LibrePlanet 2014

Millions of people have demanded an end to the NSA's mass spying programs. But we can't rely on governments to end government surveillance. Free software and end-to-end crypto is key. To protect the world from bulk spying, we need to make software that's secure

An update on the the Xiph.Org Foundation's free codec projects, focusing on the next generation Opus and Daala codecs, and where we plan to go with development and advocacy in the near future.

Lightning talks are short presentations given by conference attendees on free software topics they're passionate about. Come to any or all of the three sessions to talk or just listen.

The "Respects Your Freedom" device certification program encourages the creation and sale of hardware that will do as much as possible to respect your freedom and your privacy, and will ensure that you have control over the devices you own. Learn about the certification process, certified products, the companies behind them, and our vision and hopes for the future.

In this session, we'll lay the groundwork for working with the MediaWiki software, a PHP and JavaScript Web application that, through extensions, can be used for a great many purposes. You may be familiar with MediaWiki from Wikipedia, the Free Software Directory, or one of the thousands of other independent wikis that run the software.

Copyleft licenses, particularly the GPL and LGPL, are widely used throughout the free software community. Over the last few years, recent debates have led many to various conclusions about the popularity of copyleft. This talk will discuss where copyleft stands today, how it interacts with the modern free software world, and how copyleft advocates may need to adapt to th future of Free Software licensing.

Lightning talks are short presentations given by conference attendees on free software topics they're passionate about. Come to any or all of the three sessions to talk or just listen.

OpenPGP is the standard upon which modern cryptography systems are built upon. The Free Software OpenPGP implementation, GnuPG, is used ubiquitously throughout the free software world, and many people depend on safe and secure communications while using it. This talk will cover the basics of OpenPGP's format, and a very brief overview of how crypto systems, such as GnuPG, encode and send your data. This talk may assume technical knowledge for some parts.

Interested in helping to organize a Cambridge confab on the social and political dimensions of digital technology? Then join this lunchtime discussion to start planning the fourth iteration of the annual Digital Media Conference -- coming up in October at Lesley University. Check

In addition to information sharing and helpfulness, geek culture has a complementary norm obliging others to educate themselves on rudimentary topics. This obligation to know is expressed by way of jargon-laden exhortations such as "check the FAQ"(frequently asked questions) and "RTFM" (read the fucking manual). Additionally, the geek lexicon includes designations of the stature of the knower and the extent of what he or she knows (e.g., "newbie"). Online feminists, especially "geek feminists," are similarly beset by naive or disruptive questions, and demonstrate and further their geekiness through the deployment of the obligation to know, with some interesting differences. For instance, geek feminism includes a term for designating rudimentary (i.e., "101") knowledge, for "derailing" questions, and has novel concerns with respect to stature and extent of knowing (e.g., the Unicorn Law, impostor syndrome, and mansplaining).

This year is the 10th anniversary of the fully free GNU/Linux distribution Trisquel. We will take a sneak peek of the upcoming 7.0 version "Belenos" and unveil plans for the very near future. These plans will include a renewed effort in creating educational software and improved online tools for the community, both for users and developers.

This talk aims to help web developers understand what localization is and why it is important. In this talk I will explain, how MediaWiki/Wikipedia - arguably the biggest and most localized projects on the Internet - handle internationalization, how you can do it for your own apps, via jQuery.i18n (or other frameworks), and I will also talk about TranslateWiki.net, a place for free software projects to get their strings translated.

Tens of thousands of people visit the Free Software Directory each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info. Stop by any or all of the three sessions today to help improve existing entries, add to new ones, or to find out about our latest efforts, such as importing package info from GNU/Linux distributions. No experience required.

In the last several years, free software projects and events have made great strides in representing the voices of groups which have previously had almost no voice. The ratio of female presenters at major conferences is on the rise, and nearly every event boasts a talk or panel specifically about the place of women in technology. In this panel, we propose to go further. We ask: what comes after representation? Now that we have found ways to give voice to a second gender in free software, how can we actively and effectively make room for others? With a specific emphasis on race, sexuality and gender beyond the binary, this panel seeks to explore ways of advancing our discussions beyond the simple metrics of representation. We aim to both raise issues and offer tools for thinking further than the mere problem of presence.

The government is tracking who you call and when. Snoops are reading your emails. Internet companies like Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are working with companies you've never heard of to compile deep, secret profiles of millions of us, sell the data, and make billions. We're being surveilled from all sides. This panel will address practical responses to the creeping techno-surveillance state. How are individuals and communities responding when so many of our private details are being hoovered up, in secret and for secret purposes? What are the best practices for navigating the spy-infested waters of the Internet? We've reached a point in which opting-out is no longer an option. Instead, we must arm ourselves with new digital habits, policy solutions and grassroots pressure to protect our digital rights. The NSA, the defense establishment, and Silicon Valley are incredibly powerful. How can we possibly fight back? What are the policy solutions that will roll back the laws that enable government spying and hold companies accountable when they collude in these programs or go too far with their own corporate surveillance practices? How can individuals work with others to pressure Congress, governmental agencies, and Internet companies to do the right thing and protect our privacy?

The lack of a mouse and the presence of "the mouse" are having a detrimental impact on global elementary education. The rush to adopt tablets is putting passive tools of consumption into the hands of young learners at a time in their development when "making" is paramount. The "Disneyification" of media further erodes the opportunity for personal expression by young learners. In this panel we will characterize these threats and discuss strategies for combating them.

Tens of thousands of people visit the Free Software Directory each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info. Stop by any or all of the three sessions today to help improve existing entries, add to new ones, or to find out about our latest efforts, such as importing package info from GNU/Linux distributions. No experience required.

Web and static map making to highlight inequality and injustice. Tools covered include R -maptools, leaflet.js, d3.js, Tilemill, postgres/postgis, and Open Street map.

Tens of thousands of people visit the Free Software Directory each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info. Stop by any or all of the three sessions today to help improve existing entries, add to new ones, or to find out about our latest efforts, such as importing package info from GNU/Linux distributions. No experience required.

Free software projects need coders, but they also need good writers for documentation, press releases, and blogging; experts on outreach, fundraising, and volunteer management; and friendly packs of translators. A lot of projects don't have these people, and when they do show up, they don't always stick around.

Deb and Molly will lead a discussion on the process of bringing in non-coding contributors. How do you find these folks? And then what can your project do to bring them in and keep them around, happily contributing? We don't have all the answers, but we feel that this is a critical topic for the free software movement's future growth beyond the community of super users.

The Circumvention Tech community is behind the creation of various free software anti-surveillance and anti-censorship tools, with Tor being the most well known. It also includes organizations that help journalists, activists, and citizens understand different strategies and tactics they can use to protect and empower themselves online. Hear from key voices about: where and why these technologies are used, and current challenges in the space; who makes up the circumvention tech community, and how it compares to other free software communities; how to get involved, with an intro into key community gathering points, like Techno Activism 3rd Monday and Noisy Square; and a case study on how to make the space sustainable.

The free software movement has never seen a time like this before. We are at a turning point in the struggle over patenting software. Edward Snowden has shown the world why unfree technology imperils political liberty, but we are challenged by the need to cure the Internet of the harm done by the

This session will discuss two case studies that involve archiving different kinds of cultural information resources in the Indian context using free software and the challenges therein. It will also discuss the possibility of collaborating and licensing issues faced in India.

Today we often use binaries that someone claims were built from particular source code, but we usually have no way to check that the source and binaries we've been actually given correspond to one another. We rely on someone's say-so, and they might be wrong! Software developers and the infrastructure used to create and distribute software are significant targets of attack. We need ways to give everybody meaningful assurances about the provenance and integrity of the software they use.

Following up on last year's session, we will talk about ways to explain software freedom and more generally advocate for the cause with various audiences. We'll brainstorm specific ideas and talk about organizational approaches going forward. No prior experience is necessary to join this session, especially since a little enthusiasm can go a long way in helping to get the word out!

This talk will focus on how to write, validate, and release freely licensed JavaScript. Writing and releasing your JavaScript under a free license helps your users avoid "The JavaScript Trap." This talk will also demonstrate how developers and webmasters can use GNU LibreJS to ensure that their users don't have to give up their computing freedom to use the websites that they are responsible for.

A field report from the Urchin animated film studio and libre media group, proposing a development path that unites federated publishing with decentralized production. It responds to the problem of free software tools and free culture as marginal zones, and asks how we can implement advantages of the libre modality without merely imitating the topography of the restrictive commercial world. More broadly, it considers how we can galvanize a distinct ecology to re-seed the internet (and global policy) according to the conventions of freedom, if we can create a compellingly attractive use case for them. This talk touches on Blender, MediaGoblin, Krita, Inkscape, Gimp, Pitivi, Ardour, and issues of funding in both software and the arts.

In Orwell's 1984, Newspeak had its vocabulary reduced so that subversive ideas could not be expressed. Likewise, user-programmable general-purpose computers are losing ground to ones that don't let users express the computations they wish to perform, unless they are available in exclusive appstores. Unable to program, users lose the freedom to improve software, and even the notion that they could! Failing to realize the importance of essential software freedoms, they fail to demand them! That's double plus unGNU! Let's fix it!

Christopher Allan Webber of GNU MediaGoblin discusses the past, present, and future of free network services. Issues of network freedom have gained much attention over the last six years, and increasingly so both within and outside of the software freedom communities. Progress has been made, but present adoption shows we have a ways to go.

What opportunities and challenges face free network services? Ranging from licensing decisions, technical choices, protocols, deployment configuration, and how we message ourselves, many components inform the past, present, and future of this field. Join Christopher Allan Webber of GNU MediaGoblin in talking about what can be done so that network freedom can be something that everyone can feasibly enjoy.

Following up on last year's session, we will talk about ways to explain software freedom and more generally advocate for the cause with various audiences. We'll brainstorm specific ideas and talk about organizational approaches going forward. No prior experience is necessary to join this session, especially since a little enthusiasm can go a long way in helping to get the word out!

As part of the Mailman 3 project, the Hyperkitty mail archiver will be introducing a new user interface for browsing mailing lists and we're hoping it'll improve the ability of free software projects to communicate effectively. Learn more about the new interface, its design, and our progress, including a report on OPW intern Karen Tang's work with the Hyperkitty UI.

For a long time, hackers have been creating a lot of free software. Each free software project is an important contribution to ensure that all software users have the freedom to control their computers. Free software use has been increasing, but impediments to its development still exist today. From copyright threats to patents, including treacherous computing, bundled sales of computer with software, FUD, and threats to net neutrality, the causes for concern are numerous. Free software cannot develop fully without a benevolent political and legislative environment. That is where April plays a crucial role in France and Europe, along with allied organizations. Its actions, thanks to its volunteers and its staff, are precious for everyone who produces and/or use free software. It is the organization's small contribution to the free software movement. We will present April, how it operates, the current European issues they are working on, and future perspectives and share strategies, successes, and challenges.

This session will cover the curriculum, methodology, and contributions made for and by the students of the Humanitarian Free/Open Source Software Development course at Rochester Institute of Technology in Upstate New York. This is the gateway course for a newly minted, first-of-its-kind, academic minor in Free/Open Source Software and Free Culture. Course materials are licensed CC-BY-SA, source code is available online, and patches are always welcome.

F-Droid is an easily-installable catalogue of free software applications for Android and Replicant devices. Stop any or all of the three sessions to improve existing entries and add new ones, and make it easier for people to install free software on their mobile devices. No experience required.

The session will present an overview of the "natural fit" between free software and the values of government agencies in a democracy (transparency; openness; participation and empowerment; cost-savings; collaboration), and then proceed to discuss recent successes -- and persistent challenges -- in the campaign to get public-sector organizations to adopt, accommodate -- and ideally support and create -- free software tools and open standards.

F-Droid is an easily-installable catalogue of free software applications for Android and Replicant devices. Stop any or all of the three sessions to improve existing entries and add new ones, and make it easier for people to install free software on their mobile devices. No experience required.

For years, activists have been using free software tools in their efforts to organize and build movements. Bringing together organizers from the media justice and digital rights movements, which all rely on the use of free software in their advocacy and essential communications, this panel explores the centrality of technology to all projects of social change. We will question how activists use free software and how the adoption of free software has helped or impeded networking efforts.

2013 taught us that our computers are less secure than we'd hoped. What is the role of free software in improving our security? Does improving security mean compromising our freedoms? Or can we simultaneously increase user freedom

Since 2010, the GNOME Foundation's Outreach Program for Women has provided 130 women with an opportunity to participate in remote internships with twenty three free software organizations. It has helped participants become established free software contributors and has made a deep impact on the communities that have participated. We'll present what currently makes the program successful and will seek input from the audience about how the program can be expanded to offer opportunities to other underrepresented people, in addition to women.

This session will be devoted to tech activism. We'll talk about activism to promote free software, some types of activism you can do with free software, and some of the challenges involved in getting activist groups to adopt free software.

This session will introduce you to the philosophy and practice of cooperation, which can help you to live out the principles of free software as a consumer and worker in the tech sector. We will give an overview on the cooperative model and movement, how it relates to the free software philosophy, and provide real ways for you to begin connecting free software to cooperation -- from democratizing your workplace to cross-movement coordination. Voices from different perspectives within the free software and cooperative movements are represented in the slate of presenters, which ensures that we will be equipped to answer your questions and/or point you to additional resources.

The open science movement is a grassroots and growing effort to make science publicly accessible. While securing open access to published results is the most well known open science issue, activists are also working towards: breaking down the barriers between scientist and non-scientist through participatory research and citizen science; opening up the data and methods of published studies to allow reproducible results and meta-analysis; and highlighting the importance of contributions beyond patents and papers, such as the creation of free hardware and free software tools.

In this panel, activists at the intersection of open science and free software will discuss how the two movements can learn from each other and work together. How do free software and open science differ in their approaches to shared goals of communal knowledge? What technical barriers to open science exist, and how can free software advocates help? How can open science projects build free software communities?

F-Droid is an easily-installable catalogue of free software applications for Android and Replicant devices. Stop any or all of the three sessions to improve existing entries and add new ones, and make it easier for people to install free software on their mobile devices. No experience required.

Explaining the importance of free software and its ideology to new audiences has always been a challenge. Karen will discuss the challenges inherent in free software messaging and why it's so important to win the allies we need going forward. She will share what she's learned from recent experiences in the GNOME and free software communities generally, and discuss strategies that could take our movement to the next level.