A lecture/talk/chat on open source and its licenses

General
21

If we aim for the medtech course, it will likely have to be something as close to 15 October as possible for me. This is because even though I have all the materials and the draft outline, (1) there are the pre-lecture tasks for the audience, and (2) I still need time to put all the presentation slides together and I want to do as good of a job as I can!

Looking at my calendar, it is getting pretty full that week. Would “Friday the 13th” of October after 13:00 (Germany time) work for you? I’m also happy to do anything that weekend if they do lectures during the weekend… And if that doesn’t work, I might be able to squeeze in Wednesday 11 October as well.

Sorry about the limited options!!!

Maybe we can also consider a lecture separate from the medtech course if need be? Thanks!

22

Hi,

I’ve spoken to the people at MedTech and they think it is best to wait for the end of the program, as all groups have a big presentation on October 16th.

I think we could try to make a separate course, and think about a broader/complementary audience?

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@amchagas:

I think we could try to make a separate course, and think about a broader/complementary audience?

Sounds great to me!! Do you still have a rough date in mind??? If so I can try to schedule time to work towards that date. If not tha’ts fine by me too and I’m happy to continue working on this with you!

And by separate course, do you mean a series of lectures?

And in any case, I’ll try to refine the outline more and as that happens start coming up with some slides to go with it.

24

This would be so so so useful. I see the first document posted by @art.pilacinski was a bit different from the one @hpy outlined, are you planning two different sessions? Anything I can help with?

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This would be so so so useful.

I couldn’t agree more. There are still so many myths and misconceptions that need to be dispelled!

are you planning two different sessions?

I’m actually not sure! But I’m happy to help develop as few or as many sessions as we think is needed to better address this issue.

That said, I think it’ll be helpful in general if we can develop a short 10 or even 5 minute version.

Anything I can help with?

Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to add to and change in the outline. I also just put the outline up on a public Etherpad if folks like that instead: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/GOSH_open_source_lecture

Or would you like to help prepare and deliver part of the lecture?

26

Hi!

I think the document @art.pilacinski posted was with the crowd from the medtech school in mind, so I would take the highlights of it and put it on the public pad @hpy created. This way we have a more general documentation/guideline more useful to a broader audience.

Do you still have a rough date in mind???

Not really, but I see that not having a date can make this go on indefinetly. What do you say to making this a series of online videos? and setting a date for streaming/uploading the first one? This way we can break it down into smaller “digestible” chunks?

Which also brings me the question, does anyone knows if GOSH has an official video channel? (youtube or other?) @jcm80 might know?

27

I have now finished my conference and mountaineering series so can work on this again, too. @amchagas: do you think of cutting the lecture into smaller pieces and post online or organizing a series of events? In the latter case I’d contact the Linux Users Tuebingen group to maybe provide us with more speakers. What about that? I guess the MSS (startup school) could provide us with rooms/resources to make this happen.

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PS: As for the date - what about some time early November?

29

Ok! I’ll check the pad and see if there’s anything I might add =)

If you’re planning to do the “mini” version of only-licenses talk I’d be happy to attend only (and help organising if needed). If it’s the extended version I can collaborate with some insights in the first part regarding philosophy of open source, tensions between open source and free software, origins, etc.

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I would like to suggest emphasis on the difference between free software and open source. Actually, I believe that a community-wide reflection on the use of “Open source” is important.

Open source is an unfortunate term that was created because free means both freedom and free of charge. Open source was a way of avoiding confusion with the later. This ambiguity is found only in the English language - other languages have different words. Unfortunately it leads to a conceptual weakness - see Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software.

There are several definitions of intellectual works based on the four freedoms, initially defined for free software. I would like to point to the Definition of Free Cultural Works. This definition came latter, but is more fundamental than those for specific domains (i.e. software, hardware, multimedia). It is conceptually more accurate than those definitions that refers to open-source. As a reference, this definition was chosen for Wikimedia Foundation’s Licencing Policy.

I wrote about the different concepts related to knowledge freedom - it can be found here (in Portuguese) and here (Spanish translation) by @jarancio. I am planning on writing a paper on “Lessons from the free software” aimed towards the open hardware community as I think we have a lot to learn from the free software experiences. If you are interested drop me a line.

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31

Glad to hear everyone’s interest!! :smiley:

@rpez:

I would like to suggest emphasis on the difference between free software and open source. Actually, I believe that a community-wide reflection on the use of “Open source” is important.

I agree. In fact I actually do know about the differences between free software and open source. The main reason I didn’t focus on the difference was because this was originally intended to be a one-off talk for an audience who is completely new to the concept, and I thought it would add confusion if I tried to explain the difference. Just explaining free software doesn’t have to be free of charge is hard enough! :stuck_out_tongue:

However, if we are planning a series of lectures, then I agree we can fit in an explanation on what’s going on between free software vs open source software.

That said, this point begs the question of who is our target audience?? Like I said, most of the time it is already super difficult to help someone fully understand the importance of software (and hardware) freedom, and how that doesn’t have to mean free of charge. This is especially true if the audience is completely new to the topic.

On the other hand, if the audience is - just for example - the maker community, then this might be slightly easier to understand.

Therefore, I suggest we better define the target audience first??

@jarancio:

If it’s the extended version I can collaborate with some insights in the first part regarding philosophy of open source, tensions between open source and free software, origins, etc.

Sounds good! Again I think maybe we should consider how many lectures we want and how long each one is? This may be a function of the target audience, too.

@art.pilacinski:

Sounds good.

@amchagas:

What do you think about dates?

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Thanks for sharing this @hpy . I think this is at the heart of the problem: imposing proprietary/individualistic frameworks on top of a continuum/collective/net of knowledge production. If we understood ideas as emergent (almost pattern formation outcomes) on top of communities, the legal framework would be different I believe. @jcm80 you mentioned a book about the problem of one-person vs co-creation of technology, could you share it here please?

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33

I think this is at the heart of the problem.

I agree. If we work from the foundation that Everything is a Remix, then everything else falls into place, whether that’s free culture, free software, etc. And this is the point I think this lecture (series) should make!

34

Hi,

@hpy, I think those dates are fine, but somewhat tight. I guess if everyone is fine with that, than we can work towards it?

I think clearing misconceptions and the differences between open source and free software/hardware is a very hard task on itself. Specially because of the already established use of “open source”, and the fact that sometimes people mean one definition, using the other name.

I think having a lecture (or two) trying to show people about the differences of proprietary and free/open licenses and adding these differences in the mix is a recipe for confusion.

Maybe a good solution is to introduce new comers to the “free framework” and only very late mention open source? This way people get the idea before the nomenclatures?

About one lecture, or a series of lectures, how about we start with one or two that give a nice overview of the whole thing and create the series on a rolling basis, is there is interest and time? With an overview, people can start to look for things themselves, and give us time to slowly develop the others?

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Hi André. that is a good approach. In this case I reinforce the suggestion of reference to freedomdefined.org and their wording:

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36

I like this idea. This way, we can plan future talks based on feedback from the first one or two.

In this case, I suggest that for the first one (or two) talks, we focus on what free (as in freedom) is and why that’s important on a general level. And here we can use @rpez’s suggestion:

This initial talk about Free Cultural Works would work well with my suggested viewing of Everything is a Remix.

Then, in later talks, we can talk about open source software and open hardware. When we get there, I think we could do one of the following:

  1. Clearly define that for the purposes of our lectures, “open source” means free as in freedom and leave it at that.
  2. Try to clarify the difference between free as in freedom and “open source”.

For option 1, the advantage is that we’ve clearly defined open source to include freedom in its meaning. This way, freedom is emphasised. The disadvantage is that for the rest of the world, there are many people who only thinks of “open source” for its practical benefits and not freedom.

For option 2, the advantage is that we talk about the difference between free software and open source, so the audience knows that there is this division in the software world. The disadvantage, as described by others on this thead, is that talking about this can very easily add to the audience’s confusion.

Once again I would like to come back to the question: What is our target audience? If they are already hackers/makers, then option 2 is more doable. But if our audience is the “general public” (broadly defined), then I can say from personal experience that they would be extremely easily confused so option 2 would be problematic.

If it’s just me, I am more interested in developing a talk for a very general/non-specialist audience. This means we have to assume zero prior knowledge. This would be people who have never heard of “open source” or any of the related terms. Additionally, these are people who are brought up to assume that copyright/patent-maximalism is the only way to “incentivise” innovation and for people to make a living.

Having said all that, my takeaway from the discussion so far is that for the first talk, we should focus on the problems with the current copyright/patent (and other things like trademarks and trade secrets) system, and how Free Cultural Works is a good solution. Does this sound right?

If so, there’s definitely exisiting material I can put to use for this purpose.

37

Sounds right to me! :slight_smile:

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I think this approach is very useful, as it addresses ideas first rather than categories… I like it!

I also like this one, it will allow us to design based on people’s interests and feedback, it’s more flexible and ¿participatory? (excuse my horrible English)

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39

I think that’s a nice idea. Just thought of something - what about trying to do this in collaboration with Weltethos Institut here in Tuebingen? They may help us with technical aspects, maybe better than the MedTech Incubator. We organized one event there for Pro-Test Germany and it worked fine.

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40

Hi @rpez what do you think about the faircode license?
Saludos