[Bradley Kuhn] I have to be honest I'm really honored to be here
I don't say that to just every conference I care a lot about Debian
This is my 3rd DebConf I've ever been to.
There have been a lot of them so I obviously haven't been to that many
But I was at DebConf1
I just learned today that it was zero based so that it wasn't the first DebConf
which I should have known but didn't for some reason.
I was at the 2nd DebConf by accident somewhat because I was going to
Libre Software Meeting and just happened to
book my flights so that I could be at DebConf as well
I gave a regular track talk at DebConf10 about the GPL v3
because it was in New York City where I was living at the time
Here I'm giving an invited speaker talk or keynote or whatever else it is called here
That really means a lot to me.
I'm a fan of Debian, I'm a user of Debian.
I don't actually consider myself part of the Debian community
because other than filing a few bugs over the years
I haven't contributed all that much to Debian but I've relied on it and used it
and been a fan of it for so long that I really love your project.
So I am really honored to be invited to speak here
and I really believe that Debian is a very special project for a lot of reasons.
First of all, it has thrived for longer than almost any free software project
in existence in a lot of ways. There are top 10 lists of projects that
Debian is certainly on as far as longevity goes, maybe the top 5
It's governance is one of the few democratically elected and
democratically controlled governance processes in free software
Everyone is a fan of talking about this 'benevolent dictator' stuff
which I think is really horrible The fact that somebody would call
themselves a 'self appointed benevolent dictator for life' is really disturbing.
You are democratic.
You elect your leadership.
You have referendums on major issues that everyone can vote on.
That is amazingly rare, impressive and important for free software.
The other thing that really impresses me,
in particular being somebody from the non-profit world,
is that Debian has been staunchly non-commercial for it's entire existence.
Of course I don't mean that Debian can't be used in commercial settings.
DFSG free means that things can be put into commercial products.
What I mean is that the project itself has always been non-commercial,
meaning that the people that work on it are volunteering,
and, even if their employers are paying them to work on it,
they are part of a community and not doing their work inside Debian as
officially part of some commercial activity.
Most free software projects these days are controlled by
some commercial entity or another.
Debian is not.
I was at Debconf1 which was really exciting for me.
I was a young executive director of Free Software.
I showed this picture to Karen Sandler who I work with and said how different I look.
She said I don't look different at all,
but, speaking as the person that looks at that face in the mirror every morning,
there are a lot more lines on my face than there.
That is a smooth looking baby face that I had 14 years ago that I don't have anymore
I was pretty casual back then. I'm not in short trousers any more.
It's hard to see and you can see it in some of the other photos that I was.
Even in this heat like this I haven't worn short trousers in a very long time.
What's that? [bdale heckles]
Bdale, I was thinking about mentioning you and now I have to because you are heckling
me [laughter]. Bdale is the one adult in the room who can dress like
everybody else but I can't pull it off
I respect Bdale that he can. The tie-dye still works for him.
And I stopped wearing t-shirts years ago at conferences
and here I'm sweating in my long sleeves halfway between hacker and suit attire.
And there [in the photo] I'm talking to Martin Michmayer
I'm going to do questions at the end Lars, if that's ok.
I'm not good with questions because I get off topic easy.
I left 17 minutes at the end for questions which Bdale just took 3 of [laughter]
There I'm talking to Martin Michlmayer when I first met him.
A lot of things have changed since I looked at this photo.
But one thing that hasn't changed, you see this face that Martin is making.
He still makes that face at me every time I talk to him, which sort of says like
"You do not know what you are talking about". That hasn't changed, which is good
[laughter]. I'm glad he is laughing in the back there.
Some things have stayed the same. Martin still thinks I'm full of it.
And I probably am, so that's ok. I like people to keep me honest.
Other than jokes, the thing that hasn't really changed since I was first
introduced to the Debian community, in person, back in 2001,
is the ethos of this community is still the same one that I remember
even though a lot of the developers have changed.
I talked to somebody who had never even installed Debian when they were at
DebConf1. I talked to someone who was 12 years old at the time of DebConf1.
I find it impressive that what I call the 'morality of the hobbyist contributor'
still lives strongly in Debian.
The people in Debian want to do what is right for other people -
their users, co-developers, co-contributors.
They also volunteer to do that.
As I said before, that doesn't mean that they aren't being paid to do their work.
It's the classic free software thing: lots of people get paid to write free software.
What I've seen recently, in many free software projects, is that
companies have used that. I think OpenStack is one of the worst examples
of this. To control the project by hiring lots of it's developers.
They have this kindof pull over the project. I think that a lot of people that
work at OpenStack would say they are employers employee first and an
OpenStack contributor second.
I don't know anyone in Debian who would not say 'I am a Debian developer' first
and then I happen to be employed as a second issue.
Debian is their first priority. Their job is their second.
That hobbyist culture of 'my volunteer work matters more to me than
what actually pays me for a living' is the kind of mentality that I am such a
fan of. I try to live that in my own work as well.
I like interacting with the community. I usually find conferences very stressful.
This one I do not find as stressful other than I'm standing in a room with a
huge number of people. Other than that I don't find it stressful
because this is the kind of community that thinks that way.
I think a lot of it has to do with the other structures you have set up around
yourselves. The idea of having charities that you work with
which you have chosen to do a multi charity situation where you have lots
around the world that you can interact with.
One of them was founded by a Debian developer initially.
You reach out to other partnerships or charities as a non-commercial community
That allows you to have an infrastructure that you can rely on that helps
you maintain that community. I'm very glad that you do that.
I used to work for the FSF and am still on the board of directors.
Early in the project Debian was more or less a GNU project for a while.
It was part of the FSF. I know that relationship has never been perfect
sometimes rocky and sometimes better, but the FSF saw this in Debian too
very early on. That it was a really important way to begin the whole
distribution thing of free software and that culture was a match with
FSF's culture.
I know where the issues are and I'm sure John is here to talk about them.
But I think there is a lot of cultural connect between FSF and Debian.
I'm a little obsessed about this quote. I saw it in real time.
I was subscribed to comp.os.minux in Aug of '91 when it was posted
Part of it was that when I started working for the FSF I started thinking about it
and the FSF when I worked there had 7 employees and still has under 20
That's not big.
So I don't think of it as big and I guess strictly speaking,
since the FSF is a very professional organisation, and to take the
strict definition professional means you get paid to do this thing,
you do it for a living - yes, the FSF staff are professionals
in all the ways you might use the word professional,
but I don't think that's what Linus was going for in this quote
I don't think he meant those normal things about professional
I think what he was going for is he was trying to create Linux back when he was humble
Because people forget Linus used to be really humble. Once upon a time.
[laughter]
I don't know... ok. I think some of his early posts were humble
but we can debate that I suppose.
One of the things that Linus understood well was that he wanted to create
a project where individuals collaborated together in their own capacity.
He wanted a hobbyist kind of culture and was interested in that kind of culture.
I think that what he got wrong was not realising how important charities are
to that culture and I think Debian has always got that right.
You've always interacted with charities in good ways.
I think you keep them at arms length, which is OK and reasonable, but
you've always seen the value, always seen the connection between being
a non-commercial hobbyist controlled project, very professional I think, but
still hobbyist controlled in a sense that you are volunteers doing the right things
for everyone in your community.
At the same time reaching out to these charities and letting them help you
get done what you need to get do in the logistical world outside of your project.
What I've seen in other projects that Debian has not suffered from
is the politics of the projects have bifurcated.
There's the technical politics which is the usual arguments about
this technology verses that technology
say, systemd verses upstart, something like that
and that, I think in almost every project still remains under developer control.
People who are developers decide technical decisions like that.
But the political governance in most other projects has been hijacked in my view.
By various different groups, depending on the project
but usually some mix of lawyers or business type people who are somehow
in for profit companies or industry associations,
that have taken over the political governance.
The reason they've succeeded in doing this I think is because most developers
care deeply about the technical politics, but not so much about the other politics.
They want to make those decisions once and leave them alone.
A lot of my work in Conservancy is to help developers make those decisions right once
and then be able to leave them alone without it having bite them later.
I think a lot of projects have faced that situation, where the non technical
politics of their projects are under the control of people who are
not members of the community, not really.
I think that has really happened to Linux.
I think that the Linux non technical politics are out of the hands of
the developers and it's a very sad thing, from my point of view
I think the companies control those politics
and they don't keep developers out entirely, but they gate keep
from letting certain developers into the politics of what's really going on in the
non technical space.
I've met many Linux developers who feel disenfranchised.
It's why Conservancy has a GPL enforcement project for Linux.
Because they've come to us to ask for someone who has a charitable mission
to do the right thing for the public good, as opposed to the what companies want.
I think that's what these charities serve.
If you look at any of these charities that we have out there,
Conservancy, Software in the Public Interest, FSF,
they do things for hobbyist developers that are the morally right thing to do
but are sometimes controversial
that developers actually really need,
maybe sometimes don't want to spend too much time on
because they're more interested in other things,
but companies and trade associations don't need them and in fact
they often oppose them.
As I said, we're doing at Conservancy the GPL enforcement for Linux
because it is not in the business interest of the companies who invest in Linux
to see the GPL enforced.
In many cases they actually oppose it being enforced at all.
Which brings me to copyleft generally.
My last talk to all of you was at DebConf 10,
where I told you about GPL v3 and how wonderful it is and
how much I respected Debian's commitment to copyleft.
Now that's not to say everything in the archive is copyleft, I would guess that
most things in the archive aren't, as it turns out. (14:00)