Tech Over Tea - We Must Protect Your Software Freedom | Jurgen Gaeremyn

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Today we have Jurgen from Digital Freedom who run the yearly Software Freedom, Hardware Freedom and Document Freedom days, yearly events to celebrate and promote free and open source.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========Digital Freedoms: digitalfreedoms.org/en/Software Freedom Day: https://digitalfreedoms.org/en/sfdHardware Freedom Day: https://digitalfreedoms.org/en/Document Freedom Day: https://digitalfreedoms.org/en/dfd==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm as well as your host, Rudy Robertson. And today, we're doing a fun one. So last year, I did a relatively late video about Software Freedom Day. And following that, there was a communication chain that happened. And now we have basically the person who is involved in getting this all set up and sort of managing the events. So how about you introduce yourself and we'll pretty much just go from there. Okay, sure.

So I'm Juergen. I'm one of the five board members of the Digital Freedom Foundation. The foundation has existed for since 2004, actually. I stepped up up in the boards in 2023, but that's another story. We'll get back to that. And so I've been a big fan of Software Freedom Day since 2011 when I organized it for the first time because I think this is such a great event. And yeah, that's why I'm here. But actually, so the board is a bunch of volunteers.

It's me. It's Marco stepped down. He had to step down for private reasons recently. Mustafa lives in Iran. He had to step down last year for obvious reasons. But we have Ruan, we have Chris from Germany, we have Laura from the USA. And we have Joe, also from the States, who stepped in not the very first day when we made the board, but quite soon after that. And so there's like a community of board members all around the world with each other beforehand.

And so because we thought it was important that Software Freedom Day didn't perish after the whole COVID story, we stepped up and we took the fire over from the previous board. So I think the best place to start is for anyone who is completely unaware of what any of this is, what is Software Freedom Day? What are the aims of the event? Software Freedom Day. I mean, everybody listening to your podcast is half a nerd and probably already knows what Linux is and won't be surprised about the importance of software freedom. So I'm not going to go there because that's old news for you. But the big difference between most of the con, the Kahn, Foscon, all those open source events is that's an event where you,

invite people who already are involved and you deepen your knowledge, you deepen your engagement, you build your community, while Software Freedom Day is about surprising people. So you go to a library, you go to a mall, a pub, and there you show off what you can do with open source. So you often hear about free software amateur hour or being incapable or whatever. I mean, that's all news. We don't hear that much anymore, but just show how it works and how great it is,

how privacy respecting it is, how blah, blah, blah. I don't have to tell you the story. You're surprising people, and that's the fun part. That's a big difference between Software Freedom Day and all those other great events. I mean, I go to Fosdam every year, so don't tell me about it.

But the idea here is less of a singular organized event and more of a distributed thing around the world. Indeed. So Software Freedom Day is, it's more like a topical day. I mean, you have Animal Day and you have Mother's Day and whatever. So it's a day, back in the days, Matt picked the third Saturday of September for Software Freedom Day.

And on that specific day, it's a birthday party. We celebrate. and like every birthday party, sometimes you pick just that day, but if it works better, you postpone it with a week or maybe two weeks even because of a holiday. But your local community celebrates it.

So it's a physical event, ideally, where you meet with a small community that can be two or three people even. And you say, let's surprise somebody else, let's surprise other people with whatever you're good at. This can be making music, even play tux racer.

I mean, just do something with how free software makes you happy. If you happen to know of a false developer living in your area, surprise him with a song at his front door. I mean, do whatever you want. But don't make me sing because it won't to make this developer happy.

So basically, it's about a positive vibe. It's about sharing the good news about being happy how this software freedom story tells us a lot. So this year, when is it taking place? This year, it's happening on September the 19th. So that's quite a while from now. But I'd rather teams who are considering this start early. And starting early, actually is quite simple. I mean, you can make a big thing out of it, but basically, if you're with two people and a laptop, you can start. There have been communities in the early years who printed flyers, printed balloons, and just walk the streets and hand it out the stuff and say, look,

this is how to be free on your computer. And so it can be as simple as walking on the streets, but often it's just pick a venue this could be a library or could be a pub i really gave the examples and just ask their permission and ask if you can show off something and say it's not commercial it's just me showing a few things and i think people will like it and quite often they can hand you a corner or a room or a place and then you you start promoting it maybe print a a simple poster hang it in the local shopping mall. And yeah, just start off. And this can be small.

And if you then also register your event on digital freedoms.org, the website for Software Freedom Day, and you register your event there. You'll see that you're of a global community. And this also gives your event more of a, a community vibe, a big vibe. I mean, even if there's only two of you or three of you, but you know that there's over 100 events all around the world

and maybe with your help 200 this year. So, I mean, if there's events all over the world, it makes you feel connected with it. And this gives like a really great vibe. And there are communities who have become so small or so spread out that actually physically organizing something is quite difficult.

So then there is also that's maybe one of the merits of COVID that we have developed this whole online ecosystem. I mean, it's quite easy to also live stream or record or just do something online, even if it's a chat. I mean, it's as high tech or as low tech as you want.

So a big part of the reason why you want to come do this is sort of to encourage people to go and, like, run their own events. So, I guess, like, what sort of goes into setting up something like that? Because you mentioned you can, like, go to your library and do things. Like, if somebody has, like, no idea, like, where they'd even, like, start, but they're interested in doing something, where's a good place to start with this and sort of get the ball rolling?

Well, if you go to digital freedoms.org, our website, of course, you can register your event there. But there's also like a blog with a bunch of testimonies from bigger and smaller events. Sam from the UK in 2024, he organized a nature walk. So he talked to people and he said early in the morning, let's come over at I think it was 6 o'clock, 6.30. I don't know. An unholy hour. And he went into the nature. And so he took his crew of, he was alone.

so he had like 10 people maybe not that big he took them for a nature walk he ended in like a bird spotting hut and there he demonstrated his laptop and his free phone his fair phone and so he showed off the

software that he used to to be more free in all the senses of the world but also how this was more ecological and this tied in perfectly perfectly into the nature story. So just start from your own life, from your own experience, from what

touches you. If you're a privacy nerd, go to privacy thing all the way. If you're all into nature, go ecological. If you're like, I'm an artist, well, just take your graphics tablets, take Inkscape or Corita or whatever you have, and show of your talents. I mean, show people how the free software doesn't get in the way and how you can. can make yourself a better version of yourself through that. You did mention also on the notes we have here, because we have notes this time, another group that did something in Nepal. Yeah, sure.

Indeed, that was last year. So I don't know if you remember in Nepal and in the whole region there, there was a lot of Gen Alpha uprising and with very brutal attacks. and so in Nepal there was actually even a group and I found this very inspiring these people they went into the internet I don't think they even had a laptop with them they just went a bunch of students

IT students to reflect about their role so this was like more they have been organizing Software Freedom Day for years and they had they had invited me to to give like an online keynote speech this year. And then all of the sudden these uprisings came and things changes a bit. So they didn't organize it in their own campus. But then they moved into the mountains.

And they held more like a meditation kind of event. So that's also, I think an interesting approach for software feeding day to reflect as as IT professionals. What role do I want to play in this dynamic, the changing world of, of IT, I mean, if you're going to be a developer, or are you going to walk along in the bigger, bigger, bigger, cloud, cloud, AI, AI trend? Or are you going to make it? Yeah, sure, do those things because they are new and they are interesting

and they have their place, but are you going to just roll the ball and roll along? Or are you going to be somebody who wants to make a difference, who wants to make this world a better place? But it's sort of like the overarching point here is it doesn't just have to be, you know, something like, oh, I'm demonstrating this Linux distra. Like there's a bunch of different ways that you can sort of show off what software freedom is. Yes, indeed. And I think one pitfall that you should watch out for is not to nerd out.

I mean, a big one, especially if you're like in the public place and your audience is just people who bought new shoes. You don't want to harass them with PKK and tell them about how evil the big companies are. Let's also not go negative. Let's stay positive. Let's talk about how great the software is. Let's not badmouth other companies. That helps nobody. We kind of already touched this before, but like any advice you'd have for people sort of hosting

event? Yeah, sure. So the key is, of course, have a venue or no way you're going to do it. I have noticed that this is getting sometimes a bit more difficult than I thought it was. But maybe I have the luxury because I'm a member of our hackerspace here and I just say, I'm organizing and people say, sure, when. So that's, I think, an underestimated luxury for me. But if you have contact with the school or even if you go to a pub and just say, look, everybody pays for its drinks so you'll have an extra revenue. And if we can just have a corner there, it would be green. You'll have some extra people.

Have a location. Have a few people and start early. And I would say if you already have the idea of, I want to organize this event, well, just go to the website, put your event on the map. And this will encourage other people to also join because it's harder to put your event on an empty map than if there's already 20 events on there. And so register early, even if you don't know what you're going to do yet. It also helps because that that way psychologically you have already committed.

And for us, it also helps because part of what Digital Freedom Foundation does is we're looking for a few sponsors. to help pay for swag. And this swag is like a banner and these iron-on patches so you can see you can pim your own clothes a few stickers. We're trying to make it more sustainable

so not too much balloons and stickers and throwaway stuff but more ecological stuff. So if you register early, you can also tell the community that tell us that you would like to get the Shrek pack for free or for a small donation and that way we can also visually connect all the events around the world i mean if that same banner is hanging in Nepal and in Louisiana and in Bogota and in Australia i mean if it's the same banner everywhere and you see

pictures happening this creates like a community feeling and i think inside our let's be honest inside our nerd community I think we've been falling to the inside too much do you like what is it like a let's just say everything goes really well

what would be your like ultimate goal for one of these years to happen oh my well my ultimate goal is far out there probably not going to happen but like dream desire for this uh that's

every city in the world organizes software, has a small community organizing Software Freedom Day that also attracts new young people who understand how software freedom is important because it connects everything. Also, I hope, I mean, other than Software Freedom Day, actually we have like three events, but Software Freedom Day is the biggest one.

And because we're only five volunteers, And really volunteers who don't get paid, we're doing this after hours if we have some time left. So we don't, if everything goes great, it would be great. If we could also have more events around Document Freedom Day, which is actually happening March 25th. So while we're recording it's tomorrow. And it's a hardware freedom day because open and free hardware, document standards and software or like the three legs of a milking chair and this is how you get you get your stuff in balance and if you can celebrate these three events and give the other two also more focus that would that's my ultimate dream so that we could and reach also policymakers and businesses with this insight that this is the way to go I guess to the people that are watching the video, because I'll probably cut this section just after this, do you have any final words you would like to say either about the event or anything else to sort of, however you want to sign this bit off?

Inspire people, maybe, I don't know. Well, first of all, thank you for listening because this is an important story. And the fact that you're listening to this and still are means that you're kind of hooked already. So don't be shy. Get out of your cozy Linux user group or hackerspace or whatever it is where everybody already knows the point. And organize something because maybe you're complaining in your log or in your hackerspace about how everybody is growing old. But it's partly your own fault. I mean, when's the last time you invited over some?

some people who are not your nerds yet. So just don't be shy, invite them over and have fun. I mean, and ask, yeah, have fun. Register the event and the rest will come. Okay. If you want to hear the rest of this conversation, this will be uploaded a few days after this video comes out. So check that out on the podcast channel.

Yeah. Okay. Anyone who's still here, you're on the podcast. Welcome to the podcast. Hi. I'm just basically going to The way I'm going to handle that is just that Introsection is just going to be the introsection

And then it just rolls into the rest of it from there So What do you got there? What are you drinking? Ah, Club Matte What is that? Like a soda? You don't know, you don't know Club Matte? No, I don't know that Look, oh, that's like

I can't read any of that I think I'm... No, I do, you're putting your clothes I'm not going to help me, it's not in English Oh, okay. Okay. No, I only see a small thumbnail of myself. So, anyway, Motté is like a German...

Mote drink, kind of iced tea. Hmm, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of caffeinated, it grew in the Hager Spaces community. Oh, okay, okay. You did bring up Lugs there. I think, actually, that's kind of a place to kind of go to. Lugs have really kind of, like, died out in many ways, where a lot of the, we talked about this in our earlier conversation,

that a lot of this like sort of community around FOSS has moved into digital spaces and you don't really have as much in the way of in-person groups at this point. Yeah, yeah, so that's something I kind of, it makes me a bit sad because online, online communication is often very functional and very text-oriented in the sense, of at best you have an emoji or three.

And people our age typically don't like emoji that much. So we even skip that part. But what I have learned from my own hackerspace is we have people here, a bunch of nerds also. And people, we call them neurospicy. I don't know if this is a global tense, a global expression. But it means, yeah, we all have like our quirks. and it works this way. And the fact that we

actually see each other, also peripherally, so I mean if I'm sitting here and in the other room, people are working on their project and behind me there's some people soldering in the electronics lab and somebody's 3D printing something. Even if you're not

meeting each other, you're running into each other, you watch each other's project, you. So the benefit of of having a physical event is that you have much more human interaction in a way that you feel safe. And a few years ago, I also had the idea that maybe with the rise of the whole AI and speech generation and text generation that you also functionally not always are sure, am I actually talking to the real Brodie or am I talking to a script that is running here? but yeah kind of i i think if you know people it kind of works but we've all heard the stories

about fishing attempts and people getting called and the video calls so i mean it's the only the best way to know if something is real is to be there physically and the only way to say something at peace is also to say it in a real context where it doesn't get recorded and will be used against you in the future. So the opportunity to to be yourself and to slip up and say something stupid and have fun and not have this end up in some podcast somewhere is a good thing. Yeah. So I think some of the things that happen on certain mailing lists in our communities if they would have been said in real life the drama would have been much less.

Yeah, not to bring up any like specific things, but there are a lot of cases where I look at it, it's not even like in a private mailing list, it's in like the public core mailing this for a project where it's like this could have been a, at worst, like a private email. This didn't need to be like hashed out in front of everybody. and

like I get why it is right it's easy that's the place you're communicating but I do wish there was sort of like

more thought on the fact that like at this point the FOS space isn't this like niche little thing a lot of people

are seeing what is going on and there's no reason to hash out your personal dramas sort of around everybody else yeah

but I think think that's also, I mean, this kind of communities, I mean, the fact, with you now want to want, because I've been watching, like, I've been binging your podcast, like, the techie version of Home and Away, with all the drama and everything in it. So, I mean, it's a, I kind of know you. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, you talk about the same home and away, thinking of, like this Australian show? Or is there some...

Yes. Why do you know that exists? Why are you aware of this? This is something my sister was watching during our childhood, so this is like ancient. And I think it still exists. It does, yes.

It is still airing constantly in Australia. We're still new episodes all the time. I don't know how long it's been going for too long. Too long is the answer. Certainly, certainly 40-ish years. Something like that. Not at all if you're doing.

Yeah, because, yeah. I watched it when Kylie Minogue was a young girl. Right. Anyway. Anyway. So, I mean, the fact that we're talking now, I have a feeling I'm talking to you, but I don't realize that I'm actually talking to,

I don't know how much audience you have, how much people will be listening to this episode, maybe 200 or 500 or 10,000, I don't know. The main video probably I would expect at least 10,000. Yeah. Yeah, minimum. Yeah. And this longer segment is maybe a few thousand.

But I mean, at that moment, I'm forgetting that I'm talking to all these people. Right, right. If I'm sending a mail to the mailing list, I'm forgetting maybe that I'm, I have all the bystanders when I'm replying to Linus Torval's or, whoever. I mean, I'm replying to this person and I forget about all the people reading along and all of the sudden

you get caught in this because you had an emotional outburst, I mean, we're all humans. We get emotional every now and then and especially if we're coding until two in the night and something you worked on very hard and you're tired and you're deeply affected

about it. And then all of a sudden somebody tells you that your sweet little goat baby is not perfect, that hurts. I mean, and these things happen. And if they happen in a public forum that feels private, there's something odd happening. And this is a difficult one. And that's something I think we should be careful about. But also, that's why I like in real life communities. Of course, it's hard to have it.

I wouldn't have invited you over to Belgium for this interview because that would have been a hard one. There's something about text that also feels like it's official, right? If something is written down, it's treated as something that is... I don't really know how to think about it, right? It's like anybody writing something down, it just... I really don't know how to sort of like frame this. It feels like it's like an official documentation and a like a, this is an official communication of some sort.

I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, partially. But I'm going to tell you another story. I mean, this is a fun one. Back in the, I'm going to show my ages a little bit here. But so back in the days when I got my first job, I had to go to a new city. I went to live in Maine and Maine in this city in Belgium

and I knew nobody because I moved into the house and so I thought I'm going to go on IRC channel of the city name that didn't exist so I went to the closest next city channel name I went to Cortec that's a city name and

I said hey who's from this area here and Cobra Lord answered me hey I live like a few hundred meters from you probably so I got to know Cobra Lord. And we had some fun and chatting on IRC.

We had nerding out and everything. And all of a sudden we were talking about DVDs and he said, oh yeah, I have that movie. Come and I'll bring it over and we'll go out then. So he brought me his DVD and we went out to have a drink. And so

all night long I had been drinking beers with Cobra Lord and a few friends. I think crazy. Cat was one of them too. So anyway, so we had some fun. I had to bring the DVD back to his home so he gave me his address.

So I went to his home, hopped on my bike, went small distance, expected to see Cobra Lord, but his mom opened the door. So hi, is Cobra Lord home?

And so the mom was instantly. She knew what was happening. So she called Arne somebody for you. And so Arna came from the steps and then I gave back the DVD.

So that's when I learned his real name. But I mean on IRC online, people are just their names. I mean, if I hadn't gone out with him, Cobra Lord could have been a guy, a girl, 20 or 60. I don't know. I don't care.

Back in those days, I also had like a role. My alias back then was also cyber pottery. So people just talked to me. I had a lot of people from that channel, Cortreg, who just talked to me and told me like the deepest secrets about traumas, about abuse. And then next day, if I don't know, maybe one of these people is the girls sitting behind the counter in the shop. I don't know. I mean, it also gives you like a veil of anonymity.

And sometimes that's something safe. But if you're maybe agitated or drunk or abusive, that also gives you that same veil of anonymity, it can be damaging too. I mean, we also had abusers on there. So the story works in two directions. But so I do believe in the power of this chat and this online community too. But it shouldn't be reduced to that stuff only.

Right, yeah, you like the idea of being able to connect people across distances, connect groups. You know, being out of have a conversation like this, this wouldn't be possible without the internet, right? No, of course. At the same time, that shouldn't be the only form of communication. There should be these sort of in-person groups. And I have noticed, I don't know what it's like for you, but I've noticed that a lot of board game stores are opening up here. And that was not a thing six or so years ago.

There was just, you know, there was like one or two, maybe a while away, but there's maybe five or so board game shops that I can get to in a pretty close distance. So even outside of the Foss space, it seems like a lot of people are starting to realize that there's something nice about doing things in person.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I agree. I don't see that same movement happening here but maybe that's also because I'm not looking for it I don't know. Fair enough. There was one where I live

but it disappeared so I'm not sure if it was very successful but I don't know. Yeah, that's I had something I wanted to say just the other, I forgot it. I'm assuming you can cut stuff off here. It's good.

So when you first started getting involved in Linux and involved in FOSS, like what were Lugs kind of like at that point? Like when were you first getting involved? Well, when I came, so I was a, I've been a computer nerd since the 90s, basically. But back then, I was 12, 12. it was even even the 80s. When I was 12, 13, I wrote in GW Basic my first program, Microsoft.

I mean, the 80s Linux didn't exist yet. And you do not have the money for Linux at that time. I didn't even know it existed. Sure, sure. Yeah, so anyway, I wrote like a small game, kind of memory game. And I, back then, there was no internet either. So you created like an executable file and you added a read me file. And then you said, okay, copy this as much as you want.

And it was called freeware back then. And actually, so this, there was like a community of exchanging floppy disks. So I think I have sent a thousand floppies over post. And all of a sudden, somebody sent. me an envelope. I read your read me file. Here's five euros, five bucks.

Keep on programming. And so that's, I mean, for a 12 year old, that was very impressive because a complete stranger, somewhere got a floppy with my game on it. And he found it so rewarding that he

actually sent me something. And that's, I think, the very first time that I, I felt the joy of open source of the word in there exist yet back then. And yeah, so from there, growing up, I did like a job in a computer shop. And the culture back then was if you bought the computer, the shop installed all the software you wanted. So we had AutoCat and Robocat and all those really expensive programs. My job was this, I was this jockey.

So 20 computers installing all the software on 20 computers. Stack them full with software. Never mind, it's illegal. Back then, that wasn't really relevant. And then giving like a small introduction in how computers work to the customers. And one day, there was like this black CD. I was working in a shop for like years already. Slackware was on it.

And I said, what's this? So I popped it into my computer, opened the file, the disk in Windows, and I didn't find any executable. So that's where my story ended back then. How dumb did I feel when I figured out that you had to boot a computer with it? So anyway, a few years later,

I then discovered my first, first Ubuntu distro, which was I think 804. And I think that was still dual booting, but two years later, I was done dual booting. And I don't think I ever had a computer of my own running Windows since. Wow. I have had some issues where I got stuck and then you could of course, online but and then I wanted to find like a computer community where I could find other nerds so then I went to computer club but yeah it wasn't really what I was looking for it was okay

ish but yeah it wasn't my vibe so after a few years I I kept looking for something else and all of the sudden I found the hacker space in Brussels where somebody in his own living room started like a hacker space and so I thought to wow hackerspace cool so I mean I had the same idea about hackers back then that people nowadays probably also have so I thought I'm going to walk into like a shady room with all people with hoodies hacking you the Belgian government I don't know what I want was expecting but I walked into that front door I was a complete stranger to do people as two people looked up hi and they went typing on the left

on the left side there was like a wall with all old laptops and a junk computer graveyard and and and that was basically it so I took a chair I flipped up my laptop and I started typing along and and like the common language was English in that group we were 10 maybe 15 people and after a while some people stopped typing so i

had a drink typically one of these uh that was my first time also had i clip mathe and um so uh yeah started talking and then we we started talking about other stuff i mean one one of the girls women women in the in the hackerspace then worked in a bakery and on that usually day evening our social evening she always arrived with a bag of um coffee cooking we say it in that so like um sandwiches and but but but with with with with fillings so like donuts type of things right right right leftovers from leftovers from the bakery and so we all had snack and we talked a bit and and and that young woman there she uh she learned learned soldering in the hacker space too because there were a few soldering stations.

And now she's running a jewelry. Oh, wow. So she actually took that skill, which was completely out of her comfort zone and did her own things with it. And I found this very inspiring. I decided when life went on. I mean, I also took my kids to the hackerspace

every now and then. I have two daughters. And I mean, my youngest one, she was three or four when she came in here and she saw all those colorful wires. I mean, we have like a bunch of copper wiring and she wanted to make a necklace. So I taught my four-year-old how to solder. I told her how the lead is toxic and how she should wash her hands. And if it smells like chicken, you're holding the wrong side, all the cliches.

so I just but I mean a four year old learned to solder because she wanted to make a jewel and that's for me that's the whole core of a hacker space of sharing knowledge

of just figuring stuff out I mean okay that wiring isn't made to be a necklace it's made to connect electronic spots but I mean if a six year old sees jewelry there

I mean, I don't have to tell you what the next Mother's Day gift was. But I mean, she has skills that no other four-year-old had. And nowadays, for her, it's just, okay, yeah, sure, I can solder. She's completely not into electronics. She doesn't care about it, but she has some basic concepts.

And yeah, I mean, just have fun and see where it lands you. That's one of the things I do miss about my university. When I was at university, we did have a club for the programmers. And it was, the room wasn't really used to, like, its full potential, right? It was more of a sort of just place the people hung out with. I do kind of wish it was used more for that sort of, like, hacker space kind of thing. But, you know, there was a lot of people who came to the room,

a lot of people with different ideas about what should be done there. So things kind of just never really went in that sort of direction. But I can definitely see why having something like that is, you know, I can see the appeal there, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So in our Hacker space, basically, and that's such a safe place. I mean, you can just be whoever you want to be here. And if you say I want to order something, whatever, whatever, we have. one rule. It's everybody's welcome. So no private events, that's basically the only rule. And also everybody pays what he wants or can. So don't make like a 200 euro event or a 500 dollar event because that's too expensive. Right, right. You can of course, if there's like you have to buy hardware,

then you can say, look, if you want to join the event and you want to play along, you have to buy the hardware. Sure, sure, yeah. But that's obvious. I mean, we can't donate everybody a raspberry pie for every event we're doing. So things just happened. And that was also how my very first Software Freedom Day was in 2011 in the living room of Peter. And I just asked in the room who wants to give a talk and somebody gave a talk about Sozi. I don't know. Sozi is like

I don't know if you know, Presi. Presi is like a platform to make presentations dynamically. And Sozi is an open source variant. Back in the days, it was an Inkscape plugin, but now it's a standalone thing where SVG things slide through each other and it's a very dynamic way of presenting stuff. I still very much like the concept.

But somebody else gave a presentation on how you could order bits of DNA and order like your your basic DNA to grow a banana with a strawberry smell, whatever. So he created like, so he gave like some basics in crispering and DNA and DNA. A recombination. It was somebody talked about model trains a few years thereafter. So people just talked about whatever was in their interest.

And yeah, so in the beginning it was small. I mean, I think the very first edition we had five speakers and six visitors. But that was enough. I mean, it was fun. And the 11 people who were there had a good time.

and then the year after we had a few more and then five years after we went to a new place where we had like an apartment with three floors and then we decided to have like the ground floor entry level talks second floor technical talks third floor let's nerd out and we really that was a crazy a crazy event because on the ground level I mean I gave a talk on on how to work with Inkscape somebody talked about

about multi-language control in Libre office. I think it was the open office back then I don't know. Anyway, the second floor was like programming an Arduino, some kind of nerdy stuff, but not that nerdy. And then the top floor was like ham radio stuff and an FPGA and things that were really out there. And that created such an opportunity for different type of nerds to come together. I mean, I had a mom coming over to the Inkscape introduction.

Yeah, but with their kids. And they had the introduction. And I had to do part of it in French because their English wasn't good enough. I mean, in Belgium, the languages are Dutch and French. So, and then, and they wandered around. and they ended up on the second floor, on the first floor, sorry, where they actually got like an intro into Arduino,

which they would never have had otherwise. And they were kind of fascinated. So things they mingle. I mean, I don't think somebody from the ground floor will successfully attach to the top floor. But I mean, I think everybody was able to rise to the next one and sometimes for the top floor level people so the really nerds being able to take it down a notch and explain their stuff on a less technical level is also a skill so this was like a

really cool interaction between people and from there i mean more and more people inside the hacker space community started seeing the value of software freedom day as an event not only because it made some money for the haggarspace, because we sold some drinks, but also because, I mean, it is maybe not the core of what we are about, but it certainly is very dear to a lot of us that software freedom and open source and open hardware can actually have its place, have its role, and is a key element in being able to exchange knowledge with each other. Because that's something that you cannot do if you're just using consumable software.

I was going to ask you how you got involved. So around that point, 2011, that's when you were sort of like involved in running an event. Yeah. So then. Yeah, what sort of happened from there, I guess? Okay. So, yeah, so back at 2012 or 2013, I got my swag back from China or from Cambodia.

And this was, I mean, the banner is still still hanging somewhere in our hallway, 2012. So that's what I mean with sustainable swag. It should go on forever. But I really liked the idea of organizing something and being a part of that global community. And so every year I registered. There was like a website and there was like a wiki

where you could put your event on and add some data. It was a bit cumbersome because you had to create like an account on two sides and then you had to put them together. And it was a bit complicated, but it worked. Okay, let's keep it with that. It worked. And like in 2022 or 23 post-COVID, in April or May, on the mailing list,

I asked, hey, who's going to, when are you going to update the website because I want to register my event? And then the existing board member sent a mail out that he and his wife were the last two remaining board members and they were resigning because of COVID and because of, yeah, I mean, they had been doing this for. 15 years, I don't know, a really long time. They had put a lot of effort in it. I know obviously a lot of events weren't happening during that time.

Did any Software Freedom Day happen during like that 2020, 2021 time? Apparently, five or so. Okay, okay. Yeah. But it would mean like a massive drop off from the year prior. Yes, yes. So, I mean, in the peak, the period around 2011, 12, there were like 650 events. And in an interview, somebody asked,

I forgot his name, damn it. I forgot his name, sorry. The previous board member, and what's your dream for Software Freedom Day? And he said, my dream is to have a thousand events. And it started going downhill. So it was like, he jinxed it. I don't know.

But, I mean, it was also a change in time because then you had like the, cloud services coming up, Google Cloud that was also free as in beer. And I mean, the free as a freedom services could not compete with free as in beer. Because you still had to run your server. You still have to set up. And I mean, if you had access to unlimited space at Google, and Google was really into open source back then because they had the Google summer code,

and they had like a really big community. And back then, I remember Google was like really the frontrunner in the open source community. And they supported like a lot of events including OpenS Software Freedom Day. They also gave us like financial support. But so those things were happening. And then these kinds of supports started diminishing. financially. And also we felt how I have the feeling that Google actually took that spirit from the open source community that great enthusiasm.

And they recreated it inside their own ecosystem. Because you also had like these places where developers had like foothball tables and very cool recreation places. Yeah, you look at like that like sort of developer kind of office that Google really started. It really was kind of like a hacker space within the company. Yeah. So they took that great vibe and they learned from it, which I think is a good thing. I don't blame them for that, but they took that great thing and they transplanted it into their own ecosystem. And it worked very well.

And they attracted a bunch of great hackers into the Google infrastructure. And so everything worked great in there. And I think they kind of cannibalized the real open source community there. But I don't blame them. I mean, they did what worked for them. And so I think actually you saw a decline because people had to go full and for their job, work hard, play hard. And we saw the decline.

So from 2015, 16, it's slowly declined year by year. with the absolute deep indeed being COVID. And there was also, in 2019, there was one of the board members who died in a traffic accident. So that was also something I can imagine if I would now learn that somebody died in a war or in a traffic accident from our board members, it would also deeply hurt me, even if I hadn't met them physically yet. But so this board in 2023 said, look, we're stepping down.

If anybody takes over, be my guest. We have maintained the websites. But if nobody does, we'll be shutting down. Because I had been nagging that guy with questions on the mailing list. I had to put my money where my mouth is. Right, right. So I basically said, okay, look, if there's five of us, I'm in. And within two days, four other people said, okay, I'm in too.

And then there, then a few others stepped in shortly after. I mean, there's Archie, who was a graphics guy. He wrote Archie. He's doing great stuff for the graphics designs. There's somebody from Slovakia who, who, who, who, who, who's running another big nonprofit and he's harboring us because the legal structure was a bit broken. So we're now an American under his supervision in American charity. So we have some legal framework where people can make donations and get tax deduction in America.

And yeah, so we have a few very visible people and a few more or less invisible people. and we're trying to grow the movement again. And in 2020, 3, 24, we saw the numbers go up. I mean, post-COVID, that's not a big achievement. I mean, going from zero, you can't go down anymore. Well, you know, it could have shut down, so I guess it could have been a bit worse. Yeah, but anyway, so we took over, we started finding our way, reaching out, to communities reaching out to social networks.

Basically, everywhere, we kind of heard the same thing that you said last year. Never heard of that, which I knew before. And I was so surprised that nobody knew about that because, I mean, it was so big 600 events in 2016, so 10 years ago. And but yeah, anyway. I think I think some of that is just since that, Since that point, there's kind of been this whole new generation of people that have started using Linux who have gotten interested in this FOS space. Especially, I think the big shift, especially for me, was 2018, I think.

I'm trying to remember the year that Valve got proton released. I think it's 2018, 2017, somewhere around that point. That brought a whole new generation of people who are interested in Linux over, because now you can play. your video games on Linux. Like that's, you basically, unless you're playing like multiplayer stuff, you just don't really have to think about it at this point. So it made it considerably more viable

for those people who do care about the Foss stuff, but they don't want to give up all of that, you know, all of that hobby as well. Yeah. Well, actually, Matt, Matt Oquist, he was the founder of Digital Freedom Foundation, of Software Freedom, the first edition,

back in 2004. He was, so his first concept was this software back in those days, showing my age again here, when you bought a computer magazine, it came with a CD, not even a DVD, a CD.

And then you had like trialware on there. Like you had a 30-day version of WordPerfect or a game that you could only play the first two levels. So that kind of crap. A few fonts, clip art, because I mean, the internet was dial up, so you had to call, and then you

had to pay per minutes, and you had like a speed of 65K, kilobite per second, not megabytes. And so if you, it took time to download stuff and it cost it money. So these CDs and DVDs were actually valuable. And he thought, so how, there's already this software, this open source software, free software, That already works. You had like Inkscape 0.47 or something. You had open office, those early versions. And they did quite a decent job, actually.

They, they, they, they, you had a browser. You had the first Linux versions that were already consumer grades. I mean, 04 is kind of early, but you had already the distros. And it, it already worked. So he was, he started looking around. on forums and found like a small community of people and also the open CD project and the open CD project was like creating an ISO

with all open source and free software that ran on Windows back then but all the software on there was completely free to use in whatever way. I'm the four freedoms. Don't have to tell them to you. And so and that took off like really quickly and I think the first year they had already 40 or 50 events worldwide

and then the year after 150 so we're not there yet but I mean and and those local communities actually burned CDs they burned like 20 or 100 CDs some let let factory made them but and then they had like this the sticker front for them so they created the CDs and handed them out. And that was also very valuable for the people coming because they had free software at no cost.

Also, no download cost. And so it kind of worked. And then the fact that the internet was getting more accessible and more permanent. I mean, you didn't have to dial up.

Also changed the fact that because downloading became easier. So, the value of a CD was less of the content of the CD I mean and so those things all made a difference I think in how because you could just install Linux on your computer at home

and you could figure stuff out on your own so the need for that community was less so I think that that's also maybe a point for a lug and for a hacker space and for those online for those physical locations. I mean, reinvent yourself. What's your added value now?

I mean, what can the gray neckbeards do that chat chitkant? Yeah, that's... And so... Sorry, go on with your time. We'll maybe get into that in a bit afterward. But like that, that does sort of like add this whole another sort of thing into the equation as well. Yeah, very much.

Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I sort of sidetracked you there a little bit. Yeah, but so, I mean, it is important that we, that we know where we come from, but also that we don't get stuck there. We all, I mean, when I look at our hackerspace now, for example, there is a lot of negativity around the whole open AI story. And I get it because there are like, both ethically and ecologically and equilogically and equitably. economically and military, there are things to be frowned upon. But if we just say, get off my lawn and don't look into it, then all the AI will become more or less ecological and less ethical and more military and more economically.

While if we do what hackers have always done, try to understand it, try to break it and reinvent it, then we will force those big companies to also do a better job at what they're doing. Right, rather than just letting them sort of control the space entirely do what the hacker space is always done and like sort of build your own thing. Yeah, I mean, and keep, keep focus.

I mean, if you let the company take the lead, then the company, I mean, what does a company? do let's be honest the company has to make money and if they have shareholders shareholders expect in revenue so if that if that becomes your main focus i mean i can't blame them to to optimize for for profit if that's their they have to do i mean that's what a company does so if that's your if that's your if that's your if that's what what you what you get accounted on i mean it only makes sense so if other communities take that knowledge that is open. I mean, the fact that open AI started as the non-profit open AI,

because the AI knowledge was too important to be confined in some business. That was their original idea, which I liked very much. I actually had like, I think I paid for chat CPT3 because I was so, enthusiastic about the idea of creating an open community around this. But we've gone a long way from there. And then we learned about how the legal aspect and how people got tricked into having their data sucked into training models and the ULas. Yeah, they said we were not going to share your documents with other

customers. Technically that's right. We didn't do that. So the Eulas always were correct. They never cheated on us, but you had to damn well know how to read these because it was there in what was not said. Yeah. And hackers, hackers, we have technical hackers, we have legal hackers. I mean, what the Software Freedom Conservancy is doing, I think is great work. What in Netherlands, you have been. bits of freedom, you have followed the money. Those are real hackers in my eyes. They, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they,

and OYB in you in you, in Europe. It's like a, that, that sues, uh, they have been suing my meta, I think now recently. So they are really doing great work hacking the system. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I, I completely agree. Um, um, we're talking. about like events earlier. Last year, how many events were run? Over 100. I think 117.

I'm not sure. Okay. I'm quickly going to the site now. So 25. Okay. Oh, dang it. I can't see it. It's just a map here.

117. Okay. I think. Yeah. Something like that. So I guess what is, like, realistically, right? We can talk about, you know, far out goals. But realistically, what is your hope for this year?

I would like to top it. I would be happy if we got 150. Okay. But I would be really happy if we could reach 150. But I have been over up there. optimistic for years now. I rather have like aim high and and just not get there than say,

okay, I'm happy when you have 100 and then have 120, which is okay. I think you kind of need to be overly optimistic when you're bringing an event that basically back from the brink of doom, right? Yeah, but also, I mean, it's I think it's more important than ever and that's one of the reasons why I actually decided to

to put my time into this event because it's eating quite some of my time because with all the cloudification of public services with all the the privacy things and all the I mean

the the shenanigans that have been going on around AI how they got to their data, etc. I mean, we have been tricked. We have come to the point where, trust me, bro, isn't going to do it anymore. And so I'm, and I still believe that most of the people in those big companies are really honest and have all the best intentions.

But if you don't have to trust, because if you don't if you're in a wave of paranoia and you say, I don't trust my text editor and you have the opportunity to dive into the code or pay somebody to dive into the code, whatever, then you're at another level because then you can say, okay, I trust you. And so because I trust you, I'm still going to look into the code. And also, I mean, there's, There's a shift of priorities.

I still remember talking Windows XP. I bought a license for Windows 97. Office 97. Okay. And Office 97 had this cool feature in Outlook where you could print your agenda on paper. So you have like in booklet form. I printed my booklet for the month.

because I like a PDA was quite expensive and I was like the clumsy guy I always dropped my stuff in water and I went on camps and so buying a new PDA every three months was a bit too expensive too and so I printed my my booklets and then I entered in the evening my new data in the booklet and next month I printed the next booklet and that kind of worked then I bought Windows X X So upgrade was okay yeah sure all the new features so yeah I wanted the new shiny stuff so I bought that one too and I installed it and I wanted to print my agenda of the next month and the booklet the booklet feature was gone. So I called Microsoft support because that's what you do if you pay for your stuff. Hello, I can't find where I can't find how to print my booklets. How do I do this? And I actually back then I still had a person on the line. And so after some digging and some some searching,

apparently she had to tell me that that feature was no longer supported because there was not enough use of it. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah. Right. But then a month later, some small company came, came with a plugin to print your agenda in booklets. And then I paid another small amount for that plugin

and everything worked again. Everybody happy, including that new company. And, but I mean, that's something, this won't happen in open source. Right, yeah. If Libre offers had something like that and then they decided, hey, we're going to deprecate that feature, you could just add the feature back.

Yeah, that's what I mean. or you could decide to downgrade again or whatever. I mean, there's options enough. So that's something that I really liked about the open source ecosystem. And I mean, I had like one of the very first HP CD burners to. And I had it like for 10 years. But after two years, the Windows drivers were also no longer updated. so that device didn't work under Windows XP anymore.

And that's when I was, then two years later or three years later, I discovered my first Linux. I installed it. And lo and behold, my CD burner worked again. So it had been dead for three years. I plugged it in, the scozy port. And it worked. I mean, it blew my mind.

that's the power of software freedom. I mean, it's not business interest that decides it's consumer interest and community interest. And okay, back then Linux was more nerdy, but it worked. And yeah, it has only worked better since. That's the nice thing about Linux, right? Like you can, I think people sort of, because of, because of, because of, you know, are so many options of hardware you can run now, people sort of

think, oh, you know, there's lack of hardware support. For certain areas, there certainly is, but I think the difference now is because there is so much out there, you can't realistically support everything

when you're not being paid to do it. But what you can also expect from Linux is random old things that you have no expectation of ever working. Totally fine, right? You know, one example that I really like, and they were discussing removing it from the kernel

a while back and ultimately changed their mind. In the kernel, there are Wi-Fi drivers for running Linux on the PlayStation 3, back from when Sony officially supported it and then has dropped it for about at least 16 years now. It just works. Okay, cool.

It just works. Yeah. But also, I mean, even if something gets deprecated, I mean, 32 bit Linux is deprecated. But if you happen to run into some 386 computer, you'll find some Linux version that works. And you'll probably even find one that runs like a more, or less recent browser

which is, I mean, you won't be able to visit most of the websites on Windows 98. Yeah. Yeah, that's just cool. If somebody wants to support it, somebody can support it.

I think that's like the core thing there. Yes, there's going to be things that are not going to work, but anybody can go and do it if they have the drive to do so. No one is going to get in your way of making this thing work. And now this is a place where online communities do work, I think, because despite sometimes the risk of bike shedding, but very often, if you have like one nerd in Australia,

two nerds in Belgium and one in Taipei, you might have enough to pollinate each other when you get stuck and to inspire each other to go on. I mean, yeah. And that's something that, that you didn't have, if you only had to depend on your fellow hackers in the hackers space here in Brussels or wherever you lived. Because then you had a much smaller pool of expertise. Yeah, yeah.

That dissemination of information makes it so you can actually, like, you could, you know, work everything out by yourself and, you know, get there eventually. But being able to skip those early steps and go to someone who actually does have field expertise in, whatever it is that you're trying to deal with, whether it be, you know, getting, you know, drivers working so that you can make the LEDs on your mouse the color you want them to be, right? There's somebody out there who has that knowledge,

whereas if you're just dealing with your local community, you know, there's not necessarily going to be someone who's messed around with that. But even if it's just somebody who, if you're stuck and fed up and ready to give up, And somebody says you, have you tried this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I just gives you that little bit of incentive,

just encouragement, a little bit of loving maybe, who, yeah, but I mean, just know that you're appreciated for what you're doing is sometimes even enough, because if you're in a hackerspace and you're the only one with that crazy mouse, who cares? But I mean, if that guy in Taipei and that guy in Brussels also have the same mouse as you have, I mean, they're waiting for you.

And that helps. So we've talked quite a bit about Software Freedom Day, but that's not the only day that is under digital freedoms. You also have the Hardware Freedom Day and the Document Freedom Day. Do you want to talk a bit more about what those are for anyone who might be interested? Sure. Okay. Well, those are basically because we don't have manpower enough to put the same weight behind them. But Document Freedom Day is about international standards, about open standards, open document formats, and exchangeability of data. So the document foundation is very inspiring on that front. But you also, have like the more technical level open standards like Sparkle Jason these are equally

important and maybe maybe even more important nowadays but I mean the fact that you that we're using open standards and I mean I was so happy when when Germany last week announced that in their Bundes whatever I don't speak German their their IP policy ODF is now the required document format yes yes someone did send me that link actually this one it was also on the blog of the document foundation also talked about it it made me so happy because that's baby steps but it's it's so great but if you if you look into if you dive into that legislation you'll see that they also very much talk about open standards for API open standards for for database into connectivity so it's not only

about that document format but it's really the whole thing is very much more focused on being open which really made me happy so document Freedom Day is about being able to

pick up a file that got saved 25 years ago and still being able to read it in a reliable way and that's so equally important and then harder

Freedom Day this is maybe something that's a little bit underrated because we all think about our cloud infrastructure and a cloud is fluffy and soft so I mean a cloud is something abstract

but basically a cloud is also a bunch of chips sitting on a board running a firmware and on this lower level if you want to have the same freedoms, the same integrity, the same certainty

that you can access the stuff, you will also have to be able to know for sure that your hardware is on the same level. So Hardware Freedom Day is about celebrating free hardware, open hardware.

And that event happens in April. Next one is April 18th. So if you want to organize it, especially hackerspaces maybe, go ahead, be my guest, do some Arduino workshops, give a talk, do a challenge, use open data,

I make like all kinds of stuff. I mean, for example, what I find very, I'm not sure if I find it amusing or disturbing, is that we all like how cloud, data. If our data goes to the cloud, I mean, our weather module or our doorbell or our loyalty cards from the shop supermarket,

it all goes into some app that stores its data in the cloud. But why does this cloud have to be somewhere else's cloud? I mean, I've been playing with the idea of, I haven't had the time because I have a squirrel brain. But playing with the idea of creating an app that scans my loyalty card for the supermarket and stores it in my next cloud. So in my cloud, instead of in the cloud of the app. But let's take it to the next step. It's actually the next cloud instance of the hackerspace. So if other people also put in their loyalty card for the same supermarket

it will just every time I arrive at the shop show them a random card so I will be polluting the data set of the supermarket because I don't want today I'm buying diapers next month

my colleague is buying diapers so who has the baby I don't know so let's just randomize that data set and hack the system just turn the thing around and let the cloud be your own cloud

and use the benefits of this cloudification. I mean, if you interconnect your data and you say, I want to share my weather data with a weather map, go ahead and send out the anonymized version.

And this way, I'm the one in control. and I decide what I share and what I won't share. But in first instance, an app should store its data in my cloud. And then I also have the benefits of it being outside of my house. I don't have to be at home to access my loyalty cards and see how much points I have saved, etc. But if I can then use open hardware, open specs, open free software, then this whole ecosystem becomes stronger.

And then I can put a sensor on the roof of my house, store the data reliably in my own cloud, in an open format, and share it through open software with the community. And the three connect to each other. And I've been playing with the idea. We have been discussing this idea because of our limited manpower, but also because basically,

document Freedom Day and Harder Freedom Day have five events for the moment. The same people who would also organize it if we said nothing. Right, right. Because they just love the event. And because they already do it. And how about we just

make like one event Digital Freedom Day. Because in essence, you cannot talk about harder freedom without open standards. You cannot talk about other freedom without software either. And you cannot run software without hard. where and so these three

they're like it's almost religious they're a trinity and they're the whole trinity of open source and if we use this and just

celebrate a digital freedom day so that was my idea I launched to free up some space but basic but there was a lot of rejection because people were sad because then you would reduce it to one event and it would

it's a good thing to have the focus on those three aspects of its own because they are they are very different but they complement each other right if you split it down to one then you know when you have these three seven events they happen at three different times of the year so if it's down to one then it's either you do it one time a year or you then like do I guess you could do

digital freedom day multiple times a year then but then maybe that starts to cannibalize the main, like the one where most people do it. So there's not really, I can see both perspectives here. Yes. So we all, but but so we ended up with let's focus on Software Freedom Day because that's the one that's rolling. But let's keep in mind that those other two, one can't live without the other.

I mean, it's, if you kill one, they die all three of them. so we need to to give them the same love even if they don't get the same attention and so that's why I said in the beginning also if I dream big this event will spread out to also Hardware Freedom Day and Document Freedom Day

because these are equally important actually No I do agree and I think you talked about the cloud before and I this little links into the earlier thing you're talking about with a lot of this freers-in-b-s software sort of cannibalized what existed

in the FOS space for a long time. A lot of this cloud stuff, even if it is paid, it's very convenient. And a lot of people are very willing to sort of trade away some of their freedom for the extra convenience you get of, you know,

oh my data is being synced across all my devices and it's backed up but I don't have to deal with it it's backed up on some magical cloud somewhere I know that if I've used I cloud my data is going to be available anywhere I can access ICloud and

especially if you're not someone who's very technical I can see the appeal in having that even if you understand as someone who is like why that may not be the best thing for your data privacy and things like that so

trying to sell to someone why that maybe a bit less convenience is better for you in other ways can be kind of difficult well

so now you're actually touching something that is another movement I started but this is just in Belgium is Bilebra and Bilebra is like

the Belgium open source movement because in Belgium there was no open source movement everybody who lives in Belgium took it to the European level because Brussels is also the capital of Europe and it actually has to happen on European level

but so by consequence nothing happened in Belgium and I've been advocating for this I call it a critical dependency and I have been mapping DNS records for municipalities So in the DNS records, one of the things you can see are the MX records and the SPF records, showing you what mail services of municipality is using. And this is always an underestimation because you always have people who are using a firewall or a proxy or a locally hosted server.

But what I learned back then was that in. Belgium between 70 and 85% at least of the municipalities was using Microsoft. 100% of the police department is running Microsoft. The army is running Microsoft.

70% of the hospitals are running Microsoft. 80% of the schools are running Microsoft and 30% are running Google. So there's an overlap. Some are running both. And banks, notaries, advocates, lawyers

newspapers journalists I mean all all the journalism is using Microsoft bar none even the smaller ones if at a given point

Microsoft says for some reason trade embargo GDPR violation tripling the price big scandal in espionage I don't care what, the plug gets off, gets disconnected,

and the whole outlook domain gets blocked in Europe. I mean, we have a major crisis at hand. So that's not because it's a bad product, but it's because it's a single point of failure. Yeah, yeah, indeed. And so it's once upon a time, now I'm going back to the old people here, the neckbeards.

The internet was conceived as a disputed, unbreakable network. So we came from ring tokens and star tokens. And then we said, we're going to like make this whole spaghetti of cables. And if somebody bombs on New York, well, no problem. The connection will find its own way.

And TCP IP got developed. And all these great protocols found their existence. and their role, and everything became decentralized. But what we see now is everything is getting recentralized into, I would say, on corporate level Microsoft stack, on consumer level Google stack, and you have these two major points of failure. Well, a great example of, it's sort of relevant to this as well, when Cloudflare has an outage, that will in some cases

knocked down half the internet yeah so I was talking on an event where we're like in Belgium there were like 50 Cs and TOs and sea level

technical people and I gave my talk about about the single point of failure and then then I said look if you're doing business in a serious way, you should be aware of these risks.

If Microsoft is a single point of failure for you, you must have at least a fallback plan for critical infrastructure. I challenge you, in your firewall, block the Microsoft domains and see what stops working. And people got a bit annoyed. And people started shifting on their share. And then one person, he was very brave. He took the word.

And he said, look, if that happens, that problem is so much out of scope. That's of the same order as a pandemic or a war. If that happens, this problem is much bigger than our company. And this is not something we can solve. So basically what he was saying at that point, was not my problem because if not my problem but but it's it's it's the government has to solve it right right it's above my pay grade that's someone that's like yeah but i mean i if it's if that is the case if you're convinced that that's the case then please reach out to your government policy makers

and loud and clear tell them that that's that that's your expectation tell them look uh city of of brussels look back Belgium, look Europe. If Microsoft goes down, we'll be pointing at you, and then we have our next too big to fail banking crisis. So be prepared for that, because the governments are going to say, not my problem, it's your business. So who's going to solve it? I mean, yeah, I didn't even consider like how bad that would be, but yeah, like Amazon's another example of that, right? Where there's so much... Yeah, absolutely.

You look at... And what's really bad with the Amazon stuff is you look at all of these little like VPS providers and there's a lot of them which are Amazon resellers. So you might think you're using something independent, someone with their own hardware, but it's just taking AWS

and then just reselling it to you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes, sure. But also, I mean, like in Europe, there's like very much talk now about sovereign cloud because it has to be

GDPR compliant and and a lot of worries about the American Cloud Act and the FISA Act and so how basically if an American extraterritorial law can mandate companies access to servers

even if they are physically located inside Europe. So this means that I mean your data isn't private enough if the CIA or the FBI or three-letter agency mandates Google or the AWS or Microsoft to open up their server. And they have built all kinds of legal and technical hurdles to say how much they're doing their best. do not grant access. And I really believe they are doing this in all the ways possible.

But at the end of the day, if the law says you have to, I don't see them saying goodbye. We're going to move Microsoft to Ireland. Right. There have been cases where certain countries have, like a good example of this is where South Korea, they wanted companies that were using certain amount of data to start paying

for data costs within the country. The streaming website, Twitch, for example, was really going to be affected by this because video streaming is very expensive. And they just said, okay, we're just not going to operate in your country. And you can do that with smaller countries, with like smaller population. Things have happened in the past with our certain countries is wanting to charge for links being shown with things like Google News. But you can't really do that with a country like the US or, you know, a trade zone, like the EU, things like that.

If they wanted to do something, then it's way too big of a block to just say, okay, we're not going to operate there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, indeed. But I lost my point again. Yeah, so freedom, yes. But so for, I think you remember the case where the ICC court, Judge Karim Khan, his account got blocked. And Microsoft was very quick to elaborate and explain that they didn't block the account of Karim Khan. Later on, it appeared that this was technically correct. because the ICC blocked the account of Karim Khan

because if the ICC would block the account of Karim Khan Microsoft would completely block the whole ICC out so and and so this is like a typical example I think of how sometimes legal tricks are being used to not having to abide by law

because they didn't have to they didn't follow the order of the executive order of the American American government but the the ICC did block the account of

Judge Khan and afterwards they just ditched Microsoft and are now operating in their own ecosystem, which is open source. So I think they did a smart move because this way they held access to all their data. They could migrate it and now they're moving over. But these companies, I mean, I understand them. They are companies.

I mean, they have to make a living. Same for System 76. I mean, they're implementing. age control in their computers in PopOS. Yeah, I think you talked about it. I did, yes. Well, at the same time as that, Carl is also going and actually speaking with legislators

to try to get this changed. Yeah. So, I mean, I very much appreciate how they're approaching it. And I really refuse to be negative about it. I was a bit sarcastic. there's going to be an episode of troller coaster on Hacker Public Radio in a few weeks where I'm advocating all in favor of age control and I'm trolling System 76 a little bit too but I really very much appreciate how they approach it so I want to say it on the record here

because I think they're doing great job both in business-wise and advocacy-wise but yeah so I mean it's a tough world to balance in and I understand it and yeah I mean that's also what I was strolling about but basically yeah sure they can implement age control and maybe at a certain point you will have to enter pop in your your smart your ID to be able to visit up certain sites but I mean this is this will only encourage young people to become more creative in hacking. And I mean, this is, in a certain way, it will create the next generation of hackers.

I don't know if you're aware of anything that any of the age verification stuff happening in Australia, but six months ago, I think it was. We introduced basically a requirement where if you're under the age of 16, you cannot use social media. And with that, they'll start introducing age verification laws, You're now seeing websites that are requiring you to verify you're above a certain age, 18, to be out of, you know, view adult content. And sometimes it's not even adult content. It's whatever, whatever content happens to be on the list of things.

What's happened is about, I think it's something like 80% of the children that would have been affected are still on social media. and especially now a lot of people are a lot more aware of what you can do to get around and I think that's something that has been really good that has happened these past couple of years

people have become really aware and it's become like a mainstream awareness that like VPNs are a thing that exists and you can get around like geo-blocking of content the concern like major concern I had when those were coming in is it sort of pushes people to websites that tend to operate

outside the law, right? Where they're going to host content which should not be hosted on the internet. You know, someone might be trying to find adult content and then, you know, you're in the same place as, you know, child stuff and things like that where if you're on one of the bigger websites,

they've cleaned that up because they are, they are being regulated, whereas the, like, the, sketchier sites, no one even really knows they exist until people sort of like get, shoved into them because of these restrictions. But my main point here is,

I think you are right there, where a lot of people are, I think people sort of underestimate how crafty and willing to learn young people are. Where just because you say, you can't do this now, I know when I was 15, if you told me I couldn't do something,

I was going to find a way to do it. Of course. I mean, when I was 14, my parents bought like a VCR, which had like a parental lock that you could lock out certain, let's call them, nature channels. Sure, sure, sure. And so, but I was basically the techie from the house, age 14. So I installed the VCR. I took the manual. Oh, cool.

Okay. So I blocked out all those. nasty channels because oh my god I didn't want my sister to see them but I made very sure that my parents also didn't know about them so I was the so I was the only one who had access to them so I mean yeah kids bypass things that's what kids do especially teenagers I mean that's good that's what they have to do let's just make sure you don't do anything really really ill be because you don't want to get caught or get your parents in trouble but I mean be

creative I've I've taught my kids that they're in their early teens now to if they enter and create an account somewhere first of all they have a catch-all the domain for email so they can enter whatever they want for email but enter a random name a random date of birth and so my kids now have ages varying between 4 and 24 and they're getting birthday discounts and birthday wishes every day of the year and I'm really encouraging them not to give them their real information to whatever site and be critical about this stuff but I mean they're teaching it I'm not going to teach

them to put in their ID card to log into a banking site or a forum or whatever because then they can see the 16 plus stuff. Don't care. Yeah, no, I, I've talked. One thing I think a lot of people sort of miss about the age verification stuff as well is there's a lot of people who are not, you know, very technically literate, right? They know how to use a computer. Maybe they can use Facebook and maybe send an email, but they're very trusting of what is done online. And my major concern is there's going to be websites that don't need to ask your ID that are just using it as a way to get your ID, right? There's going to be websites that you basically, what you've effectively done is created

this government mandated data theft. Yeah, of course. And there's two things. First of all, because I mean, this is the biggest present. you can give to any social media. I mean, yeah, sure, you're giving an age bracket, but the date, the bit flips, you know the birth date.

And you know the birth date for the rest of its life because people don't change accounts. So this is a data harvesting at a major scale, one. And two, this is also shifting liability. I mean, if, if, somebody achieves to enter Facebook or whatever

with underage. Well, it's the fault of the government or the operating system that the person got into the social media account. It's not the fault of Facebook anymore. It's not the fault of meta or Google or whoever. Now it's the fault of

someone else. So they're offloading the risk and the burden of proof to other companies, which is completely unfair. I mean, just imagine that a gun would handle the same logic. Imagine a gun has built in age control. And you say, if a kid achieves to shoot somebody, it's the fault of Smiths and Wesson. I mean, people would declare you for, crazy. Yeah.

On that note, um, it's like, it's kind of related to that. When we talk about driverless cars, like, who's response, like let's get to the point where,

let's say we have a driverless car that doesn't have a steering wheel. At that point, who is actually responsible if something goes wrong, right? Is that then the responsibility of the company? Because if you don't have a way to do manual input, I would assume it would be. But right now we have this, these driver,

these, There's driverless systems that still have a user override. So there's like this weird legal area of like who is actually responsible in the case of a crash where the driverless system is being used? Yeah, I don't know. I think that that's one of the main reasons why there still aren't or hardly are any driverless cars riding around. Yeah, yeah. Because of the liability thing, much more than a technical issue. Yeah.

But on the other hand, I'm also kind of happy that it's not happening yet because then you will be getting people who can buy the premium car package and get priority traffic. And you have the not-havs who will have to stop for the premium drivers. Yeah. And yeah, I do expect that happening. What's going to happen is like, the law is going to take a long time to catch up,

which is what always tends to happen with any sort of like, hey, is there a loophole that we can exploit to do something that will get us more money? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I'm not sure if I'm that opposed to driverless cars at all, because if I look at myself how every now and then I almost dose off or have like a moment of lack of concentration behind the steering,

wheel. I'm very happy that nothing happened, but there are times where I really wish I had an autopilot. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's going to be a hard sell for a lot of people because a lot of people feel like even though you could show people the numbers of it being safer,

but if you take control away from people, immediately they have this, especially if something does one story of an autopilot system going wrong sounds a lot worse than a human driver because with a human driver like the logic, the rationality can use in your head is well, I'm a better driver.

I'm not going to do that. Whereas with a driverless system, you're not in control so it could happen to you without you doing anything. So it sounds a lot worse. Have you ever taken a bus or train? You're true, true.

you're also not in control there. You also have to trust that the person sitting at the wheel is in good state of mind and etc. I mean, he can also dose off. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I'm not opposed to driverless cars either. I just, it's obviously going to be a big legal challenge

and technical challenge and mass data harvesting. And there's talks of some car companies being like, in the future, cars will have 300, gigabytes of RAM, which, you know, wouldn't be out of, out of the realm of possibility. Just a super computer on wheels. Given the current ramp prices, maybe it's... Yeah, yeah. I think we'll have to start.

Yeah, no, I was going to start wrapping up soon anyway. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on that we kind of missed? I don't think so. Okay. I guess once again, if somebody wants to start an event and get it signed up, where can they go? And where can they go to learn everything about what's going on with Software Freedom Day? So only one place to go. Digital freedoms.org.

I'm assuming there's going to be a website somewhere here or here or here, wherever, yes. Just go there, create yourself an account, register your event. And join the mailing list if you have questions. Okay. Nothing else you want to direct people to. That's pretty much it. That's it. Thank you very much. I had fun. Yeah, I did as well. I'm going to do my outro and then we'll sign off. Okay, perfect. Okay, cool. My main channel is Broaderie Robertson. I do Linux videos there six days a week.

Sometimes I stream as well. I've been lazy on that, so maybe not as much. But sometimes I do. I've got the gaming channel, Bruton Games. Right now I'm playing through Shenmu 2 and probably MetalGus Solid, the time you're seeing this. And if you're watching the video version, this, you find the audio version on basically every podcast platform at Tech Over T. And the video is on YouTube, Tech Over T. We also have Spotify video as well if you like Spotify video. So, oh, there's an RSS feed as well if you like RSS feeds. How do you want to sign us off? What do you want to say? Do you want to, do you want to say something to sign us off? No. Okay. Fair enough. We can just.

just end it like that, that works. Okay.