Today marked the first day of the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) annual
LibrePlanet conference, now in its sixteenth year. The LibrePlanet
theme this year is "Cultivating Community," and the event is being held
at the Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) as well as online. Here
are some of the day's highlights.
Opening keynote
David Wilson of System Crafters was Saturday's keynote..
This year's opening keynote, titled "Cultivating a welcoming free
software community that lasts" was held by free software developer and
video creator David Wilson. In his talk, Wilson shared the
insights he's learned over the years from building the System Crafters
community. He provided a helpful framework for how we can build a
friendly, thriving community around a free software project.
Basically, Wilson recommended four steps: first, be a role model and
welcome everybody in the community. Second, preserve the good vibes,
remind people that this is a welcoming community. Third, ignite
collaboration and celebrate contributions, no matter how small they
are, because they are a sign of personal involvement. And last but not
least, make yourself replaceable. The fourth step, Wilson explained,
is important, because "the only way a project can survive long-term is
by becoming a collective activity."
Wilson's talk focused on the importance of attracting positive and
encouraging people to ensure the health of the community. Doing this
is key to getting a new free software project off the ground. Of
course, one option is "paying for a huge billboard to advertise your
community," but for most projects, a user's first experience with the
project is a website. Creating a good first impression and using a
website to say "what your project is and what you value" is important.
Wilson also spoke on how to highlight core members of your community
and promote their work. He gave examples of "helpful people" he had
promoted in the System Crafters community, giving them a larger role
in the project and encouraging them to do more. Similarly, Wilson said
that a good goal for a new project was enabling the contribution of
one user, then ten, then one hundred.
The morning
The keynote was followed by a behind-the-scenes tour with the Savannah
hacker Corwin Brust, a presentation on how to liberate the boot
firmware of a Raspberry Pi by Johannes Åsgård (dolphinana), and a
workshop by academic researcher and activist Christina Haralanova
about connecting community organizations and technological activists
for software freedom.
In the workshop, participants brainstormed solutions to bring more
software freedom and collaborative practices into the community
sector. Haralanova cultivated the idea that by being active in other
communities and movements we can share our experience with software
freedom and help them move on to free software.
Wensheng Xie shared his story of how he started contributing to
the GNU System and Marco Calegaro presented how he built a coreXY
meditation table by modifying a 3D printer with free software.
Throughout the morning, in-person attendees could free their computer
by replacing their BIOS with GNU Boot at the GNU Boot install
party.
As has become tradition, FSF associate members held their
annual meeting to discuss where the free software movement is going
and come up with recommendations for the FSF.
The afternoon
The afternoon had a special surprise, cake included. Conference
attendees celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Trisquel
GNU/Linux project with its founder Rubén Rodríguez Pérez,
who gave a developer preview of a new major release planned for
later this year. In parallel, the three students Michael
Brodskiy, Amit Shenoy, and Olivia Gallucci discussed the
difficulties free software enthusiasts face at universities these
days, both while they're in school and also when they go to
search for jobs at companies that use and develop proprietary
software.
Afterwards, Open Forum Europe senior policy advisor Ciarán
O'Riordan enlightened the audience on how we can influence
legislation for the benefit of software freedom. He shared his
insights from previous legislation processes like the drafting of the
Cyber Resilience Act. O'Riordan described the CRA as a marked
difference between the old style of free software as analogous to
literature, where one is "free to publish," versus the new legislative
landscape, where applying criteria to software publication equates to
"you're free to publish if..." O'Riordan also highlighted the
ambiguous meaning of putting software "on the market" in the European
Union an earlier draft of the CRA, stating that each time a patch is
pushed to a free software project, it is a new act of publication in
the EU. The free software movement needs not only people who are
familiar with free software, but people who are familiar with
legislation.
The day concluded with a keynote by FSF's executive director Zoë
Kooyman. Kooyman spoke about recent FSF initiatives like its
participating the National Institute of Science and Technology
(NIST)'s consortium on AI safety to ensure the free software
perspective is represented, the FSF's desire to expand its
outreach to free software in education through speaking
engagements, developments in the FSF board's governance process,
and other ways the organization defends free software.
Kooyman then proceeded to present the 2023 Free Software Awards
This year's recipients are Bruno Haible, Nick Logozzo, and the Free
Software Unit of the French government, code.gouv.fr. Haible and
Bastien Guerry of the Unit accepted their respective awards in
pre-recorded announcements. Logozzo sent a written acceptance that FSF
campaigns manager Greg Farough read during the ceremony.
Coming Sunday
Sunday, we will continue the GNU Boot install party and we have
many more talks by many more fantastic speakers! The lineup
includes a keynote by Hayley Tsukayama, associate director of
legislative activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on
cross-disciplinary free software advocacy, and the closing keynote
will be held by Alyssa Rosenzweig, who spearheaded the
reverse-engineering of Apple's GPU.
We hope that you enjoyed the first day of this year's LibrePlanet as
much as we have. It's fantastic to see so many people from all over
the world participate. Of the countries represented, we heard from:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China,
Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India,
Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.
We are looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow. If you missed a
talk you would like to see keep an eye on the LibrePlanet website
and Mediagoblin instance for the publication of the videos after
the event.
