hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0713.txt

Episode: 713
Title: HPR0713: NELF Interview With Matt Lee and Donald Robertson
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0713/hpr0713.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 01:22:33

---

The following interview was recorded at the Northeast canoe Linux Fest with Matt Lee and Donald Robertson of the Free Software Foundation.
At their request, this episode is being released by Hacker Public Radio under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-like 3.0 Unported License,
which means that it can be used for commercial purposes.
Please enjoy this interview, presented by Hacker Public Radio.
Hello HPR, this is Poki. I'm here at the Northeast canoe Linux Fest with Matt Lee and Donald Robertson of the Free Software Foundation.
Are you guys involved with the Free Software Foundation?
That's correct.
Tell us a little bit about Free Software Foundation. What do you guys do for all of us?
We were started 25 years ago now back in 1985 to protect computers of freedom.
And so the first 10 years or so of the FSF existence, we mostly wrote Free Software.
We wrote the canoe operating system, we formed the canoe GPL, and we wrote a lot of Free Software.
And then in the sort of early to mid-90s, we noticed that actually a lot of people were doing this for us now.
And we could refocus our efforts on advocacy work and promote Free Software to the wider world.
And so for the last 16 years or so, we've been doing that.
Primarily with Richard Stulman, our founder and president, traveling the world, always on a plane somewhere, giving a talk about Free Software to anyone who listens.
And yeah, that's what we do these days.
Cool, cool. Now Richard gets a bad rap sometimes, so he's a hero of mine.
He's a hero of ours today, yeah.
I mean, he really is.
And the canoe Linux thing, a lot of people blow it off as if it doesn't mean much.
But I personally hear a lot of people, like recently, people will rant about Android.
And they'll say, this is Linux, why doesn't it work the way I wanted to work?
That's a really good point.
It's because it's not canoe.
So I found out my talk about this today, I'm in Boston, we're talking about this.
When Firefox 4 launched last week, you get a Firefox website, and you can download Firefox for Windows, for Mac, and for what they call Linux.
And you know, he's like, does this version of Firefox work on my set top box?
No, does it work on my Android phone?
No, does it work on many other devices that I have that run Linux?
No, when it runs on, it's my desktop computer or my laptop computer running.
What we call, canoe plus Linux, canoe slash Linux.
And so, while there's a distinction to be made, I think canoe slash Linux is a really good kind of beacon
for free software and the desktop free software for users.
You don't really use the free software when you're having a set top box.
Primarily, that's proprietary software built on top of a Linux kernel.
With Android, you're not really interacting with canoe software or with Linux.
You're using Dalvik and using Android and the system there.
And so, yeah, canoe slash Linux is a great, you know, ban a piece for free software.
Cool. How long have you been with FSF?
I've been with FSF now for about three years as an employee.
And I've prior to that about eight or nine years as a volunteer.
Eight or nine years?
You look like a young fella, so.
Well, still young, 29, almost 30.
But yeah, hang on to that youth.
Yeah.
For a couple more weeks.
Yeah.
And then I'll become an old man and retire.
But no, yeah, so yeah, 15, probably about 15 years of using free software in about 11 years of being evolved
with the FSF in some manner.
Wow. Actually, so back in the mid 90s.
Back in the mid 90s, yeah.
So what kind of stuff are we doing in the mid 90s as a teenager with free software?
Spotty kit with free software.
Discovering free software like many people.
I lived in rural England.
I didn't have an internet connection.
So I would get these, these cover mounted CD-ROMs on the, they were CD-ROMs back in the day.
On the front of magazines.
Red Hat 4, Red Hat 5.
Slackware discs.
Open Sousa.
Or I guess just Sousa at the time.
Yeah.
And then later Debian.
And then, you know, kind of got, got used to free software installing it.
No help.
There's no body I knew in my life that used free software.
And it's just how you picked up chicks.
I know.
Maybe not.
But yeah.
And so I started communicating with RMS.
When I finally got email.
It's a little challenge for someone.
And then I asked him all these questions.
I wanted to ask him about free software.
Yeah.
And I was very interested in it.
I was like, yeah.
What is this?
And how does this work?
And he's very graciously replied to the emails of a 12 or 13 year old kid.
Yeah.
You know.
At the time, did you know this was Richard Stalman?
I mean, were you like overwhelmed with meeting Richard Stalman?
Well, meeting through the email, I guess not so much.
But yeah, I did read the book.
Hackers by Stephen Levy.
Okay.
Around that time as well.
And the very last chapter of that book really is all about Richard.
It's Richard and his kind of struggle at MIT in the last days there.
And the AI lab.
And his sort of the situation that rose to force him to kind of create
good over the GPL in this community of sharing software.
And so, yeah, it was kind of cool.
Yeah.
And kind of the super hero of the free software movement.
Yeah, exactly.
Kind of nice now.
And it's kind of strange 25 years after death, that's created.
Kind of be here and be a part of it so much.
Yeah.
But I like to think about the past two months.
I think about the future.
Right.
I'm going to go next.
So, how big now is the episode?
How many people are employed there?
Ah, we have one.
10 people.
10 people?
Yeah.
Some small plus Richard.
10 people in Richard who's a full-time volunteer.
Richard doesn't get paid by us.
Right, I've heard that.
It's all volunteer work.
And he travels on all contributed money.
He doesn't take money to travel.
He doesn't take money from us.
People pay for his flights.
People want to come speak.
So maybe a university or a company will.
Fly him to a place and when he's out there,
he'll kind of arrange to give talks at smaller events.
Like this one today here at Worcester State University
and bigger conferences.
He makes it work.
He'll try and maximize his time.
So if he's in a city or in an area,
he'll give two or three talks.
Then move to the next city and give two or three more talks.
So, love talking.
Nice.
And for yourself, you do mostly talking.
And of course you can't paint managers.
So yeah, there is some talking.
But most of it, these days, is more email and phone interviews
than physical interviews.
Okay.
But it's nice to come out here to Worcester.
Not far from our office in Boston.
So it's, you know, we can make it down here.
It's a cool event.
Cool.
Donald, what do you do over at FSF?
So I'm the copyrighted administrator
and also the operations manager.
So primarily the copyright administration.
That's how we ensure that the new project continues to be free.
And that people aren't violating the GPL out there.
Excellent.
In order to do that, we need to be able to hold the copyright on a lot of the software
such as GCC, EMAX.
Yep.
So we get contracts from companies and individuals who want to contribute to those projects,
signing the copyright over to us.
So we're in the best position to ensure that software freedom goes forward.
So do companies approach you then or do you approach them?
They approach us, actually, because a lot of people want to be involved in a new project.
They want to give the code back that they've developed in house
or that they just want to jump in and be working with upstream guys.
And so they will contact me and say that we want to do assignment.
Most of the time it's pretty simple stuff.
We just send them form and they fill it out.
Sometimes we got to hang a little bit with some of them about what the terms of the assignment will be in general.
So that's pretty simple stuff.
So do you guys have the agreement that you will never take that code proprietary?
That is correct.
In every single one of our contracts, we have a promise that the code will always be under freely restrivitable
that any distribution that we make will be under a copy-lefted license of some sort.
That is correct.
That's very important.
When you say copy-left, is it specified somewhere?
In writing and provable that this is that what you mean by copy-left is the four freedoms.
Yes, yes.
So in our general assignment contract, it says that it's going to be under terms that perpetually allow anyone who receives the software to redistribute it, modify it, use it, study it.
We do have some assignments where we actually specify that we're always going to release this code under GPL V3 or later or something like that.
But generally it's saying it's going to be under something under that matches the free software that conditionizes.
A lot of times when I hear someone say GPL V3 or later, I think a Bradley Coon talking about the SILON zone by Microsoft scenario.
But I've never had that explained to me.
I don't understand what that means.
So essentially all it is is that if you license something under GPL V2 or later or GPL V3 or later, what it means is that if we come out with a later version of the license, then people have the option to use the software.
Under that later version.
They can still use it under the initial version.
So if something's released GPL V2 or later, people who take that can choose to redistribute it under GPL V3 or later or they can redistribute it under GPL V2 or later.
It's up to them.
It's a simple way to make licensing, you know, real licensing a little bit easier.
So if SILONs or Microsoft came and took over FSF and released GPL V7 and it was completely proprietary, what that means is we're protected in that the code is still released under GPL V3.
Yep, we can still really center GPL V3.
It's at your option.
Yeah.
It's not a forced upgrade.
Okay.
But it doesn't guarantee that future versions of the license won't be void in some way.
That's a separate thing from copyright assignments.
Okay.
And so the copyright assignment, when we have our promise back, that is also on, that is a contractual obligation that's also on our, if we ever were to assign or become controlled by someone in the future.
Yes.
So everything that's assigned to us, even if SILONs were to take over, they're contractually bound to ensure that it's under a free license forever.
Okay.
And so that can't be changed even if Microsoft were somehow to be able to buy everything.
And how is the definition of a free license protected? Is there anything in place for that?
Well, so the, our contract is actually, they don't reference the free thing, they actually define what we mean in the contract itself.
So the language, I can't remember off the top of my head, but it says that it's going to be perpetually under terms that will allow people to freely distribute it and you do this.
It doesn't make reference to the definition, so they can't just change the definition or something like that.
Okay.
Right.
And we've got very smart people at the software Freedom Law Center.
Yeah, no doubt.
It's craft everything to make sure that, you know, anything that's ever contributed to the new project is going to be free forever.
Yeah, period.
Okay, so what are some of you guys most recent initiatives, anything new that we should know about?
We've been working for a while now with this campaign.
We have court effective by design and effective by design.
Maybe people will remember it as us in these bright yellow hazmat suits, hazmat serial suits,
going into Apple stores and hanging out flyers and protesting outside Apple stores.
A lot of people in our community found that very offensive.
Really?
Yeah, I hear, I don't know the first thing about it.
Okay.
But I have heard people say that a lot of the things that the FSF does doesn't put our best face forward.
Okay.
I guess I would answer that by saying, you know, the FSF has a mission to ensure user freedom, software freedom.
Okay.
And so sometimes we have to do things which are not the most popular for, you know, publicity for the organization, for the community in general.
But the things that we genuinely believe are required to ensure that they're going forward.
So with effective by design, we're not really talking about free software.
We're talking about DRM.
And we see your toy of DRM talking about what we call digital restrictions management.
Yes.
The right management.
And that's an important distinction to make.
If you kind of cast it in our language and not in the language of the community,
or the companies that want to make you believe DRM is a good thing.
Right.
You see it differently.
Well, let me, okay.
So, let me ask you this.
Sure.
Personally, I've given the digital rights management, digital restrictions management phraseology, a little bit of thought.
And to me, I think it would be simpler to say to someone that it is digital rights management,
but it's someone else managing your rights against your will.
Okay.
Or not in your best interest.
I think the difference there is when you use a term at digital restrictions management,
it's a term that jars a little bit.
And it causes people to think, well, you know, okay, that's not a term I've heard before.
I've heard a similar term.
Why the different term?
I think by using a different term, we force the conversation into our, you know,
point of view, and not just by, you know, kind of trying to redefine existing terms.
Okay.
And if you'll allow me to play devil's advocate here, I think the feeling that I've caught
from other people I've heard of pying on this is that you're talking to people who have never heard either term before.
Right.
So it's a really good experience to, if they're going to hear that term and they're going to hear it more and more,
to get them quickly with the term that we believe to be the correct, you know,
the correct phrasing of that experience.
And doesn't that risk the disassociation of the terms later?
I mean, if you're talking to someone who doesn't really know and doesn't really care,
they may not think it's the same thing.
That they may have been true to begin with, but now you see more and more things that are being marketed
as being DRM free or, you know, things that are DRM light.
And so when you see, I remember seeing someone saying, I saw a commercial.
I was just zip ties for handcuffs, not metal ones, right?
I saw this post on the side of a train station for a new album for a band I never heard of.
And it was just like, you know, like this album is coming out.
And then like a good 30% of the commercial, the poster, was just DRM free.
Like now it's DRM free and it's late.
Okay.
That's strange to see an artist I've never heard of, probably a new artist pushing the anti-DRM angle in their own marketing.
And this is IRL. This is up on a wall.
This is a wall.
In Manchester, England, this is on the side of a train station.
DRM free is an artist. And that's cool, right?
That to me suggests that, you know, we're not the only ones here who are against DRM.
Artists more and more are against DRM.
It's very encouraging.
And I think with music, primarily at this point, the DRM argument is lost.
Amazon and then later Apple have, you know, they have DRM free music stores now.
Can't buy the DRM music from these people.
I thought you could from Apple still.
Not anymore.
What you can buy from Apple now is DRM videos and DRM applications and DRM bring turns and DRM everything else.
We can't buy DRM music from them anymore, which is in some way, I guess, perhaps reassuring.
Okay.
But if you own their DRM music, you can upgrade to DRM free.
30 cents per song.
30 cents per song.
Yeah.
Okay. So that helps you to get out of some of that vendor lock-in.
Right.
That's there.
I mean, that's something that I've got kids.
I try to tell my kids all the time about this vendor lock-in thing.
And they don't, they're just young, my oldest is 11.
So they don't really care because it's my money still.
Right.
But the more and more that they spend their own money, you know, from Christmas, they begin to understand
I can't take this thing that I own over here and use it the way I want to use it.
And primarily it's because you don't own it.
Right.
You own a license to it.
And that license can tell you whatever they want.
And the license is on music digitally a far more restrictive than the license is you get on a CD.
So how do you present that very important fact to someone who's never thought of this before?
Never given this issue any thought whatsoever.
So we've done that in the past by having like real-world protests.
What we tend to do nowadays more with the fed-up by design is we still have a mailing list of 35 plus thousand people.
And each month we try and present a new single DRM action.
These people can take that's a simple thing.
Last month we did an action against Sony.
Sony, if you don't know about this, the PlayStation 3 has been jail-broken, I suppose, for one of the better term.
And the developers who figure this out are now being threatened and in some cases having their houses bust into by teams of police.
Computers confiscated because they figured out how to bypass a restriction in Sony's hardware.
Yeah, on equipment that they have personally owned.
And that's very important.
That's something that people I think may not be seeing in this issue is that these people bought the hardware.
They owned the hardware.
And no one in any court of law anywhere would argue that they don't own the hardware.
Yet they don't own the ones and zeros inside that hardware that are hard locked to it. They can't be separated.
I think it's a pretty dire situation for our society when private companies can be ordering quarters to have individuals harassed by the police for potentially owning pieces of hardware or doing things with how are they purchased that the companies just don't like.
Well, as a political guy, I just want to say counter that point, but also to it.
It's usually not private companies. These are public companies. That's where the problem lies.
I think is these public companies who just do these very egregious things for the almighty dollar or pound or yen or whatever the case may be.
And they justify it by saying that if they didn't take these actions and it costs the company money, the shareholders would come after them personally and be looking for their jobs.
And it's pretty much true.
And I think that's a big problem in our society right now because you don't generally see privately held companies doing things like that, do you?
I mean, you guys are on the legal side of it. I guess you're the best to ask.
I'm not aware if Sony Entertainment is a private or a property entity company.
And Apple certainly is a public charity company and they've done this before with the iPhone 4.
But with Sony, I'm not sure. And it's only has so many different subsidiaries and companies and things.
It would be interesting to see who's doing this exactly here, but the same kind of the same point.
I guess I would argue that they should be talking to their shareholders and saying, well, you're like, yeah, we're selling essentially computer set people.
Yeah.
It's a pretty damning situation if you're so new via computer as a computer and they're more than your Sony PlayStation 3 as a computer.
Correct.
You're going to come after you for the, for the via if you install free software on your via right that I'm going to come after you.
But yeah, if you do, even if I flash the bio son that right, if you install free software in your PlayStation 3.
And that's not forget the place is initially sold as being a computer that could also run.
Good new limits.
Yeah, that feature away eventually.
Yeah, that was pretty disgusting.
But it was sold as a general purpose computer.
These people are doing nothing more with that computer system.
We do with our computers every single day and we install free software on them.
What are they claiming is the legal difference between the two between between a PlayStation that you cannot alter the firmware on?
I'm not sure about that.
They try to make a decision to the consumer.
They say, yeah, Apple does this too.
They say the iPad is not a computer.
It's a it's a device.
And if it was a computer, then you know, you'd be able to install software you want from wherever you like.
But because it's a device, we're going to treat you in a different way and you know, force you to install software through the app store.
I agree to these conditions and I should prohibit free software on these devices too.
Now in the conditions that you're agreeing to, they typically come to you on like a shrink wrap license.
You break the shrink wrap.
You've agreed to the license by default.
There were no more shrink wraps.
This is digital software downloading with a click of a mouse.
Right.
Oh, with the PlayStation.
I mean, the shrink wrap on the box.
But I mean, the analogy is basically going for it.
But yeah, it's these licenses that you're required to agree to.
These eulas that are also, I think, a big part of the problem.
And that's the part that really shackles people is these eulas.
Are you guys doing anything about those?
Or have you given them any thought?
In what regard?
Fighting eulas.
Fighting eulas?
Yeah.
Well, I think generally our recommendation for people is to use free software licenses for everything that they use.
And I think I think that's our general campaign is to get people to stop having these eulas, these licenses that take away freedoms.
Instead of giving freedoms to people.
OK.
If you want to license your software, put the GPL on the software.
That's a great license.
OK.
So you're not then opposed to eulas.
You're just opposed to their terms and conditions.
We're opposed to eulas in the sense that eulas are generally user, you know, they're attacking the user, they're not for the benefit of the general public.
OK.
So yeah, we're against eulas.
And since we have our own license, similar to an end user license agreement, I guess if you want to call it that.
But the GPL is a license.
So you can apply the GPL instead of applying eulas.
And you'll find that you're not incurring the wrath of the FSF.
If you're using the GPL for software.
Right.
Should I be asking you guys any other questions?
I guess one thing I would like to talk about a little bit is this thing called the JavaScript crap, which is a new thing we've kind of been talking about a little bit this week.
And the JavaScript crap really is.
People are generally unaware of this.
When you visit a website like Gmail, for example.
Yes.
You're actually downloading and running a few hundred K.
So sometimes half a megabyte or more of proprietary JavaScript that exists on Google servers is downloaded onto your computer and run inside your computer.
OK.
And so for someone who doesn't know what JavaScript is, this is pretty obvious in that any website that you can talk to and talk back to without reloading the page.
Generally, you're using JavaScript.
What's some modern websites?
If you use Gmail, if you use Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, all of these websites, they use JavaScript to do some fancy stuff.
OK.
You type into an email and it starts up in someone's name.
It brings up a little pop down of someone's name.
Yep.
That's a JavaScript.
Right.
That's using code running on your computer to send requests to a server and asking them to send you the names of people.
And that code is almost always proprietary software.
That software that does not give you the four basic freedoms to use the software for any purpose, to modify the software and to distribute copies of that software and free and in modified and unmodified terms.
And so what we're asking people to do is to avoid the JavaScript trap and to actually actively block these non-free JavaScript files entering the computer.
Remember the plugin like no script for Firefox?
Again, no script for Firefox.
And to actually encourage these companies like Google to take this, use a facing code.
This code comes onto my computer and to release it under a free software license.
So which license would be applicable to their code running on your computer?
It could be the GPL.
It could be any of these new licenses, any free software license, really.
OK.
So the AGPL wouldn't apply to this, correct?
And the AGPL would give you no more benefit than the GPL, but in this instance.
OK.
And now the difference between the AGPL and the GPL is where the code is running, correct?
The actual processor, it's ticking over on it.
So the AGPL is for the instance where you got a user interacting with the code via network service.
Yeah, the code would be on Google's end and the user would be interacting with the code via the network service.
So in this instance with the JavaScript trap, you download the software onto your computer.
So you're not communicating in via network.
So the AGPL is not going to give you any more anything extra over the GPL.
OK.
That's the situation.
So do you have anything left?
Yeah.
So I mean, the AGPL is a perfectly final license to use.
But it's not going to give you anything more than the GPL.
I see.
But the other thing is the benefit really is that there are things like grease monkey,
which allow you to install little pieces of JavaScript into your web browser.
Often grease monkey scripts are under a free license.
grease monkey itself is free software.
OK.
And you can modify how the JavaScript on Gmail works.
So there's a whole suite of free software that is already interacting with the JavaScript from Gmail,
kind of modifying it on the fly, and then doing some cool interesting things with it.
And so given that, given that people are already doing this despite, you know, the heavily obviously a code that Google presents to you,
they give it to you.
They give you code that's, you know, garbled.
It's hard to figure out what's going on.
It's compressed.
If they release that code under a free license and they release it in a way that's suitable for modification,
so that it's not garbled, it's not compressed.
It's easy to read, it's easy to understand.
We believe not only will this practice of enhancements to Google continue, but a little improve.
And it also means that everyone who uses Gmail is still using in their browser.
Their browser is still using completely free software.
There's no, you know, ethical issue.
They're not giving up control of their computer to Google.
Now, there are other issues with Gmail.
Gmail is, you know, it's still software running on somebody else's server.
And so, in an ideal world, we want people to use free software to do that.
When people run their own mail service, you know, use services that actively promote free software.
And so, this is the first step in a series of, you know, pieces we're doing.
But have Google or Facebook or any of other companies that are serving up this JavaScript?
Have they been addressed directly by the FSF?
We've spoken to Google about a previous project they have called the Google Art Project.
The Google Art Project uses non-free JavaScript code.
It also uses Flash.
And so, there's a couple of problems there for us.
We don't want to see these works of public art locked up in Flash.
Flash, of course, is proprietary.
And so, we are interested in speaking to Google further about this.
Google right now is the only service we've written about.
We're going to be writing about future services in the future.
But yeah, Facebook, Twitter, sites like that.
And, you know, for things like Twitter, there are services like StatusNet, Identica.
My own project, Good News Social, which are free software projects that can be used instead of Twitter.
Yep.
You can use it.
And the JavaScript is free software.
You have no worries about running free software JavaScript in your browser.
It's under a license that allows you to study it and modify it and change it.
Now, have Google responded to that at all?
They have not.
Yeah.
They're just kind of ignoring it for now.
Google is a big company.
Yeah.
So, you know, I don't want to express any malice towards Google on this.
There are not.
Google's a big company with a lot of different people, different project managers.
And, yeah, I imagine that, you know, this is an issue that will be addressed.
I'm hopeful that they'll come soon.
Okay.
Have you worked on the other end?
Have you spoken to any of the companies that you referred to earlier that are submitting code to FSF?
Have you spoken to any of them about the same issue?
The projects that are using free JavaScript project?
No.
Earlier on, you said that companies would assign code to the FSF.
So, put them under the GPL 3.
Right, those don't?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Have you guys approached any of those companies as maybe a starting point for getting them to
handle it unobviscated and free JavaScript?
So, in terms of the directing sort of our campaigns at our individual contributors.
I don't believe that we currently do that.
We send them, they get into our general mailing list.
Okay.
In terms of, you know, of, you know, sending a message to a company and saying specifically,
all right, on this issue, would you guys come and do something on this?
That's possibly something we could work towards in the future, but we're talking about, you know,
hundreds and hundreds of companies that are working in various spaces.
Like, most, you know, a lot of these companies are working on like GCC,
or they're embedded designers, stuff like this, where they don't even have.
Also, the GPL, you know, encourages people to, or if they're required, people to release software
in the preferred form for modification.
Yeah.
And so, the preferred form is not obviscated, compressed code.
It's code that has, you know, white space and comments and function names that make sense.
Yeah.
And so, I think that if, going ahead, you know, like, these companies are already doing that.
They're already releasing free software in a good way.
Yeah.
The few projects that we have spoken to that are doing free software that uses JavaScript.
They're definitely aware of our efforts in this area.
I'm going to be ramping up, like I mentioned, you know, status and identity.
Things like that.
You know, finding good alternatives to a lot of these platforms like Gmail and Facebook.
It just seems to me like, you know, starting with your friends might be an easier place to start.
Well, the Google is a contributor.
We have assignments for, I believe, every new project.
And so, you know, we're not saying that, you know, Google's not,
is we're not saying that they're not our friend or anything like that.
I didn't mean to imply that.
I'm sorry if I did.
But another really important thing is we're looking at our mailing list.
There's a mailing list that doesn't mention this general mailing list we have.
And shockingly, I didn't think it would be as high as it was,
but it's like 90% of our mailing list is at gmail.com or at googlemail.com.
So, you're going to email this to people and 90% of them are already using Gmail.
Yeah.
That's a great place to start.
Because it can guarantee you 90% of people aren't using Identity Grust,
it's not maybe 20% of them are.
And that's awesome.
But really, you're talking about almost targeting every person on that list is using Gmail.
So, that's a great place to start.
Yeah, it's a good target to take.
How would I or any of our listeners get onto the general mailing list?
You can go to fsf.org and all over the website on the homepage and on every page on the website.
Hopefully, you should find a little box on the side of the screen that just says sign up
doing the thing with a free software supporter.
Okay.
It's a monthly email we send out to you.
We send out occasional other emails.
But generally, you can expect one or two emails a month from us about important issues to free software.
And we got a monthly newsletter as well, which is also pretty interesting.
And the newsletter and the mailing list, these are free as in beer as well, correct?
They are, we don't charge to you on our mailing list.
That is a very important distinction.
But also, yeah, we've published this.
You can join us and you can come and get an account on our website and get involved and edit our wiki.
We have this wiki that has the JavaScript trap stuff we're working on.
So, if anyone out there is listening to this and there's a particular website, they really use that uses a lot of non-free JavaScript.
And they really want to like figure out how to make that work better with free software.
Jump onto our website, fsf.org, follow the community link.
And then you can go ahead and make an account.
And you can start editing stuff.
It's not contributing to this body of knowledge about free software that we're trying to build.
That's excellent.
Now, I can see you're describing that.
You're almost wanting to grit your teeth at fighting with these websites with JavaScript.
So, to any of the listeners, if you are really fighting with a website, this sounds like an excellent place to start.
Yeah.
With doing that.
And so, yeah, I think that's probably about it for today.
But I would encourage everyone who is listening to Go and Check out our website, fsf.org.
You can visit the website about the GNU project.
That's GNU.org.
And you can get our website.
And if you are so inclined and so, and ship our work, you can also become a member.
An associate member of the fsf.
Give us a little bit of money each month to help us continue to fight the dangers of proprietary software.
And hopefully do some good work.
And, you know, if you think ten people working above a bank in downtown Boston is not enough,
then the more money you give us, the more people we can hire.
And maybe get a bigger office or, you know, two offices, even.
And hire more people to do this good work.
You guys are all in one office now.
All in one office at my level.
Get loud in there.
All the clacky keyboards.
Oh, yeah.
Very, very loud.
So, yeah, come on.
And if you're sick, if you're in Boston, you know, give us a shout.
We're always looking to meet people who are in the area and should free software.
New Englanders, not that far away, really.
We have a great public transit system in Boston.
You can come visit us.
And it's right in downtown Boston.
It's a Charlie card.
Gotta love it.
Use a Charlie card, you know.
Charlie on the MTA.
Just make sure you cover your Charlie card in foil when you're not using it.
Amen.
RFID.
Have you tried that?
Have you covered it in foil and run it by an RFID that you're in control of?
Yeah, we've seen that, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, great.
It's blocked.
And it is blocking it.
You're just using regular kitchen foil.
Yeah.
Oh, excellent.
Okay.
I can't recommend a particular brand, but.
I wasn't going to ask that either.
Other kitchen foils are available.
Excellent.
Donald, does there anything that I should be asking you about on your end of things?
Well, we've got a lot of exciting new projects that are coming in that are becoming new projects
that we're assigning on.
Obviously, Matt Lee has been pumping a new social and a new FM, which are network services
that replace some proprietary ones out there, like from last FM or Facebook.
A new one that's coming up that maybe Matt can talk a little bit more about is called Media Goblin.
And it's a new, another network service that we're trying to.
The new project traditionally has been, you know, stuff for the desktop.
We have a whole bevy of incredible tools that make a new Linux system possible.
But in terms of creating the, you know, this sort of next generation of software that everybody uses and loves every day,
we're getting into that now.
So it's a very exciting future for the new project.
So it sounds like you're trending more towards the social.
Indeed.
It's computing.
We're getting a lot more projects that are jumping on the bandwagon to get new out there
and working on the social web.
So it's a big one for you.
So we're pretty satisfied that you can sit down on the computer now and get work done.
And now we're looking at the social side and the play side of it.
Thanks for moving into the browser.
And as they do that, you know, we need to make sure that we don't forget about this top.
But at the same time, people, I use more and more browser stuff.
And it's good to have alternatives out there that, you know, do good work for the free software.
And you can take our software like GNU FM, GNU social and GNU Media Goblin, which is coming out soon.
And instead of using Facebook or instead of using last FM or instead of using Flickr,
you can set these programs up on your own server.
And in some cases, you can go to a public version of these sites and check it out there.
Much in the same way they're status net and it's identical.
There's, you know, there's GNU FM and there's Libra FM and GNU social and there's Daisy Chain and there's Media Goblin.
And what will it be?
We don't know yet.
Very exciting.
Sounds very exciting.
Great.
Well, thank you guys very much for coming by our booth.
Matt Lee, thanks so much.
No worries.
Thanks so much.
Thanks so much.
This is, this is really great.
I think everybody on HPR is going to love it.
I know I enjoy my talk with you guys and, you know, having fun at the fest.
It's just a small one, but it's fun.
It's a lot of good smiling people here.
Some small ones are the best ones, I think.
In real sense, it's nice to go home having spoken to everybody.
Oh, yeah.
But, you know, at the end of this, we're all going to go for a beer.
And I'm going to get chance at everybody.
Excellent.
Bigger conferences.
You just can't do that.
Excellent.
Thank you guys going out there.
Thank you so much for your time.
So, yeah.
Awesome.
Thank you for listening to Half the Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
So, head on over to C-A-R-O.
All the good things.
All the good things.