1
00:00:16,612 --> 00:00:17,380
Can you hear me?

2
00:00:17,701 --> 00:00:18,420
Better.

3
00:00:18,570 --> 00:00:19,562
So, hello everyone.

4
00:00:19,683 --> 00:00:21,382
Welcome again to DebConf, I guess.

5
00:00:21,522 --> 00:00:25,360
It's a great pleasure to be back again 
at one DebConf

6
00:00:25,443 --> 00:00:28,447
and a great honor to be doing one 
of the opening talks.

7
00:00:29,161 --> 00:00:31,801
I confess I wasn't really expecting
that honor.

8
00:00:31,870 --> 00:00:33,531
I just wanted to propose a session

9
00:00:33,559 --> 00:00:36,281
which was supposed to be
a self held sessions

10
00:00:36,281 --> 00:00:39,326
for those of us that think there are
some worries

11
00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:43,320
about where the free software is going
in general.

12
00:00:43,763 --> 00:00:47,651
And the role distributions have to play
in the current state of affairs.

13
00:00:48,004 --> 00:00:50,925
So this talk will be about a couple of
journeys at once.

14
00:00:51,216 --> 00:00:54,286
The first journey is a journey
through emotions,

15
00:00:54,569 --> 00:00:58,640
through good feelings about what
we have achieved in Free Software

16
00:00:58,921 --> 00:01:01,800
over the past 15 to 20 or 30 years

17
00:01:01,824 --> 00:01:03,860
depending on how long you've been
involved.

18
00:01:04,006 --> 00:01:06,284
The second journey is essentially 
my own journey


19
00:01:06,284 --> 00:01:08,122
through software freedom

20
00:01:08,132 --> 00:01:10,840
from the day I started discovering
Free Software

21
00:01:10,866 --> 00:01:13,240
and what I've ended up doing since then.

22
00:01:14,282 --> 00:01:17,240
Starting with the positive news.

23
00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:23,001
This is how I got involved myself
in free software in 1997.

24
00:01:23,050 --> 00:01:25,140
I understand that there are people
in the room

25
00:01:25,161 --> 00:01:27,920
who have been involved 
since way earlier than that,

26
00:01:27,949 --> 00:01:30,360
others that have been involved
since way later than that.

27
00:01:30,450 --> 00:01:31,561
Well, that's my story.

28
00:01:32,046 --> 00:01:34,802
I hope you'll find ??? points
with your own story.

29
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:41,041
When I started as a freshman in a computer
science class at university of Bologna,

30
00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:43,600
that was a huge tiping point,

31
00:01:43,845 --> 00:01:47,121
a huge hype point for the so-called
opensource movement.

32
00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:52,040
That was the year the very influencial
essay by ??? has been published.

33
00:01:52,404 --> 00:01:58,528
That was the year ??? Netscape decided to
opensource its own code.

34
00:01:58,870 --> 00:02:01,210
That was the moment in the history of
free software

35
00:02:01,320 --> 00:02:04,000
when people were trying to sell
to the industry

36
00:02:04,280 --> 00:02:09,431
what free software was doing, and
I'm not using that word in a bad sense.

37
00:02:09,610 --> 00:02:12,970
There was reasonable concern that
without involvement of the industry,

38
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:16,400
the free software movement wouldn't have
got far.

39
00:02:16,773 --> 00:02:21,830
So they were trying to tell about free
software in an industry-friendly way.

40
00:02:22,283 --> 00:02:25,203
Essentially, the rhetoric at the point
was that

41
00:02:25,475 --> 00:02:28,800
if you do development of software
in the free software way,

42
00:02:28,960 --> 00:02:31,230
in a more open way,
a more participative way,

43
00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:35,693
you will end up having better software
and that by merely opening up you code

44
00:02:35,896 --> 00:02:40,526
you'll have these flocks of programmers
coming to you project and end up helping you.

45
00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:47,046
A few years later, I realised that
I personnaly didn't believe much in that idea:

46
00:02:47,261 --> 00:02:50,390
it's only because your software is open
that it's gonna be better,

47
00:02:50,727 --> 00:02:53,521
but it was a fair thing to try
at the time.

48
00:02:54,282 --> 00:02:57,304
What I discovered a bit later is actually
what ??? me

49
00:02:57,304 --> 00:03:00,336
was essentially the philosophy
of free software.

50
00:03:00,336 --> 00:03:05,360
The fact that computer user should be
in charge and in control of their own machine,

51
00:03:05,480 --> 00:03:07,200
that should have some basic freedom.

52
00:03:07,241 --> 00:03:10,770
You know about the 4 freedoms,
I'm not going to repeat them here,

53
00:03:11,067 --> 00:03:15,922
but my personal point is that
the narrative of free software is something

54
00:03:15,960 --> 00:03:17,890
that resonated with me a lot at the time.

55
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,

56
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.

57
00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:32,000
I didn't have to trust the teacher on how
an operating system should be developed.

58
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

59
00:03:38,904 --> 00:03:41,440
that was being implemented in the real kernel.

60
00:03:41,489 --> 00:03:43,555
Not that I really got all of it at the time

61
00:03:43,555 --> 00:03:46,781
but the possibility was just breathtaking
for me.

62
00:03:47,911 --> 00:03:52,982
Later on, I ended up distilling
the main intuition of free software,

63
00:03:52,982 --> 00:03:55,980
which is the one I used to explain
free software to people,

64
00:03:55,980 --> 00:03:57,600
which is intuition of control.

65
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

66
00:04:03,362 --> 00:04:07,750
for about fifteen years is that I really believe
that every single computer user,

67
00:04:08,013 --> 00:04:10,249
and that's a lot of people these days,

68
00:04:10,249 --> 00:04:13,755
should be in control over
their own computations.

69
00:04:13,755 --> 00:04:17,212
Everything you're doing with a device
which is mediated via software

70
00:04:17,440 --> 00:04:20,840
is controled by someone,
either it is you or it is someone else.

71
00:04:21,539 --> 00:04:24,350
And the best episode, the best narrative
to explain that to people

72
00:04:24,391 --> 00:04:26,794
that they've been using for quite a while
is this passage

73
00:04:26,794 --> 00:04:29,197
from the novel "Makers" by Cory Doctorow

74
00:04:29,197 --> 00:04:31,600
which is a bit long so I'm not gonna read it in detail,

75
00:04:31,752 --> 00:04:35,518
but essentially there is one character
of the novel which is Lester

76
00:04:35,760 --> 00:04:39,580
which is explaining to another character
the importance of controling

77
00:04:39,580 --> 00:04:41,370
your own devices, your own tools.

78
00:04:41,370 --> 00:04:44,170
The first example he takes is the example
of the hammer,

79
00:04:44,170 --> 00:04:45,840
a physical hammer,

80
00:04:45,840 --> 00:04:48,570
and he goes on saying that if you own
a hammer,

81
00:04:48,750 --> 00:04:50,940
essentially you could do
whatever you want with it.

82
00:04:50,980 --> 00:04:53,303
You can use it for its main purpose,

83
00:04:53,303 --> 00:04:55,426
or you can use it for something
completely different

84
00:04:55,426 --> 00:04:58,520
which was not meant to be its original
purpose but it's you that decide.

85
00:04:58,952 --> 00:05:03,886
He compares that another device
which is the "Disney in a box" in the novel

86
00:05:04,155 --> 00:05:08,487
and Disney in this book is the big evil
villain which is oppressing people

87
00:05:08,770 --> 00:05:14,271
and essentially Disney in a box is a
glorified3D printer that can only print

88
00:05:15,131 --> 00:05:17,960
what Disney wants it to print for that day.

89
00:05:18,632 --> 00:05:22,071
One day, it will print a goofie character,

90
00:05:22,071 --> 00:05:24,600
another day it will print Donald Duck,

91
00:05:24,600 --> 00:05:26,160
but it's not you who decides.

92
00:05:26,217 --> 00:05:30,227
It's Disney that decides what the printer
is gonna print for you that day.

93
00:05:30,560 --> 00:05:33,968
You own the device but you are
not in control of what the device does.

94
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.

95
00:05:39,560 --> 00:05:45,920
This notion of oppression is what has
been motivating me for all these years.

96
00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:49,864
So the fact that if you are not in control
of your own computation,

97
00:05:49,864 --> 00:05:52,088
then someone is oppressing you.

98
00:05:52,088 --> 00:05:56,552
Someone usually is the person or the company
or whatever that has created the software,

99
00:05:56,588 --> 00:05:59,210
that has the power to change that software
instead of you.

100
00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:01,413
This is something that really ??? me.

101
00:06:02,711 --> 00:06:05,440
What was I doing at the time
with my computer?

102
00:06:05,440 --> 00:06:08,049
Well I was doing pretty standard stuff.

103
00:06:08,049 --> 00:06:10,596
I was using some hardware we had at the time

104
00:06:10,596 --> 00:06:14,063
which was mostly desktops and
local network servers.

105
00:06:14,063 --> 00:06:16,668
I didn't have a laptop because
it was really expensive for a student

106
00:06:16,668 --> 00:06:19,003
so I did get a laptop much later.

107
00:06:19,003 --> 00:06:21,930
I was doing some content production,
some content consumption.

108
00:06:21,983 --> 00:06:24,836
The kind of content I did produce
at the time was mostly

109
00:06:24,836 --> 00:06:29,139
office suites, desktop publishing
and this kind of stuffs.

110
00:06:29,139 --> 00:06:32,352
I was doing some communication, some email,
some IRC, some newsgroup

111
00:06:32,352 --> 00:06:34,705
which was really cool at the time
for geek communities.

112
00:06:34,705 --> 00:06:36,946
And I was doing some software development
as a newbie

113
00:06:36,946 --> 00:06:38,987
but it was what I was doing at the time.

114
00:06:38,987 --> 00:06:41,941
I also did some content consumption,
some gaming

115
00:06:41,941 --> 00:06:46,075
which are arguably some content that
someone else is producing for you to consume.

116
00:06:46,075 --> 00:06:47,361
I was doing some web browsing.

117
00:06:47,461 --> 00:06:49,147
Internet was not as popular as it is today,

118
00:06:49,147 --> 00:06:53,113
but there were some websites
you could find interesting.

119
00:06:54,163 --> 00:06:57,565
In that situation,
with this kind of computing,

120
00:06:57,565 --> 00:07:02,817
the actual path to software freedom
and to control was fairly clear.

121
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.

122
00:07:08,057 --> 00:07:11,674
What I should have done, what we all should
have done to actually liberate people

123
00:07:11,674 --> 00:07:14,691
from the oppression of people controling
our own computation.

124
00:07:15,031 --> 00:07:18,948
The idea is that while you have
a lot of pieces of proprietary software

125
00:07:18,948 --> 00:07:22,883
which you do not control, what you need
to do is to replace

126
00:07:22,883 --> 00:07:28,488
every such a component of proprietary
software with a free software equivalent.

127
00:07:28,658 --> 00:07:31,626
Using some local application, some game,

128
00:07:31,626 --> 00:07:34,054
we need to replace it
with an equivalent free game.

129
00:07:34,054 --> 00:07:39,156
We were using some client-server software,
some mail ???, some mail client,

130
00:07:39,156 --> 00:07:42,218
some mail server, some IRC client,
some IRC server.

131
00:07:42,218 --> 00:07:47,395
What we needed to do to actually empower
people and liberate people was to rewrite

132
00:07:47,395 --> 00:07:50,942
those pieces of software with free software equivalents.

133
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.

134
00:07:55,599 --> 00:07:56,561
The plan was clear.

135
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.

136
00:08:01,880 --> 00:08:04,570
The GNU project existed ??? since
quite a while,

137
00:08:04,570 --> 00:08:07,460
the Linux kernel existed already
and it was working.

138
00:08:07,460 --> 00:08:11,963
So someone else with shoulders larger
than ??? I had at the time

139
00:08:11,963 --> 00:08:15,252
had already done a lot of work for me and me

140
00:08:15,252 --> 00:08:19,458
and together with other free software activists,
what I had to focus on was to rewrite

141
00:08:19,458 --> 00:08:24,514
proprietary application into equivalent
free software application, possibly better.

142
00:08:24,514 --> 00:08:27,480
That was clear, was hard,
but it was fairly clear.

143
00:08:29,001 --> 00:08:34,570
That's where, I think, the notion
of a free software project comes from.

144
00:08:34,813 --> 00:08:39,955
We use very often this term of free
software project and never ended up

145
00:08:39,955 --> 00:08:44,323
really thinking about that before a few
years ago and I think the reason why

146
00:08:44,323 --> 00:08:46,881
we call it free software project is that
there is an objective.

147
00:08:46,881 --> 00:08:49,914
So there is a mission,
ideally a time-limited one,

148
00:08:49,914 --> 00:08:54,916
and that mission is writing a replacement
for a proprietary application using

149
00:08:54,916 --> 00:08:58,828
free software which is as good,
possibly better than the original.

150
00:08:59,338 --> 00:09:03,612
Having a lot of free software projects
around gives rise to a lot of releases.

151
00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:06,656
So what we were doing a lot at the time
in the 90s

152
00:09:06,656 --> 00:09:10,092
was to actually manually install
software on our own machines.

153
00:09:10,092 --> 00:09:14,679
To be fair, our lab was running
some Red Hat machines.

154
00:09:14,679 --> 00:09:18,107
At the time there weren't that
many packages available and

155
00:09:18,107 --> 00:09:21,895
we had to fairly often install stuff
by hand on the lab machines

156
00:09:21,895 --> 00:09:25,033
in our own directories and also
on our computers at home.

157
00:09:25,033 --> 00:09:27,633
This is a procedure you all know very well.

158
00:09:27,933 --> 00:09:31,693
You download a tarball, you run "configure",
you run "make", you run "make install".

159
00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:35,529
The first time I saw that, it was kind of
a magical recipe for me.

160
00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:38,792
Just follow these steps and you will get
some software to play with.

161
00:09:38,792 --> 00:09:41,890
Well, except that every single step
could fail, of course.

162
00:09:42,200 --> 00:09:47,023
Let's keep aside for the moment the fact
that the website might be down but,

163
00:09:47,023 --> 00:09:50,726
you run "configure" and you miss some software
you need to fetch from somewhere else.

164
00:09:50,726 --> 00:09:54,480
You run "make", you encounter some
compilation problem.

165
00:09:54,791 --> 00:09:58,428
You run "make install", maybe the path
will clash and so on and so forth.

166
00:09:58,658 --> 00:10:03,160
The problem with this procedure for
install software we are using by hand

167
00:10:04,160 --> 00:10:05,801
is that you are essentially
conflicting roles.

168
00:10:06,600 --> 00:10:09,800
You're mixing together the role of
software user,

169
00:10:10,201 --> 00:10:13,480
the role of system administrator
and the role of software developper.

170
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.

171
00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:24,760
In a sense, a free software which works
like this is essentially a very elistist thing.

172
00:10:25,160 --> 00:10:29,241
It's only an elite which have
all the needed skills who is able to enjoy

173
00:10:29,560 --> 00:10:34,440
the benefits of free software and is able
to be in control of their own computation.

174
00:10:35,080 --> 00:10:39,240
This is essentially the reason why distributions
much earlier had been invented.

175
00:10:39,720 --> 00:10:42,960
We all know very well here
what distributions do,

176
00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:48,204
they sit in between software developpers
and software users and make it easy for you

177
00:10:48,681 --> 00:10:50,040
to actually use that software.

178
00:10:50,480 --> 00:10:55,600
We do installer work, we create installers,
we create package managers,

179
00:10:55,752 --> 00:11:00,040
we do all the integration work that make 
different pieces of software work well together.

180
00:11:00,480 --> 00:11:04,560
We actually make life easy for final users.

181
00:11:05,480 --> 00:11:11,395
So, for me, something that I started believing
is that the ultimate mission of free software

182
00:11:11,395 --> 00:11:16,521
distributions is to actually democratize
free software, to enable users

183
00:11:16,720 --> 00:11:20,681
which do not have software development skills
or do not have system administration skills,

184
00:11:21,640 --> 00:11:24,547
enable them to enjoy the benefit
of free software.

185
00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:27,320
We offer very simple interface,

186
00:11:27,640 --> 00:11:31,601
we offer the equivalent of what these days
are called appstores in which

187
00:11:31,760 --> 00:11:34,640
with one click, you can just install
some software and

188
00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:38,084
enjoy the benefit of that software,
in particular a free software.

189
00:11:39,760 --> 00:11:43,320
This is for me the historical mission
of distributions.

190
00:11:44,440 --> 00:11:48,924
Later on, in 1998, our lab decided
to switch to Debian

191
00:11:49,920 --> 00:11:51,440
and I was really happy about that.

192
00:11:52,201 --> 00:11:54,120
We switch from Red Hat to Debian and
I look out about this project,

193
00:11:54,120 --> 00:11:59,240
I start learning what this project does
and I find out that not only

194
00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:02,560
this project Debian was actually up to
the mission of empowering user

195
00:12:02,640 --> 00:12:06,480
by making it easy for users
to use free software.

196
00:12:06,980 --> 00:12:12,242
If you read the original announcement of
Ian Murdock announcing the Debian project,

197
00:12:12,242 --> 00:12:15,880
we'll find this notion of being competitive
with proprietary operating systems

198
00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:18,720
and it's really clear that the point is
empowering users.

199
00:12:19,403 --> 00:12:24,560
I end up reading about this project and
not only I found their mission

200
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

201
00:12:28,760 --> 00:12:30,720
is to make the project a community project.

202
00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:34,121
Not only the target are the users 
and empowering them,

203
00:12:34,280 --> 00:12:37,840
but also the way to reach that objective
is fostering a community

204
00:12:38,120 --> 00:12:40,000
that will work together to that goal.

205
00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:41,760
I got immediately hooked,

206
00:12:41,927 --> 00:12:44,521
I vividly remember the moment
a collegue of mine, a student

207
00:12:44,680 --> 00:12:47,441
explained to me the anatomy of
a Debian source package,

208
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

209
00:12:51,150 --> 00:12:53,881
with the differences with respect to upstream,
and all those metadata

210
00:12:53,881 --> 00:12:56,481
that was really thrilling for me
from a technical point of view.

211
00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:00,841
A few years later, I ended up joining
the nm-process.

212
00:13:01,369 --> 00:13:05,480
I was doing some OCaml development
at the time, there were some libraries,

213
00:13:05,521 --> 00:13:08,200
OCaml libraries in Debian, others were
missing and I said

214
00:13:08,440 --> 00:13:12,960
"Ok, maybe I should help and create
some libraries for the project as well".

215
00:13:13,240 --> 00:13:20,239
I went through nm and there are a few things
I've learned doing nm

216
00:13:20,280 --> 00:13:23,360
and also in the subsequent ten years
or fifteen years or so.

217
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.

218
00:13:30,520 --> 00:13:34,761
Debian is a project that did not start
from only technical means

219
00:13:35,280 --> 00:13:37,680
but also decided at some point that
they needed some guidance,

220
00:13:37,720 --> 00:13:40,400
some clear guidance of what it should
technically and what it shouldn't.

221
00:13:41,240 --> 00:13:45,920
And an important document where we have
distilled this notion are the DFSG.

222
00:13:46,602 --> 00:13:47,960
The Debian free software guidance

223
00:13:48,161 --> 00:13:50,961
which has been very influencial
on the free software movement as a whole.

224
00:13:51,320 --> 00:13:54,280
They've been used as a base for
the open source definition as you know,

225
00:13:54,761 --> 00:13:58,240
and what was very ??? for me
is that commitment we had in Debian

226
00:13:58,521 --> 00:14:03,057
in keeping the main archive completely
DFSG-free, keeping it completely free software.

227
00:14:03,601 --> 00:14:08,167
This commitment is depicted here
by those fearsome character

228
00:14:08,668 --> 00:14:14,400
and his owner on a couch and it's mediating
and triggering the NEW queue, supposedly,

229
00:14:14,801 --> 00:14:17,479
and the NEW queue is not necessarily
the best way we could implement

230
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

231
00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:27,320
but it shows our commitment to actually
only follow the guidance we have set for ourselves.

232
00:14:27,600 --> 00:14:29,480
It was really motivating for me.

233
00:14:29,760 --> 00:14:32,121
The second thing I've learned and which
will come handy in a bit,

234
00:14:32,121 --> 00:14:37,240
is the importance of the legal knowledge
and legal geeks in the free software movement.

235
00:14:37,440 --> 00:14:42,400
Like it or not, free software as an ideal
is philosophical mean,

236
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:48,082
but its main implementation is through the
legal system, is through copyright licenses.

237
00:14:48,561 --> 00:14:52,280
To really ??? what's happening
in free software in general,

238
00:14:52,280 --> 00:14:55,840
to understand where the free software
movement is going, figuring out and

239
00:14:55,840 --> 00:14:59,321
really understand what's going on
in the legal system is very important.

240
00:15:00,200 --> 00:15:03,920
In Debian, we know that pretty well,
that's a stumbling block for many people

241
00:15:04,061 --> 00:15:06,120
when joining the Debian project.

242
00:15:06,120 --> 00:15:09,960
It's something we insist people are at least
basically familiar with and

243
00:15:09,960 --> 00:15:14,280
that's pretty characteristic
of the Debian project.

244
00:15:14,520 --> 00:15:17,040
In the end, what I've learned is that

245
00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:22,660
in this quest that I feel very much myself
against the oppression of someone else

246
00:15:22,660 --> 00:15:27,361
controling your own computation,
law, if you hack around it smartly,

247
00:15:27,361 --> 00:15:31,723
can be a very useful ally,
a very useful device to liberate users.

248
00:15:33,400 --> 00:15:38,480
Time passes − there was supposed to be an
image here, which for some reason disappeared.

249
00:15:38,960 --> 00:15:45,040
And, we might argue that, these days,
we have achieved a lot since that moment.

250
00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:48,922
If I look around the industry or, in general,
if I look around computing

251
00:15:49,240 --> 00:15:54,000
as people are doing that,
free software is a little bit everywhere.

252
00:15:54,680 --> 00:15:58,400
In the industry, there are some stats
that claim that essentially

253
00:15:58,640 --> 00:16:02,320
every single software product you find
on the market has, inside of it,

254
00:16:02,480 --> 00:16:04,600
a little bit of free software code.

255
00:16:05,536 --> 00:16:08,280
If you look at all the different application
stacks we have

256
00:16:08,642 --> 00:16:11,280
from webservers to education to clients
to smartphones,

257
00:16:11,602 --> 00:16:15,800
you find a lot of free software, free software
infrastructures that are everywhere.

258
00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:19,400
So these are just some stats ???
in the recent years

259
00:16:19,880 --> 00:16:24,600
and for instance if we look at one of the
key target market for Debian ???

260
00:16:24,960 --> 00:16:30,441
we'll find out one website over ten
on the Internet in general is running Debian.

261
00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:33,800
If we include also some of our most
popular derivatives such as Ubuntu,

262
00:16:34,121 --> 00:16:35,960
we'll find that more than 20%
of the websites

263
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:38,560
are running something which comes
from our own work.

264
00:16:39,001 --> 00:16:45,721
And some of the recent hype on free software
is coming from the Snowden revelation

265
00:16:45,721 --> 00:16:50,000
and most people are starting to be concerned
about what the software they're using is doing

266
00:16:50,400 --> 00:16:55,680
and is turning to free software and is turning
to stuff like Tails which is heavily Debian-based

267
00:16:55,680 --> 00:17:00,685
to actually see in which way we can
help them foster their own security.

268
00:17:01,281 --> 00:17:03,000
In some sense, we have achieved a lot.

269
00:17:03,680 --> 00:17:08,041
In everything we do in computing,
there is a little bit of what we have done

270
00:17:08,041 --> 00:17:10,800
in free software and also a little bit
of what we have done in Debian.

271
00:17:11,160 --> 00:17:12,960
This is pretty impressive for me.

272
00:17:13,040 --> 00:17:18,560
We're in a place where I wouldn't have
dreamed being when I started in 1997.

273
00:17:18,874 --> 00:17:19,881
That's very impressive.

274
00:17:20,321 --> 00:17:24,160
On the other hand, there are some reasons
of concerns

275
00:17:24,480 --> 00:17:27,951
and this is the main thought
I wanted to share with you.

276
00:17:30,020 --> 00:17:33,880
There are some technical reasons which
we discuss often in free software circles

277
00:17:34,240 --> 00:17:40,040
like the fact that "Ok but most of these
platforms are not 100% free software".

278
00:17:40,841 --> 00:17:42,560
If you look at smartphones for instance,

279
00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:48,440
you will find a lot of non free code every here
and there and the point can be made that

280
00:17:48,440 --> 00:17:52,041
either you have full control over
your own computation,

281
00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:53,440
or you are not in control at all,

282
00:17:53,600 --> 00:17:57,206
because if your software stack is a single layer
which is controlled by someone else,

283
00:17:57,206 --> 00:18:01,200
and is mediating all your communication,
maybe you're not so sure

284
00:18:01,524 --> 00:18:04,600
that you are the real owner and
the real controller for your own device.

285
00:18:04,760 --> 00:18:07,157
That's a absolutely fair point.

286
00:18:07,160 --> 00:18:11,241
We can make some more technical points
about for instance non free JavaScript.

287
00:18:11,321 --> 00:18:14,520
More and more of our computations are
happening in our browsers

288
00:18:14,855 --> 00:18:17,680
and are happening through code which is
delivered to our browser

289
00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:21,081
by remote servers and this code
is not free at all.

290
00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:26,840
I absolutely agree with that but the point
I want to focus on today is actually

291
00:18:27,040 --> 00:18:29,561
what we call the cloud.

292
00:18:30,080 --> 00:18:33,012
All my images are gone.

293
00:18:34,160 --> 00:18:36,040
You had a very nice image there, sorry.

294
00:18:41,390 --> 00:18:45,525
The remaining point and my main reason of
concern is what is being called the cloud.

295
00:18:45,961 --> 00:18:48,640
Let allow me to be a bit generic here
for a moment.

296
00:18:49,040 --> 00:18:51,360
I know there are very different ???
in what we call the cloud

297
00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:53,800
and will be specific in all of them
in a bit.

298
00:18:54,320 --> 00:18:56,680
But for now I want to focus on the 
common trend that

299
00:18:56,720 --> 00:18:58,880
the cloud is bringing to computing
these days.

300
00:18:59,481 --> 00:19:03,897
Computing today, for most people, is not
much different from the kind of computing

301
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:05,962
I was doing fifteen years ago.

302
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:09,960
That's the kind of computing that we do
on very different hardware,

303
00:19:10,120 --> 00:19:13,920
we have way more smartphones, way more
tablets than in the past and that's true.

304
00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:19,160
But the kind of activities we do − producing
content, consuming content − is very similar.

305
00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:23,721
The big difference is the kind of
technological stack we're using

306
00:19:24,040 --> 00:19:25,880
and where the computations are happening.

307
00:19:26,280 --> 00:19:30,440
For most people today, the kind of
office suites we use is no longer

308
00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:33,687
a software which is installed on 
your machine but it is Google Docs.

309
00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:39,200
I'm an academic myself, I'm very often
forced to use some Google Docs applications

310
00:19:39,281 --> 00:19:42,160
to work with others, otherwise I'm free
not to work with them,

311
00:19:42,640 --> 00:19:45,881
because it's a technological choice
made by someone else.

312
00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:49,240
For many people, e-mail, as you know,
just mean GMail.

313
00:19:49,480 --> 00:19:52,960
All our e-mails, even if your not
using GMail ourselves,

314
00:19:53,288 --> 00:19:55,480
are passing through some GMail servers.

315
00:19:55,681 --> 00:20:00,080
Asynchronous communications still exist,
but it is very often mediated

316
00:20:00,200 --> 00:20:01,640
to software like Skype or GTalk.

317
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:02,940
And so on and so forth.

318
00:20:02,940 --> 00:20:04,240
You have seen this list very often.

319
00:20:04,920 --> 00:20:08,640
Consuming content, there as well,
we are still doing gaming,

320
00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:11,400
we are still doing browsing but it's often
mediated by platforms

321
00:20:11,520 --> 00:20:14,320
which are far away from us and just stream
content to us or,

322
00:20:14,480 --> 00:20:19,320
in the specific case of web browsing,
they are more and more often hosted

323
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:23,120
by very few hosters in the world − which
we often ??? to a walled garden −

324
00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:25,644
that can do whatever they want
with our content.

325
00:20:27,040 --> 00:20:30,720
The point here is not demonizing
those services.

326
00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:35,307
People are using those services because
they are convenient and

327
00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:39,525
there is a lot of network effect going on
that makes it easy for other people

328
00:20:39,601 --> 00:20:41,360
to start using those services.

329
00:20:41,720 --> 00:20:44,200
It's really not the point of demonizing
those services.

330
00:20:44,200 --> 00:20:49,444
The point here is observing that interesting
computations that we are doing

331
00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:53,200
as our job, as our life,

332
00:20:53,320 --> 00:20:57,241
are no longer happening on our machines,
but are happening on other machines

333
00:20:57,390 --> 00:21:02,400
which are far away from us and which
are not under our direct control.

334
00:21:02,641 --> 00:21:09,200
In this context, for me, I confess, what
actually is the road to software freedom

335
00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:12,040
and to control, to enable people
to control their own computation

336
00:21:12,120 --> 00:21:13,080
is no longer clear.

337
00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:17,080
It's no longer enough to say
"Well, we just need to rewrite

338
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:20,383
Google or Facebook or Twitter
in free software".

339
00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:23,961
That's not enough, because even
if you do that, you have the problem

340
00:21:23,961 --> 00:21:27,401
that when you are using a server
you don't know if the code it is running

341
00:21:27,521 --> 00:21:31,658
is the one they claim it is running, so
that's a very difficult problem to solve.

342
00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:35,320
And even if it were the case,
where do you deploy yourself

343
00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:38,521
a Google-like architecture,
or a Facebook-like architecture?

344
00:21:38,800 --> 00:21:40,000
You simply can't.

345
00:21:40,400 --> 00:21:42,371
It is no longer enough to just say

346
00:21:42,521 --> 00:21:45,200
"We just need to make
some software development,

347
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:47,802
we just need to make it better
than the alternative."

348
00:21:48,201 --> 00:21:51,600
There is a real tricky combination between
software development

349
00:21:51,819 --> 00:21:55,881
and software deployment which
not easy to see how to fix it.

350
00:21:56,380 --> 00:21:59,520
At least for me, it's very ???

351
00:21:59,620 --> 00:22:01,043
So, what about distros?

352
00:22:02,139 --> 00:22:06,280
We are distro people, doing one 
of the most popular distro in existence.

353
00:22:06,320 --> 00:22:09,248
Are we winning or are we losing
in this situation?

354
00:22:09,400 --> 00:22:13,165
How are we doing in terms of our efforts?

355
00:22:14,074 --> 00:22:16,320
In a sense, we are very much winning.

356
00:22:17,521 --> 00:22:20,800
A lot of our work is being used
to deploy those infrastructures.

357
00:22:21,320 --> 00:22:24,080
A lot of the infrastructure
of the big companies are deploying

358
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:27,560
on top of free software, if not direct 
on top of our very own systems,

359
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:31,560
maybe modified here and there where
they need to make things better

360
00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:34,680
as it is their own right
given it's all free software.

361
00:22:35,400 --> 00:22:36,680
In that sense, we're winning.

362
00:22:37,137 --> 00:22:38,480
We're increasing market share,

363
00:22:38,642 --> 00:22:40,920
??? are being used a lot
to make infrastructure.

364
00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:46,240
But we are also losing in the sense that
we are really not empowering users

365
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:48,560
to be in control of 
their own computations.

366
00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:53,401
If our final users are the sysadmin
that are running those infrastructures,

367
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:55,202
for them we are doing great.

368
00:22:55,360 --> 00:22:56,920
We are making them be sure

369
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,041
they are in control
of their own infrastructure.

370
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:01,640
But for the final users of those services,

371
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:04,562
we are really not empowering them
at the moment.

372
00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:07,241
So what I call the free software dark ages,

373
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:13,241
which is an expression I actually borrowed
from [name] ??? quite inspiring,

374
00:23:13,520 --> 00:23:17,760
is a situation in which we win 
on the end user market

375
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:21,681
so every single device out there
in the hand of people − desktop,

376
00:23:21,681 --> 00:23:26,000
laptop, even smartphones where right now
we are not doing very well −

377
00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:28,360
all of this is running free software.

378
00:23:28,440 --> 00:23:29,720
All of that is running Debian.

379
00:23:30,080 --> 00:23:34,600
So, total world domination as
we were talking about a long time ago.

380
00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:39,080
But all interesting computations,
all the final user application

381
00:23:39,201 --> 00:23:42,920
which is being used to bring on
with your digital life,

382
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:46,801
are no longer happening on your devices,
happening far away from you

383
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:50,363
on computer you do not control,
sometime with free software,

384
00:23:50,363 --> 00:23:51,655
sometime with non free software.

385
00:23:52,001 --> 00:23:54,126
But in any case, outside
of your own control.

386
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:59,520
In a sense, this is very worrysome for me
because we have this ??? we are very popular.

387
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:06,600
We are winning the war − we were using a lot
of this war-like terminology when I started.

388
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:11,680
But the war we are winning seems to become
increasingly pointless

389
00:24:12,080 --> 00:24:15,522
because it's not being useful to actually
empower users to be in control

390
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:17,240
of their own computation.

391
00:24:18,401 --> 00:24:23,601
To make things worse, there seems to be
some cultural problems that might be

392
00:24:23,601 --> 00:24:28,441
just a perception of mind, maybe being
too pessimistic, but it seems to me that,

393
00:24:28,441 --> 00:24:31,520
as developper communities,
as hacker communities,

394
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:34,440
we are becoming way more lenient,
way more ???

395
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:38,281
about the lack of control on the tools and
on infrastructure we use

396
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:39,760
to make free software.

397
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:43,880
More and more often we see free software
developed on non-free infrastructure,

398
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:47,280
meaning infrastructures which are built
using non free software

399
00:24:47,360 --> 00:24:50,600
and which are anyhow centralized
in the hand of a few hosters.

400
00:24:53,670 --> 00:24:55,640
The new generation of developpers
which is coming up

401
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:57,080
seems to be totally fine with that.

402
00:24:57,320 --> 00:25:00,520
I'm not gonna argue this point in much detail,
there is a great essay by Mako

403
00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:03,880
that I encourage all of you to read,
"Free software needs free tools",

404
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:05,840
which actually make couple of points.

405
00:25:05,881 --> 00:25:09,360
One is that by using non free software
to make free software,

406
00:25:09,360 --> 00:25:11,081
we are sending out a very bad message.

407
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:13,814
We are telling to the world that
free software is good for you,

408
00:25:13,814 --> 00:25:16,480
that's why we are developing it,
but it's not good for us

409
00:25:16,561 --> 00:25:18,480
because we are using non free tools
to make it.

410
00:25:18,801 --> 00:25:21,841
That's the kind of ???
in our advertising message,

411
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:26,120
but it's also making the software
we are creating indirectly less free,

412
00:25:26,401 --> 00:25:29,880
because if the favorite way to contribute
to that free software

413
00:25:29,961 --> 00:25:32,200
is using some non free infrastructure,
some non free tools,

414
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:35,840
indirectly we're making people 
that only want to use free software

415
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:38,600
less apt to contribute to that software.

416
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:41,241
So I really recommend reading that essay.

417
00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:44,800
But also technically, we are going back
to a sort of a cage problem,

418
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:49,640
which is also a problem which is called 
"the problem of the bug that noone can fix"

419
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:53,640
by the FSF I think, and essentially
we're creating software stacks

420
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,400
in which some part of it is entirely
free software, that we can debug

421
00:25:57,481 --> 00:26:02,320
and some other parts are non free software
or software run by someone else,

422
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:05,160
so we have lost the ability to debug
the full stack.

423
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:11,000
When I was starting to learn programming,
this idea that I could debug everything

424
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:14,801
from the end user I was writing myself
for an assignment

425
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:17,709
down to the kernel level
was just exciting for me.

426
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:20,520
We seem to be losing sight of this,
a little bit.

427
00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:25,360
As a second cultural problem,
we seem to be losing sight of

428
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:29,160
how much help we could get from
the legal system

429
00:26:29,492 --> 00:26:32,720
and from new legal solution that
we might be in need of finding.

430
00:26:33,041 --> 00:26:38,361
An example of that is the post open
source software "POSS" debate

431
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:40,720
which some of you might have run into.

432
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:43,920
That's a debate which actually observes
that the new generation of

433
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:48,008
free software developpers actually
don't care about licenses.

434
00:26:48,523 --> 00:26:51,363
They just want to kick out their code,
just put it on GitHub,

435
00:26:51,643 --> 00:26:54,963
not declaring their license at all
and they're just fine with that.

436
00:26:55,363 --> 00:27:00,883
They want to be ??? to have
the hassle of deciding first of all a license,

437
00:27:01,208 --> 00:27:04,403
second of all also some governance
model for their projects.

438
00:27:04,483 --> 00:27:09,163
They just want to be hacking and doing,
and not caring about those annoying details.

439
00:27:10,163 --> 00:27:15,523
This could be intervetedly interpreted
in positive ways like says that

440
00:27:15,763 --> 00:27:22,523
we want the right to work on the code and
to do whatever we want with that by default.

441
00:27:22,763 --> 00:27:25,483
We do not want to be expliciting
which kind of rights we give and

442
00:27:25,643 --> 00:27:27,603
that's a very positive interpretation
of this phenomenon.

443
00:27:28,043 --> 00:27:32,083
But in the end, for now, it is creating
a huge bunch of code that

444
00:27:32,123 --> 00:27:35,243
we could not use as free software yet.

445
00:27:35,443 --> 00:27:38,643
For instance we cannot include in Debian
something that does not have a license at all.

446
00:27:39,523 --> 00:27:43,043
A second example is the debate about
the non freeness of AGPL.

447
00:27:43,723 --> 00:27:49,923
If you look up the history of free software,
there is argument that GPL itself is not free.

448
00:27:50,003 --> 00:27:52,723
It's an argument that was being used
twenty years ago

449
00:27:52,763 --> 00:27:56,963
when the battle between copyleft and
liberalizing was very high, was very harsh.

450
00:27:57,403 --> 00:27:59,402
And it's just recurring again.

451
00:27:59,843 --> 00:28:04,123
So maybe for some syntactically
interpretation of our own guidance,

452
00:28:04,163 --> 00:28:08,123
we could make the point that something
like the AGPL is non free, maybe.

453
00:28:08,603 --> 00:28:12,883
But the point is that the way we distribute
software to final users is really changing.

454
00:28:13,443 --> 00:28:18,123
Twenty years ago or fifteen years ago,
the main way to enable some user to use

455
00:28:18,363 --> 00:28:21,283
a piece of software was actually to make
a copy of that software and

456
00:28:21,283 --> 00:28:25,163
give it to him or to her via the network
or some media.

457
00:28:25,563 --> 00:28:29,163
And all those ???,
that kind of conveying software is clearly

458
00:28:29,163 --> 00:28:34,483
distribution and that kind of activity used
to trigger some sort of license ???.

459
00:28:34,723 --> 00:28:38,443
These days, a software is no longer
distributed that way, in large parts.

460
00:28:38,729 --> 00:28:44,683
It's being used over the net and something
like the AGPL is the equivalent of triggering

461
00:28:44,803 --> 00:28:48,203
some licensing condition via the main way
of distributing,

462
00:28:48,243 --> 00:28:50,123
of giving access to some software.

463
00:28:50,603 --> 00:28:53,453
I want to enter in details in this debate.

464
00:28:53,493 --> 00:28:56,283
Those are just examples, for me they are
examples of the fact that

465
00:28:56,283 --> 00:29:01,163
we are kind of losing faith in how much
the legal system and free software

466
00:29:01,203 --> 00:29:02,403
are intertwined.

467
00:29:02,922 --> 00:29:06,435
And this actually mixes very badly
with the situation in which

468
00:29:06,435 --> 00:29:10,324
users are losing control because those
computations are moving away from them.

469
00:29:10,683 --> 00:29:14,243
I think this situation, in general,
is not going to fix themselves

470
00:29:14,608 --> 00:29:18,403
and we, as distribution people,
have a role to play in fixing it.

471
00:29:19,723 --> 00:29:25,563
What could be a role for Debian in all this
computing situation we have these days.

472
00:29:27,813 --> 00:29:31,883
The common trend in the so called cloud
seems to be that computations

473
00:29:31,925 --> 00:29:33,844
are moving away from user devices.

474
00:29:34,643 --> 00:29:37,763
We cannot just say
"Well just don't use anything cloudy",

475
00:29:38,043 --> 00:29:40,083
because it is convenient, people will want
to use that.

476
00:29:40,243 --> 00:29:41,563
We need to do something different.

477
00:29:41,921 --> 00:29:46,291
As distribution people, we could do a lot,
I think, and I have a couple of thoughts

478
00:29:46,564 --> 00:29:53,683
to share with you that are different
depending on the so called service model

479
00:29:53,683 --> 00:29:54,643
of the cloud.

480
00:29:54,803 --> 00:29:57,521
One of the first service model of the cloud
you might have heard about is

481
00:29:57,685 --> 00:30:00,643
"Infrastructure as a Service" (IaaS) where
essentially you have servers that

482
00:30:00,849 --> 00:30:05,643
give virtual machines to people and
essentially you get to administer

483
00:30:05,763 --> 00:30:08,403
your own machine which is a virtual machine
on a virtual machine server

484
00:30:08,683 --> 00:30:10,206
controlled by someone else.

485
00:30:10,444 --> 00:30:14,243
This is potentially very good for people
because it is lowering the barrier

486
00:30:14,284 --> 00:30:16,323
you need to have your own server.

487
00:30:16,643 --> 00:30:21,083
When I first set up my own server
with friends, at the end of the 90's,

488
00:30:21,324 --> 00:30:24,883
we had to buy some machine, to find
someone kind enough to host it,

489
00:30:25,003 --> 00:30:27,523
pay the hosting fees and so on
and so forth.

490
00:30:27,723 --> 00:30:31,963
It was something that was by far not at all
accessible to the random user.

491
00:30:32,323 --> 00:30:37,045
These days, a lot of people can simply go
to some virtual machine provider, rent

492
00:30:37,283 --> 00:30:42,044
a virtual machine with one-click button and
they have their own machine to administer.

493
00:30:42,364 --> 00:30:46,164
Maybe they don't have the skill to
administer it, that's a different problem,

494
00:30:46,332 --> 00:30:50,403
but you are definitly lowering the barrier
to access, to have you own server

495
00:30:50,682 --> 00:30:52,563
and do your own remote computation.

496
00:30:53,083 --> 00:30:56,363
As Debian, we are doing pretty well
in this area, I think.

497
00:30:56,483 --> 00:31:00,206
We're offering technology like OpenStack
and other competitors of OpenStack,

498
00:31:00,403 --> 00:31:04,603
which seems to be the market leader on
that market which are entirely free software.

499
00:31:04,884 --> 00:31:09,963
But I think we should be investing more in
offering a trivial deployment experience

500
00:31:10,211 --> 00:31:11,364
for Debian users.

501
00:31:11,403 --> 00:31:15,765
We should make trivial for people
to have their own virtual machine servers.

502
00:31:15,765 --> 00:31:19,203
If they are not computer geeks, they should
be able to flock together friends

503
00:31:19,443 --> 00:31:25,523
which have system administration ability
and have their own local IaaS

504
00:31:25,723 --> 00:31:30,843
and have their own virtual machine without
having to rely on big hosters provided

505
00:31:30,923 --> 00:31:33,043
virtual machines to everyone in the world.

506
00:31:33,444 --> 00:31:36,523
This is a great step to our autonomy.

507
00:31:36,603 --> 00:31:40,683
As Debian, what is the best deployment
experience we can offer for people

508
00:31:40,724 --> 00:31:43,323
that want to setup their own virtual
machine servers.

509
00:31:44,163 --> 00:31:48,124
Then, there is another service model which
is called PaaS, "platform as a service".

510
00:31:48,163 --> 00:31:51,724
This is a kind of service model in which
essentially you have hosters

511
00:31:51,724 --> 00:31:55,724
of application engines, you develop
application targeting

512
00:31:55,724 --> 00:31:58,043
specific application engine.

513
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
An exemple of this is Google App Engine.

514
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.

515
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.

516
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.

517
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.

518
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There might be something we could do about this here.

519
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.

520
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.

521
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.

522
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.

523
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Here, most of the work should come from upstreams.

524
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.

525
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.

526
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But still, there are useful things we could do here.

527
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We already have a lot of building blocks.

528
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have stuff like Owncloud, Git-annex, mediagoblin, pump.io, Yacy.

529
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.

530
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What we lack is the equivalent ease of deployment of these services on user machines.

531
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.

532
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.

533
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.

534
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Something that no one without having at least some basic system administration ability could do properly.

535
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is the thing we need, the nut we need to crack.

536
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.

537
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Of course, you are all thinking of the FreedomBox now.

538
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That's a great example of a project who wants to tackle precisely that problem.

539
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.

540
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's heavily based on Debian and it's doing exactly that.

541
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.

542
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.

543
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.

544
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They might want something like the FreedomBox at home and collaborate with other immediately.

545
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.

546
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.

547
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.

548
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.

549
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.

550
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That kind of intellectual debate had already happened at the time.

551
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.

552
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.

553
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Is it enough to have something which is free, do you need more specific license.

554
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.

555
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.

556
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.

557
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Essentially there is a recommandation of doing your own computation on your own machines.

558
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.

559
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.

560
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And we, as distribution people, could make easier for them to do so.

561
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.

562
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.

563
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So what we could do in Debian.

564
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Well, I think we should try to step in this debate.

565
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.

566
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.

567
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Our decisions of free license are looked up by other projects.

568
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.

569
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.

570
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.

571
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The concluding question I have for you is "What's Debian take today on liberating users?".

572
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?

573
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.

574
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.

575
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
LaTeX, beamer or Tikz or something is playing tricks on me.

576
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.

577
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Thank's a lot.

578
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[applause]

579
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There seems to be a mic which is floating around down there.

580
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.

581
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?

582
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.

583
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?

584
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' ".

585
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.

586
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.

587
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, very good question, I don't have a very good answer, sorry.

588
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] Hello.

589
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.

590
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.

591
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.

592
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.

593
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.

594
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.

595
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.

596
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.

597
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have also started to lag behind many other areas.

598
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.

599
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.

600
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.

601
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.

602
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.

603
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.

604
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That's my thought on this matter.

605
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] I have an answer.

606
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Hello.

607
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I have an answer, sort of an answer to the previous question.

608
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is of cours the heart of the difference between free software and open source.

609
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.

610
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's about goals and aims.

611
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.

612
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.

613
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.

614
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And there are a lot of examples.

615
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…

616
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.

617
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And individually, we have as well.

618
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.

619
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[A] Thanks.

620
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.

621
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.

622
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So maybe one last or, Stefano, one last?

623
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Talkmeister] We can.

624
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Ok, one last question or comment?

625
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] Just a quick comment if I may.

626
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You talked about federated services and facebook and dropbox and that sort of thing.

627
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I think maybe the issue here is less about federated services but is about identity.

628
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.

629
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".

630
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".

631
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.

632
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But we are coming to late for that.

633
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.

634
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?".

635
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.

636
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, thanks a lot.

637
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[applause]