• Keynote

Keynote

This is the source code, so to speak, of the keynote that I delivered at Ohio Linux Fest in September 2007. There is video of the talk on Google Video. I have since updated the content for use at Athens Digital Week 2008.

Feel free to adapt and use these ideas, but in the same manner that I credit folks who inspired me, please be sure to do the same.

Introduction

• Credit Cory Doctorow, Eben Moglen, Michael Tiemann, Greg DeKoenigsberg, Jan Wildeboer

• About me.
• PURPOSE -- to engage a diverse audience of FOSS veterans, newbies, potential users and contributors, to make sure people understand what FOSS is and how it works, and to paint the larger picture of why their work is changing the world.

• THESIS STATEMENT -- free software as a vanguard of massively distributed cultural engineering effort. The fundamentals in FOSS lay the groundwork for business, sports, politics, etc. Free Culture > Free Software

How we define freedom

• Gratis versus libre.
• FSF 4 freedoms. Core philosophy that brings us together.
• Core ideas of choice, meritocracy, transparencey are not new. Newly interpreted.

Economics of the internet age

General

• Revolution that progresses as a slow evolution.
• Hypothesize that Linux 1.0 in 1994 and Netscape IPO in 1995 was The Moment It All Happened.
• Computer industry is the harbinger of large change in this regard.
• It's about POWER, not MONEY. Money simply follows the power.

Examples

• Sports

  • $1.8 billion for ManU, $1.6 billion for Dallas Cowboys -> MyFootballClub

    • Test wisdom of the crowds.
• Finance

  • Few banks -> p2p lending (Prosper in USA, Zopa in UK, Kiva non-profit and transparent)

• Communications

  • AT&T -> Asterisk

• Music & Television

  • EMI, Sony, Universal, Warner -> MySpace, Sellaband (ex-Sony/BMG guys)

  • Internet is slowly replacing radio and television and phone lines (Joost is trying).
  • WCPE in North Carolina -- community supported radio, streaming worldwide.

Internet economy and free software complement one another

General

• All this innovation for the most part is built on FOSS or FOSS ideas (or both).
• Freedom is a feature.
  • Business decision, not just philosophical one.
• Freedom = Choice = Power
  • Having choices equals freedom, freedom to choose equals power.

  • TurboGears, Rails, JBoss --> TurboGears 2.0 proves the point.

    • Modularity and option value
  • Fedora custom spins.
  • KDE vs GNOME, arguments that we should just "pick one distro" and standardize on it.
• Route around attempts to stifle choice. Proprietary software stifles choice.
  • Internet routes around censorship (John Gilmore).
  • Market forces combine with FOSS principles to offer choice.
  • Anything that interferes with people's ability to make choices is doomed.
  • Market rejects this on economic basis.

Examples

• Music
  • DRM == lock in != choice
    • Team + millions + years defeated by one kid in Norway, zero dollars, few days
    • Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, Zune

    • TechCrunch said digital music sales in 2007 were $3B, and that was 15% of total industry.

  • Recording artists also revolt against labels. Business, not philosophy.
    • Nine Inch Nails accuses RIAA of theft, urges fans to download, and releases full tracks on USB keys at shows.
    • Madonna drops record label, signed $120M promotion deal w/ 3 free albums.
    • Radiohead no longer tied to record label, fans pick their own price for album.
• Telephone
  • iPhone jailbreaks.
  • Rockbox for the iPod.
  • iPhone cracked to enable network switching.
• Society
  • Creative Commons.

  • TRAnsnational republic -- founded in Munich, group people based on similarity of beliefs & feelings.

  • Ars Electronica -- art, technology, and society in Linz, Austria.

Open Standards

• Compare to FSF 4 freedoms
  • Royalty-free, immune to vendor capture, freely available specification, collaborative public review, etc.

  • TCP/IP, XHTML, PDF, ODF, OGG --> they originate in different ways

• Modularity and option value once again.
• Internet speeds it up, but it's throughout history.
  • Scribes vs. printing press.
  • Assembly lines and tools become standard, industrial revolution.
  • Railroad tracks becoming uniform, enables trade and connections.
  • Standard means of sharing information.
  • Patience, long planning horizon == doom for proprietary business models.
• Open standards leads to commoditization.
• Cost of switching is zero. That is choice, and it shows that you have the power.
• Ability to fork is what you get when cost of switching is zero.

Why free software is better

• Belief in FOSS is not a short term investment. Long planning horizon, right side of history.
• Science vs. Alchemy. Science requires public scrutiny. Crypto algorithms. We call it "Computer Science".
• Proprietary software is not science because it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

  • Diebold --> Maryland spent $100M on abandoned e-voting machines.

    • FOSS (Fedora) providing open source technology election that (a) is cheap and (b) gets it right.
  • Kernel discussions on LWN.
  • Every patch, every proposal, every action.
  • Transparency defeats cynicism.
• October 2001 -- RH Linux 7.2 and Windows XP released 3 days apart.
• 2002-2006 -- RH 7.3, 8, 9, FC1-FC6, RHEL2-RHEL4 (12 operating systems)
• 2007 -- RHEL 5 and Windows Vista 2 months apart.
  • Dell customers reject Vista and force XP back onto machines.
  • Microsoft extendes lifecycle of Windows XP in response.

Conclusion

• Transparency & meritocracy of FOSS gives it credibility.

  • Protecting the rights of users.
  • Freedom to invent.
  • Patents and copyrights MUST support the public good.
  • Help people to grow.
  • Defend the freedom to build on what came before.
  • TRansnational Republic another example of FOSS ideals in non-technical applications.
• Free software requires a CHOICE and a BELIEF.
• Leadership = capacity building. Linux distros provide a synchronization clock.
• Gathering people together to do ANYTHING is the same.
• Go out and do something.