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Can you hear me?

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Better.

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So, hello everyone.

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Welcome again to DebConf, I guess.

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It's a great pleasure to be back again 
at one DebConf

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and a great honor to be doing one 
of the opening talks.

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I confess I wasn't really expecting
that honor.

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I just wanted to propose a session

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which was supposed to be
a self held sessions

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for those of us that think there are
some worries

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about where the free software is going
in general.

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And the role distributions have to play
in the current state of affairs.

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So this talk will be about a couple of
journeys at once.

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The first journey is a journey
through emotions,

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through good feelings about what
we have achieved in Free Software

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over the past 15 to 20 or 30 years

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depending on how long you've been
involved.

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The second journey is essentially 
my own journey


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through software freedom

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from the day I started discovering
Free Software

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and what I've ended up doing since then.

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Starting with the positive news.

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This is how I got involved myself
in free software in 1997.

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I understand that there are people
in the room

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who have been involved 
since way earlier than that,

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others that have been involved
since way later than that.

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Well, that's my story.

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I hope you'll find ??? points
with your own story.

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When I started as a freshman in a computer
science class at university of Bologna,

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that was a huge tiping point,

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a huge hype point for the so-called
opensource movement.

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That was the year the very influencial
essay by ??? has been published.

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That was the year ??? Netscape decided to
opensource its own code.

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That was the moment in the history of
free software

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when people were trying to sell
to the industry

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what free software was doing, and
I'm not using that word in a bad sense.

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There was reasonable concern that
without involvement of the industry,

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the free software movement wouldn't have
got far.

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So they were trying to tell about free
software in an industry-friendly way.

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Essentially, the rhetoric at the point
was that

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if you do development of software
in the free software way,

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in a more open way,
a more participative way,

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you will end up having better software
and that by merely opening up you code

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you'll have these flocks of programmers
coming to you project and end up helping you.

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A few years later, I realised that
I personnaly didn't believe much in that idea:

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it's only because your software is open
that it's gonna be better,

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but it was a fair thing to try
at the time.

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What I discovered a bit later is actually
what ??? me

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was essentially the philosophy
of free software.

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The fact that computer user should be
in charge and in control of their own machine,

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that should have some basic freedom.

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You know about the 4 freedoms,
I'm not going to repeat them here,

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but my personal point is that
the narrative of free software is something

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that resonated with me a lot at the time.

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As a student, I realised that by having
free software at my fingertip as a computer science student,

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I could debug any single layer of the software stack
and look at how things are going.

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I didn't have to trust the teacher on how
an operating system should be developed.

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I was able to open up ??? in the linux kernel
and look at the actual scheduling algorithm

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that was being implemented in the real kernel.

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Not that I really got all of it at the time

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but the possibility was just breathtaking
for me.

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Later on, I ended up distilling
the main intuition of free software,

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which is the one I used to explain
free software to people,

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which is intuition of control.

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So, I ended up believing that the main
reason why I've been involved in this movement

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for about fifteen years is that I really believe
that every single computer user,

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and that's a lot of people these days,

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should be in control over
their own computations.

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Everything you're doing with a device
which is mediated via software

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is controled by someone,
either it is you or it is someone else.

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And the best episode, the best narrative
to explain that to people

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that they've been using for quite a while
is this passage

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from the novel "Makers" by Cory Doctorow

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which is a bit long so I'm not gonna read it in detail,

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but essentially there is one character
of the novel which is Lester

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which is explaining to another character
the importance of controling

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your own devices, your own tools.

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The first example he takes is the example
of the hammer,

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a physical hammer,

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and he goes on saying that if you own
a hammer,

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essentially you could do
whatever you want with it.

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You can use it for its main purpose,

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or you can use it for something
completely different

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which was not meant to be its original
purpose but it's you that decide.

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He compares that another device
which is the "Disney in a box" in the novel

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and Disney in this book is the big evil
villain which is oppressing people

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and essentially Disney in a box is a
glorified3D printer that can only print

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what Disney wants it to print for that day.

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One day, it will print a goofie character,

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another day it will print Donald Duck,

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but it's not you who decides.

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It's Disney that decides what the printer
is gonna print for you that day.

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You own the device but you are
not in control of what the device does.

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The big quote for me is that if you don't
control your life, you're miserable.

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This notion of oppression is what has
been motivating me for all these years.

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So the fact that if you are not in control
of your own computation,

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then someone is oppressing you.

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Someone usually is the person or the company
or whatever that has created the software,

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that has the power to change that software
instead of you.

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This is something that really ??? me.

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What was I doing at the time
with my computer?

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Well I was doing pretty standard stuff.

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I was using some hardware we had at the time

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which was mostly desktops and
local network servers.

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I didn't have a laptop because
it was really expensive for a student

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so I did get a laptop much later.

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I was doing some content production,
some content consumption.

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The kind of content I did produce
at the time was mostly

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office suites, desktop publishing
and this kind of stuffs.

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I was doing some communication, some email,
some IRC, some newsgroup

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which was really cool at the time
for geek communities.

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And I was doing some software development
as a newbie

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but it was what I was doing at the time.

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I also did some content consumption,
some gaming

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which are arguably some content that
someone else is producing for you to consume.

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I was doing some web browsing.

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Internet was not as popular as it is today,

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but there were some websites
you could find interesting.

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In that situation,
with this kind of computing,

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the actual path to software freedom
and to control was fairly clear.

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It was difficult, but it was fairly clear
to me as a new activist in free software.

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What I should have done, what we all should
have done to actually liberate people

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from the oppression of people controling
our own computation.

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The idea is that while you have
a lot of pieces of proprietary software

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which you do not control, what you need
to do is to replace

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every such a component of proprietary
software with a free software equivalent.

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Using some local application, some game,

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we need to replace it
with an equivalent free game.

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We were using some client-server software,
some mail ???, some mail client,

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some mail server, some IRC client,
some IRC server.

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What we needed to do to actually empower
people and liberate people was to rewrite

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those pieces of software with free software equivalents.

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It was difficult, because it was a lot of stuff
to be rewritten, but it was fairly clear.

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The plan was clear.

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And also, luckily, we also had, at the time,
all the heavy lifting was already in place.

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The GNU project existed ??? since
quite a while,

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the Linux kernel existed already
and it was working.

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So someone else with shoulders larger
than ??? I had at the time

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had already done a lot of work for me and me

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and together with other free software activists,
what I had to focus on was to rewrite

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proprietary application into equivalent
free software application, possibly better.

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That was clear, was hard,
but it was fairly clear.

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That's where, I think, the notion
of a free software project comes from.

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We use very often this term of free
software project and never ended up

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really thinking about that before a few
years ago and I think the reason why

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we call it free software project is that
there is an objective.

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So there is a mission,
ideally a time-limited one,

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and that mission is writing a replacement
for a proprietary application using

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free software which is as good,
possibly better than the original.

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Having a lot of free software projects
around gives rise to a lot of releases.

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So what we were doing a lot at the time
in the 90s

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was to actually manually install
software on our own machines.

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To be fair, our lab was running
some Red Hat machines.

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At the time there weren't that
many packages available and

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we had to fairly often install stuff
by hand on the lab machines

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in our own directories and also
on our computers at home.

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This is a procedure you all know very well.

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You download a tarball, you run "configure",
you run "make", you run "make install".

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The first time I saw that, it was kind of
a magical recipe for me.

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Just follow these steps and you will get
some software to play with.

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Well, except that every single step
could fail, of course.

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Let's keep aside for the moment the fact
that the website might be down but,

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you run "configure" and you miss some software
you need to fetch from somewhere else.

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You run "make", you encounter some
compilation problem.

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You run "make install", maybe the path
will clash and so on and so forth.

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The problem with this procedure for
install software we are using by hand

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is that you are essentially
conflicting roles.

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You're mixing together the role of
software user,

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the role of system administrator
and the role of software developper.

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You need to have a little bit of all those skills
together to be able to enjoy software.

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In a sense, a free software which works
like this is essentially a very elistist thing.

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It's only an elite which have
all the needed skills who is able to enjoy

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the benefits of free software and is able
to be in control of their own computation.

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This is essentially the reason why distributions
much earlier had been invented.

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We all know very well here
what distributions do,

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they sit in between software developpers
and software users and make it easy for you

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to actually use that software.

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We do installer work, we create installers,
we create package managers,

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we do all the integration work that make 
different pieces of software work well together.

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We actually make life easy for final users.

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So, for me, something that I started believing
is that the ultimate mission of free software

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distributions is to actually democratize
free software, to enable users

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which do not have software development skills
or do not have system administration skills,

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enable them to enjoy the benefit
of free software.

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We offer very simple interface,

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we offer the equivalent of what these days
are called appstores in which

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with one click, you can just install
some software and

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enjoy the benefit of that software,
in particular a free software.

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This is for me the historical mission
of distributions.

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Later on, in 1998, our lab decided
to switch to Debian

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and I was really happy about that.

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We switch from Red Hat to Debian and
I look out about this project,

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I start learning what this project does
and I find out that not only

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this project Debian was actually up to
the mission of empowering user

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by making it easy for users
to use free software.

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If you read the original announcement of
Ian Murdock announcing the Debian project,

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we'll find this notion of being competitive
with proprietary operating systems

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and it's really clear that the point is
empowering users.

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I end up reading about this project and
not only I found their mission

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they're up to is the mission I believe in,
but I found out that the key intuition there

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is to make the project a community project.

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Not only the target are the users 
and empowering them,

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but also the way to reach that objective
is fostering a community

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that will work together to that goal.

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I got immediately hooked,

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I vividly remember the moment
a collegue of mine, a student

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explained to me the anatomy of
a Debian source package,

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the fact that it was a .orig.tar.gz,
the fact that it was a diff.gz

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with the differences with respect to upstream,
and all those metadata

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that was really thrilling for me
from a technical point of view.

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A few years later, I ended up joining
the nm-process.

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I was doing some OCaml development
at the time, there were some libraries,

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OCaml libraries in Debian, others were
missing and I said

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"Ok, maybe I should help and create
some libraries for the project as well".

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I went through nm and there are a few things
I've learned doing nm

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and also in the subsequent ten years
or fifteen years or so.

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One thing I've learned in all these years in
Debian is the importance of being principled.

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Debian is a project that did not start
from only technical means

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but also decided at some point that
they needed some guidance,

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some clear guidance of what it should
technically and what it shouldn't.

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And an important document where we have
distilled this notion are the DFSG.

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The Debian free software guidance

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which has been very influencial
on the free software movement as a whole.

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They've been used as a base for
the open source definition as you know,

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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

515
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
what we do as a distribution because either
you're using a full fledge distribution

516
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and you do your own system administration,
or you are developping an application

517
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for a specific application server and
you rely on someone else

518
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to do that administration.

519
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, yes, I think it's mostly orthogonal
to what we do, but might also be

520
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a symptom that there is a reject from the
application developper community,

521
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a reject from the way they can target
distributions like Debian.

522
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So if it is very difficult to have your own
application running properly on Debian

523
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because we have old software, because we
change libraries, because we do not accept

524
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
multiple copies of the same libraries and
so on and so forth,

525
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if it is too difficult for application
developpers to target Debian,

526
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they might be more and more tempted
to target applications servers like PaaS.

527
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So there might be something we could do
about this, here, like finding better synergies

528
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
between containerization technology,
we have some work done in Debian,

529
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the way we usually develop some,
we usually maintain a distribution.

530
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There might be something we could do
about this here.

531
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,

532
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
just a train of thoughts I wanted to share
with you and what we could do

533
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to improve the situation.

534
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The final service model we have in the
cloud, which is I think worrysome

535
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
from the point of view of user control,
is SaaS, Software as a Service.

536
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There, essentially your own device,
your own computer only is thin client

537
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and rely entirely on a remote server
to do your own computation.

538
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We are back to the mainframe / thin client
distinction of the early days of computing

539
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and here, there is a lot we could do,
I think, but also a lot we could not do.

540
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Here, most of the work should come
from upstreams.

541
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We need better free software and federated
replacement for

542
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
popular centralized proprietary applications
in which users can participate

543
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in some kind of network by using
their own node.

544
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is work that should not come from
distribution itself, it should really come

545
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
from application developpers upstream.

546
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But still, there are useful things
we could do here.

547
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We already have a lot of building blocks.

548
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have stuff like Owncloud, Git-annex,
mediagoblin, pump.io, Yacy.

549
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

550
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with the centralized proprietary equivalent,
but I'm confident we could get there.

551
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What we lack is the equivalent ease of
deployment of these services on user machines.

552
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In some sense, if we have democratized
the installation of software twenty years ago

553
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with distributions, these days, to face the
challenge of control of our own computation,

554
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we need to make it as easy as using a
package manager to install

555
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
your own nodes using those applications.

556
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Ideally, everyone in the world without
nothing more than basic computer user skills

557
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
should be able to have its own machine
at home doing some anonymous browsing,

558
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
doing some mail handling, doing web hosting,
doing storage calendar,

559
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
doing encrypted peer to peer backup,
and so and so forth.

560
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'm maintaining my own mail server and it is
a user ???, I struggle myself

561
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to keep up with the need of knowledge and
of surveillance that I need to make

562
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to my own mail server to be able to run it
properly and I get blacklisted

563
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
from time to time from providers and
it's a pain.

564
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Something that no one without having at least
some basic system administration ability

565
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
could do properly.

566
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is the thing we need,
the nut we need to crack.

567
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We need to empower everyone out there
to have its own computer with

568
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
its own node of those services.

569
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Of course, you are all thinking of
the FreedomBox now.

570
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That's a great example of a project who
wants to tackle precisely that problem.

571
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

572
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if my memory serves me well.

573
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's heavily based on Debian and it's doing
exactly that.

574
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But my question from the Debian
point of view is:

575
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
maybe this project should not only be
a spin-off of Debian,

576
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
should not only be a derivative distribution
of Debian,

577
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
maybe we should think at making something
like this a first class citizen in Debian.

578
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I don't know exactly what that means yet,
it's something we could think about

579
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
having the main administration interface
for Debian something

580
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that targets these specific scenarios.

581
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We could generalize that, we do not need
to target only specific plug devices

582
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because people at home might have desktop
computers, might have media center.

583
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They might want something like the
FreedomBox at home and

584
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
collaborate with others immediately.

585
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
My point here is that if our mission back
in the days was to

586
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
democratize free software by making it
easier to install free software

587
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on your machine, today our mission is to
democratize free software by making it

588
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
trivial to install some node of some
federation of free services on your machine.

589
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Another thing we could do,
it is the last one for me today,

590
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is to step in the free service debate.

591
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
When I started looking up these arguments
a few years back, I was surprised by

592
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the fact that it's still not clear what
it does mean to be a free service.

593
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
When I started working on free software
fifteen years ago,

594
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it was fairly clear what does
free software mean.

595
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Sure, it was some terminology debate
between free software and open source

596
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which still exists today,

597
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but the basic freedoms, the basic rights
you should have to call something

598
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
free and open source was fairly clear.

599
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That kind of intellectual debate had
already happened at the time.

600
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Today, where the problem of computations
moving away from indivual user

601
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is raging, there is no clear consensus
on that matter.

602
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There is some great work, for instance
there is the Franklin Street statement on

603
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
free network service,
I think that's a full ???,

604
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
dating back to 2008, six years ago, in
which you find a lot of very useful

605
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
recommendations for users, for software
developpers and for system administrators

606
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to make sure that you maximize your control
over your own computation on the network,

607
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but they take no stance on what it does mean
to be a free service.

608
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Is it enough to have something which is free,
do you need more specific license.

609
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There are some recommendation
on that point, but still,

610
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
there are no clear answers
to this question.

611
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There is another work by RMS in 2010
about Software as a Service or

612
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"service as a software substitute"
as he calls it.

613
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Here, essentially what you have is a main
recommandation about

614
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
not using Software as a Service at all.

615
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Essentially there is a recommandation of
doing your own computation

616
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on your own machines.

617
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I think that might be a generally good
recommandation but it's not gonna scale,

618
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's not gonna be enough in my opinion
to convince people

619
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
not to use very convenient services.

620
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Think we need more gradual and blurry
lines saying, encouraging people

621
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to keep computation closer to them,
to rely on federation of friends of people

622
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to do computation together.

623
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And we, as distribution people, could
make easier for them to do so.

624
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And then there is another work which is
"Network Services Aren't Free or Nonfree"

625
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which is a couple of years later, still by RMS,
which essentially tries to walk the fine line

626
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
between what's the difference between
a pure service, so a service that

627
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
just for instance convey messages,
as opposed to a service which does

628
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
computation that could have been
done instead on your machine.

629
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That's a very fine line to work, it's very
difficult to stay there and

630
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
what we might need there is a strong
opposition, actually, and we should try

631
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to replace everything which is centralized
with federated equivalent and say that

632
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we as free software people and distribution
people should work in that direction.

633
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So what we could do in Debian.

634
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Well, I think we should try to step
in this debate.

635
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Surprisingly for me, we still have no clear
answer to what it means to be a free service

636
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
today and we have quite a bit of
experience in Debian

637
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in leading debates in free sotfware.

638
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have created the DFSG which is being
used as an example for

639
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
many other communities, we have participated
in the GPLv3 discussion for instance.

640
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Our decisions of free license are looked
up by other projects.

641
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So we might have the authority and
the reputation to step in this debate

642
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and we also have a lot of technical
knowledge in the area.

643
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Being a distribution commited to free software,
we know a thing or two not only about

644
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
software freedom, but also about how you
deploy software, how difficult it is

645
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and how difficult it should be for people
to deploy free software.

646
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So I think we are in just the sweet spot
to actually enter this debate

647
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with the needed authority and make
a contribution to actually help people

648
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
realize what it means today
to use a free service.

649
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The concluding question
I have for you is

650
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"What's Debian take today
on liberating users?".

651
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Would we be happy enough to have Debian
on every machine in the world

652
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if people are using completely
remote services?

653
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

654
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that future which seems very much
the future that we have at hand.

655
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Pictures are gone, so there was a cloud
on the left,

656
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
there was Debian here and a sun here.

657
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
LaTeX, beamer or Tikz or something
is playing tricks on me.

658
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

659
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for this week and if you have any question
or comments in these topics,

660
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'm very much happy to hear about that.

661
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Thank's a lot.

662
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[applause]

663
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There seems to be a mic which is floating
around down there.

664
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] ??? quite a lot and quite brilliantly
about what cloud computing buzzwords

665
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
mean free software, but I think what important
battle we are actually losing is ???

666
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in the minds of people.

667
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] Why is it young developpers or
newcommers to free software

668
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
don't care about software being free?

669
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

670
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which license declare for their software
if any license is at all? and so on.

671
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?

672
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Zack] Well, a friend of mine we asked
a similar question I think once answered

673
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"What could they say more that
'Oh those young kids' ".

674
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

675
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to convey the importance that being
in control of our own computation had,

676
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or maybe it's just that the public that
is open to coding and

677
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
hacking is much larger than in the past so
we are reaching out other communities.

678
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

679
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to have basic knowledge of coding to
understand what's happening in the world,

680
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but maybe they just have different mission
than we had in the past.

681
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, very good question, I don't have
a very good answer, sorry.

682
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] Hello.

683
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

684
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
political issues and I see there's a challenge
between the sort of very individual focus

685
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of each person being able to use their own
computer as the wish which has its own values,

686
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but there's a different sort of value that
relates to power structures in general.

687
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, we're talking about not just how free
is each individual person but whether

688
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
an entity like Twitter, Google or Facebook
or some these other services

689
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is a very powerful entity that has power over
the majority of us who use their services.

690
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And so, I wonder if and I'd like your
thoughts on thinking about it

691
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
less as a "Is this software free?" but
about "Who is in power in the community?"

692
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and so in a democratic sense, you could have
the community that builds the tools together

693
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
as government structures or as mechanisms
for handling power that make the power

694
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
bottom-up and more democratic and maybe
that's more important than

695
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the technical status of each
individual user.

696
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Zack] So, as a concerned citizen and also
as a political activist,

697
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I very much share your concern.

698
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

699
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and have this kind of discussion
in a different circle.

700
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, as someone with activity in politics
and as a geek, I very much try

701
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to actually explain to politicians and
to activists the role of

702
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
what we are doing here in very technical
ways and the impact that it as

703
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on politics in general.

704
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And I think the ??? the talk later on
this evening might have

705
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a thing or two to say about that as well.

706
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So from our part we need to understand it
in some sense even if

707
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we advance a lot the status quo of user
control of technology

708
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that we had thirty years ago.

709
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have also started to lag behind
many other areas.

710
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Something that I wanted to mention before
but I fail to do so is that

711
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
when I was doing my computing in the
nineties, a lot of computations

712
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
were mediated by clearly defined
protocols.

713
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So we had RFCs or equivalent documents
by other organisations which were like

714
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
clearly marked paths to how to collaborate
technically on the internet

715
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and how to make software talk together.

716
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In a sense, that culture of interoperability
of protocols has actually started lagging

717
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
behind a lot with respect
to popular technology.

718
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So stuff like social networks, most of them
except the good ones that free software guys

719
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
try to build like pump.io or like diaspora,
well all those technologies started up

720
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
without any kind of interoperability
in mind.

721
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So technically I think we need to push
again on the direction of interoperability

722
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of protocols, and that's a technical
contribution that we could do that

723
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
will have an impact.

724
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You know, code is law, as Lessig was saying,
and that would have a technical impact

725
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on the power structures you mention.

726
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That's my thought on this matter.

727
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] I have an answer.

728
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Hello.

729
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I have an answer, sort of an answer
to the previous question.

730
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is of course the heart of the difference
between free software and open source.

731
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The difference between free software and
open source isn't nothing at all

732
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and it's not about licenses.

733
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's about goals and aims.

734
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Over the past decades, many of us have
chosen not to pick a fight with

735
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
open source people just for an easy life and,
you know, it's always easy to have somebody

736
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who might share some of your goals and
to be able to collaborate with them.

737
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But less and less is it becoming
the case that

738
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the goals of people who are doing open
source are the same as the goals

739
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of people doing free software.

740
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You can see that very clearly
in the responses from people like

741
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Google to things like the AGPL.

742
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And there are a lot of examples.

743
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, one of the things that we can do
to try and bring some of

744
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the new crop of developpers along with us
is to actually make it

745
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a bit more of a fuss about…

746
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You know, let's not come ??? all Stallman
about that,

747
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Stallman is not the best PR guy, but I think
Debian can do a lot better than he can

748
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and we've probably got
a lot more credibility.

749
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And individually, we have as well.

750
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What we need to do is we need to explain
our vision to those new developpers

751
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who mostly are just being, you know, they
see a open source marketing machine

752
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and we are something different.

753
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Zack] Thanks.

754
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.

755
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.

756
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So maybe one last or, Stefano, one last?

757
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Talkmeister] We can.

758
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Ok, one last question or comment?

759
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Q] Just a quick comment if I may.

760
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You talked about federated services and
facebook and dropbox and that sort of thing.

761
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I think maybe the issue here is less about
federated services but is about identity.

762
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
If I have my own dropbox alike and you have
your own dropbox alike,

763
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the problem is not that the two couldn't
talk to each other,

764
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we have no way of negotiation of identity
authentication, access kind of problem.

765
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I think maybe part of the answer to your
question is

766
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"Can we come up with some way of allowing
federated identity management

767
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for people in general and just us say".

768
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[Zack] I think this is very much related
to what I was answering before Aaron,

769
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in the sense "yes we could".

770
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have shown in the past that we can
come up with very smart protocols

771
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that allow people to technically
interoperate over the net.

772
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But we are coming to late for that.

773
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Those big entities which now have the power
to attract a lot of users to them

774
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
developped before those standard
that we could have used to make

775
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
smaller entities interoperate could
have been put in place.

776
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

777
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we are late in doing that work and
the question now is only

778
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"How could we do the technical work that
allows us to have smaller entities

779
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that interoperate for authentication or
everything else?" and also

780
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"How do we migrate from the status quo to
the ideal world that would be possible

781
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if those standards existed
in the first place?".

782
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

783
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
before reaching the optimal and more
federated situation which I think

784
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
would solve the problem.

785
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, thanks a lot.

786
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
[applause]