Molly de Blanc

We have rights with respect to our technology. These rights are imperative to ensuring our digital autonomy: our right to be in control of our own destinies. As the border between the physical and the digital breaks down, it is increasingly becoming necessary to re-examine what we consider to be the rights that protect our digital autonomy, and the way those abstract ideas apply to existing (and theoretical) technology. We will first discuss the principles of digital autonomy, clarifying what your rights are and the principles that define them. They will then analyze popular technologies, namely Debian!

Other people: Karen Sandler

What do you think we at Community team do? What are your expectations? Come let us discuss how and what we do!

Other people: Sruthi Chandran Pierre-Elliott Bécue Steve McIntyre Luke Faraone Jean-Philippe MENGUAL

We have rights with respect to our technology. These rights are imperative to ensuring our digital autonomy: our right to be in control of our own destinies. As the border between the physical and the digital breaks down, it is increasingly becoming necessary to reexamine what we consider to be the rights that protect our digital autonomy, and the way those abstract ideas apply to existing (and theoretical) technology.

Cyborg lawyer Karen Sandler and digital rights activist Molly de Blanc will first discuss the principles of digital autonomy, clarifying what your rights are and the principles that define them. They will then analyze popular technologies including video chat software in the context of these principles.

Karen and Molly wrote the Principles of Digital Autonomy to summarize what they have learned in their time as digital rights advocates and activists. In this session, they will share them with the audience and then look at software and hardware, including Zoom, from the lens of those principles.

None

Other people: Karen Sandler

We have seen several licenses proposed as "open source" that carry some obligation or restriction related to ethics or other social goals. Is this a good direction for FOSS license drafting?

Affirmative position: FOSS licenses should advance social goals

1. First Affirmative Constructive (1AC) = 7 minutes a. Cross-examination of First Affirmative by Second Negative = 3 minutes
2. First Negative Constructive (1NC) = 7 minutes a. Cross-examination of First Negative by First Affirmative = 3 minutes
3. Second Affirmative Constructive (2AC) = 7 minutes a. Cross-examination of Second Affirmative by First Negative = 3 minutes
4. Second Negative Constructive (2NC) = 7 minutes a. Cross-examination of Second Negative by Second Affirmative = 3 minutes
5. First Negative Rebuttal (1NR) = 3 minutes
6. First Affirmative Rebuttal (1AR) = 3 minutes
7. Second Negative Rebuttal (2NR) = 3 minutes
8. Second Affirmative Rebuttal (2AR) = 3 minutes

Other people: John Sullivan James Vasile Josh Simmons Dashiell Renaud

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are part of the future we were promised. Armed with our mobile devices, we can control everything from our cars to our toasters to the doors of our homes. Along with convenience, IoT devices bring us ethical quandaries, as designers and users. We need to consider the ethical implicates of the technologies we are building and ask ourselves not just about the ways they are being used, for both good and evil, but the potential use cases we might encounter in the future.

IoT devices are becoming increasingly prevalent in our lives -- even my water filter is wifi enabled. In this session, we'll be looking at two case studies of how one might interact with IoT devices, and then consider the ethical implications of these devices, focused on the social impacts they can have on an individual or a society. While we will focus on smart doorbells and smart locks and situations in which installing these could significantly impact quality of life, we will touch on other common IoT devices.

Whether you're an individual or an organization, you can be a good open source citizen! This is a responsibility we all have, to contribute not just to our projects, but to the greater ecosystem in order to create a brighter future for everyone who interacts with any given piece of technology, whether they're using, developing, or designing it. We can become good citizens through conscientious contribution, offering the support which we are capable of, and asking for support when we need it. We must take an active role in order to create a better future for technology.

In free and open source software, we talk about how to contribute to individual projects. We also need to talk about the responsibilities that come along with being a participant in the greater FOSS ecosystem. In asking ourselves what it means to be good open source citizens, and how we can best accomplish that, we also have to look at how to help others do the same. Individuals, projects, foundations, nonprofits, educational institutions, and companies all have responsibilities to FOSS. These responsibilities may seem different, but they all have a similar shape: contribute, give back to the community, support the work of others, and build technology keeping the future and rights of users in mind.

Want to know what the Outreach team does? Are you interested in getting involved in one of the mentorship programs Debian participates in? Do you have ideas about what we can do in the future, to do a better, more exciting job? Then come to the Outreach BoF, to discuss what the team has been up to over the past year and where the future of Debian outreach lies. This session is for past, current, and future mentors; past and potential participants in internship programs; and anyone who wants to talk about our participation in programs like Google Summer of Code and Outreachy.

Other people: Pranav Jain Jaminy

This talk is for past and current GSoC/Outreachy students to present their projects which they did with Debian. We (Outreach) team will also give introduction about these programs and will ask mentors to share their experience about mentoring students too.

Other people: Pranav Jain Jaminy

The Debian Anti-Harassment team has been working to help by providing advice on Code of Conduct issues and potential Code of Conduct issues. This session is to meet with the A-H team to discuss current activities, past activities, and the future of the team and its role within the Debian community.

Other people: Steve McIntyre

Is there a single right way to enforce a code of conduct, community guidelines, or whatever you call the systems you have to help maintain a good community? This is a peek into how the Debian Anti-Harassment (AH) team functions, a few (anonymized) examples of issues handled, and the philosophy behind helping the Debian community to be a welcoming place for all contributors.

The Debian code of conduct (https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct), mailing list code of conduct, Debian Community Guidelines, DebConf code of conduct, and even the Diversity Statement are tools used for the goal of building a welcoming and inclusive community for Debian.

As much of Debian's work is carried out in the open, so too are many of its problems, which can be visible on social media, in the blog aggregation site Planet Debian, and on public mailing lists. Inappropriate behaviors, harsh communications, and general poor decision making occur on a fairly regular basis. When problems arise within the project, they are typically escalated to either the Anti-harassment team or the Debian Project Leader (DPL). The Anti-harassment team (AH) tackles these problems on a fortnightly basis, making recommendations and directly contacting those involved in disputes or questionable practices.

Debian and the Free Software Foundation, along with its GNU Project, share many goals and ideals. They are two of the most mature and dedicated organizations working in the free software movement. This is a great opportunity to talk in person about how they can better work together and inspire each other. FSF members (and potential members) will meet to talk about the FSF’s work, the FSF's relationship with Debian, and progress of the movement as a whole: * A very brief update by the FSF’s executive director and campaigns manager on highlights of the FSF’s work since the last DebConf * Feedback (positive and negative) from members, and a little brainstorming about what the FSF should and shouldn’t be doing * A review of the current relationship between the FSF and Debian * A discussion of areas for collaboration, focused on projects that could be completed or significantly advanced before the next DebConf Recognizing that we can't cover everything in 45 minutes, at the beginning, we'll choose some specific topics to focus on under this general Debian logo umbrella. Past sessions at DebConf have led to concrete positive results like collaboration on the hardware database at https://h-node.org/. Let’s have another productive one!

Other people: John Sullivan

With the saturation of technology in our lives, free software has become more important than ever. You can find computers in the walls of your home and woven through the walls of your heart. With the advent of electronic voting, and the possibility of an all-online census, questions of software safety and user freedom are now touching parts of our lives we may not have thought about before. If you've ever wondered to yourself whether something is a free software issue, the answer is probably yes. Join cyborg lawyer and Software Freedom Conservancy executive director Karen Sandler and free software activist and Free Software Foundation campaigns manager, Molly de Blanc to discuss the wide range of what is a free software issue and why it's important to view our technology issues through that lens. Together, we'll discuss how to talk about free software from different perspectives, drawing the connection between issues of software and user freedom to issues ranging from institutional racism to avocado toast. Bring your questions and the topics you want to connect to free software.

Other people: Karen Sandler

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is found everywhere from music to cars and, most recently, World Wide Web Consortium recommendations. How did we get here and where are we going with DRM? Who really owns not just your tools, but your experiences when someone (or something) else is controlling access to the data and access around them? We'll attempt to answer these questions, and more, in a historical overview, contemporary analysis, and look towards the future.

This talk will cover a range of technologies and use (and failure) cases in how digital experiences are being restricted and controlled by "rights holders." It will also touch on what it means to be a rights holder, and how that's affecting digital media and technology. This talk is aimed at a general audience, and will be tackling these topics at a basic level, with the aim to create shared language and understanding.

Deborah Nicholson and Molly de Blanc want the free software movement to keep growing and one facet of successful movement building is embracing a multi-generational community. The good news is that there is no age requirement for using, promoting and contributing to free software. The bad news is that we aren't always doing a great job of facilitating a diverse, inter-generational movement. We'll take a look at what we're currently doing to bring in young people, how we are treating older people in our communities and where there is room for improvement. Using examples from other movements and inter-generational communities, we'll identify tactics that aren't being used to build the free software community and see what we can collectively port over. We plan to inspire the audience to find ways to recruit and retain young people, inspire older people to participate and maintain an unbroken thread of free software conservatorship. This session is accessible to anyone with a general knowledge of what free software is, and that open contribution communities power many free software projects.

Other people: Deb Nicholson

GNU and Linux are now embedded in more kinds of hardware than ever, but nearly always only by requiring proprietary bits. The world's most popular tablets and phones are based on a free core system loaded with nonfree software on top. We are at risk of free software being used primarily as a delivery vehicle to lower the cost of getting proprietary products to market. How do we get the freedom we all want, and what is the market for that? The Free Software Foundation has a certification program called "Respects Your Freedom" (RYF) that awards a certification mark to hardware meeting a set of free software standards (fsf.org/ryf). Embedded and IoT devices are a major target for the future of this program. RYF has already made significant gains, especially over the last few years, certifying USB wifi adapters, 3D printers, home wifi routers, and earlier generation laptops. A growing number of small companies are competing on the basis of the certification, and crowdfunding campaigns are citing meeting the standards as a key project goal. Even bigger things are planned, and most involve the embedded world. Get updates on what's in store, learn what it takes to get your product certified, hear about the impact of certification so far and the community that has formed around the program, and discuss possible improvements to the standards. Can we turn our current "free software invisible under the hood" reality into a reality where consumers can go into a store or shop online and find clearly marked products that fully respect their freedom?

This talk examines the way the free software community communicates with one another, and ways codes of conduct and community guidelines affect language. By analyzing mailing lists, looking at the frequency with which participants use slurs and expletives before and after the institution of codes of conduct, we can see how effective these policies are, and what sort of spaces they are creating for community members and project contributors.

This talk is the follow up to talks at Libre Planet (2016) and SeaGL (2016), taking a mostly (and then progressively less) humorous look on language used on Twitter and mailing lists, and the positive and negative ways we use strong language to talk about free software, and talk to each other about free software. This talk will include a general look at the purpose of codes of conduct and community guidelines, what sort of things make one policy "good" or "bad," and, when possible, the process by a given community agrees on the institution of one. It will then focus on statistical analysis of language use on a chosen number of mailing lists (including the Linux Kernel Mailing List), with outstanding examples.

This talk will likely include some strong language.

We want the free software movement to keep growing and one facet of successful movement building is embracing a multi-generational community. The good news is that there is no age requirement for using, promoting and contributing to free software. The bad news is that we aren't always doing a great job of facilitating a diverse, inter-generational movement. We'll take a look at what we're currently doing to bring in young people, how we are treating older people in our communities and where there is room for improvement.

Using examples from other movements and inter-generational communities, we'll identify tactics that aren't being used to build the free software community and see what we can collectively port over. We plan to inspire the audience to find ways to recruit and retain young people, inspire older people to participate and maintain an unbroken thread of free software conservatorship.

Other people: Deb Nicholson

Projects with a significant number of contributors and users will face decisions where they are no longer able to fulfill the needs and desires of all stakeholders. When this happens some people become upset. A subset of those people become so upset they vent their frustrations on Twitter. I have collected tweets that express a negative sentiment towards decisions made within free software communities and by decision makers for free software projects. These were then categorized based on the decision type (e.g. licensing) and outcome (e.g. switching licenses). I hope to create a greater community understanding of decision making processes, develop a discussion about how communities and decision makers can move forward to better balance the wants and needs of stakeholders, and make a few crass jokes that possibly violate the Code of Conduct.

Description above.

This session of curated lightning talks will bring new speakers to the podium as well as familiar faces talking about non-familiar topics. These talks, which are pre-scheduled, will be brief overviews of broader topics or a deeper take on a very narrow topic. Each talk will be ten minutes (including time for questions), with a time at the end to engage individual speakers.

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.

Other people: Deb Nicholson