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 I have several unpublished stubs started on my blog (19 as of publishing time, to be precise).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.

Many have started on this same path before. Several communities form a committee as a governance model for important decision-making. Usually committee membership is chosen through an election process. Paid employees, or sometimes, members of the community comprise the elected committee membership. This meritocratic approach is believed to bring in diverse representation and participation of highly-engaged people. After all, who better to represent contributors of a project than a committee of folks elected by their own peers?

Sometimes, committees do accomplish this lofty goal. My argument is that sometimes they don’t – especially if your committees are designed in a way to disable participation.

Context brief: what is a committee? 🔗

Frequently in this post, I refer to committees. But what are committees? I see a committee as a I see a committee as holding the following characteristics:

• Fixed group of individuals charged with important decision-making privileges
• Appointed or elected members with fixed term periods (i.e. an end date)
• May perform their work in a public and transparent way

Challenges of a committee 🔗

If designing a community for participation and engagement, a committee can do the opposite by pushing people away. It can be difficult for non-members to participate in important decisions. When building the foundation of a community on volunteerism, expecting others to give time in huge quantities is a false expectation. An active, long-term commitment as a committee member may be a big ask. Yet even if an individual wants to contribute, their company may not support such policy. So, this person is unable to contribute fully in the committee. Therefore, the opportunity is lost to include their voice as a representative of a larger community.

Furthermore, a committee depends on the engagement of its members to be effective. Committees are limited by the amount of time individual members actively contribute. Committees lose their effectiveness when:

1. Individual committee members practice poor time management, or are simply overloaded with too many responsibilities
2. Inclusion of others with valuable perspectives have no pathway to being heard or represented, unless they are on the committee

Committee members participate for a fixed amount of time as regular participants. This can be good for a healthy turnover rate, but it becomes bad when the same people are running over and over again. Often described as burnout!

What is a better design for community engagement? 🔗

A fatal flaw in community management is being too hands-off or too hands-on from a corporate context. I look back at 2018 in the difference of roles in Fedora Mindshare vs. Fedora CommOps. Red Hat strives for participation beyond paid Red Hat employees, yet the volunteer-driven community struggles at times for participation of any Red Hat employee.

The Mindshare Committee is the community body that leverages power in the community. These are tasks that could have been designed by CommOps too. I think the format and spirit of CommOps encourages collaboration and invitation to contribute. On the other hand, if you are not an elected or appointed member of the Mindshare Committee, there is not much in the ways of contributing. Even if that is more a belief than a fixed rule.

Blogs were (mostly) safe spaces where we could share our thoughts and views. We were often influenced to think we were sharing our thoughts and views with the world, but really we were writing to a known audience. We were writing to the people who read our blogs; unless you were a 2006 Internet celebrity or mom blogger, our audiences were small and narrow. Perhaps both to our benefit and to our detriment.

How does this compare to today? Most online content by the masses is condensed into bite-sized thoughts: tweaked for the tweet, fed to the feed, and longing for the likes. Our thoughts and ideas are in competition in a race where attention is sparse. But to blame this solely on social media is not fair either. More consumers and producers exist today than we had fifteen years ago. We have more means to produce content today than our bandwidth-challenged dial-up connections at the turn of the new millennium. Social media went mainstream in our society because it was at the right place, at the right time.

As we progress further along in this decade, the art of blogging as a vehicle for human expression becomes sidelined further in nostalgia. Maybe in part because we have less collective time than we did before. Perhaps also because we became lost in this mirage of how we are supposed to appear and how we are supposed to act when our lives are lived out in this strangely self-controlled yet algorithmically influenced existence. Blogging, as a form of expression dating back to the earliest times in the Internet, exists partially outside this algorithmic existence.

Yet it still exists. For me, my blog is still online. But my blog maintains an absence of these kinds of emotional, artful expressions that better show me as a human being, not just a contributor or participant in some technology projects or communities.

So, lost somewhere in that cyclical loop of (self-defeating?) nostalgia, I push my thoughts out into the sea of the Internet; a message in a bottle without a final destination. Just a thought: here for a moment and gone in the next.

Accommodations move us closer to equality but not equity. The presence of accommodations implies a belief in an “us” and a “them”. One group benefits from default inclusion, while another group either raises a collective voice, or is de-facto excluded. Instead of designing our world for others different than ourselves, we must design our world together. It is a quicker way to achieve a more just world.

The “abled” community needs to challenge our perspectives and do our share of the learning required to see things from another perspective.

An example I saw from Twitter that made an impression on me was how someone explained the idea of combinations and permutations of the five human senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The commonly-held belief is that lacking one (or more) of these senses leaves you deprived. Without one of these senses, your potential is limited and you deserve to be pitied.

Multi-sensing > accommodations 🔗

So, what does it mean to be multi-sensing? Most of us see our five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) as a fixed state of sensory stability. These senses and basic mental stability are socially-assumed as always present. They define how we individually experience life.

Often those lacking one or more of these senses are seen as deprived. They are perceived as missing something or to have lost something they can never fully regain. The absence of a human sense comes with the added psychological burden of living in a world where you are often the afterthought, the “new use case”, the countless trials of countless beta versions of any kind of software that might help overcome the disadvantage of “missing” a sense or mental disability.

I suggest an alternative way to design for accessibility and inclusivity. A personal deviation is not written off as “missing” something, but instead as a new combination of senses gained. Designers should assume an expected and guaranteed variable of this new combination. Accessible design must be a first-class citizen in early project management planning.

To put it another way, observe the presence and lack of senses among us as a matrix of combinations, instead of large swathes of characteristics assumed to always be present. We unlock the best of our design knowledge to think in the pursuit of access to the greatest many instead of “what ticks off the box”.

Before, we saw an accommodation as when a specific feature is added to software for someone lacking one or many senses. But we must shift from accommodations to full inclusion. Accommodations are acknowledgements of disability. It assumes a fixed state where a set of critical features to guarantee usability will always lag behind for a subset of people. True equality is seeing access for those with disabilities as equal to the design of features for those with five active senses.

Featured image photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash.
Modified by Justin Wheeler.

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.

That semester, I traveled to different international FOSS conferences (before COVID-19), analyzed contemporary changes and trends in Free Software, and reflected on where I think we are going. I am sharing an edited version of my final report here, as a look into my “crystal ball” for what is coming to Free Software in the 2020s.

Preface 🔗

There are emerging challenges and changes to the Free Software status quo. Three pieces of context about me will help to understand my perspective.

First, I am a young adult who has contributed to Free Software for a third of my life. At fourteen, I landed my first Open Source contributions. In high school, I participated in Open Source communities with 100,000+ adolescents, teenagers, and young adults. Later, I led community-driven initiatives in Open Source projects older than me. Thus, these experiences are a significant part of my experience coming into the Free Software movement.

Second, I follow conversations about Open Source sustainability. I regularly collaborate with others who also care about Open Source sustainability. I participate in communities where Open Source sustainability is the key issue to address, like Sustain OSS and the CHAOSS Project.

Third, I am a white American male in my early 20s, which yields me certain privileges. I actively work to understand how my privilege constructs my worldview and experiences. I also acknowledge my freedom to participate in the global Free Software community is afforded to me in part by who I am. So, I acknowledge these biases in order to frame my perspective.

So, I propose three emerging trends in Free Software across the 2020s:

1. Sustainability of Free Software is here to stay.
2. Free Software will have its ethics interrogated.
3. More young people will stay, or leave.

Free Software sustainability is here to stay. 🔗

Sustainability has subliminal buzzword status today, yet it will not fade from our vocabulary soon. Unlike other tech buzzwords from the last decade, I suspect sustainability is here to stay.

Sustainability is broad though. This analysis begins broadly and then narrows down the definition. To start, here is the Oxford Dictionary definition of sustainability:

sus·tain·a·bil·i·ty

The ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.

Oxford U.S. dictionary

From this definition, I look at two sub-types of sustainability: software sustainability and Free Software sustainability. While they do overlap, software sustainability is what we build: the technology we make and its ability to last into the future. Free Software sustainability is who and how we build: the people who comprise the Free Software movement and how they work together and collaborate.

Now, sustainability is less overlooked than five or ten years ago. However, we still have competing definitions for what sustainability means. The dictionary defines sustainability as “the ability to maintain” but there are different ways sustainability is interpreted.

The maintainer and the corporation 🔗

For example, to an Open Source software maintainer, the “ability to maintain” might mean their ability to pay for their bills, live securely and safely in their day-to-day lives, or supporting a family. On the other hand, to a corporation that depends on Open Source software for their business, the “ability to maintain” might mean the ability to make new software releases at a specific cadence. It could be lines of code added and removed, or the number of commits made. Both perspectives are valid, but they imply different expectations of what maintenance requires.

On first consideration, these competing definitions make the landscape confusing. But surprisingly, this varied interpretation does not weaken sustainability; it strengthens it. It creates more opportunities to collaborate and work together in solving common problems in new, intersectional ways. Instead of focusing on common differences, it encourages seeing common problems first. While the definitions of sustainability might be different between an independent tech freelancer and an engineering manager in a Silicon Valley tech corp, both of these people could still work together on something that benefits both of them.

While I cannot predict what sustainability will mean to us in 2030, I am confident it will not mean the same as it is today. So, I am interested to both observe and participate in the shaping of the sustainability conversation in software and Free Software communities over the next decade.

Free Software will have its ethics interrogated. 🔗

Free Software emerged in the 1970s as a social movement in an act of defiance to a global market change, when software became a commodity. Activists stood together and asserted what they believed to be essential freedoms of all computer users. So, Software Freedom as a concept was born through the GNU Project in 1983.

Today, a similar storm is on our horizon. The world is shifting again. It is not just software that is a commodity. It is data and human futures. Free Software was a bold assertion of essential freedoms about software. But those in the 1980s did not know how the world would change nearly forty years later. Today, the plot has thickened. The world is more complex. Technology impacts our lives in ways we never imagined in 1983. Software Freedom may protect us in one aspect of our digital lives, but it fails us in other ways.

Ethical Source? 🔗

Perhaps this is best understood by looking at the attitude towards the Ethical Source movement by those in the Free Software world. There are a wide range of views and opinions. It is difficult to build common consensus and understanding across these groups. Yet, somehow, we cannot move past this conversation. It persists.

One famous example is the Java programming language license that forbid its use in nuclear submarines. For this reason, Free Software activists did not consider Java as Open Source until Sun Microsystems and subsequently Oracle were challenged. To some, freedom meant the ability to do anything—with no limitations—to the original work. For others still, freedom means the freedom of all people. The “freedom to use” is a controversial freedom in respect to certain ways we use software.

“Join, or Die.” 🔗

Is there a consensus today in the Free Software or Ethical Source worlds about how we address the ethical issues of our field? No. There is not. Inside each movement, there are disagreements and differences on what is the most effective way to accomplish collective goals of building a more fair and just world. Depending on our unique perspectives and backgrounds, we have different views on the methods and means of how we address issues of ethical and unethical uses of software. I am doubtful there is a common definition of what ethical and unethical means in the narrow context of software. We have not yet clearly agreed on those definitions in global and transnational legal and judiciary systems.

It is not clear to me which way the winds will blow in the 2020s. But what is clear is that the storm is coming. Either the Free Software movement will fragment on different definitions of Freedom, or it will collectively converge around a new set of values updated to the ways the world changed so far in the 21st century (or even just 2020 alone).

One path weakens us all, amid global political shifts reminiscent of 20th century nationalist politics. The other path unifies us and builds common power together for the things we can change. I just hope the Free Software movement chooses right.

Free Software will see more young people stay, or leave. 🔗

Free Software will either be more inclusive of young people and new ideas, or it will see these young people move on to something else and fragment the movement.

In my own life, there were decisions and opportunities to influence the building of my digital life. But it was a paradox of choice, whether I wanted this digital life or not. It was simply the reality of the world I grew up in.

I am a millennial. The world changed around me as a child, as I grew into this new hyper-connected digital era. I owned my first computer at four years old. My home had a (dial-up) Internet connection when I was six. In grade school, I built a community site and online forum for my class. In high school, I participated in and moderated international online communities. These experiences collectively informed my worldview as someone who grew up on the budding World Wide Web.

“The world the children made.” 🔗

Millennials were the first generation to inherit the new always-online world built by the generation before. This is true for many others my age or younger who are transitioning into global citizens. This is no small part enabled by the constant-connectivity of the Internet mixed with different social and environmental circumstances we are born into. Young people are coming, and it is an open question whether Free Software will include them. Or if it will only include a select few who subscribe to the same pre-existing value system.

It is difficult to articulate this well, but I think Free Software will face a challenge of inclusivity for my generation. Either it will encourage and foster the next generation of Free Software activists to assert and protect our basic freedoms of computers, or it will isolate and push those people away from being a part of this movement.

Will others my age, or younger, emerge as leaders in their own right in the Free Software movement? Or will young people start something new that is more welcoming and empowering to them as individuals?

What now? 🔗

Just like the Free Software activists of the 1980s and 1990s, I cannot predict precisely how the world will change. But I think it is valuable to step back from the hustle and bustle of daily life to think constructively about where we are going. We can fall into a routine of living our life comfortably because it is easy, but our comforts can cover our consciousness unless we evaluate our own views and biases for what they are.

I cannot know for sure where we are going, but I am committed to the belief that there are essential freedoms that we, as human beings, have in the context of the systems and digital worlds we create together. It is to this core belief that I bind myself, and I am excited as much as I am nervous for what changes are to come in this next decade of Free Software.

This blog post was originally written for an independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology as a supplement for IGME-583 Legal and Business Aspect of FOSS. Special thanks goes to my faculty advisor, D. Joe, for supervising this independent study and being a sounding box for ideas, perspectives, and thoughts.

Original photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash. Modified by Justin Wheeler for this blog post. Special thanks to Wilfried Hounyo, Mike Nolan, and Olivia Gallucci for reviewing.

The Cryptographic Autonomy License is one of newest Open Source licenses on the block. The Open Source Initiative approved it in February 2020. This license also made ripples when it came through. But the question I had, and could not find a clear answer to, was why is it so interesting?

This blog post is my attempt to do a casual coffee-table review of the license. If you agree or disagree, I encourage you to leave a comment and share your opinion and why!

This short article covers three sections:

1. CAL-1.0 provisions: What basic Free Software assumptions are present in the license, much like other copyleft licenses.
2. What’s fresh!!: What is the hype? Ready for the key information? It is covered here.
3. Personal takeaways: My personal thoughts on this license and where it might be applicable.

CAL-1.0 provisions 🔗

I learned there are basic assumptions and expectations that are true for all Open Source licenses, per the Open Source Definition. Copyleft licenses also have different degrees of rigidity depending on context and use. So, what basic ingredients of a Free Software license are present in the Cryptographic Autonomy License?

Note: The number in parentheses before each line is the corresponding section number in the license text.

Basic legal provisions 🔗

• (6.0) Disclaimer of warranty, limit on liability: If someone uses the software and it causes unexpected disastrous side effects, the Licensor cannot be held responsible.
• (2.0) Receiving a license: Anyone can receive a CAL-1.0 license. To receive it, you just have to agree to its rules.
• (7.4) Attorney fees: If a case involving noncompliance with the CAL-1.0 is brought to court, loser pays legal fees for prosecution and defense.
• (7.3) No sub-licensing: You cannot add another license “on top” of the CAL-1.0.
• (3.0) Patent clause: Got patents? This license is equipped to interface with external patent licenses.

Permissive provisions 🔗

• (4.1) Access: Source code must be made available over a network with this license.
• (4.3) Attribution: Cite your sources. Retain all licensing, authorship, and/or attribution notices.

Copyleft provisions 🔗

• (4.1) Modified Work: Changes to the original Work make it a Modified Work. Same license rules apply to a Modified Work.
• (5.2) Reinstatement: A la GPLv3, for non-compliant derivative works, there is a 60 day grace period to come into compliance before your license is terminated.
• (4.5) Combined Work Exception: Software in the Larger Work as well as the Larger Work as a whole may be licensed under the terms of your choice.
• Network use: A la AGPL, it also includes a trigger for network use.

What’s fresh!! 🔗

The fresh take on this license from other licenses is all in 4.2. Maintain User Autonomy:

In addition to providing each Recipient the opportunity to have Access to the Source Code, You cannot use the permissions given under this License to interfere with a Recipient’s ability to fully use an independent copy of the Work generated from the Source Code You provide with the Recipient’s own User Data.

Section 4.2 Maintain User Autonomy: intro text

My non-lawyer take on this is that user data plays a much more prominent role in the terms of this license than other copyleft licenses. Just like the AGPL was a response to the changing world of network services and cloud computing, the CAL-1.0 is a response to the changing world of machine learning and data science.

The CAL-1.0 seems to define “user autonomy” in the context of actually using the software, versus something more holistic like Digital Autonomy. In other words, if you are running CAL-1.0 software, you cannot interfere with requests for personal user data from your users.

This might not sound so radical, but it really is. It is a radical way to assert users’ ownership of their data. If you are the end user of a distributed or cloud-based app licensed under CAL-1.0, you are enabled (to some degree) to request copies of personal user data without interference or obfuscation.

CAL-1.0 and Hatbrim Technologies 🔗

To better explain this, consider this made-up example.

I am a product manager at Hatbrim Technologies. Hatbrim develops an integrated calendar application, Holocal, to store events, meetings, and reminders. Holocal is an integrated application that includes a front-end component, back-end component, and a machine learning algorithm. The algorithm offers tailored suggestions to reduce my meeting load based on my common meeting patterns with other events or activities I have planned.

Oraculous, a competing company to Hatbrim Technologies, creates a fork of Holocal called OraCal. It is almost functionally identical to Holocal except it also adds an integration to other services from Oraculous. However, OraCal also modifies the calendar optimization algorithm. It adds a periodic random event suggestion based on events and activities in your calendar.

Meanwhile at Hatbrim… 🔗

Since I am a product manager at Hatbrim, I turn to my trusty team of developers and ask them to explore the OraCal fork of Holocal. I am curious to know how their calendar optimization method works, since Oraculous must also release OraCal under the Cryptographic Autonomy License (CAL-1.0). My team of developers review the OraCal code, try making changes to Holocal, but we are unable to replicate this feature of OraCal in our environment.

Eventually, one developer runs OraCal internally, but optimized for our data. Still no luck to reproduce the nifty calendar event suggestion feature! Fortunately, the CAL-1.0 offers a protection here. So, the developer sends an email to Oraculous to request her personal user data from OraCal provided to her. Because the CAL-1.0 has provisions to prevent foul play or modifying the data, the developer receives a copy of her data and realizes another Oraculous tool was scrubbing and appending data for calendar predictions before it returned to OraCal.

In this hypothetical scenario, our developer is ultimately able to understand how the Modified Work is changed and how Oraculous adapted the original Work. Under another copyleft license like any GPL variant or the Mozilla Public License, a licensee has no obligation to share any user data with an end user. For any reason. Unless they happen to be nice or because another legal authority or body holds them accountable to share user data.

CAL-1.0 personal takeaways 🔗

Did I mention I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal or financial advice? In case I did not, I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal or financial advice.

This advice and interpretation of the license is raw and unfiltered. But you only read something for the first time but once. So, with all other contemporary issues in the Free Software world going on, I thought it would be a fun exercise to draft this blog post as I read through the Cryptographic Autonomy License for the first time.

Ultimately, my takeaways after reading and reflecting on the license a few times is this:

1. Lack of transparency in motivation: Holo, the company behind the license, emphasizes all the good qualities of this license while sneakily dodging the fact that it is a mildly anti-competitive license for their business case.
2. Precedent-setting: This is the first approved Open Source license that explicitly does anything significant about data. It will be interesting to see if this inspires other licenses that make definitions on data.
3. Potentially powerful if picked up: If used more widely or in more popular projects, it has potential to disrupt the status quo of how Open Source thinks about user data and the autonomy of the end user.
4. No defining moment: To my knowledge, CAL-1.0 lacks a significant defining moment since its approval. It is unclear what real-world noncompliance litigation looks like. It lacks the battle-testing of other copyleft licenses.

I imagine I am not the only one who feels mutually excited and hesitant about the Cryptographic Autonomy License. I am not sure if it makes sense to apply to any of my work or to recommend as a default license to others yet. And licensing is only but one of many pathways in the Free Software legal and policy world. But nonetheless, it is an interesting Free Software development that is still maturing since February 2020.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash. Modified by Justin Wheeler.

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!

Where Byfield was accurate 🔗

While I don’t agree with all of Byfield’s sentiments, he identified some key challenges that still hold truth today: a predisposition to focus on differences and not similarities, an outreach approach centered on ethics and not software, and the importance of opportunities for intersectional interaction.

Predisposition towards difference 🔗

First, Byfield notes the differing age groups of the activist communities and the tendency for viewing others by their differences first, not their similarities. He seems to attribute the tendency to view others by differences first as a characteristic of older generations; however, this is not necessarily the full truth.

As a member of the young activist community, this explanation is too simplistic of the underlying cause. There is also a political motivation by established power to sow division among the population of a nation-state. It makes community organizing more difficult and presents diversity as an issue to “solve” instead of a source of greater unity and common strength.

This is exemplified by the social media algorithms of today that reward sensational content (judged on likes, views, clicks, or other user feedback) and share it widely across a huge platform. In 2006, it was difficult to imagine the relationship social media would have in the lives of an everyday person; today, a great deal of social power is granted to those who understand how to leverage social media, either for good (e.g. social activism) or harm (e.g. deceptively persuading large parts of a nation-state’s population leading up to a national election).

The politics of division are within the fabric of our political systems; this is a challenge for modern-day activism and community organizing to overcome. In identifying this as a challenge, Byfield is correct that a differences-first approach makes it harder to share and spread the importance of FOSS in other activism circles, especially as technology becomes an increasingly relevant way of how we experience our lives and how our systems of law and justice are enforced.

Outreach on ethics, not software 🔗

Second, Byfield suggests an ethics-based approach to outreach is more effective than a software-based approach. This is also correctly noted, even if perhaps overemphasized. The jargon and language of the technology world is not accessible to the large majority of the global population. While some degree of technology literacy might be expected in some populations, much of the existing FOSS community is deeply rooted in technology. Sometimes this limited perspective is counterproductive.

This revisits the rebranding of “Free Software” as “open source” in 1997. For many subsets of the wider open source community in 2019, the default approach to open source software is merely a secondary thought for how to collaboratively work on technology. This is part of the outcome of the Open Source Initiative’s gamble in 1997 by beginning to emphasize the business sensibility and practicality of open source, and de-emphasize the social roots of Free Software (or rather, try and position itself as some sort of translator between these two “worlds”, as if they cannot be spoken of together in the same room).

As such, those who work on open source software projects are not necessarily predisposed to assume the role of an activist. Truly if Free Software is to take root outside of technology, then those who see the ethical values of Free Software need to better organize and promote the values of FOSS externally. This will contribute to the diversity of Free Software activism by helping non-technology activists add FOSS as a tool to their existing work.

Intersectional movement building is the future 🔗

Thirdly and finally, and perhaps most importantly, Byfield suggests the importance of intersectional interactions between Free Software communities and other activist communities. This is a fundamental requirement for the growth of Free Software as a social movement. Those of us in Free Software see the world around us informed by a background informed by technology; this background is emphasized in a world that is generating new, advanced technology at an unprecedented rate. However, while software and technology are important parts of the world around us, they are not the world around us. They are one part of a greater picture of fighting for a common good and welfare for all people. There are others in similar niches who have a deep understanding of their problem space and how they want to approach a challenge.

“One group may be working against child poverty, another for recycling, but the people in these organizations can almost be transferred from one to the next.”

Peter T. Brown, Free Software Foundation Executive Director (2006)

Just like a healthy garden, cross-pollination of these niches is vital to help others understand how we can help each other in accomplishing our mutual goals (this also feeds into why the politics of division explained above is so pervasive and difficult). Bringing Free Software technologists to activist communities where there is not an overwhelming Free Software background (and vice versa) is vital to building an intersectional social movement that strengthens the social impact of Free Software, not just open source.

Where Byfield didn’t go far enough 🔗

Byfield made one assumption on how activists have “their own share of insularity” and that the presence of connections between two movements does not mean they could immediately connect their existing beliefs with new ones. Fioretti’s challenge was in others understanding why they should listen to him; there was a lack of foundational knowledge of open source and technology that is normally assumed of someone who works as a software engineer.

Indeed, attention is a currency in the world of an activist. It is not enough for a FOSS advocate to expect others to listen to you on an appeal of technology. Part of the work in sharing is understanding who you are sharing with; if FOSS wants to take deeper roots in the activist community, it needs to understand the backgrounds of activist communities and be creative in how to appeal the mission of FOSS to the mission of their work. Where you can build in-roads together with others through common initiatives is the beginning of grassroots community organizing. So, while Byfield is right that there is an almost competitive nature of ideas in activism, it is not enough to write insularity off as a fixed aspect of nature. To not acknowledge this is to deny the influence of capitalist power structures in the humanitarian sector as they pertain to sustainable funding.

What are today’s challenges? 🔗

Some of today’s challenges are about inclusion and power.

Inclusion builds power 🔗

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) are important but poorly understood; not only are D&I about including people of different identities in technology, but also people with backgrounds outside of technology. FOSS stands to benefit by including more people who do not necessarily have a strong technology or engineering background. The goal is to inspire different perspectives to contribute in meaningful ways to build sustainable technology.

Instead of seeing diversity and inclusion initiatives as problematic or unneeded, D&I groups in FOSS communities stand to be the most effective people at building community and influence.

Power and governance 🔗

In the activist / humanitarian / non-profit world, there is a power struggle for sustainability as it pertains to funding. Funding models in non-profit work (usually sustained by grants, sponsors, and donors) encourage solutions that get funded, not necessarily solve problems the most effective way. Many organizations struggle with how to achieve sustainable funding without being so dependent on the expiration date of a grant’s funding.

We need more representative governance models in open source communities that reflect the interests of the communities around them, not necessarily an individual, a company, or group of companies. Building governance models that empower people within a community to make decisions and reduce the corrosive influence of money from humanitarian work.

Where do we go from here? 🔗

This blog post is an active reflection of my own thoughts and perspectives of Free Software, activism, and humanitarian work. If you are interested in pushing this conversation further, find me in Brussels, Belgium for any of the following three conferences and let’s chat further:

• 30 January 2020: Sustain Summit
• 31 January 2020: CHAOSScon
• 1-2 February 2020: FOSDEM

If you want to discuss this further, you can also drop a line in our online discussion community, fossrit.community.

Photo by Walid Berrazeg on Unsplash

The entry is lifted out of my journal with minimum edits. I thought about fully revising it or updating it before publishing. Many parts I would write in a different way now, but I decided to let it be. It reflects my perspective at that particular moment and time at 19 years old. It is more personal than other posts I’ve published and maybe it’s a little uncomfortable for me to share, but I felt like it was worth doing anyways.

entry002: 2017-02-12 🔗

Picking up the pen to write in this is always difficult because it feels like there’s too much to say. Part of the problem is that I don’t write frequently enough, which I’ll try to improve. Not everything worth saying needs to be publicly lambasted.

I left the apartment for coffee after again reading the story of Seth Vidal, a founding developer of YUM and a one-time Fedora superstar. Seth was killed in a hit-and-run accident while cycling in 2013.

What strikes me so much about Seth isn’t just the work or code he left behind, but his legacy. There is no shortage of blog posts dedicated in his memory, with many written by folks I see regularly in Fedora. He is held in a high respect and regard not only because of his work, but how he worked with people. He was clearly a sincere friend of many in the community and always knew how to use and share his brilliance to bring out the same brilliance of those he worked with. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, but he always did so courteously and in a way where there was a next step or improvement. As one memoir quoted him as saying with a cocked head and a smile, “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? Because I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

It’s odd for me to read about Seth and how connected to him I feel, despite his death occurring well before I was anywhere near where I am now. Maybe it’s because I, like [thousands] of others, use his software. But more likely is because I see the type of impact and legacy is something I wish to share. Not having so many people write memoirs of my passing, but more about how many lives, communities, and people he touched. I see a man you could approach with anything, whether he knew you or not, and he would give you his honest opinion to help drive or motivate you to success. It may not be what you want to hear, but it will be what you need to hear. Again, delivery of that message is critical, and Seth seemed to be pretty good at it.

I may not know Seth, nor will I ever, but his legacy gives me a strong reminder about what I hold important and how I want to carry out my presence in the projects I’m involved with. If more people want more Seth Vidal’s in the world, then we need to [understand] his values, compare them to our own, and build those values into our own being. This is part of the idea of actively shaping and adapting our values, and never settling with the way we are because we think we know these things. If the mind is open and willing, we are always learning, and thus, always changing.

In summary? Seth’s light fades out and burns into embers, but it never dies. His legacy will always be there, for friends to remember and strangers to learn from. Amidst all of this panicked writing I have to do after DevConf and FOSDEM, Seth’s legacy levels me and reminds me of what’s important. Sometimes what’s really important is logging off and going for a bike ride, or a coffee with notebook and pen, or sharing precious time with loved ones. Seth, you may be gone and have no memory of me, but I have your memory, and I hope you are with me too.

Justin Wheeler

Growing up with easy access to the Internet grants the privilege of experiencing effortless knowledge and high availability of information. Wikipedia is an example of 21st century cooperation and collaboration. For many, it represents a beacon of free information and self-education. Some might credit it for charting wider participation in the movement towards free content and open resources.

Yet Wikipedia remains a tool of power and privilege, absent for many as societal myths perpetuate in the lives of children. As children are exposed to the Internet at earlier ages, their comprehension and correlation to the real world is in the context of living in a digitized society. In simpler words, everything they ever know always has technology, tablets, smart-phones, and smart devices present. There is no split experience of going from have-nots to haves.

For me, the split experience was my experience. As I became older, information became within click’s reach and a moment of patience. In prior generations, factual information existed in factual places, such as a library or a home study (for those privileged to own encyclopedias in their homes as children). Caught without any reference to support or dissent against a societal myth, the truth remained far enough out of reach for only the most motivated (and privileged) to continue searching for truth.

Today, this process takes seconds. From devices in pockets to sitting at desks. Desks now conveniently feature a computer workstation over “old school” writing utensils, books, and paper. Externally-verified information is available for those who seek truth or supporting evidence to define their own understanding of truth (additionally, misinformation is equally spreadable depending on prior motivations, but will not be covered in this short opinion).

If the answers are so near and available, it enables increased self-awareness among youth. The Internet’s ludicrous goals of a more interconnected species came not boldly, but subtly. It crept into our culture and perception of the world. As more gratis and factual information (academic work, scientific research, investigative reporting, and others, often under free licenses) creeps into the search-able Internet, answers remain convenient with a few taps on an LCD screen. Perhaps today’s youth, privileged to early Internet exposure, have subconsciously understood their perception of information as naturally free and available (with different understandings of what is true or false). For those searching for secularism, the true science remains easy to find and discover.

And thus, the root of the issue. What is the role of privilege? What early childhood development possibilities are created within information-rich societies? Are children better able to cast away their own doubts and suspicions? Do they avoid buying into a system designed to feed from them?

But what of the contrary? What is the experience to go without this privilege? It can be lack of access to information. The perception of information is opposite of naturally free and available, but costly and hidden. The odds are stacked higher against you because of poor accessibility to tools and resources.

But is access to free knowledge like Wikipedia truly inaccessible for even the most impoverished? Since even some of the poorest countries have better access to smart-phones than piped water, exposure to the wider Internet (including Wikipedia) is inevitable. But the timing is late. The critical period of early childhood development is missed. Early childhood development has three phases: conception, the first 1000 days (birth to three years old), and pre-school / pre-primary years. The brain of a child is most sensitive, almost like a sponge, in those first 1000 days. Researchers defend this period’s impact on child-society and community cohesion as critical, even influencing the neurobiology of peace.¹ So then what of those who have the privilege of exposure to technology in those first 1000 days? What of the billions, nearly trillion, dollars of advertising that slip through the cracks of what these children are exposed to? Are we subtly being written before language is even learned?

In this way, the open and closed systems compete in the Internet state. There are positive and negative qualities from both free information and black-box systems in information-rich societies. Wikipedia is a privilege, but it is only one small part of something bigger. A privilege of truth. A privilege of access. A privilege of self-liberation.

¹ Britto, Pia. “Building Brains, Building Futures.” Online webinar, UNICEF, 24 January 2018. Keynote address.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash.