However, this question only led to more questions. Much of the existing Open Source discourse on sustainability centers on defining, tracking, and understanding “dependencies.” Yet when we say dependencies, people typically mean source code, software packages, and license compatibility. So, how do we describe the value proposition of people and the impact of cross-pollinated communities?

So, what if Open Source dependencies weren’t just software? Furthermore, what if Open Source dependencies could mean people… or simply, human beings? In this blog post, we’ll walk through this thought experiment.

Open Source dependencies are people. 🔗

My purpose is to augment the idea of “dependencies” from exclusively source code to be more inclusive of its authors as well. We typically center software in our Open Source conversations, so I want to deliberately center people. There are many ways to cover this, but I will offer three ways we could think of Open Source dependencies as more than source code:

1. Community inheritance
2. Legacies
3. Love

Dependencies: Community inheritance 🔗

New, smaller projects sometimes form up underneath or within an existing larger project. Sometimes a new project is created to support the existing project. Sometimes it is a passion project led by a few that aligns with the motivations and values of a wider community. But these new projects begin with an added advantage of inheriting the collaborative ecosystem surrounding the existing project, instead of being tasked to create this from scratch themselves.

Why measure this? 🔗

Ask anyone responsible for building an Open Source community from scratch. The approach at this stage is experimental:

• Will using this feature encourage new contributors to participate?
• Does someone in a related field discover our project on a casual whim looking at GitHub?
• How do we make our project more accessible for contributors we do not yet have?

Many times, it is about forming a hypothesis and then testing it.

However…

If you exist within the dynamic of an existing community, you benefit from resources, people, and infrastructure that would be unavailable if you started independently. Finding communities with compatible values and motives exposes you to a wider network, and thus more visibility in a world where there is already too much information. Working within an existing community can cut light-years off of time-to-market or improving product sustainability and community resiliency (in the context of other variables).

Example of community inheritance 🔗

The Fedora Project produces Fedora Linux. Fedora Linux is a Free and Open Source operating system derived from the open source Linux kernel. The Fedora Project also creates other software in order to facilitate the production, creation, and updates of Fedora Linux. Examples of this are asynchronous meeting minute note managers, community calendars, gamified badges, software package distribution tools, and more.

While none of these smaller software projects are the ultimate purpose and goal of the Fedora Project, they are supplementary to the overall goal of producing Fedora Linux. The sustainability of these smaller parts ensure a healthier ecosystem around the larger project.

Another way to see this is as a planet with several orbiting moons, where the planet is an existing project and each moon represents another smaller project orbiting around the existing one. Each moon is different, yet each is still connected to the gravitational force and motions of the planet.

Dependencies: Legacies 🔗

Open Source projects are more than source code. Human beings are social creatures, and Open Source is a social activity. An individual or groups of individuals may influence the hearts and minds of others in the movement. To win hearts and minds is to merge the intentions of the individual with the intentions of the wider community. The power to change minds is the power to move mountains.

Why measure this? 🔗

Open Source is a social activity. It has both a written and oral story-telling tradition. There is a rich history from the movement that first took root in the 1980s. We use stories to expand our imagination, or to see a perspective in a way we might not have before. So, it is important to note the value these historical stories play in shaping our movement and creating leaders.

Legacies of kindness and love result in thriving communities where contributors look out for each other. People are not motivated by the will to survive; they are motivated by the will to thrive with a community. Legacies of discrimination and hate result in divided, splintered communities who are focused on counting their differences instead of seeing how alike we are.

Example of legacies 🔗

Seth Vidal wrote the Yellowdog Update Manager (Y.U.M.), and he contributed to Fedora. Matthew Williams helped others learn about Linux and Open Source, and he contributed to Fedora. Thomas Gilliaird helped me with using Fedora Linux in IRC as a teenager, and he contributed to Fedora. The ways we help other humans while on our own journey is how we create a legacy with wider wings. The impact of a few kind people is enough to inspire more to follow.

To ignore the impact of legacies in social activities surrounding Open Source is to deny the impact of charismatic leaders who lead in styles of either unity or division.

Dependencies: Love 🔗

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The act of existence can be political. We cannot escape the sociopolitical environment of our world, no matter how much we wish to push it aside. If we choose to ignore it, there are others who choose to manipulate common ignorance, to the exploit of their own unbounded wealth. We must embrace and acknowledge the political atmosphere permeates our world; it does not disappear and hide away when it makes us uncomfortable.

Why measure this? 🔗

Open Source does not get a “get out of jail free” card.

Open Source is political. Its roots in the Free Software movement were firmly rooted in politics, even if they were narrowly confined to a few key issues. The real question is, how do we wield our own political agency and expediency? We should act from our hearts and move to inspired action to correct everything that stands against love.

Example of love 🔗

This blog post. These words are a radical act of love. Acknowledging it and choosing to embrace it is the first step in using our Open Source power responsibly.

Featured image arranged by Justin Wheeler. Original photograph by Ian Schneider on Unsplash.

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!

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.

This will be the second annual International Copyleft Conference. Participants from throughout the copyleft world — developers, strategists, enforcement organizations, scholars and critics — will be welcomed for an in-depth, high bandwidth, and expert-level discussion about the day-to-day details of using copyleft licensing, obstacles facing copyleft and the future of copyleft as a strategy to advance and defend software freedom for users and developers around the world.

This event will provide a friendly and safe place for discussion of all aspects of copyleft, including as a key strategy for defending software freedom!

Official conference website

This was my first time attending CopyleftConf. I attended on behalf of RIT LibreCorps to represent the sustainability efforts at the RIT FOSS@MAGIC initiative. However, I also represented myself as an individual in the Free Software movement. For CopyleftConf 2020, I arrived hoping to learn more about where we, as the Free Software community, are going. I also hoped to gain a deeper ethical perspective about our digital society.

Event reports take many forms. Since CopyleftConf 2020 is structured in a unique format, my event report is structured as follows:

• At a glance: structure and key takeaways: High-level overview of what CopyleftConf 2020 was like. What the biggest ideas on my mind were at the end of the day.
• Copyleft adopt curves: what drove copyright adoption then (or now?): Musings on the history of copyleft and movement building.
• Free Software, but for kids: Children and teenagers are already building open source communities. How do we include the next generation?
• Where are we going?: Software ethics and copyleft licensing.

At a glance: structure and key takeaways 🔗

If you’re here for the quick overview, this is it.

CopyleftConf 2020 is one of the best conferences I have attended. I bought my ticket the morning of the conference. Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn fired me up the day before in their FOSDEM 2020 talk. My initial reluctance to go was because I assumed it was a conference for FOSS lawyers. While it definitely includes that group, it isn’t exclusive to that group. CopyleftConf 2020 collected people from a diverse range of experiences and backgrounds in the open source world.

However, I also realized the “movers and shakers” in the Free Software world have been around a while. Many people there are embedded in this ecosystem for the last 10, 20, or even 30 years. I think I was the youngest person there. I realized Free Software has not done an excellent job of including my generation. This left me with interesting reflections on the future of copyleft and its ability to transfer lessons and values on to the next generation.

Structure: Dialogue and discussion 🔗

The best way to describe the format of CopyleftConf 2020 is “dialogue and discussion”. The first half of the conference started with traditional sessions, with speakers and slide decks. The end of the conference moved towards open panels with stronger audience participation. Most panels centered around topics or ideas addressed in the morning sessions.

I attended these sessions:

• Keynote (Tony Sebro)
• Copyleft adoption curves: what drove adoption then (or now?) (Luis Villa)
• Copyleft Expansion: What should – and shouldn’t – be on the table? (Deb Nicholson, Bradley M. Kuhn, Allison Randal, Heather J. Meeker, John Sullivan)
• The Rising Ethical Storm in Open Source (Coraline Ada Ehmke)
• Software Ethics and Copyleft Licensing (Karen Sandler)

I came up with three key takeaways from CopyleftConf 2020 as a whole (not including the detailed sections further below):

1. Open source is in an identity crisis. 🔗

Many people are confused. The confusion is simultaneously indecisive and divisive. I believe the identity crisis stems from that early decision in 1997 about what we call this particularly different way of developing and collaborating on software and technology. Free Software or open source? One is politically charged and historically exclusive, while the other is more neutral and business-friendly, and more inclusive to people who believe in compromise. Today, we are seeing a similar divide emerge between Free/Open Source and Ethical Source.

There are several emotions. It is deeply personal. For some, the promises of free/open source failed our collective humanity. For others, open source is a vastly successful turn of events to make the closed world more open. Yet for others still, it is both. CopyleftConf 2020 took a highlighter to this tension between what we consider right and wrong. It also questioned what the role of Free Software is in all of this.

I don’t think anyone has the answer yet. Surely some people left CopyleftConf 2020 with a more clear view if they think licensing is a viable approach or not. But CopyleftConf 2020 did not have this answer. It just made it clear that most of us are still wrestling with this.

2. Millennials are underrepresented. 🔗

Most of the time I was at CopyleftConf 2020, I had massive imposter syndrome. This is no fault of the conference or the great steps the organizers took to make it inclusive, but wow. There were so many people there who I have seen all across Twitter. People who are moving and shaking in different realms of the open source world.

Yet as I looked around the room, I started to wonder what the average age demographic of the room was. Being in my early 20s, I felt like I was in a room of Free Software giants. Many people there have been pushing the conversation forward and definitively fighting for Software Freedom for a decade or more.

And then there was me. I don’t know what my role or higher calling is yet in this great big movement we call Free Software. While I was glad to be in the room, I felt sorely underrepresented in age.

Born digital 🔗

I couldn’t help but find it unusual though. My generation and those after me are the first generations who were born into the digital society, built by those who came before us. When I was four years old, I was privileged to have my own computer. By six, I was connected to the Internet (even if it was dial-up). By fourteen, I was in a Linux command line running my own Minecraft server with thousands of players.

While my perspective is rooted in some privilege, there is something interesting in my experience. I was born into a world where I didn’t make the choices of what hardware or software I used. In the beginning, everything was handed to me or provided for me.

For kids and teenagers today, this couldn’t be more of a reality. Before COVID-19, when you went out to a restaurant or public place, how often would you see a small kid clutching a tablet, provided by an exhausted parent? Adolescents today grew up in the always-online worlds of Google and Snapchat.

Today’s teenagers and young adults I know are often keenly aware that they are the prey in a complex digital world they are already so deeply embedded in. So, why resist at all? To them, there is little point in resisting because all the technology decisions made for them early in life locked them deeper into this “predator-prey” ecosystem.

Is Free Software ready for the millennials? 🔗

So, I felt like an imposter at this conference of people who are wise to the role of Software Freedom in our new digital society, but never grew up in the kind of world I did. A lot of the people in the room at CopyleftConf 2020 developed their worldview, ethical perspectives, and software preferences as the world changed around them. Me and other people of my generation were born into this world.

It makes the conversation around Software Freedom very different, and also challenging, because the next ten and twenty years of Software Freedom will have to include today’s youth to be truly sustainable.

3. The world is changing. Will Free Software? 🔗

Related to the identity crisis and under-representation of youth, the theme of change begins to emerge. Stallman and other Free Software leaders in the 1980s and 1990s were ahead of their time to realize the importance of Software Freedom in respecting and protecting user freedom. Some of those same people were also in the room at CopyleftConf 2020.

But today’s world is changing. Software became the commodity in the 1970s and 1980s. Free Software was the resistance. Today, data is the new digital commodity. Software is just one piece of a bigger puzzle. Software Freedom may protect one aspect of our digital lives, but it would be nonsensical to assume the digital world would stay the same. Why should Free Software?

The 2020s will be definitive 🔗

So, CopyleftConf 2020 made me realize that the next ten years will be definitive. The 2020s will determine whether open source becomes yet another cog in strengthening our capitalist society and enthroning corporations as a great benefactor to technology, or if Software Freedom undergoes some sort of transformation to meet the new demands of freedom in our digital world.

No matter your political leanings, read any news site that isn’t a tech journal and tell me honestly that there are not some scary trends in our technology world. COVID-19 is just the latest example, with our data privacy and digital rights being on the sacrificial alter for our “safety” and “protection”. This line is all too common. I have heard it as a justification of many things across my life since September 2001.

So, what will Free Software do?

Copyleft adoption curves: what drove copyright adoption then (or now?) 🔗

Copyleft adoption has changed significantly over time, for better and for worse. This talk will survey the many factors that drive adoption, with particular focus on GPL v2 and Affero GPL v3. While some factors are obvious and reasonably well-understood (particularly the shift towards SaaS economics) many other nuanced factors play in as well.

Luis Villa

What I highlighted in my notes from Luis’s talk was his history lesson on adoption. While the history of Free Software wasn’t new to me, nor most people in the room, Luis took it in a different way. His history lesson was a reflection on “why?” and not just “what?”

Whether you think Free Software “won” or not, open source is here to stay. So, how did we get to where we are today? How did a famous software company go from calling open source an “intellectual property cancer” in 2001 to investing billions of dollars into open source and open source companies by 2020?

Add more chairs to the table 🔗

I loved this quote that Luis dropped: “Movement building is the only way to influence political change.” Luis gave examples from the 1990s of how evangelism and education were part of the building blocks of open source. There were “leading apps” that brought new people to the Free Software (or open source) table. Mozilla was the first browser that brought common lawyers in. A focus on education for lawyers, such as the F.S.F.’s 22,000 word F.A.Q., converted a motivation to learn into practical knowledge used for compliance work.

However, I think Luis’s goal was to define, not to prescribe. He implied that building a movement doesn’t start with writing a license, based on his personal experiences (he did lead drafting of the Mozilla Public License). My takeaway from Luis is that we need to think about how we build a movement that includes people who aren’t at the table today to build a strong foundation for what comes next.

Free Software, but for kids 🔗

There was a panel on copyleft expansion and what should and shouldn’t be at the table. At some point, the role of “the next generation” came up in heralding the values of copyleft licensing forward in light of the popularity of permissive licenses.

This was personal. My first experience in the open source world was as a community member and later a volunteer staff member of the largest open source Minecraft server software project. In my time in that community, I learned a lot. I saw a major breakdown of the GPL for a community of hundreds of thousands of young adults, teenagers, and children. So, indeed, how is “the next generation” going to herald these values of copyleft licensing?

Talk with us, not at us 🔗

It is interesting to be present in these conversations about “the next generation” because it usually feels like people are talking at me instead of with me. It took some reflection time to realize this after CopyleftConf 2020, but I feel like some older folks like to imagine that younger folks will come on board and just start steering the ship in the same course it has always traveled. Some younger folks may be fine with that.

But I also think a lot of younger people will ask more of Free Software because of our collective experiences with Free Software licenses. From my hey-days in the Minecraft community, there is bad blood towards the GPL and copyleft licensing because of the scars it left on the community, even if it was really because the GPL should never have been used in that context.

But the demands for more also stem from the collective treatment by those senior to us in traditional “FOSS circles.” Even at my university, I also see how students become bitter and frustrated in instances where senior faculty and older community members insist on a Free Software-first, no-compromises approach. As if it were so simple for my generation.

I already explained the perspective of younger folks earlier in this blog post. But the way some senior folks treat us in the proper Free Software world is sometimes exclusionary and off-putting, even if that isn’t the intention. It discards great opportunity for guidance and mentorship. There is an innumerable amount of times an older person completely dismissed my decision to use a proprietary or mixed-source platform for a community, yet they lament about not having the patience to troubleshoot the Free Software tools they rely on when they fail (mailing lists and email spam filters, I’m looking at you).

Teach early and teach often 🔗

But that point aside, let’s bring it back to the panel. I think it was Allison Randall and John Sullivan who emphasized the importance of early education around the concepts of Software Freedom. The average middle school student interested in STEM will not comprehend the GPL. However, the Four Freedoms (by design) are easy to comprehend. The freedoms to Read, Run, Remix, and Redistribute are not that difficult to understand. Perhaps part of the answer lies in how we think about messaging to younger folks and keeping foundational concepts like the Four Freedoms at the forefront.

I still lament over the way that Free Software built itself in a technology-centered way instead of a people-centered way, but I digress.

Where are we going? 🔗

The hottest discussions I participated in were from The Rising Ethical Storm in Open Source (Coraline Ada Ehmke) and Software Ethics and Copyleft Licensing, emceed by Karen Sandler. Coraline dropped absolute fire in her talk, even knowing that the essence of her talk would alienate some people. But it was a call-out to us folks in tech who consciously or unconsciously live these values that our Free Software movement is built upon: the freedoms of personal liberty, as it lends itself both for justice and harm.

I won’t spend a lot of time summarizing these talks and sessions, but one interesting thing to look up that Coraline mentioned was the Parable of the Locksmith.

During Karen’s session, I penned what ended up being a short speech in my notebook. When I was eventually passed the mic, I tried to fit too much into too little time, and I was not fully respectful of other folks who also had something to contribute to the discussion. So, instead, I will recap the full essence of what I wanted to say in my blog post.

Our software freedoms are not enough 🔗

The Four Freedoms, the foundation of all copyleft licenses, is not enough.

On the Saturday before CopyleftConf 2020, I presented at FOSDEM 2020 with my colleague and dear friend Mike Nolan on three new freedoms for AI that go beyond software. In our talk, we analyzed the history of how Free Software began as a social movement. It roughly flowed as follows:

1. GNU Project, 1983: Establishment of values
2. Free Software Foundation, 1985: Establishment of organization to champion the values
3. GNU Public License, 1989: Establishment of license to enforce and protect the values

In today’s complex and changing world, we need more than Free Software’s Four Freedoms. This libertarian base was susceptible to the co-opting of its values as “open source.” It was always inevitable, because Free Software was built from the strengths and biases of those who founded the movement (i.e. Richard Stallman).

Free Software was designed with technology at its center, not people. This is to say, it was poorly designed.

Now, we have an ethical dilemma that was always possible because Freedom means freedom to do as you wish, not the freedom of all people.

Some context for discussing legal issues is key, but we need to push the conversation forward beyond semantics. We need to identify whether unethical uses of our software is something we will tolerate. We can’t continue to ignore or delegate social responsibilities for what we do.

So, now what? 🔗

On one hand, we need to be ready to have these conversations about real effects and the impact of what we do on people. Look at the Facebook news feed and the Myanmar genocide. Legal semantics is where we are stuck since we defined the Four Freedoms. But these freedoms are no longer enough.

There is not one answer of where we are going. There are only multilateral answers. We have to be intersectional and inclusive for where we go from here. Free Software needs to turn to its allies not only in law and licenses, but also in labor organizing and regulation authorities.

One direction on my mind is continuing to support D&I initiatives like Outreachy. Outreachy interns do awesome things during their internships, and many continue to do awesome things even when their internships end. Bringing more diverse perspectives to the table, especially from underprivileged groups, is key to giving those perspectives equitable power and influence.

We do have the power. 🔗

But everyone in that room at CopyleftConf 2020, and you, the reader, have some power. We all have some room to influence change for good. But we cannot avoid the discomfort. We can not keep turning away our eyes.

So, what will you do?

For me, I am wrestling with that question actively as I continue to make my way out into the world.

Thanks folx! 🔗

To wrap up this CopyleftConf 2020 report, a few thank-yous are in order:

• Stephen Jacobs: For always being supportive for yet another trip abroad and helping me push my career forward in a number of ways (and footing the bill!)
• Mike Nolan: My co-conspirator, partner in FOSS, and comrade in arms
• Software Freedom Conservancy: For creating and holding this important space.

CopyleftConf 2020 continues to give me a lot to think about and consider. I’m fortunate to have attended. I hope this event report gives additional visibility to some of the conversations held in Brussels this year.

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

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

Across this spectrum of bold headlines and addicting scrolling, I began to wonder about identity. What determines how we choose to identify where we originate from? What makes us decide to disassociate from our birthplace? What parts of our culture make us proud and content and what parts are like fresh wounds withheld from time and space needed to heal? I started to wonder about my own identity and what it means to me to be defined as an American.

I fight a growing sense of dissatisfaction and disbelief of what I read happening each day. As I read about the United States and how its citizens are represented on a global stage, a feeling of repulsion sinks into my stomach. Society greatly shaped my perspective of what it meant to be an American as I grew up. What is around me now is contradicting: the qualities of inclusiveness and diversity espoused to the identity of being an American are the same qualities I feel are under attack.

One afternoon as I walked back to my Chicago apartment, I passed a Mexican restaurant. As I walked by, I searched for a menu to measure how authentic it would be compared to offerings in Atlanta (I’ve notoriously had a difficult time finding authentic Mexican food north of Virginia). However, I was disappointed, as the choices fell into the category of American-Mexican food and not the authentic dishes I craved.

But even though I continued on and left the food behind me, the restaurant didn’t leave my mind. As I continued to ponder on what it means to be American, I couldn’t get this restaurant, and countless others like it, out of my mind. One of the most unique observations of my travels is how culturally homogeneous so many countries are. From my experience living in Europe and visiting India, the difference of cultural diversity from my American experience was impossible to miss. Each country was mostly shaped by its dominant ethnic group. To see a Nicaraguan in Croatia or a Swede in India would be a memorable encounter because it was outside of preconceived expectations. But in America, I board a New York City, Chicago, or Washington DC subway, and I always remain pleasantly surprised at how unique and different all the passengers are.

But what of the Mexican restaurant? If my train rides reflect this unique cultural identity, what is the significance of the Mexican restaurant and why can’t I forget it?

Suddenly, I realize perhaps American culture is several shards of all other cultures that assimilate here. Instead of the restaurant being an imitation of the real thing, what if it is as real and independent of an experience as the original? Instead of being a clone or a derivative, what if they are their own original craft and subculture? In a way, they are mostly unique – many of the fusions of culture, from food to celebrations, and architecture to film are only found in this sort of combination here.

These pieces of foreign culture are transplanted seeds, taken from their native soil and planted into a new environment. It requires adaption and perhaps creativity too. But these pieces of culture, whether they are motivated to be imitations or not, are created from a place of love and genuine human connection. They stem from a desire to celebrate who we are and where we come from. Furthermore, they offer an opportunity to share these things with others and to pass along the memories and experiences to others in the hopes that they too will see the world from a different perspective, if only for a passing moment.

As I continue to read past another day of headlines, I feel hopeful knowing this spirit of America, although challenged today, remains and exists. In a city like Chicago, it would almost be impossible to miss this range of diversity. While some choose to wrap words of hate and fear around the red, white, and blue stripes of the American flag, I try to remain mindful to keep this flag closer to me too, and wrap it around my values of love and compassion for others, and what it means to me to be an American in this political era.