Community operations: what we keep doing and what we stop

Aug 31, 4:00 PM·43 min·11 chapters

S1S4S3S2S5

0:00Chapter 1/11 · Feedback and Future Plans42:44

Overview

The panel reviewed feedback on talk formats, decided to keep the dev room to a single day, honored Tom Marble’s contributions, and debated legal, licensing, and policy issues affecting the free‑software community, including cloud licenses, code‑of‑conduct governance, and corporate influence.

Key topics

Feedback on talk length, lightning talks, CFP complexity, and Easter‑egg query –
Dev‑room scheduling rationale and tribute to Tom Marble –
Adding reference links to legal glossary terms –
Custom cloud licenses: motivations vs. anti‑Amazon sentiment –
History & complexity of commercial use in free‑software licenses –
Hollow Chain license origins and whether to continue Linus discussion –
Code‑of‑Conduct classified as policy; threats to supporters; Linus timeline –
Press independence, media pressure on CoC adoption, Linux’s shift to corporate control –
Developer identity blur & unresolved “most important policy event” –
IBM’s Red Hat acquisition – panel perspectives and who works at Red Hat –
DRM proliferation, limits of boycotts, call to lobby politicians for legal exceptions –

Decisions

Apply for one day only for the dev room to avoid overlap and content tightness –
Classify code‑of‑conduct issues as policy matters suitable for the community dev room –
Presented gifts to Tom Marble in recognition of his foundational work –

Next steps

Organizers to submit a single‑day dev‑room request for the next event.
Participants to add URLs or a web page to the legal glossary for terms like “patent exhaustion.” –
Community members encouraged to engage politicians to amend laws that block legal DRM circumvention. –
Panel to continue monitoring the impact of cloud‑license trends and corporate shifts on free‑software freedom.

Speaker 5

Okay, we have now reached the final talk of the Legal and Policy Issues Dev Room, which

is - yeah, I know, it's hard to believe - where did the day go?

It's your organizers panel, it's the four of us.

Speaker 1

It's the moment you've been waiting for.

Speaker 5

Yeah, hot topics, Patana, Karen, Bradley, and myself.

Speaker 1

Well, maybe hot topics, but also potentially feedback on the room and things people would

like to see us improve for future?

Sure.

Speaker 5

Do you want to take it away?

Speaker 1

Yeah, should we start with that?

Yeah, great.

So, yeah, does anybody have any suggestions on - so let's do a show.

It's a show of hands.

Raise your hand if you thought we had a good mix of panels and talks.

Okay, so that's like - that's pretty much everybody.

Raise your hand if you thought that the - most of the talks were 25 minutes.

Raise your hand if you thought that that was too short.

Okay, so like three people, four people have raised their hands, but like in a shaky - raise

your hand if you think that was just right.

That's like three-quarters of the room.

I'm not going to ask about too long.

Okay.

Does anybody have any suggestions of things that we should do if we do this again?

Lightning talks.

Oh, and a thumbs up.

Raise your hand if you like the idea of lightning talks.

Okay.

Oh, cool.

So it's like three-quarters of the room.

This is great because last year we asked for feedback and we were told that people wanted

more than just a day at FOSDEM and so we took that feedback and now we have CopyLeft Conf

on Monday.

Yay.

So if anyone wants to come to that, it's at copyleftconf.org on Monday.

It's just 15 euro for hobbyists and that'll help cover lunch.

So any other suggestions?

Oh, you can register at the booth as well.

Speaker 5

I have a question.

How many of you thought about maybe making a proposal for the dev room but saw the CFP

was 14,000 pages long and way too long?

Was our CFP too complicated?

Anybody?

Speaker 1

Who thinks the CFP was too long and complicated?

Anyone?

I didn't read it.

Okay.

Did anybody, did anybody, yeah, raise your hand if you read the CFP.

Like, okay.

Okay, three people read the CFP.

No, no.

It was more than three.

It was like a quarter of the room.

Speaker 4

Raise your hand if you found the Easter egg I put in the CFP.

Speaker 1

Raise your hand if you thought about submitting to the dev room but didn't.

Okay.

So next year, submit.

I saw you, Jim.

Does anybody else have any ideas, things we should try other than lightning talks?

More a comment than an idea, but I don't really think that copyleft, which I applauded and

I'm going, but I don't think the copyleft conference really replaces the possibility that would be great

for me in particular of having these being wider in positive.

So the comment was that having copyleft conf doesn't solve the problem, that there isn't

more legal and policy dev room at FOSDEM.

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Just because it's not part of FOSDEM or for other reasons?

Well, yeah.

Speaker 1

Let's pass the microphone, because if you're, and so let us know if you're going to talk

for more than just a quick minute so that we can get you the microphone, because otherwise

the recording is really terrible.

Oh, I thought he was freeing.

Oh, you're on the hook, Jim.

I think you're on the hook, Jim.

I don't know why Tom went up there.

No, you've got to wait a minute, because it's...

Speaker 2

So I think there are several reasons that it might change from person to person, but coming

to FOSDEM is, for many people, a tradition, for many people is a commitment.

And extending the visit one day is not very... it's not easy for everyone.

And also, Copy Life Conf is not a free event, which is something that I saw many people complain

Speaker 1

about.

I did not see many people complaining about it, because we have specified in lots of places

that if the 15 euro that will cover your lunch is too much to let us know, and we have volunteering

opportunities, and we'll work with you.

So... but there are challenges to having more... you know, we... it's not fully our choice

to have only a one-day dev room, and we don't want to necessarily conflict with anything else.

I have to say a huge shout out to the community room for working with us.

We cooperated with them, we coordinated our days, and we coordinated our speakers, and that's

a real advantage.

Speaker 4

Yeah, and we used to always apply for two days.

With the advent of the community dev room, there was enough overlap that it made more

sense, really, for us to each apply for one day.

And we requested the FASM organizers put us each on different days.

That seems to have worked better.

There is the community dev room tomorrow.

After going to that, if you still feel the way that you feel that we really should be applying

for two days, we're willing to do it.

The last time we had two days of this...

I'll just be very frank.

We got just enough talk submissions to fill the two days.

Like, basically, everybody has accepted that year.

Which is fine.

They were all good talks, but it was tight.

Like, we were worried, like, are we going to have to, like, fill some content here?

So we aren't sure that there actually is two days of material.

Go ahead, Jim.

Speaker 2

I was just going to halfway jokingly suggest that if you, Bradley, me, and Max can agree

on whether something is a derivative work, it's a derivative work, dammit, and we should

just sit down there for an hour and take questions lobbed at us.

Speaker 4

All right.

So submit that as a panel for next year, Jim.

Yeah.

He's got...

We don't...

Speaker 1

We try to discourage menals.

Come on.

What's that?

We try to discourage menals.

All male.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

All right.

Speaker 4

I don't know who was first.

Thank you.

Speaker 5

I would like to counter the, like, please make it two days again.

Because the legal and policy dev room only being one day gives me a chance to spend the other

day doing other stuff.

And in my experience, the dev room is so good that I want to stay in it the whole day, which

kind of makes me miss the whole rest of the conference.

So I really like it being, like, one day, good content.

And also, thank you for an awesome dev room.

Wow.

All right.

Speaker 4

So that's a perfect moment before you go, Remy.

So I do this every year, and it gets worse every year.

Not all organizers up here are equal.

Some are better than others.

In fact, one is much better than the rest of them.

And it's not.

Speaker 1

It's not me.

Speaker 4

It is Tom Marble.

He does all the work.

And we get the credit.

And every year, we promise to do more.

And we do less.

And he does more.

And this room would not exist without Tom in the first place.

Because Tom was the first person to ever suggest that we do it.

After his experience helping co-run the Java dev room and said, we should have this.

He approached us and convinced us to do it.

At that point, I had never been to Fosdom.

I think maybe you hadn't either.

I hadn't either.

Yeah.

Did you?

No.

So none of us have been in Fosdom.

And Tom made this happen.

And then he's been the lead every year doing most of the work.

So we have a couple of gifts for you, Tom.

Wow.

They're not fancy.

Speaker 1

But they represent the better things in life from our perspective.

Yeah.

Chocolate.

Some chocolate and some wine.

No.

I'm sorry.

It's a shirt with wine inside.

Shirt with wine.

Wow.

You can.

Speaker 4

I wrapped it in a shirt.

I know.

How fancy.

Oh.

Thank you.

And we actually have another box of more fancy chocolates that we left in the hotel

rooms.

But we'll get that later.

Oh, goodness.

Well, thank you very much.

Speaker 5

Well, I will say I don't think I would have had the guts to do this without the varied support

of all four of us.

So I think it's been a great team effort.

And it is kind of amazing to me that this is our eighth year.

And...

Eight long years.

Okay.

That's not talking about.

All right.

Let's move on to it.

Okay.

So...

But I didn't do all the work.

Speaker 4

I'd love to take all the credit, but I can't take all the credit.

Before it comes to Mutual Appreciation Society, Remy, tell us what you have to say.

Speaker 2

So thanks again, everybody, definitely.

If I really like that the community and the legal dev room are, you know, you're recognizing

there's a serious overlap between the audiences.

Since legal got the upgraded gigantic room, community did not last year.

And there was a lot of line where like you couldn't get into the community dev room.

So if they are related, and it is the same amount of people, and we should have this many of

a room for this track, maybe we can get a bigger track for community too.

I don't know.

I know it's unrelated, but...

Speaker 1

They actually upgraded us at the last minute.

If we're coalition building.

So we have zero influence on it, and it's tough.

We're really grateful to FOSDEM for organizing such an amazing conference, and it's a huge logistics

battle for them.

So we're grateful for what we get.

Speaker 2

So, I don't have a necessary good answer to this, but a thing that I notice, and this happens

here in this room, and also in my life, I speak to people, and I see people speaking, and a

lot of software people, you know, they're good with detail, they're good with abstraction,

but they're unfamiliar with a lot of the terminology, a lot of the legal concepts, and the talks here

vary, obviously, and some of them are at quite, shall we say, quite a high legal level, and

maybe we could have, I don't know, a glossary post on the poster on the wall, or we could

have like a 101, like, legal terms or like structure of law and software, or something kind

of more introductory.

Right in a session of a...

A handout.

A handout or a...

Yeah.

Or a web page or something.

Speaker 4

I mean, would it be acceptable if it was written materials that

were available, and like a URL on the board?

Speaker 2

Yeah, you could put a URL on the board, and then people can go like, what even is that

thing, and look it up on their laptop.

Speaker 4

I think it's a great feedback.

We did design this dev room.

One of the goals we had, when Tom came up with that idea, we said, well, you know, there's

so many... you go to any open source and free software conference, and you see the legal

issues 101 talk.

This is what copyrights are, this is what patents are.

We do not want that talk in this room.

This room is not for the intro.

But I agree with you that we don't want to be unwelcoming to people who don't have up

to speed.

I saw people like...

I saw the, like, stress in the room when Van was saying, exhaustion is this, exhaustion

that.

People were like, tell me what exhaustion is, right?

And so I think it would have been a great idea if we had had a web page that had the definition

of patent exhaustion, so that when Van started, people could have been loading that.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and that's a challenge with the 25-minute talks as well.

Right.

Speaker 4

And it makes it difficult to make an interesting talk and keep something that's got enough content

in it.

You don't want to be distracting it with lots of stuff.

Speaker 1

Does anybody else have any other feedback?

Do we want to talk about some of the interesting events?

Yeah.

Right.

Speaker 4

So now that we did the feedback first, do you want our usual, like, "We decide what

was important this year and tell you what we thought about it"?

Is that what you're after now?

We have another...

There's a lot of talks.

I don't know.

I'm bad at this.

Oh, my gosh.

There are three tracks of awesome copyleft-related talks.

It is incredible.

I can't think of...

Speaker 1

There's no other place where you will get that content.

It's astounding.

I'm...

I'm kind of stressed because I don't know which to choose to go to myself, but that's the

whole point.

It's going to be awesome.

But it will be recorded.

Yeah.

I don't want to oversell that because just in case, you know, you don't want to be like,

"It's recorded!"

And then it's...

But we're planning to be recording it.

The FOSDEM video staff is helping us out, so we have a much higher chance of success than

if we were left to our own devices.

But so hopefully that'll be that.

And that's sort of the goal is that then we have all that great content about copyleft

recorded so everyone can experience it at their own pace.

But it's not the same if you're not present in person in the flesh.

Speaker 4

So, Tom, every year we get up here for the last three, I think this is the third in

the row and we decide and tell them all the big things in policy and legal issues and

free software.

Well, we don't decide now.

We already decided, didn't we?

Speaker 1

How much time do we have left in this?

We've got plenty of time.

Speaker 4

So, I mean, we did have Lammy's talk, which told us the big thing of this year,

which is everybody's writing their own cloud license.

Everybody.

Speaker 5

Yeah, that's interesting.

I guess, let's talk about the cloud licensing thing for a second.

I have this feeling, and it's just a feeling, I'd love to get feedback on this, that some

of these actors that are saying, well, the AGPL isn't going far enough.

They claim that the developers of the software aren't getting properly remunerated for their

efforts.

I think it's kind of disingenuous, because I think that what they really want is they want

Amazon to pay them for maybe doing something, but not necessarily recognizing the giants on

whose shoulders their software is based, and ultimately, you know, the developers that were

part of it, so it seems sort of not really straightforward.

Is it all really about Amazon?

I've been wondering about all year.

Is it all about Amazon?

Speaker 4

Is it everybody just, Amazon takes our stuff, and we license freely, and doesn't-

Speaker 5

I think Amazon is the convenient scapegoat.

Obviously, any network services hoster could be blamed for this, but it seems like it's a fashion

trend that it's, what do they call it, network freeloaders?

Speaker 3

There are two questions.

Speaker 5

I'll go to you, and then.

Okay.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, there's, I think in some of the cases, the competitive

concern is not apparently Amazon, but Amazon is the convenient corporate entity that they

want to bash.

Speaker 2

Could you please first explain why non-commercial is non-free?

I mean, what harm does it do to the freedom of the users?

Speaker 3

I mean, I'll, just because I have a mic, I'll try to answer that.

I don't know if I'm the best person to answer that, though.

I think it's a really good question because I think we tend to assume that there's a right

to commercial freedom in free software without, just because it's sort of like a religious

kind of belief, and I don't think it's really examined much.

I think that-

Speaker 5

John, you're just calling it freedom zero, right?

That's just freedom zero.

Speaker 3

Well, free, yeah, it's sort of part of freedom zero, right?

But you could imagine a version of freedom zero that excluded commercial freedom.

I think it's because this culture that free software came out of was, you know, frankly,

it was a partially entrepreneurial culture.

These were developers who wanted, who saw nothing wrong with the general idea of supporting

themselves, you know, through software development and support of software that they wrote and

so forth.

But they did see something wrong with the proprietary model, which they were, which was a new thing

for the software industry, which was very young at the time that free software was emerging.

So it was a culture that was already kind of oriented towards, sort of positively towards commercial

activity.

Maybe not large scale commercial activity, but small scale.

So I don't, you know, why exclude, what is so bad about commercial activity that it should

not be protected like all other kinds of endeavors is maybe the question to ask.

Speaker 1

I think one of the issues that we see, especially in the free culture space, is that the definition

of what is commercial and what is not commercial is extremely difficult.

And so going into that area creates a lot of question marks and it's quite difficult.

Yeah.

So there's a piece of Linux.

Speaker 4

I just want to finish one point on his question here.

There's an interesting piece of Linux history.

Most people don't know that Linux was under a non-commercial use only license when it was first

released.

And the reason that Linus gave when he changed the license relatively early on was he got sick

of being contacted by lugs who were saying, I burnt CDs and they cost like $10 US a piece.

I want to recover the money and sell them at the lug, but it's non-commercial use.

So what do I do?

And he was giving out all these exceptions to each of the, each time.

So he finally said, well, maybe I should actually use a free software license.

Cause apparently it took him a while to realize that.

And then chose the GPL.

So it's a great example of where that, what Karen was saying, where, where like they crossed

the line to commercial merely cause they wanted to recoup their cost and they couldn't do it

with a non-commercial license.

So I think that alone is enough to convince me, but I also feel there were a lot of debates

in the eighties where people really thought this through and were like, well, it's really,

it's really hard to say who's on equal footing with whom.

And I always felt that the, the way non-commercial and commercial activity was treated equally,

put everybody on equal footing.

Read the green manifesto.

So just according to Tom.

Yeah.

Speaker 1

And also the, the, sorry, creative comments put together, like an analysis of what people

consider to be commercial and not commercial.

And you can take a look at that.

It's fascinating.

Speaker 5

Just echoing Tom's points about the, the folks that complain about the GPL, for instance,

not being strong enough.

of what I see, it's mostly commercial entities that adopted free and open source software licenses

as a way to reach a certain number of goals, but then see that as they grow, this is maybe

counterproductive to them to still use free and open source licenses.

And, and I think it's, it's, it's really dissentious in this, in this sense, which is the one that complained

that copy left license do not prohibit commercial usage are effectively commercial entities in mostly.

Speaker 3

But these are, these are proprietary software companies.

I mean, that's the, what, why did it?

Why did copy left licenses come to be used as an instrument, a business kind of tool by proprietary

software licenses?

That's the sort of question that I think I've been asking myself for a long time and, and puzzling over.

And I think that's kind of the, one of the, the strange things about free software legal culture that has really shaped it.

And, and, and over the past year, these efforts at writing new, at least in some cases, definitely non-free licenses

has kind of exposed that kind of problem again.

Speaker 5

So, Philippe, maybe to interpret what you're saying, maybe they started with Redis, for example, AGPL,

but then really decided that they wanted to go to a non-free, non-open source license.

But they call it the commons cause because it sounds nice and you might think it's an open source license.

But really, it's, it's really just a way of transitioning back to proprietary license.

Speaker 4

To me, it feels really like bait and switch.

Speaker 5

Yeah, bait, bait and switch.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's really nothing new though.

Speaker 3

It's, I mean, I'm, I'm sort of glad that it's getting a lot of exposure because it's something

that we've been talking about for ages.

Speaker 2

So, I have a much better answer to, I think, that, to this question of why, why do free software

licenses need to permit commercial use?

And the answer is software freedom is not something that, that we, you know, it's not just something

that we have to be able to exercise individually for ourselves alone.

Software freedom is something we need to be able to exercise collectively.

It's, it's a thing that we need to be able to build ecosystems of everybody who has software

freedom and everybody is collaborating together to exercise that freedom, to give people the freedom

that they want.

If you have a non-commercial use license, then you can't set up a consultancy that will help

people solve their problems with that software.

You can't distribute that software to people and cover your costs.

There's endless things that, that, you know, in our society, most of our societies are capitalist

here.

You have to work to live.

Um, if you can't cover your costs, you can't live, then you will have to do something else

with your life.

Now that's not necessarily a, a, a big problem, but it does mean that you will never be able

to pay somebody to do the free software thing that you cannot do yourself.

Yeah.

So that's, that's just not, that's just not good enough.

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I think, um, I, to me this, your argument comes down again to what is commercial and what

is non-commercial, because I could imagine folks saying, well, wouldn't we really enjoy the

alternate universe where we make such great software that we can make charitable models

around our technology?

And, you know, people at charities do get paid.

They don't get paid as much as they do in, in the private sector, but there could be a

lot of great results for doing that.

But I think that it all keeps coming down to the fact that it's, um, it's, it's a, it's very

difficult to draw the lines.

Yep.

Crowdfunding.

Taryn, do you want to talk about Linus?

Me?

Well, so, um, are we done with the new licenses?

I, I mean, I, I wanted to mention that there was a, there was a new one like this week, um,

and a van is van still here.

Is he?

Oh yeah.

So van is involved with the drafting and, and it, you know, I read the blog post and it sounds

very inspirational, you know, where the, it's a hollow chain.

Um, and the, and so it's very inspirational about humanity's next ascendance.

And then, and then you're like, Oh, okay.

So it's hollow chain.

So, so let's see who's writing this license.

And it's like, Oh, it's hollow.

The company is hollow and the product is hollow chain.

And so it's just another one of those, like you take the license and then you go to who,

who is, where is it coming from?

Who wants it?

And you look and you, you have to really dig to figure out what hollow is and that hollow

is a company and they're hiring by the way, which, but it was like, that's how I figured

out that they were a for-profit company because it, you had to like dig to figure out that

they weren't a charity or foundation or, or something like that.

And so it's just fascinating.

So I just sort of want to mention that, that they're, they're coming up in, in other contexts

too.

What's cool, what's good about the hollow chain example though, is that they're specifically

state that they'll be doing their process in public and that they're inviting comment.

And I think that was missing from these other licenses that were basically just, just dropped.

So now I have to talk about Linus is what you're saying?

Well, if you want to.

I mean, someone else might be a, I mean, it's not that I don't want to, but you can, yeah.

Speaker 4

So, sorry, I, I, we, we talked a little bit before the organizers panel, panel about whether,

I mean, there's this overlap with the community dev room that we're talking with Remy about here.

And I actually think code of conduct issues are a policy issue because a code of conduct is a policy.

So I think it's appropriate for our dev room.

And I think the debates this year about code of conduct reached a level that was quite disturbing

and dangerous for a lot of people because it got to the point where,

we're now at the point where people who are supporting the idea of a code of conduct get death threats,

you know, attacked online, verbally, those sorts of things, which is really upsetting.

The, the manner in which Linux project switched its code of conduct,

the code of conflict to a code of conduct was, was interesting.

And I don't know if I want to say more than that yet.

Let's see what somebody else has to say.

Do you have anything to say on that, Tom?

No.

You're going to make me say everything that you're thinking.

Speaker 1

Who here heard that Linus Torvalds took a brief step away from the Colonel because of code of conflict issues?

Okay.

How many people know about a New Yorker article about Linus' behavior?

So almost everybody raised their hand to the first.

Only half the room raised on the second.

Speaker 4

So the third question is, of those of you who know, how many know that they were contemporaneous?

So I, I, I...

Speaker 1

You have to say that's a quarter of the room.

Yeah.

That's about a quarter of the room.

Speaker 4

So I think the, I, I think the, the, the, the, the interesting thing to me about that from

a policy perspective is something that I've actually complained about on this panel two years ago,

I think, which is that we don't have very much of a press in free software.

Uh, the, the, while there are some good journalists out there, they are overworked and underpaid,

and there aren't that many articles written by independent journalists about things that are happening in open source and free software.

Uh, that's a problem in the tech industry generally, but it's even worse, I think, in FOSS.

And I think it's interesting that a very important and I think generally positive change was forced by the press.

Because I, I, I'm sorry to be a little US biased here, but I believe in a, a cantankerous free press is valuable to the future of, of democracy and a republic.

And therefore, I think it's a really good thing that, that, that, that, that the press was able to pressure, uh, that switch and that Linux project actually has a real code of conduct now.

Speaker 3

But, um, we see very little, um, mainstream press coverage of free software, of course.

And, uh, as you were saying, you know, in the tech press, there's really one, I think, one really sort of professional level, uh, news organization and really not a whole lot more than that.

Speaker 4

Yeah. And one news organization is never a good thing.

Uh, and so I, I, there has to be more than one for there to be real.

Speaker 3

I mean, there's, there's another interesting thing about this, which I don't know if you've thought about, uh, and I'll just raise it as a, as a question.

Um, would the events here, uh, including Linus's leave of absence and the adoption of the code of conduct have happened?

Were there not a relationship between the Linux kernel project and a certain trade organization?

If it were the kernel of the 1990s, sort of independent, uh, much more independent of, of, um, sort of the commercial corporate interests.

It's just something that popped into my head.

Speaker 4

Well, I, I think, I think that one of the things that we're seeing with, how do we always end up talking mostly about Linux on this panel?

Uh, but, uh, but one of the things I, that concerns me about Linux is the amount of, uh, copyright that is now being held by companies.

I think we talked about that last year.

And so that's related to your question because it's one of these situations where a project that was a community project, uh, is now mostly a corporate project over short, over a long period of time.

It's slowly shifted to that.

Uh, and I think that relates to your question.

Speaker 1

I'm not sure if I have an answer to your question or if I want to answer your question, but given the corporate interest in Linux, I have to tell you, I w I've been astounded that it hadn't happened long ago.

Because the, the liability alone of the companies that are involved in the kernel was high.

I mean, when I would talk about, when I would be asked to, I would, I'd be asked to do, um, continuing legal education.

Um, so like classes for lawyers and, um, and people would, would start asking me about liability points.

The bad behavior by employees is, uh, you know, something that came high to the list and, um, and the exposure of employees to hostile environments also is high on the list.

And so I'm amazed that it took so long to get to this point.

So maybe someone did their feeble raise their hands.

Anyone who hadn't contributed yet?

Did I miss?

Okay.

People changed their minds.

Ian really wants to say something.

Speaker 4

Well, I mean, I'm, I'm like, no, but, um, so that is interesting.

You asked that question.

Speaker 2

Um, Debian in the last few months of last year and the, and in January has had, uh, a code of conduct issue.

Um, and that has taken it, that was quite unpleasant and it looked quite unpleasant from the outside.

I can tell you if you read the private mailing list, it's, um, really quite bad.

Um, no fun at all.

Um, and I don't really know whether that answers your question about corporate influence.

You know, Debian, I think the majority of Debian are moving in the right direction.

Um, but you know, it's, it, it, again, it's not, it's not easy and it's not without conflict.

Speaker 3

Debian does not have the BDFL problem.

These things are hard.

I mean, they're hard.

Speaker 1

And, and I think especially with, um, with developers, the, the lines are blurry.

And I have a, actually, I had a talk about this, uh, Bosdem a couple of years ago about, uh, it was called Identity Crisis.

It was a keynote here.

And it basically that the, the, the identity that we have as developers of, as contributors to a free software project,

as our, our job, but also as our identity and as hanging out with friends, it's all really blurry.

I mean, I always ask this when I give that talk, how many people are, um, are work on free software related things

and have changed their job, but continue working on the same thing.

Um, so like people are like, yeah, nodding, raising their hands.

It's sometimes I ask that in a big auditorium and like half the room raises their hands.

I mean, people switch from job to job, but they're do exactly the same thing with the same people.

Some of these people are doing jobs that they were doing, you know, are working on things that they worked on as university students.

And so it's hard to remember that there's, you know, what is, it's hard to remember what's professional and what's personal

when you're just hanging out with your friends and when you're, you know, you're in a professional environment.

And I think that's a big part of what happened with these cultures.

And since they were not particularly inclusive for so long, it means that we have, it's complicated and we have to get over this.

And I tell you that, uh, Debbie and private thread, like was so demotivating to so many of us, but, but we're, we'll work through it, right?

We'll improve our, our infrastructure. Molly gave a great talk earlier today about it.

And, and that's how we'll move on and we'll make free software better.

We need to have diversity in free software because if we don't, we're going to have instances like those soap dispensers that only work on white hands, right?

Like these are, it's, we need to have diverse perspectives in order to make sure that the technology we create is, uh, is sufficient for what we need it.

Speaker 4

So actually give me this. I want to ask Richard.

So what do you think the most important thing that happened since last FOSDM in free software policy is?

Speaker 3

The most, the most, the most important thing?

Speaker 4

Since the last time we did this panel, about a year ago.

Speaker 3

Um, I don't know. I mean, like, I can't say, I can't say like these, these, this whole like MongoDB, Redis, Commons Clause thing.

Speaker 4

Right, because you think that's basically not important.

Speaker 3

No, because I think that's, that, that's what.

Speaker 1

And the ones that you might be referring to Bradley.

No, is this a trick?

Wait, actually, is this a trick question?

It's not a trick question.

Speaker 4

It's, it's actually an open-ended question.

I, I don't.

See what you'll say.

I, I, I don't, I, I rarely, on a panel do I, rarely do I ask questions I don't know the answer to, that the, the, the person's going to give.

And I do not know the answer you're going to give.

Speaker 3

For, for a few years I was being roped into by my employer to, um, to kind of write this top 10, um, news stories in open source and free software for the year.

Uh, legal, legal news stories.

The policy listicle.

Yeah.

Now, uh, uh, a famous lawyer in open source named Mark Radcliffe, uh, beat me to it, uh, this time.

So I just didn't even bother.

Um, and I don't know what he listed.

Um, for all I know, he may have listed the, the Linux code of conduct thing.

Um, but I don't know.

I mean, like recently this whole, the MongoDB license thing has been on my mind partly because of my work with the OSI.

Um, but I don't really know the answer to your question.

I was, I was not, I just don't think in terms of years.

Okay.

Sorry.

Speaker 1

You're not thinking of any acquisitions.

Speaker 3

Oh, that's, that's not a, I mean, it's, that's a.

Speaker 1

I thought that was the leading, that was the leading question, wasn't it?

You think of that as a.

I don't know.

I don't think that's necessarily the answer to the question.

Speaker 3

That was on Mark, that was on Mark Radcliffe's list now that I recall, but I just don't actually weirdly think of that as a,

an open source legal story.

It's just a, you know, it's an acquisition.

It's a policy story.

Speaker 5

Well, I, I just, I'm sure most of you know, but just to make sure we're all clear, Richard Fontana works for Red Hat.

Not anymore.

Yes.

Speaker 1

Yes, I do.

Speaker 3

To Bradley's point, Red Hat was acquired by IBM.

Speaker 5

And you heard some of our speakers mention this while Italo was unambiguous in his thought process about it.

What is your thought process about IBM acquiring Red Hat?

Speaker 3

Are you looking at me?

Okay.

Speaker 4

Who on our panel works for Red Hat?

Anybody else up here who works for Red Hat?

So he wants to be talking to you.

Speaker 3

So I think I'm not, I'm not really able.

So this is one of the few situations where I'm actually going to say I'm not really able to comment on this.

I will say that the atmosphere at Red Hat is, for the most part, you know, things are just like moving, moving on as usual.

And the, the acquisition hasn't actually happened yet.

So the closing is planned to happen sometime, maybe at the end of this year.

So yeah, there's nothing I can really say.

Yeah.

Speaker 4

I mean, I, and so, you know, having lived through the Sun Oracle acquisition, which was a disaster for free software, Jim.

Um, because so many projects, uh, there's a huge diaspora projects inside Sun because Sun, for all their faults that we heard about today in an earlier talk, uh, was making some efforts to be a better citizen to these projects.

And almost all of them ended up having to fork, um, to survive.

And, uh, I, I hope that doesn't happen to a lot of the projects that Red Hat does that I, I would hope that it doesn't.

But, IBM's manner of participating in upstream projects is, is indeed radically different for Red Hats.

Speaker 3

Uh, yeah, it, it, it is different.

It's a different kind of legacy.

And one thing I, I will say, for example, I would have always said this, is that IBM had a different approach to dealing with these, um, uh, institutions, um, trade associations, um, nonprofit organizations, compared to Red Hat.

Red Hat had this kind of, uh, position of, you know, we're, we're not going to get involved in all these entangling alliances.

IBM was kind of all about, about, um, you know, getting involved in organizations and starting organizations like that, you know, going back decades.

So that's, uh, that's just like one, you know, interesting.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean, IBM is often credited as the key organization that caused the OSDL, um, free standards group merger that formed the Linux Foundation, for example.

So that's, that's a good example of where that occurred.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, IBM was, was certainly, um, uh, pretty, a major factor in the formation of OSDL to begin with.

Speaker 4

So, but you work, you work for Red Hat, which will soon be IBM, but you don't work for GitHub and don't work for Microsoft.

So you can comment on the acquisition of Microsoft, or Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub.

I'm staring at Justin Colonino.

Um.

Well, I didn't ask him to comment because he works for Microsoft.

Speaker 3

I mean, is that, that's, that's like a, that's, that's not a free software story.

I mean, GitHub is a proprietary software service provider, and.

Speaker 4

I, I mean, that, that, in fact, that's how I felt about it when I heard about it.

Was, I was like, oh, one proprietary software company acquired another proprietary software company.

It has something to do with.

It happens all the time.

Speaker 3

It has to do with, like, developers and developers like open source, and it's kind of connected to, like, a lot of open source projects are hosted on GitHub.

It's kind of true.

Yeah.

Speaker 2

It recommends licenses and, um, recommends how you put a license file in your project.

So, uh, that matters.

Yeah.

Speaker 3

They don't like the, the use of, uh, copying, which is part of the, the GNU tradition.

So that they, they like, uh, the license to be called license.

Speaker 4

I will, I will, I will go out on a, on a dangerous limb here and say that I told various people at the FSF, like, 20 years ago, that copying was a really dumb name.

No.

Because it covers copying, modifying, and distributing.

It's a tradition.

It's all about, it's all about tradition.

Speaker 1

I'm glad you raised those two acquisitions at the same time, because I think that they stand for the same proposition, which is that things change.

And that the way things are today are not the way that things will be tomorrow.

And we have to take whatever actions, yeah, we have to take whatever actions we can to protect ourselves, to protect ourselves against the evil versions of ourselves and others.

And, and having distributed copyrights, choosing copy left, these are all things using, making nonprofits strong, these are all ways that we can help protect ourselves.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'm just going to change the topic.

Thank you.

We could talk about that all day, but I, I've been concerned about DRM for a long, long time, but I was always protected from it, because I have no DRM capable software on my laptop, so it didn't affect me.

I just boycott everything, but things are just closing in.

It's hard, but sometimes it works.

But things have been closing in, and now, you know, public service broadcasters are putting, you know, requiring DRM to watch their TV channels.

And I'm just getting concerned that my one-man boycott is not sufficient to, to combat this threat anymore.

And so, since there were no two-man boycott, thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

So, since there's nobody talking about DRM today, I presume nobody submitted a talk about it.

Is there anyone who can give any hope or any suggestions for what might happen in 2019 regarding DRM?

Speaker 4

So, I, I, I frequently these days think of something Seth Schoen of the EFF told me when he was working in the anti-DRM campaigns in the early 2000s, that the, the way the inter-industry conversations happened, the phrase they used was DRM is inevitable.

And that was the starting point of every conversation.

I, I think DRM was inevitable.

Um, I, uh, the one thing I did not disclose in our keynote this morning is that I am, in fact, not part of that boycott anymore.

I admit to having used systems, uh, recently that have DRM in them.

Um, and I'm not happy about that or comfortable with it, but I have done it.

And, uh, I believe that the very few people boycott is not working.

Um, and I, I don't know what we do about it.

Uh, but, uh, we're always on a conclusion, collision course between DRM and free software.

Um, how that collision course pays out now, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1

Well, we can, we can try to change the law because right now, uh, DRM is, um, actually killing copyright exceptions, for instance.

And we are from Portugal and we managed to change the law in a way that, um, you could break the technology to use, to make, um, a copyright exception.

Uh, actually, uh, there was, um, a change or proposal in this, um, reform, copyright, reform, European copyright reform in the beginning.

Sadly, it was rejected by one vote, but we can try to, uh, look at, uh, in your country, look at the law.

Probably the law says that you can't break DRM even for legal purposes, but we'll give you, uh, a workaround.

Usually that workaround will not work.

Then go to your politicians and say, the law doesn't work, please correct it.

That's what we have done and we, we did it, so.

Absolutely.

I mean, this is one of the reasons Conservancy is really, um, uh, you know, really focused on getting some of the, um, DMCA exceptions, um, in place.

We did one, um, at Conservancy for Smart TVs and I worked on one, um, for medical devices, um, with a bunch of other, uh, uh, medical device researchers.

Um, this is amazing.

I hope that we can continue more discussion on Monday at KapiLefConf and otherwise next year.

Thank you so much to the other organizers and to all of you.

This is so great.