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

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

I asked Asheesh to type up his notes for the "Ethics and History of Free
Software" talk he usually gives at our OSCTC event.  As I was writing up
some feedback it occurred to me that others might be interested in
discussing how to improve the talk.  So here it is:
https://openhatch.org/wiki/OSCTC_Resources/Ethics_history_talk

And here's my feedback:

___Before we start___

* 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.

___1. Preface___

* These notes can definitely be formatted more usefully.  For instance, the
very first line is "Should all software be open source?" but it's not clear
whether that's rhetorical or a discussion starter.  Perhaps when we build
in discussion questions they can be colored or highlighted in a way to be
more visible.
* 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.
* Bringing up RMS in the preface, when people don't know who he is or why
we should care about his opinions, seems kind of irrelevant.

___2. History____

* But did free software really start with RMS? In some senses yes, but in
others no - after all, the whole narrative you tell here is one of RMS
defending free software culture from an incursion of proprietary culture.
 So how did that emerge?  How did software itself grow up?
* Bonus: starting the history before RMS might give us the option to
highlight a greater diversity of people.
* That said, I like the printer story.  It's concrete, and not too long.
* From section 2.2.5 "this is the GNU project, standing for GNU's Not
Unix." -- Probably should mention what Unix is!
* From section 2.3 "So he and the GNU team worked to make sure the GNU
tools and his system worked together." - What GNU team?  How did he get a
GNU team?  How did people find out that this college student was doing this
work?
* Section 2.5 about free software vs open source brushes past that ethical
issue quite quickly, and it doesn't get raised again in the ethics section.
 It's worth considering how deeply we want to delve into this issue and how
helpful it would be for attendees to think about.
* From section 2.8 "That's enough history for now."  Is it?  That brings us
up to 1998, leaving 15 more years of history we could touch upon.  I'm not
super familiar with free software history so I would really love it if we
could talk about what else we *could* include, even if we don't end up
including it.

___3. Ethics___

* More rhetorical questions!  Can we make these actual questions?
* I think we could have a more concrete discussion of different licenses
and why people would prefer one to another.  You touch upon this when
talking about permissive licenses.  I think it's interesting conceptually -
which is more "free", a license that makes you free to make it un-free, or
software that must remain free?  But there are lots of legitimate reasons
to argue for more restrictive or even proprietary licenses - that I think
are worth going over.
* I love the Skype story but it's not clear how it supports the premise
that "all software should be free".  I mean, it sure supports the idea that
Skype should be free software!  But I don't think it's necessarily framed
in the lecture in the best way?  Maybe link it to security/reliability and
the bias that people have towards believing that proprietary software is,
well, better for that?  Alternatively link it with a story about the
opposite - a case where the freeness of the software decreased
security/reliability.

___4.  Economics___

* It would be nice if we had numbers when talking about people working in
Open Source.
* We can also touch on alternatives such as open source in science/academia
or open source work funded by non-profits such as Sunlight, OLPC as opposed
to businesses.

___5.  Closing___

Do we want a more capstone-y wrap up section, instead of just transitioning
into whatever comes next?
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