Today marked the first of several days of events and talks for the
Free Software Foundation's (FSF) annual conference, LibrePlanet,
now in its fifteenth year. LibrePlanet 2023's theme is "Charting the
Course," and is being held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition
Center (BCEC) as well as online.
Of the countries represented, we heard from: Argentina, Australia,
Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece,
India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazahstan, Mexico, New Zealand,
Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, Thailand, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States,
and many, many more!
Start of the conference
This year, we took on the ambitious task of running the conference
both in person and online simultaneously. And, of course, we did so
entirely with free software. Starting the conference, there was a bit
of a hiccup finalizing the setup for broadcasting, but, after about a
thirty-minute delay while our skillful tech team worked to solve all
the issues, we were successful in our goal, and people were able to
watch the talks live from their respective locations worldwide
simultaneously with in-person participants.
Matthias Kirscher, reading his new book Ada & Zangemann.
As there were many talks today, the morning started with, among other
things, an exploration of free licensing trademarks, by Julian Daich,
and "Libre software in Africa," by Benson Muite. We also had a live
reading of the popular free software children's book Ada & Zangemann
by Matthias Kirschner, which we're excited to say will be sold in the
FSF Shop after LibrePlanet.
There is much to be said about the entire day, so make sure to keep an
eye on the LibrePlanet Web site and Mediagoblin instance for
the publication of the videos. Here are some of the day's further
highlights.
Opening keynote
This year's opening keynote, titled "Education and the future of
software freedom" was held by researcher and educator Erin Rose
Glass of Social Paper. Glass's talk covered the role higher
education plays in cultivating passive acceptance of broad forms of
digital surveillance and control through popular educational
technologies like learning management systems, word processing
software, and test-taking tools, which are all pervasive within
contemporary education. She presented the many obstacles teachers and
students are facing today, while presenting a mixture of possible
solutions. These included philosophical shifts as well as free
software technological possibilities.
When asked by an audience member during the Q&A, "Why should we assume
that the course will change [toward privacy and freedom]? [...] Why
shouldn't I just be discouraged at this point?" Glass advised that we
"invest in the positive example," saying that we need to "be like the
sun, to [draw people in ...], because the wind method, the fear
method, doesn't seem to work."
Lightning Talks
We had a variety of high-quality talks this year for our lightning
talks series, presented both in person and online. A demo of free
blogging software that utilizes GPG encryption, a demo of a free
and uniquely designed group chat platform Quiet, a remote presentation
of REUSE by Lina Ceballos of Free Software Foundation Europe, and
a presentation by New Hampshire representative Eric Gallager are
among some of the talks given this year.
Sick Codes presents the free software running on tractors
Later in the afternoon, after an interesting exploration of how to use
data to better understand the impact of free software, by Do Yoon Kim,
Australian hacker Sick Codes shared the results of his most recent
research on free software in tractors. His talk started with the
question "Is your food farmed with free software?" and explored the
implications that software freedom has for farmers as well as
agriculture in general. He demonstrated for the audience how much of
the code running on John Deere tractors is free software, as well as
how to brick and unbrick a tractor. After the talk, he allowed
participants to play FreeDoom on his tractor interface.
The day concluded with a keynote by FSF's executive director Zoë
Kooyman and president Geoffrey Knauth. Kooyman spoke about the various
challenges ahead, such as contemporary threats to free, private
communication, Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS), proprietary
software in self-driving cars, and the normalization of proctoring,
which is "extremely malicious" to both students in the field of
education, as well as for employees. She then went on to praise the
free software community for being a small "group of individuals with a
strong set of beliefs who are making a real difference." She
acknowledged that there is hope on the course ahead, and that our
audience is growing, in part, because "more and more people are
questioning their relationship with technology."
Knauth followed, sharing his love of the "very grassroots" feel of the
free software movement and the LibrePlanet conference. He then
proceeded to present the 2022 Free Software Awards. This year's
recipients are Eli Zaretskii, winner of the Award for the Advancement
of Free Software, Tad (aka SkewedZeppelin), who won the Award for
Outstanding New Free Software Contributor, and GNU Jami, who had two
in-person representatives receiving their award live in Boston, for
Project of Social Benefit.
Coming Sunday
Sunday, we will have many more talks by many more fantastic
speakers! The lineup includes updates on the FSF-supported project
JShelter, a "Webextension that helps in returning the browser to
users," and GNU Taler, free/libre payment system. In the
afternoon, we have a discussion led by tech cooperative Agaric
which starts from the provocative question, "Should developers get
paid for their work?" Dr. Elizabeth Chamberlain is Sunday's
closing keynote, presenting a talk titled "The future of the right to
repair and free software."
We hope that you enjoyed the first day of this year's LibrePlanet as
much as we have, and we are looking forward to see you again tomorrow.
