Program Sessions

As free software activists, do we focus on our own project-based communities or should we be looking outside? If free software is to succeed (forever!) I believe we need to do both. Maintaining our ideals as we take free software to new places, introduce it to new people, and bend it to new purposes depends on our willingness to grow both individually and collectively. Change is never simple so I hope that we will be gentle with each other as we try new things and work to build an even bigger movement.

A battle is underway at the US Department of Defense (DoD) to improve the way DoD develops, secures, and deploys software. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is not common reading for most people, but buried within the DoD’s 2,000-page budget authorization is a provision to free source code. The lively history behind this provision is simultaneously frustrating and encouraging, with private industry giants, Congress, and other federal agencies jockeying around the effort to free the code at DoD. Come listen to this important, but perhaps lesser known, chapter of the free software narrative, and learn how a small group of impassioned digital service experts are defying all odds to continue the fight for free software adoption.

Modern vehicles are nodes on a network with a high degree of autonomy. As they've become more connected, they've incorporated more free software. But the fundamentally proprietary nature of car and truck manufacturers has led to regulatory and compliance issues that have unclear outcomes. The outcomes are increasingly pertinent to software freedom, especially as the use of free software shifts domains from consumer-focused to safety-critical.

This session will discuss problems around modern vehicles, including:

This is a short introduction to LaTeX, a free software project/ecosystem for document preparation. The presentation is intended for a general audience who have no prior knowledge of LaTeX, but are interested in creating beautiful electronic documents (manual, slides, letters, etc.). We will answer the following questions: When can LaTeX be a good choice? How do you get started with LaTeX? How do you migrate existing non-LaTeX documents (Markdown, OpenDocument, etc.) to LaTeX?

In this session, we will reconstruct a real 3D object using a camera and free software!

Photogrammetry is the reconstruction of 3D information about objects from a photograph or multiple photographs -- like 3D scanning but with cameras. While closed source tools to do this are quite well marketed and hyped, it might come as a surprise that we can accomplish similar results with free software. The workshop will go over some of these tools, and their use and installation, and participants should be able to go home and do the same with their own computers and cameras. Some familiarity with command line tools, software installation, and 3D graphics might help, but the workshop should be understandable to people with any level of technical ability.

Please bring your own laptop and, if you have one, a camera.

Think your phone is safe from the creepy gaze of advertisers? Think again. Not only do big tech companies have a grip on your mobile device, but there's a clandestine industry of surveillance inside the world's most popular apps. Researchers at Yale Privacy Lab and Exodus Privacy are collaborating with F-Droid to expose this kind of tracking in Android apps. This session will give an overview of Yale Privacy Lab's approach, and introduce you to the Exodus privacy auditing platform, a free software scanner that analyzes Android apps and reports a list of detected trackers and app permissions. We will talk about static analysis of app packages, network analysis, impostor apps, and our work on related privacy issues such as tracking through ultrasonic beacons.

We want software creators to use the GPL and its cousin licenses. We also know that people make mistakes in the process, or don’t even try because they’ve heard it’s "too complicated." Just as we do when we develop software, we would do well to study these failures and use them as opportunities to improve the usability of the GPL. This talk aims to start that process by identifying some known problems and considering some possible solutions. (None of these solutions are a new version of the license!)

If you develop or distribute software of any kind, you are vulnerable to whole categories of attacks upon yourself or your loved ones. This includes blackmail, extortion or "just" simple malware injection! By targeting software developers such as yourself, malicious actors, including nefarious governments, can infect and attack thousands -- if not millions -- of end users.

How can we prevent these disasters? The idea behind reproducible builds is to allow verification that no flaws have been introduced during build processes; this prevents against the installation of backdoor-introducing malware on developers' machines, ensuring attempts at extortion and other forms of subterfuge are quickly uncovered and thus ultimately futile.

Through a story of three different developers, this talk will engage you on this growing threat to you, and how it affects everyone involved in the production lifecycle of software development, as well as how reproducible builds can help prevent against it.

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This panel will offer a well-rounded discussion on various ways to incorporate free software into university curricula and scholarly projects, as well as ways to promote further engagement between scholars and the free software community. The panel will explore how free software fits into both computer science programs, such as the Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture Minors at RIT, and into digital humanities projects. What are the barriers to free software in academia? How does terminology cloud the issue? How do we promote the ethics of "free as in freedom" when the draw to many academics is "free as in beer"? How do free software and free culture interact in digital humanities and humanitarian projects?

On the surface, this presentation is about setting up a small, inexpensive, low-power server for the home. However, it uses that objective as an excuse to delve deeper into some technical issues, as well as to reflect upon the effect of free software on the relationship between computers and humans. It will answer the obvious questions about such a server: the whats, whys, hows, etc. It will share experiences with hardware and software for services such as shared file systems, backups, printing, Jabber/XMPP, music, and more. But it will also sneak in some deeper technical excursions enabled by free software, such as the preferred way, and reasons, to write random data prior to setting up encrypted storage. It will also include some personal observations on the experiential differences between using free and non-free software, especially those relating to enjoyment and to learning and teaching, formal and informal.

This presentation will review some of the policies that governments have adopted over the years regarding the production of free software. Historically, the free software community has focused on news items about larger users of free software, including a program in Munich. We now live in a world where everyone uses free software at least some of the time, and a large number of companies, even Microsoft, have even created policies on how they are participating. We are just starting to see governments considering their role in free software beyond consumers. In this talk, we will review some of the existing policies by both national and state governments that are embracing free licensing, and we will look at some recent proposed/enacted policies and laws. We will also briefly discuss the role that copyleft and permissive licenses can play in those policies, and what governments should consider when choosing a license.

The use of free software in the research and development of technology in the educational field is essential for a better society with more solid values. Mexico has initiated the development and use of free software, thanks to the creation of free software labs in higher education institutions. In this talk, we will discuss the creation of these labs, and the positive impact it has generated.

The ambition of the Software Heritage project is to collect, preserve, and share the entire body of free software that is published on the Internet in source code form, together with its development history.

Since its public announcement in 2016, the project has assembled the largest collection of freely available software source code for about 4 billion unique source code files and 900 million commits, coming from more than 60 million projects.

Initially focused on the collection and preservation goals -- which were at the time urgent, due to the recurrent disappearances of development forges -- Software Heritage has since rolled out several mechanisms to peruse its archive, making progress on the sharing goal.

In this talk, we will review the status of the Software Heritage project, emphasizing how users and developers can, today, benefit from the availability of a great public library of source code.

In this non-technical session, I will talk about the philosophical aspects of GNU Health as a social project. I will discuss implementations in places around the world, including Argentina, Cameroon, and Laos, and the different actors involved, including governments, academia, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Finally, we will talk about the community, ethics, risks, challenges, and ways to keep these projects healthy and sustainable in the long term.

The FSF and The Document Foundation have worked together to offer LibreOffice Certification to FSF Members, for developers, migrators, and trainers. This session will provide all of the relevant information about LibreOffice Certification, in order to make it easier for FSF Members to apply and prepare for the certification review.

The Tor Project has been hard at work this year building free software to fight surveillance and censorship across the globe. Join a handful of Tor contributors at this panel, and learn all about the state of the onion. We'll talk about how we're adding new security features like browser sandboxing, improving support for mobile devices, deploying the next generation of onion services, making Tor more usable, lowering our network overhead, making our software more maintainable, and growing our community with new outreach initiatives. We'll also share some of what you can expect from Tor in the coming year, and we're eager to hear questions from our community, too.

Starting a business is a big decision, and choosing to share its results with the world is perhaps bigger still. Denver started JMP early last year, and faced this very choice, deciding to release all of JMP's code as free software and to charge money to use the instance he runs. In this session, Denver will describe why he chose to build a free software business, and will discuss the details of the business model he arrived at, alongside other business models for free software companies.

Few contributors are paid to work on free software today, and far fewer are paid by non-profit organizations (or even by small businesses). It is imperative for us to explore how we can sell free software, especially through non-profits and small businesses, so we can bring freedom to more people and, just as importantly, build sustainable futures for our contributors.

Many nonprofits today are at a disadvantage in the software they use to manage everything from donor management to graphic design. Staff members are often not focused on acquiring the best digital resources, and overcomplicated, restrictive, and expensive software programs dominate the nonprofit market. Free software could provide a much-needed revolution for the nonprofit world.

The good news is that some nonprofits are beginning to work with other organizations and free software developers and communities to start solving common problems.

In this session, I will review some tangible ways in which free software is having and can have a positive impact on the nonprofit world, and some of the challenges nonprofits face both with current software available and in getting involved. I will then discuss strategies for advocating for free software for nonprofits. With nonprofits across the globe facing issues of censorship, privacy concerns, and the need for more financial freedom than ever before, this is the perfect time for nonprofits to embrace free software.

Engaging youth by meeting in their space in a respectful and encouraging manner is critical to achieving youth participation within the free software movement. Many opportunities to engage young people within their communities already exist across the globe, so let's explore how we can contribute in ways that are fun, engaging, empowering, and memorable.

Boston-based Mariah Villarreal and Devin Ulibarri have been working in their respective fields to empower youth with free software and free culture. Mariah and Devin will present some of their fieldwork, and will discuss the challenges and opportunities that teaching libre technology to youth provides. Mariah and Devin will also highlight how this branch of activism fits into the larger software freedom advocacy landscape.

The license-importance divide seems almost generational: the older generation cares about licenses, and the younger generation does not. Yet, the historical focus on licensing in FLOSS, while occasionally prone to pedantry to a degree only developers can love, stemmed from serious governance considerations regarding how community members interact.

Copyleft was invented to solve the many problems of project governance, assuring the rights of users and creating equal footing for all contributors. The licensing infrastructure today also has increased in complexity, with proprietary relicensing business models, excessive use of CLAs, and tricky clauses on top of existing licenses.

Given this climate, how do we understand if copyleft is succeeding? This talk explores historical motivations and modern reactions to these licensing matters, and digs into understanding how policies have impacted Free Software communities for both good and ill.

Embedded devices are all around us, and have become deeply "embedded" into our daily lives: from microcontrollers to "smart"-watches, routers, and televisions, they are all around us. Many of us don't think twice about the root of control in these devices, or even the software that runs on them. In some cases, manufacturers lock users out from controlling these devices, and cause a security nightmare when they stop supporting them. This session will cover a wide range of topics including: what libreCMC is, the project's goals / developments, and why free software is crucial in securing control and freedom in embedded devices.

Given the rapid growth of free software, it seems reasonable that free software communities might expect undergraduate students in computer science or software engineering programs would graduate with an understanding of free software and the ability to make project contributions. However, many students are not being taught core tools and concepts such as licenses, version control, and issue trackers as part of their degree program. This presentation will summarize the results of recent field research on the state of undergraduate education about free software; discuss the gap between undergraduate computing education and community expectations; and explore both the reasons for the gap and approaches to bridging it.

We're updating the popular 150-page Introduction to the Command Line. What do you think should be in the new edition? We'll be discussing content and process for updating this important work.

A product of a partnership between the FSF and Floss Manuals, this book gives new computer users a gentle, beginner's window onto Bash, vim, a few scripting languages, and other key tools offered on the Unix/GNU command line. A lot has happened since the book was released in 2009. We want to include new developments without substantially increasing the length of the book.

The president and founder of the Free Software Foundation will speak about pressing issues in free software today, and will present the winners of the 2018 Free Software Awards.

During this time, there will also be a raffle drawing.

Many things in life come with limitations -- often because we don't have unlimited time, energy, or other resources. But software often feels like it should be an exception, because it's immaterial and weightless, built from scratch out of logic. It doesn't literally rust or rot. So idealistic software developers have consistently envisioned software systems that will escape the shortcomings that frustrate users.

Meanwhile, researchers keep discovering kinds of tradeoffs that seem to be built into the very structure of certain problems; as the Rolling Stones said, "You can't always get what you want." Inherent tradeoffs have popped up in political science, computer science, and even ethical philosophy, with conjectures and often formal proofs that, in various regards, can't be wedged into any system that will give people all that they want out of it. Limitative theorems are now a major research theme, and more are being found all the time.

These tradeoffs seem to have very practical consequences, among other things, for privacy and anonymity software, and for social networks: each design may have to give up things some users value in order to achieve other goals.

Thinking about these limitations and what they do or don't mean can help inform discussions of software design, especially for communications tools whose value depends on broad adoption. And we're having to get used to the idea that in some ways, we'll never create perfect software.

ActivityPub is a federated social network protocol used to connect together decentralized Web sites running software such as Mastodon, Kroeg, and soon, MediaGoblin. How does ActivityPub work? What is the future of the standard and related work? What are Decentralized Identifiers, Capabilities, the "Web Of Trust," and why should you care? What are the lessons learned about standardization processes themselves, what roles and responsibilities should standards organizations play, and how can we make sure they have the right incentive structures?

The Debian project has used a cryptographic keyring for most of its authentication for over twenty years. Recently, we have taken on the study of the social implications that can be learned from how it's shaped, and its inner movements. Our aim is not just to document, but to understand what it means. We don't want to keep it as an academic-only exercise. I want to share some of our insights in this session.

This should also be a opportunity to invite other projects to follow Debian in not only loosely using OpenPGP, but in constituting a true Curated Web-of-Trust keyring. This talk should serve as documentation and motivation towards what this means, exploring which policies we follow, and part of our rationale to it.

Free software overall remains remarkably undiverse, with the latest GitHub survey finding that only about 3% of contributors are women, but communities that are making an effort to improve diversity are seeing results. Learn about several major efforts over the last seven years that have had an impact: Outreachy, the Ada Initiative, Python community outreach, the Women in Open Source Award sponsored by Red Hat, and a track at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Hear about emerging trends, such as efforts being made to reach people from a broader set of underrepresented backgrounds, and the establishment of paid positions and consulting opportunities for people working to improve diversity and inclusion in free software. You will leave with a good grasp of the history of diversity efforts in free software, and inspiration to connect with at least one of them!

Software dependencies. Software citation. Scientific reproducibility. Preservation of legacy software. These phrases bring to mind times we need to communicate about free software. From people who write software to people who organize and provide documentation of software, to end users searching for software, we all need to unambiguously refer to software in its complexity.

We are representing two different initiatives actively building the semantic web of free software by sourcing software metadata, and creating mappings and links to software artifacts. Morane is the metadata lead for Software Heritage, an initiative striving to become the Library of Alexandria for software by collecting all publicly available software in source code form, together with its development history. Kat is metadata lead for Wikidata for Digital Preservation, a collaboration between the Wikidata community and the digital preservation community. Together, we are working to ensure that our approaches to solve the software metadata challenge are interoperable.

Schools discard thousands of computers each year, as hardware moves off of service warranties or is no longer capable of running the latest proprietary software. At the same time, many schools are looking to increase STEM curricula. The availability of surplus equipment and FLOSS software provides a unique opportunity for schools to enhance their technology-based educational programs. Using discarded computers, kids can repair hardware, build a local-area network, install GNU/Linux, install LibreOffice, install GIMP, and even code a bit. The project teaches kids by doing.

Once their projects are completed, kids can take their computers home, for keeps. For under-served students, where homework is done online and projects are completed via the computer, these rebuilt machines ensure access to education, and provide a source of pride.

Free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) has become synonymous with a shockingly poor user experience (UX). If we really want software freedom to become ubiquitous and accessible to all, we're going to have to up our UX game. You'll learn why FLOSS UX is important, how the UX design process works, pitfalls to avoid that are specific to UX in a FLOSS context, and tips for how to work effectively with designers and how to recruit them to FLOSS projects. Let's fix this!

Many communities have widely adopted codes of ethics governing the moral conduct of their members and professionals. Some of these codes may even be enshrined in law, and for good reason—certain conduct can have enormous consequences on the lives of others.

Software and technology pervade virtually every aspect of our lives. Yet, when compared to other fields, our community leaders and educators have produced an ethics void. Last year, I introduced numerous topics concerning privacy, security, and freedom that raise serious ethical concerns. Join me this year as we consider some of those examples and others in an attempt to derive a code of ethics that compares to the moral obligations of other fields, and to consider how leaders and educators should approach ethics within education and guidance.

Would you like to avoid spying digital eyes? Has news about identity theft, phishing scams, and ransomware got you worried about the safety of your devices?

This talk is a walkthrough of steps that you can take for improved online privacy and security. I'll recommend concrete free software to keep your personal information from leaking from your personal devices.

This non-technical survey of security and privacy tools and settings is for people with an average threat model.

The future of any philosophical movement is in its youth membership. The average age of a member of our movement, however, is at least the age of the movement itself. Thanks to "open"-washing, prospective members likely have a preconceived notion of software freedom that is less than optimal for the perpetuating the movement. How easy is it for a modern user to join us? How do so-called "millennials" and the like, who characteristically grew up with (mostly proprietary) software, perceive the imposition of ethical issues on their favorite practical tools -- and what is the best way to introduce them? Are older members, or older ways of thinking, holding the movement back from spreading like wildfire? Are our methods too focused on developers and technophiles, and poor at converting mere mortals? In this discussion, we will not only ask ourselves these difficult questions, but also discuss concrete, actionable solutions.

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Short talks, by you! You can sign up online!

When it comes to health, freedom is literally visceral. How do the principles of freedom apply to the devices used for medicine, health, and wellness? Moderated by Mad Price Ball, a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, this panel introduces leaders that bridge industry, community, and individual experiences. Rachel Kalmar (Berkman Klein Center), uses her experience with sensors and wearables to confront how devices and their data interact with a larger ecosystem. Dana Lewis (OpenAPS) connects us to health communities, and her work with the Nightscout project and patient-led efforts in type 1 diabetes. Karen Sandler (Software Freedom Conservancy) shares her experience as an individual with a device close to her heart: a defibrillator she uses, as a matter of life or death -- and she cannot get the source code to it. Join us to learn about how freedom matters for devices in health.

In the summer of 2017, software powering the critical infrastructure of Ukraine came to a grinding halt after the country was hit with a surgically precise targeted cyber attack. A malware virus called NotPetya irreversibly encrypted the files of hundreds of thousands of computers. The impact was devastating: the Chernobyl radiation moderating system was shut down, governmental institutions lost access to critical data, and the total damage was estimated to cost over $100 million. This example, among others, points to an increasing weaponization of vulnerabilities in proprietary software to accomplish these attacks.

This session explores the ways in which proprietary software acts as a catalyst for the spread of cyber attacks, and will explore the use of free software and how it can be used to build resilient, virus-resistant digital infrastructure.

Problem: schools and communities rarely work on deeply interrelated projects that will benefit both the school and the people of the community.

Solution: mentoring students to engage members of their community to cooperatively develop platforms and applications using free software, such as the Drupal content management system. Inclusion of community members in early development will introduce people to the myriad of careers, disciplines, and skills necessary to build in self-sustainability, cooperatively.

Our workshop will focus on methods and ways to engage your community in building platforms and tools owned by the community members. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop.

One of the amazing things about the GNOME project is how it brings people together, both by bringing new developers into free software for the first time, and by fostering cooperation and interoperability between different free software components. The "year of the free software desktop" may not be in the next twelve months, but for those that use GNOME, we can work together to ensure that software freedoms are accessible by all. This talk will have a look at some of the challenges that GNOME and free software desktops face at the moment, a brief look into a possible future if we aren't vigilant, and how we can meet those challenges head-on and thrive.

When you think of free software, what things come to mind? Freedom, obviously, but what others? A shared community? An open culture? Within free software culture, there is a perception and expectation of openness and collaboration within the community: all are welcome to the table, and your contributions speak for you. When you get outside the community by enough, however, the answer changes. Contemptuous, confusing, elitist, and abrasive are words that some outsiders use to describe free software communities. Some go out of their way to avoid the communities we've worked so hard to build. Why?

In this talk, I'll look at some of root causes of these opinions and attitudes, as well as how to solve some them and make our communities more approachable by outsiders by using real-world examples of the good, bad, and the ugly. Building off a decade of community involvement on the fringe of free software, plus an academic focus in organizational and community communications, I'll help us make free software a welcoming place for newcomers, so we can all become strong advocates for free software!

For nonprofits, accepting credit card donations has become easier and easier, whether through a donation processing company or directly through a payment network like Stripe. Sadly, though, until now, nonprofits have had limited options: either accepting some non-free Javascript for an elegant donation experience with minimal PCI compliance rules, or requiring complex integrations or PCI compliance burdens on the backend.

Eric Schultz, Lead Developer with CommitChange, and core contributor to the Houdini Project, the free donation processing and donation management system running CommitChange, highlights how nonprofits can use free software to improve donor experience without compromising their mission. Additionally, Eric will discuss the history of Houdini, how it can be used for crowdfunding, why it was licensed under the AGPL with a few unique additional permissions, and how nonprofits and their supporters can work together to improve fundraising software to improve people's lives.

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Since early 2016, Public Lab has worked to make our free software projects more welcoming and inclusive, and to grow our software contributor community in diversity and size. We have learned from and incorporated strategies from other communities like the Hoodie Project, SpinachCon, and FirstTimersOnly.com, and shared our own ideas, and this session will cover a range of principles and strategies that have emerged across a number of separate efforts in different FLOSS projects. Topics will include: 1) friendliness, 2) Codes of Conduct, 3) first-timers-only issues, 4) welcoming pages, 5) social media outreach, 6) code modularity, 7) ladders of participation, 8) continuous integration, 9) friendly bots, and 10) evaluation.

GuixSD is a GNU/Linux distribution built from the ground up to empower users to exercise the four freedoms they've been granted by free software. In this talk, you will learn how GuixSD makes it easy to inspect source code, share source code and binaries and even entire system configurations, verify that binaries were built from the source they claim, customize software packages, and experiment without fear of breaking your system.

OBS Studio is a FLOSS application that puts you in the director's chair for live streaming or recording. It is built as an application to help video game or creative streamers share their computer screens with a live audience, but its power goes well beyond that. Anyone who is using their computer to tell a story can benefit from the professional touch that OBS can provide. It can manage multiple capture devices, independently combine captured window areas, and overlay text and graphics. In this presentation, I'll show you what this software can do, and what you can do with it. A simple example: presenters often like to include their social media handle on their slides. When the presenter goes to the terminal, this isn't displayed. If the presenter uses OBS studio to control the projector display, OBS studio can trivially be configured to overlay anything.

Music Blocks is a visual programming language for exploring musical concepts. It was developed by Walter Bender (SugarLabs) and Devin Ulibarri (New England Conservatory), along with contributions from countless youth from all over the world.

Bring a laptop to this hands-on workshop, and engage yourself in coding while having fun with music. Walter and Devin will be on site to guide you through what Music Blocks has to offer, and to help you with any questions you may have.

This workshop will be kid-friendly, for years 7 and up. It is recommended that you bring your laptop with Chromium and/or Firefox pre-installed, as well as your own earbuds or headphones. Some laptops and peripherals may be provided, but there is no guarantee. Adults are allowed too, but the coordinators will prioritize kids in attendance.

GPL enforcement and Outreachy are the two most visible and controversial programs that Conservancy undertakes. In this talk, Karen will explore how the programs fit together in the context of software freedom generally. Karen will review her work around medical devices and critical infrastructure and show how seemingly disparate initiatives fit into a single advocacy narrative.

Elections in the US rely heavily on software. Whether we cast our votes using a computer, or on paper ballots that are then scanned, software interprets our votes, counts them, tabulates the results, and calls the winner. Almost all of this software is proprietary, and owned by a handful of large companies.

A few jurisdictions have plans to move to free software, are funding its development, or are already using it. I'll give an overview of free software projects for election-related software around the US, with a focus on San Francisco's project, where I'm on the Technical Advisory Committee.

GeoNode, a free software platform for building and sharing maps, has grown from an experimental project implemented after one disaster, to a public good currently in use in dozens of locations around the globe. The Global Facility for Disaster Resilience and Readiness (GFDRR) contributed to this growth in multiple ways. This session presents an overview of the history of GeoNode as a case study of institutional investment in a free software project. GeoNode has helped people across the world own their own data and respond to disasters.

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