NB: Over two years ago, I affirmed that I wanted to write and share more personal thoughts on my blog. Not only the professional and fully-polished things. Looking back, I haven’t really done that. Being a part-time perfectionist, I get stuck on the production value of the things I make. I feel like I have to get it just right before publishing. I have several unpublished stubs started on my blog (19 as of publishing time, to be precise). However, I have not yet overcome the hesitation of being content with a stub post just being a stub post. After all, if Wikipedia can do it, why can’t I? Furthermore, I can also write for the purpose of my own satisfaction and not the satisfaction of others.

So, here goes.

Me? Not represented? 🔗

After the Inclusion & Diversity summit ended and I returned to my hotel, I entered a thought loop. There was this uncomfortable idea stuck in my head that as a white American male, I didn’t feel represented there. Which depending on your view, either sounds very ironic or it might seem obvious (duh!). However, I did not want to suppress this uncomfortable feeling. I wanted to interrogate it, understand where it came from, and identify why I felt this way.

First, I came to see my feeling of under-representation was not (only) as a white American male—but instead as a privileged ally. Many speakers during the day called out issues in our industry, shared their work as advocates and champions in working to address these issues, or did both. But in our divided and divisive world of the 2020s, a feeling of frustration slowly overcomes me. Never all at once, but more often like the tides of the ocean—slowly rising, rising, until everything is underwater. What are my role and purpose? I care about DEI issues and I have made an effort to do what I can in the last eight years to make Open Source more diverse, more inclusive, and more equitable. I attempt to spend my privilege on others who don’t have the privilege and power that I was assigned at birth.

Noticing the white narrative. 🔗

However, at the same time, I can’t help but feel there is a narrative about people who look like me and come from where I come from. That narrative is white supremacy. The white supremacy narrative can be an integral part of identity to people who also look like me and come from places like I do. The narrative often comes from a place of anger. The narrative is often hateful. That context is understandable because the white supremacist narrative is always harmful to people who do not look like me and come from different places than I do. My daily life is least impacted by the white supremacy narrative.

However, I am not saying that white supremacy is unreal. On the contrary, Western media, news, and opinion articles quickly provide several easy affirmations that a white supremacy narrative holds real weight.

The paradox of the white narrative 🔗

Yet, I feel the narrative is also the exact problem. Does a white supremacy narrative override other narratives that a white person could relate with? I remembered a time when I took a History of Women in Science & Engineering course during my undergrad studies. While discovering hidden stories in history of accomplishments, struggles, and successes of women in STEM over hundreds of years, I was also intrigued to read about the allies who helped them. The allies I read about were white men who spent their privilege as sponsors to many of these early women innovators. They shared their own resources and enthusiasm as an act of asserting both the value of the women they supported and the work they did.

It was doubly sad to me that history relegated several of these stories to the sidelines, both the stories of these women innovators and the stories of their allies. These stories of early allies are under-represented because most often, they are simply not told.

No savior complexes. 🔗

At the same time, an alternate narrative to white supremacy must also not be a savior complex or white savior-ism narrative. True allyship does not look like a savior complex. The historical view could easily jump toward a conclusion with a savior complex narrative. There are no saviors; the only one we can truly save is ourselves. We can support, mentor, and sponsor, but there is no magic, quick solution that makes everything better.

In today’s world, I feel that healthier narratives are also not well-represented. I strongly believe in words that I attribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today in the United States, white supremacy is going more mainstream (again). It is also one of the most visible narratives of White identity. This begs a question of how do we influence the narrative and also inspire what a better, healthier “whiteness” can mean? How do we promote stories of transformative love, incredible allyship, and true compassion? There are many stories in history if you look closely. But often they are relegated to the periphery and cast aside, alongside the experiences of other white people who fit outside the societal power structure of White society. We need these stories told too, should we create a more equitable society that allows everyone to realize their innermost human potential.

Where do we go from here? 🔗

I write this without full answers. My motive to write is because this thought comes up from time to time for me. Sometimes I just long for better role models. I want a society where more white people lend their support and power for dismantling hate and destruction. I want more white people who use their privilege and power as superpowers for love and justice. A future default narrative for whiteness should not feature pain and center hate. This is in spite of what is an undeniable part of the legacy and history. Yet that is the heart of it. I want the mainstream narrative to change. I want us to take real steps toward reparation to atone for that legacy and history.

But it is like they say, “it is hard to be what you can’t see.” Sometimes I feel exasperated by the narrative staring back at me and my ancestry. My identity as a white American man is bound by nature of my birth. But perhaps instead of waiting for the right story to be written, perhaps this is my own action item. I should be better at writing my own story. The only person I have to do it for is myself.

Photo by Rishabh Dharmani on Unsplash. Modified by Justin Wheeler.

I am opposed to the impact of Export Administration Regulations by the United States as it pertains to free and open source software. I am a strong believer that the impact of these regulations are most harmful to all free & open source software communities at an individual, human level. When I saw this discussion at the Fedora Council level, it offered me an opportunity to reflect on my own feelings about these regulations, and also to share an opinion on how I believe Fedora Linux could truly live up to its certification as a Digital Public Good to ensure a more equitable world.

Here is what I wrote to the Fedora Council, and perhaps also to anyone reading from Red Hat’s legal team:

Hi, I would like to add a counter-opinion, of course one that holds no weight as an official vote.

As Fedora Linux is forced to this decision by its relationship to its legal sponsor, Red Hat, I therefore believe it is also the responsibility of Red Hat to seek a solution that does not deny an individual their right to realize the Four Freedoms of Free Software on the basis of geography or citizenship.

I recognize no policy is being changed here. It is a deliberate clarification of rules that were always in effect. Yet this ticket opens the context behind the policy for greater scrutiny, and I posit the context is harmful both to the Fedora Project and to Red Hat.

This policy is harmful for diversity and inclusion, and compromises Fedora’s position to be an innovative platform built by a global community. The U.S. laws and regulations driving this decision exist within a specific context, but that context is grossly incompatible with the dynamics of inclusive Free & Open Source communities. In practice, these laws and regulations deny individuals (really, other human beings) of their ability to be a beneficiary of the open licenses we employ for creating our work, collaborating on it together, and sharing it with others.

I see two outcomes of accepting this as an unchangeable norm.

Firstly, it creates confusion, doubt, and feelings of ill intent. These laws and regulations are meant to impact governments and nation-states. In a Free & Open Source community such as ours, these regulations impact individual people. Not governments or nation-states. As an example, a Fedora community member, Ahmad Haghighi, was recently permanently removed from the Fedora Community. In a few quick clicks, Ahmad’s legacy in the project was erased. As a precedent, even if someone’s contributions were not “supposed” to be accepted in the first place, it does not sit well with me that any one person’s legacy of contributions can so easily be removed from project records.

Secondly, it challenges the vision and foundations of the Fedora Project. Particularly our vision statement and the Friends Foundation. When I contribute to the Fedora Project, I do not see people as a citizen of this-country or that-country. I see them as my peers and fellow Fedorans, helping meet that shared vision of creating “a world where everyone benefits from free and open source software built by inclusive, welcoming, and open-minded communities.” As an American citizen, I know my country makes such discriminations about large groups of people based only on their nationality, but as a contributor to Free & Open Source communities, I see people by their individual character and intention to be a part of our shared vision. But how can we truly aspire to this vision if we are consciously making deliberate exclusions, even if they make little to no sense in our own context? This geographic restriction policy sits in contrast to the vision and purpose we spell out “on paper”.

I understand why Fedora leadership is taking this action due to Fedora’s legal and sociopolitical relationship to Red Hat, an American incorporation subject to American laws and regulations. To an extent, the hand of Fedora is forced.

But I believe this is a great opportunity for Red Hat to be an enabler of Fedora’s First Foundation. Previously, Microsoft stood up for Iranian developers and successfully set a precedent about how the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) treats such cases. I found this excerpt from Nat Friedman’s announcement to resonate:

Over the course of two years, we were able to demonstrate how developer use of GitHub advances human progress, international communication, and the enduring US foreign policy of promoting free speech and the free flow of information. We are grateful to OFAC for the engagement which has led to this great result for developers.

Advancing developer freedom: GitHub is fully available in Iran - github.blog

I believe Red Hat’s legal team should take a stand for individuals in embargoed countries to remain a beneficiary of the free and open source licenses that enable a community Linux distribution like Fedora to exist in the first place.

After all, in Fedora, we are well-known for being first in the Open Source space for innovative new ideas and approaches. We know Fedora Linux is a digital public good that should be accessible to all and everyone. But to make this a reality, the Fedora Project cannot be first here on its own. We need our friendly primary sponsor, Red Hat, to help us clear this burden, which is brought on by our connection to Red Hat in the first place.

I’ll close this counter-opinion with an excerpt from our First Foundation:

“However, the Fedora Project’s goal of advancing free software dictates that the Fedora Project itself pursue a strategy that preserves the forward momentum of our technical, collateral, and community-building progress. Fedora always aims to provide the future, first.”

From What is Fedora all about?

Here is a chance to be clear on the future we want to provide and for whom.

Background photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Mahatma Gandhi

I believe in the value of upholding the Open Source Definition as a mature and dependable legal framework while recognizing the OSI needs to work better with works that are not Open Source. My ambition as a candidate is to support existing work to enable a more responsive, more agile Open Source Initiative.

Twitter: @jwf_foss

Why should you vote for me? 🔗

I bring a public sector perspective to a conversation where it seems missing, despite the dependent relationship of the public sector to Free and Open Source works. In my work, I provide Open Source mentorship and coaching to humanitarian-driven start-ups hailing from 57 countries. I am an excellent communicator, I understand a subset of challenges faced by Open Source communities, and I have a collaborative nature.

I am also a millennial. The GPL was first drafted before I was born. My lived experience with Free Software and Open Source gives me a vantage point not well-represented in Open Source legal and policy work. My personal experience with Free and Open Source software is impacted by years of untangling my own digital life from technology decisions made for me, not by me. With that in mind, I realize not everyone can afford to be a Free Software purist, but we can still uphold the values of Open Source even if we do not use it exclusively.

Who am I? 🔗

I work as an Open Source Technical Advisor at UNICEF in the Office of Innovation. I manage and support an Open Source Mentorship programme for start-up investments and teams building Open Source products and communities from more than 57 countries. I also provide Open Source support to other UNICEF colleagues and recently coordinated UNICEF Innovation’s participation in the [on-going, at publication time] Outreachy round.

Outside of work, I have contributed to the Fedora Project for almost six years. I am soon ending a year-long term as the Diversity & Inclusion Advisor to the Fedora Council. I am a founding member of the Fedora Community Operations and Diversity & Inclusion teams. 

What are my qualifications? 🔗

I first contributed to Open Source as a teenager. I was a community moderator and staff member of the open source SpigotMC project. There, I handled user reports for a community forum with over 400,000 registered members. This is one of the most unique communities I have worked in, as the Spigot Community is a population of hundreds of thousands with an age demographic concentrated between ages 13-25.

Additionally, I am on the advisory board of Open @ RIT, the Open Source Programs Office for the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. This enables me to work more closely with academia, which has a growing interest in the growing ecosystem of academic Open Source Program Offices.

Finally, I regularly work with teams building Open Source solutions in support of children and UNICEF’s core work. I have lived experience of coaching teams on Open Source best practices across six continents. I have seen where Open Source worked well and where it didn’t. I bring this background and perspective into the work I would do as a member and representative elected by the Open Source Initiative constituency.

In summary, my lived experiences in Open Source, my connection to academic Open Source, and the humanitarian focus of my work make me a uniquely-qualified candidate for the OSI Board.

Interview responses 🔗

Luis Villa published four interview questions for OSI Board candidates on Opensource.com. I originally tweeted my response, but I copied it here for wider visibility too.

Q1: What should OSI do… 🔗

“…about the tens of millions of people who regularly collaborate to build software online (often calling that activity, colloquially, open source) but have literally no idea what OSI is or what it does?”

I am excited at the opportunity to contribute here. The UNICEF Office of Innovation (and my own Open Source Mentorship programme) rely on the Open Source Definition to guide our international Open Source work, even if we are still learning how to do it best. But without the OSD as a guiding light, our work is much harder. My team is well-positioned to be an advocate and voice of support for the Open Source Definition in policy environments where Open Source is not. This relates to on-going Giga connectivity work to connect schools worldwide to the Internet for equitable education opportunities for children.

So to directly answer the question, we have a conversation. Avoid anger when others choose software that is not Open Source. Avoid exasperated frustration when people pick licenses that are not Open Source. But the first step is always to teach & educate on the stories, values and history of the Free/Open Source community.

Q2: If an Ethical Software Initiative sprung up tomorrow, what should OSI’s relationship to it be? 🔗

The good folks behind the Ethical Source movement have done so. The OSI needs to be open to collaborate and engage with other orgs who steward legal works that do not adhere to the OSD.

I want to invite the Ethical Source folks into the conversation. How can we better partner together? If elected, I would commit myself to organizing a public town hall or community discussion with the Ethical Source folks. Coraline Ada Ehmke, Tobie Langel, and many other folks are doing great work in this space. So, let’s collaborate and work together.

Q3: When a license decision involves a topic… 🔗

“…on which the Open Source Definition is vague or otherwise unhelpful, what should the board do?”

The OSI needs to improve at saying what it is not. We are more clear on what the OSD is than we were even last year. As a candidate, I don’t have crazy ideas for the Definition. But there are things that are not Open Source. The world is changing.

We need to adapt. We must be nimble in changing with the world, or the values and motives of the original Free/Open Source movement are at risk of volatility. As a candidate, if presented with an unclear situation, I would take one of two options:

1. If the proposed work stands against a principle of the OSD, it should not be approved as such, or the OSD becomes meaningless; OR
2. Take an interpretive, “living document” view of the OSD for new copyleft innovations where the OSD is not clear or ambiguous.

For context, I am a copyleft believer. Promoting and advocating for the stability and integrity of Open Source licenses is a fundamental part of my interest as a candidate for the Board.

Q4: What role should the new staff play in license evaluation (or the OSD more generally)? 🔗

I don’t have an answer to this one. Foundations are mostly new to me. I would defer to expertise and listen to what others with more years have to say. I want to better understand the capacity and ambition of the OSI to take on new work with a steady staff.

I am a collaborator by nature and a team player. So, I want to enable the work for the OSI to be more agile and responsive in what I see as core, critical work.

That’s it. If you have specific questions, you are welcome to get in touch with me on Twitter or add a comment below.

I don’t say that casually either. I have involuntarily found Open Source as my calling. Or my people. I contribute to Open Source because I love to collaborate and work together with other people. This challenges me. It humbles me in a way that I know I can always learn something new from someone else. For this, Open Source and Free Software have enriched my life. They have also given me, again involuntarily, an odd but productive way of coping with my own mental health issues, anxiety, and depression.

So how do I make sense of the emotions and feelings I have now? How do I untangle this complicated web of events and reactions by other people? To ignore it doesn’t seem possible. If I remove emotion, I am left with a purely rational motive to involve myself in this contemporary issue. My work, profession, and career goals are directly affected by however this discussion goes. There is no way out for me. It’s my job, so I have to care. But if you add emotions back in, to stand still and remain idle is heartbreaking. To do nothing is to commit to defeat. Resignation. The darkness.

Yet what is there to do? The only thing Stallman ever directly gave to me in life was an email explaining elegantly how there was nothing he could do for the Minecraft GPL community fiasco. At a time when I was so personally lost as I saw a community I love tear itself apart, he stood by idly as the so-called steward of these licenses that I was just too naïve to believe in. That experience to me now is amplified in the light of the much more egregious things he is accused of.

So, the Free Software Foundation welcomes Richard Matthew Stallman back to its board. Wonderful. Congratulations Mr. Stallman. I am going to pause for a moment of sadness and hurt as I contemplate the impact of this moment on our fragile movement, which has much bigger enemies today than it has in its 40 year legacy. But then…

I will move on. Because we have to. The only way is forward.

This blog post was first written on August 28th, 2020.

Today is a sad day. Chadwick Boseman is dead. At 43 years old, he lost a terminal battle with stage IV colon cancer. As his great light dims, I am left to wonder what loss will happen next in 2020.

But like the ashes of a phoenix, we will rise. His death reminds me of the fierce urgency of now, as said by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That in the moment of darkness that follows death, a new bright light will emerge. It is just so human for us to cling to the embers of hope, in the fear that we will one day be delivered from suffering.

Boseman was a social leader and source of inspiration for many. His life and many roles championed racial equity on the Hollywood screens. Boseman was passionate about what he did. He led a committed life.

Boseman’s death caused me to reflect on the definition of Freedom in the movement I am embedded within: the Free Software movement. Yet in this community I value, there are seeds of discontent. The fierce urgency of now has revealed that systemic social injustices continue to exist in our society, as they have for centuries. The generational question we must answer as witnesses to this moment is: will we continue to tolerate the systemic faults within our society? Or must we imagine a more fair society? A more just society? I know we can because we have to.

On the origins of Software Freedom 🔗

A background on the Software Freedom movement is helpful to understand this discourse on freedom.

Free Software is a social movement born in the 1980s in North America. In the beginning, it was mostly a set of ideals and values set forth by MIT computer scientist Richard Stallman. Stallman witnessed a dramatic shift in how the free market distributed software in the 1980s. Previously to then, software was usually trivial; an afterthought. Software was freely shared between companies, universities, and individuals. Part of this is to blame on the industry’s intent focus on hardware during the Cold War. At the time, there was no standardization to hardware development, so software source would have to be rewritten to compile on different hardware architectures from competing vendors. However, this mindset eroded in the 1980s. There were a few lead architectures at the time, mostly championed by Intel. Software had to be compiled less often. Now, this freely shared source code could be repurposed much more easily.

At this point, the software industry went mainstream. Software began to receive acute focus by companies with computer science talent. Talent needs moved beyond hardware. Stallman saw all this, and believed the shift was at a great loss to the personal freedoms of the individual. So he coined “Software Freedom”, and a movement formalized.

With that background, the word “Freedom” has a specific, coded meaning to people who believe in the principles of Software Freedom. Software Freedom protects a set of digital rights that the movement leaders first advocated for in the 1980s and 1990s. The Four Freedoms (to use, to study, to share, to improve) are entrusted to the individual user of a computer system.

Freedom in 2020 🔗

However, it is 2020. Not 1985. Not 1991. 2020.

Questions about what Freedom means could never be more removed from the context of right now. Software Freedom asserts rights fully-realized by participants in the new digital society. Yet billions of people on Earth remain unconnected to the Internet. How can you realize rights that were never accessible to begin with?

Even if you are participating in digital society, freedom to read source code and make changes to it are just one of many different examples of freedom. But what other definitions exist?

The freedom to be safe asleep in your home without being gunned down by those entrusted to protect you.

The freedom that your children may live in a world where they may realize their fullest potential.

The freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In comparison, the freedom to read the source code of the web browser that keeps crashing on an unsupported device does not practical value to people who have different questions in the pursuit of freedom.

Reconciliation and intersections 🔗

But surely there is somewhere we can reconcile these different definitions of freedom. They may conflict at times but they are not in opposition to each other. There must be a way to realize both the freedoms of the individual to live a better life, and the freedoms of witting or unwitting participants in a digital world governed by increasingly invisible hands.

The intersection is surprising. Before identifying it, it is important to understand its purpose. The purpose of the intersection of these two definitions of freedom is to unify and empower people to be in control of their own destinies. Our destinies and futures are influenced but not entirely controlled by our environments. Both types of freedom believe in the right of the individual to understand the ways a system works, in order to understand how the system impacts them.

Said simply, the purpose is inclusion. The purpose is to bring together. The purpose is to empower. The purpose is give individuals the tools to shape their own destinies.

The name of this intersection is digital intersectionality.

Digital intersectionality makes inclusion a first-class citizen. It must take an intersectional approach from the outset if it is to accommodate the hyper-globalized world we live in. Albert Einstein once reflected in a letter to schoolchildren in Japan about his great delight in being able to communicate across such distances—something that was unheard of at the time. It is a cute memory, but also emphasizes the ways the world has changed since the most widely-known events of human genocide. Digital intersectionality has no borders. Its borders are decentralized; its borders may or may not have nationality. Copper wire, fiber lines, satellite receivers; these are the conduits that digital intersectionality resides in.

Digital intersectionality must be about inclusion. Digital intersectionality by definition must always be intersectional. Digital intersectionality must always consider the role of the individual in contributing to healthy, collective society. Digital intersectionality must embrace love.

What now? 🔗

Chadwick Boseman is gone. But we are not.

We are in the same world. Breathing the same air. Living under the same sun, and the same stars. As I see the void and grief left behind in his wake, as I look around me in a global pandemic that places the heaviest burdens on those with the most to bear, as I continue to see the effects of unjust systems perpetuate, I am thinking more about my own role in shaping the world we must create.

So I will continue to advocate and celebrate both freedoms, software freedom and inner freedom, under the mutual banner of digital intersectionality.

Special thanks to my early editors!

This post does not describe what the Principles are (click that link to learn more about them). This post describes the story behind the Principles, and how our Sustain Working Group worked together over three months of virtual facilitation during the COVID–19 crisis to build these Principles.

Overview 🔗

This blog post is a story, or perhaps open source lore. So, here is the abridged summary:

1. The Sticky Idea: How did a discussion topic at a one-day open source sustainability conference evolve into a three-month extended collaboration?
2. Facilitation, Roosevelt-style: The people are here. How do you facilitate a conversation with no scope and few bounds?
3. Is there a next chapter to this story?: The Working Group is winding down. What happens to the Principles next?

If you are hooked, read on.

The Sticky Idea 🔗

How does a discussion topic at a one-day conference evolve into an inter-organizational, international collaboration that spans three months?

When the accountability and transparency discussion groups formed at Sustain Summit 2020, none of us knew what would come after the event. Not to mention, there were several different sustainability topics explored at the Summit.

So, the conversation about corporate accountability was about the same as every other conversation during that morning: someone was motivated enough to step up and say, “I’ll do it – I’ll facilitate this conversation!”

Open Source Accountability Goals 🔗

Duane O’Brien volunteered to lead facilitation on defining goals for open source accountability. Duane proposed four goals to iterate on in the Summit break-out groups:

1. Set and publish a goal for open source contribution relative to value capture
2. Adhere to principles of authentic participation
3. Publish documentation of open source policies, processes, and project governance
4. Well defined reporting process that is publicly available

The morning discussions broadly focused on these goals. After the ice was broken and conversation was flowing, themes and patterns emerged in the stories we shared with each other. Later that day, Allen Gunn asked me if I would lead an afternoon discussion session. The second goal, these principles of authentic participation, were personally interesting to me, and the morning group was engaged too. So I said, “Yes, I’ll do it!” Even though I did not really have any idea what I was going to do yet.

Facilitation of Authentic Participation discussion 🔗

After lunch, I gathered folks for the discussion group to discuss what authentic participation means. If we could propose a basic set of principles that we agree on, could this be a useful tool for the pain points of stories shared in the morning session?

The afternoon discussion was insightful, but lacked firm conclusions. We had great ideas and lots of stories, but nothing to tie them together. I collected email addresses of folks who wanted to continue engaging on the Principles of Authentic Participation. However, I wasn’t sure what the next step would be at the time.

At the Summit, I committed to facilitation of a public Discourse forum discussion, but some attendees voiced that Discourse was not accessible for them. To compromise without exhausting myself across too many platforms, I promised to host a few online discussions for folks to gather and talk about these things again later.

The embers were hot on this discussion at the Sustain Summit. But it was still just embers. How do we get these embers to “spark” into something bigger? Enter the Fireside Chats.

Facilitation, Roosevelt-style 🔗

So, skip ahead a couple weeks. I was ready to push the conversation forward. The time was right for the first follow-up email to the discussion group participants. As promised, I opened a Discourse discussion that summarized our notes from the conference and asked open-ended questions. Later on, I announced the first of four Fireside Chats. The Fireside Chats became the primary vehicle of collaboration for the working group.

Text-based communications are my preference. But video?? I would have to swallow my introverted shyness if I was going to lead this. I never facilitated an online discussion group before. There were also not many public examples to learn from either. The style I took to the Fireside Chats was mostly my own. I relied on my past experience of facilitating open source project meetings and development to drive these Fireside Chats. And I borrowed a little inspiration from former American president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the 1930s/1940s.

For the first Fireside Chat on 2020 February 28th, I had no idea what I was doing. I prepared a loose agenda, but I left it broad so people could bring their own interests and passions into the conversation. I figured doing this would allow people to bring their own needs, desires, and wants to the conversation. It was unrealistic to expect a collaboration driven by my own motivations.

A successful collaboration requires all participants to have an opportunity to satisfy their own personal motivations for showing up in the first place. So, my approach centered our collaborative work on the group and not just myself, to avoid a high initial interest that dwindles down over time.

How did facilitation start? 🔗

The first Fireside Chat was exploratory. It was our first time talking about the Principles since the Sustain Summit. We caught back up on where we left off, detailed what we wanted to get out of this collaboration, and began scoping out what we thought we could accomplish together.

Although the first chat was mostly unstructured, it was essential to to identify themes and ideas that led to more focused, structured discussions for the next three Fireside Chats. The Discourse thread was also useful as an accessory for the Fireside Chats. I published notes from each Fireside Chat on the Discourse thread, and there was some asynchronous discussion between Fireside Chats.

Beyond the first Fireside Chat, the agendas became easier for me to write and the feedback became more focused. Fortunately, most of this work happened in public on the Discourse thread. So, if you are curious for more details on how the final three Fireside Chats went, take a look at the discussion thread.

Is there a next chapter to this story? 🔗

For now, the Principles of Authentic Participation Working Group is going dormant. We met our original goal of drafting some basic principles.

So, now what happens? So, let’s try to predict the future! (That can’t be that hard, right?)

My hope is that the Principles of Authentic Participation leads to more story-telling about what it means to authentically contribute to open source, whether you are an individual or an organization. To help curate the stories, I created a template to encourage folks to share them with us. The template provides question that makes it easy for a maintainer to copy and paste the story into our published Principles of Authentic Participation website.

Whether this hope comes true or not, we will see. But the Principles have a life of their own now. It doesn’t mean the Working Group will never meet again, or that we won’t revisit these ideas over time. But these Principles are now the “property” of the community to continue building. I will continue to participate where I can to curate stories about the Principles.

Closing thoughts 🔗

My hope in sharing this story is to help other facilitators and activists in the open source world approach digital-only organizing. Digital facilitation and organization is a skill we are all learning, for better or worse, in a COVID-19 world. But it isn’t a new skill. Lots of folks have been doing this for a long time, especially in the digital-first world of open source.

So, I hope this paints a picture of how we pulled off the Principles of Authentic Participation and how others can take what we did and improve on our processes.

It is possible to work collaboratively with new people on digital initiatives across different backgrounds and sectors. Remote facilitation is someone being brave enough to step up and lead, even if they have no idea what they are doing. After all… isn’t that what many other white American men like me do anyways? So can you.

Why does this matter? 🔗

This exploration and thought experiment is important to understand when revisiting social movements in technology in the current day. In the FOSDEM 2020 talk Mike and I gave, we presented three possible digital “freedoms” for artificial intelligence. The rights-based approach we presented at FOSDEM 2020 was inspired by the origin of the Free Software movement.

But to understand how we got to today with thousands of contributors to the Linux project, billions of dollars in open source company buyouts, and the words “open source” used on mainstream cable news channels, we have to start from the beginning, in 1983.

27 Sept. 1983: GNU Project announced 🔗

On 27 September 1983, the GNU Project was announced by Richard Stallman. The GNU Project was a collection of Free Software tools for building a free operating system. But it was also more than that. The GNU Project came with a vision to give computer users freedom and control of their use of computers. To do this, the GNU Project advocated for four fundamental freedoms:

• Run software in any way desired
• Copy and distribute the software
• Study it (i.e. reading the source code)
• Modify it and make changes

Today, we call these the Four Freedoms.

So, the GNU Project was founded with these fundamental freedoms as the motivation for why they did what they did. It was more than shipping code for code’s sake, but to lead by example in how software could be developed without sacrificing the rights of users.

4 Oct. 1985: Free Software Foundation founded 🔗

Next, skip ahead to 4 October 1985. Two years after the launch of GNU, the Free Software Foundation (F.S.F.) is founded to support and sustain GNU and the Free Software movement. The values of the GNU Project were important and valuable, but it wasn’t enough to leave them out in the world on their own.

At first, the F.S.F. focused on employing software developers to work on Free Software and the GNU Project. Later, the F.S.F. transitioned to legal and structural issues to support the Free Software community.

So, it is one thing to have your values and ethics out there, but they need to be protected and respected by the rest of the world too. The F.S.F. represented the sustainability of protecting these rights and beliefs, originally put forth by GNU.

While the F.S.F. does help sustain those rights, how does a nonprofit foundation actually enforce these rights in practice?

25 Feb. 1989: GNU General Public License created 🔗

Finally, we skip ahead four more years to 25 February 1989: the first version of the GNU Public License (G.P.L.) is created. This is the license that gave “copyleft” a name. It was written and released for the GNU Project, but the license itself was stewarded by the F.S.F.

The G.P.L. put power in the hands of individual people and activists to shape how others used their software. Thus, copyleft is put into a practical legal policy. In a sense, the G.P.L. allowed software developers to place the Four Freedoms at the core of their code.

Although enforcement of copyleft licenses has a blemished history, it was still the “teeth” in translating these values and values to the rest of the world. It took inspiration from how copyright was not something often considered when distributing software until the early 1980s.

And thus, copyleft becomes a radical invention in software with the proliferation of the G.P.L., especially in its adoption in prominent projects like the Linux kernel.

Is the past relevant to social movements today? 🔗

So this was a lot of history. Is the past relevant to where we are today? First, consider how the early Free Software movement responded to these emerging societal issues in the 1980s.

Free Software was a response to the changing ecosystem of software distribution. Software became more valued because of a standardization on hardware that didn’t exist previously. There were simply fewer architectures to compile for!

Suddenly, the value of software increased. It became a commodity.

Before this commodification of software, the Four Freedoms were, in a sense, the default way of distributing and sharing software. After commodification, this was no longer true. The Four Freedoms were rooted in a belief that there are essential rights that belong to all users of computers and computer systems. Stallman observed this change directly at the MIT Media Lab in the 1970s and early 1980s. This motivated him and many others to stand up for Software Freedom by asserting these freedoms.

To respond to commodification of software, Free Software took a freedom-based approach to established their values, as the Four Freedoms. So, looking back 40 years ago, is it possible to extend and make the past relevant again in today’s changing world?

Before we can answer that, we have to first ask. How has the world changed?

Your future is the new commodity. 🔗

The history of Free Software overlaps with what is happening now.

Today the world is about predictions: predictions about human futures. This is accomplished by the combination of software and data. Human futures are a simple formula: Data + Software. Or, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

But how are human futures becoming a commodity? In the 1980s, software became the thing we “sold”. It had inherent value. Today, the ability to predict what you are doing to do next is valuable. This makes both your and my future the new commodity. Where will we go next? What will we buy next? Who have we contacted recently?

But data is only one piece of this big puzzle. It is the enabling force for determining our futures. Third-party organizations collect the world’s data on a massive, centralized scale. Your data is what allows companies to sell your future.

To add a metaphor, data is like oil, not gold. You consume the input (data) to sell the output (human futures).

Where are we today? 🔗

So, how have we responded to our changing world?

There have been some successful resistance to the new value of user data and human futures. The privacy movement and legislation like G.D.P.R. are representative of this.

However, data privacy is only one part of the big picture. Focusing on individual empowerment does not protect us from societal effects. Consider predictive policing and court rulings as two examples.

Ultimately, the data privacy movement has been a key factor in combating the effects of surveillance capitalism, but there are still gaps. Mike and I noticed we need to approach topics like artificial intelligence not in pieces, but as a whole.

And some organizations have recognized this challenge and are working to address it. “Working groups” and reports with non-mandatory recommendations are on the rise. However, these groups are not effective on moving forward ways of ensuring people are effectively protected from the unforeseen harms of AI systems. “Light self-regulation” works on an opt-in model, and it is against the interest of some actors to opt in.

So, if we are in the middle of this societal shift from software as a commodity to human futures as a commodity, where do we go from here? Do we choose chaos or community?

At time of publication, I am still wrestling with these questions. As are a lot of people! To get a wider picture of what is on my mind in 2020, read my event reports from my pre-coronavirus 2020 travels.

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash.

I never intend to adjust myself to injustice.

“I’m proud to be maladjusted.” https://t.co/TFBiWBy6Xc

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) December 12, 2019