at why they're proprietary software and see if you can start a project that's a free software one
43:02
that replaces it, or find a free software project that already is started in that direction and help it. All right, I think we'll have to call a close, because the – yeah, is there another – do we have the mic? The mic's over here, and – Are we closing, or – okay.
43:23
So, coming back to your mapping issue, you're in a car, you're looking at a paper map. That paper map is proprietary. The car you're driving has engine management software, which is proprietary. How did you get in the car in the first place?
43:41
So, I missed – what was the last part of the question? So, you're in a car. The engine management system in that car contains software. The clothing you're wearing is produced on CNC equipment containing software, none of which is free. The only way we're going to solve this is not to buy second-hand equipment and reflash it,
44:02
but to persuade the manufacturers that we need to buy software and hardware and our products that are built on this. We can't just retrofit, because we're always going to be playing catch-up. So, unfortunately, I only heard a very small part of that talk because there's so much movement, but it sounds like you're basically saying that the problem is dire
44:21
in that there is so much proprietary stuff. Even the paper map was proprietary, there's proprietary software in every part of a car if you're driving it, all that sort of stuff, and it's just such a – Right. And even those of us who live in cities where we don't need cars, there's a lot of proprietary software involved in the public transit that we take as well.
44:41
We agree with that completely, and I think we have a lot of work ahead of us. That's sort of the point of how much proprietary software in the world. I think you're pointing out how much there is. There's way too much and we have a lot of work to do. We just have to go step by step because it's the only option we have. I think we really need regulation. I think the GDPR has been very inspiring in the way that there is sweeping regulation
45:04
and companies were able to accommodate those laws, which had previously thought were a no-go. With those very same companies, and I think that it doesn't go very far, unfortunately. And so we have the situation where GDPR talks about consent and having plain English consent,
45:25
but it's sort of like, oh, would you like – you should know that this device will collect information about you and send it to third parties. Oh, and by the way, the device is a defibrillator, and would you like this life-saving device or not? You can't appreciably consent if there's no alternative,
45:42
and we need to sort of start thinking holistically about our rights. For example, our rights to not be connected and our rights to software freedom, and this needs to be packaged as a whole ethical technology or self-autonomy in technology. It has to be this bigger issue because all these issues are totally intertwined.
46:07
One note, guys. In the audience, I know it's too late to ask, but please keep quiet. We'll handle a little bit more questions and answers, and everyone who speaks will be heard.
46:24
So please keep quiet. If you leave the hall, do it quietly. I know it's a little bit late, so please, please, questions. So I think what we'll add is we are co-running the legal and policy dev room. Karen and I will be over there all day, so if you have a follow-up that you want to discuss with us,
46:43
that's the place to find us for the rest of the day. Thank you all. Thank you.