John Sullivan

In 2022, we saw growing concerns around app stores as run by Apple, Google, and Microsoft -- and meaningful legislative and regulatory interest. The concerns came from many different directions, including privacy, antitrust, gatekeeping decisions, and platform exclusivity.

I'll discuss this recent activity with a focus on how it all has impacted or may impact user freedom. I'll survey the responses we've seen from free software projects and organizations, and share insights about current app store terms in relation to free software licenses (especially copyleft), and alternative models of distribution like F-Droid.

This will lead to an assessment of what this all means for the future -- are there opportunities for the free software movement to get more involved in influencing ongoing policy conversations that could dramatically impact our future, and our ability to get free software into the hands of users?

Compliance with Open Source and Free Software licenses remains a perennial topic of discussion among policy makers in our community. However, little attention is paid to the motivations why these licenses have specific requirements. Specifically, at least for copyleft licenses, the licenses seek to bestow specific rights and freedoms to the users who receive the software integrated into the devices they use. This panel, containing a group of industry experts, consultants, and license enforcement experts, discusses the challenges and importance of assuring downstream can actually utilize the compliance artifacts they receive with products as intended by the license.

Compliance with Open Source and Free Software licenses remains a perennial topic of discussion among policy makers in our community. However, little attention is paid to the motivations why these licenses have specific requirements. Specifically, at least for copyleft licenses, the licenses seek to bestow specific rights and freedoms to the users who receive the software integrated into the devices they use. This panel, containing a group of industry experts, consultants, and license enforcement experts, discusses the challenges and importance of assuring downstream can actually utilize the compliance artifacts they receive with products as intended by the license.

Other people: Bradley M. Kuhn Miriam Ballhausen Davide Ricci Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin

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: Molly de Blanc James Vasile Josh Simmons Dashiell Renaud

Movement activism often focuses on economic decisions. Buy this ethically made product; don't buy that one made by a company that funds terrible things. In free software, we encourage people to boycott (for example) Microsoft, and to instead support companies who sell machines with GNU/Linux. It's an intuitive idea that, as individuals wanting to make the world better, we should use our willingness to spend or not spend money to reward those who do right and punish those who do wrong. Throughout history, this has sometimes been effective. But how effective? Can it be dangerous? There is a danger of *reducing* activism and social change strategy to these decisions. We see this in the free software movement, when some activist campaigns aimed at persuading people to stop using proprietary software are met with responses like, "If you don't like Apple products, just don't buy them. Help make free products that are better than theirs. Why campaign against them?" or "How can you criticize proprietary software but still drive a car that has it?" As an advocate, have you ever heard these responses, or felt like a hypocrite, or stumbled trying to explain to others why the situation is more complicated than "just don't buy it"? How do we form a holistic movement strategy for advancing user freedom that takes consumer activism as far as possible, without overprioritizing it? How does or doesn't Debian fit into the picture? I hope those interested in effectively fighting for user freedom will join me as I share thoughts formed from 16 years of experience working on the Free Software Foundation's advocacy efforts, against the backdrop of some highlights from the history of other social movements.

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 an annual 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 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 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! This session will not be recorded, in order to make participants feel more comfortable speaking informally.

A short update from the Debian Keyring maintainers about the current state of the keyring, as well as an opportunity for project members to ask any queries they might have.

Other people: Jonathan McDowell Gunnar Wolf

Welcome to LibrePlanet (take 2)!

The vast majority of JavaScript carries no license or copyright notice at all, often because of concerns about optimizing bandwidth and speed, but also because of a lack of awareness. As JavaScript developers, you are well-positioned to help solve this problem -- by clearly licensing your code, by making improvements to the common tooling, and by providing important feedback on what licensing methods make the most sense.

The lack of clear licensing info, especially when combined with minification, makes most JavaScript proprietary for the users who receive and execute it in their browsers, even if the source code is available elsewhere on the Internet in some repository under a free license. The lack also means rampant license violations, for both permissively and reciprocally licensed code. The Free Software Foundation has proposed and implemented a couple of licensing metadata methods by which JavaScript which is intended to be free software can clearly say so, and therefore actually respect the freedom of its users. This is the first step in compliant and realistic distribution of copyleft-licensed JavaScript, as well as a step toward allowing free software users to run only free software inside the browser as they do outside the browser. Other approaches have been proposed as well. We will discuss these questions and seek input on the approaches so far, and hopefully leave with some momentum to make positive changes.

The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) is an important tool for protecting user freedom on the network. Detractors have criticized it for being both too weak and too strong/demanding. In 2018, it was in the news more than ever. Are the interests of corporations that are afraid of their free code being turned into network services run by competitors starting to align with users losing their freedom to such services?

Historically, the AGPL has been the target of criticism from entities that want to extinguish it. Some companies have banned it from their premises, sowed fear about how it operates, and propagated a myth that nobody is using it.

Others claim that the AGPL is being used primarily by companies seeking to strong-arm downstream users into purchasing a proprietary version of the covered software -- by catching those users being out of compliance with the AGPL, and telling them that they must buy the software under a proprietary license to avoid being taken to court for copyright infringement.

A third group of companies is now claiming that the AGPL doesn't go far enough to protect their software against being turned into services that deny users freedom -- though freedom may not be their primary concern.

In fact, the AGPL is being used today by a variety of interesting and important projects, including ones started by governments, nonprofits, and even businesses. I'll highlight some illustrative examples. I'll also do my best to separate understandable concerns that people have about using the AGPL from attacks on user freedom masquerading as concerns, and see if there is any synergy between the concerns of the third group above and those of individual users.

While not a full solution to the problems raised when users replace software running on their own machines with software running on someone else's machine, the AGPL is a tool that is being embraced and should be embraced even more.

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: Molly de Blanc

We go through a lot of work and angst as a community over licensing -- what is free, what is not, what is open source, what is compatible with what, which software is to use which license. Then, after all the work put into these decisions, the result is hidden away, only to be seen or become relevant in the event of some legal challenge or insider decision. Licensing information is by and large not sufficiently communicated to end users, even though we are trying to build a movement of users who prefer freely licensed software.

Two years ago in this Devroom, I talked about license choosers like Github's choosealicense.com, and how they might influence license selection for new projects. In response to that talk, Github made some important improvements. How are they doing now, and what about other sites and systems where users frequently obtain software, like Google Play, the Chrome Web Store, and the Firefox Add-ons library? Too often we find that such sites do not display license information at all in key places, or if they do, it's in a way that is not as clear or as strong as many of us in the free software movement would like to see. How can users prefer free software when they aren't given the info they need to choose it? I'll survey the scene, highlight some examples, and talk about how they can be addressed while considering the objections/concerns of the site operators.

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 learn from each other. FSF members (and potential members) will meet to talk about the FSF's work, and relationship with Debian: * A very brief update by the FSF's executive director 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 Past sessions at DebConf have led to concrete positive results like collaboration on the hardware database at [https://h-node.org/](https://h-node.org/). Let's have another productive one!

In free software circles, a disturbing number of conversations treat it as given that fewer new projects are choosing copyleft licenses, and more are going the route of lax permissive. Though this has been repeated in news articles and blog posts, when we look deeper for evidence of the claim, we find either anecdotes (often from the field of corporate-backed project license choices), or highly questionable and unscientific data sets. Sometimes the claim is repeated by people just trying to set the table for other discussions about trends in free software or open source; sometimes it is promoted by people specifically arguing against copyleft (especially in business); sometimes it is raised as a concern by people defending copyleft. All three situations are worrisome in their own ways. I'll discuss: 1) recent "data" and articles published, including my own analysis; 2) whether the contexts in which permissive license use does appear to be increasing mean what they are purported to mean, and whether those contexts are actually relying purely on permissive licenses or on other sorts of supplementary legal structures; 3) prominent instances of copyleft usage, especially the AGPL and GPL; and 4) different ways to study and understand the trends people are trying to get at when they talk about licensing choices in quantitative terms. In a community with so many computer scientists, lawyers, and talented researchers, it's important that we habitually put popular assumptions up for critique. Assumptions and bits of conventional wisdom need to be audited just like code, to ensure that the business plans and movement-organizing decisions which flow from them aren't based on rotten foundations.

In advanced free software legal and policy circles, a disturbing number of conversations treat it as given that fewer new projects are choosing copyleft licenses, and more are going the route of lax permissive. Though this has been repeated in news articles and blog posts, when we look deeper for evidence of the claim, we find either anecdotes (often from the field of corporate-backed project license choices), or highly questionable and unscientific data sets. Is it really so?

In advanced free software legal and policy circles, a disturbing number of conversations treat it as given that fewer new projects are choosing copyleft licenses, and more are going the route of lax permissive. Though this has been repeated in news articles and blog posts, when we look deeper for evidence of the claim, we find either anecdotes (often from the field of corporate-backed project license choices), or highly questionable and unscientific data sets.

Sometimes the claim is repeated by people just trying to set the table for other discussions about trends in free software or open source; sometimes it is promoted by people specifically arguing against copyleft (especially in business); sometimes it is raised as a concern by people defending copyleft. All three situations are worrisome in their own ways.

This was all true in 2012, when I gave my talk "Is copyleft being framed?", but things have gotten worse since then.

I'll discuss:

1) new "data" and articles published since 2012, including issues with my own methodology;

2) whether the contexts in which permissive license use does appear to be increasing mean what they are purported to mean, and whether those contexts are actually relying purely on permissive licenses or on other sorts of supplementary legal structures;

3) prominent instances of copyleft usage, especially the AGPL and GPL; and

4) different ways to study and understand the trends people are trying to get at when they talk about licensing choices in quantitative terms.

In a community with so many computer scientists, lawyers, and talented researchers, it's important that we habitually put popular assumptions up for critique. Assumptions and bits of conventional wisdom need to be audited just like code, to ensure that the business plans and movement-organizing decisions which flow from them aren't based on rotten foundations.

"Open source" split from "free software" to be more pragmatic, to gain entry to the business world, partly by being more accepting of proprietary software. This led to descriptions of free software as "vegan" and open source as "vegetarian." Let's question this analogy, and in the process explore how the Tofurky is made, looking at underlying motivations, ethics, communication, and collaboration. In Debian, we don't just want to write and package free software or open source code. We want others to understand *why* we do it. We want to get along with each other. We want other people to join us in envisioning a world where our kind of collaborative production is the norm. At the very least, we want them to think we're not crazy. The challenges for those committed to our cause can be similar to those choosing to be vegetarians or vegans -- having to explain why we won't eat what seems to others to be perfectly good software/food, why we can only frequent certain restaurants/websites, why we refuse to serve meat/proprietary software to others. We can be similarly accused of being judgmental, impractical, idealistic, or "in a phase." Because many more people are familiar with the concept of dietary restrictions motivated by concern for animal rights, environmental ethics, sustainability, and health, this can be fertile ground for analogies to explain our choices in software and technology. As we chew the fat, we'll learn more about the diverse motivations within our movement, leading to both better collaborative potential among current practitioners and improved recipes for communicating about what we do to brand new audiences.

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 learn from each other. FSF members (and potential members) will meet to talk about the FSF's work, and relationship with Debian: * A very brief update by the FSF's executive director 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 Past sessions at DebConf have led to concrete positive results like collaboration on the hardware database at . Let's have another productive one!

A friendly introduction to free software, open source, and Debian, with an opportunity for the audience to ask questions.

Other people: Allison Randal Bdale Garbee Neil McGovern Bernelle Verster Steve McIntyre

Are interactive tools like choosealicense.com or the Creative Commons license chooser effective? What about noninteractive guides like the Free Software Foundation's situational license recommendations? Do these tools have agendas, and if so, are these agendas made explicit and are they in line with the interests of the developers who use them? Can we find ways to make them better, or do we need a brand new tool?

There's of course many free software and free culture licenses out there, and some commonly used standard nonfree ones as well. The problem of "license proliferation" has been and continues to be identified as a problem in our world. Especially when starting a new project, choosing which one of the licenses to use can be daunting and conflict-prone, and these choices are not what developers typically want to spend their time on. As one solution to this problem (or coping mechanism), some companies and nonprofits have developed tools and guides aiming to narrow the set of options based on plain language statements about what the developer would like her project's license to achieve in practice.

Two of the most popular interactive tools are Github's choosealicense.com and Creative Commons' license chooser. Then there are the noninteractive guides, like the Free Software Foundation's best practice license recommendations, a subset drawn from its full list of free licenses. Some of these tools claim to be "objective", while others are explicit about their connection with specific missions or agendas.

I'll do a survey of these tools and guides, along with a bit about their history, then assess their usefulness for developers and possible impacts on things like license usage counting surveys. I'll highlight the ways in which the most prominent ones either intentionally or possibly unintentionally further a particular agenda. That will involve a look at the language choices we make when trying to describe license terms in "plain language," such as whether we call a provision a "restriction" or a "protection," and the implications of those choices.

I'll invite discussion along the way, and maybe together we'll come away with some productive next steps to improve license culture and education for everyone, such as pull requests for existing tools, or an outline for a new, ideal tool for someone (the FSF?) to implement.

On the Free Software implications of JavaScript.

JavaScript served to you by a site is still software. It runs on your local computer. Typical computer use for just about everyone involves executing copious amounts of JavaScript on a daily basis, no matter what operating system they are using. The vast majority of it carries no license or copyright notice at all, often because of concerns about optimizing bandwidth and speed. This makes it proprietary for the users who receive and execute it in their browsers, even if the source code is available elsewhere on the Internet in some repository under a free license. The Free Software Foundation has proposed and implemented a couple of licensing metadata methods by which JavaScript which is intended to be free software can clearly say so, and therefore actually respect the freedom of its users. This is the first step in compliant and realistic distribution of copyleft-licensed JavaScript, as well as a step toward allowing free software users to run only free software inside the browser as they do outside the browser. Other approaches have been proposed as well. What are the advantages and disadvantages to each? Why has JavaScript licensing been such a problem in general? What are the concrete impacts of this phenomenon? We will discuss these questions and seek input on the FSF approach so far.

Safety Critical Devices.

We rely on software more and more for critical functionality in our society. Medical Devices and Cars are two areas where our lives literally depend on the safety of this software. As more exploits are demonstrated on cars, pacemakers and insulin pumps that show them to be vulnerable, the industries are evaluating their technology and some are advocating for free software as partial solution to these problems. This panel will discuss free software in Safety critical devices. including the implications of different licenses, issues regarding warranties and indemnities and liability issues for manufacturers The panel will discuss automotive and medical devices and consider regulatory issues.

Other people: Karen Sandler Jeremiah C. Foster Amanda Brock

This talk will cover the main challenges facing the Free Software Foundation's Licensing and Compliance lab in 2013, and will invite discussion of the FSF's work and policies in this area. We'll explore:

• Copyright assignment: Some high-profile GNU maintainers have recently criticized the FSF's copyright assignment policy and system. What are these criticisms, what does the FSF intend to do about them, and what's the point of its assignment process to begin with?

• GPL adoption: Last year here, in "Is copyleft being framed?", I put numbers supposedly showing declining GPL adoption in perspective, showing problems with the data, questioning the conclusions drawn from the data, and presenting different data leading to the opposite conclusions. We'll look at the questions that were raised since then about my data, and at some new data that's been made available, and draw new conclusions.

• App Stores: When Apple's App Store launched, the FSF concluded that its terms were incompatible with the GPL -- and with any kind of strong copyleft. Since then, we have several new App Stores; most notably from Google and Microsoft. Are the Apple terms still incompatible with the GPL? Are the other stores any better? Are these stores undermining GPL adoption, and should copyleft relax its standards in order to get free software to this audience, or should it stand its ground?

This short talk will address the following questions, to inspire discussion and contemplation about how we frame descriptions of the state of licensing in free software. * Numbers are increasingly being cited to show that the use of copyleft licenses, specifically the GPL, is declining. What do these numbers actually show, who is propagating them, and why? What do or might other numbers show? * Is the "percentage of free software projects which use copyleft licenses" a useful way to judge the success of copyleft? Does an increase in the percentage of projects using non-copyleft permissive licenses indicate a failure of copyleft? * As a small related case study, what role have the licensing terms of popular mobile application stores played in this debate, and how have those terms changed the frame of the discussion?