preroll music
Herald Angel: Welcome back to the hacc stage this year on the remote Congress three. We
are here again to host you an amazing talk: How proprietary IP and copyright
models failed society and what we can do about it by Mario. He will be talking
about some examples where IP or the current IP system failed us. And I think
in general, a lot of people would agree that not everyone is content with how IP
works today. So I have nothing more to add to this. And I give my voice over to
Mario.
Mario Behling: Thank you very much. This has been a very kind introduction and I appreciate
the support of the entire team and community. And I'm happy to give this talk
here today. It's a question that really concerns me for many years, honestly, more
than 20 years since I started my journey in the open source, in the free software
and the open hardware community. And yeah, I have quite a few things to share. And so
but before I talk about all these problems that we see, especially this year, I want
to talk about the positives, my experience over many years, how open systems can
benefit society and people's lives. And I want to talk about what I experienced and
where I connected to people first, because for me, this is kind of proof that open
systems can work and that they are ready to be the mainstream in society. So
shortly about myself, I'm working here in Berlin with my company, OpenTec. I lived
many years in Asia and usually I spend still a lot of time in Asia every year.
And actually I stayed there until April. And when I came back at the beginning of
the Corona crisis, then to Germany to be close to my parents and I love learning
languages so on, not only into tech, always had this excitement, the kind of
inspiration when I meet people from other countries and try to speak their
languages. And yeah, that's what I really love. And people don't believe it
sometimes when they see my photo in the driver's license where I have long hair
and I used to play in a rock band. So that's also in my life. And yeah, I
believe in open tech as a solution for many of our global problems. So in 2006,
for example, I started a journey with a mesh network community here. And I would
like to share something that I did there that I hope to inspire others. And it's a
video which I want to show you a few seconds here, to get you into the mood. So
let me quickly switch to the video. And here it's from Flo Fleißig and one video
that I created at that time.
Video: singing Flo Fleißig, Flo Fleißig, Flo Fleißig olala. Flo Fleißig, Flo Fleißig,
Flo Fleißig olala.
Ich bin Florian, und das ist meine neue Wohnung. Wir sind gerade hier eingezogen.
Und, ich hab kein Internet. Jedenfalls hatte ich keins. Aber in Berlin gibts ja
Leute, die verschenken Internet. Und das Allerbeste? Es kommt auch noch durch die
Luft. Und ich zeig' euch wie. Kommt mal mit. Hier ist mein
Wohnzimmer. Kommt rein, kommt rein. Na, wie sehen die Schuhe aus? Gut. Und das ist
mein Computer. Und der brauchte Internet. Und wo kommt das her? Erst mal aus nem
Kabel. Und das Kabel geht durch die Decke. So, kommt mit, ich zeig euch wo das hin
führt. Das ist meine Dachterasse. Und von hier komm ich immer aufs Dach. Kommt
schon, kommt schon! Von hier aus kann man über ganz Berlin gucken. Da hinten ist der
Fernsehturm. Da kommt mein Internet aber nicht her. Guckt mal, hier kommt mein
Kabel raus. Und das geht in ne Tupperbox da unten. Und da kommt noch Strom hin und
dann kommt noch 'n anderes Kabel raus Mario: And I don't want to show the entire
video. But I want to give you an example. What I did and how I got into the
community, how I got excited. So in, for example, for the free wireless mesh
community. And I kind of forgot that it was German, I was switching it in. But
it's about a guy who gets the Internet through Wi-Fi, who uses open source
software, uses networks and like as much as possible open things, and then like it
creates a network, participates in a network and so on. We make videos about
Wikipedia and so on. So actually, that was a pretty exciting time because it just
seemed everything's possible. People were talking about blogging, changing the media
and so on. So, yeah, looking back from 2020, it seems kind of like a utopian time
where we thought so many things are possible. And then we had like many events
here called The Wizards of OS, and they happened like every two years at that
time. And I was excited. So I went there. And one year I also got the chance to help
with the press there. So I met a lot of the drivers of that time there. So, for
example, like here in this slide, we see Volker Grassmuck who organized the
Wizards of OS, with a team and with a community. And some people we welcomed
back then were Jimmy Wales, Lawrence Lessig. And yeah, that was a really cool
time with all these people came from all over the world. And like everything seemed
possible and and we changed it. So and at that time, I also, of course, made a video
with Lawrence Lessig and. Yeah. And he said something very important for me. It
is extraordinarily important to have openness really in every layer of the
network. The physical infrastructure needs to have open and free resources, the
logical and the application needs to be open and the content layer too has to be
opened. These things work together to encourage a wide range of innovation and
creativity. This just sounded so cool to me. Everything just needs to be open. And
yeah, I believe in this until today. And I see that people around the world and also
I personally, we have a lot of benefits through open things. So I finished
universities then and I wanted to do good. So I worked in some projects, for example,
here in Berlin at the TU Berlin, where we trained Afghans. And I also then had the
chance to go to Afghanistan with a position in the Foreign Ministry, they
funded like some training programs in Afghanistan. And I went there and yeah,
that was really cool so I could help people in the university. We were training
there. We were doing like presentations, lectures and so on in the university over
a period of one year and also worked with the Goethe institute. Later on I met a
guy who like crazy from crazy way to think of it. He started his company in Afghanistan
and then he collaborated with all kinds of organization and projects. And at that
time we got in contact with the one laptop per child project and we ended up to
distribute 10,000 OLPCs, the XO laptops in Afghanistan, but not just distributing
them. What we actually did is we set up and networks there so the kids could have
access to knowledge from the Internet to Wikipedia. And we even like did all this,
like we installed a localized Wikipedia version on a computer. And so you didn't
have to go all the way to the Internet. The Internet connection was bad, right,
like you can imagine, for example, in Jalalabad, it was really difficult to get
a good Internet connection. So we set up like a local server on a Eee PC at that
time and with like kind of stripped down version of Wikipedia. And then we had our
local network there. So. Right. I mean. Whatever we always talk about we actually really
tried to make it happen and we did it and and there were so many more ideas at that
time. I mean, for example, the Goethe institute, I had proposed to them back in
2006, to make a content management system or a wiki or something like that and
collect educational materials. And I thought, like, maybe we could have one or
two people at the Goethe institute working on educational materials instead of like
selling books to kids. And, you know, all this thing where you have to, like,
distribute books around the world and so on. I thought, like, we can do so much.
And why not start with a German institute? Unfortunately, already 2006, there wasn't
any positive feedback. They said, oh, that's really nice. They wanted to hire me
right away as for their development team to to take care of their website, but
actually I was always interested in creating open knowledge. And yeah,
unfortunately, until today, we still have the problem that the digital divide is
here right now in in Germany. And yeah, it's still not there. So unfortunately, no
progress when I first proposed that 2006 to the Goethe institute. So I stayed
longer in Asia and later on I went to Singapore, then to Vietnam, and I started
a company in Vietnam. We did kind of Linux systems for the Swiss post. And so that
was nice, right? I mean, you could earn income with open source. Fantastic. And we
had this idea to connect with the global community. There was always this feeling
that we are a bit disconnected. Yeah. I mean, we're in Asia, we see all these
things happening online and somehow we don't meet these developers that we
usually meet at conferences, for example, in Europe. So we thought we are in Asia.
It's not just me I'm talking about we, because, of course, you're always
embedded. You always meet friends, developers, designers, a lot of
community people. So we thought, like, let's make a event in Asia and here in
Vietnam and we love FOSS and let's call it fossasia then because we are in Asia. And
yeah over the years we developed different activities and different streams here,
fossasia.org, where we of course then develop software and hardware. I mean if
you have events and when you have events, I mean then you meet other people and they
have cool ideas, you have cool ideas. But it's not that you only talk about it, you
actually do it. You open a GitHub repository, for example, and then create a
project and some projects move forward and yeah, become real and people use it. So
one of these projects, for example, is eventyay.com that we use to organize our
open source events. And then like we also connect developers, for example, through
programs like codeheat. So happy to see you guys there checking it out. And it
would be great to see you on one of these platforms. And yeah, a few pictures of
people who are contributing and we always have big numbers. Right. And but like,
it's not just big numbers, of course, like people come and go. A lot of people
register but like then they come back. Some people continuously work over a long
time. Maybe you see some familiar faces here from other events. These are a few of
the contributors in the fossasia community. So we have a lot of merged pull
requests. There are 5,000 developers registered, as I said, big numbers. You
know, some people stay, some people go. It's always come and go. But we have a lot
of activity going on. We have hackathons and we have a lot of coding programs. So
back to 2009, then we started to organize events here with the help of the GNOME
community we hosted GNOME.Asia. We started development. And that's what I say, like
openness, open systems. They really bring together people to share
knowledge and, yeah, to build a better world. And we continued over many years
here, for example, fossasia Summit 2011, where we had a mini debconf. And so we
were very happy to welcome debian developers from all over the world.
That was really nice. And we moved to different places. For example, Phnom Penh
in 2014 where we were at Norton University. People again came from many different
places. So that was really inspiring. And not just like summits and events here.
Also we have coding contests and here, for example, there's an information event
about coding, about codeheat in India. So it's not just us, people actually started
to make their own events without our help, so that was really lovely to see here in
India. And yeah, so then I thought, like, OK, all this free and open source, it's
working. We have the software. We have people working on hardware. How about open
architecture? And it happened that like I was in Vietnam and we had a small patch of
land and we had planned to build a house. And then we said, why not build something
really nice, like a slightly bigger where we can also welcome people from the
community that we can say that we build an open source business here and we decided
to build an open source hotel. So basically a hotel that uses as much as
possible open source tools and software and also a hotel that should have like
follow the idea of ecology. And so we put on top of the house, for example, water,
solar panels that are known to be really efficient. So the entire building is like
uses hot water through solar panels, for example. And of course, we use Linux
system where people can go to into the Internet. We use openWRT for our network
and so on. Whatever is possible, unfortunately, is not entirely possible.
Because in Vietnam it's also like guests are usually supervised by the police. So
the police demands that you install an app on the hotel computer and when you submit
every evening which guests are in the hotel. So that one is the only laptop that
runs with Windows, there in the building. Yeah. And that was cool and then I thought
like but like what's happening in Germany. So I went to Germany and I met a lot of
people who were working on knitting. Yeah, knitting. And then there were
people who are interested in fashion and technology and we thought like, why not
bring these people together? And there was also there was also a time where some
disasters happened, for example, in Bangladesh. And so we had the, there was a
building that crashed down. A lot of people died there and so on. So basically.
That was big in the news and then there was big in the news that the textile
industry harms the environment like in many different ways, especially in those
emerging countries. So we thought, what could we do about it? And the TU Berlin
and Melanie and Andre, few friends here, they said, let's make it happen. Let's
let's make an event happen where we bring some people together. And, yeah, I
would like to share another video here with you to give you some impressions from
that time.
German TV Narrator: Computer trifft auf Mode.
Auf der MeshCon kamen zum ersten Mal Softwareentwickler, Strickenthusiasten und
Vertreter der Textil- und Modeindustrie zusammen. Entwickelt werden unter anderem
digitale Strickmaschinen als umweltschonende Konkurrenz für
Billiganbieter aus Fernost. Ein nur 3€ teurer WLAN-Chip zum Beispiel ins Hemd
eingenäht, lässt die Kleidung mitdenken. Mario: Für den Gesundheitssektor ist das
sehr interessant, denn hier kann man sehen, wie verschiedene Parameter
funktionieren. Man kann den Herzschlag abnehmen, man kann Blutdruck und so weiter
dann aufzeichnen und direkt per WLAN übertragen.
TV Narrator: Ziel der MeshCon ist es, durch digitale Anwendungen eine
umweltfreundliche Textilproduktion nach Deutschland zurückzuholen.
Mario: So, yeah, right, I mean, like that was 2014 and again, you might say, well,
yeah, it's the same topics that we hear today. I mean, like that's like six years
later, right? It's "umweltfreundlich", environment. Right. Environmental friendly
textile industry. What can we do with technologies to improve the situation
here? And yeah, like this is something that we can do with free and open source
hardware. And then we had the CCC event again that year and there Hong Phuc
presented her like talk about textile machines. And there was this vision of a
open textile production line. That's a huge thing. And we thought, like, let's
make a revolution for the textile and garment industry. The system is broken.
So already 2014 and onwards like we already knew that the system is broken.
And it's just the same situation as today. And there was a video, I think I don't
have so much time to show this, but we have our friends from the hackerspace in
Munich and different ones like in this video. I recommend you to you to have a
look online after this session and the links and slideshow will be provided. But
it's really amazing what they do. And it shows that. Like textile production, local
production is possible with free and open tools. We just need to develop them into
the right direction. And of course, it takes a lot of resources. So that was one
cool thing. And then we continue our fossasia events, of course, here at Phnom
Penh, for example, we had Pravin. Pravin was from India and he is a physics teacher
there, and he introduced to us the idea of a pocket science lab that he could use for
himself to teach the students. So we started that project and it's unbelievable
what we have now achieved in 2020. We now have a small science lab here and you can
find more information on pslab.io. And this science lab is completely open. Here
you see the board. So you can connect it, for example, to a computer, you can
connect it to a smartphone and you can start to do experiments. There's a lot
more work to do, but we have already achieved versions that people all over the
world can use. And yeah, even you can connect small robots and learn about this.
So that's really cool. And this is, again, a positive vision. And we produce this in
China. Of course, I always say local production, but we do what is possible, of
course, with fossasia. We have a lot of connections across Asia. So here we
actually got the knowledge to do this. We started a small company that facilitated
the production. So that's all possible. And then, of course, it's about education.
Here we see how people like go around in different places, for example, a
Hackerspace Maker Fair in Singapore and so on, and do this. And then another thing
that we did, I already mentioned eventyay.com. We now integrated Jitsi and
Big Blue Button. Again, a positive example how you can collaborate in the open
community. They're like completely different projects. We don't even know
always the developers, but we can find their projects online and we can build
amazing solutions. So of course, like always, the Chaos Computer Congress here.
And this is the place where our contributors here from Europe, but also
like from Asia, come together. Unfortunately, this year it's not
possible. But we're really looking forward to hang out again with you guys so hello
here from Berlin right now at the moment to everyone. So this is a great place to
meet. So we see amazing things are possible. And I could give you more
examples from my own life, like free and open source technologies and knowledge and
all these things are possible and they can be an example. But fast forward to
today. What are the news that we are seeing? We are seeing information about
how proprietary IP and copyright models fail society every day. And let me go
through a few news here. So, for example, here already in March: Everything is
missing. That was reported on Süddeutsche.de and it was reported that we
don't even have like the simplest masks everywhere. And I have to say now it is
the end of December, 10 months later. And still my father went to the pharmacy. He's
85 years. And what happened? They don't have masks. Yeah. So this is something
simple. We are living in a high tech country here in Germany, but. We don't
have masks. Yeah, and even the masks that we have, I mean, like, if I would think
like 10 months have passed, what high quality, high tech masks could we have
possibly now if we bring all our knowledge together? But it is a market focused
economy here and a market focused society that we have a lack to even imagine,
something that could work with a power of community. And I was very pleased to see
here our friends from Potsdam and Brandenburg here giving a talk at the CCC
about how they took action and produced masks themselves. And it's unbelievable
how actually we rely on citizens to take the initiative where we have like so much
money in the economy and businesses and the government. I mean, like, we really
need to do and change something here. But this is just like one example. And I want
to move forward. Then just a few days ago, I read this here: our health minister,
they have the right to... We have patents, right? Like patents and for... People
do research and they develop like some kind of formula. They develop a process.
And so a lot of companies use patents to ensure they can earn money with this. But
what happens if there is a war or if there's a huge crisis like now the
pandemic? The government is allowed to stop this. The government is permitted to
take the patents and say they're invalid, for example, for some time, and they can
use, for example, their power here to produce more vaccinations right? But how
long do we have to wait until vaccination is available for everyone? And I mean, six
months, one year, and then is it available for everyone around the world? I mean,
right now, the vaccination like, it's a business, right? And the companies that
create the vaccination, they don't have any interest commercially to quickly
vaccinate everyone. I mean, you can read about it on the Internet everywhere. I'm
not going into detail here. There was also a talk about patents here at the CCC. So
this is another bad example, how we fail society because of our policies. There was
also this example in the corona crisis where some media reported that actually a
company tried to stop makers here in Milano in Italy, and these makers had
produced spare parts for ventilators. And they were really like running out of
ventilators. And that was a big problem. And yeah, this company, of course, didn't
want to help and they couldn't provide design files to actually save lives! So
this is just so sad that copyright and patents actually, you know, like you can
only be in a loss of words when you think about it. It's like people die because of
these kind of like... Yeah, and we have this here, patents are dying. So there are
initiatives that actually mention this and ask European governments to follow up. So
then another example like I can, I have a lot of examples. I don't know if I have
enough time in this talk. But now let's go to examples here. The pandemic amplifies
trouble with restrictive licensing and text e-books. So, of course, education is
a big topic like students are at home, they can't get materials that they need.
You can find examples all around the world. And then we have the World
Intellectual Property Organization here, WIPO. What are they doing? "Copyright and
Covid-19: Has WIPO learned nothing from the pandemic?" are the news that we are
reading here. So basically they don't want to change their policies. People don't
have access to education, to knowledge,. Even the pandemic they have to stay at
home and it's just not possible to adjust the policies. Everything is just for
copyright. WIPO's missed opportunity to produce guidance on copyright exceptions
hits education during pandemic. And here, for example, a quote from a spokesperson
for African countries. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, never before has the
subject of copyright limitations and exceptions been more pertinent for
educational and research purposes. It is just so clear, he continues: Open source
publications on health research are essential to the common human endeavor to
find a solution to this global health challenge. Furthermore, children in
developing countries have been denied online access to educational research
material because of copyright restrictions. This is just unbelievable.
It is inhumane to learn about this. And yeah, why did it take so long before
reading time arrived to distance learning? Copyright, of course, is a quote here of
Mike Masnick that I found online. And he goes on how like, for example, teachers
have to get permission to use reading materials online. And it is just silly if
you think what he says here. No one would ever expect that if you walked into a
kindergarten classroom that a teacher would first need to get a) a permission to
read aloud a book and b) state before reading that he or she had permission from
the copyright holder. This is happening in kindergartens, it's just insane. So a lot
more examples and I will switch a bit forward because I don't have too much time
here for the entire thing. What else happened here this year? The youtube-dl
source repository went offline. The I... R...I... RIAA used the same law that stops
farmers, creators and security researchers from modifying or repairing devices they
bought and own from tractors and toasters or smart speakers and smartphones. And we
could just go on and I think many of you remember what happened. They just took off
a source repository, basically without rights. And of course, my favorite here:
Apple. Apple crushes one-man repair shop in Norway's Supreme Court after a three
year battle. Maybe some people are confused. I don't know who's listening. If
you're listening from Germany, if you're listening from Australia or any other
country, you could actually find similar news everywhere in the world where Apple
prevents people from repairing their phones or from making any changes to their
devices. And think about this in regards to the environment. Do you think this is
good? If you can't repair your device and always have to buy something new?
Definitely not. The example like the EFF just referred to it in the same path:
Farmers fight John Deere over who gets to fix an 800,000$ tractor. So. John Deere is
one of the biggest like companies that create machinery, agricultural
machinery, and they told the copyright office that farmers don't own their
tractors because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors,
farmers receive an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the
vehicle. OK, again, copyright and intellectual property, so-called. And just
like now, I don't know if people already have the chance to go through the Brexit
treaty. What do we read now on the Brexit treaty? A party shall not require the
transfer of, or access to the source code of software owned by a natural or legal
person of the other party. Basically, this means. This is a trade agreement, and in
this trade agreement, we say if, for example, the EU or Germany, for example,
demands that any software that we buy from Britain and if the software is, for
example, security related or for our power grid or something like that, we are not
permitted to ask a British supplier to open the source code to us. This is like
how politicians continue here in this crisis. So it's all heading in the wrong
direction. And these are just a few examples. We are living here in a market
society, but the market is failing to solve the pandemic, the climate change and
poverty around the world. This is just what we see here. And I want now some
outcome here. I want demands. In my view, we are in a state of digital emergency. To
solve the problems of our planet, from climate change to the pandemic and
poverty, we need a new open digital deal for global collaboration. And this is what
I showed to you before. I showed to you how, from my own experience, I can
collaborate and work together with people all around the world. I can meet them. We
can create something new. We did create many things. And in my view, this is an
example here that we should follow as a society. And that's why I have demands and
here's some key things that I think we need. So of course, we need global
knowledge sharing to solve our problems. We need open access to knowledge and
information. We can't afford anymore to block access to our books and knowledge.
And of course, that also means open science. We shouldn't say open science
because science is like by definition already open. But unfortunately, it is not
always, often scientific sources are not released. And I think many people who are
working in science and in university can talk a lot about this. So local
production, of course. Of course, it's not achievable from one moment to the other.
But right now, like we already saw how, for example, for some health equipment, we
are dependent on other regions of the world. It's very monopolized and
centralized and for the environment and for the benefit of a lot of people like
locals who want to make income. We need a circular economy. So that, yeah, that is
important. And of course, like it's an ongoing topic. And I know a lot of people
in Asia and in other parts of the world who suffer because they don't have
privacy. And yeah, privacy is a human right, but there are many human rights
that are violated, unfortunately, all around the world. Well, probably this list
can be extended. These are a few key points that I see. All this is possible
already today. If we could leverage the advantage of open collaboration, we have a
proof. I have a proof that FOSS, open hardware, open knowledge, open data
works, openness works. And I want to leave you in a few moments with this list here
that I created. My demands for new open digital deal for global collaboration.
It's not sorted in a specific order. There are some thoughts. I think, like if people
are interested to contact me and work on this, I'm happy to extend and define this
list. But here are a few points how we could achieve in this new open digital
deal. So we could, for example, declare a state of digital emergency. I think that's
what we should do. Digitalnotstand in German, like it's so apparent, it's on
every corner and every school are these problems, companies have these problems
it's just everywhere. And this demands a state of digital emergency. We need a new
vision of openness everywhere. And of course, we are a market society. But this
state like is active on so many layers and so much money is handed out. Where is the
billion euro funded package to develop freely licensed open technologies on all
layers by the European Union? We need this now and participatory making just needs to
be everywhere, a makerspace in every library and substantial tax benefits for
open source businesses associations as well. It's not just businesses who improve
society, it's associations, there are individuals. There are many different
forms how you can benefit society and people around you. And for example I could
imagine in Germany, a Bundesstiftung Open Source. And copyright should be defined as
the right to copy, not is like right now, it's the other way around. It doesn't make
sense at all. Right? So, yeah, another idea, priority for businesses,
associations and individuals that provide benefits to society. I think I already
mentioned that. And all this will help us with more resilience and the digital
sovereignity. So we are not dependent on, like, for example, China or like companies
in the US. We don't know what they are doing. And we already experienced like
what happened, for example, the last few years with Donald Trump. And yeah. So
definitely we need to stop the colonization of Europe and the rest of the
world by monopolistic platforms. I think you can imagine which platforms there are.
And it's even very difficult to get out of these platforms. And unbelievably, they're
hardly paying any taxes here in Europe. So there are gatekeepers everywhere. Privacy
is a human right. And I will leave you here with this list that you can also
review. Afterwards, there's not so much time left. But I think you understand in
which direction we need to head. And I demand that we do this right now. So this
is my end slide and I'm open for a few questions. And I hope I can follow up with
more of you. And there's a fossasia summit happening in March. We'll do it entirely
online. And I would be happy to connect with you guys and with all our friends
again there. So thank you very much for this talk. And moving back to the demands,
I want to leave this as the final slide. We need openness on all layers, and I'm
really fed up after twenty years. I have this experience, but I don't see that we
really, you know, like it must be on all layers of society. We can't wait anymore.
The climate change, pandemic. And maybe it's not the last pandemic. We don't know.
All these things are happening and I think we need to change this now. So thank you
very much for giving me the opportunity here for this talk. And I don't know, do
we still have time for question?
Herald Angel: Well, we are a bit over time already, but I think I have three
questions right here. And I think I'm just going to ask them. We still have some time
before the next talk. So are you still active in the open Internet scene, or
like Freifunk or like the thing you showed at the beginning?
Mario: Yeah, I think right now I'm not like involved in the Freifunk community,
but like, of course, like we all use it. I mean, you know, so it depends, define
active, right? So definitely I'm supportive of the network community. And I
think, like, it's on a lot of different layers. And I try to do my part to bring
things forward. I think at the moment, my main focus personally is on open hardware,
for example, the pocket science lab. And I'm also trying to support people who want
to run events with free and open source software only. We even see a lot of events
that, you know, like free and open source operating systems, but they use closed
source platforms. I want to help everyone to move to an open layer. And I
think the wireless mesh community, Freifunk and so on, they have been very
successful already. But in my view, we need companies, yeah? Because like we are
in a capitalistic society. So if we try to, you know, to do too many things at
once, yeah? Yeah, it's difficult. It's very difficult. So I'm focusing on more
narrow things personally, but as I show here in the demands, I think we can have a
much wider achievement, if we do this on different layers, if we for example, if we
force the government to go into the copyleft instead of the closed strict
copyright, you know. We need to change the policies and like an
association by itself doesn't have the same resources as, for example, an entire
state, and we need this open and free and open systems must become mainstream.
Herald Angel: Okay jumping back again into the open infrastructure like
infrastructure for everyone. What are your thoughts on Starlink or if there could be
a way to make this kind of Starlink open source open hardware style? Starlink is...
Mario: I didn't get enough startling? What is it?
Herald angel: Starlink is, I think from Elon Musk, a company trying to get
internet into all the remotest places via a satellite mesh network.
Mario: Sorry, Starlink. Absolutely. So this is a very good initiative. And of
course, Elon Musk, even though I thought many times that he is a supporter of free
and open source, he's just one figure and he depends on venture capital. And it's
not like that he has all the money and does it. He has a lot of partners there,
venture capital, and there are limits to venture capital. They want to make money.
Their main priority is to make money, while my main priority is like to do good for
society. So I'm definitely happy to earn money to have like a nice glass of wine
and so on. But right there, there are limits to this. So I want society to
benefit as a whole. And if we could have Starlink, for example, to run entirely
with open source and like follow an open approach, and I would be very happy. Definitely.
Herald Angel: Last question, we are a bit short on time
now. Are you more in the organization part of fossasia or are you more focused on
single projects? Mario: OK, so I think it is, it is both,
yeah, and like honestly, like fossasia, it sometimes seems like a huge organization
that people say, oh, so many people subscribe and this and that. And we do
events and people ask, how can we also become like that and so on. Actually, we
don't do this to become a huge organization. Of course, like we invite
everyone to star repositories, to invite us, to come to events and so on. But it's not
like for the benefit of like having a lot of stars or something or having a lot of
members. Our goal is to bring people together and also to like I think it's
much better if they write on their GitHub profile: I'm a member of a FOSS
community, then if they say I'm a Microsoft university student or something
like that. So a lot of the things that we do somehow scale because of this community
effort and one person tells the other. So even though it might sometimes look big,
we are actually relatively small, I have to admit, and I try to support on every
different layer. So my personal focus changes over time. So right now, I have a
strong focus on enabling people to do online events. And I believe that in many
parts of the world the virus situation will continue the way it is now,
unfortunately. And so we need a solution to connect to these people and we should
do this with free and open source. Herald Angel: Alright I think thats a nice
way to conclude this talk. No more questions came in, as for now. So I'm just
going to say from our side, this talk is over. I will give the word back to you for
a few last words and then all the viewers can go watch another great talk or go
around in rC3 world. Mario: So I only would like to say thank
you very much to the team, it has been an absolute pleasure and how you helped to
make everything happen. And it's really nice to connect with you guys. And I feel
like I'm really like at the CCC myself, so and I follow everything. So I appreciate
all your efforts and what you are doing. So keep it up and everyone out there and
let's get on board and let's add more demands to my demands and let's make them
happen and bring them to politics and so on. Unfortunately, the
Pirate Party is not like, didn't progress in the way we would have all loved to do
it. But hopefully we can achieve this in other ways. So please let us join efforts
and make all this happen. And new open digital deal for global collaboration. So
thank you very much.
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