WEBVTT 00:00:16.612 --> 00:00:17.380 Can you hear me? 00:00:17.701 --> 00:00:18.420 Better. 00:00:18.570 --> 00:00:19.562 So, hello everyone. 00:00:19.683 --> 00:00:21.382 Welcome again to DebConf, I guess. 00:00:21.522 --> 00:00:25.360 It's a great pleasure to be back again at one DebConf 00:00:25.443 --> 00:00:28.447 and a great honor to be doing one of the opening talks. 00:00:29.161 --> 00:00:31.801 I confess I wasn't really expecting that honor. 00:00:31.870 --> 00:00:33.531 I just wanted to propose a session 00:00:33.559 --> 00:00:36.281 which was supposed to be a self held sessions 00:00:36.281 --> 00:00:39.326 for those of us that think there are some worries 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:43.320 about where the free software is going in general. 00:00:43.763 --> 00:00:47.651 And the role distributions have to play in the current state of affairs. 00:00:48.004 --> 00:00:50.925 So this talk will be about a couple of journeys at once. 00:00:51.216 --> 00:00:54.286 The first journey is a journey through emotions, 00:00:54.569 --> 00:00:58.640 through good feelings about what we have achieved in Free Software 00:00:58.921 --> 00:01:01.800 over the past 15 to 20 or 30 years 00:01:01.824 --> 00:01:03.860 depending on how long you've been involved. 00:01:04.006 --> 00:01:06.284 The second journey is essentially my own journey 00:01:06.284 --> 00:01:08.122 through software freedom 00:01:08.132 --> 00:01:10.840 from the day I started discovering Free Software 00:01:10.866 --> 00:01:13.240 and what I've ended up doing since then. 00:01:14.282 --> 00:01:17.240 Starting with the positive news. 00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:23.001 This is how I got involved myself in free software in 1997. 00:01:23.050 --> 00:01:25.140 I understand that there are people in the room 00:01:25.161 --> 00:01:27.920 who have been involved since way earlier than that, 00:01:27.949 --> 00:01:30.360 others that have been involved since way later than that. 00:01:30.450 --> 00:01:31.561 Well, that's my story. 00:01:32.046 --> 00:01:34.802 I hope you'll find ??? points with your own story. 00:01:35.560 --> 00:01:41.041 When I started as a freshman in a computer science class at university of Bologna, 00:01:41.360 --> 00:01:43.600 that was a huge tiping point, 00:01:43.845 --> 00:01:47.121 a huge hype point for the so-called opensource movement. 00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:52.040 That was the year the very influencial essay by ??? has been published. 00:01:52.404 --> 00:01:58.528 That was the year ??? Netscape decided to opensource its own code. 00:01:58.870 --> 00:02:01.210 That was the moment in the history of free software 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:04.000 when people were trying to sell to the industry 00:02:04.280 --> 00:02:09.431 what free software was doing, and I'm not using that word in a bad sense. 00:02:09.610 --> 00:02:12.970 There was reasonable concern that without involvement of the industry, 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:16.400 the free software movement wouldn't have got far. 00:02:16.773 --> 00:02:21.830 So they were trying to tell about free software in an industry-friendly way. 00:02:22.283 --> 00:02:25.203 Essentially, the rhetoric at the point was that 00:02:25.475 --> 00:02:28.800 if you do development of software in the free software way, 00:02:28.960 --> 00:02:31.230 in a more open way, a more participative way, 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:35.693 you will end up having better software and that by merely opening up you code 00:02:35.896 --> 00:02:40.526 you'll have these flocks of programmers coming to you project and end up helping you. 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:47.046 A few years later, I realised that I personnaly didn't believe much in that idea: 00:02:47.261 --> 00:02:50.390 it's only because your software is open that it's gonna be better, 00:02:50.727 --> 00:02:53.521 but it was a fair thing to try at the time. 00:02:54.282 --> 00:02:57.304 What I discovered a bit later is actually what ??? me 00:02:57.304 --> 00:03:00.336 was essentially the philosophy of free software. 00:03:00.336 --> 00:03:05.360 The fact that computer user should be in charge and in control of their own machine, 00:03:05.480 --> 00:03:07.200 that should have some basic freedom. 00:03:07.241 --> 00:03:10.770 You know about the 4 freedoms, I'm not going to repeat them here, 00:03:11.067 --> 00:03:15.922 but my personal point is that the narrative of free software is something 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:17.890 that resonated with me a lot at the time. 00:03:18.201 --> 00:03:22.720 As a student, I realised that by having free software at my fingertip as a computer science student, 00:03:22.722 --> 00:03:27.600 I could debug any single layer of the software stack and look at how things are going. 00:03:27.800 --> 00:03:32.000 I didn't have to trust the teacher on how an operating system should be developed. 00:03:32.121 --> 00:03:38.904 I was able to open up ??? in the linux kernel and look at the actual scheduling algorithm 00:03:38.904 --> 00:03:41.440 that was being implemented in the real kernel. 00:03:41.489 --> 00:03:43.555 Not that I really got all of it at the time 00:03:43.555 --> 00:03:46.781 but the possibility was just breathtaking for me. 00:03:47.911 --> 00:03:52.982 Later on, I ended up distilling the main intuition of free software, 00:03:52.982 --> 00:03:55.980 which is the one I used to explain free software to people, 00:03:55.980 --> 00:03:57.600 which is intuition of control. 00:03:57.832 --> 00:04:03.303 So, I ended up believing that the main reason why I've been involved in this movement 00:04:03.362 --> 00:04:07.750 for about fifteen years is that I really believe that every single computer user, 00:04:08.013 --> 00:04:10.249 and that's a lot of people these days, 00:04:10.249 --> 00:04:13.755 should be in control over their own computations. 00:04:13.755 --> 00:04:17.212 Everything you're doing with a device which is mediated via software 00:04:17.440 --> 00:04:20.840 is controled by someone, either it is you or it is someone else. 00:04:21.539 --> 00:04:24.350 And the best episode, the best narrative to explain that to people 00:04:24.391 --> 00:04:26.794 that they've been using for quite a while is this passage 00:04:26.794 --> 00:04:29.197 from the novel "Makers" by Cory Doctorow 00:04:29.197 --> 00:04:31.600 which is a bit long so I'm not gonna read it in detail, 00:04:31.752 --> 00:04:35.518 but essentially there is one character of the novel which is Lester 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:39.580 which is explaining to another character the importance of controling 00:04:39.580 --> 00:04:41.370 your own devices, your own tools. 00:04:41.370 --> 00:04:44.170 The first example he takes is the example of the hammer, 00:04:44.170 --> 00:04:45.840 a physical hammer, 00:04:45.840 --> 00:04:48.570 and he goes on saying that if you own a hammer, 00:04:48.750 --> 00:04:50.940 essentially you could do whatever you want with it. 00:04:50.980 --> 00:04:53.303 You can use it for its main purpose, 00:04:53.303 --> 00:04:55.426 or you can use it for something completely different 00:04:55.426 --> 00:04:58.520 which was not meant to be its original purpose but it's you that decide. 00:04:58.952 --> 00:05:03.886 He compares that another device which is the "Disney in a box" in the novel 00:05:04.155 --> 00:05:08.487 and Disney in this book is the big evil villain which is oppressing people 00:05:08.770 --> 00:05:14.271 and essentially Disney in a box is a glorified3D printer that can only print 00:05:15.131 --> 00:05:17.960 what Disney wants it to print for that day. 00:05:18.632 --> 00:05:22.071 One day, it will print a goofie character, 00:05:22.071 --> 00:05:24.600 another day it will print Donald Duck, 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:26.160 but it's not you who decides. 00:05:26.217 --> 00:05:30.227 It's Disney that decides what the printer is gonna print for you that day. 00:05:30.560 --> 00:05:33.968 You own the device but you are not in control of what the device does. 00:05:35.080 --> 00:05:38.831 The big quote for me is that if you don't control your life, you're miserable. 00:05:39.560 --> 00:05:45.920 This notion of oppression is what has been motivating me for all these years. 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:49.864 So the fact that if you are not in control of your own computation, 00:05:49.864 --> 00:05:52.088 then someone is oppressing you. 00:05:52.088 --> 00:05:56.552 Someone usually is the person or the company or whatever that has created the software, 00:05:56.588 --> 00:05:59.210 that has the power to change that software instead of you. 00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:01.413 This is something that really ??? me. 00:06:02.711 --> 00:06:05.440 What was I doing at the time with my computer? 00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:08.049 Well I was doing pretty standard stuff. 00:06:08.049 --> 00:06:10.596 I was using some hardware we had at the time 00:06:10.596 --> 00:06:14.063 which was mostly desktops and local network servers. 00:06:14.063 --> 00:06:16.668 I didn't have a laptop because it was really expensive for a student 00:06:16.668 --> 00:06:19.003 so I did get a laptop much later. 00:06:19.003 --> 00:06:21.930 I was doing some content production, some content consumption. 00:06:21.983 --> 00:06:24.836 The kind of content I did produce at the time was mostly 00:06:24.836 --> 00:06:29.139 office suites, desktop publishing and this kind of stuffs. 00:06:29.139 --> 00:06:32.352 I was doing some communication, some email, some IRC, some newsgroup 00:06:32.352 --> 00:06:34.705 which was really cool at the time for geek communities. 00:06:34.705 --> 00:06:36.946 And I was doing some software development as a newbie 00:06:36.946 --> 00:06:38.987 but it was what I was doing at the time. 00:06:38.987 --> 00:06:41.941 I also did some content consumption, some gaming 00:06:41.941 --> 00:06:46.075 which are arguably some content that someone else is producing for you to consume. 00:06:46.075 --> 00:06:47.361 I was doing some web browsing. 00:06:47.461 --> 00:06:49.147 Internet was not as popular as it is today, 00:06:49.147 --> 00:06:53.113 but there were some websites you could find interesting. 00:06:54.163 --> 00:06:57.565 In that situation, with this kind of computing, 00:06:57.565 --> 00:07:02.817 the actual path to software freedom and to control was fairly clear. 00:07:02.817 --> 00:07:08.001 It was difficult, but it was fairly clear to me as a new activist in free software. 00:07:08.057 --> 00:07:11.674 What I should have done, what we all should have done to actually liberate people 00:07:11.674 --> 00:07:14.691 from the oppression of people controling our own computation. 00:07:15.031 --> 00:07:18.948 The idea is that while you have a lot of pieces of proprietary software 00:07:18.948 --> 00:07:22.883 which you do not control, what you need to do is to replace 00:07:22.883 --> 00:07:28.488 every such a component of proprietary software with a free software equivalent. 00:07:28.658 --> 00:07:31.626 Using some local application, some game, 00:07:31.626 --> 00:07:34.054 we need to replace it with an equivalent free game. 00:07:34.054 --> 00:07:39.156 We were using some client-server software, some mail ???, some mail client, 00:07:39.156 --> 00:07:42.218 some mail server, some IRC client, some IRC server. 00:07:42.218 --> 00:07:47.395 What we needed to do to actually empower people and liberate people was to rewrite 00:07:47.395 --> 00:07:50.942 those pieces of software with free software equivalents. 00:07:50.942 --> 00:07:55.360 It was difficult, because it was a lot of stuff to be rewritten, but it was fairly clear. 00:07:55.599 --> 00:07:56.561 The plan was clear. 00:07:56.842 --> 00:08:01.560 And also, luckily, we also had, at the time, all the heavy lifting was already in place. 00:08:01.880 --> 00:08:04.570 The GNU project existed ??? since quite a while, 00:08:04.570 --> 00:08:07.460 the Linux kernel existed already and it was working. 00:08:07.460 --> 00:08:11.963 So someone else with shoulders larger than ??? I had at the time 00:08:11.963 --> 00:08:15.252 had already done a lot of work for me and me 00:08:15.252 --> 00:08:19.458 and together with other free software activists, what I had to focus on was to rewrite 00:08:19.458 --> 00:08:24.514 proprietary application into equivalent free software application, possibly better. 00:08:24.514 --> 00:08:27.480 That was clear, was hard, but it was fairly clear. 00:08:29.001 --> 00:08:34.570 That's where, I think, the notion of a free software project comes from. 00:08:34.813 --> 00:08:39.955 We use very often this term of free software project and never ended up 00:08:39.955 --> 00:08:44.323 really thinking about that before a few years ago and I think the reason why 00:08:44.323 --> 00:08:46.881 we call it free software project is that there is an objective. 00:08:46.881 --> 00:08:49.914 So there is a mission, ideally a time-limited one, 00:08:49.914 --> 00:08:54.916 and that mission is writing a replacement for a proprietary application using 00:08:54.916 --> 00:08:58.828 free software which is as good, possibly better than the original. 00:08:59.338 --> 00:09:03.612 Having a lot of free software projects around gives rise to a lot of releases. 00:09:03.960 --> 00:09:06.656 So what we were doing a lot at the time in the 90s 00:09:06.656 --> 00:09:10.092 was to actually manually install software on our own machines. 00:09:10.092 --> 00:09:14.679 To be fair, our lab was running some Red Hat machines. 00:09:14.679 --> 00:09:18.107 At the time there weren't that many packages available and 00:09:18.107 --> 00:09:21.895 we had to fairly often install stuff by hand on the lab machines 00:09:21.895 --> 00:09:25.033 in our own directories and also on our computers at home. 00:09:25.033 --> 00:09:27.633 This is a procedure you all know very well. 00:09:27.933 --> 00:09:31.693 You download a tarball, you run "configure", you run "make", you run "make install". 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:35.529 The first time I saw that, it was kind of a magical recipe for me. 00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:38.792 Just follow these steps and you will get some software to play with. 00:09:38.792 --> 00:09:41.890 Well, except that every single step could fail, of course. 00:09:42.200 --> 00:09:47.023 Let's keep aside for the moment the fact that the website might be down but, 00:09:47.023 --> 00:09:50.726 you run "configure" and you miss some software you need to fetch from somewhere else. 00:09:50.726 --> 00:09:54.480 You run "make", you encounter some compilation problem. 00:09:54.791 --> 00:09:58.428 You run "make install", maybe the path will clash and so on and so forth. 00:09:58.658 --> 00:10:03.160 The problem with this procedure for install software we are using by hand 00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:05.801 is that you are essentially conflicting roles. 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:09.800 You're mixing together the role of software user, 00:10:10.201 --> 00:10:13.480 the role of system administrator and the role of software developper. 00:10:14.080 --> 00:10:19.240 You need to have a little bit of all those skills together to be able to enjoy software. 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:24.760 In a sense, a free software which works like this is essentially a very elistist thing. 00:10:25.160 --> 00:10:29.241 It's only an elite which have all the needed skills who is able to enjoy 00:10:29.560 --> 00:10:34.440 the benefits of free software and is able to be in control of their own computation. 00:10:35.080 --> 00:10:39.240 This is essentially the reason why distributions much earlier had been invented. 00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:42.960 We all know very well here what distributions do, 00:10:43.320 --> 00:10:48.204 they sit in between software developpers and software users and make it easy for you 00:10:48.681 --> 00:10:50.040 to actually use that software. 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:55.600 We do installer work, we create installers, we create package managers, 00:10:55.752 --> 00:11:00.040 we do all the integration work that make different pieces of software work well together. 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:04.560 We actually make life easy for final users. 00:11:05.480 --> 00:11:11.395 So, for me, something that I started believing is that the ultimate mission of free software 00:11:11.395 --> 00:11:16.521 distributions is to actually democratize free software, to enable users 00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:20.681 which do not have software development skills or do not have system administration skills, 00:11:21.640 --> 00:11:24.547 enable them to enjoy the benefit of free software. 00:11:24.960 --> 00:11:27.320 We offer very simple interface, 00:11:27.640 --> 00:11:31.601 we offer the equivalent of what these days are called appstores in which 00:11:31.760 --> 00:11:34.640 with one click, you can just install some software and 00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:38.084 enjoy the benefit of that software, in particular a free software. 00:11:39.760 --> 00:11:43.320 This is for me the historical mission of distributions. 00:11:44.440 --> 00:11:48.924 Later on, in 1998, our lab decided to switch to Debian 00:11:49.920 --> 00:11:51.440 and I was really happy about that. 00:11:52.201 --> 00:11:54.120 We switch from Red Hat to Debian and I look out about this project, 00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:59.240 I start learning what this project does and I find out that not only 00:11:59.440 --> 00:12:02.560 this project Debian was actually up to the mission of empowering user 00:12:02.640 --> 00:12:06.480 by making it easy for users to use free software. 00:12:06.980 --> 00:12:12.242 If you read the original announcement of Ian Murdock announcing the Debian project, 00:12:12.242 --> 00:12:15.880 we'll find this notion of being competitive with proprietary operating systems 00:12:16.160 --> 00:12:18.720 and it's really clear that the point is empowering users. 00:12:19.403 --> 00:12:24.560 I end up reading about this project and not only I found their mission 00:12:24.887 --> 00:12:28.480 they're up to is the mission I believe in, but I found out that the key intuition there 00:12:28.760 --> 00:12:30.720 is to make the project a community project. 00:12:31.680 --> 00:12:34.121 Not only the target are the users and empowering them, 00:12:34.280 --> 00:12:37.840 but also the way to reach that objective is fostering a community 00:12:38.120 --> 00:12:40.000 that will work together to that goal. 00:12:40.440 --> 00:12:41.760 I got immediately hooked, 00:12:41.927 --> 00:12:44.521 I vividly remember the moment a collegue of mine, a student 00:12:44.680 --> 00:12:47.441 explained to me the anatomy of a Debian source package, 00:12:47.760 --> 00:12:51.120 the fact that it was a .orig.tar.gz, the fact that it was a diff.gz 00:12:51.150 --> 00:12:53.881 with the differences with respect to upstream, and all those metadata 00:12:53.881 --> 00:12:56.481 that was really thrilling for me from a technical point of view. 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:00.841 A few years later, I ended up joining the nm-process. 00:13:01.369 --> 00:13:05.480 I was doing some OCaml development at the time, there were some libraries, 00:13:05.521 --> 00:13:08.200 OCaml libraries in Debian, others were missing and I said 00:13:08.440 --> 00:13:12.960 "Ok, maybe I should help and create some libraries for the project as well". 00:13:13.240 --> 00:13:20.239 I went through nm and there are a few things I've learned doing nm 00:13:20.280 --> 00:13:23.360 and also in the subsequent ten years or fifteen years or so. 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:29.720 One thing I've learned in all these years in Debian is the importance of being principled. 00:13:30.520 --> 00:13:34.761 Debian is a project that did not start from only technical means 00:13:35.280 --> 00:13:37.680 but also decided at some point that they needed some guidance, 00:13:37.720 --> 00:13:40.400 some clear guidance of what it should technically and what it shouldn't. 00:13:41.240 --> 00:13:45.920 And an important document where we have distilled this notion are the DFSG. 00:13:46.602 --> 00:13:47.960 The Debian free software guidance 00:13:48.161 --> 00:13:50.961 which has been very influencial on the free software movement as a whole. 00:13:51.320 --> 00:13:54.280 They've been used as a base for the open source definition as you know, 00:13:54.761 --> 00:13:58.240 and what was very ??? for me is that commitment we had in Debian 00:13:58.521 --> 00:14:03.057 in keeping the main archive completely DFSG-free, keeping it completely free software. 00:14:03.601 --> 00:14:08.167 This commitment is depicted here by those fearsome character 00:14:08.668 --> 00:14:14.400 and his owner on a couch and it's mediating and triggering the NEW queue, supposedly, 00:14:14.801 --> 00:14:17.479 and the NEW queue is not necessarily the best way we could implement 00:14:17.837 --> 00:14:21.641 a system which triage all the software in the archive and to ensure it's DFSG-free 00:14:21.760 --> 00:14:27.320 but it shows our commitment to actually only follow the guidance we have set for ourselves. 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:29.480 It was really motivating for me. 00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:32.121 The second thing I've learned and which will come handy in a bit, 00:14:32.121 --> 00:14:37.240 is the importance of the legal knowledge and legal geeks in the free software movement. 00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:42.400 Like it or not, free software as an ideal is philosophical mean, 00:14:42.480 --> 00:14:48.082 but its main implementation is through the legal system, is through copyright licenses. 00:14:48.561 --> 00:14:52.280 To really ??? what's happening in free software in general, 00:14:52.280 --> 00:14:55.840 to understand where the free software movement is going, figuring out and 00:14:55.840 --> 00:14:59.321 really understand what's going on in the legal system is very important. 00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:03.920 In Debian, we know that pretty well, that's a stumbling block for many people 00:15:04.061 --> 00:15:06.120 when joining the Debian project. 00:15:06.120 --> 00:15:09.960 It's something we insist people are at least basically familiar with and 00:15:09.960 --> 00:15:14.280 that's pretty characteristic of the Debian project. 00:15:14.520 --> 00:15:17.040 In the end, what I've learned is that 00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:22.660 in this quest that I feel very much myself against the oppression of someone else 00:15:22.660 --> 00:15:27.361 controling your own computation, law, if you hack around it smartly, 00:15:27.361 --> 00:15:31.723 can be a very useful ally, a very useful device to liberate users. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Time passes − there was supposed to be an image here, which for some reason disappeared. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And, we might argue that, these days, we have achieved a lot since that moment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If I look around the industry or, in general, if I look around computing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as people are doing that, free software is a little bit everywhere. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In the industry, there are some stats that claim that essentially 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 every single software product you find on the market has, inside of it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a little bit of free software code. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you look at all the different application stacks we have 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from webservers to education to clients to smartphones, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you find a lot of free software, free software infrastructures that are everywhere. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So these are just some stats ??? in the recent years 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and for instance if we look at one of the key target market for Debian ??? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we'll find out one website over ten on the Internet in general is running Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If we include also some of our most popular derivatives such as Ubuntu, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we'll find that more than 20% of the websites 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 are running something which comes from our own work. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And some of the recent hype on free software is coming from the Snowden revelation 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and most people are starting to be concerned about what the software they're using is doing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and is turning to free software and is turning to stuff like Tails which is heavily Debian-based 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to actually see in which way we can help them foster their own security. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In some sense, we have achieved a lot. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In everything we do in computing, there is a little bit of what we have done 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in free software and also a little bit of what we have done in Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is pretty impressive for me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We're in a place where I wouldn't have dreamed being when I started in 1997. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's very impressive. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On the other hand, there are some reasons of concerns 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and this is the main thought I wanted to share with you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There are some technical reasons which we discuss often in free software circles 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like the fact that "Ok but most of these platforms are not 100% free software". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you look at smartphones for instance, you will find a lot of non free code every here and there and the point can be made that either you have full control over your own computation, or you are not in control at all, because if your software stack is a single layer which is controlled by someone else, and is mediating all your communication, maybe you're not so sure that you are the real owner and the real controller for your own device. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's a absolutely fair point. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We can make some more technical points about for instance non free JavaScript. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 More and more of our computations are happening in our browsers and are happening through code which is delivered to our browser by remote servers and this code is not free at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I absolutely agree with that but the point I want to focus on today is actually what we call the cloud. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 All my images are gone. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You had a very nice image there, sorry. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The remaining point and my main reason of concern is what is being called the cloud. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Let allow me to be a bit generic here for a moment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I know there are very different ??? in what we call the cloud and will be specific in all of them in a bit. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But for now I want to focus on the common trend that the cloud is bringing to computing these days. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Computing today, for most people, in not much different from the kind of computing I was doing fifteen years ago. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's the kind of computing that we do on very different hardware, we have way more smartphones, way more tablets than in the past and that's true. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the kind of activities we do − producing content, consuming content − is very similar. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The big difference is the kind of technological stack we're using and where the computations are happening. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For most people today, the kind of office suites we use is no longer a software which is installed on your machine but it is Google Docs. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm an academic myself, I'm very often forced to use some Google Docs applications to work with others, otherwise I'm free not to work with them, because it's a technological choice made by someone else. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For many people, e-mail, as you know, just mean GMail. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 All our e-mails, even if your not using GMail ourselves, are passing through some GMail servers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Asynchronous communications still exist, but it is very often mediated to software like Skype or GTalk. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so on and so forth. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You have seen this list very often. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Consuming content, there as well, we are still doing gaming, we are still doing browsing but it's often mediated by platforms which are far away from us and just stream content to us or, in the specific case of web browsing, they are more and more often hosted by very few hosters in the world − which we often ??? to a walled garden − that can do whatever they want with our content. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The point here is not demonizing those services. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People are using those services because they are convenient and there is a lot of network effect going on that makes it easy for other people to start using those services. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's really not the point of demonizing those services. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The point here is observing that interesting computations that we are doing as our job, as our life, are no longer happening on our machines, but are happening on other machines which are far away from us and which are not under our direct control. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In this context, for me, I confess, what actually is the road to software freedom and to control, to enable people to control their own computation is no longer clear. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's no longer enough to say "Well, we just need to rewrite Google of Facebook or Twitter in free software". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's not enough, because even if you do that, you have the problem that when you are using a server you don't know if the code it is running is the one they claim it is running, so that's a very difficult problem to solve. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And even if it were the case, where do you deploy yourself a Google-like architecture, or a Facebook-like architecture? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You simply can't. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It is no longer enough to just say "We just need to some software development, we just need to make it better than the alternative." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There is a real tricky combination between software development and software deployment which not easy to see how to fix it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At least for me, it's very ??? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, what about distros? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are distro people, doing one of the most popular distro in existence. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Are we winning or are we losing in this situation? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 How are we doing in terms of our efforts? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In a sense, we are very much winning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A lot of our work is being used to deploy those infrastructures. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A lot of the infrastructure of the big companies are deploying on top of free software, if not direct on top of our very own systems, maybe modified here and there where they need to make things better as it is their own right given it's all free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In that sense, we're winning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We're increasing market share, ??? are being used a lot to to make infrastructure. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But we are also losing in the sense that we are really not empowering users to be in control of their own computations. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If our final users are the sysadmin that are running those infrastructures, for them we are doing great. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are making them be sure they are in control of their own infrastructure. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But for the final users of those services, we are really not empowering them at the moment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So what I call the free software dark ages, which is an expression I actually borrowed from [name] ??? quite inspiring, is a situation in which we win on the end user market so every single device out there in the hand of people − desktop, laptop, even smartphones where right now we are not doing very well − all of this is running free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 All of that is running Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, total world domination as we were talking about a long time ago. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But all interesting computations, all the final user application which is being used to bring on with your digital life, are no longer happening on your devices, happening far away from you on computer you do not control, sometime with free software, sometime with non free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But in any case, outside of your own control. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In a sense, this is very worrysome for me because we have this ??? we are very popular. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are winning the war, we were using a lot of this war-like terminology when I started. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the war we are winning seems to become increasingly pointless because it's not being useful to actually empower users to be in control of their own computation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 To make things worse, there seems to be some cultural problems that might be just a perception of mind, maybe being too pessimistic, but it seems to me that, as developper communities are hacker communities, we are becoming way more lenient, way more ??? about the lack of control on the tools and on infrastructure we use to make free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 More and more often we see free software developed on non-free infrastructure, meaning infrastructures which are built using non free software and which are anyhow centralized in the hand of a few hosters. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The new generation of developpers which is coming up seems to be totally fine with that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm not gonna argue this point in much detail, there is a great essay by Mako that I encourage all of you to read, "Free software needs free tools", which actually make couple of points. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One is that by using non free software to make free software, we are sending out a very bad message. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are telling to the world that free software is good for you, that's why we are developing it, but it's not good for us because we are using non free tools to make it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's the kind of ??? in our advertising message, but it's also making the software we are creating indirectly less free, because if the favorite way to contribute to that free software is using some non free infrastructure, some non free tools, indirectly we're making people that only want to use free software less apt to contribute to that software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I really recommend reading that essay. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But also technically, we are going back to a sort of a cage problem, which is also a problem which is called "the problem of the bug that noone can fix" by the FSF I think, and essentially we're creating software stacks in which some part of it is entirely free software, that we can debug and some other parts are non free software or software run by someone else, so we have lost the ability to debug the full stack. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I was starting to learning programming, this idea that I could debug everything from the end user I was writing myself for an assignment down to the kernel level was just exciting for me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We seem to be losing sight of this, a little bit. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As a second cultural problem, we seem to be losing sight of how much help we could get from the legal system and from new legal solution that we might be in need of finding. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 An example of that is the post open source software "POSS" debate which some of you might have run into. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's a debate which actually observes that the new generation of free software developpers actually don't care about licenses. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They just want to kick out their code, just put it on GitHub, not declaring their license at all and they're just fine with that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They want to be ??? to have the hassle of deciding first of all a license, second of all also some governance model for their projects. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They just want to be hacking and doing, and not caring about those annoying details. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This could be intervetedly interpreted in positive ways like says that we want the right to work on the code and to do whatever we want with that by default. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We do not want to be expliciting which kind of rights we give and that's a very positive interpretation of this phenomenon. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But in the end, for now, it is creating a huge bunch of code that we could not use as free software yet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For instance we cannot include in Debian something that does not have a license at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A second example is the debate about the non freeness of AGPL. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you look up the history of free software, there is argument that GPL itself is not free. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's an argument that was being used twenty years ago when the battle between copyleft and liberalizing was very high, was very harsh. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it's just recurring again. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So maybe for some syntactically interpretation of our own guidance, we could make the point that something like the AGPL is non free, maybe. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the point is that the way we distribute software to final users is really changing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Twenty years ago or fifteen years ago, the main way to enable some user to use a piece of software was actually to make a copy of that software and give it to him or to her via the network or some media. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And all those ???, that kind of conveying software is clearly distribution and that kind of activity used to trigger some sort of license ???. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 These days, a software is no longer distributed that way, in large parts. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's being used over the net and something like the AGPL is the equivalent of triggering some licensing condition via the main way of distributing, of giving access to some software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I want to enter in details in this debate. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Those are just examples, for me they examples of the fact that we are kind of losing faith in how much the legal system and free software are intertwined. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And this actually mixes very badly with the situation in which users are losing control because those computations are moving away from them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think this situation, in general, in not going to fix themselves and we, as distribution people, have a role to play in fixing it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What could be a role for Debian in all this computing situation we have these days. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The common trend in the so called cloud seems to be that computations are moving away from user devices. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We cannot just say "Well just don't use anything cloudy", because it is convinient, people will want to use that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We need to do something different. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As distribution people, we could do a lot, I think, and I have a couple of thoughts to share with you that are different depending on the so called service model of the cloud. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One of the first service model of the cloud you might have heard about is "Infrastructure as a Service" (IaaS) where essentially you have servers that give virtual machines to people and essentially you get to administer your own machine wich is a virtual machine on a virtual machine server controlled by someone else. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is potentially very good for people because it is lowering the barrier you need to have your own server. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I first set up my own server with friends, at the end of the 90's, we had to by some machine, to find someone kind enough to host it, pay the hosting fees and so on and so forth. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was something that was by far not at all accessible to the random user. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Theses days, a lot of people can simply go to some virtual machine provider, rent a virtual machine with one-click button and they have their own machine to administer. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Maybe they don't have the skill to administer it, that's a different problem, but you are definitly lowering the barrier to access, to have you own server and do your own remote computation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As Debian, we are doing pretty well in this area, I think. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We're offering technology like OpenStack and other competitors of OpenStack, which seems to be the market leader on that market which are entirely free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But I think we should be investing more in offering a trivial deployment experience for Debian users. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We should make trivial for people to have their own virtual machine servers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If they are not computer geeks, they should be able to flock together friends which have system administration ability and have their own local IaaS and have their own virtual machine without having to rely on big hosters providing virtual machines to everyone in the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is a great step to our autonomy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As Debian, what is the best deployment experience we can offer for people that want to setup their own virtual machine servers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then, there is another service model which is call PaaS, platform as a service. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is a kind of service model in which essentially you have hosters of application engines, you develop application targeting specific application servers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 An exemple of this is Google App Engine. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think in some sense this service model of the cloud is mostly orthogonal to what we do as a distribution because either you're using a full fledge distribution and you do your own system administration, or you are developping an application for a specific application server and you rely on someone else to do that administration. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, yes, I think it's mostly orthogonal to what we do, but might also be a symptom that there is a reject from the application developper community, a reject from the way they can target distributions like Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So if it is very difficult to have your own application running properly on Debian because we have old software, because we change libraries, because we do not accept multiple copies of the same libraries and so on and so forth, if it is too difficult for application developpers to target Debian, they might be more and more tempted to target applications servers like PaaS. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So there might be something we could do about this, here, like finding better synergies between containerization technology, we have some work done in Debian, and the way we usually develop some, we usually maintain a distribution. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There might be something we could do about this here. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Oh, and I didn't mention this, but I have no specific answer to give to you, just a train of thoughts I wanted to share with you and what we could do to improve the situation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The final service model we have in the cloud, which is I think worrysome from the point of view of user control, is SaaS, Software as a Service. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There, essentially your own device, your own computer only is thin client and rely entirely on a remote server to do your own computation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are back to the mainframe / thin client distinction of the early days of computing and here, there is a lot we could do, I think, but also a lot we could not do. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Here, most of the work should come from upstreams. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We need better free software and federated replacement for popular centralized proprietary applacations in which users can participate in some kind of network by using their own node. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is work that should not come from distribution itself, it should really come from application developpers upstream. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But still, there are useful things we could do here. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We already have a lot of building blocks. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have stuff like Owncloud, Git-annex, mediagoblin, pump.io, Yacy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have a lot of good building blocks, most of them are not yet up to par with the centralized proprietary equivalent, but I'm confident we could get there. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What we lack is the equivalent ease of deployment of these services on user machines. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In some sense, if we have democratized the installation of software twenty years ago with distributions, these days, to face the challenge of control of our own computation, we need to make it as easy as using a package manager to install your own nodes using those applications. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ideally, everyone in the world without nothing more than basic computer user skills should be able to have its own machine at home doing some anonymous browsing, doing some mail handling, doing web hosting, doing storage calendar, doing encrypted peer to peer backup, and so and so forth. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm maintaining my own mail server and it is a user ???, I struggle myself to keep up with the need of knowledge and of surveillance that I need to make to my own mail server to be able to run it properly and I get blacklisted from time to time from providers and it's a pain. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Something that no one without having at least some basic system administration ability could do properly. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is the thing we need, the nut we need to crack. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We need to empower everyone out there to have its own computer with its own node of those services. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Of course, you are all thinking of the FreedomBox now. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's a great example of a project who wants to tackle precisely that problem. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a project that's been announced by Eben Moglen a few years ago at a Debconf if my memory serves me well. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's heavily based on Debian and it's doing exactly that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But my question from the Debian point of view is: maybe this project should not only be a spin-off of Debian, should not only be a derivative distribution of Debian, maybe we should think at making something like this a first class citizen in Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't know exactly what that means yet, it's something we could think about having the main administration interface for Debian something that targets these specific scenarios. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We could generalize that, we do not need to target only specific plug devices because people at home might have desktop computers, might have media center. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They might want something like the FreedomBox at home and collaborate with other immediately. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My point here is that if our mission back in the days was to democratize free software by making it easier to install free software on your machine, well today our mission is democratize free software by making it trivial to install some node of some federation of free services on your machine. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Another thing we could do, it is the last one for me today, is to step in the free service debate. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I started looking up these arguments a few years back, I was surprised by the fact that it's still not clear what it does mean to be a free service. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I started working on free software fifteen years ago, it was fairly clear what does free software mean. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sure, it was some terminology debate between free software and open source which still exists today, but the basic freedoms, the basic rights you should have to call something free and open source was fairly clear. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That kind of intellectual debate had already happened at the time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Today, where the problem of computations moving away from indivual user is raging, there is no clear consensus on that matter. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There is some great work, for instance there is the Franklin Street statement on free network service, I think that's a full ???, dating back to 2008, six years ago, in which you find a lot of very useful recommendations for users, for software developpers and for system administrators to make sure that you maximize your control over your own computation on the network, but they take no stance on what does it mean to be a free service. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Is it enough to have something which is free, do you need more specific license. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There are some recommendation on that point, but still, there are no clear answers to this question. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There is another work by RMS in 2010 about Software as a Service or "service as a software substitute" as he calls it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Here, essentially what you have is a main recommandation about not using Software as a Service at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Essentially there is a recommandation of doing your own computation on your own machines. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think that might be a generally good recommandation but it's not gonna scale, it's not gonna be enough in my opinion to convince people not to use very convenient services. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Think we need more gradual and blurry lines saying, encouraging people to keep computation closer to them, to rely on federation of friends of people to do computation together. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we, as distribution people, could make easier for them to do so. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And then there is another work which is "Network Services Aren't Free or Nonfree" which is a couple of years later, still by RMS, which essentially tries to walk the fine line between what's the difference between a pure service, so a service that just for instance convey messages, as opposed to a service which does computation that could have been done instead on your machine. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's a very fine line to work, it's very difficult to stay there and what we might need there is a strong opposition, actually, and we should try to replace everything which is centralized with federated equivalent and say that we as free software people and distribution people should work in that direction. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So what we could do in Debian. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, I think we should try to step in this debate. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Surprisingly for me, we still have no clear answer to what does it mean to be a free service today and we have quite a bit of experience in Debian in leading debates in free sotfware. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have created the DFSG which is being used as an example for many other communities, we have participated in the GPLv3 discussion for instance. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Our decisions of free license are looked up by other projects. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we might have the authority and the reputation to step in this debate and we also have a lot of technical knowledge in the area. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Being a distribution commited to free software, we know a thing or two not only about software freedom, but also about how you deploy software, how difficult it is and how difficult it should be for people do deploy free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I think we are in just the sweet spot to actually enter this debate with the needed authority and make a contribution to actually help people realize what does it mean today to use a free service. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The concluding question I have for you is "What's Debian take today on liberating users?". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Would we be happy enough to have Debian on every machine in the world if people are using completely remote services? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And if we were not, what should we do, what should we be working on to change that future which seems very much the future that we have at hand. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Pictures are gone, so there was a cloud on the left, there was Debian here and a sun here. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 LaTeX, beamer or Tikz or something is playing tricks on me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So that's all I have for you, I hope I've given you some food for thoughts for this week and if you have any question or comments in these topics, I'm very much happy to hear about that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thank's a lot. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [applause] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There seems to be a mic which is floating around down there. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Q] ??? quite a lot and quite brilliantly about what cloud computing buzzwords mean free software, but I think what important battle we are actually losing is ??? in the minds of people. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Q] Why is it young developpers or newcommers to free software don't care about software being free? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Q] Why don't they care about using non free tools, why don't they care about which license declare for their software if any license is at all? and so on. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Q] You mention that problem, but what do we do about it? Do you have any ideas? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [A] Well, a friend of mine we asked a similar question I think once answered "What could they say more that 'Oh those young kids' ". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, I don't know, maybe it's our fault, maybe we have failed as a generation to convey the importance that being in control of our own computation had, or maybe it's just that the public that is open to coding and hacking is much larger than in the past so we are reaching out other communities. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's very good for them to be coding because I think every citizen in the world need to have basic knowledge of coding to understand what's happening in the world, but maybe they just have different mission than we had in the past. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, very good question, I don't have a very good answer, sorry. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Q] Hello. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thank you so much for the wonderful talk, I think it's great to talk about these political issues and I see there's a challenge between the sort of very individual focus of each person being able to use their own computer as the wish which has its own values, but there's a different sort of value that relates to power structures in general. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, we're talking about not just how free is each individual person but whether an entity like Twitter, Google or Facebook or some these other services is a very powerful entity that has power over the majority of us who use their services. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so, I wonder if and I'd like your thoughts on thinking about it less as a "Is this software free?" but about "Who is in power in the community?" and so in a democratic sense, you could have the community that builds the tools together as government structures or as mechanisms for handling power that make the power bottom-up and more democratic and maybe that's more important than the technical status of each individual user. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [A] So, as a concerned citizen and also as a political activist, I very much share your concern. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think we need to focus on what is in reach on us as geeks in this circle and have this kind of discussion in a different circle. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, as someone with activity in politics and as a geek, I very much try to actually explain to politicians and to activists the role of what we are doing here in very technical ways and the impact that it as on politics in general. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I think the ??? the talk later on this evening might have a thing or two to say about that as well. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So from our part we need to understand it is some sense even if we advance a lot the status quo of user control of technology that we had thirty years ago. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have also started to lag behind many other areas. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Something that I wanted to mention before but I fail to do so is that when I was doing my computing in the nineties, a lot of computations were mediated by clearly defined protocols. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we had RFCs or equivalent documents by other organisations which were like clearly marked paths to how to collaborate technically on the internet and how to make software talk together. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In a sense, that culture of interoperability of protocols has actually started lagging behind a lot with respect to popular technology. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So stuff like social networks, most of them except the good ones that free software guys try to build like pump.io or like diaspora, well all those technologies started up without any kind of interoperability in mind. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So technically I think we need to push again on the direction of interoperability of protocols, and that's a technical contribution that we could do that will have an impact. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You know, code is law, as Lessig was saying, and that would have a technical impact on the power structures you mention. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's my thought on this matter. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Q] I have an answer. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Hello. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I have an answer, sort of an answer to the previous question. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is of cours the heart of the difference between free software and open source. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The difference between free software and open source isn't nothing at all and it's not about licenses. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's about goals and aims. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Over the past decades, many of us have chosen not to pick a fight with open source people just for an easy life and, you know, it's always easy to have somebody who might share some of your goals and to be able to collaborate with them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But less and less is it becoming the case that the goals of people who are doing open source are the same as the goals of people doing free software. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You can see that very clearly in the responses from people like Google to things like the AGPL. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And there are a lot of examples. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, one of the things that we can do to try and bring some of the new crop of developpers along with us is to actually make it a bit more of a fuss about… 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You know, let's not come ??? all Stallman about that, Stallman is not the best PR guy, but I think Debian can do a lot better than he can and we've probably got a lot more credibility. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And individually, we have as well. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What we need to do is we need to explain our vision to those new developpers who mostly are just being, you know, they see a open source marketing machine and we are something different. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [A] Thanks. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So there's not need to be questions and answers, so if you have comments, feel free. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Talkmeister] I think we're running short of time and we need to take one more question. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So maybe one last or, Stefano, one last? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Talkmeister] We can. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ok, one last question or comment? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Q] Just a quick comment if I may. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You talked about federated services and facebook and dropbox and that sort of thing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think maybe the issue here is less about federated services but is about identity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If I have my own dropbox alike and you have your own dropbox alike, the problem is not that the two couldn't talk to each other, we have no way of negotiation of identity authentication, access kind of problem. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think maybe part of the answer to your question is "Can we come up with some way of allowing federated identity management for people in general and just us say". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [A] I think this is very much related to what I was answering before Aaron, in the sense "yes we could". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have shown in the past that we can come up with very smart protocols that allow people to technically interoperate over the net. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But we are coming to late for that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Those big entities which now have the power to attract a lot of users to them developped before those standard that we could have used to make smaller entities interoperate could have been put in place. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So yes, I agree with you, there is technical work to be done but in some sense we are late in doing that work and the question now is only "How could we do the technical work that allow us to have smaller entities that interoperate for authentication or everything else?" and also "How do we migrate from the status quo to the ideal world that would be possible if those standards existed in the first place?". 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So in a sense I think we are a bit late and we have twice the work to be done before reaching the optimal and more federated situation which I think would solve the problem. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, thanks a lot. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [applause]