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\section{You are what you run}

\myauthor{John Sullivan}{Executive Director}

\cap{Y}\emph{ou are what you eat} is a popular slogan in many parts
of the world used by groups encouraging people to change their eating
practices. It is used to promote vegetarianism, to discourage ``junk
food,'' to campaign against foods containing genetically modified
ingredients, and more.

These campaigns do not all agree with each other. The slogan common
between them is an attempt at motivating us to more closely examine
what it is we are putting in our bodies. No food movement argues everyone
needs to be, or should endeavor to become, a Michelin star chef. Everyone
acknowledges that people choose to spend different amounts of time
and energy learning about preparing and eating food.

\medskip{}


\begin{minipage}[t]{0.9\columnwidth}%
\includegraphics[clip,width=1\columnwidth]{mrsnowden}%
\end{minipage}

\medskip{}


But a certain very basic level of food literacy is widespread. We
take many of the basics for granted. Even if you do not have advanced
culinary skills, you know that hamburgers do not grow on trees (yet),
that food in general is prepared by taking ingredients from different
places and combining them, often with heat, and that if ingredients
are not stored or handled in certain ways, some of them can make you
sick.

You know that with the same or similar ingredients, you can prepare
a meal at home, or you can have the meal prepared for you at a restaurant.
You know that if you do not like the way it is prepared at a restaurant,
you can prepare a different version at home. You know that even at
a restaurant, if your food is not salty enough, you can add more salt
yourself. You know that preparing a single meal can involve several
people working together. You know that, while a meal is presented
on a very specific plate in one restaurant, the same meal can be presented
elsewhere on a different plate while still tasting the same and having
the same nutritional value.

Because every healthy human has to eat, and eat every day, every human
has to know \emph{something} about food in order to pursue basic happiness.
Food-focused movements start from these basics and ask people to learn
more, in order to convince them to change habits and make different
choices.

When it comes to advocating free software, we often find ourselves
stuck on the basics. Try re-reading the above ``you know that''
statements, substituting software for meals. Within the sizable portion
of humanity now using or interacting with computers on a daily basis,
how many people know those basics? How many people know that they
could replace the operating system (meal) on an iPad or a Microsoft
Surface tablet (plates), if those devices were not arbitrarily locked
down? How many people know that their ``smart'' thermostat is running
computer programs written by programmers (chefs) who may have failed
to follow basic code security (sanitation) practices? How many people
know that when they visit a Web site, their computer is given programs
to execute locally behind the scenes, and that these programs may
be doing all kinds of things they do not want? How many people know
what source code is, or that programs are usually transformed from
human-readable into machine-only formats?

More and more often at the FSF, we are finding our advocacy efforts
running into challenges related to a widespread lack of fundamental
computer literacy. This is not because people lack the ability to
understand, or that they are doing something wrong. It is just a fact
that we need to address. It is difficult, because others are very
happy with the current state of affairs. There are billions of dollars
from proprietary software and service operators pouring into marketing
materials along the lines of, ``we know you don't want to have to
care about how your computer works, you just want it to work.''

Ironically, when computers are delivered in new formats \textendash{}
cars, flat, round, handheld, goggles, whatever \textendash{} they
are often accompanied by advertising campaigns by these same companies
portraying them as something so radically new that we should of course
expect them to come with new rules. This is how people who have been
installing whatever software they want on their laptops for years
initially accept the idea that Apple can tell them they cannot install
software on their iPad from anyone but Apple, or that if they want
to switch to Android they have to buy a new phone instead of just
flashing their current iPhone.

As user freedom advocates, we should get more involved in doing and
encouraging basic computer literacy education. This does not mean
asking people to write their own software, or to concern themselves
deeply with complex software systems. As with food when we eat out,
or when we buy prepared meals or produce at the grocery store, we
trust others to do all or some of the work and detailed understanding
for us \textendash{} we just have general knowledge about the processes
they are using, and that general knowledge empowers us to protect
ourselves.

A little bit of knowledge goes a long way toward putting people in
the position to make much better, more ethical choices. Just knowing
the basics will not make people automatically support free software.
But knowing a little more will make it much easier for them to give
it a fair hearing. If we are successful, we could start advocacy campaigns
with the slogan, ``You are what you run.'' \ender


\section{In it for the long haul: A model for long-term free software campaigns}

\myauthor{Georgia Young}{Program Manager}

\cap{W}hat is your favorite FSF campaign?\footnote{fsf.org/campaigns}
How long has it been around, and when was the last time you heard
about a victory in that area of the FSF's work? These questions came
to mind as I begin to integrate the recommendations of the High Priority
Projects (HPP) committee, and it got me thinking about how our three-person
campaigns team can evaluate and sustain long-term free software activism.\footnote{See u.fsf.org/1sy for the committee's analysis, and u.fsf.org/1sz
for the list.} 

The HPP campaign launched in 2005 to foster work on projects that
are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software.
For the first few years, the list was maintained by FSF staff and
board members, based on our own research and on feedback occasionally
sent in by interested people. In 2014, we formed a committee of free
software community leaders, who have done the work of reevaluating
and refining the list based on suggestions from the free software
community, the changing landscape of software and hardware (and consequently,
of restrictions on computer user freedom), and the achievements and
failures of projects.\footnote{u.fsf.org/15r} The most recent revision,
which is currently underway, includes the introduction of four criteria
that define what needs are important for the list.

But how can we maximize the usefulness of this list \textendash{}
or any of our campaigns? In the case of this campaign, we have identified
projects that are critical to the advancement and adoption of free
software. But if nobody steps up to work on these projects, if nobody
hears about them, they will never get done. The campaigns team helps
by acting as a project manager for the committee, publicizing the
list, recommending ways the community can help get the work done,
celebrating victories, and reevaluating the work regularly \textendash{}
essentially, we must continue our advocacy indefinitely.

How exhausting! No wonder activists suffer from burnout. And we cannot
stop until we have achieved a world where all software is free.

So, how do we keep up our momentum in a years-long effort like the
HPP list? Here are a few thoughts:

\emph{Small wins add up over time.} The aims of the HPP list are impossible
to achieve in one fell swoop, but over time we can chip away at them,
bit by bit. Once we have updated the list, we will be sure to celebrate
progress made toward the fulfillment of any of these High Priorities.
You will hear about it on \url{fsf.org}, in the Free Software Supporter,
on social media sites, and in the press.

\medskip{}


\begin{minipage}[t]{0.9\columnwidth}%
\includegraphics[clip,width=1\columnwidth]{drm-protest}%
\end{minipage}

\medskip{}


\emph{Revisit and challenge.} The list has been revised several times
\textendash{} extensively, in the most recent round. This is because
software has changed \textendash{} and the world's needs have changed.
At one point, Flash dominated the Web, so the list recommended a Flash
replacement \textendash{} now we are focused on free phones, decentralization,
and other issues. By revisiting the project regularly \textendash{}
and soliciting ideas from the community when we do \textendash{} we
keep the work relevant.

\emph{Patience and perseverance.} If we fail, what do we do? We can
start by reevaluating the project. But it may be that we simply need
to try again. When change is truly important, actions that energize
people can benefit from their failure by observing what went wrong,
and what might be needed to lead to success next time. Some people
at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) were dismissive of our campaign
calling for selfies against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)
on the Web \textendash{} but it got their attention and led to conversation
in the press and between the W3C and our movement \textendash{} conversation
that those who favor DRM would prefer to avoid.

\emph{Celebrate and share your successes.} When an HPP need is met,
we will announce to you and the rest of the world about it. And we
will celebrate you when you help. To keep up motivation, we will share
conversations with the people who are working hard to help check a
priority free software project off the list. We will also be clear
about how you can help \textendash{} whether that is through coding,
testing and bug reports, documentation, advocacy, or funding.

This is the kind of work the FSF campaigns team facilitates and champions.
We've had some successes along the way: Six years ago, we recommended
CiviCRM, because it met the requirements of the HPP need for a fully
featured donor and contact management system for nonprofits.\footnote{u.fsf.org/1t9}
More recently, we announced that the GNU PDF project was completed,
thanks to \url{libpoppler}'s ability to support newer PDF features
like annotations and forms.\footnote{u.fsf.org/1ta}

Wins like these add up, but we cannot do it alone. Everybody in the
free software community can help make the world more free by participating
in our campaigns \textendash{} check out all of our campaigns at \url{fsf.org/campaigns}
for ways to help. \ender


\section{Mr. Snowden: or how I learned to stop worrying and love GStreamer}

\myauthor{Ruben Rodriguez}{Systems Administrator}

\cap{A}t the time of LibrePlanet 2016, I may have been the newest
FSF employee but I was not a newcomer to the conference itself. In
the previous four years, my participation involved talks on Trisquel
and GNU IceCat, and were excellent experiences each time. Every year,
the recordings and streaming of the talks seemed to improve, but still
fall short of expectations. When I joined the tech team, it became
a personal goal of mine to improve LibrePlanet's video production
process. The first step was to make the most out of our equipment.
We use Libreboot powered laptops and Elphel cameras, which come with
freely licensed hardware specs and GPLed source code. The devices
then connect to servers running fully free software. This makes for
excellent freedom standards, but it comes with some technical challenges.
The Elphel cameras provide high quality video at the expense of extra
post-processing on the laptops \textendash{} which are not that powerful
\textendash{} so a lot of experimenting and optimizing had to be done
to get to a pipeline with low latency, good image quality and low
CPU usage. This was quite the tall order, but we made great progress
with it and our intern David Testé even wrote a great graphical interface!\footnote{u.fsf.org/1sn}

We doubled down on our commitment by booking Edward Snowden to give
the opening keynote as a live interview from Moscow. To make it more
\emph{fun}, we made the decision to record the interview and stream
it live. We tested different options and landed on using a WebRTC
instance, plus GStreamer and IceCast for broadcasting. With this new
toy coming together, we tripled down on our commitment by helping
Snowden migrate his stack to free software. We began by researching
how to replace his nonfree video compositing program (that ran on
Windows), and eventually built a hack using even more GStreamer, a
video compositing tool, a local Real-Time Messaging Protocol feed,
a virtual webcam device, and\dots{} well, way too many things for
it to sound like a good idea. But we went to MIT's Stata Center the
two weekends before the conference and tested the whole thing, network
and all. It worked nicely. You can read about and discuss our setup
at \url{u.fsf.org/1tb}.

Then the day arrived\dots{} LibrePlanet.

We got to the venue at 7 a.m., with three hours to unpack all the
hardware, set up, have a muffin, and go live with the event (well,
that was the plan anyway). Daniel Kahn Gillmor, the interviewer of
Snowden, arrived at 8 a.m. and we started to set things up. Quickly
we started to realize the network \emph{smelled funny}. The MIT network
has a captive portal: to access the Internet you must register your
device and wait a couple minutes for the system to let you through.
Since we were bringing a bunch of laptops, we registered them in advance
to avoid problems, but the captive portal was still asking us to register.
So we did, we waited (while the room started to fill up), and the
network continued to fail for every machine, and even for MIT registered
staff. We urgently asked the IT department to look into it, and they
quickly fixed the issue. We had Internet!

With the room now quite full and only five minutes to spare, we connected
with Snowden on the videoconference. To our dismay, his screen blacked
out. After some more testing we decided to try a different browser
on Snowden's end. He moved to Iceweasel and things were working again.
This ate so much of our setup time that not only were we already past
the start time, we still had to set and test the recording and streaming...
which were also failing!

With my nerves running thin, and trying not to raise my gaze to the
nearly four hundred people in the room that were looking at my frantic
typing, I finally managed to get it working. We were delayed enough
that no testing could be done, so we just declared it ready. I sat
nervously next to Daniel, and let the keynote start. It worked like
a charm! \ender


\section{Governments pay to reinvent the wheel, or buy a proprietary wheel}

\myauthor{k054}{Web Developer}

\cap{W}e all know that free and gratis are not the same thing, and
sometimes free software is also about money. In the global economic
south, huge sums of money, in the form of public resources, are paid
to develop proprietary software to try to overcome the gap between
them and the so-called developed nations.

I think it is great that governments pay for software development.
I am also absolutely convinced that it should all be free, especially
if it is being developed with money coming from people's taxes. Unfortunately,
local governments in the emerging economies do not use free software
nearly enough; therefore they pay to reinvent the wheel, or buy a
proprietary wheel, instead of taking advantage of the software that
has already been developed and has the freedom to continue developing
without restrictions or licensing costs.

As an example twelve years ago, the Mexican government spent twenty-four
billion pesos (roughly about two billion US dollars at that time)
to ``develop'' a platform called \noun{Enciclomedia} that does pretty
much the same thing Wikipedia does, but is based on the infamous Microsoft's
Encarta and only adds a few interactive functions.\footnote{u.fsf.org/1s-}

Eventually the entire project was abandoned due to its absolutely
horrifying design and the prohibitive licensing fees the Mexican government
was obliged to keep paying to use it, with more taxpayer funds, after
paying for development.

In this case, one of the developers took the so-called ``digital
objects'' and created a fork from it called Encicloabierta (coming
from encyclopedia and \emph{abierta}, which is the Spanish word for
``open''). He kept maintaining it even after facing a trial for
using ``copyrighted materials,'' but eventually stopped doing it
due to lack of resources.

There are several other cases of governments paying for the ``development''
of the exact same piece of code in different counties, either for
water and public services management or even public schools administration.

While free software is a widespread ideal among many developed circles,
it is not in most emerging economies' governments. And that, mixed
with ambitious salespeople, companies, and corrupt governments, makes
a broth for ``those who know'' to make millions out of poor people's
taxes instead of using those funds to do real development. The governments
could both save money and make better use of the funds by getting
it back to the community that started and supported the software development
in the first place.

Spreading the existence of such free software among all people, but
especially within non-governmental organizations who struggle to make
government more transparent, can both reduce corruption and save millions
of pesos, soles, quetzales, guaranís, bolivares, colones, lempiras
and reales all across Latin American and the world's emerging economies.
But furthermore, it will add some great stories to the book of a different
history for humankind as a whole.

A lot of people around the free software movement are fed up with
what government does, and especially about what is done with money
coming from taxes, but this is a great chance to make it do the right
thing. So, if you feel inspired by any of these ideas, look at ``Measures
Governments Can Use to Promote Free Software'' and join the online
LibrePlanet advocacy group focused on this issue.\footnote{See u.fsf.org/1t0 and u.fsf.org/1t1, respectively.}
\ender


\section{User freedom in the age of computer-generated software}

\myauthor{Chris Webber}{GNU Maintainer}

\cap{M}any of us share a vision for the way software, free or otherwise,
is developed: software is written by a programmer as ``source code''
and transformed through some mechanisms into ``object code.'' As
free software activists, we are used to thinking about our legal,
development, and community processes and tooling in terms of this
workflow. But what happens when software which used to be written
manually by humans is developed generatively through other software?
How does this affect software and user freedom?

Of course, by speaking of the above I am talking about \emph{artificial
intelligence} (AI), a topic and term which is both compelling and
vague. At one point almost \emph{everything} in the world of computers
was considered to be ``artificial intelligence,'' including fundamental
building blocks like compilers. This has lead to what is sometimes
called ``the AI effect,'' where everything is considered ``artificial
intelligence'' until we know how to do it. This has lead to not only
push back against the term ``AI'' but even its pursuit; why chase
a concept which ceases to exist once uncovered?

I think this is missing something important: regardless of term vagueness,
original visions for AI aimed for machines which could think for or
program themselves. This vision permitted the idea of ``generative
software,'' where humans were not manually writing so much of the
logic of the system. But much of the resources towards AI research
tapered off through the ``AI Winter'' which settled in through the
1980s and 1990s. Since the ``AI Winter,'' we've seen the majority
of programming resources going towards other things like web development,
graphical interfaces, business needs, games, and so on. Typically
development has involved humans manually writing the logic underpinning
the system.

Recently this has been changing. There has been much news around Google
beating Atari games and Go champions, not through manually written
strategies, but through neural networks which are trained to build
something resembling human intuition. Likewise, many more companies
are hiring for positions involving ``machine learning'' to reduce
the amount of manual programming required.

In other words, the AI Winter has thawed. So where does this leave
free software?

One question we might ask is, ``do user freedom questions still apply?''
Let's consider a scenario.\footnote{Thanks to Gerald Sussman for inspiring this example through conversations
at the FSF's 30th anniversary party.} Imagine you are in a generatively programmed self-driving car, and
the car unexpectedly swerves off the road into a ditch. Afterwards,
you would like to ask the car, ``why did you do what you did?''
Via some mechanism, you could in theory ``talk to'' the machine's
generated AI system to ask \emph{it} why it did what it did. But will
the car manufacturer permit you to do so?

Through this example, we can quickly realize that all four software
freedoms still apply: the freedom to run, study, redistribute, and
redistribute modified versions of an AI. It is also easy to see that
not everyone might want you to have these rights; one can easily imagine
a less scrupulous manufacturer saying, ``I'm sorry, we can't let
you talk to that AI... that's \emph{our} AI.'' (Thus one can easily
see that even generative software should not have owners.)

So, software freedom applies, but how does it ``work?'' It may be
hard to apply the methodologies we are used to when humans are not
manually programming the software used.\footnote{This led fellow free software activist Asheesh Laroia to observe that
perhaps this demonstrates that ``open source as methodology'' was
a distraction, and that software freedom was the real goal all along.} Still, one can imagine collaborative methodologies that do work on
the basis of sharing some dataset; perhaps many users (programmers
and non-programmers alike) helping train software generated via genetic
programming.

And what of our legal tools? Does copyright apply? Does copyleft apply?
If not, are there other ways to protect the commons of software being
developed as others attempt to lock it down?

There are multiple directions of generative software to approach,
from machine learning to symbolic-based expert reasoning systems to
genetic programming. Some of these systems may be more appealing than
others; systems which clearly express their symbolic reasoning may
be preferable (and are more ``accountable''). At this time, what
is most important is to get more free software activists exploring
this space.

Happy spelunking! \ender

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\section{On the road with RMS}

\myauthor{Jeanne Rasata}{Assistant to the President}

\cap{R}ichard Stallman (RMS) is not slowing down! Over the past six
months, with his characteristic unflinching focus, he has continued
getting the word out on computing ethics and raising awareness of
the social issues at stake: since we last wrote you, he has attended
over a dozen conferences and given forty-one speeches in thirty-seven
cities across eleven countries and three continents.

Last fall, in Paris, he spoke to Supélec's researchers and doctoral
students about the importance of free hardware designs. In Ghent,
Stockholm, Østersund, Barcelona, Utrecht, Athens and France, he addressed
diverse student audiences and the general public alike.

He attended Guadalajara's annual Feria Internacional del Libro, Latin
America's most important editorial meeting and an important cultural
festival, to speak on the importance of a free digital society and
warned attendees of the dangers of the Trans-Pacific Partnership's
restrictions on computing and the Internet.\footnote{u.fsf.org/1t6}
He took advantage of the visit to give six other speeches at different
universities throughout Mexico, including at the Universidad Tecnológica
de la Mixteca, as a guest of KadaSoftware, a part of the university
that is dedicated to supporting the school and the region through
software development and an exemplary part of the free software movement.

In India he gave speeches in Delhi and Bhopal and spoke at two different
tech festivals, in Pilani and in Roorkee. Likewise, he spoke at Fossetcon,
in Orlando, FL, and then in Madrid, at Retina 2016, a conference directed
at professionals responsible for the digital transformation of their
companies, and to Istanbul Tech Talks, which targets software engineers.
Even when his audience is experienced developers, he continues to
open eyes to the social implications of software.

In Canada, he spoke both at the Université Laval, in Quebec City,
and then in Montreal, at the III Colloque libre de l'ADTE, which promotes
free software in colleges and universities in Quebec.

Back in the US, he spoke at MIT and at Oakland University, in Rochester,
MI, in addition to speaking at LibrePlanet, the FSF's annual conference,
and handing out this year's Free Software Awards.

All throughout his travels, RMS highlighted the injustices of proprietary
software through user subjection to developers' power, exemplified
by surveillance, DRM, and back doors.

Please write to \url{rms-assist@gnu.org} with any photographs you
would like us to share on RMS's blog, at \url{fsf.org/blogs/rms,}
speeches to publish in our audio-video archive, or to extend a speaking
invitation to RMS.\footnote{audio-video.gnu.org} See \url{u.fsf.org/zi}
for a list of his confirmed engagements. \ender


\section{We need to fight for strong encryption. And stop DRM in Web \\standards.}

\myauthor{Zak Rogoff}{Campaigns Manager}

\cap{E}ncryption is the backbone of privacy and anonymity technologies,
and these technologies are an important driving force for democracy
in the 21st century. Their adoption is partially equalizing the balance
of power between people and governments, enabling transparency, accountability,
and freedom. Intimidated, the law-enforcement arms of many governments
are attempting to slow this process by banning strong encryption.

The FBI took a big swing at the right to encrypt this spring, when
it attempted to force Apple to break its own encryption on an iPhone.
They did not quite succeed, but it is important that we stay vigilant
\textendash{} they will try again to strong-arm tech companies into
weakening widely-used encryption systems. We must stop them, both
to protect the new political power of encryption, but also because
weakening it would cause huge collateral damage to millions of innocent
people using the Internet and the global financial system.

The mainstream media has covered the FBI versus Apple fight, but so
far the free software movement has not been able to effectively leverage
it as an opportunity to teach the public the deeper truth about our
computing rights: encryption is important, but no real popular control
of computers is possible without free software at the center. Programs
like GnuPG, Tor, and OpenSSL are the gold standard in encryption because
their free licenses grant users the transparency necessary to verify
that they are secure, and the freedom to fix insecurities. If we celebrate
Apple's stand for strong encryption uncritically, we miss an opportunity
to point out that Apple's proprietary encryption (while it is a step
up from proprietary software \emph{without} encryption) still represents
an evolutionary dead-end for our society.

Just as the FBI hopes to set a precedent by making Apple crack its
own encryption, the DRM lobby is currently pushing for a major political
victory to legitimize its restrictive technology and make it easier
and cheaper to implement. DRM is software that runs on your devices
and polices your behavior. It is what stops you from copying streaming
videos and songs onto your hard drive, prevents you from using some
programs without an Internet connection, and stops you from moving
books between e-readers.

Its owners claim DRM is necessary to ``protect creators'' by stopping
unauthorized copying. While this sounds very virtuous, it is rarely,
if ever, true. The precise motivations vary, but the goal of DRM is
usually either removing functionality and selling it back piecemeal,
or preventing competitors from making interoperable products.

Recently, Netflix, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have crafted a new
universal DRM system for the Web, called Encrypted Media Extensions
(EME). They are trying to get it ratified by the W3C, which sets official
Web standards. For many of the same reasons that we need to protect
strong encryption, we also need to stop this power grab by those that
profit from DRM.

Weakened encryption loosens our control on our computers. DRM does
this as well, by encumbering our devices with proprietary code that
treats us as adversaries. DRM is impossible to implement effectively
with free software, so any system that requires it also locks out
users that are committed to protecting their own freedom. Perhaps
worst of all, the continued legal and political acceptance of DRM
marginalizes our general claim to control over our computers, and
legitimizes the idea that media distributors' business models should
trump user freedom.

Encryption is an essential pillar in computer security, which is one
of the reasons that such diverse groups are united against government
attempts to weaken it. Like weakened encryption, DRM is a nightmare
for security.

Because it is a black box that users are compelled to install and
that is designed to be hard to remove, DRM becomes a tempting home
for every kind of abuse and attack that a software author can perpetrate
on a user. Even if a DRM's owner does not actually command it to attack
or spy on users, others often slip through the hole it has punched
in users' security.

Fearful of public scrutiny, the DRM lobby has passed laws (the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act in the US, followed by similar laws and treaties
in many countries) to effectively gag security researchers seeking
to expose and fix vulnerabilities in systems that include DRM. This
means that the best system we have for protecting users from insecure
programs \textendash{} independent expert review \textendash{} is
outlawed.

To protect user control and digital security, we need to make DRM
politically expensive. Currently, we are fighting this struggle in
the arena of Web standards. The free software community plays a leadership
role in the fight against this backwards step for the Web, through
our Defective by Design campaign. We call on anyone concerned with
strong encryption to join us by signing our petition and by adding
a protest selfie to our growing gallery.\footnote{defectivebydesign.org/action}

There is a blooming global consciousness of the need for secure and
user-controlled technology, and DRM is not a part of that picture.
Resist DRM with us, and demand a Web that puts users first. \ender

\clearpage{}\verbatimcopyright{2016}
\donate{foo}
\end{document}
