WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Bradley Kuhn] I have to be honest I'm really honored to be here 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't say that to just every conference I care a lot about Debian 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is my 3rd DebConf I've ever been to. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There have been a lot of them so I obviously haven't been to that many 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But I was at DebConf1 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I just learned today that it was zero based so that it wasn't the first DebConf 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which I should have known but didn't for some reason. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was at the 2nd DebConf by accident somewhat because I was going to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Libre Software Meeting and just happened to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 book my flights so that I could be at DebConf as well 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I gave a regular track talk at DebConf10 about the GPL v3 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because it was in New York City where I was living at the time 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Here I'm giving an invited speaker talk or keynote or whatever else it is called here 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That really means a lot to me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm a fan of Debian, I'm a user of Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't actually consider myself part of the Debian community 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because other than filing a few bugs over the years 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I haven't contributed all that much to Debian but I've relied on it and used it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and been a fan of it for so long that I really love your project. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I am really honored to be invited to speak here 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I really believe that Debian is a very special project for a lot of reasons. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 First of all, it has thrived for longer than almost any free software project 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in existence in a lot of ways. There are top 10 lists of projects that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Debian is certainly on as far as longevity goes, maybe the top 5 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's governance is one of the few democratically elected and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 democratically controlled governance processes in free software 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Everyone is a fan of talking about this 'benevolent dictator' stuff 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which I think is really horrible The fact that somebody would call 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 themselves a 'self appointed benevolent dictator for life' is really disturbing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You are democratic. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You elect your leadership. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You have referendums on major issues that everyone can vote on. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That is amazingly rare, impressive and important for free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The other thing that really impresses me, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in particular being somebody from the non-profit world, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is that Debian has been staunchly non-commercial for it's entire existence. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Of course I don't mean that Debian can't be used in commercial settings. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 DFSG free means that things can be put into commercial products. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What I mean is that the project itself has always been non-commercial, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 meaning that the people that work on it are volunteering, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and, even if their employers are paying them to work on it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they are part of a community and not doing their work inside Debian as 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 officially part of some commercial activity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Most free software projects these days are controlled by 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 some commercial entity or another. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Debian is not. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was at Debconf1 which was really exciting for me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was a young executive director of Free Software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I showed this picture to Karen Sandler who I work with and said how different I look. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 She said I don't look different at all, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but, speaking as the person that looks at that face in the mirror every morning, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there are a lot more lines on my face than there. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That is a smooth looking baby face that I had 14 years ago that I don't have anymore 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was pretty casual back then. I'm not in short trousers any more. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's hard to see and you can see it in some of the other photos that I was. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Even in this heat like this I haven't worn short trousers in a very long time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What's that? [bdale heckles] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Bdale, I was thinking about mentioning you and now I have to because you are heckling 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 me [laughter]. Bdale is the one adult in the room who can dress like 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 everybody else but I can't pull it off 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I respect Bdale that he can. The tie-dye still works for him. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I stopped wearing t-shirts years ago at conferences 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and here I'm sweating in my long sleeves halfway between hacker and suit attire. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And there [in the photo] I'm talking to Martin Michmayer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm going to do questions at the end Lars, if that's ok. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm not good with questions because I get off topic easy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I left 17 minutes at the end for questions which Bdale just took 3 of [laughter] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There I'm talking to Martin Michlmayer when I first met him. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A lot of things have changed since I looked at this photo. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But one thing that hasn't changed, you see this face that Martin is making. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He still makes that face at me every time I talk to him, which sort of says like 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "You do not know what you are talking about". That hasn't changed, which is good 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [laughter]. I'm glad he is laughing in the back there. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Some things have stayed the same. Martin still thinks I'm full of it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I probably am, so that's ok. I like people to keep me honest. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Other than jokes, the thing that hasn't really changed since I was first 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 introduced to the Debian community, in person, back in 2001, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is the ethos of this community is still the same one that I remember 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 even though a lot of the developers have changed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I talked to somebody who had never even installed Debian when they were at 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 DebConf1. I talked to someone who was 12 years old at the time of DebConf1. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I find it impressive that what I call the 'morality of the hobbyist contributor' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 still lives strongly in Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The people in Debian want to do what is right for other people - 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 their users, co-developers, co-contributors. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They also volunteer to do that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As I said before, that doesn't mean that they aren't being paid to do their work. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's the classic free software thing: lots of people get paid to write free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What I've seen recently, in many free software projects, is that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 companies have used that. I think OpenStack is one of the worst examples 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of this. To control the project by hiring lots of it's developers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They have this kindof pull over the project. I think that a lot of people that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 work at OpenStack would say they are employers employee first and an 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 OpenStack contributor second. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't know anyone in Debian who would not say 'I am a Debian developer' first 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then I happen to be employed as a second issue. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Debian is their first priority. Their job is their second. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That hobbyist culture of 'my volunteer work matters more to me than 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what actually pays me for a living' is the kind of mentality that I am such a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 fan of. I try to live that in my own work as well. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I like interacting with the community. I usually find conferences very stressful. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This one I do not find as stressful other than I'm standing in a room with a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 huge number of people. Other than that I don't find it stressful 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because this is the kind of community that thinks that way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think a lot of it has to do with the other structures you have set up around 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 yourselves. The idea of having charities that you work with 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which you have chosen to do a multi charity situation where you have lots 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 around the world that you can interact with. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One of them was founded by a Debian developer initially. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You reach out to other partnerships or charities as a non-commercial community 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That allows you to have an infrastructure that you can rely on that helps 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you maintain that community. I'm very glad that you do that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I used to work for the FSF and am still on the board of directors. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Early in the project Debian was more or less a GNU project for a while. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was part of the FSF. I know that relationship has never been perfect 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 sometimes rocky and sometimes better, but the FSF saw this in Debian too 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 very early on. That it was a really important way to begin the whole 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 distribution thing of free software and that culture was a match with 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 FSF's culture. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I know where the issues are and I'm sure John is here to talk about them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But I think there is a lot of cultural connect between FSF and Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm a little obsessed about this quote. I saw it in real time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was subscribed to comp.os.minux in Aug of '91 when it was posted 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Part of it was that when I started working for the FSF I started thinking about it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the FSF when I worked there had 7 employees and still has under 20 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's not big. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I don't think of it as big and I guess strictly speaking, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 since the FSF is a very professional organisation, and to take the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 strict definition professional means you get paid to do this thing, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you do it for a living - yes, the FSF staff are professionals 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in all the ways you might use the word professional, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but I don't think that's what Linus was going for in this quote 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't think he meant those normal things about professional 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think what he was going for is he was trying to create Linux back when he was humble 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because people forget Linus used to be really humble. Once upon a time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [laughter] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't know... ok. I think some of his early posts were humble 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but we can debate that I suppose. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One of the things that Linus understood well was that he wanted to create 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a project where individuals collaborated together in their own capacity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He wanted a hobbyist kind of culture and was interested in that kind of culture. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think that what he got wrong was not realising how important charities are 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to that culture and I think Debian has always got that right. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You've always interacted with charities in good ways. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think you keep them at arms length, which is OK and reasonable, but 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you've always seen the value, always seen the connection between being 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a non-commercial hobbyist controlled project, very professional I think, but 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 still hobbyist controlled in a sense that you are volunteers doing the right things 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for everyone in your community. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At the same time reaching out to these charities and letting them help you 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 get done what you need to get do in the logistical world outside of your project. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What I've seen in other projects that Debian has not suffered from 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is the politics of the projects have bifurcated. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There's the technical politics which is the usual arguments about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this technology verses that technology 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 say, systemd verses upstart, something like that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that, I think in almost every project still remains under developer control. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People who are developers decide technical decisions like that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the political governance in most other projects has been hijacked in my view. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 By various different groups, depending on the project 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but usually some mix of lawyers or business type people who are somehow 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in for profit companies or industry associations, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that have taken over the political governance. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The reason they've succeeded in doing this I think is because most developers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 care deeply about the technical politics, but not so much about the other politics. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They want to make those decisions once and leave them alone. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A lot of my work in Conservancy is to help developers make those decisions right once 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then be able to leave them alone without it having bite them later. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think a lot of projects have faced that situation, where the non technical 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 politics of their projects are under the control of people who are 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 not members of the community, not really. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think that has really happened to Linux. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think that the Linux non technical politics are out of the hands of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the developers and it's a very sad thing, from my point of view 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think the companies control those politics 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they don't keep developers out entirely, but they gate keep 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from letting certain developers into the politics of what's really going on in the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 non technical space. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I've met many Linux developers who feel disenfranchised. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's why Conservancy has a GPL enforcement project for Linux. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because they've come to us to ask for someone who has a charitable mission 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to do the right thing for the public good, as opposed to the what companies want. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think that's what these charities serve. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you look at any of these charities that we have out there, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Conservancy, Software in the Public Interest, FSF, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they do things for hobbyist developers that are the morally right thing to do 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but are sometimes controversial 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that developers actually really need, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 maybe sometimes don't want to spend too much time on 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because they're more interested in other things, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but companies and trade associations don't need them and in fact 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they often oppose them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As I said, we're doing at Conservancy the GPL enforcement for Linux 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because it is not in the business interest of the companies who invest in Linux 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to see the GPL enforced. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In many cases they actually oppose it being enforced at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Which brings me to copyleft generally. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My last talk to all of you was at DebConf 10, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 where I told you about GPL v3 and how wonderful it is and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how much I respected Debian's commitment to copyleft. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now that's not to say everything in the archive is copyleft, I would guess that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 most things in the archive aren't, as it turns out. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But there are many, many important things in Debian's archive that are copylefted 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and many Debian meta-projects that you rely on every day as part of your 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 development that you have chosen to copyleft. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I see Debian as a strongly connected project to the broader copyleft community 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which I am heavily involved in. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Excessively involved in you might say. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The organisation I work for is funding a lawsuit, here in Germany 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 against VMware for violating the GPL for a very long time and refusing to comply. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Christoph Hellwig is the plaintiff. It is in a Berlin court. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Till Jaeger is his lawyer and you have to read the FAQ. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I am, admittedly, not as comfortable with the German legal system as the US. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I am used to the US where everything is public. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The German legal system doesn't work that way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I respect the cultural difference and therefore we put what we could in the FAQ 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so you could go read it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So if you were hoping to hear all about the VMware lawsuit in this talk this is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the only slide that covers it, sorry to say. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You can load your browser and look at the FAQ I guess. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The interesting thing that I can talk about is the aftermath in the politics in 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the community that I think a lot of people, even people in this room got wrong 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about what was going to happen after we sued VMware. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I have myself been a little bit surprised that the response by many for profit 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 companies (in the back channels, this has not been in press releases, obviously) 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 has been to attempt to eradicate copyleft entirely, or at the very least 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stop its enforcement. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At this point, for anybody who wants to make a strong commitment like Christoph, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like me, to spend a lot of time enforcing GPL, it is an extremely, politically 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 treacherous decision. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have people in our GPL enforcement project for Linux at Conservancy who 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 insist on anonymity because they are terrified it will affect their ability to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 get jobs, and other things if they're even heard to be talking to people who do 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 enforcement. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think what's happened is that the people who have always been against copyleft 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 subtly and quietly now see there's some chinks in the armour. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There are very few people still enforcing the copyleft. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The only two organisations doing it as part of a charity are the FSF and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Conservany. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a time for the sharks to circle and see if they can finish off the rest. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's what I think is happening. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, this matters to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Even if you don't care that much about copyleft, it matters. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ubuntu was violating your copyrights for two years. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They had a trademark policy that contradicted the GPL. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a violation of the GPL. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Free Software Foundation and Conservacy worked very, very hard for two 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 years to get it resolved. It's been resolved. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The trademark policy, as it stands - you can read the statements on both 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Conservancy and FSF's websites - is in compliance with the GPL. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm glad that Canonical eventually did the right thing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 However, you've got to read the fine print. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because what they've done is they've said "Well, by using this trump clause thing to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 comply", it means that all the non copylefted software (from Debian which of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 course then ends up in Ubuntu) is then propitiatorized, effectively, when it goes 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 into Ubuntu, because all these additional restrictions and terms in the trademark 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 policy that are contradictory to copyleft, the trump clause passes them out for 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 copyleft so you can't have those contradicting copyleft, but they happily 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 don't contradict the two clause BSD license, or the Apache software license or 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 various other licenses. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A lot is being proprietarized, now it's totally permissible by the copyright 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 license, but I would encourage everyone in the Debian community to think about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how much you like that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because your goal is to make everything in main be DFSG free, but when it gets into 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ubuntu main it automatically (if it's not copylefted) falls under this trademark 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 policy that's unfriendly to free software and I would argue DFSG non-free. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think we're facing some really tough challenges. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I believe free software has been largely co-opted by for profit companies. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's why I still say free software and not open source, because I think 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 source (I actually agree with RMS about this) is a term that allows companies to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 take the good parts they want from free software and leave the political stuff 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that many of us care about and still be able to exploit it for their own purposes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Meanwhile, Debian is a hugely important political part of what's happening. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because Debian is this really important non-commercial project. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Probably the largest non-commercial project of it's kind that's still 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 extremely relevant in the free software community. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Your long history and your good governance have insulated you from a lot of these 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 politics that have happened in other projects. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What's happened to OpenStack would never happen to Debian, because you're too 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 old for it to happen to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's just kinda nice that it works out that way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There's some usefulness in being old. [laughter] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Eventually the pressure will catch up to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Somebody's going to do it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Canonical just tried it and didn't succeed thanks to the fact that we stopped them 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but someone else will come along and try to do it next. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think it's just a harbinger of things to come at this point and copyleft is going 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to matter more and more to Debian as time goes on because it is the thing standing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 between these kinds of manoeuvres and free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I always see Debian as a key building block of other free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People build stuff on top of Debian all the time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I find in my work investigating GPL violations plenty of times where it's a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Debian system they just took and then gave no source code and moved it into a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 product and violated the GPL. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That means that people who are powerful and corrupt will want to control it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because it's essential and if they could somehow take control of Debian they could 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 control a lot of the software world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think they can't get control of you, because of the way you're organised, but 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that doesn't mean they're not going to try. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, I think that is so successful because Debian has always been about people. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The decision to make the Debian Developer - and I know it's different know, but 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 originally the Debian Developer was the pinnacle of how you became part of this 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 community, you passed your Debian Developer stuff, which I've never been 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 able to pass, because I'm lame - but I always believe that people oriented 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 manner of operating was essential to how that worked. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now since that first DebConf, I admit I've not spent much of my time with developers, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 certainly not as much as I would have liked. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I spend most of my time around lawyers and business people in the last 13 or 14 years 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they look at Debian or in fact any free software very differently. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Most of these people look at it not about the people, they see people as basically 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 fungible - any developer's good as the next, right? From a business person's 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 perspective. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the assets that sit there, things like copyrights. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That they look at as the output of Debian, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the value that Debian generates. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There is a certain technical correctness to that, it's like until you write 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 something down it doesn't exist, kind of thing, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so the fact that Debian generates copyrights as you all are doing your work, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 packaging packages, writing documentation, everything that you do. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's the record of what you did, which is then copyrightable, so there's a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 certain logic to this lawyer's way of looking at Debian, so say 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "Oh, it's just the assets. There's some trademarks, some copyrights yada yada" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What I think you should all think about in response to that is maybe there's some 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 value to that, maybe you should leverage the assets we have as a way to fight for 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ourselves, fight for good cause of free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The one way to look at copyleft is and this is one I like almost the best, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is that it's really just a mechanism to leverage assets, which lots of us agree 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 shouldn't exist - I'm not a fan of copyright by any means, but you take those 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 assets that are forced upon you basically by the system we live in and try to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 utilize them in some novel way to maximise fairness and goodness and benefit to other 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 people. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I wrote an essay years ago with Richard Stallman about this, about how the power 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to chose a license on software is this inappropriate power that people shouldn't 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 get. They get it anyway, so the only thing we can do is make a good choice about our 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 licenses to neutralise the power we should never have been given to start with. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I often talk about this as using the tools of the oppressor against the oppressor. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If we're going to do that, that means we have to look at every tool they use with 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 regard to copyright. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We've generally just looked at the licensing tool. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The tool of "what license do I put on my software", that's how I'll do it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'll put a copyleft license so that I'm defending software freedom by putting 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a copyleft licence on my code, but I think Debian could go even further and use these 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 tools in additional ways to help defend software freedom. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 With that, I'd like to announce a thing that Conservancy is doing for Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This was officially put into place in April. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We waited to announce it until my keynote here because we knew I was going to be 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 keynoting. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's an agreement that has been signed between the DPL and the Conservancy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to offer the following services to the Debian project, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all of which are optional to all Debian Developers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a programme begun under the Software Freedom Conservancy, and we recognise 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that as a member of SPI we asked SPI if it's ok if we did this before we did it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because we wanted to make sure we weren't offending your other charity organisation 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in the United States, and they agreed that this was fine. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It permits any Debian Developer who would like to, to optionally, and in a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 configurable way, assign any copyrights in their Debian related works to Conservancy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if they would like to. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If they don't want to do that, it also permits them, if they would like, to sign 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 an enforcement agreement with Conservancy, to ask Conservancy to enforce free 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 software licenses on behalf of that developer and that's an agreement that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can be cancelled, I'll talk more about that in a minute. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Probably of the most interest to a lot of you because it's going to come up the most 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 often is Conservancy will provide licensing support and advice on an ongoing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 basis for the Debian Project, and I'll talk more later on how we're going to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 do that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The whole this exists is because a key Debian contributor came to us and asked us 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to do it and we were happy to do it, and I'll talk about who that was in a few 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 minutes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 First, I felt I have to talk about this, because I've spend a lot of years lately, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in fact the last time I was in Germany, I was here to debate Mark Shuttleworth about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 copyright assignment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The fact that I've just pitched to you that copyright assignment is now available 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for Debian Developers I'm sure is probably leaving you to wonder a little bit.