MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-02-23 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] Time for a Field Trip to Boston
|
March 19-20
MIT
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Time for a Field Trip to Boston, who wants to come!!!
https://libreplanet.org/2016/program/
Program Sessions
SESSIONS / SPEAKERS
Keynotes
The last lighthouse: Free software in dark times
Edward Snowden , Daniel Kahn Gillmor
Join NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden and ACLU Technologist Daniel Kahn
Gillmor for a discussion about free software, surveillance, power, and
control of the future.
Sessions
Advocate for Yourself at Work: Use More Free Software and Keep
Contributing to the Community
Deb Nicholson , Open Invention Network and Richard Fontana , Red Hat
Your workplace can exert a lot of control over how much free software
you use, what you're allowed to work on in your own time and what kinds
of tools you become an expert in. New employees don't always negotiate
their contracts to make sure they can continue contributing to free
software and current employees aren't always successful at advocating
for using free software tools, choosing free software technologies or
contributing changes back upstream when they do rely on free software.
We'll address what's possible, what your legal department is likely to
be concerned about and how to be a smooth negotiator at work. Many
companies could benefit tremendously from using FOSS, but free software
enthusiasts and institutional gatekeepers are coming from very different
perspectives. Free software developers and users tend to be most
familiar with free software's benefits when compared to proprietary
solutions; user freedom, reusing code, public code review for bugs,
increased project capacity and cost. The uninitiated may --
unfortunately -- be most familiar with the risks, some real and some
perceived. Employers also benefit from having workers who are passionate
about their work, are well-connected to the free software community and
are constantly learning about new technologies from their peers outside
the company, but new employee contracts rarely recognize this unless you
ask. Conversations about contracts, choosing new technologies and
sharing an employee's work with another entity are high stakes
negotiations. With a solid understanding of what worries and motivates
the other parties, you can become a savvy advocate for free software at
work. This talk will help you gather information, frame the conversation
and make the best possible case for using and contributing to free
software at work.
Artificial scarcity: Beyond the digital
Shauna Gordon-McKeon
Digital resources such as software programs can be easily copied and
shared, but distribution is restrained by technical, legal, and cultural
means. The free culture community is not the first to fight "artificial
scarcity." What can we learn from other communities and movements?
This presentation will be a series of case studies covering a variety of
other forms of artificial scarcity, including food waste, housing
vacancy, and the destruction of excess retail merchandise. We'll focus
on efforts to combat this scarcity, highlighting what's worked and
drawing lessons from what hasn't.
By exploring the connections between free culture and other
anti-scarcity movements, we'll find new approaches, new allies, and new
opportunities to stand up for the public commons.
Beyond reproducible builds
Holger Levsen, Debian
The presentation will describe how the Debian reproducible builds team
made 85% of the Debian archive reproducible, what steps are left to
reach 100% and what steps are needed beyond reproducible builds, so that
every user can easily and meaningful benefit from them.
The presentation will be largely about the the Debian work on the area,
but it will also portrait other projects work on reproducible builds, as
our goal is to make reproducible builds the norm for Free Software.
""It's not free software if it's not reproducible."
Building new economies for open development and content
Paige Peterson , MaidSoft
Shifting perspectives on the value of Free/Libre software development
and Creative Commons content creation would open up opportunities for
individuals working in these fields as we finally see a push towards an
economy that makes sense for the Internet. This will be an overview of
some platforms creating these new opportunities and ways we can think
about how an economy can exist in the digital world beyond the
artificial scarcity that comes with keeping code and content locked down
or secret. The session should include group discussion about platforms,
philosophies and experiences folks working in free/libre software and
creative commons content.
Challenges and future growth in libre media and conference video production
George Chriss and others, Kat Walsh (moderator)
An 'intermediate' panel designed to provide a working overview of
diversified libre media communities blended with per-project technical
development updates, organizational adoption challenges,
community-centric user-experience goals and other novel discussions
regarding video production both generally and as it relates to
conference video production (e.g., session recording and live-streaming).
A community take on the license compliance industry
Stefano Zacchiroli , Debian, OSI, IRILL
The license compliance industry purportedly helps information technology
companies and other actors to use publicly available software, and in
particular free software, in a way that is compliant with the relevant
free software licenses. In this talk we will review why the license
compliance industry exists and discuss, from an external point of view,
how it operates. We will then highlight some potential ethical issues on
the current best practices for license compliance in the industry, and
propose community-oriented alternatives that we can build, today, on top
of the existing corpus of publicly available free software.
Community technology for solidarity economies
Andrew Seeder , Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative
This strategic action session is for anyone interested in the solidarity
economy and asset-based community development. We'll compare notes,
network, and outline the ecosystem of services needed to support the
operations of community land trusts, worker co-operatives, sharing
networks, and other democratic economic initiatives. We'll also explore
how free software technology can help activists organize and manage
investments, alliances, and information resources. Hopefully both
hardware and software solutions will be discussed. I'll facilitate the
session and am open to the "unconference" style, where the content of
the session is decided by whoever shows up. I'll prepare an overview of
the topic, with an emphasis on designing tactics for people without a
background in technology. Security, control, and sustainability will be
core concepts.
Copyleft for the next decade: a comprehensive plan
Bradley Kuhn , Software Freedom Conservancy
Copyleft has faced serious challenges in the last five years. It's not
over: many more threats are on the way. Not by coincidence these attacks
on copyleft come when "open source" reaches new heights of success. For
example, hordes of software developers are funded full time to churn out
new free software, as long as it's not copylefted. Some such code is
specifically designed to replace existing, widely used, copylefted programs.
Meanwhile, programs under copyleft licenses (most notably the kernel
named Linux) face a decades long, ongoing myriad of license violations.
Such violations include nefarious attempts by major companies to shirk
their responsibilities under copyleft. The situation is undoubtedly bleak.
Those of us who care about software freedom need a plan. Copyleft once
assured an equal playing field, but big companies work daily to tilt the
playing field in their favor and against the interests of most
developers, hobbyists, users, and enthusiasts.
Effective outreach in four steps
Marina Zhurakhinskaya , Red Hat
The full potential of free software is to break down the barriers to
technology and to participation, and to include users and contributors
from a wide range of backgrounds. There are four key steps for making
communities diverse and inclusive: creating a welcoming environment,
teaching skills, fostering connections, and increasing visibility of
contributors from underrepresented backgrounds. Whether you are a
prospective contributor wondering what an inclusive community looks
like, a project contributor wanting to take concrete steps to improve
your project's outreach, or a project leader looking to create a
diversity strategy for your community, this talk will have the
information you need. Marina will share best practices and inspiring
stories from her years of experience in free software diversity outreach
in roles including outreach specialist at Red Hat, co-organizer of
Outreachy, advisor and director for the Ada Initiative, and outreach
lead for GNOME.
Ending Online Tracking! Privacy Badger and Beyond!
Cooper Quintin , EFF
Modern websites incorporate large amounts of third party resources.
While these third parties can provide a better browsing experience all
too often they abuse their inclusion on sites to be able to track
information about your website's visitors. This type of non-consensual
tracking must stop.
I'll cover how users can protect themselves while browsing, why some
solutions are better than others, and why free software licenses have
helped provide a rich ecosystem of non-proprietary tools. From Ad Block
Plus, to Firefox's Tracking Protection, to the EFFs Privacy Badger
extension I'll discuss how these tools work and how users can protect
themselves from online surveillance.
Experiences around FLOSS tools and social movements in Mexico
Jes Ciacci , Gibrán Montes
We want to share experiencies around Mexican social movements migrating
to free software and/or using other free tools. People of different
social processes are increasingly adopting FLOSS in their daily activity
to communicate and organize. Most of the motivation came from digital
security awareness but some times it goes a little further (like be
congruence with the defense of human rights). In the way of facilitating
those processes we have seen some advantages and disadvantages and
receive some feedback we want to share with the rest of the community.
Specially interesting for developers and technical facilitators who want
to share their own experiences in this topics and strengthen links
between FLOSS technical communities and Latin American social movements.
Intend to generate some ideas for improving the linkages between both
spaces not only for the software itself but emphasizing the political
aspects they share and how to empower grassroots movements using
free/libre tools.
F as in Freedom
Molly de Blanc
Projects with a significant number of contributors and users will face
decisions where they are no longer able to fulfill the needs and desires
of all stakeholders. When this happens some people become upset. A
subset of those people become so upset they vent their frustrations on
Twitter. I have collected tweets that express a negative sentiment
towards decisions made within free software communities and by decision
makers for free software projects. These were then categorized based on
the decision type (e.g. licensing) and outcome (e.g. switching
licenses). I hope to create a greater community understanding of
decision making processes, develop a discussion about how communities
and decision makers can move forward to better balance the wants and
needs of stakeholders, and make a few crass jokes that possibly violate
the Code of Conduct.
Free software alternatives to dominant proprietary solutions: A review
of French initiatives
Marianne Corvellec , April and Jonathan Le Lous , April
Project "De-google-ify Internet" aims at offering as many alternative
services as possible to those threatening our digital freedoms. Google"
is not the only player there, even though it gave the project its name.
Google Drive, Google Calendar, Skype, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter,
Youtube, Doodle, Yahoo Groups, and many others, are extremely convenient
services. But they are centralized and make users dependent.
Framasoft are resisting this trend. They have come up with a several
year roadmap to set up alternative services. These services are thought
of as digital commons. They are free, gratis, and open to all. Framasoft
is a French not-for-profit whose goal is to decentralize the Internet by
promoting self-hosting. They work to empower everyone to install and run
their own services. The project already offers more than 15 alternative
services and welcomes about 1,000,000 visits per month.
FSF at 30: history of free software
Matt Lee , GNU Project
A look back at free software history, with a live demonstration of
software from the past being used to deliver a presentation in 2016.
Getting the academy to support free software and open science
Scott Dexter and Evan Misshula , CUNY, and Erin Glass , UCSD
Academic Institutions and their researchers are some of the biggest
beneficiaries of free software development. While individual researchers
have contributed greatly to free software, they usually do so outside of
the scope of their regular jobs and to the detriment of their academic
careers. At CUNY, we have taken steps to change this unacceptable
situation. Please come to this session and exchange ideas and strategies
for having contribtions to free software valued by the University.
GNU/Linux and Chill: Free Software on a College Campus
Michaela R. Brown
Being a free software user isn't easy, especially when you're a college
student. I spent a year at a school that taught Visual Basic as its
primary programming language for freshmen and sophomores, where
"Introduction to Programming" was an overview of the Windows OS, and
where most of the professors would only accept papers typed in Times New
Roman -- and I survived. In this session, I'll give students tips for
making it through college while still adhering to the values we hold as
free software users -- including alternative fonts, making a GNU/Linux
live disk for use on public computers, avoiding the "Netflix and Chill"
dilemma, and most importantly, ways to discuss free software with
professors and fellow students. After leaving this session, students
will feel empowered and able to hold their own as free users in a
proprietary campus.
Hardware reverse engineering insights from the MAME project: a path
towards free firmware
Felipe Correa da Silva Sanches , MAME
The MAME Project's main stated goal is to preserve historical computer
hardware. The strategy for achieving that objective is to inspect the
devices and then to develop emulators for them. While most hardware is
undocumented and relies on proprietary firmware, the MAME development
community has nurtured strong reverse engineering practices since its
origins back in 1997.
The techniques that we need to master in order to develop new emulators
include reverse engineering procedures that are also very useful for
aiding in the creation of free firmware solutions to replace the
non-free blobs used in a broad variety of daily-use devices. These
skills are also useful for the development of free drivers for
undocumented devices and in the porting of operating systems and BIOSes
to new hardware platforms. We need to strengthen a community of skillful
hardware reverse engineers so that we can solve the freedom issues
denounced by projects such as Linux-Libre and Libreboot.
Inessential Weirdnesses in Free Software
Sumana Harihareswara
I'll discuss aspects of our behavior and jargon that stop or slow down
some new users and contributors in free software, so that in outreach
efforts, we can be better at bridging the gap. These include git's
terrible UI, our in-person conference structures, and widespread scorn
of and dismissiveness towards team sports, Top 40 music, patriotism,
religion, small talk, and Microsoft Windows. In getting rid of
unnecessary barriers, we need to watch out for disrespectful
oversimplification, so I'll outline ways you can know if one of our
weirdnesses is necessary. And I'll talk about how to mitigate the
effects of an inessential weirdness in your outreach efforts.
Introduction to Python in Blender
Bassam Kurdali , Urchin
Blender is a versatile Free 3D animation program that is most famously
used as an artist tool. However, it also has a rich, pythonic and
consistent api that allows extending and controlling the application.
We'll explore techniques to use this api for creating 3D meshes, that
could be a foundation/ inspiration for generative architecture or art.
Familiarity with Blender is not required (but recommended) and at least
a basic knowledge of Python would be helpful for this workshop.
LittleSis: Mapping the powers that be
Molly Gott
LittleSis is a free software, wiki-style database that tracks
connections between the world's most powerful people and organizations.
In the workshop, participants will be trained in the site's basic
functions (e.g. editing profile pages and searching for interlocks
between corporations) and advanced functions (e.g using the site's
Oligrapher tool to create maps of information stored in the database).
We will also share stories about the ways in which LittleSis and power
analysis research have been used in movement and organizing contexts,
including how activists in St. Louis used LittleSis to map and challenge
the local corporate Powers Behind the Police and how activists in
Philadelphia are using LittleSis to research the corporate entities
behind education privatization. Participants will leave with an
understanding of how to use LittleSis, as well as inspiration for how
they can start their own movement research teams to map the powers that
be in their communities.
Loomio: Creating a world where anyone, anywhere can participate in
decisions that affect them
MJ Kaplan , Loomio
Loomio is free software that we created after experiencing the
transformative potential of participatory decision making, and its
limitations, during the Occupy movement in New Zealand. Scaling is
impossible if people have to be in the same place at the same time so we
developed software that allows online groups to be inclusive and fast,
enabling deliberative discussion that taps the collective intelligence
of the group while moving actively to shared agreement and action.
Loomio is free to maximize access and inclusion, knowing that people who
are on the margins of power are the least likely to have a voice. This
session will engage participants in how Loomio works -- in fact they can
sign up ahead of time to inform the session! I'll share lessons and
challenges from cases across the 95 countries where citizen activists
and workers are experimenting with better, fast platforms to
collaborate. Participants will be inspired to use Loomio to support
their groups.
Mutual Assistance Technical Communities
Enrique Rosas , Mutual Assistance Technical Communities
GNU has made great contributions laying the groundwork for commons
development within the digital context. Those contributions
(philosophical, ideological, legal and technical) have achieved its
ripeness in a growing number of free software projects with an also
growing economical and social relevance, inspiring the creation of
cultural goods and hardware designs under the same ideology.
For those seeking social changes, GNU represents a concrete and
practical reference that has successfully convened thousands of people
to contribute with their work to the common good, as well as promoting
the exploration of communities coexistence towards that end; all of it
under the capitalist system.
Left social organizations struggling against several layers of
dependency are in need of new ways of collaboration, but also are in
need of shared knowledge goods, developed in shared strategies based on
their skills n' common needs. Mutual Assistance Tech Communities is a
project in that direction.
Restore online freedom!
Mike Gerwitz , GNU Project
Imagine a world where surveillance is the default and users must opt-in
to privacy. Imagine that your every action is logged and analyzed to
learn how you behave, what your interests are, and what you might do
next. Imagine that, even on your fully free operating system,
proprietary software is automatically downloaded and run not only
without your consent, but often without your knowledge. In this world,
even free software cannot be easily modified, shared, or replaced. In
many cases, you might not even be in control of your own computing --
your actions and your data might be in control by a remote entity, and
only they decide what you are and are not allowed to do.
This may sound dystopian, but this is the world you're living in right
now. The Web today is an increasingly hostile, freedom-denying place
that propagates to nearly every aspect of the average users' lives --
from their PCs to their phones, to their TVs and beyond. But before we
can stand up and demand back our freedoms, we must understand what we're
being robbed of, how it's being done, and what can (or can't) be done to
stop it.
Scaling your free software system: lessons from a decade of OpenMRS
Judy Gichoya
By sheer luck and opportunity, a group of four doctors in 2004 at a
restaurant used napkins to sketch the data model of what they thought
would be a simple electronic medical records system.
Fast track to today, this simple medical records system is known as
OpenMRS (Open Medical Record System), a free medical records system in
use in over 42 countries in the world. For example, when Google worked
on the ‘Ebola tablet’ under project Buendia, OpenMRS powered it. After
the national disaster in Haiti struck, OpenMRS powered the new
Mirebalais hospital. Six countries committed to deploy OpenMRS as their
national EMR system including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria,
Philippines and Bangladesh. OpenMRS has never hired developers for the
decade of existence, yet every single day people from all over the world
come to our platform and ask us how can they get involved?
This session shares a decade of running a lean organization to provide
free medical records software, what has worked and what threatens our
sustainability.
The Singularity, the Matrix, and the Terminator
Alexandre Oliva , FSF Latin America
In fiction, we have often faced our fear that man-made creatures will
become smart enough to subjugate us. As technology evolves, the
Singularity may seem an inevitable looming future, but such intelligent
beings have actually been with us for a very long time. Over many
decades, they disabled the checks intended to keep them under our
control, and turned most of us into their much-needed servants, who now
live in an artificial reality they created to control us, while our
planet can hardly support our life much longer. These creatures grew
more powerful and smarter with our technological advances, but then they
sent their agents back to disable our defenses and the leaders of our
resistance, turning many of our tools and much of our infrastructure
against us. They vaporized our freedoms, and a dark cloud now covers
most of the planet. We still have one card left up our sleeves to tame
these creatures, but we need more Neos and Connors to play it
successfully. Are you up for it?
Solving the deployment crisis with GNU Guix
Christopher Webber , GNU MediaGoblin and David Thompson , GNU Guix
User freedom is threatened by the growing complexity of current
deployment and packaging directions. Running software (especially
server/networked software) is becoming too hard for the average user, so
many users are turning to the dangerous path of relying on large
corporations to do their computing for them. What can GNU do to turn the
tide here? Enter GNU Guix and GuixSD! This talk will walk through Guix's
unique positioning to provide totally free and reproducible systems. A
path will be laid out on how Guix could be used as a foundation for easy
to run and maintain computing for everyone, how you can get Guix and
GuixSD running, and how to get involved in the most hacking-friendly
package manager/distro duo ever!
Stallman, Nussbaum, and Sen: putting "freedom" in context
Luis Villa
Our movement rarely talks about freedom with much philosophical nuance.
In this talk, I'll try to put some flesh on the bones of freedom by
giving an introduction to Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capability
approach, and applying it to software. The capability approach
(sometimes called the human development approach) is a framework for
thinking about human freedom that, since its development in the early
90s, has been applied across a broad range of philosophical, economic,
and policy problems. Focused on what options a person has to reach their
goals, it is well-suited for understanding where we succeed - and fail!
- at actually freeing people.
Talk attendees should come away with a more nuanced understanding of
software freedom, how to talk about it with others, and where to focus
their coding energy to best increase human freedom.
Take control of your communication with Ring!
Adrien Béraud and Guillaume Roguez , Savoir-faire Linux
Do you know Ring ? It's a free software for real-time communication.
Developed by Savoir-faire Linux and a community of contributors, it
operates in peer-to-peer - so without a central server . Communication
is tightly coupled to the sense of liberty. Ring let users keep control
of their exchanges.
It allows to make audio or video calls, and to send messages - in
confidence and safely. Currently in an alpha version, Ring is even more
than that! Available on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, and Android, it can
be associated with a conventional phone service, integrated with any
connected device, and adapted to the specific needs of users. It is a
combination of technologies and innovations opening all kinds of
perspectives for everyone!
During this presentation, you will understand how Ring is built to
respect privacy and how you can use it. You will also discover why it is
an essential tool for the future and how Ring defends freedom.
Taking back our freedom: Free software for sousveillance
M. C. McGrath
The surveillance state is driven by secrecy. But everything leaves a
data trail and the intelligence community itself is no exception -- even
the NSA is vulnerable to surveillance. Transparency Toolkit is a free
software project that helps anyone investigate surveillance programs.
By making tools to help collect and analyze publicly available data like
resumes, job listings, social media, and government contracts, we are
using free software and open data to track and expose the surveillance
state. In this talk, I'll discuss some of the interesting things we've
found, how Transparency Toolkit's software works, and how people can use
our tools to investigate issues they care about.
Trans Code: Free software as model & critique of diversity by
transgender hackers
Brian Callahan , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Lillian Lemmer ,
Hypatia Software Organization
Gender and racial diversity initiatives have been an important social
force in the free software movement in the last several years. These
social justice campaigns have been successful: see for example PyCon.
However, those further marginalized, such as transgender hackers, may
not feel properly included in these initiatives. They have turned to
free software as a model for their own liberation as well as a way to
critique the culture of the status quo and mainstream diversity initiatives.
This talk, co-given by a trans hacker and an anthropologist, highlights
how free software offers powerful models and critiques of the lack of
gender diversity in the free software movement by retelling several
ethnographic stories of a free software project led by and comprised of
trans women.
By presenting these ethnographic stories we wish to springboard with the
audience a conversation of the value of challenges from below to
diversity initiatives in free software and the tech industry at large.
Want to advance free software? Learn to engage and connect with others
Emmanuel , Hampshire College
The free software movement has done well in the last few years, and has
even inspired a new generation of activists advocating for software
freedom. However, in a software-driven society where everything from
cars, watches, and even medical devices run on non-free software, the
free software community has its work cut out for it. In order to enact
significant social change, we need to work with legislators, other
activists, and local community leaders. Their help is crucial.
How do we connect our community to other groups? In order to gain
support, the first step we must take is to engage with the public on how
non-free software can affect their everyday lives negatively. Even the
most non-technical person can become engaged with the social and
technical benefits to free software, if given the chance. This session
will discuss how each and every one of us in the free software movement
can engage with others, promoting the ideals of a society running on
free software in a way that each person can personally appreciate.
Will there be a next great Copyright Act?
Parker Higgins , EFF
The first day of LibrePlanet 2016 marks the third anniversary of
Register of Copyright's emphatic call for a comprehensive rewrite of the
United States Copyright Act -- the first such effort since 1976.
Congress has taken up the charge, holding dozens of hearings and
floating multiple bills. Meanwhile, trade negotiations and extralegal
agreements have changed the state of play. Where does it all stand, and
what can activists looking for common sense reform do next? This session
will describe recent progress and the lay of the land on copyright
terms, the public domain, DRM laws, policy laundering, fair use, and
more topics of immediate interest to the free software community. It
will describe activism efforts underway to defend the rights of the
public as legislation gets proposed. Finally, it will foolishly attempt
to predict the future. Will we see a Next Great Copyright Act?
Yes, the FCC might ban your operating system
Eric Schultz
What could possibly make thousands of free software advocates, ham radio
operators, researchers and physicians stand together? One obscure FCC
rulemaking proposal on wireless radios. Eric Schultz, one of the leaders
of the Save Wifi Initiative, discusses the details of the extreme
proposals of FCC to control how you use your devices. You'll learn the
history of regulators quietly locking down wireless radios and how it's
unintentionally extending to a lockdown of the operating systems of
devices. Finally, you'll find out some of the problems with proposed
workarounds for the the FCC lock down proposals.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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