Episode: 1441
Title: HPR1441: Jono Bacon and Stuart Langridge talk with pokey
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1441/hpr1441.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:01:33

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I'm basically happy to intro this in the sense of why I suggested we should have a conversation,
but you might want to chuck in some stuff first about how high this is HPR or whatever.
Well, now you get that out of the way.
Yeah, that's all we really need.
This is Hacker Public Radio.
Thanks for tuning in today.
I'm Poki and with me is Jon O'Bacon and Ack.
Hello.
Hello.
This is rather marvellous.
And I have to say I'm now fulfilling a responsibility since Ken has been on at me for
I was going to say months, but probably years.
It's been a while, isn't it?
Yeah, but I should do something with HPR.
So here I am doing it.
Yes.
Fabulous.
And no one on the internet can't figure it out.
You can still say months even though it's been several dozen of them.
I see you plan.
Yeah, I was listening to you guys did a show just after the new year.
I forget the exact date and unusually I get a little way into a show and then just go
with this whole segment about me, which was where I'm worrying.
Well, I started listening to it and I thought, now hang on, this isn't right.
And so I thought something in between a useful conversation and a right to reply might
be haveable.
So I'll summarize conversation then, Poki, do please jump in if you think I'm misrepresenting.
Let me just add to that.
Preface there and say that it was show 14, 18, I believe it was recorded on New Year's
Eve.
We did the 24 hour, which is really like 36 hours, it turns out to be a marathon.
It was.
Yeah, it's a marathon live streaming show that we do.
It's our third year and we started at 12 hours and went to 24 hours and then this year,
26 to include all the time zones.
Plus, I don't know how much after show.
And I don't know the exact date that it got pushed out as a podcast because it was cut
up into smaller segments.
So if you're looking for the part that we're talking about tonight, it is show 14, 18.
And you can see right in the show notes, it says that a discussion of, you know what?
I don't know what the show notes say I forget now.
So that's that.
Really I ran my mouth more than I should have and both John Owen Act wanted to have a
go at me.
So here I am.
Well, well, ordinarily, I would say no, no, no, no, no, that's not how it is, but it's
a little bit how it is.
What I thought was interesting, despite the combination of cringing embarrassment and
huge ego boost that there was half our conversation dedicated to me and Bacon, was the overall thrust
of the conversation, I think, was that many years ago, we started, like, radio in, when did
we start 2004?
2004, yeah, I think, well, it's been in conception for a while, haven't it, but yeah, it was
actually, we actually decided to stop being lazy and do something in 2004.
Absolutely.
And it would be reasonable, I think, to state that for at least the first few years of
lab radio and continuing beyond that, I was the, the, the flag bear with the torch carrier
for the idea of free software above everything else.
Yeah.
The voice of reason I like to call it and certainly at the time, I mean, I said at the time and
I've said since, that the only reasonable position to take on free software is that
have a fire breathing zealot.
If you, if you actually believe this stuff, you should not allow yourself to compromise.
Since the, well, the conversation then went on from the saying that that was the cash
which I would agree with and saying that John, I disagree with me, which I would also
agree with, to saying that I've since changed and moderated my view somewhat, which is also
the truth and then blaming John over bullying me into it, which I believe is emphatically
not the truth.
I just want to note for the record, by the way, that I've been threatening all week to
come on this to say this.
So, yeah, my change to the habit of a lifetime, you know, this is the thing, I, part of the
reason I was so annoyed when I was listening to the podcast was that I don't think I liked
the idea that me changing my mind has to have happened because I was right and then I was
bullied into believing something that I don't actually believe, which I don't think
is the case at all.
I mean, I think, I think my view has changed and I'd be the first to say that my view has
moved quite a bit closer to where John O's is today, but I don't think it's because John
O told me to think it, I mean, I, I, I, one of the things that I thought would be useful
in this conversation is to me to lay out why my view has changed and what the differences
are.
But, that's what, are my misrepresenting your opinion here?
No, not, I don't see, I wouldn't say you're misrepresenting it.
I, I, I don't know if I meant to say that John O bullied you into believing what you,
what you believe now.
And I mean, you, you, you, you, you nonetheless did say that.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, it should be noted that that was precisely what you said.
Okay.
I mean, I don't take anything personally, you know, they very rarely take anything personally
from what people say about me, you know, it's the nature of life, but the, without, without
distracting from the topic too much, I was equally, when I, when I first heard the show,
because Ken has been mentioning it for a while, I'm going to check the show out, I was
quite surprised to hear, I don't understand if you just said, you know, John O would
have been, you know, banging on about his perspectives about it.
And maybe, maybe dominating lug radio more than he should have done.
Um, I think that's fair.
But, but the thing, the thing that surprised me was the term bullying, I think is a rather
extreme way of describing it.
And secondly, I would argue that anybody who has heard more than a little bit of lug radio
will know that both Ack and I dominated lug radio.
Like, I would, if someone was to tot up the amount of airtime that we had, I would say that
it's relatively equal.
And anyone who's met Ack before will know that he is, he is his own man.
He is his own person, you know, he, no, Ack is unbelievable from the, from the amount
I've known him, he is an unbelievable person.
He is a man who will change his mind, changes perspectives based upon new information,
which I admire him.
But I was, like I say, I was kind of a little saddened by the way it was poured, the way
I was portrayed, it seemed a little unfair to me.
Um, and as I said to you guys on email, um, that if I had anything to apologize for, I
do it publicly.
So I do apologize then for using the word bully.
I'm very glad to hear what you just said, um, about, you know, and that you're both
an agreement that, that it wasn't, uh, as extreme as, as bullying, um, and it was a poor
choice of words on my part.
And I apologize for that.
Yeah.
No, I apologize.
Yeah.
Apology accepted.
Um, yeah.
That, that was your full, throw to kick in the nuts about the word bullying, um, the
rest.
The rest of it is, um, I, I thought I'd outline why my view has changed and you can then
have a crack at telling me why I'm wrong.
Yeah.
And the other thing as well, I think that, to get into that as well, is that there is
a lot more context than just log radio.
I mean, when I lived in England, it happens a little bit less these days, but when I
lived in England, Akanae would spend literally hours on the phone.
I mean, it will, I remember some, uh, to the point where we'd spend so long on the phone,
the phone battery on my, on my phone, you know, on my cordless phone would run out batteries
because we'd, we'd get into a debate and, and it would last sometimes upwards of three
or four hours, um, which sounds like an exaggeration, but it really isn't.
It was, it was, and it was always very respectful, but it was always, we were playing chess
with each other.
So I think one thing to bear in mind a little bit as Ak explains like how his perspectives
have changed is that it wasn't just what you heard on the show.
A lot of people have commented over the years who, who know as have said, you know, log radio
really is just a bit when they switch the mics on, like they like that all the time.
And that's very true.
We'd have our own two-man version of log radio, pretty much most eggs.
So I just wanted to throw that out there that it's not just the show that, that as Ak has
adjusted his perspectives, it's not just the show, I mean, I've adjusted my perspectives
as well as not all the way there.
And, and Ak, you didn't bring this up, but, uh, I will, I was, I listened back, I said,
I would listen back to it to, to see what I had said and I, uh, I was much harsher on
Jano than I meant to be and I'll apologize for that and I'll also say that just you
contacting us and asking to come on and discuss it with me, Jano, has brought my opinion
of you up a great deal.
It's, it's...
I appreciate that.
Yeah, and I was, I was too harsh on you, uh, and, and I guess that's obvious and, you
know, because I used the word bully when I shouldn't have and probably didn't even
mean to.
Well, and, you know, and, you know, just to be clear as well, like, when, when, when Ak and
I heard this and, uh, our goal here is not, not retribution or anything like that, just
it's, I know it was, you know, it was only kidding about that.
You know, it's, it's, I think a lot of it is just, it's always fun to kind of be in the
same room as someone who has a different perspective to you.
That's one of the reasons why him and I get on so well in the first place.
Um, and we, you know, you're a sort of guy, you know, you've got a great reputation.
We thought this could be fun, uh, fun way to kind of like get all that out on the table
and have a chat about it.
So that's kind of flattering.
I didn't realize I had any reputation, so, so, you know, you want HBO, right?
For a start.
But yeah, I mean, I would, I would agree with Jonna.
And to be honest with you, um, uh, the two different sides of the, uh, the conversation
about which we're commenting here, I was considerably more annoyed by your portrayal
of Jono than I was about your portrayal of my views, because I'm perfectly confident
in my ability to defend my own viewpoint, not a problem, um, at those people who have
met me, or have listened to that radio or other stuff that I've done or whatever, um,
will probably be aware that I have no problem or I am entirely prepared to defend my
own viewpoint, even if I get told that I'm wrong at the end of it.
Um, but yeah, so apology accepted.
That's all good.
Absolutely.
Well, thanks, guys.
It's, uh, very nice, very, very honorable to you.
Thank you.
Well, I mean, and without wishing to turn this into the Brady Bunch, it was in a likewise
manner, right?
The thing that got me about about it was less about, I mean, like, I work in a fairly
public position.
People talk crap about me all the time.
That's, that is nothing new.
But it was, the thing that got me was, it was the way, in some ways, act was portrayed
as an empty vessel.
Not so much.
I don't, I think that's, that's non-ferracaracterized in the way you, you, you portray him, but that he
was, uh, that he was bendable to, to my whims or to my influences more so than he actually
is.
So I think that thing, it's kind of, uh, kind of a mutual thing.
I think it was the, the way we both reacted, but anyway, so, uh, maybe you should provide
a bit of context around how you have changed your perspective over the years.
Oh, you know, I think that's reasonable.
I want to get back to that part afterwards, but go ahead and remind me of that.
Um, yeah, I mean, this has been a, uh, 10, 15 year journey for me to arrive at where I
am today, um, and I'm, I'm not wholly sure of all of my arguments here, but I am wholly
sure that where I am, I'm reasonably happy with now.
I still use open source stuff, everything.
Uh, I'm, I mean, I, I worked for Canonical for Britain, that was great, and I left now
around my own business, um, still run everything on a bunch of, um, a few people have said they
were surprised because I mean, I, I left so that my own business, I'm mainly doing web
stuff now.
And a fair few people said they were surprised that the instant I left Canonical, I didn't
go out and buy a Mac, um, and, and, and, and to be honest with you, um, there is a small
cost to me, not in terms of money, but in terms of fitting in with the overall mise
on set of what I do, because I don't have a Mac and everyone else does, which means that
the tools they're all talking about, um, and, uh, the, the little bit of information they're
swapping and the software they're using is not the software I'm using, because I'm not
on a Mac, I'm on a Ubuntu, um, I'm in the same position as someone who has a Mac and
hangs out with gamers, you know, that you can do the basic stuff, but, um, but when you
start getting into it, you're to some extent, forging your own path.
Now, that doesn't bother me, um, and that extra little bit of cost to me, I have no problem
with, because I'm using Ubuntu, I don't want a Mac, right, believe in open source software.
So I, I, I, I use Ubuntu every day, I've got, hang on, I've got this laptop, just about
by another machine, I've got the machine plugged into the television, um, and I've got
the server downstairs, they're all Ubuntu, the machine plugged into the television upstairs
isn't running Ubuntu only because it's a Raspberry Pi and Alan Bell hasn't finished
to pull yet.
Um, so how else is open source, right, phones, I'll come back to in a minute.
The thing that's changed about my viewpoint is not how much, that in my opinion, at least
things change about my viewpoint, it's not how much I believe in open source and what
I'm doing, uh, what's changed is how I approach other people to convince them, because
the fundamental thing which got me out of the evangelism business and made me annoyed
with people who we evangelize at me is that shouting at people doesn't work.
I used to think it would, and if you, if you lined up me in 2004, me, and attempted
to draw the most obvious difference between our viewpoints is that 2004, me thought that
if someone wasn't using free software, a good thing to do was to say to them, why aren't
using free software and explain to them why it was a problem and explain the freedom
is important and look down on them if they didn't accept those arguments.
And 2014, me, doesn't do that part of the reason that I, part of the reason that I don't
do that is because I don't care as much anymore, part of the reason that I don't do that is
that I don't want to be associated with the people who do do it, and part of the reason
is that we haven't got any good arguments, and all three of those strands are important
and I'll enlarge on each of them at request.
So now I think I still agree with 2004 you, except for the part about looking down on
the people, I see no use to that and no reason to believe that that would ever be useful
or helpful or handy in any way, but why would you say that it's no longer useful to explain
to someone why proprietary software is a problem?
I think in my experience, and the difference between 2014 and 2004, me, I've got 10 more
years of attempting to do this.
In general, if you explain to someone in an abstract way why openness, why freedom are important,
they will agree with you, right?
There are very few people who, if you explain to them why Ubuntu is a good idea, and you
can do things with it that you can't do with Windows, very few people will say, I don't
think that's an advantage, almost everyone will say, I can see that, that seems like a
good idea, but when you then say, ah, but the open source type of things hasn't quite
got to the point where it can like for like replace everything you're doing, you will
have to give stuff up in order to gain the benefits of that freedom.
Almost nobody in my experience actually considers the freedom important enough.
The people who do consider the freedom important enough become me, or Jono, or you, Pokey.
They've already, we've had, well, I'll say 10 years, we've had 35 years of explaining
to people why this stuff is important, and saying what you should be prepared to do is
give up functionality in some way in order to get freedom, and that argument I believe
doesn't work.
I don't believe it's a false argument though, I don't think you have to ask people to
give up functionality in exchange for freedom, because what you're talking about is, you
know, make a jump from Windows to Linux, or from Mac to Linux because it's free and
free is the right thing to do, but you're going to lose functionality.
You're going to lose functionality anyway.
If you stick with Windows as the last, you know, five or so years have shown, that system
has completely changed from XP up through Vista and 7, they're on 8 now or 9 or whatever
the hell they're on, it's completely different, they've exchanged their functionality.
You can't do the same things you used to be able to do, so they avoided those people who
did not hear your 2004 argument, the people who didn't hear that stayed with it and lost
the functionality anyway, so they gained nothing by not hearing the reasonable things that
you said they would agree were reasonable.
The thing is though, I think the key thing in my mind is there's basically two approaches
to getting people to use free software.
There is an active and a passive approach to freedom.
Now, so folks at the free software foundation and people like that are very active in their
advocacy of freedom.
To the point whereby they will say, you should focus on freedom as the priority and functionality
and ease of using things like that should come separate because the freedom is quote
unquote more important, it's ethical.
The passive approach to advocacy is that you consider things like freedom, you consider
the overall package as one element in the overall package, and that's, I would say largely
the approach of a Ubuntu is that freedom is very important, but a free software system
that nobody can use that doesn't give people the functionality they want is not going
to be used and it's going to have limited take up.
Now, I believe that that's the case, this is the reason why very few people use Triscoll
and lots of people use Ubuntu as one such example.
The difference is that the people who traditionally advocate in an active capacity in terms of
freedom define their value system by free software.
The people who advocate in a more passive manner, they define their value system by free
software to a degree, but they also define their free, their value system in other ways
as well.
I think the crux of what Akka's experience, I don't want to speak for him, but I think
no name as long as I've done, I think this is the case and this is certainly my viewpoint,
is that people who advocate free software in a passive capacity as seen as being less
pure and get a lot of criticism and in many cases a lot of abuse from those who advocate
free software in a more active manner because they're not free enough.
And if there's one thing that human beings don't like, is somebody else telling you that
your ethics are wrong.
And I think that, I mean, we did a radio for what, five years and every single week,
I got criticism from people for recording it on a Mac.
Now I can understand why some people may say you shouldn't be recording a show about
open source and free software in a Mac, but a lot of these folks didn't consider all
the other work that I do in terms of free software or the other work that the other guys
and the team do in terms of free software.
That one attribute, the fact that the show is recorded on a Mac was because of that model
of defining your value structure by free software completely overshadows everything else.
And you know, this at one point is something you put up with when you're a volunteer.
But I think what happens is you get to a point and you just get sick of it.
I think a lot of people get sick of it.
And I think that was a big chunk of the transition that I experienced at go through is just
getting sick of people constantly criticizing him for his perspectives because he wasn't
free enough.
I think I think it's almost if you if you take an active position on advocacy, then one
of the things that you can't be seen to do is be a hypocrite because that undermines
your active platform.
So if you say to someone you should be using free software because of this and their
retortes, but you don't use free software for your music production or for your microwave
or for your phone or for your word processor, however, then that undermines their argument.
Therefore if you're going to actively champion free software, you are almost obliged to
hassle people about everything because if you don't hassle about some things, that's
evidence that you don't truly believe what you're championing.
And yeah, I don't want to see that entirely true.
Oh, no, okay.
Now I I fall somewhere in between what the two of you have just been talking about because
I believe I do advocate free software.
I believe I do take an active role in it, but I don't I don't get in people's faces
about it.
I like to tell them what I know about it more of an educational perspective is as I
guess how I would describe it.
And I do use some proprietary software here and there and I'm willing to admit that it's
a hypocrisy and that I wish I didn't have to or I wish I were stronger.
There's some some instances where I don't have to but do anyway.
And I wish I were a little bit stronger and I try not to do those things, but I'm not
perfect and I come from that perspective that I don't expect anybody else to be perfect
either.
So I think there's plenty of degrees of middle ground between the two extremes of passivity
and activity there that you two are talking about.
I mean, I'm just I just fall somewhere on that scale.
I don't even think it's like a choice between the three.
I think there's all sorts of degrees there.
I think you're absolutely right.
The challenge is even just the word hypocrisy.
The word hypocrisy is such a strong way of describing somebody who has a passion for
free software who makes a pragmatic decision to use something that's non-free.
Like, you know, I use it myself as an example and many other people that I know, 90% of
the time I use free software to do everything that I can.
I always try to use a free software solution first, but sometimes I can't do that.
Like, you know, I wouldn't be married to my wife if I didn't use Skype.
If Skype, if I was a free software purist and I refused to use Skype, I would not be
married to my wife.
She's Californian.
I use Skype to talk to one other in England.
It would have been impossible.
Now, am I willing to give up my marriage or a potential life of happiness with my wife
for free software values?
No, I'm not willing to do that.
But there will be some folks who will think that I'm a hypocrite for doing that.
To me, as a pragmatist, it's a pragmatist who made that decision.
The challenge here is the level of, I hate to use the term extremist because I think
that's a very disparaging term to many people.
The problem here is, in my mind, a one-dimensional approach in either side of the aisle is terrible.
Like, it's the same thing with American politics.
If you're an extreme Democrat or an extreme Republican, you don't see things from the other
side from the other perspective.
And what worries me at times, and I think what Akinai talked a lot about in the radio,
and how we spar at times, is the way our free software and open source community is filled.
It's not filled to a large extent, but there are a lot of people out there with that perspective.
And what it does is, while these people are touching the right place, it really puts people
off.
I know how I could give you a list of people who have said, screw it.
I just don't want to be part of it because I'm sick and tired of being lectured all the
time that I'm not as good as they are.
And that's what worries me, is that we often lose really good people, because people take
this very, very critical manner of trying to impose their ethics on other people.
It's an externality.
There's a whole lot of people, because I'm going to lose this.
I think there's a little more to it than that, though, Jono, because a lot of times I feel
the need to talk to someone about free software, just to correct them, because so many people
get it wrong.
I mean, very basic things where they think that you cannot charge money for free software.
I mean, that's like the kindergarten of understanding free software, and they get that
wrong.
I find up having the conversation with them or somebody does, and it's very often the
person who makes that mistake, it's extremely frustrated in being corrected, no matter
who does it, not even me.
I can understand if I'm the one who always doesn't, they always get frustrated with me,
well, okay, that's me.
But it doesn't seem to matter who does it.
People get frustrated with that, I mean, obviously it's a confusion of the same word.
You know, me having two different meanings, but there's all kinds of other things.
People think that there's a true distinction between free software and open source, when
really it's kind of a mindset more than a technical distinction, things like that.
And I do, however, totally agree with you that once you politicize it, once you make it
two different ends, and you don't allow people to fall somewhere in the middle of that
scale, that is where you get the battle, the combat, the dividing of our community that
we just don't need.
Right, and the part of the problem is that advocacy, I mean, I have one perspective, I'm
just one person in the crowd with a viewpoint.
But I've been fortunate enough to work as effectively a professional advocate for a long
time now.
And one thing I've learned is through the work that I do and the work that I've seen
other people do, as I've tried to learn how to be better at what I do, is the one way
in which you will never ever, like the one thing will never work in convincing people to
move to an idea or a system or a process, is gilding and lecturing them into it, right?
It's like the annoying neighbor who is passive aggressive that you don't recycle enough.
Like that is not going to work.
And you know, there's so many wonderful benefits like Poke, I think you made a good point
about trying to get over the benefits and the reasons why free software is so wonderful,
right?
There's so many things that we can share, so many ideas and so much potential and so
much inspiration we can give to people who don't know about it.
But doesn't that, if you describe in a gentle and meaningful and understandable terms,
why recycling is so good and that's why you do that, or why free software is so good
and that's why you do that, doesn't the person you're speaking to eventually feel a little
guilty about it?
Isn't that...
I think there's a very important subtlety, using the neighbor recycling example.
If I am constantly inferring or suggesting or directly telling my neighbor that they
don't recycle enough, that is me gilding them, that is me pressuring them into doing that.
If I inspire them and encourage them and like just explain to them the benefit that the
small amount of work that they're going to go to to recycle is going to benefit the planet
and how that's good for our future generations and all the rest of it.
They are making their own decision and I think that's the key thing is that people want
to make their own decision about a software and one of the things I think is frustrating
about this is that we're talking about by and large grown adults, we're talking about
people who have families, who have jobs, who have careers, they can make their own decisions
and people going out and lecturing them that they are making the wrong decisions doesn't
help.
I think the evidence speaks for itself is that the vast majority of people in the open
source community don't have that level of that level of quote unquote purity when it comes
to the software.
There's always a balance.
People may be running a bunch of door or whatever else, they may be playing their games
on the steam and they may be using Skype here and there, but by and large they're supportive
of pushing our movement forward and I think that the small minority of people who lecture
people, in many cases let's decide down and that's what worries me is that we often lose
people because of some of these folks, despite the fact that they obviously have their
house in the right place, you know, I took a guide, no you got it.
To give a perfect example of this, the conversation which got this started, right, what you guys
talking about was the fact that I'm less committed to open source than I was, now I use
all the same open source software that I did then.
Some things I made easy for me because now I have wireless free open drivers and I don't
have to forego having wireless, I don't have to make that choice, I don't have to make
that choice anymore because our technology has improved in 10 years, but the software
I use is just as open sources, it was then the software that I write and release is
just as open source than what's changed is that I don't go on about it as much as though
my dedication to free software is not defined by how much I do with it, but about how much
I shout about it, right, then I got that wrong from what you said, and I believe it was
the last episode of Log Radio, it sounded to me like you were saying, all right, I'm going
to give up on this in part or in whole and I'm going to give it a go, see what the proprietary
software can offer me and whether or not the ease of use or functionality or something,
you know, I'll accept the benefits that have been preached to me, you know, for the past
multiple years here, that's what I heard, and if I got that wrong, then I'm sorry, but
would you clarify that because I believe you say something to that effect?
Um, two could be different things in my mind, but I think a good way of illustrating this
might be something that I did 18 months ago, which was by an iPhone, nothing to be John,
I, he's never had an iPhone as far as I'm aware, and I wrote quite a long blog post explaining
why, um, and I, at least by a few people was vilified for choosing an iPhone because
Apple are the enemy, and the argument I made at the time at which I still believe is that
what I want out of the things that I use, whether they be laptops or servers or phones or
whatever devices, things that I used to do work, what I want out of them is three things
I want, openness, vitality and beauty, and openness is a critical part of that triad, but
it's only one part of that triad.
What I want is all three, historically, it's been very, very, very difficult to find anything
which is all of open with a large vibrant active community and beautiful defining beautiful
how you are.
I mean, obviously, from the point of view of a server, we're not talking about the beauty
of the case.
It comes in so much as the beauty of the experience of using it, um, right.
So the phone I had, um, before the, uh, before the iPhone was, was a Nokia N9.
Can you say that iPhone is, is beautifully talking about the UI or the designer thing
of the whole package?
Both.
Okay.
Both.
Um, the, uh, the Nokia N9 that I had before, that was, uh, uh, mostly open source, great,
fantastic.
So for, for the openness thing, and it was gorgeous, the device itself was gorgeous, um,
the experience of using it was lovely, um, stupid things like, because it came from Nokia,
rather than, um, you know, I mean, my, my historical experience with running, um, uh, Linux
based distros and, and then Ubuntu has been that you buy whatever laptop, um, best supports
things.
Right.
You don't get to have that, you don't get to have the pretty laptops, the ones that look
nice, you get to have some clunky, horrible old thing because it supports Linux well and
the pretty ones done.
John and I have been arguing for a decade now about the fact that I refuse to buy think
pants.
I, I don't, I don't give a shit that they support them, it's better than everything
else.
I don't care.
I hate them.
They look like they belong on blocks outside someone's trailer and I will not, boy.
You will.
My bend at one point.
I, I, I, I, I will not because the next machine I'm buying is a desktop machine.
I'm not even buying a laptop.
The hell with your thing, man.
Get stuff.
Right.
I'll say it's the desktop machine.
I'll buy in the case.
It's gorgeous.
God.
It's so nice.
I'm anyway.
Right.
Sorry.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know if I could even relate to you there because I could give a shit what my computer
or my laptop looks like.
I say really.
I have a, and, and for most things in my life, it, form follows function.
If the thing doesn't work, I don't care what it looks like.
Ah, well, this is exactly the point.
I want all of them, you know, and I think some of our, and when I say I don't mean
that I asked three, but our community, some of our lack of desire for beautiful things
is because historically, we just haven't been allowed them.
So we've become conditioned to the fact that you shouldn't even ask, you know, you
get openness or you get pretty things, you have to choose.
We think openness is important.
So the whole idea of something being beautiful has taken a back seat to it being open.
This is not the goodness because if we were face to face, you'd be criticizing me on
the beauty.
But, but this is out of the, I mean, I, I almost think it's Stockholm syndrome, right?
We are now that used to the idea that we're not allowed pretty things that we've turned
it into a virtue, right?
I have come to the realization that I want all of these things, I want vitality, I want
openness and I want beauty.
I'm bloody allowed, beautiful stuff, I mean, stupid example, and I'm putting together a
plan for my next machine, which is going to be a desktop machine, right?
And I, I posted to Google Plastic and said, I'm thinking by this, but has anyone got
positions for lovely cases because I want something that looks gorgeous, my, my, my
reckoning point here was that I want something where I could put it on a coffee table in
my living room, on view, looking gorgeous.
And people would see it and go, wow, that looks great, you know, it's like an object
die in your house.
And about half the response, I got, oh, man, why would you want to do that?
Just chuck a blanket over it and put it in a cupboard.
And I'm like, no, man, what are cars are the same, right?
Desktop environments, another perfect example.
And I, I, I use a bunch of, I, I worked for Canon Club, but I used a bunch of before I
worked for Canon Club, continue to use it afterwards.
And part of that is that I think the experience is beautiful.
And the desire from an awful lot of people to say, well, no, I want to be out of change
it around and do things and change the way everything looks is almost directly contrary
to that idea of beauty, right?
So anyway, openness, beauty, vitality, I wanted all three.
The Nokia N9 openness, it was great for pretty much all open source software, use QML,
fantastic, plug it into my printer machine, it worked brilliantly.
I could, I could SSH into it and like my app, which was amazing, really, please.
And it was beautiful, the experience of using things beautiful, the hardware itself was
beautiful, I have and still use the, my emergency plug-in battery was bought for my Nokia N9.
And I bought that rather than one of the random cheap black ones on the market, this one,
the one I've got is it's shaped like the, the N9 squircle logo.
And it's the same colour as my N9 was.
So being able to have this kind of matching accessory, the sort of thing that Apple people
take for granted, and we just say, well, that's, why would you want that?
That's not important, it is important, at least to me, and I think it's important to
a lot of people out there in the world as well.
So, so you had beauty and you had openness, what the N9 mist was vitality, right?
There was hardly any community there, there were apps for everything, there wasn't a good
way of getting into it.
And three quarters of the community were involved with it, were involved with it because of
the openness, which means that instead of dedicating their time to building great applications
to make the phone do more stuff than I wanted, they were devoting their time to patching
out the wireless system which came with it and patching in WICD instead.
Now, that's fine, I mean there's a place that and everything, but I don't care, I
really don't care about that.
And so, no vitality in the platform, so, I mean before that, I had an Android phone,
I've always used, I've always used to run too.
So now I, now I, I was, I bet very, the point of trying the iPhone was exactly to try
to, the other two prongs of the tripod, I'd tried openness and vitality with the N9, and
I wanted to try beauty and vitality, you know, really big community, get applications for
everything.
You get, it's not just applications, when you've got a problem and you Google for it,
there are 50 people saying, oh, here's the simple way around, rather than one guy writing
on his live journal how he recompiled the kernel to fix it, right?
So, so, yeah, it used to be there's a, there's a Firefox plugin for that now, it's, there's
an app for that.
Well, I mean, I mean, that, that's something, and I can see, I am, I am semi unusual in
the open source community for valuing beauty that highly, I mean, to give another example,
which is tangentially related, but in my head it's very closely related.
If you've got a, if you want to tweak something about Ubuntu, you go and ask on Reddit or
ask Ubuntu or whatever, and three quarters of the answers start with open a terminal
and do blah.
Even if there's a nice convenient easy button somewhere you can press, now I'm all about,
I, I spend half my life in a terminal, I code that's what I do, part of my job, but
I hate it when that's the advice which is given, because new people coming into our community
who are not technical, see that and are scared away, right?
And the beauty of the platform is precisely, you don't, you know what it's like, you,
you talk to people who aren't Ubuntu users and are Mac users or are Windows users and
say, but they're technical, they say, why aren't you using Ubuntu, they're like, oh man,
because you have to just compile your kernel every five minutes, which all three of us
know is a joke, which is 15 years out of date, but that opinion is completely, completely
reinforced by the fact that you ask someone, how do I disable a scope in Ubuntu?
And instead of saying, find that scope, right click on it and say disable, the answer
is open a terminal and type G setting space, set space, open square bracket, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
And it's not, it's people who aren't, who are not only not pushing the, in my mind,
the beautiful way to do it, but are actively reacting against the beautiful way of doing
so that's why we must not come central.
We become that conditioned to the idea that we're not allowed easy, convenient ways to
do stuff.
The, the very, the command line, very often in line is the, is the easier and better
way to do something and when that, when that answer pops up, that's, I'm glad it does.
When, when, when I have a broken package and I ask, okay, not me, but for example,
if I had a broken package and I said, you know, how do I, how do I fix this?
I get some dependencies screwed up.
Somebody said to me, okay, you open Synaptic, look for checkmarks that are undone or what,
no, okay, so how about just apt get, you know, fix broken, you know what I mean?
Right, okay, and here's the problem with that.
If I said that to my dad, do that, he type, I'd get fix broken, it wouldn't work because
it's not right, it's apt dash get.
I'm sorry.
And then, and then a space and then dash, dash, fix, dash broken and it's case sensitive
and you have to get the things.
The command, but is here, the command is brilliantly, brilliantly, brilliantly powerful.
And like I say, I use it all the time, a reasonable portion of the time I, when I'm installing
stuff, I don't, don't from the dash, I don't from the terminal, because I'm in a terminal
anyway.
Fine, but it's not discoverable.
Right.
But the thing, the thing that relates to that as well is that invariably, I think this
gets to another issue that we have in our community at times is there is a very, very strong
level of technical elitism in the open source and free software world.
There is a feeling that you should kind of know how to use the terminal like it, you
should know still.
Oh, absolutely.
I see every single day, I see it, I see, I see significant numbers of people who demonstrate
technical elitism through a few different routes.
One is through mocking people who are new, mocking people because they don't know how
to use a terminal that they don't know how to configure their machine to a level that
other people may be able to expect.
And then the other thing is the, in many cases, is the often overly dramatic criticism
of quote unquote, dumbing down Linux.
I see this all, I see this a lot with a bunch of people, very critical of a bunch of
because we are quote unquote, dumbing down Linux.
Now, I think to your point, Poké, you're providing that solution as a expedited means of solving
the problem, not being technically elitist about where it's appropriate as well.
Right.
I understand that that axe point about, you know, right clicking on something and clicking
disable.
Yes, that's the correct answer.
They're not dropped down to the command line.
My only point was to say that very often the command line has a better solution and the
way that the way that act was describing it sounded to me like it would have discouraged
somebody from posting the answer.
For answers exist, if somebody has the answer, go ahead and post it out, let the person
read through the post and decide which one is best for them.
Well, I get, I get, I get, you see, this is, well, I just get another example of something
I refer to as an externality economist term.
Each individual person saying, okay, here is a terminal based web doing that because in
this example, it's quicker and it's clearer.
Each individual thing is probably correct in that particular situation that that way
is faster, but they're ignoring the cost they impose on the whole open source community
by marginally decreasing the credibility, the usability of open source in general.
Because if for each individual thing, you can say, there is a way of doing this with
the terminal and that way is faster and you review a thousand questions and they've all
got answers like that.
What that says to ordinary people attempting to use open source is using the terminal is
the best for everything and then they try and use the terminal and they don't understand
that.
Right.
I was going to say the thing that relates to that is when someone asks a question and
somebody gives them an answer, there's two components in the answer.
One is actually solving the problems that that person can get on with their lives and then
the second thing is helping that person to be able to solve the wrong problems in the
future.
Now, if somebody is not the kind of person who's going to be either interested or necessarily
capable of using the terminal and you give them a solution that involves a terminal, you
may solve their problem, but it's going to be completely, they're never going to be
able to help learn the overall system and be able to fix it in the future using more conventional
methods.
And I think, but to me, that's not necessarily a criticism that's specific to free software
and open source.
That's just the difference between technical and non-technical people.
Right.
And there's nothing stopping anybody from saying, okay, you've got all these 50 people
have answered here and they've all said that, you know, the fastest way is to drop
to the command line, but here's a way to do it with your mouse and keyboard that might
be a little easier for nothing stops anybody from doing that.
And it, I just think criticizing somebody for telling, for giving an answer, this is
how I know it works, this is the way that I know to fix the problem that you're having.
I don't, I don't think it's right to criticize people for doing that, even if, and, and
there you and I disagree, I think, because I think if there, if you only know of a terminal
based answer to someone's question and you do not know that there isn't, okay, if you
know there's no agree way of doing this, it's only a terminal way, then fight.
Say to them, here's the terminal way of doing it.
There isn't another way.
By the way, user, the fact that there is no easy way if you do this is a bug and we're
going to fix that.
Yeah.
But if you say there's a terminal based way of doing it, and I don't know, because I've
never had to check, because I'm technical guy, I've never had to check where there's a
agree way or not.
I only know the terminal way and you tell them that.
I think you're making the situation worse.
I would rather you didn't give an answer.
I'd rather someone said, oh, there maybe isn't a way of doing this and then they'll go
and explore.
If they get the answer and it's an open a terminal type this command sort of answer,
then they'll believe that's the only way of doing it.
Yeah, see, like, we, you're right, we're going to have to disagree on this one.
I think I think, I think, I like finding the answer that says open a terminal and do this,
and I'm not, I'm just a user, okay, I, I don't know what you guys think of me or whatever
in my background, but I'll tell you, I'm just a user.
I'm a real, I don't work with Linux on a daily basis.
I've been using it for years, but only as a normal user would use a computer.
So I might, my learning curve is not as steep as someone who, you know, would, would run
a server for a job or who's producing documents or, or something like that.
I'm just a normal guy.
So when I go to search for a problem and I find that, okay, here's the answer and it's
on the terminal.
That gives me a place to start.
That is me, that is the person answering, teaching me to solve my own problem because now
I have a command to start with.
I can go read the man page on that or read the help file, I usually start with a help
file.
I, you know, I can read those, these are the man pages usually, but then I can understand
the command and find out where that's going to.
Now again, if there is a better way in the GUI, then yes, go ahead and give me the
GUI answer.
But as far as teaching someone to use a computer, I learn more from that, so, and that's just
me.
I think I'll, I'll go ahead.
I was just going to say real quick.
I think the thing that this is, the challenge here is, you know, and just to be very
pleased to provide a caveat that hope nobody would need for me is I absolutely love the
equipment source and free software community.
I think that despite our issues here and there, it's an amazing place to be, I feel privileged
every day being able to be surrounded by people in the community and to be able to work
in it.
But I think that the one thing that we as a community need to confront and that we need
to deal with is that when we are getting people, when we are trying to advocate and get people
excited and interested in, in, in join in our world, that we need to try and be more adaptable
to the user's needs and not try to force them into our blocks and our ethics.
I think that, that is the key distinguishing factor between active and passive advocacy
is the way I described it really wrong.
Well, I think, I think there's a slightly subtler difference in that when you want people
to join the community, I think it's the freedom that, that I bait my hook with when I,
when I tell people, I mean, I can't tell people, you know, come use Linux because it's,
it's hands down better, even though I believe it is, I can't convince someone of that because
what they're using is different and people often confuse different with worse.
So there's no way you can convince somebody that it's just better.
But I don't think that's the most effective way of doing it because while that may work
with some people, that is that presumes that people should or do care about freedom.
And the sad reality is the vast majority of people use technology couldn't give two
shifts for them.
No, I'd, I'd, I'd, I'd just modify that.
I'll go ahead, you go first.
Just, just, just to finish off the vast majority of people out there who have got iPhones
and they've got Microsoft phones and Microsoft devices and Apple devices, whatever else,
who are fertile ground for us to bring over to Linux and free software.
The vast majority of those people don't give a crap about freedom.
Now could they benefit from freedom?
Of course they could, right?
I mean, we know that freedom could bring many things to them.
But if we go out there and we try to bring them over, as freedom is the thing that we're
baiting the hook with, what you're going to get is you're going to get some people going
to say, wow, that, yeah, that's really cool.
Yeah, I'm definitely interested and you're going to get a lot of people going to say,
I don't really give a shit about that.
Like tell me how this thing can give me a better quality of life than what I've got with
this existing thing that I've got.
And so I think what we need to do is we need to apply the right pushpoints to different
people.
Like if you go up to any executive or any business person in any company that is evaluating
moving to Linux from moving from proprietary solution, those people are not going to care
about freedom.
They're going to care about total cost of ownership and support and all those kinds of things.
If you go to any teenager who has got an iPhone, who's playing candy crush, all that kind
of stuff, they're not going to care about freedom.
They're going to get care about having cool games to play with and meeting other people.
So I think we need to be thoughtful of modifying how we advocate to people.
And that's the thing is that too many people, I'm not suggesting you do this, because I don't
know you well enough.
But too many people go out there and they put freedom first and foremost.
And it doesn't resonate.
And when it doesn't resonate, a lot of those people think that the person is somehow inferior
because they don't get as passionate and as excited about freedom as the person doing
the advocacy.
And that I think is the thing we need to adjust.
I don't, I do advocate on freedom.
And when it doesn't resonate, I do not see the person as inferior.
I just have a hard time seeing that person as potentially useful to the community.
That by definition, see somebody as inferior.
That's almost exactly how I was just going to put it.
You've got two people, right?
Both of whom are identical, but one of them's useful to the community and the other one
isn't.
By definition, the one who's not useful to the community is inferior.
They're not as good as that's what inferior means.
Not as for a specific task or some specific purpose, not as a human being.
They're not inferior as a human being.
They're not less than a person.
But that also presents, I kind of, I kind of agree with you that you're not seeing
them as inferior as a human being, but it quite often comes across that way.
Not, I'm not saying this specifically about your arguments, but the difference between
this argument and all the others is that it's an ethical argument, right?
Pretty much by definition, if you're saying this is how you ought to feel ethically, but
you don't feel that way, that looks disparaging to the person you're saying it to.
I mean, that's the nature of ethical arguments, right?
If you have a political argument with someone and they get annoyed with you because they
feel that you're not protecting the rights of man in the way that they are, they are,
by definition, saying that you are demonstrating an inferior ethical awareness, that's the
nature of ethical argument.
The other thing as well that relates to that is that there is a, when you said you wouldn't
necessarily see them as inferior, but you would see them of lesser use to the community,
that presumes that that person would want to be in the community.
Yes, that's the other thing we need.
If they're not interested in being in the community, then you're right, there's no point in
even considering that.
But I think that's the thing is that we need to accept that there's going to be a load
of people out there who could benefit.
Or everybody in fact.
Yeah, who could benefit from free software and open source, who couldn't care about being
part of the community.
I'll give you one example of this.
In recent years, in particular last year, we've spent a lot of time building an app developer
community around Ubuntu.
This is something that Ack and I talked endlessly about.
One of the things I did just to be very clear, like in my job as the community manager for
Ubuntu, Ack has been a great mentor to me for many, many years, right?
I've run loads of things past him and get his advice and his feedback because I think
Ack has got a great objective stance on the world and that's a good person about
ideas.
One of the things that we were discussing a lot was that we have two communities in Ubuntu.
We have a community of people who traditionally, who are interested in contributing to fixing
bugs and packaging software and doing translations and doing documentation and stuff like that.
Those are the kinds of people who really care about me versus Wayland and really care about
Unity versus Cnome Shell and really care about contribute license agreements and all that
kind of stuff.
All the people magazine stuff that we deal with every day in the resource world, right?
Then you've got a community of app developers and these are people who want to build apps
that run on Ubuntu.
Those people don't care at all about how Ubuntu is fit together.
They couldn't care less.
They couldn't care less about the politics.
They couldn't care less about the details and it's the same thing with a lot of OEMs.
It's the same thing with a lot of ISBs.
They don't care about how Ubuntu is fit together.
You can care less about me versus Wayland, right?
They're not interested in, quote-unquote, being part of that community.
They're interested in harnessing the technology and the freedom to help further their own
world and we need to accept the fact that it's perfectly valid that somebody can enjoy
using software and enjoy the benefits of that freedom and have no idea of the benefits
of that.
That's where I take a more passive approach to it because I don't feel the need to stand
on the rooftops and shout, Linux works better.
It does, but I don't need to, you know, and there's no viruses.
That's not my business.
Right.
That's not, I mean, I have a dear friend of mine and his wife who both own laptops that
they've asked me to put Linux on for them because it works better.
They could give a shit about the software freedom involved, just like, you know, just
like you said, you know, 9 out of 10 aren't going to care and they don't.
But I didn't talk them into it either.
They simply, you know, they come to me for computer help and they notice that there is a divergence
between, you know, how much I know or how much I used to be able to help them when we
were both using, you know, Windows XP and we're both on the same operating system to how
useful I am helping them now that I'm no longer using Windows and they're looking at a Windows
machine.
And they decided, okay, let's try this out.
Even if I have to learn something completely new, at least the support network that I
trust is there.
And I'm fine being that support network.
I, to all my friends and family, I tell them if you would like help with your computer,
if you would like help with Linux, I'm more than happy to do it for you.
I will work on it until it's fixed.
If you need help with Windows, I might not be able to help you.
I'll give it a try, but I may not be able to help you and I'll be able to do it quickly.
You're nice to the night.
And then as a matter of policy, I won't help people who've got Windows.
I said to them, if you want to run Windows, that's fine, but you're on your own.
You run Ubuntu.
I'll help you out.
I'll help family, not friends.
I should make that sound.
I see my parents run Ubuntu now.
My parents run Ubuntu now for precisely this reason.
What I think is interesting there is, to my mind, open this freedom in your software,
is not a reason to start using it, but it's a reason not to stop using it.
Right.
So you don't bring people, I don't bait the hook with freedom, not at all.
But why not reason to start it using it?
But once someone's in, it's a good way to say to them,
oh, by the way, think about what you'll be giving up.
Good example there, while we were saying about saying,
well, we've got an open source operating system and we've had it for years
and why is everyone using it?
And our market share is still at 1%.
Google sat down, built an open source operating system
and took over the whole universe with it.
Android, right?
Almost no one of the over 50% of phones sold with Android on them,
because it's open source.
But once they've gotten Android, they know what I'm thinking of getting an iPhone.
You can say to them, oh, you know that extra keyboard you installed?
Not allowed to do that on iOS.
And they go, what?
And then you say, that's the difference between an open system,
whether we're talking about open source in terms of the software
or open this in terms of how accepting the system is of change, right?
You say, yeah, you can't install that.
When you open a PDF on your Android phone,
and it opens in one of those two things,
because you installed 200 things,
did that on your iPhone?
It opens in iBooks, nothing you can do about it, right?
And they go, well, that's ridiculous.
I have this freedom, and it's being taken away.
There's a bit of a full in your argument that's all responsive, I think.
But before you go too much further, there's a bit of a whole in your argument.
Part of the reason people aren't standing on the streets
and hollering about the freedom of Android,
is that it's not particularly free being like...
Bullshit.
Bullshit, and this to me, is a really important thing.
When people say, we care about your software being free, an open source, right?
You say, it is free and open source, and they go,
ah, that's not really what we meant.
We don't really care about the license on the software.
What we care is that we get an opinion on how it should be created.
And there's a difference here between...
John and I will disagree on this.
Right, yeah.
I mean, I think I share aspects of either of your, both of your viewpoints.
Android is an open source operating system, right?
It is open source, you can get the code, you can use it, you can fork it if you want to.
What it isn't, is it isn't, I would say, a particularly collaborative open source community.
Google, a very, very crispy said, look, we're basically running the show here.
And, and that's fine.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, right?
You know, it's, it's almost like, you know, you could have a completely open source community
that's got no company attached to it that builds something like the open worker.
When that was around, I don't know if you're still around these days,
but completely open source community, completely collaboratively driven,
and they did their work.
And then you've got Android on the other side of the equation, which is open source,
but, but is very driven by Google.
And then somewhere in between you've got, you've got something like Ubuntu.
I don't think it's fair to say it's not open source and free software,
but it's also not fair to say it's a particularly collaborative environment as well.
It's, it's not particularly collaborative.
I mean, this, one of the things that's been interesting over the last year of using an iPhone,
they went through the iOS 6 to iOS 7 transition, right?
And that brought a lot of changes.
And it was really interesting seeing the difference in response from the iPhone using community,
both app developers and just users, and comparing that with the same,
a similar reaction to change from our community, right?
Apple bring out iOS 7.
It broke a load of stuff.
It broke a bunch of people's apps.
It broke a bunch of stuff that Safari did.
It brought a bunch of new functionality.
And people went, oh man, it's broken load of stuff.
How annoying.
We better knuckle down and get our apps fixed.
And when some, when a Linux based OS makes a change like that,
the response is not, oh well, this has happened.
Let's continue being great.
It's, that's terrible.
Reverse the change and then make a way to reverse the change.
Now, don't, don't, don't discount the financial motivation for the people who say they have to knuckle down and fix their app.
No, no, no, no, I honestly do not think.
I mean, I'm sure there's a certain amount of, well, I haven't gotten me a choice,
so I better just suck it up.
Yeah.
But, but, but, but there is honestly a much more accepting culture of the idea that someone else defines the OS and you use it.
Right.
And that, I'm that division.
Yes, of course, because they don't have a choice if they want to make the money on the app.
On the other side of the aisle, if you're a Linux, if I'm developing software for Linux,
and someone goes and pulls the rug out under me and I have to recode the entire thing,
that to me is going to feel like all the work that I already did has been unappreciated.
Because there's no, there's no typically, there's not a lot of, you know, financial compensation,
which you can, you know, equate to appreciation on some level.
So, I'm going to, I'm going to feel unappreciated.
I'm going to feel like people don't like what I have done or, or don't appreciate what I've done.
But that is, that is, that's a bit of, I think this also shines a light on, on, on another slight issue that I think we have from time to time,
which is, which is, there is often a sense of entitlement that, that, that something changes, but what about me?
Now, I can understand, like, look, this is the human source community.
The free software community is not the only community by any stretch that is affected by this, right?
Look at the movie world, right? You know, look at what happened to the Star Wars.
People were complaining and say, well, what about the original blah, blah, blah, blah?
But at times there is a sense of, you know, how dare they do this?
And it, it, it boggles my mind when you see such, such, um, vitriol from some people about, um, a change that is, there is just the natural evolution of a platform developing.
And I think to Axe point, you see a lot, a lot less of that in the, in the Apple world, because there is a very clear difference between the, the platform provider and the app developer, right?
The app developer exists in his or her own world, they build things that run on the platform.
Now, they may be frustrated with changes in the platform or may not like changes in the platform, but they don't feel like they've been slighted by it.
And I don't know that's true.
I think, I think the reason why we see more of this in the Linux world is because the lines are very, very blurred between upstreams, ISVs and platforms.
There is, you know, look at, look at Linux traditionally until quite recently.
If you want to get an app into a Linux distribution, you have to become an operating system developer and get it into the archive.
Now, what's ISV?
I, uh, independent software vendor, right?
So someone produces an app, an independent app, right?
Traditionally, that's the way you have to do it.
We had this in Ubuntu for donkeys years.
You want to get an app into a Ubuntu?
Okay, you've got to be an Ubuntu developer and you've got to get it in before we next, we release our next version of Ubuntu.
Until quite recently, we didn't have any of the, the infrastructure to be able to, to let people independently upload apps to Ubuntu.
Well, you have to, you, you have to sign the Ubuntu code of conduct.
Right.
And I, yeah, I have to promise to be nice to everybody in order that people can play my game.
Now, I think this, I think the COC is a nice thing to do, but I think that division between the operating system and the vendors is, it is an important.
If I, I'm building software, I'm, I'm, I'm not really that interested in building Ubuntu.
I'm interested in building on Ubuntu.
And I mean, it's reasonable to say, I mean, we, I talked, I talked about Apple, but you can reasonably say that
at what Apple doing, what we're doing are two fundamentally different things, right?
And therefore, there is a fundamentally different relationship between the, the people who produce the platform and the people who produce stuff on it.
But Android is, is not. Android is very similar to, to what we do, right?
It's an open source OS, it gives you openness and hooks to change things.
The team, the team doing it on as collaborative as perhaps they could be, but equally that collaborative, that lack of collaborativeness has got the operating system built.
And more importantly, an existence proof here, right?
While we're all sitting about saying everyone should be using Ubuntu, iOS got created and Android got created and they took over the world, right?
So our way isn't working and their way is, it doesn't matter whether we want our way to work or whether their way shouldn't work, their way does work.
So to my mind, emulating that to some extent, so everyone ends up using our open source platform and then saying to them, oh, by the way, openness, it's really good.
That's a reason to not leave the platform here with the benefits you get from it now that you're here seems to me to be a good idea.
And that's one of the big things that's changed about my opinion that I've had 10 more years of watching our way, just not work.
It doesn't matter whether I think it ought to work or I think that people ought to be listening to our arguments, they're not either we're wrong or we need better arguments.
I think that I think relates to this as well as, you know, bringing things to a bit of a conclusion.
The way the way poker you kind of presented me in the previous show, almost made out that I don't care about free software and I don't care about open source.
And I'm more than happy to just, in fact, I don't have a transcript in front of me, but the way I remember it was, you know, Jono is advocating proprietary software.
I don't advocate proprietary software. I don't tell people to use proprietary software.
What I do is I use proprietary software when there is no free software alternative to use.
And I think that one of the things here is that we have many benefits with freedom, many benefits with openness in our community.
But the blurred lines between the platform and the app developer community and the ISVs and all the other different pieces causes all of this completely unnecessary bickering that we see in the own source world every single day.
And that's, you know, Akinai, we've, again, I don't want to represent Mr. Represent Act, but I think we've both our opinions of both evolved over the years.
I don't think they're the same. I do believe that there's, I believe that we can succeed. I believe that we can win with free software and we can win with open source.
I think there is tremendous opportunity out there, but we need to get away from this insane land grabbing and this judgmental nature that some people have where you're not one of us because you use Skype.
And until we get away from that and until we start setting a better example in our community, we will be, we will be plagued with making slow progress than we could have done.
And this is the reason, one of the reasons why I think we both want you to come on and talk about it is because I hate to say it, but I think the way you presented as on that show was an example of the problem.
Now, just to be very clear, I think it's also, don't hate to say it if you feel that way, then say it.
No, no, my hates aren't hurt by being wrong.
No, I hate to say it because I hate to see examples like that. I know that you're, I know you're not going to take it personally.
And I think just to be very clear, I think I, I massive respect for you welcoming Akinai to both come on on that kind of radio and talk about it.
And that takes, it's a big person to, you know, to be critical of something and then have those people come on and, and question what you said.
I think that was amazing. I'm very, very respectful if you've been doing that.
Thank you.
I think that that's the issue that we need to fix and podcasts are a great way of providing an example of doing that.
And hopefully that will change in the future.
Yeah, to be clear, very, very, very, very briefly.
I don't want to ask to eat our lunch, right?
And now that Google have basically shifted three quarters of the important new stuff in Android into close source ships only from Google, you can't change it.
Things inside Google Play Services.
I don't want Android to eat our lunch either, right?
I would like, I personally would like a bunch to win.
But we're never going to get anywhere if we spend all our time fighting amongst ourselves.
Right, right, of course.
Now, John, I don't think you mischaracterized me at all when you said that I, if I didn't outright say it, at least gave the impression that you advocated for proprietary software.
And hearing what you just said about using proprietary software, perhaps it was your defensive of, maybe people put you on the defensive.
That often sound like advocacy.
And maybe maybe that's the middle ground that we could reach between, you know, what I said and the reality.
Is that clear?
I don't think that I, I mean, I don't, you know, I don't think I'm particularly defensive about it, but I will correct people when I think they're wrong.
I don't think I advocate free software, proprietary software.
No, I don't go out there and tell people to use, I use Cubase, I use Skype, I use the PlayStation 4, I don't advocate people to use those things.
I may say to people, I think Cubase is cool, like I enjoy using it. I think Cubase is a great piece of software.
Am I going to go out there and advocate it? Am I going to go out of my way to tell people to use Cubase?
No, not at all.
I will go out of my way to tell people to use a bunch of free software.
So I think there's a difference between advocacy and just saying that you use something and that, you know, that's just easy because there is no good alternative.
Free software solution that supports what you want to do.
There is a difference between those things, but that difference becomes blurred when you're a public figure and you're a very public figure and you were on Log Radio as well.
I mean, Log Radio carried the banner for the Linux using community for a very long time.
It had a massive effect on the community, on opinions and on the excitement behind it all as did Brian and Chris for a long time.
I really, really did, affected me tremendously.
And even people who, you know, would say they didn't like one or other or both of the shows still listen to the mall, still formed opinions, still had a massive effect on them.
So that that line between, you know, advocacy and just stating what you're using and explaining why can become blurred, I think.
And I have a habit of, at least I think I do of kind of bowing out of conversations where I might be seen to be an advocate and not being critical there.
I'm just trying to reconcile my experience with that.
And John, I know you said there was one more thing and I forgot it, but I know you said you had to go, but I wanted to ask you because I think I'll get a kick in if I don't.
Did you guys, how did you guys come across the New Year's Eve show? Were you listening? Are you HPR listeners? Anyway, or did somebody say, here, I heard your name on this one or check this out?
The way I came across it was I was, I was going through the bad voltage inbox and I was just because when we do an episode about voltage, we often read out emails and stuff like that.
And I saw the email again from Ken.
And I thought, oh, I'll go check out like what they did.
And so, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't join on New Year's Eve because I already had plans with the family, but I thought, I'll go and check it out.
And then I went there and I was quite surprised to see, you know, we discussed the world of John O'Bake and which.
So yeah.
Okay, those are the good show notes, sound chase will be happy with that.
How about you, Ak, was it seeing thing or did John also say, hey, they talked about us.
On that specific one, John, I said to me, hey, they talked about us.
Can't listen.
So I went out.
HPR generally, I, I drop in from time to time. I have the huge list of podcasts and I never get to listen to any of them.
I mean, I hardly get time that most of the time I don't even get to listen to the whole of the bad voltage show.
Some of the reason that is either I honestly don't have the time, but an awful lot of Linux based open source based podcasts aren't particularly talking about things which are particularly relevant to what I do.
And so if I am listening to something that I am limited time, I'm probably more likely to find myself listening to a no JS podcast or something instead.
Yeah.
Because I'm more interested in the technology on top than I am in the operating system itself as we previously discussed.
A part of the reason I'm involved in bad voltage is that it's precisely that it's about, you know, I don't know if this turns you an advert, but which one talk about technology generally, it's not just about open source software.
Some of it's about films, some bits about applications, some of it's about gaming because that level of stuff is what I'm interested in.
Now that's changed from 2004, but I don't believe that's tidied with my belief, otherwise in free software.
I think just I used to find things like building a computer from components, fun.
I used to find compiling my kernel to do new stuff, fun, and now I just don't, but I think a lot of that's because I've just got older.
I don't know because I dislike the freedom aspect a bit more than I used to.
I've just got to the stage where now I'm a bit old.
I've done plenty of it and at least to some extent I have a bit more money now.
So the idea of paying someone to build me a computer rather than doing it myself,
spending the whole time dropping screws on the floor trying to understand what type of RAM to buy in order to save myself 45 quid.
I just think the hell with it. Well, there's a thing as well as get a pretty machine to pay someone to build it.
There's a thing as well as when your hobby turns into your career, you know, you go from spending a couple of hours, three hours in the evening, playing around with Linux and open source.
Well, that becomes your career and you're doing it for 14 hours a day.
You kind of want to do other stuff in your evening.
The mechanics car is always the last to get fixed.
And this is important, right? I'm not John.
He has music. He does barbecuing things like that.
What I do for fun is right code.
Right?
But yeah, barbecue go off and all the, you know, we think up a new podcast and then suddenly I have to learn how to install the forum with juju on as you're right.
So what I do is my hobby is still the stuff I'm doing every day.
I don't have another outlet other than reading. Apart from the weekend, I spent my daughter at your brilliant.
So spending some time not having to do the more annoying low level grovely bit is nice.
Yeah, I, I didn't mean that you had to defend, you know, not every single Linux podcast that exists.
I'm trying to explain the reasoning.
Yeah, no, of course, of course, everybody has a limited amount of time and an infinite number of cool podcasts.
When Ken forwarded the email to me, the journals first email and then when you got involved at.
I had a couple of different emotions, all, you know, one right after the other.
The first one I was actually pretty flattered that the two of you guys had listened to the episode or we're listening to hacker public radio where I didn't know.
That was the first thing.
The next thing was a bit of panic and oh shit, what did I say?
Did I say anything that, you know, would upset anybody?
No, I didn't say anything nice about John Oh, and I apologize for that.
And I know I said some nice things or at least I tried to say some nice things about act.
So there was that little bit of panic.
But I think it's kind of opened my eyes now, made me be a hope will be a little bit more aware in the future that people might be listening.
Because at the time had I thought that you guys were listening, I don't think I would have said anything different.
You know what I mean? I would have tried not to be as harsh as I was.
Because I did listen back today and I was quite harsh and I apologize for that.
And I just I want to thank you guys for calling me on it, for confronting me on it, for not being dicks about it.
You know, you know what, Pokey, in my mind, the true test of the person is not what they say.
It's the way they respond to the conversation.
And you have demonstrated an amazing level of sincerity in this.
And I think it was honorable in the way that you've let us come on and talk about it.
And you've been really cool about it.
So, you know, no feelings have been hurt.
If you haven't said that stuff, we would never have this conversation.
This was a great conversation. It has been a lot of fun.
I certainly appreciate it. I know that the fat man appreciates it as well.
Yeah, I would agree with that wholeheartedly.
Yes, hopefully we've given you some food for thought if nothing else.
I'm going to listen back and think a lot about some stuff.
I will point out that if you want to get me listening to your shows, given the limited time I have,
the way to do it is not to record shows which are 36 hours long.
Hey, that episode was only five and a half hours. We cut it out.
Well, yes, thank you for taking some time to talk to us.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
And I know in the text here for the listeners benefit.
In the text here, Jono said he had to go and he's got a meeting and he's got to go.
And I just wanted to make sure I said that before he left.
So, feel free to cut loose and act.
If you don't mind, would you mind staying on for just a couple more minutes?
I had one or two more things if I can recall them.
Oh, yeah, now I'm happy to stick around for a little bit.
I mean, I'm not too long because it is half past midday.
Right on. Okay.
Bye, guys.
And I turned back into a pumpkin half an hour ago.
Well, enjoy because it's true.
Thank you.
Enjoy your meeting, Baconio.
Talk to you later.
Thank you a lot, Jono.
Bye.
All right, so I guess I've lost track of so many things I should have been right now in the whole time
that you guys were wind bagging.
But one thing that that kind of that I wanted to say, and I wanted to say it early on,
you know, I started Linux out in like 2006, 2007 time frame.
And I picked up, you know, lug radio as a podcast then.
And just fell in love with it instantly.
I loved the show.
I loved the way you guys bounced off one another.
I loved the way you guys could take the piss out of one another and be happy about it.
I just thought it was a great show.
I went back and listened to every episode until I caught up and then I listened until you guys finished.
And you in particular were one of my early role models in Linux.
And I've always, you know, kind of taken with me that the things that you said then and the things that you,
you know, brought to my mind, it made me think about then.
And at the end, when you, I don't know, it didn't feel like you were just saying,
I'm going to shut up about it, but keep doing what I'm doing.
It didn't feel that way to me.
And through the conversation that we've had tonight, I don't think it is exactly that way.
But what is, what does that make you feel that you've changed?
I mean, I don't know whether you care that the 2004 hack was my role model.
But I'm not so sure that the 2014 hack is that which is fine.
I think to some extent, that's because I'll use a grant upon.
And to some extent, because your own views have matured to the point where you are confident in how you do it.
How you feel at the moment.
The fact that we've just had an hour, hour and a half conversation where you stood your corner, defended your viewpoint is great.
I suspect in 2004, if we'd had that discussion and you weren't sure, then you'd have been less forthright, less willing to stand by your opinion,
because you weren't as convinced of it.
One of the things I think, having gone back and listened to the last bit of LaGuardia,
some of it was a fit of peak more than anything else.
I think it was me saying, you know what, I've been the last five years battling for people to care about freedom.
No one cares, the hell with all of you, right?
I'll come up with my nose despite my face, but that's kind of right.
Yeah, and to some extent, I'm confident that's what I was saying.
I am semi-confident that that's how I actually felt, but it didn't stick.
I'm happy to hear that.
I have found myself to this day, and pleasingly so,
I feel uncomfortable if I step away from open source stuff to a large extent.
So I felt slightly uncomfortable the whole year using the iPhone.
And some of it was because I genuinely wanted to experience how the other half felt.
Some of it was because the stuff about the triumphant earlier that I wanted to try of a highly active, highly designed, motivated, and beauty motivated community,
even if that meant giving up on open source.
Sure, sure.
I don't think anyone can, you know, maybe for dip in the water.
Exactly, but I have felt to some extent slightly uncomfortable the whole time I've been doing it.
And there have been a number of occasions when I've had my view reinforced.
I mean, the examples, stupid examples, I gave earlier, like the fact that no different keyboard for you.
And you've got to use iBooks to open PDFs and things like that.
I've found those things to be annoying precisely because I expect that sort of thing to be changeable by me.
And it is, it's when I have an opinion about how I want to do something.
And the platform vendor has an opinion about how they want it to be done.
And those opinions differ.
And I can't fix it.
To some extent, I found I find frustrating.
But one of the ways my views have changed, I think, is the not even 10 years, no five years ago.
I would have said, then your job is to get in there and fix the platform.
And now, I think, then your job is to find another platform which is more like what you want.
One of the...
Those are the big streams.
Well, one of the big arguments I had with...
And not an argument.
A discussion point I have with my wife, my ex-wife now.
And she convinced me of this was our views on the different reasons to elect a politician.
I thought that what you should be doing is electing a politician who agrees with you in everything.
And if the politician...
That's impossible.
Who gets it?
Who gets it? He doesn't agree with you in everything.
You should hassle them until they don't.
You should try and must not spoil your thing.
She said, what you do is you look at those who are available to you on the menu.
And you pick the one who is closest to your opinion.
And at first, I wildly massively disagree with her.
But I've kind of come down to her point of view on this.
And I've done the same thing, I think, with software.
I find Ubuntu to be closest to the way I think that a thing should work.
And that's why I use it.
But so I don't use Android because it doesn't think as closely to the way I think.
But if it doesn't, that's not the Android people's fault.
And if I go to them and I say, but it doesn't work this way, they can say, well, you know what?
We don't care about your opinion.
And they don't have to.
You know, they shouldn't feel obliged to care about my opinion.
It's not incorrect that they're doing something different.
Even no matter how strongly I feel about it, they can say, well, we are plotting this course.
We're not obliged to listen to you.
The reason for building an operating system, building a platform should not be a distillation of what your users want.
A politician should not be merely a mouthpiece for the majority view of his constituency.
Well, the analogy breaks down in that your choice that you're picking on the menu of politicians usually does not consist of more than, say, ten or rarely that many people.
And as it gets closer to election day, it narrows down to two.
So your choices are extremely nice.
I mean, I to in the U.S.
Yeah, I can say this is one of the reasons that this analogy is probably more appropriate to me than it is to you is the English politics is not the same as your politics.
So, so you ignore the political.
Okay, yeah, because here in the U.S.
I have written none of the above on more ballots.
I've ever voted.
Yes.
And I'm not going to get into why I think your politics is dreadful.
But I am the reason I think things like it's a good idea that elementary OS exists is not because I want to use it.
I think a lot of what they're doing is wrong.
But I do not believe that what the way Ubuntu works should be decided by what the users of Ubuntu want.
I think it should be decided by where was actually making Ubuntu itself.
And then if you don't, if you disagree massively with those people, if you really don't like the way Unity works, then stop using Ubuntu.
That's fine.
Right?
And if elementary OS is an example,
I think it would be a compromise between what users want and what developers want to build.
And ideally, you know, you'd be a bit responsive to your users, absolutely.
But equally, that flows both ways.
Your users ought to be a bit responsive to your design direction rather than say your design direction is wrong through what we want.
The one should be, well, this is the way Ubuntu is going.
If I don't agree with that,
OK, not a problem.
I'll find something which is more in agreement with my viewpoint.
At which point you go to Arch or you go to Linux Mint or you go to elementary OS or you go to Android or you go to iOS or you go to Windows or the Mac or whatever.
And I have no problem with that.
And that's changed.
But I don't think that's, I think we should change about my views of software.
It's changed about my view on the world.
And software has just been a logical outfall of that.
That I am much more of the opinion that I'd rather have a strong design goal in mind.
And then have people choose which strong design goal they choose to allow themselves with.
Rather than to say, let's get people together, find out what they want and then build that.
Sure.
Sure.
Now, in the beginning of that answer, you talked about the end of log radio, where you kind of said, you know, stuff it to all of it, or I forget your exact words said there.
What exactly, what pushed you over the edge of what were the contributing factors in making that decision?
Two things at that time.
And making the decision at that time.
At that time, I think there were two things.
And I can't be wholly sure about this because I'm not reporting on what I think I'm reporting on what I believe I thought.
Yes.
Of course.
Right.
And I don't exactly remember.
So some of this is memory and some of this is deduction.
But the first and interestingly, the two reasons I have are possibly contradictory.
But you know, that's the way it works.
The first one is that I'd, in my mind, at least I'd spent years advocating free software and I'd got precisely nowhere.
Now, in practice, that wasn't the case.
Some people didn't listen.
I believe at least some of the things I said made a difference, whatever.
Yeah.
But in general, my experience of saying to someone you should be using free software was that they then did not go on to do so.
I'm sorry I didn't email you at the time and tell you that exactly that.
I mean, I'm sorry, but it wouldn't have helped enough.
I don't think that it felt like banging my head against a brick wall that we were never going to get anywhere.
No one bloody cared.
And I didn't understand.
I spent five years not understanding how anyone didn't see this with the clarity that I did.
And so I thought, well, what the hell with it then?
Why should I bother?
I'll just, you know, I might as well just go ahead and use my, why should I spend my time giving it up?
You know, making the sacrifices that I'm doing, spending five years without Wi-Fi.
With no one bloody cares anyway, screw it.
Now, at least I'll get wireless in my laptop, hooray.
But the second reason was that I think even then I started to become aware of the way that that kind of advocacy by kind of advocacy was viewed and that it was actually making the situation worse.
And so I didn't want to be associated with it.
And so stepping away from it, that obviously making it clear that I wasn't that sort of person felt better in my mind.
To take an example.
Now I feel terrible because I, you know, I should have, I could have, you know, emailed you at the time just to say thank you for, you know, for your words and the things that you made me think about.
And you weren't the only one, you know, I don't mean to say that, but you certainly were an influence on me in my early time with Linux and with free software specifically.
So now I, now I feel guilty that I didn't do that and keep in keep in the same had I, had I written a letter.
I think the rule of thumb is for every, for every letter you get or for every email you get, there's a hundred more people who feel, you know, relatively the same who didn't bother to write.
So now I'm one of the hundred who didn't and I feel like a shit heel.
No, no, not at all.
And I look at the kind of mindset I was in at that point, successes wouldn't have weighed against the failures.
I don't think, but and as I say, I think a lot, that was a fit of peaking didn't last long anyway.
And I have, I have moderated at least one of those views.
I'm now somewhere in between two of those and I am comfortable with where I sit.
But I wasn't kidding about not wanting to be associated with free software advocacy because I don't, I think it's got such a bad name for itself that it's actually making the problem worse.
I don't know if I can agree with that.
I know there are examples, but I think there are counter examples as well.
I don't think it's a one-sided argument.
I said I don't want to keep up on like doing it.
No, no, no, I certainly agree there are counter examples. You know, I think there are people who do do it well.
In general, after 35 years, we have not come up with arguments which convince the vast population of the world.
And while we keep making the same arguments that we had before, other people have popped up and eaten our lunch.
I mean, look at bug number one in launch pad.
The problem was Microsoft dominate the world of computing.
And that bug is now clutters because Microsoft no longer dominate the world of computing.
But the purple people have taken over was mass and it should have been, it could have been us.
But we don't know how to make an argument which says what we do is more advantageous to you, general public, than the alternatives.
Because we're trading on the fact that it's open, which to a large extent people don't care about.
Now, either they don't care about it because we're not articulating it properly or don't care about it because they genuinely don't care about it.
One of the reasons I support what a bunch is doing now is that it's different.
I think it's something different. I think it's a much slower moving vehicle than that.
The advocacy of free software, perhaps not in the extreme examples that you find offensive, but just in talking to people in having a discussion like we're having here, it takes time.
You can't jump in in 2004 or 2005 and say, holy crap, look at this Ubuntu thing, it works pretty good.
Then expect it to be taken in the place of windows when Vista comes out and fails.
Yes, it should have. I agree with you. It should have on its technical merits alone.
But if you're selling something on its technical merits, then there is no incentive for anyone to consider the freedom.
If you sell something on its freedom and the people buy into it on that, there's plenty of incentive for those people to work towards improving it technically.
I don't see that door swinging.
But your argument there is that freedom is our unique selling point, our USP.
But it's a USP that nobody wants to buy.
I've spent 10 years making this argument, 15 years.
Free software as a whole has been doing it for a third of a century.
We haven't moved one frigging Iota closer to us.
I think we have, though.
People involved now than there were five years ago or 10 years ago.
I wasn't here 10 years ago, so I'll say five.
Yes, but there's also a lot more people involved in the wider tech community.
The group of people who use technology has grown.
Yes, and an open source has grown with it, but we have about 1% of the market.
And we had about 1% of the market 10 years ago.
Nothing has changed.
The 1% that we have now is so much more significant than the 1% that it used to be.
Because the market has grown at the edges of age.
The younger kids now are getting touch screen devices at three, four, five years old.
They're getting phones at 10 and 11 years old.
And the same thing on the upper end of the scale, the older folks.
Now, for a kid, a young kid, they're not going to be able to understand freedom.
It's not in their ability to comprehend it.
And for older folks, they, I hate to generalize here, but maybe they just don't have the time to care.
But as far as the people, you know, high school kids, college kids, professionals,
that 1% is more significant than the smaller percent that it used to be.
It's massively, massively disagree with you.
Sony, bring out the PlayStation 4.
It sells a million in the first die.
Yeah.
Are we calling the PlayStation 4 general purpose computer?
My point is these are people who are involved with technology.
Who weren't involved with technology 10 years ago?
Apple bring out the iPhone, people queue around the block for it.
A bunch of say, we're going to build a phone and it's all going to be open source.
And they can't get 40,000 people to sign up for it.
Right?
What we've got is a community of people who work on the software.
Find no problem.
And a community of people who like talking about it.
But we haven't actually grown in power.
We haven't grown in influence.
We're not actually making a larger proportion of people's lives better.
Right?
The whole point of doing this is to bring the benefits of open source to everybody.
But we're not doing that.
If for every 100 people who become involved in technology at all,
the same one of them gets involved in open source.
I understand what you're saying.
But for every 100 people that get involved and the one is involved with open source,
the other 99 are not the same 99 that they used to be.
10 years ago, the other 99 were professional business people.
They were teachers.
They were people in government.
They weren't eight-year-old kids.
Our side may not carry any more weight than it used to,
but their 99 carries less in terms of mind share.
Now, short carries just as much in sheer numbers.
It may even carry more in dollars because young kids don't seem to be very, very frugal with purchasing software and whatnot.
But the people who have the ability to influence how these things work underneath
and how they can be taken advantage of,
I think that particular demographic, that 1% that you're talking about,
and I don't think it's 1%.
To me, it feels like that's grown as well.
But assuming that it is the 1%, it's just as strong as it ever was.
Did I lose you?
No, here we go.
Now, you did for a second.
There, you dropped off.
All right.
What did you hear me, sir?
Yeah, it was like that.
Yeah, you were talking about the...
How do you think the 1% have not necessarily more dollars,
but you think they're more valuable in terms of influence?
Okay, well, I'm going to say that they're just the same as they were.
They haven't changed in the past 10 years, is what I'm saying.
It's the other 99% of people, the other 99 people get involved for every 100,
they don't...
I don't think there is significant as they were 10 years ago,
because now you're talking about kids...
I mean, really, you're talking about kids.
Oh, wow.
I mean, whereas 10 years ago, the other 99 people were...
As I was saying, business people...
I am repeating myself.
I know, but now I'm trying to repeat a few.
They were business people, all of them.
Teachers, people in government.
They were more influential than that 99 people are now.
This is fascinating.
We're looking at the same data,
and drawing diametrically opposite conclusions.
You're looking at the scale with the 1% on it,
and saying, this doesn't weigh any more than it used to.
I'm looking at the other side of the scale with the 99 people on it,
saying they weigh less.
That's the part I don't think they do.
I think one of the triumphs of what we,
the wider technology community, have done over the last 30 years,
is make people's lives easier with technology.
Pick an example.
My daughter is nearly 14,
and she will never know, never understand,
never even be able to conceptualize the experience of being lost.
She's never going to be lost because she's grown up
with a device in her pocket with a GPS on it.
Wait, the technology community made that happen.
Can she read a map?
She wouldn't have a map.
If you don't know where you're standing,
do you carry an HZ with you wherever you go?
Not at all.
That's the point.
That's what technology has brought.
The idea that you never...
What the native said.
Forget an Alice of a Town.
Oh, yeah, I do as a matter of fact.
Oh, really?
Yes, absolutely.
I carry a map everywhere.
Yes, maybe I know I'm weird in this.
I'm a map guy.
Sorry.
Yes, sorry.
Then find your mental.
Most people don't do this.
Great.
But that's an example of how technology has entered people's lives
in a way that didn't happen before.
And I think the fact that people are now used to that
is incredibly influential,
much more so than kind of top down hierarchical,
we see this technology,
and therefore you have to start using it,
which businesses and government and teachers do.
The fact that technology has become an integral part of people's lives
in a way that it wasn't quarter of a century ago,
I think that's a massive achievement on the part of the technology community.
But I would have liked all that extra technology which entered people's lives
to be more open source than it is.
An our current way of trying to make it be more open source than it is
isn't working.
So we should try something else.
When someone else Android did try something else,
when they took open source
and then built something great with it,
everyone's gone to it,
almost no one who's gone to Android has gone that way
because it is open source,
it's because they built a better product
where the better in this case is because it's cheaper
or because it's more available
or because it does roughly what an iPhone does for half the money
or because it's actually better
because it's got more apps or whatever,
it doesn't matter,
it's better for most people
which is why it's selling over half the phones on the market.
And then once they're there,
you can then say,
oh, by the way,
all this is made possible with open source.
It's an open source, a good idea.
And people understand that argument
because at that point,
they can see what it has brought to them,
not what it will theoretically bring them,
what it has brought them already.
And then they don't want to give it up.
When you say to somebody,
look with this Android thing does for you,
this is the power of open source,
the power of free software.
That's not what they're looking at.
They could give a shit about Android.
It's the apps that they're installing
and very, very few of those
are going to be open source
or are going to be the free software
or mostly what you're talking about is Candy Crush
and the YouTube player and the YouTube uploader.
You're not talking about free software anymore.
Now, so you can't say to them,
look at what this is.
I don't even think that you can,
oh, shit, I forgot the other thing.
I mean, I think that's a fair comment,
but we're not in the business of convincing people
that everything they do has to be open source.
What we're doing is bringing the benefits of open source
to them.
And the fact that they have an open platform
is helpful to them.
Having open source apps,
we haven't particularly come up with reason why
that would be a good way.
In what way is it beneficial to them
for Android to be open source,
as opposed to iPhone, which is not.
How does that help them?
Because it's open in terms of mindset
is what's more important than because it's open source.
But that open mindset is at least partially driven
by the fact that they are open source.
So the fact that you can install a bunch of extra keyboards
on Android is not strictly related to the fact
that it's open source, software.
But it is integral to the concept,
because they've gone into it saying
this stuff is built using contributions from other people.
We are accepting of the idea that there are people
other than us, the constructors,
who might be able to make this better.
Therefore, we'll build APIs to allow them to do so.
We'll document it.
We'll take their changes and roll them into future versions.
Yes, people will bump their head into those constraints,
though, just root the iPhone and change
what they want to change anyway.
I absolutely absolutely disagree with you.
I haven't rooted my iPhone.
I haven't rooted my Android either,
but it seems to be pretty popular with the people around me.
Yeah, but that's because we're in a very, very, very tiny bubble.
Android, right?
No, no, I'm talking about civilians here,
not tech people, not computer people.
I would be shocked out of my tree.
I mean, Android gets one million activations a day
or a million activations an hour or something now.
And if you lined up those millions of people over it.
Yeah, it's some ridiculously high figure.
And if you lined up those million people and said,
how many of you plan on rooting your phone?
If 10 of them even knew what it meant, I'd be surprised.
Okay, but if you said to the same million people,
how many of you are interested in talking about your phone,
the ones that put their hands up, they're going to root it.
No, no, no, no, no, no, I don't think so.
So the rest of them is just a toaster oven.
Yes, I mean, my parents, as an example,
both have Android smartphones.
And my dad likes how that he can really see mail on his.
On his, my mum likes fact, she can play little games
and send messages with Viper.
And neither of them are, you know,
both of them have got probably 10, 12 apps.
But I think that's, that's fine.
It needs to be a bit smarter than a feature phone.
But it doesn't have to be the Nexus 4 running Ubuntu,
or the Nexus 4 dual booting Ubuntu and Android
that I have sitting next to me right now.
A great, right, entirely.
It's a toaster oven to a lot of people and that's fine.
But there is a massive community of people
who are not interested in rooting their phone
because they don't want to fiddle with the platform.
They're interested in talking about the games
and the apps that run it.
They're interested in how to configure it
and how to work with it.
But they don't want to, they don't want to change the platform.
Exactly.
And I want to make the best of these people
or not the people attempting to change out their keyboard
or their, you know, whatever interface that some of us have.
There I disagree with you, you see.
I think there is a massive community of people
who want to do things to Android.
This is like system configuration.
Yeah, but not changing Android itself.
They're not interested in code.
They're not even programmers.
They're power users.
Right. Right.
And the power users community is way bigger
than the actually hack on Android community.
But the distinction between Android and us
is that our power users community
and our actually hack on the platform community
have historically been the same thing.
Sure.
And if you try and separate them,
some of the people who are really power users
feel that they're being denied their right
to hack on the platform.
Even though they're not really that interested.
If you say, well, you can't do that anymore,
it seems like they're being cut off from something.
Right. And so there's pushback.
Right. And that's those are the people I'm talking about.
Those are the people who are going to root their phone anyway.
Yeah, I just, I think that that separation
of platform hackers and power users
then being two separate groups is a good idea.
It means that your platform makes faster progress
because you're not constantly involved
in fighting with your power user community
who want the right to demand that it does different things
on feel betrayed when it doesn't.
That's the distinction between us and Android Nios.
And much as I said earlier,
much as I would like to believe that
the way we do things is right.
The fact that Android Nios have both been created
since Ubuntu was made up their own Linux distribution
since the Ubuntu OS was created.
Ubuntu and Android have been created since then
and have invented a whole complete different type of computing
and have taken over the world.
And we haven't budged an inch.
Suggest that maybe we should say,
let's take a tip from them.
Yeah, you've said that a few times tonight
and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around
which part you think we haven't budged about
and which parts,
which of their tactics is admirable.
So I just, yeah.
And which, you know,
once those things are defined,
you know, which of their admirable tactics,
you know, I could consider ethical or moral.
So at some moment I have to wrap my brain around
and I don't think I can keep up anymore.
You're also much more well spoken than I am.
You're a lot better at coming up with these arguments
and articulating them very well right on the spot.
So I'm trying my best just to keep up
and you're out of voice.
So bear in mind that when I said this has been a 10-year journey
to arrive at where I have arrived at,
that's been 10 years of thinking about it.
So I have spent a certain amount of time articulating this sort of thing
inside my area.
Yeah, and I'm in the guts of it.
Sometimes that you've said us,
I get a step back and say,
not me.
I'm barely a power user.
I'm just a user.
I cannot count myself in the group of people
who, you know, I'm not a programmer.
I'm not a developer.
I'm not a power user.
I honestly am not.
So I can't, you know,
claim to be part of that.
I guess step back and beg off.
But I appreciate you considering me an equal.
I mean, you know, we're all one thing, right?
I am what I am because of who we all are.
Right on.
Boy, that sounds like a good line end on,
unless you've got more.
You got anything I didn't think to ask you?
No, no, no, no, I think.
I believe I've articulated my viewpoint.
Whether anyone agrees with it or not.
Well, that's something else,
which has changed is that now I'm,
if I'd have articulated my view in 2005,
and people didn't agree,
I'd have thought I must try and convince them
because I truly believe I am right
and given that they're wrong,
they will feel better when they understand things
with the clarity and beauty that I do.
And now I think I'm comfortable in my viewpoint
and if someone disagrees, I'll just say fine.
You know what I think.
You know the reasons that I think it.
If you disagree with them, whatever.
Right.
I'm out of the game of advocacy
because I'm no longer as interested in making other people feel
as I do.
But again, I don't think that particular point
is to do with software is because I'm now 37
rather than 27.
Yeah.
And you mentioned earlier how it was frustrating for you
to realize that people aren't seeing things
with the same clarity.
And it is a frustrating place to come from.
It just, I don't know that I would ever expect people
to see things as clearly as someone who's thought
about these things.
I can certainly see expecting a person to do it, you know,
especially if you sat down and spend time with them.
And that would really give me a headache after bashing
my head against that wall long enough.
But when you said that you were frustrated
that people didn't see it that way,
I almost thought it was a ridiculous point of view
to have, but I could see being trapped in it,
not knowing how to get out of it and be frustrated.
Certainly being frustrated with it.
That's exactly the thing.
I mean, yes, some extent it was ridiculous simply
and the idea that I should be able to make a difference
on that larger scale is less important to me than it used to be.
And as I mentioned, I'm less full of person vinegar
than I was 10 years ago just because I'm older.
But I mean, I have a daughter.
Yes.
This sort of thing opens your eyes to what actually is important
and the idea of which side the launcher is on,
not quite as likely.
I didn't realize you were the same age.
I thought you were a bit older than me.
Were the same age.
No, well, I should be 38 in eight days,
but I'm still 37 for the moment.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
So you got a year on me then.
But I got two more kids than you've got.
I've got two daughters and a son.
I'm happy with just the one.
And we're tied in X, Y.
I believe.
I'm not necessarily sure.
Well, it's with that competition to be honest with you.
Yeah, you're exactly right.
It's been wonderful talking to you.
You're a gentleman and John O was as well.
And I'm sure is still.
I don't think things have changed that much in the past hour.
You guys have been fantastic to talk to again.
I appreciate you calling me out on my bullshit.
Because God knows the only thing worse than bullshit
is insisting on living with it.
You know, because someone didn't call you out on it.
So I appreciate that.
And and thanks for helping on Hacker Public Radio.
Every show helps this.
You know, and this shows going to be a good one
and going to get a lot of listeners, I think.
No problem.
Thank you for inviting me on.
No, you invited yourself, don't.
You can't thank me for that.
Thank you for writing a little bit of space
which I demanded to you.
I can see your point.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I guess it's just to say thanks again.
And good night.
Excellent.
Good night.
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So, Poke is, are we recording now?
Yeah, I'll just start recording.
We'll officially start the show.
I'll do an announcement.
But unless you don't want me to record yet,
I can stop it.
No, no, no.
No, that's fine.
I didn't even know he did recording.
Oh, yeah, it does.
Beautiful recording.
You can do multi-channel recording too,
which is really nice.
Is this just like bowing to mumble, if you don't have thing?
Say it again.
Is this just like bowing to mumble?
Yeah.
Ah, man.
John, how did you know that?
It turns out that mumble may have evolved a bit since we last
looked at it for you.
Mumble is pretty great.
There's only like two or three things
that I find annoying about mumble.
One of them is that if you do a multi-channel recording,
the tracks get out of sync,
and you have to manually add silence or remove silence
to sync them back up as you're editing,
which is not that big a deal if you're going to edit anyway.
And the other thing that I,
some people find annoying, I don't,
because I prefer push to talk.
But if everybody leaves their mic open the whole time,
eventually you will get packet loss.
You'll get packet errors.
And the only way really to clear it
is to just key your mic off for a bit and stop translating it.
Trans, bang, and let everything catch up.
Cool.
Yeah, that's pretty neat.
I like this.
Didn't realise that.
Yeah.
I can say, when we, last time I used this was at Canonical.
And either it didn't do recording,
or it did, and nobody knew about it.
I can think of a few conversations.
It would have been quite useful to record, actually.
Yeah.
If it didn't, if it did it,
no one knew about it, because I, no, this is cool.
I had no idea that it recorded.
Very cool.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is quite cool, actually.
Nice.
I believe it has done recording for as long as I've ever been using it,
which in two, three years.
It's possible.
It's possible, I'll just think that happens.
Time.
More often than you imagine.
Ha!
Fuck off.
Right.
Yeah, we were saying while you were
restarting Pulse Audio or everyone else.
That I would quite how this could have worked.
And Punky was just about to explain.
Let's go.
Well, I had no plan.
I, I guess.
Well, if you guys are ready to start,
I'll just do the intro.
We can start.
Yeah.
I mean.
