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Dear Free Software Supporter,

Today, May 5, marked the second day of the Free Software Foundation's
(FSF) sixteenth edition of its annual [LibrePlanet conference][1].
This year's theme was "Cultivating Community." The talks and
activities this year centered around nurturing the free software
community's continued growth for decades to come. We're happy to
report that, following a successful [first day][2] of the conference,
our second day brought both online and in-person attendees
entertaining and enlightening talks.

[1]: [link removed]
[2]: [link removed]

The opening keynote delivered by [Hayley Tsukayama][3] shared her
origin story as an activist for user rights causes, beginning from her
time as a reporter on the Washington Post. Tired of having to pair
stories about Cambridge Analytica and similar fiascos with those same
companies' quarterly earnings, she started a journey that brought her
to her work as associate director of legislative activism for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Tsukayama emphasized the importance of cross-disciplinary advocacy and
shared lessons EFF has learned from building partnerships with
different movements such as the workers rights and criminal justice.
When working together with other movements, attendees should think
about the individual skills they bring to the table and bridge their
own experience to the issues they're trying to impact. Tsukayama's
talk also emphasized the activist's journey rather than the
destination, stating that many times the cliche about "the friends you
make along the way" turns out to be true in activism for user rights.
When asked by an attendee during the Q&A what individuals can do, she
encouraged all of us to write to our representatives about our
personal experience with free software and the injustices of
proprietary software. She says: "I often find that personal stories
move lawmakers."

[3]: [link removed]

As not every conference presentation needs to be a full forty-five
minutes, a lightning talk round was held with both in-person and
prerecorded talks. The three in-person [lightning talks][4] were given
by four conference attendees, covering topics ranging from the
Sandstorm platform for web development, mesh networking, and a
collection of art projects that demonstrated how widespread and
effective mass surveillance technologies are. Meanwhile, [J.Y.
Amihud][5] spoke on making and producing a (libre!) film with entirely
free software, and [Iván Alejandro Ávalos Díaz][6] led a workshop on
the GNU Taler project which continued through the afternoon.

[4]: [link removed]
[5]: [link removed]
[6]: [link removed]

The free software movement extends far beyond LibrePlanet. Several
sessions in the afternoon were dedicated to spreading the message to
wider communities and contexts. One of these was [Neil Plotnick's][7]
presentation on GNU/Linux in the high school classroom, where Plotnick
demonstrated how he uses free software to teach high school students
core computer science concepts and slightly more advanced topics like
octal (Unix) file attributes.

[7]: [link removed]

In the [FSF staff panel][8], FSF executive director Zoë Kooyman joined
campaigns team members Miriam Bastian and Greg Farough for an open
(and libre!) discussion on the future of LibrePlanet, opportunities to
broaden the free software movement and the FSF's support base, as well
as challenges activists face in introducing their friends, family, and
complete strangers to software freedom.

[8]: [link removed]

The lunch break had its share of extracurriculars. The [GNU Boot][9]
install party was continued into Sunday, where the FSF provided
several laptops for enterprising attendees to try the sometimes
complicated flash process before performing it on their own machines.
[Chief GNUisance][10] and FSF founder Richard M. Stallman (RMS) hosted
a book signing and Q&A, where attendees asked inspiring questions
about how to build community and becoming an effective free software
advocate.

[9]: [link removed]
[10]: [link removed]

FSF-LA president [Alexandre Oliva][11] (often just "lxo") extended
Cory Doctorow's useful and now well-known concept of the
"enshittification" of web services to software more generally. In a
session that was chock full of both knowledge and puns, Oliva
illustrated software enshittification through the example of CPU
microcode and device firmware updates, which is one of the main
avenues for the most nefarious kind of exploitation. In contrast to
more "baked-in" forms of firmware which are ethically
indistinguishable from the circuit, microcode and firmware updates are
a particularly vulnerable place for software enshittification.

[11]: [link removed]

The volunteer-run and fully virtual Neptune track continued into
Sunday, with [Tobias Platen][12] sharing how to game in the free world
on a Talos II, [Adam Monsen][13] highlighting methods for "steadfast"
self-hosting while streaming over the web himself, [Jurgen
Gaeremyn][14] on resurrecting the (formerly?) annual Software Freedom
Day celebration, and others. LibrePlanet attendees could watch these
streams on laptops set up in the conference's "Space Station" lobby in
a special viewing session.

[12]: [link removed]
[13]: [link removed]
[14]: [link removed]

[Alyssa Rosenzweig's][15] keynote concluded the conference, sharing
her trailblazing work with freeing the M1 series of Apple GPUs.
Rosenzweig did this through first giving an introduction to the
dramatis personae of the graphical toolkit world, like Direct3D, which
she "begrudgingly" described as a standard when compared to Apple's
completely undocumented Metal API. From there, Rosenzweig took us
through how she became involved in reverse-engineering graphics stacks
by sharing how she freed her first machine, and her first computer, a
Chromebook equipped with a Mali GPU. This highlighted the domino
effect her exemplary work on free software had, beginning with "Alyssa
getting a Chromebook" leading straight up to the multi-billion dollar
ARM corporation contributing to the project. Rosenzweig characterized
her talk (and work) not as being about graphics or even free software,
but resisting the daily injustices perpetrated by the "big corporate
monolith." "I want you to find a cause, I want you to build a community,
and I want you to resist," she said. Rosenzweig concluded to a full
standing ovation from the audience.

[15]: [link removed]

Rosenzweig emphasized the collective impact that our individual
actions have, stating that individuals have something corporations do
not: dignity. We couldn't have asked for a more appropriate capstone
for the conference generally. The free software movement continues day
to day, not just two days out of the year, and we hope that
LibrePlanet has provided the encouragement both old and new free
software activists need to continue their work.

Happy hacking,

Greg Farough
Campaigns Manager

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