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hpr_transcripts/hpr0411.txt

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+Episode: 411
+Title: HPR0411: Free Software Foundation Interview
+Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0411/hpr0411.mp3
+Transcribed: 2025-10-07 19:59:05
+
+---
+
+you.
+Hi, this is Clot 2. I'm at South East Linux Festival. It's going really fantastic. I'm
+talking to someone from the Free Software Foundation.
+Hi, this is Deborah Nicholson.
+Cool, hi Deborah. So you're here. You actually are like with the FSF, right?
+Yeah, I work in the Boston office.
+Cool. What do you do?
+I'm a membership coordinator, so I do all the outreach around the membership program and
+then all the care and tuning, make sure people get their bootable membership cards and
+have their logins and everything.
+So the new deal with the, when I joined it was with the, it was a little wallet size CD.
+Yes.
+Which shattered in my wallet.
+Yeah.
+The new one is really cool. It's like a plastic USB.
+It's a credit card tie that fits in the wallet and it plugs in the USB drive and it boots
+off at that. And it's running Gneesense, which is a 100% free operating system, no blobs.
+Nice.
+Yeah.
+That's really cool. And I heard, and I don't know, you might know this, you might not.
+And I don't even remember where I heard it.
+Binary blobs in the kernel itself on some distributions.
+Yeah, some versions of the kernel have binary blobs. This is running, well,
+a black, and they have that black, black, black.
+Yeah, right, right.
+Yep.
+Is D-blobbed and then that project now gone on to the Linux Libre, which has run out of South
+America. So they're kind of keeping in maintaining the D-blobbed kernel.
+Very cool. Okay, so that's, that, that is really neat.
+And it's a really cool little thing. How much is membership anyway? I don't even know.
+Oh, well, if you're a student, it's $60 a year, and if you're not a student, it's 120.
+Okay.
+A lot of folks opt to, opt to do that as a $10 monthly, so it's like $5 a month or $10 a month
+that goes automatically, so.
+And you get a really cool, like you can alias your name, your email to like an FFF email.
+That's right.
+Cool. So, okay, so really, I mean, aren't you guys just overdoing it? I mean, come on.
+We don't, I mean, you know, free software. I mean, come on. I mean, there's a,
+there's going too far, right?
+In what sense? You mean that people have to use MP3 and, and dot, dot, and stuff, right?
+I mean, no, they don't. Actually, they can have control of every line of code on their own
+machines and still get their work done and still get the work done. There are definitely a few places
+where it's sort of like, oh, that's not super ideal. Like, I, you know, I want to use, you know,
+people want to use proprietary software and then that or the other place.
+This past year, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the new project. We decided to sort of,
+you know, looking for like, what are the 10 or 12 things that are kind of holding people back
+from being able to go with a fully free system on their machine? So, it kind of, I do
+a lot of those things. You know, one of the top of the list is Gnash, which is a free flash
+implementation. Yeah. We actually are supporting that one pretty heavily. Rob's the voice
+doing some amazing work. Okay. Really cool. That's cool. That's cool. He's a little
+handstrong and that he has to like, definitely document very, very carefully everything he does
+so that it doesn't end up looking like a DMCA violation. Real bad. Like a retro entity.
+Interesting. Okay. So it has to be really well documented what they're doing over there.
+Some of the other stuff are like, really specific stuff like, you know, some of the,
+you know, nuts and bolts things that people use with their Oracle database or like,
+a mathematical or, you know, a tree skype we've been working on. Right, right.
+And so the strategy is a little different for each project. For some projects, it's a matter
+of letting people know like, hey, you could use a free version of this. For other ones, it's kind
+of like, oh wow, we'll have to start from scratch. Right. Like, you know, most of that stuff
+is not out there. And then for other things, it's just like, oh, this needs a little bit of a push
+to get up to the current version and like, other gnashing is like that. Like, so, you know,
+there's always a new version. Yeah, of course. So they have to keep up. They just need a little
+bit of a push to be able to, you know, get to where they're on top of that. And, you know, so,
+so that's, I mean, the goal is to make it even easier for people to use all of the free software
+that it's out there. So, and that's what, so is FSS GNU and GNU is FSS? Or is it not the other?
+The free software foundation houses the GNU project. The GNU project is like, specifically like all
+of the software projects that work with the Linux kernel. I mean, they could work with other
+kernels. We don't want to go there. But all of the GNU stuff is that software development.
+So the free software foundation houses the GNU project. But we also do a lot of user education,
+especially around issues like DRM and operating system choice. We have the GPL compliance lab
+to all of the licensing work and all of that sort of thing, like, you know, all of the compliance
+things that happen. That's all of the FSS. And, you know, we also, we hope Savannah, which is kind
+of related to the GNU project. But it's just about non-G GNU stuff that is
+GNU compliant or whatever. Exactly. And we have the free software directories that's like around
+6,000 projects that we've looked at embedded and know are fully free. Cool. Well, that's, yeah,
+I mean, it's really great. I mean, not only the GNU project and FSS, but I mean, the, like,
+some of the side projects I really like, like, the, what is it? Bad vista. That one really
+cracked me up. And the defective by design. The defective by design is one of my favorite. The yellows
+are as warm as they look. Yeah. I mean, those side projects, I think those are almost
+easier for a lot of people to get into. Because, I mean, because a lot of people aren't into this
+too. For like, gee, what's wrong with, I don't know, you know, like these blogs that people talk
+about that they don't, you know, what is that? No, no one knows. But I mean, defective by design.
+I mean, that's something that people can latch on to. It's definitely been like, you know,
+I mean, nothing about DRM is good, but it has been an amazing opportunity for us to have a
+conversation about free software with people that we never had before. Yeah. And something that they
+can relate to, like immediately. Yeah. I mean, we, you know, like I said, the GNU project is 25
+years old. And for a long time, we were primarily talking to developers and fishermen. And not,
+like, sort of the general computer using population, although, you know, like the general
+computer using population for a while was to really just kind of very intensely, tactically
+minded. Right. Yeah. That's switched. And also, you know, people are kind of wanting to
+customize their systems a little bit more, a little bit more control over it. Yeah. And finding,
+like, oh, it's not that, like my music device is incapable technologically of making a copy in
+this format or, you know, making a copy of this many of this song. Yeah. It's that it's that I
+bought and paid for a machine that I don't control. Yeah. Like that makes people kind of angry.
+Yeah. Yeah. Even if they, you know, never want to crack open that machine or whatever,
+and so many people kind of angry to know that they've got something, but they don't control it.
+Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's, here's something I've been thinking about lately. You might,
+or might not have a comment on it. The whole, you know, GNU slash Linux thing, and I'm not going
+to go to the normal arguments or anything. It seems to me, like when I see the word GNU on something,
+it tells me that that is quote unquote a brand of something that is truly concerned about freedom.
+Yes. Capital ethics freedom. Whereas the term Linux alone doesn't necessarily guarantee that,
+you know, like some systems I will get because to some devices like my in 800 that I'm recording
+this on or no, I get because it says, yes, we run Linux. I'm like, cool, I like Linux. I'll get that.
+But you crack it open and it's actually not like the Linux that you're not used to on computers
+that you download and install the ISO of that distribution. You know, it's got something lacking.
+It's got something locked out. You can't get root on your own device, things like that without
+going through, you know, hurdle. Is there any value to keeping GNU rather than forcing an
+association with GNU Linux, saying that GNU is more like a badge of freedom or whatever like that?
+That's an interesting idea. I mean, I think like definitely our goal is computer user freedom.
+If the operating system that turned out to be the best and most free for people to use,
+like stopped being GNU with the Linux kernel, then we would say use whatever like, you know,
+brand new, operating system, imaginary, fantastic free, yeah.
+Whatever that was. We are not really interested in strategizing the specific instances. We're
+interested in the overall experience or freedom. I think that, you know, I'm not entirely certain,
+but I think that the idea of saying GNU slash Linux maybe if it was like the John Cougar
+Mellon camp and then one day we'll drop the Cougar. I don't know.
+Not even drop it. Just maintain that GNU as like, if you're going to use the term GNU,
+you don't have those binary blogs maybe or you know, or you don't have the MP3 support by default,
+you know, stuff like that. I don't know. I've been thinking about branding a lot lately. I don't
+know why, but that's just something that occurred to me that if I see that GNU in my mind, I think
+I'm going to go towards that before I'm going to go to something that doesn't even mention the
+GNU thing because you're like, well, maybe they don't really care about the freedom aspect. They
+just want to use this Linux thing because it's flexible and malleable and then malleable into
+something completely non-free. Yeah. Well, we do definitely. I mean, it's good to know that what we
+think is that GNU's answer freedom is coming through. Yeah. As to the specific ways that people
+use that and like, which I don't know, you can control that. I think we can continue to, you know,
+put out there that that's that GNU stands for freedom. Yeah. Yeah. You know. And if that's an
+important concept, that that's something that's desirable on your desktop or your device or whatever.
+Absolutely. I think, you know, we've gotten into this place where people think that you can do
+some things without moral implications and then there are other places where you do things with
+moral implications. Yeah. Yeah. And we just don't really live in that kind of world. Yeah.
+That nothing is a null value for, you know, reverberation throughout your society that you're part of.
+Yeah. Cool. And so, you know, if you choose to support proprietary software, it's not, that's not
+a null value. Right. That's that. Yeah. Not totally. Well said. One more question.
+And again, I don't know if, I mean, I don't know how big the FFF is. I mean, I know how big the
+community is. I don't know how big the organization is. What is the general, like, who is the FFF? I mean,
+I mean, are they a bunch of hippies, anarchists, business people? Like, who are these people?
+Who are you all? A pretty diverse office. There's a 11 of us in the Boston office and then we have
+a board of, I think it's currently five. And they're all over the US. And you guys do have a European
+office or you just have an office. Well, we have a sister organization, the FFF in Europe.
+But so, I mean, we are mixed of folks that are coming out from a development angle. And then,
+you know, we have also like nonprofit people. Our board is a lot of academic folks like people who
+teach, you know, and so it's kind of a myth. And then when you throw into that, like, all of the
+people that you work on the GNU projects, like some of them work in very, you know, very corporate
+environment. Right, yeah. You know, we tell T-shirts and they're like, oh, I wish I could wear one
+to work, but we, you know, it's all Oxford. Right, right. And so it's a lot of different people.
+And then, you know, we talk to students and they're like, oh, yeah, I don't even have to work,
+yeah, to live at home and, you know, and I'm writing code and contributing to this thing.
+And so we have a lot of folks like all over the place that are coming from a lot of different
+directions. You know, and even politically, I would say that, you know, the way that politics
+slices in the US doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't assign the, you know, the ethos are free
+to offer to one particular party or another. Right. You know, so I know that we have folks that,
+you know, we've got libertarians and we've got anarchists and we've got progressives and we've got,
+you know, I don't even know why. Yeah. It really is a very diverse, yeah. I mean, you know,
+Boston itself is a little, you know, it's fairly progressive. So like, maybe our Boston people are
+a little bit more reflective of the international Boston population. Okay. Cool. That's interesting.
+Okay. Well, cool. This was, that was really informative. I actually learned a lot,
+I thought I knew a lot about the FSF, but that was really informative. So, uh, yeah, thanks,
+Debra, for talking to me. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio.
+HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to C-A-R-O-DOT-18 for all of her team.