[lugm.org] Fwd: LibrePlanet day 1: Can free software carry an entire online conference? Yes, it can!

[Jheengut Pritvi]

yes it can
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Greg Farough, FSF <info at fsf.org>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 at 00:12
Subject: LibrePlanet day 1: Can free software carry an entire online
conference? Yes, it can!
To: Pritvi Jheengut <z.coldplayer at gmail.com>


[image: LibrePlanet 2020: Free the Future]

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Dear Pritvi Jheengut,

[image: Photo of FSF tech team monitoring the conference streams]

Sometimes, all of your best-laid plans can go awry, and when COVID-19
collided with LibrePlanet 2020 <https://libreplanet.org/2020/>, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF) staff and management had to make an incredibly
tough decision: how were we to weigh the risk of a spreading pandemic
against our most important yearly event? In five days, we had to change
course from months of scrupulous planning and figure out how to ensure that
our carefully-composed program could move forward, giving the worldwide
free software community access to the experts, creators, and enthusiasts we
had planned to bring together in Boston. We were incredibly excited to
present this slate of free software luminaries and newcomers, all eager to
discuss what it will take to "Free the Future," and we weren't about to let
all of that effort go to waste.

Thankfully, free software activists aren't afraid of a little adversity,
and are accustomed to taking on challenges. In only a few days, we fully
shifted gears to deliver the LibrePlanet 2020 program
<https://libreplanet.org/2020/program/> remotely, with online talks
streaming in from all over the world. We're so grateful to our speakers,
who have been so flexible, and to the last-minute benefactors that
volunteered to help fill any gaps that might ensue. All this allowed us to
present you with a nearly full program for the event!

[image: Photo of FSF campaigns manager Greg Farough moderating remote panel]

Usually the FSF office is packed to the seams with visitors from all over
the world during our Friday night open house and our Saturday night hack
night. While we had to discourage all visitors and volunteers from coming
due to the COVID-19 risk, the office was still bustling all day, since it
served as the home base for our online conference operation. Our intrepid
copyright and licensing associate Craig Topham made a deep clean of the "pirate
room <https://mobile.twitter.com/fsf/status/1238494495425155073?p=p>," and
the tech team worked practically overnight on our fully free streaming
setup for 2020
<https://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Conference/2020/Streaming>. The
conference was brought to viewers around the world using entirely free
software: our local Jitsi <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Jitsi> instance,
Gstreamer <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Gstreamer> and Icecast
<https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Icecast>.

Today's program kicked off with a panel calculated to line up perfectly
with the conference theme: the "Free the Future" keynote panel featured a
group of talented hackers in their teens and early twenties, interviewed by
FSF campaigns manager Greg Farough. Speakers Alyssa Rosenzweig, Taowa, and
Erin Moon each shared stories of how they discovered free software, and
shared insights they feel are essential to the future of the free software
movement.

Alyssa, who interned at the FSF in 2018
<https://www.fsf.org/about/interns/2018/alyssa-rosenzweig>, spoke
eloquently about how important it is for our community to come together:
"We cannot let fear of future dystopia drive us, quibbling over semantics
of our fear and burning out by the fires we chase, but rather must unite in
constructive optimism propelling us to free the future." She added,
"Optimism is also critical for we free software activists. We need to
empathize and support each other as a community, not demonize
imperfections. Measured against our dream utopia, none of us are perfect.
Judging others is emotional mutiny to the movement. Judging ourselves,
however, is a one-way ticket to activist burnout. But if we focus on the
constructive love of freedom instead of the destructive forces we fight,
our movement becomes sustainable..."

The morning's conversation turned on a variety of topics, including free
software community building, mobile phone freedom, and the unique role
decentralized (or "federated") social media plays when it comes to bringing
users freedom. Taowa shared his experiences as a non-uploading Debian
Developer, discussing the challenges of organizing Debian's own conference,
DebConf. Erin, who came to free software by way of her work in digital
signal processing, had special insights to share on how free software is
poised to being people freedom on the Web.

The first morning session started on an creative note with a lesson in
"Digital painting with Krita on GNU/Linux: Cute creature concept art" from
French cartoonist David Revoy, whose Web comic *Pepper&Carrot* is created
with an entirely free workflow. Revoy demonstrated the capabilities of the
free software painting program Krita <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Krita>
to draw two adorable GNU from start to finish. Other sessions were a
presentation by journalist Lucy Ingham called "Rented future: The dangerous
rise of life as a service," and an expert overview of free software in the
US government by Karen Johnson and Fen Labalme.

In the next session, online viewers chose between learning about encryption
with engineer DeeDee Lavinder, about free software community building in
the US versus China with artist and programmer Giselle Jhunjhnuwala, and
methods for educating students about the importance of ethical software
with William Liggett. DeeDee gave viewers a crash course into the "huge
topic" of encryption, which touches the lives of every software user,
providing technical and non-technical users alike with a conceptual
overview of free software encryption technology and its importance.

After a brief lunch break, sessions resumed with more lessons about free
software communities from developer advocate JJ Asghar, a visit to the
fascinating world of typography with Felipe Sanches, and a passionate
motivation for broader use of free software from local high school student
Ben O'Neill, who correctly points out that free software provides a far
more environmentally sustainable model for computing than the "planned
obsolescence" model embraced by most proprietary manufacturers.

The next time slot lined up a choice of interesting questions for online
participants: would you prefer to learn about how copyleft can be used to
disrupt the "smart device" dystopia from former FSF executive director
Bradley Kuhn. Or, would you prefer to find out how free software can
improve the future of farming, with a dynamic panel from the Gathering for
Open Ag Tech? Or, would you prefer a freewheeling metaphor comparing
bicycles and free software, from perennial LibrePlanet speaker Wm "Salt"
Hale? (Luckily, if you were having trouble deciding, you don't have to miss
out on any of these -- videos of all of these talks will be available at
the LibrePlanet video library <https://media.libreplanet.org>.)

Talks in the next session got down to practical nuts and bolts: where is
free software being used in real life, and by whom? Robb Ebright explained
how his community radio station uses LibreTime, an AGPLv3-licensed radio
automation system, while Paul Gazillo and Joshua Santana explained how free
software provides the best tools to enable free scientific inquiry, and
Camille Akmut presented their study of exactly how diverse free software
projects are (and aren't). All in all, it was an engaging look into the
practical "future" of free software: both in terms of how we can welcome an
ever-changing userbase into the community, as well as how free software can
be used to transmit other kinds of messages out to the world.

The last multi-talk slot of the day included LibrePlanet 2019 keynote Micky
Metts digging deeper into her thoughts on how we can control our own data,
Document Foundation co-founder Italo Vignoli taking a look back at ten
years in the life of LibreOffice. Micky painted a somewhat frightening
picture about the future surveillance capitalism is creating for us -- and
what we can and must do to stop it. On the other hand, Italo gave an
overview of the successes the LibreOffice project has seen in such a short
time, becoming a free software writing and presentation suite used by
millions around the world.

Finally, the day ended with a keynote by FSF executive director John
Sullivan, including the bestowal of the 2019 Free Software Awards. The
winners had already been notified in advance (under ordinary circumstances,
they would have been present and would each be giving a talk on Sunday).
This gave the FSF the opportunity to praise the accomplishments of the
three winners: longtime free software contributor and author Jim Meyering,
talented newbie Clarissa Lima Borges, and the Let's Encrypt project. Each
winner chose the person who would present them with the award. In fact,
reaching out to the community is something we plan to do even more as we
move forward with LibrePlanet 2021.

In his keynote address following the award presentation ceremony, Sullivan
announced the beginning of a new working group on free software
communication technology. True to the conference's mission to "free the
future," this working group will combine the free software acumen of the
FSF with experts working in the related fields. Together, the working group
will identify and publicly document the most pressing issues facing the
freedom of person-to-person communication, with the goal of having ethical
solutions to virtual events, online education, and workplace collaboration.
In a situation like the present COVID-19 pandemic, these are precisely the
tools that we need.

This year's volunteering tasks were very different but no less essential
than in the past, and we're so grateful for all of the volunteers helping
out and taking the time to keep our IRC channels peaceful and orderly.
We're also grateful for raffle donors Technoethical, Vikings, JMP, No
Starch Press, and ThinkPenguin. Since we weren't able to organize an online
raffle, we're scheming some fun ways to parcel out these goodies, so keep
an eye on for future announcements!

Join us for the second day of LibrePlanet 2020
<https://libreplanet.org/2020/live>, streaming live to you tomorrow at
09:30 EDT!

Happy hacking,

Greg Farough
Campaigns Manager

Photo credit: Ruben Rodriguez, © 2020, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/> license.


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