1 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can you hear me? 2 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Better. 3 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, hello everyone. 4 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Welcome again to DebConf, I guess. 5 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's a great pleasure to be back again at one DebConf and a great honor to be doing one of the opening talks. 6 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I confess I wasn't really expecting that honor. 7 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I just wanted to propose a session which was supposed to be a self held sessions for those of us that think there are some worries about where the free software is going in general. 8 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And the role distributions have to play in the current state of affairs. 9 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So this talk will be about a couple of journeys at once. 10 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The first journey is a journey through emotions, through good feelings about what we have achieved in Free Software over the past 15 to 20 or 30 years depending on how long you've been involved. 11 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The second journey is essentially my own journey through software freedom from the day I started discovering Free Software and what I've ended up doing since then. 12 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Starting with the positive news. 13 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is how I got involved myself in 1997. 14 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I understand that there are people in the room who have involved since way earlier than that, others that have been involved since way later than that. 15 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's my story. 16 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I hope you'll find 17 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When I started as a freshman in a computer class at university of Bologna, there was a huge tiping point, a huge hype point for the so-call opensource movement. 18 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That was the year the ??? has been published. 19 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That was the year ??? Netscape decided to opensource its own code. 20 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That was the moment in the history of free software when people were trying to sell to the industry what free software was doing, and I'm not using that word in a bad sense. 21 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So there was reasonable concern that without involvement of the industry, the free software movement wouldn't have got far. 22 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So they were trying to tell about free software in an industrial-friendly way. 23 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Essentially, the rhetoric at the point was that if you do development of software in the free software way, in a more open way, a more participative way, you will end up having better software and that by merely opening up you code you'll have these flocks of programmers coming to you project and end up helping you. 24 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A few years later, I realised that I personnaly didn't believe much in that idea: it's only because your software is open that it's gonna be better, but it was a fair thing to try at the time. 25 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What I discovered a bit later is actually what ??? was essentially the philosophy of free software. 26 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The fact that computer user should be in charge and in control of their own machine, that should have some basic freedom. 27 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You about the 4 freedoms, I'm not going to repeat them here, but my personal point is that the narrative of free software is something that resonated with me a lot at the time. 28 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As a student, I realised that by having free software at my fingertip as a computer student, I could debug any single layer of the software stack and look at how things are going. 29 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I didn't have to trust the teacher on how an operating system should be developed. 30 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was able to open up ??? in the linux kernel and look at the actual scheduling algorithm that was being implemented in the real kernel. 31 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Not that I really got all of it at the time but the possibility was just breathtaking for me. 32 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Later on, I ended up distilling the main intuition of free software, which is the one I used to explain free software to people, which is intuition of control. 33 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, I ended up believing that the main reason why I've been involved in this movement for about fifteen years is that I really believe that every single computer user, and that's a lot of people these days, should be in control over their own computations. 34 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Everything you're doing with a device which is mediated via software is controled by someone, either it is you or it is someone else. 35 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And the best episode, the best narrative to explain that to people that they've been using for quite a while is this passage from the novel "Makers" by Cory Doctorrow which is a bit long so I'm not gonna read it in detail, but essentially there is one character of the novel which is Lester which is explaining to another character the importance of controling your own devices, your own tools. 36 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The first example he takes is the example of the hammer, a physical hammer, and he goes on saying that if you own a hammer, essentially you could do whatever you want with it. 37 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You can use it for its main purpose, or you can use it for something completely different which was not meant to be its original purpose but it's you that decide. 38 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He compares that a ??? device which is the "Disney in a box" in the novel and Disney in this book is the big evil villain which is oppressing people and essentially Disney in a box is a glorified 3D printer that can only print what Disney wants it to print for that day. 39 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 One day, it will print a goofie character, another day it will print Donald Duck, but it's not you who decides. 40 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's Disney that decides what the printer is gonna print for you that day. 41 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You own the device but you are not in control of what the device does. 42 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The big quote for me is that if you don't control your life, you're miserable. 43 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This notion of essentially oppression is what has been motivating me for all these years. 44 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So the fact that if you are not in control of your own computation, then someone is oppressing you. 45 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Someone is usually the person or the company or whatever that has created the software, that has the power to change the software instead of you. 46 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is something that really ??? me. 47 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What I was doing at the time with my computer, well I was doing pretty standard stuff. 48 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was using some hardware we had at the time which was mostly desktop and local network servers. 49 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I didn't have a laptop because it was really expensive for a student so I did get a laptop much later. 50 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I was doing some content production, some content consumption. 51 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The kind of content I did produce at the time was mostly office suites, desktop publishing and this kind of stuff. 52 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was doing some communication, some email, some IRC, some newsgroup which was really cool at the time for geek communities. 53 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I was doing some software development as a newbie but it was what I was doing at the time. 54 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I also did some content consumption, some gaming which are arguably some content that someone else is producing for you to consume. 55 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was doing some web browsing. 56 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Internet was not as popular as it is today, but there were some websites you could find interesting. 57 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In that situation, with this kind of computing, the actual path to software freedom and to control was fairly clear. 58 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It was difficult, but it was fairly clear to me as a new activist in free software. 59 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What I should have done, what we all should have done to actually liberate people from the oppression of people controling our own computation. 60 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The idea is that while you have a lot of pieces of proprietary software which you do not control, what you need to do is to replace every such a component of proprietary software with a free software equivalent. 61 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Using some local application, some game, we need to replace it with an equivalent free game. 62 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We were using some client-server software, some mail ???, some mail client, some mail server, some IRC client, some IRC server. 63 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What we needed to do to actually empower people and liberate people was to rewrite those pieces of software with free software equivalents. 64 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It was difficult, because it was a lot of stuff to be rewritten, but it was fairly clear. 65 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The plan was clear. 66 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And also, luckily, we also had, at the time, all the heavy lifting was already in place. 67 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The GNU project existed ??? since quite a while, the Linux kernel existed already and it was working. 68 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So someone else with shoulders larger than ??? I had at the time had already done a lot of work for me and me and together with other free software activists, what I had to focus on was to rewrite proprietary application into equivalent free software application, possibly better. 69 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That was clear, was hard, but it was fairly clear. 70 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's where, I think, the notion of a free software project comes from. 71 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We use very often this term of free software project and never ended up really thinking about that before a few years ago and I think the reason why we call it free software project is that there is an objective. 72 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So there is a mission, ideally a time-limited one, and that mission is writing a replacement for proprietary applications using free software which is as good, possibly better than the original. 73 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Having a lot of free software projects around gives rise to a lot of releases. 74 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So what we were doing a lot at the time in the 90s was actually manually install software on our own machines. 75 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 To be fair, we also had, our lab was running some Red Hat machines at the time there were in that many packages available and we had to fairly often install soft by hand on the lab machines in our own directories and also on our computers at home. 76 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is a procedure you all know very well. 77 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You download a tarball, you run "configure", you run "make", you run "make install". 78 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The first time I saw, it that was kind of a magical recipe for me. 79 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Just follow these steps and you will get some software to play with. 80 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, except that every single step could fail, of course. 81 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Let's keep aside for the moment the fact that the website might be down but, you run "configure" and you miss some software you need to fetch from somewhere else. 82 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You run "make", you encounter some compilation problem. 83 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You run "make install", maybe the path will clash and so on and so forth. 84 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The problem with this procedure for install software we are using by hand is that you are essentially conflicting roles. 85 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You're mixing together the role of software user, the role of system administrator and the role of software developper. 86 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You need to have a little bit of all those skills together to be able to enjoy software. 87 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In a sense, a free software which works like this is essentially a very elistist thing. 88 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's only an elite which have all the needed skills who is able to enjoy the benefits of free software and is able to be in control of their own computation. 89 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is essentially the reason why distributions much earlier had been invented. 90 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We all know very well here what distributions do, they sit in between software developpers and software users and make it easy for you to actually use that software. 91 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We do installer work, we create installers, we create package managers, we do all the integration work that make different pieces of software work well together. 92 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We actually make life easy for final users. 93 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, for me, something that I started believing is that the ultimate mission of free software distributions is to actually democratize free software, to enable usert which do not have software development skills or do not have system administration skills, enable them to enjoy the benefit of free software. 94 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We offer very simple interface, we offer the equivalent of what these days are called appstores in which with one click, you can just install some software and enjoy the benefit of that software, in particular a free software. 95 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This for me the historical mission of distributions. 96 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Later on, in 1998, our lab decided to switch to Debian and I was really happy about that. 97 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We switch from Red Hat to Debian and I look out about this project, I start learning what this project does and I find out that not only this project Debian was actually up to the mission of empowering user by making it easy for users to use free software. 98 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you read the original announcement of Ian Murdock announcing the Debian project, we'll find this notion of being competitive with proprietary operating systems and it's really clear that the point is empowering users. 99 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I end up reading about this project and not only I found their mission they're up to is the mission I believe in, but I found out that the key intuition there is to make the project a community project. 100 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Not only the target are the users and empowering them, but also the way to reaching that objective is fostering a community that will work together to that goal. 101 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I got immediately hooked, I vividly remember the moment a collegue of mine, a student explained to me the anatomy of a Debian source package, the fact that it was a .orig.tar.gz, the fact that it was a diff.gz with the differences with respect to upstream, and all those metadata that was really thrilling for me from a technical point of view. 102 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A few years later, I ended up joining the nm-process. 103 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I was doing some OCaml development at the time, there were some libraries, OCaml libraries in Debian, others were missing and I said "Ok, maybe I should help and create some libraries for the project as well". 104 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I went through nm and there are a few thing I've leaned doing nm and also in the subsequent ten years or fifteen years or so. 105 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 One thing I've learned in all these years in Debian is the importance of being principled. 106 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Debian is a project that did not start from only technical means but also decided at some point that they needed some guidance, some clear guidance of what it should technically and what it shouldn't. 107 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And an important document where we have distilled this notion are the DFSG. 108 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 ??? a free software guidance which has been very influencial on the free software movement as a whole. 109 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They've been used as a base for the open source definition as you know, and what was very ??? for me is that commitment we had in Debian in keeping the main archive completely DFSG-free, keeping it completely free software. 110 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This commitment is depicted here by those fearsome character and his owner on a couch and it's mediating and triggering the NEW queue, supposedly, and the NEW queue is not necessarily the best way we could implement a system which triage all the software in the archive and to ensure it's DFSG-free but it shows our commitment to actually only follow the guidance we have set for ourselves. 111 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It was really motivating for me. 112 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The second thing I've learned and which will come handy in a bit, is the importance of the legal knowledge and legal geeks in the free software movement. 113 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Like it or not, free software as an ideal is philosophical mean, but its main implementation is through the legal system, is through copyright licenses. 114 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 To really ??? what's happening in free software in general, to understand where the free software movement is going, figuring out and really understang what's going on in the legal system is very important. 115 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In Debian, we know that pretty well, that's a stumbling block for many people when joining the Debian project. 116 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's something we insist people are at least basically familiar with and that's pretty characteristic of the Debian project. 117 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In the end, what I've learned is that in this quest that I feel very much myself against the oppression of someone else controling your own computation, law, if you hack around it smartly, can be a very useful ally, a very useful device to liberate users. 118 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Time passes, there was supposed to be an image here, which for some reason disappeared. 119 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And, we might argue that, these days, we have achieved a lot since that moment. 120 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If I look around the industry or, in general, if I look around computing as people are doing that, free software is a little bit everywhere. 121 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In the industry, there are some stats that claim that essentially every single software product you find on the market has, inside of it, a little bit of free software code. 122 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you look at all the different application stacks we have from webservers to education to clients to smartphones, you find a lot of free software, free software infrastructures that are everywhere. 123 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So these are just some stats ??? in the recent years and for instance if we look at one of the key target market for Debian ??? we'll find out one website over ten on the Internet in general is running Debian. 124 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If we include also some of our most popular derivatives such as Ubuntu, we'll find that more than 20% of the websites are running something which comes from our own work. 125 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And some of the recent hype on free software is coming from the Snowden revelation and most people are starting to be concerned about what the software they're using is doing and is turning to free software and is turning to stuff like Tails which is heavily Debian-based to actually see in which way we can help them foster their own security. 126 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In some sense, we have achieved a lot. 127 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In everything we do in computing, there is a little bit of what we have done in free software and also a little bit of what we have done in Debian. 128 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is pretty impressive for me. 129 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're in a place where I wouldn't have dreamed being when I started in 1997. 130 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's very impressive. 131 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 On the other hand, there are some reasons of concerns and this is the main thought I wanted to share with you. 132 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There are some technical reasons which we discuss often in free software circles like the fact that "Ok but most of these platforms are not 100% free software". 133 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you look at smartphones for instance, you will find a lot of non free code every here and there and the point can be made that either you have full control over your own computation, or you are not in control at all, because if your software stack is a single layer which is controlled by someone else, and is mediating all your communication, maybe you're not so sure that you are the real owner and the real controller for your own device. 134 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's a absolutely fair point. 135 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We can make some more technical points about for instance non free JavaScript. 136 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 More and more of our computations are happening in our browsers and are happening through code which is delivered to our browser by remote servers and this code is not free at all. 137 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I absolutely agree with that but the point I want to focus on today is actually what we call the cloud. 138 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 All my images are gone. 139 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You had a very nice image there, sorry. 140 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The remaining point and my main reason of concern is what is being called the cloud. 141 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Let allow me to be a bit generic here for a moment. 142 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I know there are very different ??? in what we call the cloud and will be specific in all of them in a bit. 143 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But for now I want to focus on the common trend that the cloud is bringing to computing these days. 144 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Computing today, for most people, in not much different from the kind of computing I was doing fifteen years ago. 145 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's the kind of computing that we do on very different hardware, we have way more smartphones, way more tablets than in the past and that's true. 146 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But the kind of activities we do − producing content, consuming content − is very similar. 147 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The big difference is the kind of technological stack we're using and where the computations are happening. 148 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 For most people today, the kind of office suites we use is no longer a software which is installed on your machine but it is Google Docs. 149 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm an academic myself, I'm very often forced to use some Google Docs applications to work with others, otherwise I'm free not to work with them, because it's a technological choice made by someone else. 150 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 For many people, e-mail, as you know, just mean GMail. 151 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 All our e-mails, even if your not using GMail ourselves, are passing through some GMail servers. 152 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Asynchronous communications still exist, but it is very often mediated to software like Skype or GTalk. 153 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And so on and so forth. 154 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You have seen this list very often. 155 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Consuming content, there as well, we are still doing gaming, we are still doing browsing but it's often mediated by platforms which are far away from us and just stream content to us or, in the specific case of web browsing, they are more and more often hosted by very few hosters in the world − which we often ??? to a walled garden − that can do whatever they want with our content. 156 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The point here is not demonizing those services. 157 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 People are using those services because they are convenient and there is a lot of network effect going on that makes it easy for other people to start using those services. 158 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's really not the point of demonizing those services. 159 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The point here is observing that interesting computations that we are doing as our job, as our life, are no longer happening on our machines, but are happening on other machines which are far away from us and which are not under our direct control. 160 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In this context, for me, I confess, what actually is the road to software freedom and to control, to enable people to control their own computation is no longer clear. 161 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's no longer enough to say "Well, we just need to rewrite Google of Facebook or Twitter in free software". 162 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's not enough, because even if you do that, you have the problem that when you are using a server you don't know if the code it is running is the one they claim it is running, so that's a very difficult problem to solve. 163 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And even if it were the case, where do you deploy yourself a Google-like architecture, or a Facebook-like architecture? 164 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You simply can't. 165 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It is no longer enough to just say "We just need to some software development, we just need to make it better than the alternative." 166 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There is a real tricky combination between software development and software deployment which not easy to see how to fix it. 167 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 At least for me, it's very ??? 168 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, what about distros? 169 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We are distro people, doing one of the most popular distro in existence. 170 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Are we winning or are we losing in this situation? 171 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 How are we doing in terms of our efforts? 172 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In a sense, we are very much winning. 173 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A lot of our work is being used to deploy those infrastructures. 174 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A lot of the infrastructure of the big companies are deploying on top of free software, if not direct on top of our very own systems, maybe modified here and there where they need to make things better as it is their own right given it's all free software. 175 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In that sense, we're winning. 176 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're increasing market share, ??? are being used a lot to to make infrastructure. 177 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But we are also losing in the sense that we are really not empowering users to be in control of their own computations. 178 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If our final users are the sysadmin that are running those infrastructures, for them we are doing great. 179 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We are making them be sure they are in control of their own infrastructure. 180 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But for the final users of those services, we are really not empowering them at the moment. 181 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So what I call the free software dark ages, which is an expression I actually borrowed from [name] ??? quite inspiring, is a situation in which we win on the end user market so every single device out there in the hand of people − desktop, laptop, even smartphones where right now we are not doing very well − all of this is running free software. 182 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 All of that is running Debian. 183 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, total world domination as we were talking about a long time ago. 184 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But all interesting computations, all the final user application which is being used to bring on with your digital life, are no longer happening on your devices, happening far away from you on computer you do not control, sometime with free software, sometime with non free software. 185 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But in any case, outside of your own control. 186 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In a sense, this is very worrysome for me because we have this ??? we are very popular. 187 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We are winning the war, we were using a lot of this war-like terminology when I started. 188 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But the war we are winning seems to become increasingly pointless because it's not being useful to actually empower users to be in control of their own computation. 189 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 To make things worse, there seems to be some cultural problems that might be just a perception of mind, maybe being too pessimistic, but it seems to me that, as developper communities are hacker communities, we are becoming way more lenient, way more ??? about the lack of control on the tools and on infrastructure we use to make free software. 190 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 More and more often we see free software developed on non-free infrastructure, meaning infrastructures which are built using non free software and which are anyhow centralized in the hand of a few hosters. 191 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The new generation of developpers which is coming up seems to be totally fine with that. 192 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm not gonna argue this point in much detail, there is a great essay by Mako that I encourage all of you to read, "Free software needs free tools", which actually make couple of points. 193 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 One is that by using non free software to make free software, we are sending out a very bad message. 194 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We are telling to the world that free software is good for you, that's why we are developing it, but it's not good for us because we are using non free tools to make it. 195 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's the kind of ??? in our advertising message, but it's also making the software we are creating indirectly less free, because if the favorite way to contribute to that free software is using some non free infrastructure, some non free tools, indirectly we're making people that only want to use free software less apt to contribute to that software. 196 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I really recommend reading that essay. 197 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But also technically, we are going back to a sort of a cage problem, which is also a problem which is called "the problem of the bug that noone can fix" by the FSF I think, and essentially we're creating software stacks in which some part of it is entirely free software, that we can debug and some other parts are non free software or software run by someone else, so we have lost the ability to debug the full stack. 198 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When I was starting to learning programming, this idea that I could debug everything from the end user I was writing myself for an assignment down to the kernel level was just exciting for me. 199 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We seem to be losing sight of this, a little bit. 200 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As a second cultural problem, we seem to be losing sight of how much help we could get from the legal system and from new legal solution that we might be in need of finding. 201 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 An example of that is the post open source software "POSS" debate which some of you might have run into. 202 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's a debate which actually observes that the new generation of free software developpers actually don't care about licenses. 203 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They just want to kick out their code, just put it on GitHub, not declaring their license at all and they're just fine with that. 204 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They want to be ??? to have the hassle of deciding first of all a license, second of all also some governance model for their projects. 205 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They just want to be hacking and doing, and not caring about those annoying details. 206 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This could be intervetedly interpreted in positive ways like says that we want the right to work on the code and to do whatever we want with that by default. 207 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We do not want to be expliciting which kind of rights we give and that's a very positive interpretation of this phenomenon. 208 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But in the end, for now, it is creating a huge bunch of code that we could not use as free software yet. 209 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 For instance we cannot include in Debian something that does not have a license at all. 210 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A second example is the debate about the non freeness of AGPL. 211 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you look up the history of free software, there is argument that GPL itself is not free. 212 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's an argument that was being used twenty years ago when the battle between copyleft and liberalizing was very high, was very harsh. 213 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And it's just recurring again. 214 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So maybe for some syntactically interpretation of our own guidance, we could make the point that something like the AGPL is non free, maybe. 215 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But the point is that the way we distribute software to final users is really changing. 216 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Twenty years ago or fifteen years ago, the main way to enable some user to use a piece of software was actually to make a copy of that software and give it to him or to her via the network or some media. 217 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And all those ???, that kind of conveying software is clearly distribution and that kind of activity used to trigger some sort of license ???. 218 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 These days, a software is no longer distributed that way, in large parts. 219 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's being used over the net and something like the AGPL is the equivalent of triggering some licensing condition via the main way of distributing, of giving access to some software. 220 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I want to enter in details in this debate. 221 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Those are just examples, for me they examples of the fact that we are kind of losing faith in how much the legal system and free software are intertwined. 222 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And this actually mixes very badly with the situation in which users are losing control because those computations are moving away from them. 223 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I think this situation, in general, in not going to fix themselves and we, as distribution people, have a role to play in fixing it. 224 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What could be a role for Debian in all this computing situation we have these days. 225 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The common trend in the so called cloud seems to be that computations are moving away from user devices. 226 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We cannot just say "Well just don't use anything cloudy", because it is convinient, people will want to use that. 227 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We need to do something different. 228 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As distribution people, we could do a lot, I think, and I have a couple of thoughts to share with you that are different depending on the so called service model of the cloud. 229 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 One of the first service model of the cloud you might have heard about is "Infrastructure as a Service" where essentially you have servers that give virtual machines to people and essentially you get to administer your own machine wich is a virtual machine on a virtual machine server controlled by someone else. 230 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is potentially very good for people because it is lowering the barrier you need to have your own server. 231 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When I first set up my own server with friends, at the end of the 90's, we had to by some machine, to find someone kind enough to host it, pay the hosting fees and so on and so forth. 232 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It was something that was by far not at all accessible to the random user. 233 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Theses days, a lot of people can simply go to some virtual machine provider, rent a virtual machine with one-click button and they have their own machine to administer. 234 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Maybe they don't have the skill to administer it, that's a different problem, but you are definitly lowering the barrier to access, to have you own server and do your own remote computation. 235 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As Debian, we are doing pretty well in this area, I think. 236 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're offering technology like OpenStack and other competitors of OpenStack, which seems to be the market leader on that market which are entirely free software.