[Freecon] Meeting notes - May 20th 2015

[Patrick O'Doherty]

Hey folks,

Given we don't have a wiki yet attaching some notes from the first
gathering.

highlights
  * Let's have a one day unconference style event @ NB
  * Late October seems to work for folks
  * Approximately 30-50 people
  * some opening talks / workshops to give context
  * focus on free culture

Next proposed meeting is June 4th, 7pm @ Noisebridge

In the meantime we're going to set up some infrastructure to help
organise the event, trello, mailing list, hosting for the public site.
etc...

cheers,

p
-------------- next part --------------
:w

Attendees
  * torrie
  * jay
  * josh
  * j
  * steve
  * zephyr
  * frank
  * patrick

Torrie - This has all come about since seeing a talk by Bradley Kunh @
LFNW about the importance of Copyleft license and culture. This is the
first meeting of a free software / culture thing, specifically strong
copyleft (not MIT etc) and how it impacts the world and can be used
for good

Jay - Is it going to be talks? hacking?

Torrie - open for discussion!

Jay - Who wants to see what?

Torrie - I'd like to see really neat talks, speakers, we can even
  import some from EU

Jeffrey - I'd like to see a talk that explains how it's actually better
than an MIT license

Josh - Perhaps a thing that'd help is instead of talking about ideology
instead talk about what has happened as a result of someone using either
a strong copyleft or non-copyleft license.

Zephyr - That'd be fascinating

Josh - case studies on what can / does happen. Maybe BSD doesn't have a
problem w/ Windows taking their TCP statck, but do you care / want
something in particular?

Torrie - A lot of people in the Free Software movement becasue they care
greatly as to what happens w/ their code, but many folks that I knonw
use permissive licenses because they don't care. Copyright is an all
rigths reserved, I have total control idea which has caused issues over
history, in music for example. Once they control exclusive rights they
control too the copies and derivative works. Copyleft is the complete
opposite, where there are no restrictions on such works, but you must
share the modifications you make. Permissisive licenses don't come with
nay requirements to share your changes. Copyleft ensures that you *must*
share changes and all that come after you must also do so.

Josh - A Copyleft license is one which ensures the user's freedoms are
preserved. They are
  0 - To run and inspect the code, to see how it works
  1 - To modify the program
  2 - To share the program with ones neighbors
  3 - To share ones improvements to the program

  MIT is more permissive than copyleft, you're not going to complain
  about being licensed something under MIT, but if you're licensing
  something to someone under MIT your user's freedom isn't preserved.

Torrie - A real life example of this would be Tivo. The Linux kernel is
GPL, you must distribute source to any changes you make and distribute
in compiled form. They made modifications and provided the source under
GPLv2. Tivo's particular thing that caused GPLv3 to come about was their
kernel signing. Even though you had the ability to see, change the code,
the code wouldn't run due to the signature mismatch. GPLv3 was created
to address this. GPLv2 also doesn't take into account
network-distributed software. For example if you modify Apache under
GPLv2 you're not required to distribute changes. The Aferro GPL was
created to address network distribution.

Jay - What about in-house proxies to proprietary services.

Torrie - If you send a packet and it hits the service there's an
interaction.

Jeffrey - What's the case that folks want to protect against w/ GPL?

Torrie - Maybe we should go around in a circle to give personal input on
why it's important. Personally, if I write something neat which allows
folks to do things, if I put a bunch of work into it and release it to
the public I'd like folks to contribute to it and propogate the changes,
keep it going. Makerbot for example started out as open source, they
contributed some, and then stopped giving back and switched over to
permissive licenses which allowed them to have a bunch of propietary and
closed source stuff. if I own one I want to be able to fix it. if it's
propietary then I can't. The DMCA also makes it illegal to reverse
engineer (circumvent access control) further prohibiting me

Jeffrey - The market surely addresses this? Should folks not be
compensated for work?

Torrie - Let's not have an argument


Torrie - When? does October suit?

Jay - suits me.

Torrie - What to we want? talks? workshops?

Jay - workshops would be neat.

Torrie - I'm also interseted in free culture. Who all else is interested
in that? What do people want to folks want to see?

Zephyr - you seem to be the pushing force of this. what would you like
to see?

Torrie - I'd like an unconference of sorts, background: it's a
conference self-organised the day of with folks putting up notes saying
they'll talk about a $thing. BACH had a similar setup and it was
successful. Things like "how do we educate folks? how do we practice it?
why's it important?" talking about what it means to us.

Jeffrey - What would be an examlpe of a talk on free culture.

Torrie - One talk could be making a living with Free Software. I've done
it for years, but not currently (Open Source VS Free Software). I'd love
to see people talk about it, and then have folks go back to their
dayjobs and think about pushing things into Free Software and
contributing back to humanity.

Josh - A terminology bootcamp.

Frank - Simultaneous presentations would be great.

Torrie - We could support maybe 3-4 talks at a time.

Jay - How many attendees ?

Torrie - Half the stupid hackathon

Patrick - Anywhere between 30-50-100 ish

Torrie - Definitely that small for a first run.

Jeffrey - do you see it overlapping w/ hackerspaces? the culture seems
to overlap

Torrie - the vast majority of free software has been written in Europe
around hackerspaces, they're mentioned as part of the culture /
foundation. They're a core part. At noisebridge most everything is
hackable / modifyable and we kinda apply the GPL to the space.

Frank - I'm seeing things in papers about housing hacking / sharing.

Torrie - it fits with the idea of sharing resources. That's the
non-techie side of this I'd like to see

Jay - Rough summary. 30-50 people @ noisebridge one day conference maybe
a couple of pivot talks to ground folks, discussion session during the
day, the rest of it being open to folks presenting their own topics

Torrie - I'd really like to see the unconference pattern.

Jeffrey - Are things like MIT being included ? Can folks come to
discuss?

Torrie - definitely Free culture, of which GPL is a major part. I don't
think MIT licenses are a big part. There should be a "safe" space
though. It needs a really strong facilitator for such a debate.

Torrie - folks ok w/ unconference as far as infrastructure?

Frank - sounds good to me. in science fiction conferences there's
definitely both really rigid / structured conferences as well

Torrie - Action items!

Patrick - Let's get a mailing list. maybe on NB to start

Torrie - Who wants to actually put energy into this!

* Website needs fixing (Jay)
* we'll have a trello board (preferably a FOSS version) (50% jay, 50%
  patrick)
* mailing list (on NB to start?) (patrick) (done)
* wiki (Spacewiki?) (torrie)
* server / DNS / things ($5/month DO instance)

Torrie - when to meet?

Patrick - every two weeks. how about thursday June 4th @ 7pm?

Josh - An idea for a session would be common talking points you'll
encounter when discussing / defending copyleft.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 473 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/freecon/attachments/20150519/f4983287/attachment-0002.sig>