Free Software

It's not about the license

Presented by Larry Garfield (@Crell)

* Cold open: ** Biz plan: Spyware on computers ** Biz plan: Child mine workers ** ** Conclusion: If your business model requires doing something unethical, you don't have a business model. * History ** History of copyright? Maybe, could be off topic. ** History of RMS/GNU, MIT too permissive ** Linux and GNU/Linux (brief) ** First moral principal of the web (Doctorow) * Code is law (Lessig quotes) ** LGPL * Examples ** Deibold Ohio voting machines *** https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/machine-politics-in-the-digital-age.html *** https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2005/03/hitchens200503 (great quotes here on actual problems seen) *** https://www.wired.com/2008/03/the-mysterious/ ** Sara Golemon insulin pump ** CPAP machines ** John Deere Tractor DRM *** https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware *** https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repair/ *** Not a case of "modify and improve software", but "replace broken part, need holy blessing for new part" ** Dmitry Sklyrov ** Parole AI *** https://phys.org/news/2017-07-lid-criminal-sentencing-software.html *** https://www.wired.com/2017/04/courts-using-ai-sentence-criminals-must-stop-now/ *** https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/us/backlash-in-wisconsin-against-using-data-to-foretell-defendants-futures.html (has picture) * Open Source ** Rebranding to avoid "Free" ** About quality software, not freedom * More history? Not sure here. ** Something something SaaS ** AGPL (need history, maybe this goes later?) * Options ** Control someone else ** Let someone else control someone else with your code ** Copyleft ** What choice will you make?
Free Software It's not about the license Presented by Larry Garfield (@Crell)