I'm Ian Kelling, one of two Free Software Foundation (FSF) tech team
staff members. Today I want to tell you about some of our LibrePlanet
technical work, the day-to-day work of running an organization exclusively
on free software, and how your financial support is truly needed for the
FSF to continue defending and advancing software freedom.
During most of the last decade, we had three or four people on the
tech team. Since fall 2023, we have been reduced to a two-person tech
team due to budget constraints. Nevertheless, we've continued to work
tirelessly and undeterred to support the free software movement. On
top of our normal work, this spring we ran another successful two-day
in-person and remote LibrePlanetconference. From a tech
team perspective, there were two significant changes at LibrePlanet
2024: we had a new venue, the Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT),
which is a great university campus, and in many respects, an
improvement upon past venues; and secondly, we made a software change
I would like to tell you more about.
This year, we used the Galène videoconferencing server for our
remote track. Previously, we used BigBlueButton. The reason
for this change is a bit complicated. BigBlueButton has a dependency
on MongoDB, and in 2018, new MongoDB versions started using a nonfree
license. In 2020, we noticed that an upcoming BigBlueButton version
had picked up a new nonfree MongoDB version, and we began a dialogue
with the BigBlueButton developers. We helped investigate some options
for moving away from MongoDB. We also tested and promoted
FerretDB, a free MongoDB-compatible database. Last year,
BigBlueButton finalized a technical plan for moving off MongoDB and
announced their plan to do so, which will hopefully happen within the
next year. Once they do officially move off MongoDB, we will celebrate
their work as the program has grown to mean a lot for the free software
community these last few years during and after the pandemic. While we
had been using a BigBlueButton version with a free, pre-2018 MongoDB
for the past few years, it was no longer officially supported by
BigBlueButton. For our major annual event, we wanted to use and
recommend a videoconferencing server with a supported and fully free
upstream. We found that with Galène.
So, what is different about Galène? BigBlueButton and Galène both have
real-time video- and audio-conferencing as a core feature. On the one
hand, BigBlueButton has some features that Galène doesn't, for
example, a shared whiteboard on which users can write and draw. While
we have enjoyed these features, we didn't need them for the LibrePlanet
2024 workshops and presentations.
Galène does have one feature that we found amazingly useful: it is very
CPU-efficient, which allowed us to to invite all attendees to directly
participate as users even if several hundred showed up. With
BigBlueButton, we would livestream a single BigBlueButton user's view of
BigBlueButton using OBS Studio and Icecast in order to scale to
hundreds of viewers safely. When considering how best to manage many
anonymous users, we noticed a few features that would be good to have
in Galène, so we made some feature requests upstream. To our
amazement, one of the developers quickly engaged in conversation with
us and within a week, implemented all of our feature requests and even
designed one of the features to be much better than what we asked for.
We also found Galène to be easy to install and administer. Overall, we are
very pleased with Galène and are currently using it for all our day-to-day
videoconferencing needs. The best thing: I was happy to learn that if
you aren't used to typing an accented è, it is normal and expected to
skip it and just type "Galene."
All in all, LibrePlanet proves again and again that a community can
come together and run a conference using entirely free software. How
great is it that we can communicate and collaborate in freedom!
All year round, the FSF runs on free software, self-hosted on our own
computers to the maximum extent we can. That includes maintaining a
rack of about a dozen servers across two data centers. We run a wide
array of software to support the free software movement, including
things like Git hosting and mailing lists for GNU software
development. In fact, we counted sixty-threedifferent services.
One way we are working to be more efficient is to better enable
volunteers to do and lead sysadmin work. We are fostering a
volunteer-centered team called the FSF SysOps team, which has a
fledgling website at https://sysops.fsf.org/wiki/, where we are
migrating volunteer-relevant information from the LibrePlanet
wiki and other places. If you have technical skills and want to
volunteer, please get in touch!
There is one more thing I helped a little bit with that I think
is really amazing and worth mentioning here. This year, the world's largest
company by revenue, Walmart (which recently acquired Vizio), attacked
the FSF with its lawyers in a grueling and verbally aggressive
ten-hour deposition that aimed to find a crack in the GPL and the
FSF's stand for user freedom. The FSF responded diligently with
extensive preparation and assistance from legal counsel, and we didn't
crack. These kinds of actions take significant financial resources. We
need your help to keep doing this. For me, a world where the FSF is
able to stand up to the biggest companies in the world is a world
where freedom has a fighting chance and hope exists.
Please help make that world exist. We know not everyone is in a position
to, but if you can, will you support our efforts by joining the FSF
as an associate member? An associate membership is a great show
of support we can rely on. With your help, the tech team can ensure that
the FSF runs smoothly on free software and thereby show that a world of
computer user freedom is possible. As an FSF associate member, you'll be
part of a vibrant international community and be able to enjoy all the
associate member benefits, such as access to the FSF's videoconferencing
server, 20% discount on FSF merchandise, and email forwarding. Every
new associate membership this spring will receive a FSF thermal mug as a
welcome gift and help us achieve our goal of 200 new associate members
by July 26. Need more reasons to join? Have a look at our appeal
page or email us at [email protected] to receive more information.
The FSF firmly believes every computer user deserves freedom and
tirelessly demonstrates how to do almost everything with free software.
For years to come, the FSF has an important role to play for computer
users globally, and we still have a lot of work to do. Thank you for
your support and for joining us on this journey to a free world.
