We have Karen Sandler and Denver Gingerage with the growing body of proprietary infrastructure
for fast development, repeating bad history.
Give it up to them.
Is this one on?
Yes.
Power.
I love power.
I'm just going to thank you so much for being here.
We are not the people you expected to see on stage today, so I'm very excited for that
applause for us because Bradley, our co-worker, was supposed to present today.
And I have a statement that I want to read from him about why you get us instead of him.
Bradley is heartbroken to not speak today.
He lasted six years ago and was so excited to keynote again.
I added this so actually.
I'll try not to edit it.
Fazem is unique event in the world and its organizers focus on community, not for profit interests.
Those who saw Bradley yesterday know that he were a tight fitting and 95 mask, the entire day.
As he did nearly the entire time since leaving his home for the trip to Fazem,
he took his mask off only to eat, drink and speak on stage.
Nevertheless, he tested positive for COVID-19 this morning for the first time in his life.
He actually feels reasonably good and since he has received absolutely every recommended vaccine,
his symptoms are just those of a difficult influenza.
Bradley asks the entire Fazem community to reconsider their safety protocols.
Bradley believes deeply in the moral and paritives of counting ethics.
That, as this quote says more formally, humans have a moral imperative to voluntarily take every action so that it maximizes the rights and welfare of all humanity.
As such, he is quarantined today for our safety.
And while he does not call for a return to mask mandates, he would like Fazem to return to masks strongly recommended policy indefinitely for the years to come.
And for all of you to wear masks voluntarily, especially when in the audience of crowded devrims.
The science shows that masking works best in disease prevention if everyone participates.
Bradley estimates anecdotally that fewer than 2% of attendees wore masks yesterday and at earlier fringe events.
We should all commit to voluntarily, so we should all commit voluntarily to making that 98% because it's the right thing to do.
So that was his statement.
You, unfortunately, are getting us instead of Bradley.
I think you, we may be a little bit more boring.
Little less charismatic, a little less fiery, but we're going to do the best that we can to.
It's like, has anyone here done slide karaoke?
Like, or deliver somebody else to tell you?
Like, I have full of people in here.
It's where they put some slides up that you've never seen before and you have to give a talk.
That you didn't prepare and you didn't have no idea what they're talking about.
So we obviously, carefully about the issues that Bradley was talking about in this talk.
But we are going to do our best to present to you the material that he had planned to present today.
So let us introduce ourselves.
So I am Denver Gingrich.
I am the director of compliance at software feed and conservancy.
And what that means is I am focused on our software right to repair efforts.
Because copyright licenses are software right to repair and improve licenses.
And so I do that through a number of ways.
You can check out our booth to learn a little bit more.
See the OpenWRT1 that we built and shipped started shipping last year.
As a great example of this, what this right to repair gives you.
And yeah, I'm just super excited to be involved.
And here today to talk about this very important thing as well.
Hi, I'm Karen Sandler.
I'm the executive director of software freedom conservancy.
As I think many of you know, I care deeply about software freedom for many reasons.
But most specifically, because I have a her condition I was born with.
And I have an implanted pacemaker defibrillator.
And I can't see the source code in my own body.
And living with a defibrillator made me keenly recognize the issues of the ethics of our software.
So viscerally every day of my life.
And in particular, in times when, for example, my defibrillator shocked me when I didn't need treatment.
It shocked me unnecessarily because I was pregnant.
And my heart was palpitating which is super normal for a pregnant woman.
But my defibrillator thought I was in a dangerous rhythm.
And it shocked me.
And the only way I could stop it was to take drugs to slow my heart rate down.
Such that it was hard to walk up a flight of stairs.
I'm fine.
Everything is fine.
I'm actually asymptomatic now.
And thanks to all different kinds of things.
I'm totally okay.
But it really stands for the proposition that our technology may not be made for us.
And what will we do when that happens?
And makes me really passionate about the public's control of its own software.
And making sure that all of the software we rely on is ethical and that we have the software
Freedom.
And that is the driving force between for why and how we run our initiatives at the software
Freedom Conservancy really about pragmatic initiatives that we can do that bring software
Freedom to us now today.
And the years to come.
So today we're talking about the growing body of her proprietary infrastructure for fast development,
repeating that history.
And it's going to be fun because it's somebody else's talk.
What we're going to give it.
So here we go.
So this is Bradley, Bradley edited the slides for us to give.
That's right.
And so this we've already heard a little about Bradley's thoughts on content today.
So this is he would like us to share this quote here.
And so I will read this quote as well in addition to the statement we've already read,
which says, only according to that maximum whereby you can add the same time will that it
should become a universal law.
So Foss has a really long history now.
And it doesn't repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.
We're going to talk about one of the really important cases where that has happened.
This is actually over 20 years ago now that this happens.
And we're going to talk a little bit about where we are going from here.
So before I go.
Can we read Bradley's poll?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Just making sure I'm on the right slide for that here.
Yeah, totally.
So he wanted us to do a little, a little poll here to find out of all of you here.
If you could raise your hands, we don't judge you or blame you for saying yes to the answers
of these questions, we still love you.
In fact, you're here, you're cool.
So we want to know of any of you to raise your hands if you're using any of the following
systems as a substantial portion of your contributions to a free and open source software.
But people are raising their hands before we even ask the systems.
Yeah, amazing.
Yeah.
So let's just go in order and we'll see.
And maybe you just leave your hands up and we'll see how what percentage we have by the end.
Microsoft Teams.
Oh, that's like, let's say I can an eighth maybe.
Zoom.
Ah, it's like only half.
Good job everybody.
Just keep your hands up.
Source forge.
No, just a few hands went up in addition.
Oh, I just lost the list of.
Okay.
Jira.
Okay, like more people.
Confluence.
Bit bucket.
Any of the many non-foss continuous integration systems.
All right.
So now we've got like three quarters.
But here we go.
Slack.
Which, by the way, is now a Salesforce product.
GitHub.
Now I'm Microsoft product.
Yeah, and GitLab's proprietary GitLab instance.
The GitLab instance of your project not self hosted.
Okay.
So, yes.
Of course, once we said, he says, once we said GitHub, the most hands went up.
But I actually think it was maybe Slack.
Yeah.
So.
Um.
Right.
Yep.
So, so this happened a long time ago.
This is what I was speaking of over 20 years ago.
Uh, so there was this.
Um, this tool.
Many people may remember called source forge.
Um, and so source forge, you know, seems.
Seems pretty good.
Like it was really the first thing that integrated all of these tools.
Like the bug tracking.
Um, and the version control and like a release like download section.
And all of these things together.
Yeah.
Can we ask people to raise their hand if they've never heard of source forge before?
If you've never heard of source forge, raise your hand.
This is awesome.
So, there is.
Yeah.
Good.
Like I'd say like a 16th of the audience.
Yeah.
Definitely.
So, the source forge was all things were going well.
People were very happy with it.
And then all of a sudden, some new things started to happen with source forge.
Um, and they were not, uh, not super great things.
Um, so there is this article, um, you know, you can search for that.
Or just punch in that, uh, URL if you want, um, to, to check it out.
Um, and, uh, this is, was a big deal because they started, uh, doing things like, um,
uh, putting ads onto the website and, and many other things that were very problematic,
uh, for, uh, for contributors, um, that didn't want to be tracked or, or otherwise.
Um, and so, uh, this article, um, goes on about some of the issues and then eventually
at the bottom, it talks about one of the, um, examples of, uh, alternatives that was being
built had only been under development for about three months at the time.
Um, and that, um, alternative here.
Um, and I, I see there are, sorry, there are a lot more notes on exactly what is going
on here, um, uh, with, with VA Linux, um, you know, this is all, as you can kind of see
by the date here.
This is a bit wrapped up in the dot com boom and wanting to make a lot of money, um,
off of these things.
And so, you know, that may be what, what precipitated some of this when the, the boom, uh,
uh, you know, initial boom ended and they were trying to make some money out of, uh,
uh, what they have.
Yeah, I'm going to read Bradley's, like, rhetoric, because it's so good and it's so Bradley.
Um, and so you'll feel like he's here.
Um, during the dot com boom, VA Linux IPO, under the ticket symbol, LNUX,
like airlines, Gams of the 1920s, where companies named themselves with ticker symbols that sounded like
airlines.
Many people thought that they were buying stock in this new operating system.
They were just hearing about not one of the many service companies in the space.
By late 2001, the dot com boom was over.
Obviously, this is way before our time done.
Um, Linux, LNUX, stock a tank, and as most fast companies do in times or
times.
Yeah.
And so, uh, at the bottom of this, it talks about some of the alternatives.
Yeah.
And so, uh, at the bottom of this, it talks about some of the alternatives.
Yeah.
And so, article is by Louie C. Dush of Lee.
And I highly recommend following his work.
Absolutely.
Um, and one of those, the one they put at the bottom of that article, if you read all the way through, is Savannah.
Um, and so that had just been under development for a few months.
At the time, um, and there are of course a couple other options that were available at that time as well.
But it was very tricky because there were not a lot of options.
And there wasn't, uh, an obvious one that everyone should immediately switch to.
Um, and so that made things quite difficult for, um, for people who were stuck on source sports.
Um, and I think is, you know, perhaps one of the things that, uh, we find concerning now,
given that we're in a similar situation, um, and what, but we'll get back to that in a little bit here.
Yeah.
Um, the side note is that, uh, all of this was the catalyst for the HEPL license.
And so that's where the HEPL license was born as an idea.
Um, so, um, in this case, Bradley pointed out that the, um,
that because VA Linux needed universal copyright assignment.
Oh, speak closer to the microphone.
Uh, in, in this case, uh, Bradley pointed out that, uh, pointed out that because, uh, VA Linux needed universal copyright assignment,
what happened was they tried to get everybody to relicense their, um, their code so that they could proprietary license.
And only a few developers held out, um, including Luke.
And so, uh, basically, the, their code was written out because so many developers were okay with the real licensing.
And so, we're, oh, hold on.
I, I think we're good on those, that the source sports diaspora.
Were there any other comments we had on that?
Okay.
So, anything you wanted to read about?
Um, everything that Bradley writes is so good, but it sounds really different when it comes out of my mouth.
So, I think, uh, you know, I, I think that he talks a little bit about why we had so much trouble getting away from source forage,
um, because there wasn't a primary fork, but dozens.
And, um, so he, he was, you know, looking at this list and, um, just saying that there were more at the time that it's,
it's put the attention of the community so badly that eventually there wasn't enough leadership to move the, um,
you know, to, to, to move to something more modern that users were looking for by the time of the, of the, of the 2000s.
So, uh, really sad situation and really set the tone and the, uh, the space for where we are now.
Exactly. And so then what happened in, uh, 2007, um, is that we had, uh, this person here, um, who acts, uh,
Oskan 2013 said the GPL is a license of restrictions and I don't like restrictions just use MIT.
Um, and so Bradley used to put the slide in every talk that he gave.
So, so he's just seeing it, but he put it in deliberately here because he thinks that this is so relevant now.
And, um, and looking back at it, really explains sort of where we got to with GitHub.
Exactly. Um, and in, in this particular case, um, I believe we have, um, a bit more relevance for, uh, for this.
So, so basically, um, this person was involved, uh, quite extensively in, um, in GitHub, um, and making it, uh, come to be.
And so, uh, he's, uh, out of this part of, like, an unrelated HR scandal, um, but his impact on the company was very great.
He was at all of our conferences, basically, saying advocating for non-copy left licensing and saying that we should really throw away all of our copy left,
and only non-copy left permissive lacks licensing was the only way to go and was a very insistent and charismatic speaker that came again and again.
And again, they, uh, he was behind some of the early choose a license that really drove people away from copy left licensing.
And it was all part of this same mentality.
And so that made, uh, GitHub a very, um, a very, uh, good fit, so to speak, for Microsoft, uh, when they acquired GitHub, uh, because Microsoft has always been very excited about the non-copy lefted boss because, um, uh, you know,
because they, um, and, and I mean, you know, this could be up for debate, but I, I would say that they are maybe not looking out for, uh, your, uh, user rights and freedoms, um, as, as others might be.
And so they would prefer to, uh, remove those abilities for you to, um, be able to modify and improve your software.
Um, and so this was a natural fit, uh, because of this belief that, uh, that less restrictions, um, so to speak was somehow better.
Um, and so that's what happened with, uh, Microsoft, and now we have, uh, Microsoft, uh, GitHub and things continued to go, uh, kind of downhill from there.
Right, instead of, like, in the source forge situation where, um, when, when looking for profitability, the obvious answer was to do advertisements, right?
Instead of doing that, um, the idea was to make GitHub more of a loss leader to get, to get developers to, to work there and to train them.
I mean, I, you know, we run outreachy at Software Freedom Conservancy, which is a diversity initiative where we have paid remote internships for folks who experience discrimination of any kind,
to get internships and, um, and work on free and open source software.
And, uh, for most of the people coming in now learning to contribute to open sources, oh, I have to learn how to GitHub, right?
GitHub is there is, is the way in and, um, and GitHub and Microsoft were really smart about that and understood that that was a way to, um, to really establish themselves.
Exactly. And I, I, I like to, um, to quote this part, um, that, that Bradley wrote here, uh, because I, I think it's very good and relevant here.
Um, Bradley mentioned that he presented his capstone undergrad project at an ACM conference in 1995, uh, at this conference.
Uh, every single attendee was given a gratis copy, uh, that is free as in free beer, um, of Windows 95.
Uh, Bradley confirms that this is the only Microsoft license of any kind that he has ever agreed to.
Um, the point of Microsoft's methods are clear going back decades to get people addicted to our proprietary stuff by offering it gratis free as in free beer at first and then finding ways to sell add-ons.
If you know Bradley, you'll really, and you know him now from this talk, you will appreciate that he wrote the words in his notes.
While we don't like the term Bradley calls this free as in cocaine.
I think he didn't think I was going to read that.
And then a note, you can edit the above if you want.
So meanwhile, um, in copy left land, um, it became obvious that, uh, the FSF USA was not able to do every possible task for the tool chain projects.
Um, and so these are some of the things that are needed for these things.
Um, and there was a compromise, um, in which, uh, the sourceware project was created and maybe you want to talk a little bit about the sourceware project.
Yeah, I mean, some of them are here.
Mm-hmm.
Raise your hand if you're connected with sourceware.
Um, so, right, I mean, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's just an excellent project I think.
Uh, round of applause.
Yes, absolutely.
And so all of this, uh, this infrastructure, all of this work is very difficult to do.
Um, and so it's been great that we've been able to continue this work through, um, projects like sourceware, which specifically does a lot of this work for the tool chain projects.
And so we're very happy that SFC is now, um, the fiscal home of sourceware.
Um, uh, it is one of SFC's member projects.
Um, and this is an excellent, um, an excellent resource that we have now.
It's hard work, right, to maintain all the independent infrastructure, but incredibly important.
And it's constantly under attack because it's so easy to shunt those services into these proprietary platforms and systems.
But maintaining our independence for the development of our software is so critical.
Because we lose so much when we seed control to these proprietary platforms.
Oh, I didn't know there was this slide. Great.
Yeah, and so, uh, and so, you know, this project was founded by people who were really devoted to all of this, these concepts.
And it does have some servers that are located on some of this infrastructure.
Um, but they are, um, they're, they're, they're fiercely independent, you could say.
Um, and so that's what I really enjoy about the project.
And, um, notably, it, you know, it is best, uh, it's serving these projects that are more focused on low-level CNC plus plus programming.
And of course, that's, that's crucial, crucial infrastructure, um, to, um, all of the, uh,
the operating systems that we use, um, and all of this great body of boss.
Um, but there are a lot more projects out there than just those, uh, written in these lower-level languages.
And so, um, it's good for us to have other alternatives as well.
So, um, so we're really excited about some new projects coming out, um, like 4Go and apologies if I mispronounce that.
Um, but I, um, let me know later, um, how I can change that.
Um, and we think this is really good because it is starting where a lot of free software projects start, uh, which is trying to replicate something that is familiar to users,
about giving you freedom, um, with that familiarity, um, and so we think that's really important.
Uh, that's why we fund a lot of the projects that we do that, that is help our member projects, um, who are in a lot of cases, um,
trying to make more freedom for, um, some familiar tools that people are accustomed to.
Um, and so, uh, this is very important, and we're, we're very happy for projects like 4Go that are doing this.
So, uh, that was where we end, um, from the slides.
I mean, I would say that there's, there's certainly more to say, um, I think that we can't underestimate the influence of corporations and trying to control our development infrastructure.
Um, there's a reason why these companies are so keen to have control over the way that we create our free software projects.
And the impact of that, um, the impact of that control is already completely evident and visceral in our, the state of our technology now.
Um, I, I, I, I think that when we look at where we are today with GitHub, we can see how far that has gone.
There's a strong power imbalance, um, that exists right now, where, for example, free software projects that host on GitHub have access to some information about their contributors.
But the companies that are a part of GitHub sponsors have access to aggregated data and tools that aren't available plainly to the public.
And it's in the name of revenue to community, and yet, they don't provide the same features and access to individuals that are coming in.
We've lost this level playing fields, and it's very hard to recover it again.
And it's a lot of the same things that we've had before as well, like it was mentioned earlier that a lot of these things are provided free as in free beer to certain people.
Uh, so for example, there are different, uh, different CI tools and similar that are only available.
Uh, gratis if you're a fast project or or similar.
Um, and so, so I think this is the sort of thing where they're trying to get you, get you hooked.
Um, and I think we should reject that.
Um, and we should say we need, uh, we need our freedom, our freedom to do these things.
Um, and I would say if you feel it is difficult for you to get off of GitHub for some reason.
Um, I would encourage you to check out our give up GitHub, uh, project, um, where we provide some templates, uh, where you can, um, indicate that you would like to leave GitHub, but there are some reasons you can't right now.
Um, and, uh, and just definitely, you know, uh, it's important, I think to show people that, uh, that we are able to, um,
uh, we are able to, uh, move away.
Even if we can't do so right now, uh, that there is this growing movement of people, uh, that would like to, uh, move, but, you know, there are a lot of issues like network effects.
I think that's one of the, the huge issues with, uh, with GitHub is that, you know, you log into your GitHub account.
And then now you can star and fork into all of these other things.
And of course, GitHub is not providing any API to let you do that with other things, like 4GEO or others.
And so, you know, that's another part of the lock in that they're really using, um, to try to keep you using GitHub and not to go elsewhere.
And what's sad is we built that network.
Like that network is the result of our work as a community.
We participated, we brought our projects there, and we're left with very little.
The, um, if you go to our GitHub page, we, we don't have it up here, but we have this, um, really adorable little logo, um, that you can put on your page.
But again, as Denver said, we're, we're cognizant of the realities of how hard it is to leave a system like that now.
And so, the read me that we have that you can put into your repo is really simple to add.
But just to show that you're using GitHub under protest.
Um, and I think that we, it seems impossible that we can do something else.
But we did it to begin with.
So we can do something else.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think that's, that's the really big thing is that we're, we're really strong, we're really strong community.
And it's taking steps like these, which may be incremental at first and then grow and grow and build and build.
Because as you see more people using this template, um, in their GitHub projects, then you, you feel empowered.
And you know that other people are, uh, want to do what you want to do.
Um, and I think that's a super important part of what we've done here.
And, you know, but what makes this community wonderful.
As the years go by with every passing month, the impact of our compromises to use proprietary infrastructure has more and more dire impact.
And what's amazing to me is all of the ways that I could never have predicted that would come about that would subjugate the work of the software freedom community.
I don't think that Bradley was intending to talk about co-pilot, but one of the impacts of putting everything that we, we're putting so much of our work on GitHub is that it is now easily the bulk of the training data for co-pilot.
Which then takes the bulk of our, much of our work and, um, and includes it in such a way that, um, GitHub had to hard case not including the GPL in its output.
Because early in early, um, iterations when you prompted it to help you with something most often, it would suggest, oh, you want to add the GPL.
And that was because there was so much copy-lefted code in the training data.
That's right. Yeah. I mean, the GPL is, of course, a very popular license and, and it's, I think it's interesting that, uh, you know, this, um, the, this tool, which is intended to kind of coalesce all of this, this knowledge, um, decided that, oh, uh, this copy-left thing is actually pretty important.
And so never tell anyone, we will never suggest the GPL. That's, because we will tell, that is something we will never do.
Exactly. So I, I think, you know, there, there's a bit of a, a funny come-up in here with GitHub being started by these people who, who really did, did not want you to use the GPL at all, like MIT, everything,
because then we can proprietaryize it, um, and have our own fun without ever, um, contributing, uh, back. Um, yeah, I, I think it's just, uh, amazing that that has happened.
And yeah, and another reason that we really need to, um, uh, we really need to, uh, stay, um, stay true to our, our principles, and, and, you know, be practical, as well, because it's, of course, not the sort of thing that everyone can do to just,
turn off GitHub for all their projects tomorrow.
No, these issues are really hard, like being able to pull together the resources to make alternative infrastructure and to support the infrastructure that we already have is nearly impossible.
And it's in part because we're relying on all of this proprietary for profit infrastructure that creating the alternatives are really different, you know, really hard and really difficult.
And so it's easy to sit up here and say, oh, we should give up GitHub and oh, by the way, we understand you can't give it up.
So just put a protest in your, um, in your repo, and that's something.
But ultimately, we need to find these solutions. We need to find other ways of doing it, and we need to establish that independence for software freedom communities.
And we need to lean into our copy left licensing as much as we can, because it is the only thing that will create principled ethical software down the road.
Because freed open source software is not something that was created just to enrich corporate profits.
We work on free open source software because we want to do things differently because we believe that we should have rights with respect to our software.
And by seeding all of our infrastructure, we subjugate and frustrate everything that we work for.
And I think we can come together and support initiatives like sourceware.
And there are others. And we should work on them all together. And we are working as hard as we can at software freedom conservancy to support these initiatives.
And do more. And you'll hear more about us from us in the future. We'd love to hear from you and for you to participate with us.
Absolutely. So I think we'll stop for a moment and open it for questions. Thank you so much for caring about this issue enough to be here.
I know this is a complicated really important issue and we're so glad that you care about it.
So. What's that?
All right. We have a lot of time left. So questions.
I see someone up there.
Oh, and I want to say when you're up on stage here, it's really, really hard to hear. I know from previous times I've spoken here that it's so hard to hear you.
So try to speak slowly and clearly and enunciate because it's all garbled up here.
Hey, thanks for session. You're a good, a really good replacement, I guess.
So the question is, there is like Garrett Hub, which is basically Garrett, which is open source system for the version control system.
Was it like considered as alternative for for for replacing the GitHub basically because I'm seeing that it's not on the website.
But it's very powerful system kind of.
Sorry, which project is that?
I'm speaking here.
Garrett Hub.
Delta.
Garrett Hub.
So Garrett?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, what was it? So I checked your website. It's not to suggest it as alternative for GitHub.
Is this a good reason for that?
Oh, I see you.
I mean, you check the give up GitHub website to see what the alternatives were and it was not listed there.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, we're kind of in the early stages of really building up all of that informational material.
And I think we should include things like Garrett on there as well because you're right that we do have a lot of other things that are part of GitHub.
You know, like this CI CD stuff that would be good to good to include. So thanks for that suggestion.
I want to ask a question.
Maybe controversial to many, but I think we should discuss this.
I think that free software doesn't mean free support.
And we should rethink fundamentally our approach to issue trackers and back trackers.
What was before like a nice community forum, people helping people and be friendly and users helping users.
We have now like a fully professionalized support websites integrated with GitHub and other things.
And I believe this should not be free or just simply free and it's a system and ability issue.
We should rethink that.
What do you think?
So your question.
It sounds like it is about some of the different support mechanisms that are available through GitHub.
So I'm just curious if this is a specific kind of bug tracker or similar or is it.
Yeah, I guess I would just wasn't quite sure.
Here, maybe I can give you the mic for a moment.
Just a idea of free support with bug truckers free support.
The ability to expect this, but maybe this shouldn't be obvious.
So people expect free support based on the bug trackers.
And they yes, I think this is a general issue.
I do agree that people may be confused different hobbyist projects that are available on GitHub with with the like for profit commercial projects.
And they all have bug trackers that look the same, but in the case of hobbyist projects.
A lot of times people treat them the same.
They treat them as some sort of, oh well, these people must have lots of money or time on their hands because they're on GitHub.
And so I'll just put my requests into this bug tracker.
And I think that's a very important concern.
I think there are a couple of parts of that.
I think we do need to change the cultural a little bit.
So people understand what some of the incentives are behind contributors.
Because, you know, there may be projects on GitHub that are very commercial.
And you know, they pay people to look at all of the bugs and to triage them and everything.
But of course, for hobbyist projects, you don't have the resources for that sort of thing.
And so I think there are a couple ways to to solve some of those issues through slowly changing the norms.
And you know, maybe including some more documentation and information.
Perhaps even, you know, changing some little notes about or interface changes where these things look differently.
So yeah, I agree that's an issue we should look at as we are moving away from GitHub as well.
Thanks for the talk. I really enjoyed it.
It's making me think like I should go and check out for a J.O. and like finally maybe switch to it.
But you know, I'm on GitHub and then I'm working on my project.
I find a bug in somebody else's project.
I just go and I file a pull request and it's so easy.
And then, you know, when I'm starting my new project, I think about where I put it, it almost feels anti-social if I don't put it in GitHub.
Because then it makes it so much difficult for everyone else.
I wonder if you know, like is there any effort to do something like mastered on like federated for J.O. or something where all of the instances could easily file pull requests against each other?
Because that would be like the thing that really kills that I think.
Do you know if there's anything?
That's a really good suggestion for to add activity support to for G.O. and similar.
I'm not sure if that's happened. I think it would be excellent if people were working on that.
I think it is parts of it are a little bit tricky.
Because it's not exactly, you know, just posting something to a general feed.
They need to be organized into issues and pull requests and other things like that.
And so I think we should definitely be looking at that.
And I agree that federating these instances will make them stronger overall.
As we have seen with projects like mastered on and the activity pub protocol that it is built on.
So there's a question.
Okay, go ahead.
So you have singled out GitHub, but I have noticed that not just code for this other problem.
I mean, you did mention it kind of a few asked about teams and you asked about Slack.
But I have noticed that a lot of open source projects are currently communicating over discord.
And I'm like wondering, do you want to have a special website to prepare people from migrating away from those proprietary chat platforms that don't actually host code?
Yeah, that's a really really good question.
I think we should go beyond some of these other tools.
Actually, I was in a dev room yesterday.
And I asked this free software project, you know, where can I meet all of your developers?
Because I would really love to discuss the project more.
And they said, yeah, we're all on discord.
And so I thought, yeah, that's going to be hard for me to join.
I mean, partly because of the phone verification stuff they do, which is very difficult using the phone number that I have available to me.
And so, and of course, it's proprietary as as you noted.
And so I think it is important for us to go beyond it because you're right.
It's not just the features that GitHub provides that projects are using.
It is also these chat chat tools and similar.
One of the volunteers gave me his phone to read from the chat, which is that some projects will close your issue if you don't donate, which is really interesting point,
but also that to link to Federation with 4JL, and there's a link there.
And so I definitely encourage people to check that out.
So, excellent. That's great.
I'm glad that 4JL has that end, or is developing it.
But yeah, I'm very, very excited for us to be working more on the chat protocols.
I mean, I'm personally, you know, a big fan of XMPP, and I think everyone should use that.
But yeah, go ahead.
I have been using or avoiding using GitHub for a few years.
I'm on court back, and I find it is really hard to avoid discord.
So, that could be even more problematic.
What's your suggestion in this case?
My apologies. In which cases is it difficult to avoid discord?
And for many projects doing chat because there is no recording chat?
Yes. So, talking to the developers.
So, this could, many of those projects have discord, this could serve us.
And so, what is the solution in this case?
I'm sorry. Is it some other features of discord aside from chat that people are using?
I'm not sure.
Okay. All right. Yes. So, I absolutely agree that we should be.
We should be making sure that the tools that we provide to people are able to offer them all of the features that they are used to.
In, in freedom respecting ways, definitely.
And I think, you know, there are a lot of XMPB extensions that will allow you to do this that are all standardized.
So, things like, you know, screen sharing and things like that.
So, we should use those.
There is another question from the chat.
What should we prioritize?
Federated across Federation across forges or decentralization.
I mean, I think these things are both very important to do.
We should have, we should have both of those.
It's important for people to be running lots of different instances,
so that we can reduce the chance that any single instance having issue causes a general concern in that network.
And yeah, I think that's a very important point.
I think we're actually out of time.
I apologize. It's very hard to hear the questions here and it's funny because when you watch the video later,
it's crystal clear.
And you're like, oh, that's what they were asking.
But I just want to say Bradley is watching the hotel after having spent the day,
rejiggering the talk that he worked so hard to give today.
I really, I'm so inspired by the work that Bradley does and how much he's put in
in decades of his life towards self or freedom.
And I know, could we all give him a huge round of applause for all the work that he does for self or freedom?
Thanks everybody for joining us and we hope to engage with you more on this issue.