[Events] Notes on History & Ethics of Free Software resource

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

> >
> > * Do we need to do this in pure lecture format?  It might be interesting
> to
> > think about how students can engage with the topic more, rather than
> being
> > passive recipients of the lecture.  Even if it's just building in more
> > discussion questions, that'd be nice, but perhaps we can do more.
>
> I agree. I'd love to make this more interactive.
>
>
So one obvious way to make the talk more interactive is to take some of the
rhetorical questions posed throughout the talk and actually ask them to
attendees, whether as a whole or in small groups.  This relies on having
attendees who are interested in debating, but it'll work some of the time.

We can also try to be cute and ask attendees to "vote" on IRC.  For
instance, for the question "Should all software be free?" or "What's more
free - share-alike or permissive licensing?"  If IRC is projected behind
the person giving the talk, and seeded by volunteer staff... all it is, is
an unusual way of showing hands, but the novelty might provoke more
discussion.  Or it might take away from in-person discussion.  So maybe we
shouldn't.

I'm going to continue brainstorming how to make this interactive without
being tedious or patronizing.



> > * While I'm on this line: "Should all software be open source?" seems
> like a
> > bit of a red herring of a question.  Do you think the answer is yes?  I
> don't.
> >  I mean, I think it's really interesting to discuss the real and
> perceived
> > weaknesses of free software, but it's hard to do that at the beginning
> of the
> > lecture when attendees don't know much about the issues.
>
> I do in fact feel strongly that yes, all users of software deserve the
> permissions
> to control that software as it runs on their computer, which are spelled
> out
> equivalently in the definitions of open source software (from OSI) and
> that of
> free software (from FSF).
>

To qualify my answer, there's a difference between should as in "In my
ideal world, all software would be open source" and should as in "I believe
it is morally wrong to create non-open-source software".  I agree with the
former, not the latter.  I think it's worth continuing to discuss this, to
see where exactly our beliefs are diverging and why, and see if that's a
useful contrast to discuss with students.  Or maybe I just want an excuse
to argue.  :)



> I do try to illuminate the history pre-RMS briefly by saying that when he
> asked
> around to find the person who wrote the driver, it was easy because back
> then,
> there weren't that many people who wrote software, so you probably were
> friends-
> of-friends with them. I will see if I can put in a few more sentences
> before.
>

Is there really no canonical or even totally untrustworthy source that
talks about the pre-RMS history of software?  Because I think we can do
better than a few sentences, but I don't really know where to begin.  Well,
I guess we begin by identifying primary sources.  If you're less interested
in this, I can put it on my to-do.



>
> I think when I actually give the talk I do say what Unix is, something
> like,
> "The operating system that he was used to using." As I write out these
> responses
> to what you wrote, it seems very clear to me that:
>
> * The outline I provided here is just my lecture notes, not the very words
>   I try to say.
>
> * I would do well to turn this into a more-well-planned presentation with
>   images that serve to illuminate concepts, and with basically every word
>   planned out.
>
> Doing the more-planned-out version would definitely help people deliver
> the same
> talk, and it would also help me deliver a consistent talk between events.
>

bd



> Good question about where the GNU team came from. Honestly, it would be
> useful
> to talk about the basics of free software community organizing here, such
> as
> the fact that Richard posted his announcements to USENET, with e.g. a
> screenshot
> of such a message, so that people would have a sense that it is somewhat
> analogous to posting a message on a LinkedIn or Facebook group that is
> generally
> about programming. (For clarity, from what I can tell by checking sources
> now,
> he was a staffer at the AI lab, not an undergraduate or graduate student.)
>

I know very few speakers who are so engaging and charismatic that they are
not helped by a visual or two or five.


>
> As for "That's enough history for now," well, it's all the history I have
> time
> for! I didn't even get to tell my favorite story, which is:
>
> * DeCSS: (1998) How Big Media made open source DVD players illegal
>
> For other stories in the 1998 onward range, they include:
>
> * Adobe eBook DRM, 2001: Why a programmer found himself in jail for
> showing how
>   enable "Read this book aloud" on a no-cost, legally-acquired copy of
>   Alice in Wonderland
>
> * 2002-2007: Why KDE created a totally new web browser, and how its
> rendering
>   engine (KHTML) became WebKit in Safari, and became the core of the Chrome
>   web browser, and outcompeted Opera's own HTML renderer
>
> * 1997-2009: How one math grad student's experiences with Mathematica led
> him
>   to create some of the world's most used (within academia) computer math
> software
>   as proprietary software, only to wake up around 2006, realize he had
> swindled
>   a generation of math researchers of their freedom, and flip out and build
>   Sage Math, accruing a team and building best-of-class software for
> abstract
>   math researchers <
> http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2009/12/mathematical-software-and-me-very.html
> >
>
> * 2004: Why the web's most self-aggrandizing development firm released
> Ruby on Rails,
>   and how open source and partial code sharing have changed the flavor of
> web programming
>
> * 1994 on: How a programming language (PHP) emerged from one hacker's
> scripts to literally
>   maintain his personal home page
>
> * 2001: How and why Sun released their newly-acquired office suite,
> formerly known
>   as StarOffice, as free software (now known as OpenOffice and LibreOffice)
>
> * 1995-1998: How Microsoft incorporated NCSA Mosaic code into a new
> Internet Explorer,
>   gave it away, and obliterated Netscape's web browser market (for good or
> for bad, not
>   intending to pass a value judgement here).
>
> * 2005: How the open source code of LiveJournal helped some users leave
> the website's
>   changing culture, but keep the user experience they were used to by
> forking
>   the source into Dreamwidth, in which a community of bloggers learned and
> taught each
>   other Perl, to make one of the most gender-diverse programming
> communities in open
>   source.
>
> * 2001: How the first relase of Mac OS X for the desktop market was made
> possible by
>   embedding and extending open source software, with care to choose
> non-GPL code,
>   preventing users of Mac OS X from having the same freedoms Apple had to
> build and
>   modify the software.
>
> (All dates approximate, just made up from what I remember. Some of these
> headlines might
> not be totally accurate, either, but they're as I remember them, with some
> basic searching
> done while typing them out to substantiate them.)
>

I am really curious about all of this history.  Here's a thought: we could
take some or all of the above, plus any other stories that seem relevant,
and summarize them concisely in a specific format.  This could be useful
for:

- presenters picking and choosing 5-10 minutes of further history from
stories that resonate with them/their audience
- an activity for attendees where they pick one history, read about it, and
tell their neighbor about it
- making a nice resource for attendees who want to learn more later

This should probably be low priority, but it'd probably get done fast
because it'd be super fun.  :)
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