Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/10/10/microsoft-oin-exfat.html

[ A similar version
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Folks lauded today
that Microsoft
has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN)’s limited patent non-aggression
pact, suggesting that perhaps it will bring peace in our time regarding
Microsoft’s historical patent aggression.
While today’s announcement is a step forward, we call on Microsoft to make
this just the beginning of their efforts to stop their patent aggression
efforts against the software freedom community.

The OIN patent non-aggression pact is governed by something
called the
Linux System Definition. This is the most important component of the OIN
non-aggression pact, because it’s often surprising what is not
included in that Definition especially when compared with Microsoft’s patent
aggression activities. Most importantly, the non-aggression pact only
applies to the upstream versions of software, including Linux itself.

We know
that Microsoft has done patent troll shakedowns in the past on Linux products
related to the exfat filesystem.
While we
at Conservancy were successful in getting the code that implements exfat for
Linux released under GPL (by Samsung), that code has not been upstreamed
into Linux. So, Microsoft has not included any patents they
might hold on exfat into the patent non-aggression pact.

We now ask Microsoft, as a sign of good faith and to confirm its intention
to end all patent aggression against Linux and its users, to now submit to
upstream the exfat code themselves under GPLv2-or-later. This would
provide two important protections to Linux users regarding exfat: (a) it
would include any patents that read on exfat as part of OIN’s
non-aggression pact while Microsoft participates in OIN, and (b) it would
provide the various benefits that GPLv2-or-later provides regarding
patents,
including an
implied patent license and those protections provided
by GPLv2§7
(and possibly other GPL protections and assurances as well)

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/08/30/on-social-justice-software-licensing.html

[ A similar version of this blog post
was cross-posted
on Software Freedom Conservancy’s blog. ]

In recent weeks, I’ve been involved with a complex internal discussion by
a major software freedom project about a desire to take a stance on social
justice issues other than software freedom. In the discussion, many
different people came forward with various issues that matter to them,
including vegetarianism, diversity, and speech censorship, wondering how that
software freedom project should handle other social justices causes that are
not software freedom. This week, (separate and fully unrelated)
another project, called Lerna,
publicly had a similar
debate. The issues involved are challenging, and it deserves careful
consideration regardless of how the issue is raised.

One of the first licensing discussions that I was ever involved in the mid
1990s was with a developer, who was a lifelong global peace activist, objecting
to the GPL because it allowed the USA Department of Defense and the wider
military industrial complex to incorporate software into their destructive
killing machines. As a lifelong pacifist myself, I sympathized with his
objection, and since then, I have regularly considered the question of
“do those who perpetrate other social injustices deserve software
freedom?”

I ultimately drew much of my conclusion about this from activists for free
speech, who have a longer history and have therefore had longer time to
consider the philosophical question. I remember in the late 1980s when I
first learned of the ACLU, and hearing that they assisted the Klu-Klux Klan
in their right to march. I was flabbergasted; the Klan is historically
well-documented as an organization that was party to horrific murder. Why
would the ACLU defend their free speech rights? Recently, many people had
a similar reaction when, in defense of the freedom of association and free
speech of the National Rifle Association
(NRA), the
ACLU filed an amicus brief in a case involving the NRA, an organization
that I and many others oppose politically. Again, we’re left wondering:
why should we act to defend the free speech and association rights of
political causes we oppose — particularly for those like the NRA and
big software companies who have adequate resources to defend
themselves?

A few weeks ago, I heard a good explanation of this in an
interview with
ACLU’s Executive Director, whom I’ll directly quote, as
he stated
succinctly the reason why ACLU has a long history of defending everyone’s
free speech and free association rights:

[Our decision] to
give legal representation to Nazis [was controversial].… It is not for the
government’s role to decide who gets a permit to march based on the content
of their speech. We got lots of criticism, both
internally and externally. … We believe these rights are for
everyone, and we truly mean it — even for people we hate and whose
ideology is loathsome, disgusting, and hurtful. [The ACLU can’t be] just a
liberal/left advocacy group; no liberal/left advocacy group would take on
these kinds of cases. … It is important for us to forge a path that talks
about this being about the rights of everyone.

Ultimately, fighting for software freedom is a social justice cause
similar to that of fighting for free speech and other causes that require
equal rights for all. We will always find groups exploiting those freedoms
for ill rather than good. We, as software freedom activists, will have to
sometimes grit our teeth and defend the rights to modify and improve software for those we otherwise oppose.
Indeed, they may even utilize that software
for those objectionable activities. It’s particularly annoying to do that for
companies that otherwise produce proprietary software: after all, in another realm, they are
actively working against our cause. Nevertheless, either we believe the Four Software Freedoms are universal, or we don’t. If we do,
even our active political opponents deserve them, too.

I think we can take a good example from the ACLU on this matter. The
ACLU, by standing firm on its core principles, now has, after two
generations of work, developed the power to make impact on related causes. The
ACLU is the primary organization defending immigrants who have been
forcibly separated from their children by the USA government. I’d posit that only an
organization with a long history of principled activity can have both the
gravitas and adequate resources to take on that issue.

Fortunately, software freedom is already successful enough that we can do
at least a little bit of that now. For example,
Conservancy (where I work) already
took a public position, early, in opposition of Trump’s immigration
policy because of its negative impact on software freedom, whose
advancement depends on the free flow of movement by technologists around
the world. Speaking out from our microphone built from our principled
stand on software freedom, we can make an impact that denying software
freedom to others never could. Specifically, rather than proprietarizing
the license of projects to fight USA’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) and its software providers, I’d encourage us to figure out a specific
FOSS package that we can prove is deployed for use at ICE, and use that
fact as a rhetorical lever to criticize their bad behavior. For example,
has anyone investigated if ICE uses Linux-based servers to host their
otherwise proprietary software systems? If so, the Linux community is
already large and powerful enough that if a group of Linux contributors
made a public statement in political opposition to the use of Linux in
ICE’s activities, it would get national news attention here in the USA. We
could even ally with the ACLU to assure the message is heard. No license
change is needed to do that, and it will surely be more effective.

Again, this is how software freedom is so much like free speech. We give
software freedom to all, which allows them to freely use and deploy the
software for any purpose, just like hate groups can use the free speech
microphone to share their ideas. However, like the ACLU, software
freedom activists, who simultaneously defend all users equal rights in
copying, sharing and modifying the software, can use their platform —
already standing on the moral high ground that was generated by
that long time principled support of equal rights — to speak out against
those who bring harm to society in other ways.

Finally, note that the
Four Software Freedoms obviously should never be the only laws and/or rules of conduct of our society. Just
like you should be prevented from (proverbially) falsely yelling Fire! in a crowded movie theater,
you still should be stopped when you deploy Free Software in a manner that violates some other
law, or commits human rights violations. However, taking away software freedom from bad actors, while it seems like a
panacea to other societal ills, will simply backfire. The
simplicity and beauty of copyleft is that it takes away someone’s software
freedom only at the moment when they take away someone else’s
software freedom; copyleft ensures that is the only reason your
software freedom should be lost. Simple tools work best when your social
justice cause is an underdog, and we risk obscurity of our software if we
seek to change the fundamental simple design of copyleft licensing to include licensing
penalties for other social justice grievances (— even if we could agree on which other
non-FOSS causes warrant “copyleft protection”). It
means we have a big tent for software freedom, and we sometimes stand under it with
people whose behavior we despise. The value we have is our ability to
stand with them under the tent, and tell them: “while I respect your
right to share and improve that software, I find the task you’re doing with
the software deplorable.”. That’s the message I deliver to any ICE
agent who used Free Software while forcibly separating parents from their children.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/08/30/on-social-justice-software-licensing.html

[ A similar version of this blog post
was cross-posted
on Software Freedom Conservancy’s blog. ]

In recent weeks, I’ve been involved with a complex internal discussion by
a major software freedom project about a desire to take a stance on social
justice issues other than software freedom. In the discussion, many
different people came forward with various issues that matter to them,
including vegetarianism, diversity, and speech censorship, wondering how that
software freedom project should handle other social justices causes that are
not software freedom. This week, (separate and fully unrelated)
another project, called Lerna,
publicly had a similar
debate. The issues involved are challenging, and it deserves careful
consideration regardless of how the issue is raised.

One of the first licensing discussions that I was ever involved in the mid
1990s was with a developer, who was a lifelong global peace activist, objecting
to the GPL because it allowed the USA Department of Defense and the wider
military industrial complex to incorporate software into their destructive
killing machines. As a lifelong pacifist myself, I sympathized with his
objection, and since then, I have regularly considered the question of
“do those who perpetrate other social injustices deserve software
freedom?”

I ultimately drew much of my conclusion about this from activists for free
speech, who have a longer history and have therefore had longer time to
consider the philosophical question. I remember in the late 1980s when I
first learned of the ACLU, and hearing that they assisted the Klu-Klux Klan
in their right to march. I was flabbergasted; the Klan is historically
well-documented as an organization that was party to horrific murder. Why
would the ACLU defend their free speech rights? Recently, many people had
a similar reaction when, in defense of the freedom of association and free
speech of the National Rifle Association
(NRA), the
ACLU filed an amicus brief in a case involving the NRA, an organization
that I and many others oppose politically. Again, we’re left wondering:
why should we act to defend the free speech and association rights of
political causes we oppose — particularly for those like the NRA and
big software companies who have adequate resources to defend
themselves?

A few weeks ago, I heard a good explanation of this in an
interview with
ACLU’s Executive Director, whom I’ll directly quote, as
he stated
succinctly the reason why ACLU has a long history of defending everyone’s
free speech and free association rights:

[Our decision] to
give legal representation to Nazis [was controversial].… It is not for the
government’s role to decide who gets a permit to march based on the content
of their speech. We got lots of criticism, both
internally and externally. … We believe these rights are for
everyone, and we truly mean it — even for people we hate and whose
ideology is loathsome, disgusting, and hurtful. [The ACLU can’t be] just a
liberal/left advocacy group; no liberal/left advocacy group would take on
these kinds of cases. … It is important for us to forge a path that talks
about this being about the rights of everyone.

Ultimately, fighting for software freedom is a social justice cause
similar to that of fighting for free speech and other causes that require
equal rights for all. We will always find groups exploiting those freedoms
for ill rather than good. We, as software freedom activists, will have to
sometimes grit our teeth and defend the rights to modify and improve software for those we otherwise oppose.
Indeed, they may even utilize that software
for those objectionable activities. It’s particularly annoying to do that for
companies that otherwise produce proprietary software: after all, in another realm, they are
actively working against our cause. Nevertheless, either we believe the Four Software Freedoms are universal, or we don’t. If we do,
even our active political opponents deserve them, too.

I think we can take a good example from the ACLU on this matter. The
ACLU, by standing firm on its core principles, now has, after two
generations of work, developed the power to make impact on related causes. The
ACLU is the primary organization defending immigrants who have been
forcibly separated from their children by the USA government. I’d posit that only an
organization with a long history of principled activity can have both the
gravitas and adequate resources to take on that issue.

Fortunately, software freedom is already successful enough that we can do
at least a little bit of that now. For example,
Conservancy (where I work) already
took a public position, early, in opposition of Trump’s immigration
policy because of its negative impact on software freedom, whose
advancement depends on the free flow of movement by technologists around
the world. Speaking out from our microphone built from our principled
stand on software freedom, we can make an impact that denying software
freedom to others never could. Specifically, rather than proprietarizing
the license of projects to fight USA’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) and its software providers, I’d encourage us to figure out a specific
FOSS package that we can prove is deployed for use at ICE, and use that
fact as a rhetorical lever to criticize their bad behavior. For example,
has anyone investigated if ICE uses Linux-based servers to host their
otherwise proprietary software systems? If so, the Linux community is
already large and powerful enough that if a group of Linux contributors
made a public statement in political opposition to the use of Linux in
ICE’s activities, it would get national news attention here in the USA. We
could even ally with the ACLU to assure the message is heard. No license
change is needed to do that, and it will surely be more effective.

Again, this is how software freedom is so much like free speech. We give
software freedom to all, which allows them to freely use and deploy the
software for any purpose, just like hate groups can use the free speech
microphone to share their ideas. However, like the ACLU, software
freedom activists, who simultaneously defend all users equal rights in
copying, sharing and modifying the software, can use their platform —
already standing on the moral high ground that was generated by
that long time principled support of equal rights — to speak out against
those who bring harm to society in other ways.

Finally, note that the
Four Software Freedoms obviously should never be the only laws and/or rules of conduct of our society. Just
like you should be prevented from (proverbially) falsely yelling Fire! in a crowded movie theater,
you still should be stopped when you deploy Free Software in a manner that violates some other
law, or commits human rights violations. However, taking away software freedom from bad actors, while it seems like a
panacea to other societal ills, will simply backfire. The
simplicity and beauty of copyleft is that it takes away someone’s software
freedom only at the moment when they take away someone else’s
software freedom; copyleft ensures that is the only reason your
software freedom should be lost. Simple tools work best when your social
justice cause is an underdog, and we risk obscurity of our software if we
seek to change the fundamental simple design of copyleft licensing to include licensing
penalties for other social justice grievances (— even if we could agree on which other
non-FOSS causes warrant “copyleft protection”). It
means we have a big tent for software freedom, and we sometimes stand under it with
people whose behavior we despise. The value we have is our ability to
stand with them under the tent, and tell them: “while I respect your
right to share and improve that software, I find the task you’re doing with
the software deplorable.”. That’s the message I deliver to any ICE
agent who used Free Software while forcibly separating parents from their children.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/08/30/on-social-justice-software-licensing.html

[ A similar version of this blog post
was cross-posted
on Software Freedom Conservancy’s blog. ]

In recent weeks, I’ve been involved with a complex internal discussion by
a major software freedom project about a desire to take a stance on social
justice issues other than software freedom. In the discussion, many
different people came forward with various issues that matter to them,
including vegetarianism, diversity, and speech censorship, wondering how that
software freedom project should handle other social justices causes that are
not software freedom. This week, (separate and fully unrelated)
another project, called Lerna,
publicly had a similar
debate. The issues involved are challenging, and it deserves careful
consideration regardless of how the issue is raised.

One of the first licensing discussions that I was ever involved in the mid
1990s was with a developer, who was a lifelong global peace activist, objecting
to the GPL because it allowed the USA Department of Defense and the wider
military industrial complex to incorporate software into their destructive
killing machines. As a lifelong pacifist myself, I sympathized with his
objection, and since then, I have regularly considered the question of
“do those who perpetrate other social injustices deserve software
freedom?”

I ultimately drew much of my conclusion about this from activists for free
speech, who have a longer history and have therefore had longer time to
consider the philosophical question. I remember in the late 1980s when I
first learned of the ACLU, and hearing that they assisted the Klu-Klux Klan
in their right to march. I was flabbergasted; the Klan is historically
well-documented as an organization that was party to horrific murder. Why
would the ACLU defend their free speech rights? Recently, many people had
a similar reaction when, in defense of the freedom of association and free
speech of the National Rifle Association
(NRA), the
ACLU filed an amicus brief in a case involving the NRA, an organization
that I and many others oppose politically. Again, we’re left wondering:
why should we act to defend the free speech and association rights of
political causes we oppose — particularly for those like the NRA and
big software companies who have adequate resources to defend
themselves?

A few weeks ago, I heard a good explanation of this in an
interview with
ACLU’s Executive Director, whom I’ll directly quote, as
he stated
succinctly the reason why ACLU has a long history of defending everyone’s
free speech and free association rights:

[Our decision] to
give legal representation to Nazis [was controversial].… It is not for the
government’s role to decide who gets a permit to march based on the content
of their speech. We got lots of criticism, both
internally and externally. … We believe these rights are for
everyone, and we truly mean it — even for people we hate and whose
ideology is loathsome, disgusting, and hurtful. [The ACLU can’t be] just a
liberal/left advocacy group; no liberal/left advocacy group would take on
these kinds of cases. … It is important for us to forge a path that talks
about this being about the rights of everyone.

Ultimately, fighting for software freedom is a social justice cause
similar to that of fighting for free speech and other causes that require
equal rights for all. We will always find groups exploiting those freedoms
for ill rather than good. We, as software freedom activists, will have to
sometimes grit our teeth and defend the rights to modify and improve software for those we otherwise oppose.
Indeed, they may even utilize that software
for those objectionable activities. It’s particularly annoying to do that for
companies that otherwise produce proprietary software: after all, in another realm, they are
actively working against our cause. Nevertheless, either we believe the Four Software Freedoms are universal, or we don’t. If we do,
even our active political opponents deserve them, too.

I think we can take a good example from the ACLU on this matter. The
ACLU, by standing firm on its core principles, now has, after two
generations of work, developed the power to make impact on related causes. The
ACLU is the primary organization defending immigrants who have been
forcibly separated from their children by the USA government. I’d posit that only an
organization with a long history of principled activity can have both the
gravitas and adequate resources to take on that issue.

Fortunately, software freedom is already successful enough that we can do
at least a little bit of that now. For example,
Conservancy (where I work) already
took a public position, early, in opposition of Trump’s immigration
policy because of its negative impact on software freedom, whose
advancement depends on the free flow of movement by technologists around
the world. Speaking out from our microphone built from our principled
stand on software freedom, we can make an impact that denying software
freedom to others never could. Specifically, rather than proprietarizing
the license of projects to fight USA’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) and its software providers, I’d encourage us to figure out a specific
FOSS package that we can prove is deployed for use at ICE, and use that
fact as a rhetorical lever to criticize their bad behavior. For example,
has anyone investigated if ICE uses Linux-based servers to host their
otherwise proprietary software systems? If so, the Linux community is
already large and powerful enough that if a group of Linux contributors
made a public statement in political opposition to the use of Linux in
ICE’s activities, it would get national news attention here in the USA. We
could even ally with the ACLU to assure the message is heard. No license
change is needed to do that, and it will surely be more effective.

Again, this is how software freedom is so much like free speech. We give
software freedom to all, which allows them to freely use and deploy the
software for any purpose, just like hate groups can use the free speech
microphone to share their ideas. However, like the ACLU, software
freedom activists, who simultaneously defend all users equal rights in
copying, sharing and modifying the software, can use their platform —
already standing on the moral high ground that was generated by
that long time principled support of equal rights — to speak out against
those who bring harm to society in other ways.

Finally, note that the
Four Software Freedoms obviously should never be the only laws and/or rules of conduct of our society. Just
like you should be prevented from (proverbially) falsely yelling Fire! in a crowded movie theater,
you still should be stopped when you deploy Free Software in a manner that violates some other
law, or commits human rights violations. However, taking away software freedom from bad actors, while it seems like a
panacea to other societal ills, will simply backfire. The
simplicity and beauty of copyleft is that it takes away someone’s software
freedom only at the moment when they take away someone else’s
software freedom; copyleft ensures that is the only reason your
software freedom should be lost. Simple tools work best when your social
justice cause is an underdog, and we risk obscurity of our software if we
seek to change the fundamental simple design of copyleft licensing to include licensing
penalties for other social justice grievances (— even if we could agree on which other
non-FOSS causes warrant “copyleft protection”). It
means we have a big tent for software freedom, and we sometimes stand under it with
people whose behavior we despise. The value we have is our ability to
stand with them under the tent, and tell them: “while I respect your
right to share and improve that software, I find the task you’re doing with
the software deplorable.”. That’s the message I deliver to any ICE
agent who used Free Software while forcibly separating parents from their children.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/08/22/commons-clause.html

[ A similar version
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Proprietary software has always been about
a power
relationship. Copyright and other legal systems give authors the power
to decide what license to choose, and usually, they choose a license that
favors themselves and takes rights and permissions away from others.

The so-called “Commons Clause” purposely confuses and
conflates many issues. The initiative is backed by FOSSA, a company that
sells materiel in the proprietary compliance industrial complex. This clause
recently made news again since other parties have now adopted this same
license.

This proprietary software license, which is not Open Source and does not
respect the four freedoms of Free Software, seeks to hide a power imbalance
ironically behind the guise “Open Source sustainability”. Their
argument, once you look past their assertion that the only way to save Open
Source is to not do open source, is quite plain: If we can’t make money as
quickly and as easily as we’d like with this software, then we have to make
sure no one else can as well.

These observations are not new. Software freedom advocates have always
admitted that if your primary goal is to make money, proprietary software is
a better option. It’s not that you can’t earn a living writing only Free
Software; it’s that proprietary software makes it easier because you have
monopolistic power, granted to you by a legal system ill-equipped to deal
with modern technology. In my view, it’s a power which you don’t deserve — that allows you to
restrict others.

Of course, we all want software freedom to exist and survive sustainably.
But the environmental movement has already taught us that unbridled commerce
and conspicuous consumption is not sustainable. Yet,
companies still adopt strategies like this Commons Clause to prioritize rapid growth and
revenue that the proprietary software industry expects, claiming these strategies bolster
the Commons (even if it is a “partial commons in name only”).
The two goals are often just incompatible.

At Software Freedom Conservancy
(where I work), we ask our projects to be realistic about revenue. We
don’t typically see Conservancy projects grow at rapid rates. They grow at
slow and steady rates, but they grow better, stronger, and more diverse
because they take the time to invite everyone to get involved. The
software takes longer to mature, but when it does it’s more robust and
survives longer.

I’ll take a bet with anyone who’d like. Let’s pick five projects under the
Affero GPL and five projects under the Commons Clause, and then let’s see
which ones survive longer as vibrant communities with active codebases and
diverse contributors.

Finally, it’s not surprising that the authors chose the name
“Commons”. Sadly, “commons” has for many years been
a compromised term, often used by those who want to promote licenses or
organizational models that do not guarantee all four freedoms inherent in
software freedom. Proprietary software is the ultimate tragedy of the
software commons, and while it’s clever rhetoric for our opposition to claim
that they can make FLOSS sustainable by proprietarizing it, such an argument
is also sophistry.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/08/22/commons-clause.html

[ A similar version
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Proprietary software has always been about
a power
relationship. Copyright and other legal systems give authors the power
to decide what license to choose, and usually, they choose a license that
favors themselves and takes rights and permissions away from others.

The so-called “Commons Clause” purposely confuses and
conflates many issues. The initiative is backed by FOSSA, a company that
sells materiel in the proprietary compliance industrial complex. This clause
recently made news again since other parties have now adopted this same
license.

This proprietary software license, which is not Open Source and does not
respect the four freedoms of Free Software, seeks to hide a power imbalance
ironically behind the guise “Open Source sustainability”. Their
argument, once you look past their assertion that the only way to save Open
Source is to not do open source, is quite plain: If we can’t make money as
quickly and as easily as we’d like with this software, then we have to make
sure no one else can as well.

These observations are not new. Software freedom advocates have always
admitted that if your primary goal is to make money, proprietary software is
a better option. It’s not that you can’t earn a living writing only Free
Software; it’s that proprietary software makes it easier because you have
monopolistic power, granted to you by a legal system ill-equipped to deal
with modern technology. In my view, it’s a power which you don’t deserve — that allows you to
restrict others.

Of course, we all want software freedom to exist and survive sustainably.
But the environmental movement has already taught us that unbridled commerce
and conspicuous consumption is not sustainable. Yet,
companies still adopt strategies like this Commons Clause to prioritize rapid growth and
revenue that the proprietary software industry expects, claiming these strategies bolster
the Commons (even if it is a “partial commons in name only”).
The two goals are often just incompatible.

At Software Freedom Conservancy
(where I work), we ask our projects to be realistic about revenue. We
don’t typically see Conservancy projects grow at rapid rates. They grow at
slow and steady rates, but they grow better, stronger, and more diverse
because they take the time to invite everyone to get involved. The
software takes longer to mature, but when it does it’s more robust and
survives longer.

I’ll take a bet with anyone who’d like. Let’s pick five projects under the
Affero GPL and five projects under the Commons Clause, and then let’s see
which ones survive longer as vibrant communities with active codebases and
diverse contributors.

Finally, it’s not surprising that the authors chose the name
“Commons”. Sadly, “commons” has for many years been
a compromised term, often used by those who want to promote licenses or
organizational models that do not guarantee all four freedoms inherent in
software freedom. Proprietary software is the ultimate tragedy of the
software commons, and while it’s clever rhetoric for our opposition to claim
that they can make FLOSS sustainable by proprietarizing it, such an argument
is also sophistry.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/08/22/commons-clause.html

[ A similar version
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Proprietary software has always been about
a power
relationship. Copyright and other legal systems give authors the power
to decide what license to choose, and usually, they choose a license that
favors themselves and takes rights and permissions away from others.

The so-called “Commons Clause” purposely confuses and
conflates many issues. The initiative is backed by FOSSA, a company that
sells materiel in the proprietary compliance industrial complex. This clause
recently made news again since other parties have now adopted this same
license.

This proprietary software license, which is not Open Source and does not
respect the four freedoms of Free Software, seeks to hide a power imbalance
ironically behind the guise “Open Source sustainability”. Their
argument, once you look past their assertion that the only way to save Open
Source is to not do open source, is quite plain: If we can’t make money as
quickly and as easily as we’d like with this software, then we have to make
sure no one else can as well.

These observations are not new. Software freedom advocates have always
admitted that if your primary goal is to make money, proprietary software is
a better option. It’s not that you can’t earn a living writing only Free
Software; it’s that proprietary software makes it easier because you have
monopolistic power, granted to you by a legal system ill-equipped to deal
with modern technology. In my view, it’s a power which you don’t deserve — that allows you to
restrict others.

Of course, we all want software freedom to exist and survive sustainably.
But the environmental movement has already taught us that unbridled commerce
and conspicuous consumption is not sustainable. Yet,
companies still adopt strategies like this Commons Clause to prioritize rapid growth and
revenue that the proprietary software industry expects, claiming these strategies bolster
the Commons (even if it is a “partial commons in name only”).
The two goals are often just incompatible.

At Software Freedom Conservancy
(where I work), we ask our projects to be realistic about revenue. We
don’t typically see Conservancy projects grow at rapid rates. They grow at
slow and steady rates, but they grow better, stronger, and more diverse
because they take the time to invite everyone to get involved. The
software takes longer to mature, but when it does it’s more robust and
survives longer.

I’ll take a bet with anyone who’d like. Let’s pick five projects under the
Affero GPL and five projects under the Commons Clause, and then let’s see
which ones survive longer as vibrant communities with active codebases and
diverse contributors.

Finally, it’s not surprising that the authors chose the name
“Commons”. Sadly, “commons” has for many years been
a compromised term, often used by those who want to promote licenses or
organizational models that do not guarantee all four freedoms inherent in
software freedom. Proprietary software is the ultimate tragedy of the
software commons, and while it’s clever rhetoric for our opposition to claim
that they can make FLOSS sustainable by proprietarizing it, such an argument
is also sophistry.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/29/gerv.html

Yesterday, we lost an important member of the FLOSS
community. Gervase
Markham finally succumbed to his battle with cancer (specifically,
metastatic adenoid cystic carcinoma).

I met Gerv in the early 2000s, after he’d already been diagnosed. He has
always been very public about his illness. He was frank with all who knew
him that his life expectancy was sadly well below average due to that
illness. So, this outcome isn’t a surprise nor a shock, but it is
nevertheless sad and unfortunate for all who knew him.

I really liked Gerv. I found him insightful and thoughtful. His
insatiable curiosity for my primary field — FLOSS licensing —
was a source of enjoyment for me in our many conversations on the subject.
Gerv was always Socratic in his approach: he asked questions, rather than
make statements, even when it was pretty obvious he had an answer of his
own; he liked to spark debate and seek conversation. He thoughtfully
considered the opinions of others and I many times saw his positions change
based on new information. I considered him open-minded and an important
contributor to FLOSS licensing thought.

I bring up Gerv’s open-mindedness because I know that many people didn’t
find him so, but, frankly, I think those folks were mistaken. It is well
documented publicly that Gerv held what most would consider particularly
“conservative values”. And, I’ll continue with more frankness:
I found a few of Gerv’s views offensive and morally wrong. But Gerv was
also someone who could respectfully communicate his views. I never felt
the need to avoid speaking with him or otherwise distance myself. Even if
a particular position offended me, it was nevertheless clear to me that
Gerv had come to his conclusions by starting from his (a priori) care and
concern for all of humanity. Also, I could simply say to Gerv: I really
disagree with that so much, and if it became clear our views were just
too far apart to productively discuss the matter further, he’d happily and
collaboratively find another subject for us to discuss. Gerv was a
reasonable man. He could set aside fundamental disagreements and find
common ground to talk with, collaborate with, and befriend those who
disagreed with him. That level of kindness and openness is rarely seen in
our current times.

In fact, Gerv gave me a huge gift without even knowing it: he really
helped me understand myself better. Specifically, I have for decades
publicly stated my belief that the creation and promulgation of proprietary
software is an immoral and harmful act. I am aware that many people (e.g.,
proprietary software developers) consider that view offensive. I learned
much from Gerv about how to productively live in a world where the majority
are offended by my deeply held, morally-founded and well-considered
beliefs. Gerv taught me how to work positively, productively and in a
friendly way alongside others who are offended by my most deeply-held
convictions. While I mourn the loss of Gerv today, I am so glad that I had
that opportunity to learn from him. I am grateful for the life he had and
his work.

Gerv’s time with us was too short. In response, I suggest that we look at
his life and work and learn from his example. Gerv set aside his illness
for as long as possible to continue good work in FLOSS. If he can do that,
we can all be inspired by him to set aside virtually any problem to work
hard, together, for important outcomes that are bigger than us all.

[Finally, I should note that the text above was vetted and approved by
Gerv, a few months ago, before his death. I am also very impressed that he
planned so carefully for his own death that he contacted Conservancy to
seek to assign his copyrights for safe keeping and took the time to review
and comment on the text above. ]

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/29/gerv.html

Yesterday, we lost an important member of the FLOSS
community. Gervase
Markham finally succumbed to his battle with cancer (specifically,
metastatic adenoid cystic carcinoma).

I met Gerv in the early 2000s, after he’d already been diagnosed. He has
always been very public about his illness. He was frank with all who knew
him that his life expectancy was sadly well below average due to that
illness. So, this outcome isn’t a surprise nor a shock, but it is
nevertheless sad and unfortunate for all who knew him.

I really liked Gerv. I found him insightful and thoughtful. His
insatiable curiosity for my primary field — FLOSS licensing —
was a source of enjoyment for me in our many conversations on the subject.
Gerv was always Socratic in his approach: he asked questions, rather than
make statements, even when it was pretty obvious he had an answer of his
own; he liked to spark debate and seek conversation. He thoughtfully
considered the opinions of others and I many times saw his positions change
based on new information. I considered him open-minded and an important
contributor to FLOSS licensing thought.

I bring up Gerv’s open-mindedness because I know that many people didn’t
find him so, but, frankly, I think those folks were mistaken. It is well
documented publicly that Gerv held what most would consider particularly
“conservative values”. And, I’ll continue with more frankness:
I found a few of Gerv’s views offensive and morally wrong. But Gerv was
also someone who could respectfully communicate his views. I never felt
the need to avoid speaking with him or otherwise distance myself. Even if
a particular position offended me, it was nevertheless clear to me that
Gerv had come to his conclusions by starting from his (a priori) care and
concern for all of humanity. Also, I could simply say to Gerv: I really
disagree with that so much, and if it became clear our views were just
too far apart to productively discuss the matter further, he’d happily and
collaboratively find another subject for us to discuss. Gerv was a
reasonable man. He could set aside fundamental disagreements and find
common ground to talk with, collaborate with, and befriend those who
disagreed with him. That level of kindness and openness is rarely seen in
our current times.

In fact, Gerv gave me a huge gift without even knowing it: he really
helped me understand myself better. Specifically, I have for decades
publicly stated my belief that the creation and promulgation of proprietary
software is an immoral and harmful act. I am aware that many people (e.g.,
proprietary software developers) consider that view offensive. I learned
much from Gerv about how to productively live in a world where the majority
are offended by my deeply held, morally-founded and well-considered
beliefs. Gerv taught me how to work positively, productively and in a
friendly way alongside others who are offended by my most deeply-held
convictions. While I mourn the loss of Gerv today, I am so glad that I had
that opportunity to learn from him. I am grateful for the life he had and
his work.

Gerv’s time with us was too short. In response, I suggest that we look at
his life and work and learn from his example. Gerv set aside his illness
for as long as possible to continue good work in FLOSS. If he can do that,
we can all be inspired by him to set aside virtually any problem to work
hard, together, for important outcomes that are bigger than us all.

[Finally, I should note that the text above was vetted and approved by
Gerv, a few months ago, before his death. I am also very impressed that he
planned so carefully for his own death that he contacted Conservancy to
seek to assign his copyrights for safe keeping and took the time to review
and comment on the text above. ]

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/29/gerv.html

Yesterday, we lost an important member of the FLOSS
community. Gervase
Markham finally succumbed to his battle with cancer (specifically,
metastatic adenoid cystic carcinoma).

I met Gerv in the early 2000s, after he’d already been diagnosed. He has
always been very public about his illness. He was frank with all who knew
him that his life expectancy was sadly well below average due to that
illness. So, this outcome isn’t a surprise nor a shock, but it is
nevertheless sad and unfortunate for all who knew him.

I really liked Gerv. I found him insightful and thoughtful. His
insatiable curiosity for my primary field — FLOSS licensing —
was a source of enjoyment for me in our many conversations on the subject.
Gerv was always Socratic in his approach: he asked questions, rather than
make statements, even when it was pretty obvious he had an answer of his
own; he liked to spark debate and seek conversation. He thoughtfully
considered the opinions of others and I many times saw his positions change
based on new information. I considered him open-minded and an important
contributor to FLOSS licensing thought.

I bring up Gerv’s open-mindedness because I know that many people didn’t
find him so, but, frankly, I think those folks were mistaken. It is well
documented publicly that Gerv held what most would consider particularly
“conservative values”. And, I’ll continue with more frankness:
I found a few of Gerv’s views offensive and morally wrong. But Gerv was
also someone who could respectfully communicate his views. I never felt
the need to avoid speaking with him or otherwise distance myself. Even if
a particular position offended me, it was nevertheless clear to me that
Gerv had come to his conclusions by starting from his (a priori) care and
concern for all of humanity. Also, I could simply say to Gerv: I really
disagree with that so much, and if it became clear our views were just
too far apart to productively discuss the matter further, he’d happily and
collaboratively find another subject for us to discuss. Gerv was a
reasonable man. He could set aside fundamental disagreements and find
common ground to talk with, collaborate with, and befriend those who
disagreed with him. That level of kindness and openness is rarely seen in
our current times.

In fact, Gerv gave me a huge gift without even knowing it: he really
helped me understand myself better. Specifically, I have for decades
publicly stated my belief that the creation and promulgation of proprietary
software is an immoral and harmful act. I am aware that many people (e.g.,
proprietary software developers) consider that view offensive. I learned
much from Gerv about how to productively live in a world where the majority
are offended by my deeply held, morally-founded and well-considered
beliefs. Gerv taught me how to work positively, productively and in a
friendly way alongside others who are offended by my most deeply-held
convictions. While I mourn the loss of Gerv today, I am so glad that I had
that opportunity to learn from him. I am grateful for the life he had and
his work.

Gerv’s time with us was too short. In response, I suggest that we look at
his life and work and learn from his example. Gerv set aside his illness
for as long as possible to continue good work in FLOSS. If he can do that,
we can all be inspired by him to set aside virtually any problem to work
hard, together, for important outcomes that are bigger than us all.

[Finally, I should note that the text above was vetted and approved by
Gerv, a few months ago, before his death. I am also very impressed that he
planned so carefully for his own death that he contacted Conservancy to
seek to assign his copyrights for safe keeping and took the time to review
and comment on the text above. ]

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/23/butchers-and-vegans.html

Someone linked me to this
blog by a boutique proprietary software company complaining about porting
to GNU/Linux systems, in which David Power, co-founder of Hiri, says:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered
on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts
simply won’t give us the time of day.

I just want to quickly share a few analogous quotes that show why that
statement is an unwarranted and unfair statement about people’s reasonably
held beliefs. First, imagine if Hiri were not a proprietary software
company, but a butcher. Here’s how the quote would sound:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist vegan mentality we
encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some vegetarian blogs
and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day.

Should a butcher really expect vegetarian blogs and podcasts to talk about
their great new cuts of meat available? Should a butcher be surprised that
vegans disagree with them?

How about if Hiri sold non-recycled card stock paper?:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist recycling mentality we
encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some environmentalist
blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of
day.

If you make a product to which a large part of the potential customer
population has a moral objection, you should expect that objection, and
it’s reasonable for that to happen. To admonish those people because they
don’t want to promote your product really is akin to a butcher annoyed that
vegans won’t promote their prime cuts of meat.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/23/butchers-and-vegans.html

Someone linked me to this
blog by a boutique proprietary software company complaining about porting
to GNU/Linux systems, in which David Power, co-founder of Hiri, says:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered
on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts
simply won’t give us the time of day.

I just want to quickly share a few analogous quotes that show why that
statement is an unwarranted and unfair statement about people’s reasonably
held beliefs. First, imagine if Hiri were not a proprietary software
company, but a butcher. Here’s how the quote would sound:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist vegan mentality we
encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some vegetarian blogs
and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day.

Should a butcher really expect vegetarian blogs and podcasts to talk about
their great new cuts of meat available? Should a butcher be surprised that
vegans disagree with them?

How about if Hiri sold non-recycled card stock paper?:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist recycling mentality we
encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some environmentalist
blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of
day.

If you make a product to which a large part of the potential customer
population has a moral objection, you should expect that objection, and
it’s reasonable for that to happen. To admonish those people because they
don’t want to promote your product really is akin to a butcher annoyed that
vegans won’t promote their prime cuts of meat.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/23/butchers-and-vegans.html

Someone linked me to this
blog by a boutique proprietary software company complaining about porting
to GNU/Linux systems, in which David Power, co-founder of Hiri, says:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered
on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts
simply won’t give us the time of day.

I just want to quickly share a few analogous quotes that show why that
statement is an unwarranted and unfair statement about people’s reasonably
held beliefs. First, imagine if Hiri were not a proprietary software
company, but a butcher. Here’s how the quote would sound:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist vegan mentality we
encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some vegetarian blogs
and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day.

Should a butcher really expect vegetarian blogs and podcasts to talk about
their great new cuts of meat available? Should a butcher be surprised that
vegans disagree with them?

How about if Hiri sold non-recycled card stock paper?:

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist recycling mentality we
encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some environmentalist
blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of
day.

If you make a product to which a large part of the potential customer
population has a moral objection, you should expect that objection, and
it’s reasonable for that to happen. To admonish those people because they
don’t want to promote your product really is akin to a butcher annoyed that
vegans won’t promote their prime cuts of meat.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/12/oscon-no-politics-allowed.html

If you’re one of the people in the software freedom community who is
attending O’Reilly’s Open Source Software Convention (OSCON) next week here
in Portland, you may have seen debate about O’Reilly and Associates
(ORA)’s surreptitious Code of Conduct change (and quick revocation thereof)
to name “political affiliation” as a protected class. If
you’re going to OSCON or plan to go to an OSCON or ORA event in the future,
I suggest that you familiarize yourself with this issue and the political
historical context in which these events of the last few days take
place.

First, OSCON has always been political: software freedom is
inherently a political struggle for the rights of computer users, so any
conference including that topic is necessarily political. Additionally,
O’Reilly himself had stated his political positions many times at OSCON, so
it’s strange that, in
his response this morning, O’Reilly admits that he and his staff tried to
require via agreements that speakers … refrain from all political
speech. OSCON can’t possibly be a software freedom community event if
ORA’s intent … [is] to make sure that conferences put on for the
exchange of technical information aren’t politicized (as O’Reilly stated
today). OTOH, I’m not surprised by this tack, because O’Reilly, in large
part via OSCON, often pushes forward political views that O’Reilly likes, and
marginalizes those he doesn’t.

Second, I must strongly disagree with ORA’s new (as of this morning)
position that Codes of Conduct should only include “protected
classes” that the laws of a particular country currently recognize.
Codes of Conduct exist in our community not only as mechanism to assure the
rights of protected classes, but also to assure that everyone feels safe
and free of harassment and hate speech. In fact, most Codes of Conduct in
our community have “including but not limited to” language
alongside any list of protected classes, and IMO all of them should.

More than that, ORA has missed a key opportunity to delineate hate
speech and political speech in a manner that is sorely needed here in the
USA and in the software freedom community. We live in a political climate
where our Politician-in-Chief governs via Twitter and smoothly co-mingles
political positioning with statements that would violate the Code of
Conduct at most conferences. In other words, in a political climate where
the party-ticket-headline candidate is exposed for celebrating his own
sexual harassing behavior and gets elected anyway, we are culturally going
to have trouble nationwide distinguishing between political speech and hate
speech. Furthermore, political manipulators now use that confusion to
their own ends, and we must be ever-vigilant in efforts to assure that
political speech is free, but that it is delineated from hate speech, and,
most importantly, that our policy on the latter is zero-tolerance.

In this climate, I’m disturbed to see that O’Reilly, who is certainly
politically savvy enough to fully understand these delineations, is
ignoring them completely. The rancor in our current politics — which
is not just at the national level but has also trickled down into the
software freedom community — is fueled by bad actors who will gladly
conflate their own hate speech and political speech, and (in the irony that
only post-fact politics can bring), those same people will also
accuse the other side of hate speech, primarily by accusing intolerance of
the original “political speech” (which is of course was, from
the start, a mix of hate speech and political speech). (Examples of this
abound, but one example that comes to mind is Donald Trump’s public
back-and-forth with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.) None of ORA’s
policy proposals, nor O’Reilly’s public response, address this nuance.
ORA’s detractors are legitimately concerned, because blanketly adding
“political affiliation” to a protected class, married with a outright ban on
political speech, creates an environment where selective enforcement favors
the powerful, and furthermore allows the Code of Conduct to more easily
become a political weapon by those who engage in the conflation practice I
described.

However, it’s no surprise that O’Reilly is taking this tack, either.
OSCON (in particular) has a long history — on political issues of
software freedom — of promoting (and even facilitating) certain
political speech, even while squelching other political speech. Given that
history (examples of which I include below), O’Reilly shouldn’t be
surprised that many in our community are legitimately skeptical about why
ORA made these two changes without community discussion, only to quickly
backpedal when exposed. I too am left wondering what political game
O’Reilly is up to, since I recall well
that Morozov
documented O’Reilly’s track record of political manipulation in his
article, The Meme Hustler. I thus encourage everyone who
attends ORA events to follow this political game with a careful eye and a
good sense of OSCON history to figure out what’s really going on. I’ve
been watching for years, and OSCON is often a master class in achieving
what Chomsky critically called “manufacturing consent” in
politics.

For example, back in 2001, when OSCON was already in its third year,
Microsoft executives went on the political attack against copyleft (calling
it unAmerican and a “cancer”). O’Reilly, long unfriendly to
copyleft himself, personally invited Craig Mundie of Microsoft to have a
“Great Debate” keynote at the next OSCON — where Mundie
would “debate” with “Open Source leaders” about the
value of Open Source. In reality, O’Reilly put on stage lots of Open
Source people with Mundie, but among them was no one who
supported the strategy of copyleft, the primary component of Microsoft’s
political attacks. The “debate” was artfully framed to have
only one “logical” conclusion: “we all love Open Source
— even Microsoft (!) — it’s just copyleft that can be
problematic and which we should avoid”. It was no debate at all;
only carefully crafted messaging that left out much of the picture.

That wasn’t an isolated incident; both subtle and overt examples of
crafted political messaging at OSCON became annual events after that. As
another example, ten years later, O’Reilly did almost the same playbook
again: he invited the GitHub CEO to give a very political
and completely anti-copyleft keynote. After years of watching how
O’Reilly carefully framed the political issue of copyleft at OSCON, I am
definitely concerned about how other political issues might be framed.

And, not all political issues are equal. I follow copyleft politics
because it’s my been my day job for two decades. But, I admit there are
stakes even higher with other political topics, and having watched how ORA
has handled the politics of copyleft for decades, I’m fearful that ORA is (at
best) ill-equipped to handle political issues that can cause real harm
— such as the current political climate that permits hate speech, and
even racist speech (think of Trump calling Elizabeth Warren
“Pocahontas”), as standard political fare. The stakes of
contemporary politics now leave people feeling unsafe. Since
OSCON is a political event, ORA should face this directly
rather than pretending OSCON is merely a series of technical lectures.

The most insidious part of ORA’s response to this issue is that, until the
issue was called out, it seems that all political speech (particularly that
in opposition to the status quo) violated OSCON’s policies by default.
We’ve successfully gotten ORA to back down from that position, but not
without a fight. My biggest concern is that ORA nearly ran OSCON this year
with the problematic combination of banning political speech in the speaker
agreement, while treating “political affiliation” as a
protected class in the Code of Conduct. Regardless of intent, confusing
and unclear rules like that are gamed primarily by bad actors, and O’Reilly
knows that. Indeed, just days later, O’Reilly admits that both items were
serious errors, yet still asks for voluntary compliance with the
“spirit” of those confusing rules.

How could it be that an organization that’s been running the same event
for two decades only just began to realize that these are complex
issues? Paradoxically, I’m both baffled and not surprised that ORA has
handled this issue so poorly. They still have no improved solution for the
original problem that O’Reilly states they wanted to address (i.e.,
preventing hate speech). Meanwhile, they’ve cycled through a series of
failed (and alarming) solutions without community input. Would it have
really been
that hard for them to publicly ask first: “We want to
welcome all political views at OSCON, but we also detest hate speech that
is sometimes joined with political speech. Does anyone want to join a
committee to work on improvements to our policies to address this
issue?” I think if they’d handled this issue in that (Open Source)
way, the outcome would have not be the fiasco it’s become.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/12/oscon-no-politics-allowed.html

If you’re one of the people in the software freedom community who is
attending O’Reilly’s Open Source Software Convention (OSCON) next week here
in Portland, you may have seen debate about O’Reilly and Associates
(ORA)’s surreptitious Code of Conduct change (and quick revocation thereof)
to name “political affiliation” as a protected class. If
you’re going to OSCON or plan to go to an OSCON or ORA event in the future,
I suggest that you familiarize yourself with this issue and the political
historical context in which these events of the last few days take
place.

First, OSCON has always been political: software freedom is
inherently a political struggle for the rights of computer users, so any
conference including that topic is necessarily political. Additionally,
O’Reilly himself had stated his political positions many times at OSCON, so
it’s strange that, in
his response this morning, O’Reilly admits that he and his staff tried to
require via agreements that speakers … refrain from all political
speech. OSCON can’t possibly be a software freedom community event if
ORA’s intent … [is] to make sure that conferences put on for the
exchange of technical information aren’t politicized (as O’Reilly stated
today). OTOH, I’m not surprised by this tack, because O’Reilly, in large
part via OSCON, often pushes forward political views that O’Reilly likes, and
marginalizes those he doesn’t.

Second, I must strongly disagree with ORA’s new (as of this morning)
position that Codes of Conduct should only include “protected
classes” that the laws of a particular country currently recognize.
Codes of Conduct exist in our community not only as mechanism to assure the
rights of protected classes, but also to assure that everyone feels safe
and free of harassment and hate speech. In fact, most Codes of Conduct in
our community have “including but not limited to” language
alongside any list of protected classes, and IMO all of them should.

More than that, ORA has missed a key opportunity to delineate hate
speech and political speech in a manner that is sorely needed here in the
USA and in the software freedom community. We live in a political climate
where our Politician-in-Chief governs via Twitter and smoothly co-mingles
political positioning with statements that would violate the Code of
Conduct at most conferences. In other words, in a political climate where
the party-ticket-headline candidate is exposed for celebrating his own
sexual harassing behavior and gets elected anyway, we are culturally going
to have trouble nationwide distinguishing between political speech and hate
speech. Furthermore, political manipulators now use that confusion to
their own ends, and we must be ever-vigilant in efforts to assure that
political speech is free, but that it is delineated from hate speech, and,
most importantly, that our policy on the latter is zero-tolerance.

In this climate, I’m disturbed to see that O’Reilly, who is certainly
politically savvy enough to fully understand these delineations, is
ignoring them completely. The rancor in our current politics — which
is not just at the national level but has also trickled down into the
software freedom community — is fueled by bad actors who will gladly
conflate their own hate speech and political speech, and (in the irony that
only post-fact politics can bring), those same people will also
accuse the other side of hate speech, primarily by accusing intolerance of
the original “political speech” (which is of course was, from
the start, a mix of hate speech and political speech). (Examples of this
abound, but one example that comes to mind is Donald Trump’s public
back-and-forth with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.) None of ORA’s
policy proposals, nor O’Reilly’s public response, address this nuance.
ORA’s detractors are legitimately concerned, because blanketly adding
“political affiliation” to a protected class, married with a outright ban on
political speech, creates an environment where selective enforcement favors
the powerful, and furthermore allows the Code of Conduct to more easily
become a political weapon by those who engage in the conflation practice I
described.

However, it’s no surprise that O’Reilly is taking this tack, either.
OSCON (in particular) has a long history — on political issues of
software freedom — of promoting (and even facilitating) certain
political speech, even while squelching other political speech. Given that
history (examples of which I include below), O’Reilly shouldn’t be
surprised that many in our community are legitimately skeptical about why
ORA made these two changes without community discussion, only to quickly
backpedal when exposed. I too am left wondering what political game
O’Reilly is up to, since I recall well
that Morozov
documented O’Reilly’s track record of political manipulation in his
article, The Meme Hustler. I thus encourage everyone who
attends ORA events to follow this political game with a careful eye and a
good sense of OSCON history to figure out what’s really going on. I’ve
been watching for years, and OSCON is often a master class in achieving
what Chomsky critically called “manufacturing consent” in
politics.

For example, back in 2001, when OSCON was already in its third year,
Microsoft executives went on the political attack against copyleft (calling
it unAmerican and a “cancer”). O’Reilly, long unfriendly to
copyleft himself, personally invited Craig Mundie of Microsoft to have a
“Great Debate” keynote at the next OSCON — where Mundie
would “debate” with “Open Source leaders” about the
value of Open Source. In reality, O’Reilly put on stage lots of Open
Source people with Mundie, but among them was no one who
supported the strategy of copyleft, the primary component of Microsoft’s
political attacks. The “debate” was artfully framed to have
only one “logical” conclusion: “we all love Open Source
— even Microsoft (!) — it’s just copyleft that can be
problematic and which we should avoid”. It was no debate at all;
only carefully crafted messaging that left out much of the picture.

That wasn’t an isolated incident; both subtle and overt examples of
crafted political messaging at OSCON became annual events after that. As
another example, ten years later, O’Reilly did almost the same playbook
again: he invited the GitHub CEO to give a very political
and completely anti-copyleft keynote. After years of watching how
O’Reilly carefully framed the political issue of copyleft at OSCON, I am
definitely concerned about how other political issues might be framed.

And, not all political issues are equal. I follow copyleft politics
because it’s my been my day job for two decades. But, I admit there are
stakes even higher with other political topics, and having watched how ORA
has handled the politics of copyleft for decades, I’m fearful that ORA is (at
best) ill-equipped to handle political issues that can cause real harm
— such as the current political climate that permits hate speech, and
even racist speech (think of Trump calling Elizabeth Warren
“Pocahontas”), as standard political fare. The stakes of
contemporary politics now leave people feeling unsafe. Since
OSCON is a political event, ORA should face this directly
rather than pretending OSCON is merely a series of technical lectures.

The most insidious part of ORA’s response to this issue is that, until the
issue was called out, it seems that all political speech (particularly that
in opposition to the status quo) violated OSCON’s policies by default.
We’ve successfully gotten ORA to back down from that position, but not
without a fight. My biggest concern is that ORA nearly ran OSCON this year
with the problematic combination of banning political speech in the speaker
agreement, while treating “political affiliation” as a
protected class in the Code of Conduct. Regardless of intent, confusing
and unclear rules like that are gamed primarily by bad actors, and O’Reilly
knows that. Indeed, just days later, O’Reilly admits that both items were
serious errors, yet still asks for voluntary compliance with the
“spirit” of those confusing rules.

How could it be that an organization that’s been running the same event
for two decades only just began to realize that these are complex
issues? Paradoxically, I’m both baffled and not surprised that ORA has
handled this issue so poorly. They still have no improved solution for the
original problem that O’Reilly states they wanted to address (i.e.,
preventing hate speech). Meanwhile, they’ve cycled through a series of
failed (and alarming) solutions without community input. Would it have
really been
that hard for them to publicly ask first: “We want to
welcome all political views at OSCON, but we also detest hate speech that
is sometimes joined with political speech. Does anyone want to join a
committee to work on improvements to our policies to address this
issue?” I think if they’d handled this issue in that (Open Source)
way, the outcome would have not be the fiasco it’s become.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/12/oscon-no-politics-allowed.html

If you’re one of the people in the software freedom community who is
attending O’Reilly’s Open Source Software Convention (OSCON) next week here
in Portland, you may have seen debate about O’Reilly and Associates
(ORA)’s surreptitious Code of Conduct change (and quick revocation thereof)
to name “political affiliation” as a protected class. If
you’re going to OSCON or plan to go to an OSCON or ORA event in the future,
I suggest that you familiarize yourself with this issue and the political
historical context in which these events of the last few days take
place.

First, OSCON has always been political: software freedom is
inherently a political struggle for the rights of computer users, so any
conference including that topic is necessarily political. Additionally,
O’Reilly himself had stated his political positions many times at OSCON, so
it’s strange that, in
his response this morning, O’Reilly admits that he and his staff tried to
require via agreements that speakers … refrain from all political
speech. OSCON can’t possibly be a software freedom community event if
ORA’s intent … [is] to make sure that conferences put on for the
exchange of technical information aren’t politicized (as O’Reilly stated
today). OTOH, I’m not surprised by this tack, because O’Reilly, in large
part via OSCON, often pushes forward political views that O’Reilly likes, and
marginalizes those he doesn’t.

Second, I must strongly disagree with ORA’s new (as of this morning)
position that Codes of Conduct should only include “protected
classes” that the laws of a particular country currently recognize.
Codes of Conduct exist in our community not only as mechanism to assure the
rights of protected classes, but also to assure that everyone feels safe
and free of harassment and hate speech. In fact, most Codes of Conduct in
our community have “including but not limited to” language
alongside any list of protected classes, and IMO all of them should.

More than that, ORA has missed a key opportunity to delineate hate
speech and political speech in a manner that is sorely needed here in the
USA and in the software freedom community. We live in a political climate
where our Politician-in-Chief governs via Twitter and smoothly co-mingles
political positioning with statements that would violate the Code of
Conduct at most conferences. In other words, in a political climate where
the party-ticket-headline candidate is exposed for celebrating his own
sexual harassing behavior and gets elected anyway, we are culturally going
to have trouble nationwide distinguishing between political speech and hate
speech. Furthermore, political manipulators now use that confusion to
their own ends, and we must be ever-vigilant in efforts to assure that
political speech is free, but that it is delineated from hate speech, and,
most importantly, that our policy on the latter is zero-tolerance.

In this climate, I’m disturbed to see that O’Reilly, who is certainly
politically savvy enough to fully understand these delineations, is
ignoring them completely. The rancor in our current politics — which
is not just at the national level but has also trickled down into the
software freedom community — is fueled by bad actors who will gladly
conflate their own hate speech and political speech, and (in the irony that
only post-fact politics can bring), those same people will also
accuse the other side of hate speech, primarily by accusing intolerance of
the original “political speech” (which is of course was, from
the start, a mix of hate speech and political speech). (Examples of this
abound, but one example that comes to mind is Donald Trump’s public
back-and-forth with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.) None of ORA’s
policy proposals, nor O’Reilly’s public response, address this nuance.
ORA’s detractors are legitimately concerned, because blanketly adding
“political affiliation” to a protected class, married with a outright ban on
political speech, creates an environment where selective enforcement favors
the powerful, and furthermore allows the Code of Conduct to more easily
become a political weapon by those who engage in the conflation practice I
described.

However, it’s no surprise that O’Reilly is taking this tack, either.
OSCON (in particular) has a long history — on political issues of
software freedom — of promoting (and even facilitating) certain
political speech, even while squelching other political speech. Given that
history (examples of which I include below), O’Reilly shouldn’t be
surprised that many in our community are legitimately skeptical about why
ORA made these two changes without community discussion, only to quickly
backpedal when exposed. I too am left wondering what political game
O’Reilly is up to, since I recall well
that Morozov
documented O’Reilly’s track record of political manipulation in his
article, The Meme Hustler. I thus encourage everyone who
attends ORA events to follow this political game with a careful eye and a
good sense of OSCON history to figure out what’s really going on. I’ve
been watching for years, and OSCON is often a master class in achieving
what Chomsky critically called “manufacturing consent” in
politics.

For example, back in 2001, when OSCON was already in its third year,
Microsoft executives went on the political attack against copyleft (calling
it unAmerican and a “cancer”). O’Reilly, long unfriendly to
copyleft himself, personally invited Craig Mundie of Microsoft to have a
“Great Debate” keynote at the next OSCON — where Mundie
would “debate” with “Open Source leaders” about the
value of Open Source. In reality, O’Reilly put on stage lots of Open
Source people with Mundie, but among them was no one who
supported the strategy of copyleft, the primary component of Microsoft’s
political attacks. The “debate” was artfully framed to have
only one “logical” conclusion: “we all love Open Source
— even Microsoft (!) — it’s just copyleft that can be
problematic and which we should avoid”. It was no debate at all;
only carefully crafted messaging that left out much of the picture.

That wasn’t an isolated incident; both subtle and overt examples of
crafted political messaging at OSCON became annual events after that. As
another example, ten years later, O’Reilly did almost the same playbook
again: he invited the GitHub CEO to give a very political
and completely anti-copyleft keynote. After years of watching how
O’Reilly carefully framed the political issue of copyleft at OSCON, I am
definitely concerned about how other political issues might be framed.

And, not all political issues are equal. I follow copyleft politics
because it’s my been my day job for two decades. But, I admit there are
stakes even higher with other political topics, and having watched how ORA
has handled the politics of copyleft for decades, I’m fearful that ORA is (at
best) ill-equipped to handle political issues that can cause real harm
— such as the current political climate that permits hate speech, and
even racist speech (think of Trump calling Elizabeth Warren
“Pocahontas”), as standard political fare. The stakes of
contemporary politics now leave people feeling unsafe. Since
OSCON is a political event, ORA should face this directly
rather than pretending OSCON is merely a series of technical lectures.

The most insidious part of ORA’s response to this issue is that, until the
issue was called out, it seems that all political speech (particularly that
in opposition to the status quo) violated OSCON’s policies by default.
We’ve successfully gotten ORA to back down from that position, but not
without a fight. My biggest concern is that ORA nearly ran OSCON this year
with the problematic combination of banning political speech in the speaker
agreement, while treating “political affiliation” as a
protected class in the Code of Conduct. Regardless of intent, confusing
and unclear rules like that are gamed primarily by bad actors, and O’Reilly
knows that. Indeed, just days later, O’Reilly admits that both items were
serious errors, yet still asks for voluntary compliance with the
“spirit” of those confusing rules.

How could it be that an organization that’s been running the same event
for two decades only just began to realize that these are complex
issues? Paradoxically, I’m both baffled and not surprised that ORA has
handled this issue so poorly. They still have no improved solution for the
original problem that O’Reilly states they wanted to address (i.e.,
preventing hate speech). Meanwhile, they’ve cycled through a series of
failed (and alarming) solutions without community input. Would it have
really been
that hard for them to publicly ask first: “We want to
welcome all political views at OSCON, but we also detest hate speech that
is sometimes joined with political speech. Does anyone want to join a
committee to work on improvements to our policies to address this
issue?” I think if they’d handled this issue in that (Open Source)
way, the outcome would have not be the fiasco it’s become.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/06/21/everyday-sexism.html

My friend, colleague, and boss, Karen Sandler,
yesterday tweeted
about one of the unfortunately sexist incidents that she’s faced in her
life. This incident is a culmination of sexist incidents that Karen and I
have seen since we started working together. I describe below how these
events entice me to be complicit in sexist incidents, which I do my best to
actively resist.

Ultimately, this isn’t about me, Karen, or about a single situation, but
this is a great example of how sexist behaviors manipulate a situation and
put successful women leaders in no-win situations. If you read this tweet
(and additionally already knew about Software Freedom Conservancy where I
work)…

… you’ve already guessed that I’m the male employee that this
executive meant. When I examine the situation, I can’t think of a single
reason this donor could want to speak to me that would not be more productive
if he instead spoke with Karen. Yet, the executive, who was previously well
briefed on the role changes at Conservancy, repeatedly insisted that the
donation was gated on a conversation with me.

Those who follow my and Karen’s work know that I was Conservancy’s first Executive Director.
Now, I
have a lower-ranking role since Karen came to Conservancy.

Back in 2014, Karen and I collaboratively talked about what role would
make sense for her and me — and we made a choice together. We briefly
considered a co-Executive Director situation, but that arrangement has been
tried elsewhere and is typically not successful in the long term. Karen is
much better than me at the key jobs of a successful Executive Director.
Karen and I agreed she was better for the job than me. We took it to
Conservancy’s Board of Directors, and they moved my leadership role at
Conservancy to be honorary, and we named Karen the sole Executive Director.
Yes, I’m still nebulously a leader in the Free Software community (which I’m
of course glad about). But for Conservancy matters, and specifically donor
relations and major decisions about the organization, Karen is in charge.

Karen is an impressive leader and there is no one else that I’d want to
follow in my software freedom activism work. She’s the best Executive
Director that Conservancy could possibly have — by far. Everyone in
the community who works with us regularly knows this. Yet ever since Karen
was named our Executive Director, she faces everyday sexist behavior,
including people who seek to conscript me into participation in institutional
sexism. As outlined above, I was initially Executive Director of Conservancy,
and I was treated very differently than she is treated in similar situations,
even though the organization has grown significantly under her
leadership. More on that below, but first a few of the other everyday
examples of sexism I’ve witnessed with Karen:

Many times when we’re at conferences together, men who meet us assume
that Karen works for me until we explain our roles. This happens almost
every time both Karen and I are at the same conference, which is at least a
few times each year.

Another time: a journalist wrote an article about some of “Bradley’s
work” at Conservancy. We pointed out to the journalist how strange it
was that Karen was not mentioned in the article, and that it made it sound
like I was the only person doing this work at our organization. He initially
responded that because I was the “primary spokesperson”, it was
natural to credit me and not her. Karen in fact had been more recently giving
multiple keynotes on the topic, and had more speaking engagements than I did
in that year. One of those keynotes was just weeks before the article, and
it had been months since I’d given a talk or made any public
statements. Fortunately, the journalist was willing to engage and discuss the
importance of the issue (which was excellent) and the journalist even did
agree it was a mistake, but neverthless couldn’t rewrite the article.

Another time: we were leaked (reliable) information about a closed-door
meeting where some industry leaders were discussing Conservancy and its
work. The person who leaked us the information told us that multiple
participants kept talking only about me, not Karen’s work. When someone in
the meeting said wait, isn’t Karen Sandler the Executive Director?,
our source (who was giving us a real-time report over IRC) reported that
that the (male) meeting coordinator literally said: Oh sure, Karen
works there, but Bradley is their guiding light. Karen had been
Executive Director for years at that point.

I consistently say in talks, and in public conversations, that Karen is my
boss. I literally use the word “boss”, so there is no
confusion nor ambiguity. I did it this week at a talk. But instead of
taking that as the fact that it is, many people make comments like well,
Karen’s not really your boss, right; that’s just a thing you say?. So,
I’m saying unequivocally here (surely not for the last time): I report to
Karen at Conservancy. She is in charge of Conservancy. She has the
authority to fire me. (I hope she won’t, of course :). She takes views and
opinions of our entire staff seriously but she sets the agenda and makes
the decisions about what work we do and how we do it. (It shows how bad
sexism is in our culture that Karen and I often have to explain in
intricate detail what it means for someone to be an Executive Director of
an organization.)

Interestingly but disturbingly, the actors here are not typically people
who are actually sexist. They are rarely doing these actions consciously.
Rather these incidents teach how institutional sexism operates in practice.
Every time I’m approached (which is often) with some subtle situation where
it makes Karen look like she’s not really in charge, I’m given the
opportunity to pump myself up, make myself look more important, and gain
more credibility and power. It is clear to me that this comes at the
expense of subtly denigrating Karen and that the enticement is part of an
institutionally sexist zero-sum game.

These situations are no-win. I know that in the recent situation, the
donation would be assured if I’d just agreed to a call right away without
Karen’s involvement. I didn’t do it, because that approach would make me
inherently complicit in institutional sexism. But, avoiding becoming
“part of the problem” requires constant vigilance.

These situations are sadly very common, particularly for women who are
banging cracks into the glass ceiling. For my part, I’m glad to help where
I can tell my side the story, because I think it’s essential for men to
assist and corroborate the fight against sexism in our industry without
mansplaining or white-knighting. I hope other men in technology will join
me and refuse to participate and support behavior that seeks to erode
women’s well-earned power in our community. When you are told that a woman
is in charge of a free software project, that a woman is the executive
director of the organization, or that a woman is the chair of the board,
take the fact at face value, treat that person as the one who is in charge
of that endeavor, and don’t (inadvertantly nor explicitly) undermine her
authority.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/06/21/everyday-sexism.html

My friend, colleague, and boss, Karen Sandler,
yesterday tweeted
about one of the unfortunately sexist incidents that she’s faced in her
life. This incident is a culmination of sexist incidents that Karen and I
have seen since we started working together. I describe below how these
events entice me to be complicit in sexist incidents, which I do my best to
actively resist.

Ultimately, this isn’t about me, Karen, or about a single situation, but
this is a great example of how sexist behaviors manipulate a situation and
put successful women leaders in no-win situations. If you read this tweet
(and additionally already knew about Software Freedom Conservancy where I
work)…

… you’ve already guessed that I’m the male employee that this
executive meant. When I examine the situation, I can’t think of a single
reason this donor could want to speak to me that would not be more productive
if he instead spoke with Karen. Yet, the executive, who was previously well
briefed on the role changes at Conservancy, repeatedly insisted that the
donation was gated on a conversation with me.

Those who follow my and Karen’s work know that I was Conservancy’s first Executive Director.
Now, I
have a lower-ranking role since Karen came to Conservancy.

Back in 2014, Karen and I collaboratively talked about what role would
make sense for her and me — and we made a choice together. We briefly
considered a co-Executive Director situation, but that arrangement has been
tried elsewhere and is typically not successful in the long term. Karen is
much better than me at the key jobs of a successful Executive Director.
Karen and I agreed she was better for the job than me. We took it to
Conservancy’s Board of Directors, and they moved my leadership role at
Conservancy to be honorary, and we named Karen the sole Executive Director.
Yes, I’m still nebulously a leader in the Free Software community (which I’m
of course glad about). But for Conservancy matters, and specifically donor
relations and major decisions about the organization, Karen is in charge.

Karen is an impressive leader and there is no one else that I’d want to
follow in my software freedom activism work. She’s the best Executive
Director that Conservancy could possibly have — by far. Everyone in
the community who works with us regularly knows this. Yet ever since Karen
was named our Executive Director, she faces everyday sexist behavior,
including people who seek to conscript me into participation in institutional
sexism. As outlined above, I was initially Executive Director of Conservancy,
and I was treated very differently than she is treated in similar situations,
even though the organization has grown significantly under her
leadership. More on that below, but first a few of the other everyday
examples of sexism I’ve witnessed with Karen:

Many times when we’re at conferences together, men who meet us assume
that Karen works for me until we explain our roles. This happens almost
every time both Karen and I are at the same conference, which is at least a
few times each year.

Another time: a journalist wrote an article about some of “Bradley’s
work” at Conservancy. We pointed out to the journalist how strange it
was that Karen was not mentioned in the article, and that it made it sound
like I was the only person doing this work at our organization. He initially
responded that because I was the “primary spokesperson”, it was
natural to credit me and not her. Karen in fact had been more recently giving
multiple keynotes on the topic, and had more speaking engagements than I did
in that year. One of those keynotes was just weeks before the article, and
it had been months since I’d given a talk or made any public
statements. Fortunately, the journalist was willing to engage and discuss the
importance of the issue (which was excellent) and the journalist even did
agree it was a mistake, but neverthless couldn’t rewrite the article.

Another time: we were leaked (reliable) information about a closed-door
meeting where some industry leaders were discussing Conservancy and its
work. The person who leaked us the information told us that multiple
participants kept talking only about me, not Karen’s work. When someone in
the meeting said wait, isn’t Karen Sandler the Executive Director?,
our source (who was giving us a real-time report over IRC) reported that
that the (male) meeting coordinator literally said: Oh sure, Karen
works there, but Bradley is their guiding light. Karen had been
Executive Director for years at that point.

I consistently say in talks, and in public conversations, that Karen is my
boss. I literally use the word “boss”, so there is no
confusion nor ambiguity. I did it this week at a talk. But instead of
taking that as the fact that it is, many people make comments like well,
Karen’s not really your boss, right; that’s just a thing you say?. So,
I’m saying unequivocally here (surely not for the last time): I report to
Karen at Conservancy. She is in charge of Conservancy. She has the
authority to fire me. (I hope she won’t, of course :). She takes views and
opinions of our entire staff seriously but she sets the agenda and makes
the decisions about what work we do and how we do it. (It shows how bad
sexism is in our culture that Karen and I often have to explain in
intricate detail what it means for someone to be an Executive Director of
an organization.)

Interestingly but disturbingly, the actors here are not typically people
who are actually sexist. They are rarely doing these actions consciously.
Rather these incidents teach how institutional sexism operates in practice.
Every time I’m approached (which is often) with some subtle situation where
it makes Karen look like she’s not really in charge, I’m given the
opportunity to pump myself up, make myself look more important, and gain
more credibility and power. It is clear to me that this comes at the
expense of subtly denigrating Karen and that the enticement is part of an
institutionally sexist zero-sum game.

These situations are no-win. I know that in the recent situation, the
donation would be assured if I’d just agreed to a call right away without
Karen’s involvement. I didn’t do it, because that approach would make me
inherently complicit in institutional sexism. But, avoiding becoming
“part of the problem” requires constant vigilance.

These situations are sadly very common, particularly for women who are
banging cracks into the glass ceiling. For my part, I’m glad to help where
I can tell my side the story, because I think it’s essential for men to
assist and corroborate the fight against sexism in our industry without
mansplaining or white-knighting. I hope other men in technology will join
me and refuse to participate and support behavior that seeks to erode
women’s well-earned power in our community. When you are told that a woman
is in charge of a free software project, that a woman is the executive
director of the organization, or that a woman is the chair of the board,
take the fact at face value, treat that person as the one who is in charge
of that endeavor, and don’t (inadvertantly nor explicitly) undermine her
authority.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/06/21/everyday-sexism.html

My friend, colleague, and boss, Karen Sandler,
yesterday tweeted
about one of the unfortunately sexist incidents that she’s faced in her
life. This incident is a culmination of sexist incidents that Karen and I
have seen since we started working together. I describe below how these
events entice me to be complicit in sexist incidents, which I do my best to
actively resist.

Ultimately, this isn’t about me, Karen, or about a single situation, but
this is a great example of how sexist behaviors manipulate a situation and
put successful women leaders in no-win situations. If you read this tweet
(and additionally already knew about Software Freedom Conservancy where I
work)…

… you’ve already guessed that I’m the male employee that this
executive meant. When I examine the situation, I can’t think of a single
reason this donor could want to speak to me that would not be more productive
if he instead spoke with Karen. Yet, the executive, who was previously well
briefed on the role changes at Conservancy, repeatedly insisted that the
donation was gated on a conversation with me.

Those who follow my and Karen’s work know that I was Conservancy’s first Executive Director.
Now, I
have a lower-ranking role since Karen came to Conservancy.

Back in 2014, Karen and I collaboratively talked about what role would
make sense for her and me — and we made a choice together. We briefly
considered a co-Executive Director situation, but that arrangement has been
tried elsewhere and is typically not successful in the long term. Karen is
much better than me at the key jobs of a successful Executive Director.
Karen and I agreed she was better for the job than me. We took it to
Conservancy’s Board of Directors, and they moved my leadership role at
Conservancy to be honorary, and we named Karen the sole Executive Director.
Yes, I’m still nebulously a leader in the Free Software community (which I’m
of course glad about). But for Conservancy matters, and specifically donor
relations and major decisions about the organization, Karen is in charge.

Karen is an impressive leader and there is no one else that I’d want to
follow in my software freedom activism work. She’s the best Executive
Director that Conservancy could possibly have — by far. Everyone in
the community who works with us regularly knows this. Yet ever since Karen
was named our Executive Director, she faces everyday sexist behavior,
including people who seek to conscript me into participation in institutional
sexism. As outlined above, I was initially Executive Director of Conservancy,
and I was treated very differently than she is treated in similar situations,
even though the organization has grown significantly under her
leadership. More on that below, but first a few of the other everyday
examples of sexism I’ve witnessed with Karen:

Many times when we’re at conferences together, men who meet us assume
that Karen works for me until we explain our roles. This happens almost
every time both Karen and I are at the same conference, which is at least a
few times each year.

Another time: a journalist wrote an article about some of “Bradley’s
work” at Conservancy. We pointed out to the journalist how strange it
was that Karen was not mentioned in the article, and that it made it sound
like I was the only person doing this work at our organization. He initially
responded that because I was the “primary spokesperson”, it was
natural to credit me and not her. Karen in fact had been more recently giving
multiple keynotes on the topic, and had more speaking engagements than I did
in that year. One of those keynotes was just weeks before the article, and
it had been months since I’d given a talk or made any public
statements. Fortunately, the journalist was willing to engage and discuss the
importance of the issue (which was excellent) and the journalist even did
agree it was a mistake, but neverthless couldn’t rewrite the article.

Another time: we were leaked (reliable) information about a closed-door
meeting where some industry leaders were discussing Conservancy and its
work. The person who leaked us the information told us that multiple
participants kept talking only about me, not Karen’s work. When someone in
the meeting said wait, isn’t Karen Sandler the Executive Director?,
our source (who was giving us a real-time report over IRC) reported that
that the (male) meeting coordinator literally said: Oh sure, Karen
works there, but Bradley is their guiding light. Karen had been
Executive Director for years at that point.

I consistently say in talks, and in public conversations, that Karen is my
boss. I literally use the word “boss”, so there is no
confusion nor ambiguity. I did it this week at a talk. But instead of
taking that as the fact that it is, many people make comments like well,
Karen’s not really your boss, right; that’s just a thing you say?. So,
I’m saying unequivocally here (surely not for the last time): I report to
Karen at Conservancy. She is in charge of Conservancy. She has the
authority to fire me. (I hope she won’t, of course :). She takes views and
opinions of our entire staff seriously but she sets the agenda and makes
the decisions about what work we do and how we do it. (It shows how bad
sexism is in our culture that Karen and I often have to explain in
intricate detail what it means for someone to be an Executive Director of
an organization.)

Interestingly but disturbingly, the actors here are not typically people
who are actually sexist. They are rarely doing these actions consciously.
Rather these incidents teach how institutional sexism operates in practice.
Every time I’m approached (which is often) with some subtle situation where
it makes Karen look like she’s not really in charge, I’m given the
opportunity to pump myself up, make myself look more important, and gain
more credibility and power. It is clear to me that this comes at the
expense of subtly denigrating Karen and that the enticement is part of an
institutionally sexist zero-sum game.

These situations are no-win. I know that in the recent situation, the
donation would be assured if I’d just agreed to a call right away without
Karen’s involvement. I didn’t do it, because that approach would make me
inherently complicit in institutional sexism. But, avoiding becoming
“part of the problem” requires constant vigilance.

These situations are sadly very common, particularly for women who are
banging cracks into the glass ceiling. For my part, I’m glad to help where
I can tell my side the story, because I think it’s essential for men to
assist and corroborate the fight against sexism in our industry without
mansplaining or white-knighting. I hope other men in technology will join
me and refuse to participate and support behavior that seeks to erode
women’s well-earned power in our community. When you are told that a woman
is in charge of a free software project, that a woman is the executive
director of the organization, or that a woman is the chair of the board,
take the fact at face value, treat that person as the one who is in charge
of that endeavor, and don’t (inadvertantly nor explicitly) undermine her
authority.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2017/12/31/donate-conservancy.html

Earlier this year, in
February, I wrote a blog post encouraging people to donate to where I
work, Software Freedom Conservancy. I’ve not otherwise blogged too much
this year. It’s been a rough year for many reasons, and while I
personally and Conservancy in general have accomplished some very
important work this year, I’m reminded as always that more resources do
make things easier.

I understand the urge, given how bad the larger political crises have
gotten, to want to give to charities other than those related to software
freedom. There are important causes out there that have become more urgent
this year. Here’s three issues which have become shockingly more acute
this year:

• making sure the USA keeps it commitment
  to immigrants to allow them make a new life here just like my own ancestors
  did,
• assuring that the great national nature reserves are maintained and
  left pristine for generations to come,
• assuring that we have zero tolerance for abusive behavior —
  particularly by those in power against people who come to them for help and
  job opportunities.

These are just three of the many issues this year that I’ve seen get worse,
not better. I am glad that I know and support people who work on these
issues, and I urge everyone to work on these issues, too.

Nevertheless, as I plan my primary donations this year, I’m again, as I
always do, giving to the FSF and my
own employer, Software
Freedom Conservancy. The reason is simple: software freedom is still
an essential cause and it is frankly one that most people don’t understand
(yet). I wrote almost
two years ago about the phenomenon I dubbed Kuhn’s
Paradox. Simply put: it keeps getting more and more difficult
to avoid proprietary software in a normal day’s tasks, even while the
number of lines of code licensed freely gets larger every day.

As long as that paradox remains true, I see software freedom as urgent. I
know that we’re losing ground on so many other causes, too. But those of
you who read my blog are some of the few people in the world that
understand that software freedom is under threat and needs the urgent work
that the very few software-freedom-related organizations,
like the FSF
and Software Freedom
Conservancy are doing. I hope you’ll donate now to both of them. For
my part, I gave $120 myself to FSF as part of the monthly Associate
Membership program, and in a few minutes, I’m going to give $400 to
Conservancy. I’ll be frank: if you work in technology in an industrialized
country, I’m quite sure you can afford that level of money, and I suspect
those amounts are less than most of you spent on technology equipment
and/or network connectivity charges this year. Make a difference for us
and give to the cause of software freedom at least as much a you’re giving
to large technology companies.

Finally, a good reason to give to smaller charities like FSF and
Conservancy is that your donation makes a bigger difference. I do think
bigger organizations, such as (to pick an example of an organization I used
to give to) my local NPR station does important work. However, I was
listening this week to my local NPR station, and they said their goal
for that day was to raise $50,000. For Conservancy, that’s closer
to a goal we have for entire fundraising season, which for this year was
$75,000. The thing is: NPR is an important part of USA society, but it’s
one that nearly everyone understands. So few people understand the threats
looming from proprietary software, and they may not understand at all until
it’s too late — when all their devices are locked down, DRM is
fully ubiquitous, and no one is allowed to tinker with the software on
their devices and learn the wonderful art of computer programming. We are
at real risk of reaching that distopia before 90% of the world’s
population understands the threat!

Thus, giving to organizations in the area of software freedom is just
going to have a bigger and more immediate impact than more general causes
that more easily connect with people. You’re giving to prevent a future
that not everyone understands yet, and making an impact on our
work to help explain the dangers to the larger population.