Episode: 4079
Title: HPR4079: The Corresponding Source
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4079/hpr4079.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:20:47

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This is hacker public radio episode 4,079 for Thursday, the 21st of March 2024.
Today's show is entitled The Corresponding Source.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 18 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, free as in freedom is dead, long live the corresponding source.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Previously we featured an episode of free as in freedom here in HQR, from the good folks over
at the Software Freedom Conservatory. They now have a new podcast called The Corresponding Source,
which I found out about our good friend, fellow podcaster, and all around,
nice guy, Dan Lynch. And I'm posting the first episode of The Corresponding Source.
So you know that free as in freedom is no more and that you should switch your feeds over to
this new podcast, The Corresponding Source. So with that, sit back, relax, and enjoy the first
episode of The Corresponding Source.
This is episode 00 of The Corresponding Source.
Hi, I'm Karen Sandler. And I'm Bradley Kuhn. And this is Corresponding Source.
This is a new show that will be doing for hopefully many episodes that's going to have lots of
great information about open source, free software, software freedom, and software rights.
Yeah, I'd say it probably also digital rights, electronic freedom, digital autonomy. I'm just
being silly now, but you're not smiling. We are in the same room this time, which we often are,
we weren't in our old show. That's right. Many of our listeners who might be joining this show
as we start will remember we previously had for many episodes a show called Free as in Freedom
that ran for quite a long time. We had another podcast even before that. But we're trying to do
something a little bit different with this particular podcast. Here, we're going to kind of start
from the beginning. We're going to talk about, well, first in this episode, we're going to introduce
you to who we are and why we care about these issues. And then what we're hoping to do is have
a series of episodes that are about the beginnings and inner workings and how free software and
then open source became to be and what the things are that you need to know about issues related to
policy, licensing, community, and just generally all the information you might need to know that's
not in the software itself or the software's documentation to get involved and get excited about
doing things in open source and free software. And our goal is to provide all of that background
and introductory information, but also to talk about some of the hot issues and more complicated
subjects that come along that are connected to that background and history.
And what we're going to have actually is two different feeds that you can subscribe to. We know
we have a lot of wonderful listeners that we like coming from our old show. I'm sure they're very
thrilled that we're back even under a new name. And they're probably going to be more interested in
the more advanced topics and current issues shows we're going to do. And we're targeting this might
vary a little bit, but we're talking to have every other show be one of the shows in the series of
introductory information about open source and free software. And then every other show will be
about more of a recent topic and so forth. We'll have a feed. The main feed will have both
those types of shows in it. And for those who want one or the other, get a can subscribe to
a specific feed for one or the other type of episode. That's cool. I didn't realize that's how
we were going to do it. That is how we're going to do it. I've had this plan in my head for so long
can. Finally, we're executing on the excellent plan that I've devised for the future of the
corresponding source. I'm here for it. My question is, is it corresponding source or the
corresponding source? Let's explain what that means. Shall we? Yeah. We picked this name from one of
the most important and popular and famous free software licenses called the general public license.
And in fact, it's called in GPL version two, the complete corresponding source and in GPL
version three, it's defined term. If you don't know what that is, don't worry about it. You'll
learn in a future show called corresponding source with CNS capitalized. And that's what we took
it from because getting the source code is one of the most important things, in fact, possibly the
most important thing that you get with your software rights with open source and free software.
And we're also corresponding. And I hope that we're a source for important information going
forward. Did I ruin it by being too explicit about the fun other meanings of the words?
Well, I thought the pun was obvious, but maybe it wasn't. I don't know, but I like it so much that,
you know, I belabor it. I came up with it. Karen liked it, but I came up with it.
Riley totally came up with it. You got the credit. That's great. Well, why don't we start by
introducing ourselves? Karen, do you want to tell your story and your background and how you got
involved in open source and free software? And just tell us your whole tell us your whole live
story, Karen. I was going to say, sure, I'd be happy to, but that would take a very long time.
I'm probably not going to talk about all of the intricacies of my story during this one podcast,
but or this one episode, but we'll probably come back to some of the important pieces of the
story over time. My story sort of has like a lot of relevance to a lot of different issues
about free and open source software. The basic story about who I am and why I care so much about
these topics is that I have a heart condition that I was born with. It's called hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy. It means I literally have a big heart. So like what happened to the grinch after
he started caring about everyone? Three sizes to large or no? It is three sizes too large. Wow,
exactly. Yes. And that's why you're such a wonderful person. No. The whole thing is not three
sizes too big. Just pieces of it are parts of it are and really it's not just that it's so big.
It's that parts of the heart are thick and so the heart muscle is kind of stiff and it doesn't
beat properly and it's totally fine. I am generally asymptomatic generally. I'm glad to hear that.
But I'm trying to, yeah, I see I know this story, but I'm trying to react to Karen's stories if
I'd never heard it before. I'm trying anyway. Bradley has heard this story like a million times.
Our listeners haven't. So please tell me more. Many of our listeners have heard this story,
so bear with me if you have. But please tell us more.
Well, okay. So I'm at a very high risk of suddenly dying. They often call it sudden death.
And so I have an implanted pacemaker defibrillator. Just in case I go into sudden death,
my defibrillator should shock me and I will be saved. But I haven't actually needed to be shocked
so far. What has happened so far is that I have only been shocked unnecessarily.
And why would a device shock you unnecessarily?
So when I was working out as myself a young person, I was on the rower and my defibrillator picked
that up and thought that I was in a very dangerous rhythm. And so it shocked me. And that was just
the first time. The later on, I was shocked when I was pregnant because my heart was
palpitating, which is super normal for a pregnant person. When you're pregnant,
your heart just can have palpitations. And it's not a big deal if you're not pregnant.
If you're pregnant and you have palpitations, doctors are always like, oh, pregnant people have
palpitations. Don't worry about it. But when you have a defibrillator, the defibrillator picks up
the palpitations and things. Oh, no, this is a dangerous heart rate. And that's what happened to me.
And it shocked me multiple times, even though I didn't need treatment.
Because it just didn't know what to do with that information and thought I was in a dangerous
rhythm. And the only way I could reliably stop it from shocking me was to take drugs to slow my
heart rate down, which made it difficult to even walk up a flight of stairs.
So that setting was not even adjustable by the electrophysiologist or anybody else. They
couldn't adjust it once it was in your body to do different things. Yeah, to adjust the algorithm
to allow for palpitations is simply not... It's not even a conversation you can even have.
And one of the reasons is that I'm a decade later from when I started, I'm still extremely
young for a defibrillator patient. Patients with defibrillators are only 15% are under the age of 65.
And the set of people who are pregnant and have defibrillators is teeny tiny. So there's no
information about they don't spend the time. And so living with my defibrillator all this time
stands for the proposition that, you know, our technology really may not be made for us in the
uses that we rely on it for. And what are we going to be able to do when it fails? And so
my heart device became a metaphor for the software we rely on. And it just, it totally blew my
mind about what this means for the technology we rely on, what we need as a society to be able to
move forward when things fail. And you know, I've been struggling with the concept of this ever
since because I can't believe that it took me being unnecessarily shocked by my defibrillator to
realize how terrible the system we have is. And I really hope that you listener don't have to wait
to have your technology fail or fire in some unexpected way that has negative consequences for
you before we as a society realize that we have to do things differently. And in this case,
you were primarily just asking for the very the simplest of the rights that we talk about in
software, the right to study the software. You did, initially, I think you just asked to
be able to review it, right? Right. I went to the device manufacturers and asked if I could see
the source code and I just got the complete run around. And you try to get it from the government
too, right? You filed a, filed a, filed a FOIA, but we should explain what a FOIA request,
Freedom Information Act to ask the FDA to give you public information that should be made public.
And you asked what I hadn't got? I did. Well, I got a whole bunch of documentation about various
meetings at the FDA. And I found out that the FDA doesn't review the source code on these devices.
So, you know, there's a lot of intricacies to this story, but ultimately, what I was left with
was this powerless feeling of having a device in my body that I knew I needed, but I had no
control over. And not only that, I am not the customer for this device. The patient is not the
customer. We don't have any purchase power. We don't have any real generally, any control at all.
It's the doctors who are the customers. And most doctors have very little technical understanding
about the way software works. And especially when I first got this a fibrillator, they didn't even
understand there was software at these devices. I think in the intervening time it's gotten a little
bit better, but they still have no their doctors. They have a lot of really amazing expertise in
areas of cardiology or whatever their area of interest is, but they don't have a strong technical
understanding. They don't even know the questions to ask. And so, when I got a new defibrillator,
because I needed your defibrillator is only as good as long as the battery is good.
And so, when I got a new defibrillator, my electrophysiologist let me be the one on the phone with
the device manufacturers. And I could ask them questions about it. And it turns out the technicians,
the people that they had available to answer questions for the doctor's offices also didn't
know very much about these devices, because nobody was asking them any of these questions.
And so, it's all really fascinating. The device I have now is the only device that was available
in the United States where you could disable the wireless communication. So, that's the one I got.
But as I have my device, I continue to live with it. And I continue to see all of the areas in which
there's a mismatch between what we need to be able to control our medical care,
what we need to be able to live with our medical devices, and simply all the technology that's
integrated into our lives. There's a mismatch between the corporations that manufacture and
deploy it and sell it and profit on it, and the ultimate use cases that are likely to happen.
My current defibrillator, which was installed a few years ago, still has 10 to 15 years of battery
life on it. If we look forward to that time in the future, I don't know what the world is going
to be like at that time. And this device could have software upgrades to it, but it's impossible
to anticipate what those will be. And so, we really need to have the ability to adjust that,
and companies go out of business all the time. In fact, the company that I have my defibrillator from
has reduced its presence in the United States considerably during the time that I've had my defibrillator.
And it is now extremely challenging to get my defibrillator interrogated at a short moment's
notice, which means that it's impossible to go into any normal regular hospital or doctor's
office and expect them to have the equipment to be able to talk to the device, get information
out of it, and change those settings like the one I was talking about before when I was pregnant.
And that also might be information they would need if you had a complication related to a condition,
they would need that information quickly to be able to treat you presumably.
Potentially, yeah. So this experience, this turned you into a software
rights and right to software for repair activists, right? Yeah. I mean, it's wild. I started out just
thinking, oh, you know, I'm a technical person. I used to code. I went to law school. I have this
policy interest. And it was sort of like, oh, you know, yeah, open source is something important.
It's cool. It's good for business, you know, whatever. It really wasn't of primary interest to me.
And then like having this experience with my medical device, it just made me realize like,
first of all, this is a story that people seem to be able to understand as a metaphor for why
we should care about all of our software. But for me personally, that feeling of powerlessness
over software that is so critical to my very well-being and like ability to function in the world
is it just really showcases why we can't like we can't just accept what companies do. We can't
just accept the software that we are given and expect to have no ability to do anything with it
down the road unless we can keep that company in business and caring about our particular use case.
And so that's where my position is on on software freedom and lag. I got so excited about it.
But I want to also hear about you Bradley. Well, I think what we ought to do so that we don't make
our our episodes too long. Why don't we have this be our first episode? Everybody learns about
one of our co-hosts Karen has just told you the story of how she got excited about software rights
and the software right to repair. And then in the next episode, I'll tell my story and you can
ask me questions about it. Oh, that sounds really good. Yeah. And we're going to talk more about
these issues as we examine like the fundamentals. We'll we'll bring back our stories and talk more.
If you have any questions about my story, if you want to know anymore about it, feel free to
contact us. Yep, and there'll be contact information in the show notes and you'll probably hear it in
the lead out as we finish up this episode. We hope you'll continue to subscribe. We welcome all
our listeners back over from Free is in Freedom, our old show. And we're really excited to have
all you new listeners who are excited to learn more about open source and free software.
And for any of the terms that you are confused about, you can feel free to write in. But you may find
many of those answers come up in future episodes as we're going to be doing lots of educational work
to explain all these different concepts about open source and software freedom to you.
I think it's going to be really fun.
The corresponding source is an audio cast of the software Freedom Conservancy, a charitable
nonprofit organization in the USA dedicated to the right to software repair. We're supported by
your donations. Visit sfconservancy.org to learn how to support us and subscribe to the cast.
You can email us at castandsfconservancy.org.
Hi, I'm Karen Sandler. And I'm Bradley Kuhn. And this is...
Karis.
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