Copyrighteous

As is becoming my custom, I'm planning to spend much of December and January on the road. This time I'll be in Seattle, Japan and Wellington, New Zealand. Here's the rough schedule:

• December 18-28: Seattle
• December 28-January 2: Tokyo
• January 2-14: Traveling in Japan
• January 15-17: Boston to compete in the MIT Mystery Hunt
• January 19-24: Wellington, New Zealand to give a talk at LCA

Mika will also be around for everything but the NZ leg and SJ seems likely to make an appearance in Japan during the first week of January.

Feel free to get in contact if you'd like to meet up in any of the places above for a coffee or beer. I'm also open to hanging out with giving talks at LUGs, GLUGs, Wikipedia groups, free culture groups, colleges or Universities along the way. Most of my time in Japan is still basically unstructured so I'm quite open to suggestions during the first couple weeks of January.

In preparation for LCA, I'm going to be giving my new Antifeatures talk a few times to smaller local audiences.

The first is going to be today in Boston (apologies for the late notice!) at Northeastern University at 11:45 and it's being hosted by the ACM chapter there.

The second one will be at my alma mater Hampshire College in Amherst this Friday. A draft flier (ignore the unpluralized "antifeatue") is below.

At OSCON this year, I'm going to be giving a talk about "antifeatures." Antifeatures are a way to describe a particular practice made possible by locked down technologies. Antifeatures, as I describe them, are functionality (i.e., "features) that a technology developer will charge users not to include. You can read my short article on the topic published in the FSF bulletin in 2007 for a series of examples and a more in-depth description.

One thing I want to do is put together as large a collection of these antifeatures as possible before the talk. Please read the article if you haven't already and send me examples of other antifeatures either as a comment or in email to mako@atdot.cc. Credit and my deep gratitude will be given to anybody who sends me something. A prize in the form of a real Dutch flessenlikker will given to the best example I get.

After a week at the International Open and User Innovation Workshop 2009 in Hamburg, I'm in Berlin again this week. I've got nothing concrete planned other than spending most of my days hacking on a few projects. Let me know if you're around and would like to meet up.

I'll post more about my travel and talks schedule this summer as things firm up in the next couple weeks.

If you're interested in free software --- and free network services in particular --- and should try to join me in Boston for the weekend of March 21st and 22nd.

The FSF is organizing its annual members meeting again. This year the model is very different. For a start, the audience isn't limited to FSF members and the conference is not just about FSF projects and work.

Instead, the meeting has been rebranded LibrePlanet and has been broken up into a two-day event that is going to talk about and then try to tackle some of the biggest problems facing the world of free and open source software. Saturday March 21st will feature a series of talks about major issues facing free software. Sunday March 22nd will be focused on an unconference attempt to tackle and explore several of the key themes or tracks: network services, high priority projects, and the nascent LibrePlanet activism network.

I'll be focused on the track around free network services which I'm helping organize in part through Autonomo.us. For more information on that angle, please take a look at my blog post over at Autonomo.us. We're going to have a great group of people at the track and I'm excited by the idea that that we'll be able to make some real progress on the issues.

I encourage anyone who thinks they might be able to make it to consider doing so. There are details including travel, location, hotel information and much more on the event web page and wiki (login is required to RSVP). Please spread the word!

One change and one addition to my current European tour.

First, it looks like we'll be skipping Amsterdam this time and heading straight to London from Zagreb on the evening of January 10th. We'll still plan to arrive in Cambridge before the 13th.

Second, I'll be giving a redux of my Revealing Errors talk at Mama in Zagreb on January 10th at 14:00 as part of the normal skill sharing meeting. It's the longer version of my OSCON keynote with many more examples. Folks who have seen earlier versions of the talk seem to think it's a lot of fun.

If you are in or near Zagreb, you should come!

I've been a bit remiss about keeping this space up to date with my upcoming talks over the last month or so. Here's me playing catchup.

On Monday October 20th, I gave a talk on Selectricity for the IEEE Boston Section's Society on Social Implications of Technology. It covered more or less the same ground I coverd in my OSCON talk on the same subject. Then next day, Tuesday October 21st, I gave a short talk on Revealing Errors as part of the MIT-Harvard-Yale Cyberscholars meeting.

There was nothing new or ground-breaking in either but it was good to spread the word on the projects -- work continues on both.

I also have one more coming up: another Revealing Errors talk in Amherst, Massachusetts at my alma mater on October 31st (Halloween). If you are in Western Massachusetts and would like to meet up or attend the talk, let me know.

On the morning after the final US presidential debate that happened a week ago, I was invited onto the excellent new WNYC morning show The Takeaway -- syndicated by Public Radio International. One of the hosts, John Hockenberry, was in Boston to tape that edition of the show.

I was on to talk about Selectricity and some of other ways that we might use election technologies. I was on and off (mostly off) air for the whole second hour (7:00-8:00 AM) of taping and had a bit of a segment just into the second half of the hour. You can check out the website or download the podcast.

Although it's definitely not as fun to listen to as my a last gig on public radio, it's certainly more consequential. The role of the techno-pundit was also -- unfortunately? --- easier for me to fill.

It's late notice but Boston area folks should drop by the local Software Freedom Day events today. It goes from 10:00-16:00 and is located in a great space in Chinatown. More information in on the wiki.

I'm teaming up with John Sullivan of the FSF to talk about free software on in your pocket on unexecpted platforms. We'll show off CHDK (for cameras), the FreeRunner (a phone), and probably also talk about RockBox, iPodLinux, and more. It should be laid back and fun!

The whole point of SFD (and this SFD event in particular) is create a space that's appropriate to folks that don't already know about free and open source software and that aren't necessary technical. If you are a hacker or an advocate, show up and meet some like minded folks and introduce new people to the ideas that inspire you. If you are just curious about this stuff this event is designed for you.

If you're not in Boston, check the SFD webpage. There are hundreds of events around the world and may even be one near you!

When I gave a Revealing Errors talk at Lug Radio Live USA, I had the misfortune of being up against Robert Love's talk on Android which many people at the conference wanted to see -- myself included! One person who showed up to my talk anyway was Allison Randall. She was apparently entertained enough to invite me to give a short version of the talk as one of the keynote presentations at OSCON 2008!

In the talk, I covered the ideas behind my Revealing Errors project and quickly walked through a few examples that showcase what I'm trying to do. I'm happy with the result: a couple thousand people showed up for the talk despite the fact that it was at 8:45 AM after the biggest "party night" of the conference!

For those that missed it for whatever reason, you can watch a video recording that O'Reilly made and that I've embedded below.

A larger version of the Flash video as well as a QuickTime version is over on blip.tv and I've created an OGG Theora version for all my freedom loving readers.

I'm in Portland, Oregon for the week where I'll be at OSCON. I'll be giving two talks on the final day of the conference (July 25): the first will be a 15 minute keynote on Revealing Errors at 8:45 in the Portland Ballroom; the second is a full-length normal talk on Selectricity at 11:35AM in Portland 255. It will be my first long-form talk about Selectricity and I'm looking forward to it.

Because myself, a few Free Software Foundation staff members including Campaign Manager Joshua Gay, and quite a few FSF associate members will be in town, we're going to hold a small FSF Associate Members event in Portland (the first outside Boston!). It's going to be in the form of a pizza party with a few small talks from FSF folk including myself. Here are the details:

FSF Associate Members (& friends!) Event

July 22nd 6:30-9:00PM

Old Town Pizza

226 NW Davis St

Portland, OR 97209

It's free and open to all but is designed to provide a forum for members and friends. If you are an FSF member, please consider coming. If you're not a member yet, please don't let it keep you away; staff will be able to sign up new members there. RSVPs to Deborah Nicholson aren't necessary to attend but would be welcome.

I'll be heading to Seattle right after the conference for a few days. If you would like to meet up in Seattle or Portland this week, please don't hesitate to get in contact.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I'm giving a talk about my Revealing Errors project tonight at the Boston Linux Unix meeting. It will be at MIT in E51-351. More information is on the BLU website.

Revealings Errors is a very different kind of project from what I've done. Please show up if you can. I'd love support, feedback, suggestions, and the like.

Over the past couple months, I gave a couple talks on Revealing Errors -- my project to try and use errors to teach non-technical people about technology, the effects it has on our lives, and the ways in which we (as users) might want to control it.

The first version was at LUG Radio Live USA and went off reasonably well. A couple weeks later, I gave a version of the talk again at PenguiCon which went great. Unfortunately, neither recording seems to have worked out.

I'll be giving talks on the subject at least twice more this summer. The first will be on June 18th at Boston Linux Unix at 19:00 at MIT in E51-315. It will be my first talk to BLU in something like three years. I'm also currently scheduled to give an abbreviated version of the talk as a keynote at OSCON under the title Advocating Software Freedom by Revealing Errors.

In addition to all that, I'm having a whole lot of fun updating the Revealing Errors blog (although not as often as I'd like) and am currently in discussions about publishing a longer version of the Revealing Errors article as a book chapter at some point in the next year.

Thanks to everybody who has been supportive of the project and read the blog, has told their friends, and who has told me about telling technological errors they've seen around. Please keep it up!

In the last leg of what has been marathon traveling over the last two months, I'm going to be heading back to San Francisco to give two talks at CommunityOne.

CommunityOne is a new one-day conference that Sun is putting on -- along side it's massive JavaOne conference -- that focuses on free software, open source, and non-Sun projects.

I'm going to be there talking about free software and free culture. I will be giving updated versions of the two talks that I have at the FSF members meetings over first two years. In the first talk, I'll be making the case for a strong free culture movement and in the second I'll be talking about liberating network services.

If you will be at the conference, or just in the Bay area, and would like to meet up, I'll be in the area for most of a week and would love to arrange something. Just get in contact.

I've been on the road quite a bit lately. During my manic travel, I have been rather lax about blogging many of my recent talks.

After a talk at CHI in Florence on the 7th and a talk at LUG Radio Live USA last Sunday, I'm in Troy, Michigan for Penguicon. It's an incredible combination of a science fiction and a free software/open source conference and it's a huge amount of fun.

This morning I gave my Laptop Liberation talk and tonight I'll be helping judge the Open Source-ry Masquerade costume contest -- the very contest were Tron Guy premiered his now famous costume!

Tomorrow I'll be giving my Revealing Errors talk which I premiered last Sunday at the LUG Radio event and which I'm really excited about. If you're around and at the event please find me and introduce yourself! If you're in the area, I may have some free time tomorrow night. Don't hesitate to get in contact.

I wrote an essay several years ago called The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth: My Story of Unlearning. It's buried on my website but still manages to attract a consistent stream of readers.

It's essentially the story of how I became a geek, about school, ADD, and free software. It is by far the most personal thing I've ever published. That said, several people have told me that it's influenced them deeply -- changed their views, politics and attitudes in important ways.

In December, my friend Marcell asked me to give a version of the talk as part of his G33koskop series. I was hesitant to give such a personal talk but I did it anyway. I've finally got around to cleaning up the recording and have posted it online. You can download and listen to the talk here in Ogg Vorbis or here in MP3).

I'm in Amherst, Massachusetts from now until Friday visiting my alma mater. I'll be giving a redux of my "Laptop Liberation" talk today (March 12) at 12:15 in Adele Simmons Hall for anyone that is around and wants to come. The talk is about free software and OLPC.

I'll be around and speaking to several classes at Hampshire College this week. If you're around Amherst and want to meet up, don't hesitate to get in touch.

It's very short notice but I'm giving a talk tonight (2008-03-03) at the Joan Jonas Performance Hall at the MIT Visual Arts Program. It's rather last minute.

I'll be talking along with Mark Tribe as part of a series called Zones of Emergency. I'll be speaking a bit about free and open source software and why it's particularly important in the context of emergencies. Think Sahana. There's more information about the talk online here.

I'm going to be traveling and giving talks quite a bit this spring. Here's what my schedule looks like now. I don't think much will be added to it:

• February 29-March 1 - Houston, Texas - Matt Lee's Wedding
• March 12 - Amherst, Massachusetts - Hampshire College
• March 15-16 - Cambridge, Massachusetts - FSF Members Meeting
• March 27-28 - New York City, New York - Fordham IP Conference
• April 7 - Florence, Italy - Renaissance Panel: The Roles of Creative Synthesis in Innovation at CHI
• April 11-13 - San Fransisco, California - Lugradio Live USA
• April 17-20 - Detroit, Michigan - Penguicon
• April 25-27 - Cambridge, Massachusetts - ROFLCon
• May 5 - San Fransisco, California - Sun's Community One

I'll be giving at least one talk at the FSF Members Meeting, the Renaissance Panel, Lugradio Live, Penguicon, and Community One.

Matt's wedding is private. To join the FSF members meeting you must become an FSF Associate Member if you are not already. All of the other conferences require some sort of registration. Penguicon, Lugradio Live, and ROFLCon are each cheap and each promises to be a lot of fun. The talk at Hampshire should be free and open to the public.

I'll be posting more about each of these as things get closer including details about what is that I'll be talking about.

If you'd like me to talk to another group or at another event while I'm town for any of the events above, now would be a good time to ask. If you just want to meet up for a beverage of your choice, that's good too. In either case, get in contact.

I'm going to be giving a reprise of the Laptop Liberation talk I gave at Cornell University in November at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in the Kansai region of Japan on January 7th. If you around, please feel free to show up. If you are in Osaka, Kyoto or Nara and would like to have lunch or dinner, please email me and we can try to arrange something.

Details on the talk is online here in English and Japanese (thanks Mika!) although the talk itself will be in English.

On January 15th, I'm going to be giving a talk on a panel at the Computing in the Cloud conference held by Ed Felton's Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. The conference description says:

“Computing in the cloud” is one name for services that run in a Web browser and store information in a provider’s data center — ranging from adaptations of familiar tools such as email and personal finance to new offerings such as virtual worlds and social networks. This workshop will bring together experts from computer science, law, politics and industry to explore the social and policy implications of this trend.

I'm going to talk about the AGPL 3.0, why it's important that we put effort into figuring out what freedom for different technologies means, and what the components of freedom for web services might be.

Registration is free and bags you a name-tag and lunch.

Worth noting perhaps, the conference is sponsored by Microsoft.

I recently mentioned that I would visiting some friends at mi2 in Zagreb and would be traveling around the Balkans a bit to give some talks and workshops. Here's what the current plan includes:

• Novi Sad (November 20, at 20:00): I'll be participating in a discussion of hacker culture at CK13.

• Novi Sad (November 21-22 16:00-21:00): There will be a System.hack() exhibition which I helped prepare some of the text for and which I'll be on-hand for. It will include a narrated history of hacking through six objects. The exhibition will be held in an room of the Mediteraneo Hotel in Novi Sad.

• Belgrade (November 23 20:00): Another discussion on hacker culture, this time at Rex.

• Belgrade (November 23-24 17:00-20:00): System.hack() will be exhibited again in a room of the Kasina Hotel.

• Ljubljana (November 26, Time TBD): I'll be giving a talk on free software project management at Kiberpipa/Cyberpipe

• Zagreb (November 29-December 1): I'll be participating the Open Translation Tools workshop organized by Aspiration.

• Zagreb (December 3): I'll giving a talk in the giving a talk in the g33koscope lecture series. The topic and time are still undecided.

If you're in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Ljubljana, or Zagreb and would like to meet up, please consider coming to the events and exhibitions. If you can, and especially if you can not but would like to meet up anyway, feel free to drop me an email and let's try to organize a meeting.

Thanks go to Tomislav Medak and Marcell Mars who organized System.hack(), this whole tour, and who helped do the work to bring me over. I'm looking forward to the next couple weeks.

Yesterday, when I posted the list of talks that I'll be giving this week, I forgot to mention that I will be giving a Cluedump at MIT tonight organized by SIPB. It will be in the form of a simple hands-on workshop to teach folks how make Debian or Ubuntu packages. The session is not aimed at teaching folks to make policy compliant packages or how to pass Debian's NM process but rather to be more of an, "Everything a Sysadmin Needs to Know about Debian and Ubuntu Packages," style introduction.

The talk is tonight, November 12, 2007, at 20:30 at MIT in room 56-114. Feel free to read the longer description and to show up if you're interested.

I'll be in New York State for the second half of this coming week. On Thursday, I'll be in New York City giving a talk as part of a interdisciplinary colloquium discussing free software and structured around Decoding Liberation, the recent book by Brooklyn College professors Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter. The talk will be Thursday, November 15, 2007 between 10:50 and 13:30 in the Glenwood Lounge in the Brooklyn College student center. See this flier for details.

I'll be heading straight to Ithaca where I'll give a talk the next day at Cornell for the Code Review student group. My talk will try to introduce and discuss free software issues in the context of the OLPC project. The talk will be on Friday November 16th at 17:00 in Rockefeller 115. There's some more details on the Code Review website.

Folks should feel free to attend either event.

I'll be leaving soon after on a bit of a Balkan tour being organized by some of my friends from mi2 and will be spending a couple weeks in or based out of Zagreb. The details are still being ironed out but I'll be sure to post them here once I know dates, places, and times.

There are quite a few important events related to Ubuntu -- and to free software communities more generally -- in the Boston area in the next few weeks. I plan to participate in many of them.

First, this coming Saturday, October 13, there will be an Ubuntu install party hosted at MIT and organized by the Ubuntu Massachusetts local community team. It promises to be a lot of fun and a great opportunity to have a gaggle of geeks install a free OS on your computer for you. If you've been thinking about installing free software but been hesitant (my guess is that this is not the majority of my readers), this is the event for you. I'll probably be doing RockBox installs as well so backup your music and bring an iPod if you're unfortunate enough to have funded Apple through the purchase of one.

Next week on October 18, Ubuntu Massachusetts will be hosting a party at the Globe Bar and Cafe to celebrate the (scheduled) release of the Gutsy Gibbon. I am not thrilled about everything in this release -- like Compiz by default -- but I am happy about the progress of the distribution both technically and in reaching out to an ever-wider and ever-larger group of users.

On the week of October 29-November 2, Canonical is hosting the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Cambridge. I'll definitely drop by for a least a day or two to make some strategic interjections and to participate in a few specifications that I care about. The summit is just down the street from my office at the Hotel at MIT so I have little excuse to not show up. I'll also being hanging out with friends from Ubuntu during the week.

Finally, as part of the Ubuntu conference, Canonical is sponsoring FOSSCamp. It promises to be a Foocamp/Barcamp style "un-conference" with a focus on free software and open source. I'll be there and, if there's demand, will run sessions on Selectricity and a quick Making Debian/Ubuntu Packages for Sysadmins talk -- basically a more polished version of what I did at the Ubucon in New York.

All events are open to the public although people who are not Ubuntu developers may be a little bored at the developer summit. I look forward to seeing both old and new faces around the project in the next month.

I'm going to be giving the opening keynote presentation at the K-12 Open Minds conference tomorrow. I was supposed to be talking on Thursday but will be filling in for David Thornburg who will be a day late. Apparently, he's been described as one of the top 21 speakers in the United States. Yikes!

I'll be talking about the free software movement and hacker culture. I've heard that the whole thing will be streamed.

This Saturday, September 15, is Software Freedom Day 2007. With more than 300 teams registered, there's a good chance that there's something going on near you.

I'll be helping at the Software Freedom Day event in downtown Boston where I'll be giving a talk on a still undetermined topic. I'll also be helping out with GNU/Linux and RockBox installs and letting folks play with my XO and OpenMoko.

If you are into free software, open source, or GNU/Linux, please show up to your local SFD event. Go ahead and bring your friends who are not yet familiar with free software -- this event is primarily for them.

In Boston, there will be refreshments, talks, demonstrations, and installs. Bring your laptop, desktop, iPod, or other DAP -- or just bring yourself and a friend.

I've let my talks page fall badly out of date in the last year. As a first stab toward updating it, I've uploaded all of the notes for all of talks I've given calling for a free culture movement built around a standard of freedom and for adoption of the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

There are notes posted for talks at the following conferences and meetings:

• Wikimania 2007 (2007-08-03) in Taipei, Taiwan. Notes: HTML, ReST
• iCommons iSummit (2007-06-16) in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Notes: HTML, Rest
• Freeculture.org Annual Conference (2007-05-26) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Notes: HTML, ReST
• FSF Associate Members Meeting (2007-03-24) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Notes: HTML, ReST
• Wikimania 2006 (2006-08-04) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Notes: HTML, ReST; Slides: PDF, ODP

The talks and notes are not the same, but they are often very similar and they share a lot of text.

The only recording I have is the one from the FSF Members meeting which I posted here before. It's still available online here:

• Talk (OGG Vorbis or MP3)
• Q&A (OGG Vorbis or MP3)

Perhaps a couple other recordings will surface.

The good news is that I think that those of us involved with the definition have begun to make real progress in getting the message out and I think that, in several real ways, we've changed the nature of the conversation around free culture.

I hope so, because I think that, looking at the list above, it's probably time to move on and to think about helping the definition and the movement in new innovative ways and with new compelling arguments.

I'm in Taipei this week whole week for Wikimania 2007. I'm here for two days for a retreat of the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors and advisory board. I'm also going to be giving two and a half talks in the conference itself, attending a Debian birthday party, and perhaps giving a talk on Ubuntu at ITRI.

Here are the overviews of my talks at Wikimania:

• Freedom's Standard Advanced (2007/08/03 10:30): Mostly a reprise of a couple talks I've given recently that make the case for a definition of freedom and for the Free Cultural Works Definition in particular.
• Supporting Collaboration in Branched Articles (2007/08/05 13:15): I'll be unveiling my thesis work: a wiki that allows for branching and merging. It is built on distributed revision control concepts and tools (i.e., Bazaar) and includes a text-specific merge/conflict resolution system designed for writers. The tool has important potential for offline wiki work, stable versions, and collaboration among forked articles within and between wikis. Think ikiwiki but with distributed revision control and all the branching and merging that goes along with it. I'll be posting lots more information and source here in the coming month.
• Election Committee (2007/08/04 14:30): I'll be joining the rest of the Wikimedia Election Committee and talking a bit about the last board elections and about how we might handle things like election methods in the next election.

Details on Debian's birthday party are online too which will have talks, food, beer, and more.

As always, get in contact if you want to meet up or just find me at the conference.

I'm off on a short European tour for the next weeks -- in all likelihood my only trip to Europe this summer. I'll be visiting three conferences where I have planned talks. These include:

• The iCommons iSummit (essentially, the Creative Commons conference). I'll be talking about philosophy of free culture movement and continuing my pitch for a set of goals for free culture and the Definition of Free Cultural Works. I'll be in Dubrovnik Croatia between 14-18 June and will be giving a talk 16 June.
• After missing last year -- my first absence since DebConf 1 -- I'll be at DebConf 7, this years instance of the annual Debian Conference. I'll be giving a an overview of academic work on Debian on 21 June and facilitating a round-table discussion among Debian derivatives on 22 June. I'll be in Edinburgh for the shin-dig between 18-23 June.
• For 26-28 June, I'll be a guest of Eric von Hippel in Copenhagen for a small meeting/workshop of people interested in and working on issues around von Hippel's idea of, user innovation -- an area of research I am seriously considering pursuing full time next year.

Between 23-26 June, I'll be traveling through the UK from Edinburgh. I have tentative stops planned for a variety of places along the way including Manchester, Cambridge, and London. I suppose there will be pub nights or something similar in each place. Get in contact if you want to meet up along the way.

Harvard Free Culture is helping to organize this years' National Free Culture Conference -- the meeting for North American Free Culture student groups. The whole shindig is planned for May 26, 2007 at Harvard University here in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The schedule is solidifying and I will presenting and arguing for adoption or support of the Free Cultural Works Definition within the FC student movement and probably also be talking about community building and advocacy in some free software groups I've worked with.

Housing is available and the event is open to the public. If you’d like to attend, speak, or help out with the conference, please email freeculture@hcs.harvard.edu or check out the Facebook event.

If you're on the fence about attending, you can read this glowing endorsement of the conference by high protectionist James DeLong at IP Central.

As I mentioned previously, I was graciously given the opportunity to speak the crowd at the Free Software Foundation's Members Meeting in March about some of my work and activism around Free Culture. In front of what was probably the friendliest audience possible, I compared the free software and free culture movements and explained why I think that free culture movement may be off track -- and, of course, what we as a community might be able to do about it.

If you listen to it, please try to forgive my faults as a speaker. The message I tried to convey is what I think is one the most important tactical issues facing free culture. If this talk dwells a little too long on free software and the lessons we might take from that world, please consider my audience.

You can listen to the talk here:

• Talk (OGG Vorbis or MP3)
• Q&A (OGG Vorbis or MP3)

I'm giving a talk today as part of Media in Transition 5 (MiT5) conference organized by the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. The topic this year year is right up my alley: "creativity, ownership, and collaboration in the digital age.

Everyone else is talking about free culture issues so I'm branching out a bit and delivering a paper I wrote with Harvard Law School and Harvard Free Culture's Elizabeth Stark on "the politics of piracy" with a focus on political action around P2P filesharing. We'll have a paper in the proceedings which I'll post with our talk notes and slides.

You can find information on our talk on how to attend on the conference website.

While I've been making an effort in the recent past to cut down on talks -- so that I can focus on getting work done that will give me something to talk about in the future -- I'm thrilled to be giving a presentation at the upcoming Free Software Foundation Members Meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While normally the members meetings are reserved for talks by the FSF board and staff, I've been invited to give a talk on my work around movement and definition building for free culture as part of a short members forum at the end of the day. I'll also be running a mini RockBox install party over lunch.

You need to RSVP for the meeting by this coming Friday (2007/3/17) and, in order to do so, you need to be an FSF member. Fortunately, joining is easy to do. I won't lie and suggest that my talk could possibly be worth the membership price. Luckily, I don't have to lie to suggest that rest of the things that the FSF does are more than worth supporting with membership dues.

I had a great time at Ubucon a couple of weeks ago. I ended up running two sessions.

After an initial opening, I opened the conference with a talk on how folks can participate in Ubuntu. The talk was roughly based on Andreas Lloyd's absolutely wonderful Contribute To Ubuntu page in the Ubuntu wiki. His page was, in turn, based on my own Participate In Ubuntu page. The talk tried to provide a solution to the common question of, "I love Ubuntu and want to give back! How can I?" -- when I was answering info@ubuntu.com (for my sins), I would get this question several times each day.

The talk was a relatively straight forward walk through the different teams and group working in Ubuntu along with examples of their projects and fun anecdotes from my experience in the community along the way. I worked in a bit of talking about different community governance structures and issues and the membership process. Trying to cram an overview of the community and its different subsections into an hour is a pretty sobering experience. There's a lot going on and I barely had a chance to give a poor description of the most visible things going on.

In the afternoon, I reminded folks (and myself) that I know a little of this tech stuff too by walking folks through a quick introduction to building and modifying Debian or Ubuntu packages. It was a quick variant on the "Debian Packaging for Sysadmins" talks that I've given in the past.

Of course, the best part was getting to hang out with some folks I know from the community and to meet a bunch of new people. It was a blast and I'm definitely looking forward to the next one.

My joint workshop with Lawrence Lessig at Wizards of OS went, in my opinion, extremely well. The worst hitch was an unfortunate series of events that conspired to keep Vera Franz from attending and moderating the session as planned. Paul Keller, who was supposed to participate in the panel, graciously (and capably) moderated in her place.

The panel allowed Lessig and I to talk openly and publicly about about our disagreements for the first time while also highlighting the many places where we speak with one voice. The conversation managed to be both positive and productive without papering over issues.

I usually like to post talk notes and slides after each speaking engagement. However, our WOS meeting was a "workshop" so I have nothing prepared to present here. I have, however, seen two write-ups in the press:

• This article in IP Watch
• This piece in Heise (German)

If someone has a recording, tell me how I might get a copy.

One small note: I am quoted in IP watch as saying that most CC works are under the most restrictive licenses and that there has been no shift toward less restrictive licenses with time. Mia Garlick has pointed out that the latest license usage statistics, based on admittedly imprecise linkback data, show a several percentage point decrease in the usage of licenses that block commercial use and derivatives -- when expressed as a fraction of the total number of works under CC licenses. The restrictive licenses are still the most popular but it was incorrect to say that there is no evidence of any progress whatsoever toward more free licenses.

Tomorrow, I will post a summary and response to one of the points that Lessig and I talked most about.

I'm in Berlin for just over 48 hours to give a workshop at Wizards of OS 4.

The workshop is Free Content Licensing: Success, Challenges and the Way Forward and will be a conversation between myself, Lawrence Lessig, and Paul Keller from Waag Society and Creative Commons Netherlands.

When I first published Toward a Standard of Freedom (my first article that was critical of Creative Commons) a couple years ago, I received an email from someone at Creative Commons within two hours of posting the note. The email pointed out that I had incorrectly licensed my work as the CC license I applied to my essay had the old mailing address for CC. I thanked the mail's author for pointing out my mistake but asked if, perhaps, she or someone else at CC had anything to say about the content of the article itself which was, after all, about her organization's work. I never received a reply.

To date, I have not been able to engage in meaningful public discussion of my criticism of CC with CC, although I have tried several times.

I'm thrilled that Volker Grassmuck and the Wizards of OS organizers have been able to put together this opportunity to start what I hope will be a longer conversation with people at CC about some of what some of us perceive as tactical shortcomings of the CC approach. It can only make our movements stronger.

In a few weeks, I'm going to be giving the keynote address at the the Conference on Engaging in Open Source at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The conference is organized by the student chapter of the ACM at Dalhousie and looks like a unique, and very interesting, gathering. My talk will build on some of my previous critical analyses of the unique process of principle-setting in the free and open source software communities and will try to introduce some new and challenging concepts while framing the broader discussion that will continue in the rest of the conference.

The conference will be held on June 1 & 2, 2006. Ping me if you're in the area and would like to meet up.

I gave a talk last week at a gathering at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS). The gathering was called Come Together and the theme was technology, social movements, and social change. The line-up included 8 people in addition to myself and ended with a talk by Noam Chomsky.

The talk focused on introducing folks to the idea of social movements around information freedom by introducing a big picture view of problems introduced by contemporary IP and a quick breakdown of some of the types of ways that people are attempting to resist, provide alternatives to, or change the system for the better. I did not use slides but I have (very rough) notes available for those that are interested.

Information Freedom talk notes:

• HTML
• ReStructured Text

While adding the notes to my website, I noticed that I never uploaded the slides or notes from the longer (better) version of a talk on a similar topic that I gave at the Darklight Film Festival's annual symposium last year. The talk was titled, Software, Freedom, and the World Beyond Computer Programs.

Aimed a non-technical audience, the talk began by introducing intellectual property and tries to describe the history of the current problems created by modern IP policy. Like the Come Together talk, it continued by offering the same rough classification of the types of "solutions" being offered. Unlike the Come Together talk, I then went into much more depth on the reasons Free Software has succeeded in the information technology realm and tried to describe some of the benefits and limitations of applying the "open source" model to the production of other types of creative works. I gave the talk on October 28, 2005 in Dublin, Ireland. Slides and talk notes are available.

Software, Freedom, and the World Beyond Computer Programs slides:

• PDF
• Open Document Presentation (i.e., OpenOffice.org 2.0)

Software, Freedom, and the World Beyond Computer Programs talk notes:

• HTML
• ReStructured Text

I submitted the following proposal for a talk at Debconf6:

This talk offers a "Debian Themed" quick tour through the academic, legal, and business worlds. It overs insight into what everyone outside of Debian is saying about, doing with, and learning from the Debian project.

In doing so, it hopes to give Debian participants some insight into fields and areas that they are largely unfamiliar with (e.g., management, sociology, anthropology, economics, computer supported collaborative work, etc.). It illuminates what others -- especially academics -- find useful or inspiring about the project and to facilitate self-reflection and self-improvement within Debian. It reflects on the impact that Debian has had in the world beyond the Debian project and, in particular, in those areas that many Debian developers may not be familiar with.

The good news is that the proposal was accepted. The bad news is that this means I actually have to finish doing the research to make the talk happen.

To make the talk excellent, I wanted to solicit examples from you, great Debian community. I've already got my own list but I'd like to hear what you think I should talk about?

What I'm not looking for is examples of people or organizations that use Debian. This talk is not about people who use the OS or the people who build it. This is about people who have learned from Debian as a community.

Primarily, I'm looking for academic publications on Debian. However, anyone who has learned and designed a system or community based on such a paper or from observation would be good as well. People who use or have learned from our voting structure might be a good example as would communities with a Debian-derived social contract. Software engineering research is fair game.

Be creative but remember that I've got a limited time on the podium and may be forced into the unpleasant position of being ruthlessly selective.

Please add examples to this wiki page or just email mako@debian.org.

That's if for now and I'll see you in... Umm... Oaxtepec.

My talk at BLU seems to have been carried out successfully.

The talk was nothing new for folks who follow this blog and know my other Ubuntu talks. It was a long (nearly two hour) number given to an audience with mixed experience with Ubuntu. As such, it covered a lot of ground by pulling from both my introductory Ubuntu talks and my To Fork or Not to Fork talk that I gave several times this summer. The talk was given at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Steve Ballmer gave a talk at Sloan two days later. His talk was better attended. Of course, I doubt he told people how to get free copies of his projects OS offering shipped to their homes at no cost.

Slides and notes follow.

Slides:

• HTML
• PDF
• OpenOffice Impress Source

Talk Notes:

• HTML
• reStructured Text Source

Last night, I decided to check out the Boston Linux Unix webpage to find out when the next meeting would be and what the talk would be on.

To my surprise, the talk is tomorrow and is slated to be given by none other than Benjamin Mako Hill. Hmmm.

I vaguely remember agreeing to give a talk like this in general sense but don't remember ever agreeing to a specific day. In any case, I'm not one to disappoint and am working on my slides.

If you're interested in some post-Breezy action in Boston, please show up! If you can't make it, I'm trying to arrange a proper release party for some point after I receive my Breezy CDs (a week or two I guess).

I'm sorry for the short notice. Of course, I'm giving the talk on short notice so I'm not too sorry. Additionally, I am missing both a class and a Media Lab sponsors dinner that I was already double booked for. You should be able to cancel up to one of your prior engagements to attend.

Information on the talk is on the BLU website. The talk will be held at MIT in E51-315.

As I mentioned recently, in what became a small European tour, I gave a number of versions of a technical talk based around a paper on Ubuntu and the way we build our distribution on top of Debian.

To Fork Or Not To Fork, was presented at LinuxTag, Libre Software Meeting and What The Hack. As I said last time, the talk describes some aspects the way that Ubuntu is developed as a Debian derivative and some reasons folks from a wide range of different Free Software projects might be able to learn something from our experience.

The talk is aimed at a rather technical audience of free software developers. Hopefully, this fills a void by acting as an Ubuntu talk that is more technical than the standard Introduction to Ubuntu without limiting its appeal to only current or prospective Ubuntu developers.

Although I gave this talk several times, I'm just including a single set of notes and slides. These are the versions from the third presentation at What The Hack. You can get the talk slides and notes in the formats listed below.

Slides:

• HTML
• PDF
• OpenOffice Impress Source

Talk Notes:

• HTML
• reStructured Text Source

I've been perplexed for quite a while by the fact that in a lot of areas (in academia in particular but may other places as well), people try to explain free software or open source and it's freeness or openness in very reductionist or essential terms. The argument can start with some variation of one of these statements (or something similar in spirit):

• "Free Software is inherently anti-capitalist."
• "Open Source is an example of pure uninhibited capitalism."
• "Free Software provides a model through which we can put limits on capitalism."

I touched on this issue in a talk I gave at LSM in 2003 called Lessons from Libre Software Political and Ethical Practice and then even managed to write it up in what became a published journal article with Biella Coleman.

Well the folks at Libroscope ran another track at LSM in Dijon this year and they managed to talk me into opening the theme with an attemp to give a practitioner's view of freedom in free software and the important role it has played in the movement as a way of deflating the reductionist and essentialist analyses I alluded to above and explaining how they are neither completely wrong, nor completely correct.

You can get the talk slides and notes in the formats listed below.

Slides:

• HTML
• PDF
• OpenOffice Impress Source

Talk Notes:

• HTML
• reStructured Text Source

At LinuxTag, Libre Software Meeting and What The Hack, I gave different versions of a developer-oriented talk on the way that Ubuntu is developed and the reason folks from a wide range of different Free Software projects might be able to learn something from it. I will export and post the slides and notes for those talks in one big lump at some point in the next week.

However, the best way for those that missed the talks to get informed on the issue may be to read the article titled To Fork Or Not To Fork: Lessons From Ubuntu and Debian (the same as the talks) which was published in the LinuxTag conference proceedings.

In the essay I explore the experience of the Ubuntu project in building a distro on top of Debian. I argue that the scale of certain free software projects are forcing developers toward a new kind of forking using technologies like distributed version control and host of other technical and social tools and processes and look at some of the early successes and failures of Ubuntu in this regard. I also describes some of the techniques in question and argue for the techniques' applicability and importance in a wide range of free software projects.

If others think it's a good idea and if I can find somewhere appropriate, I may be interested in publishing a version this article in a magazine or journal. If you know of a place where this article might be welcomed, please contact me.

You can can currently pull the article down in the following formats:

• HTML
• DocBook XML Source

A bit more than a month ago, I posted about an essay I'd written on Problems and Strategies in Financing Voluntary Free Software Projects. Thank you to everyone who sent me feedback.

As I mentioned then, I wrote the paper for a talk at this years Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, Germany. I gave the talk as planned and am using this opportunity to upload the talk notes and the slides. They are based quite heavily on the pre-paper version of the talk I gave at FISL 5 in Porto Alegre, Brazil a bit more than a year ago.

I'm not sure that these notes add much to the paper but if people couldn't make it to the talk and liked the paper, they're here for you to check out in the following shapes and formats:

• Slides in the following formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • OpenOffice Impress (Source)
• Talk notes in the following formats:
  • HTML
  • ReStructured Text Source

Tomorrow I will be at the Sixth Libre Software Meeting or Les 6èmes Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre. I'll be giving a talk on Ubuntu as part of my aforementioned Ubuntu Does Europe tour and, due to my own weak will and the persistent nature of the conference organizers, also be giving two other talks.

Here is the line-up:

• On July 5, I'll be opening the "taking Free Software beyond IT" theme with a talk called Broadly Defined Freedom and Radical Non-Discrimination based off of some of the writing I've done with Biella Coleman including How Free Became Open And Everything Else Under the Sun. It's some of my older work but I think it's still important to repeat every once in a while.

• On July 6, I'll be giving a LinuxTag redux of To Fork Or Not To Fork: Lessons From Ubuntu and Debian on the Ubuntu derivation model and how other projects can learn from our successes and challenges and why I think the model is an important step toward the way that free software will be built in the future.

• Later on July 6, I'll be giving a final talk on Creative Commons and why I think it has fundamentally misunderstood (or at least misapplied) the structure (and goals, but that's another talk) of the Free Software movement.

  I've had a concise and rather stinging article on this I've been circulating semi-privately for over a year and that I've been unsure about what I wanted to do with it. Cory Doctorow read it and compared me to a trot and Richard Stallman somehow managed to get a copy and has been repeatedly urging me to release it -- along with a number of other people I respect in the movement. As a result, I'm going to give the topic a go at LSM and then, if all goes well, incorporate any meaningful and helpful criticism I receive and release the article afterward.

  If you're not at LSM but you want a preview of the article or know of someone who might be interested in publishing it, please get in contact

You'll have to check the posted conference schedule for details, precise times, and rooms. Please find me if you'd like to sign keys or introduce me to an excellent French wine.

Slides, notes, and the like are on their way from my LinuxTag talks and I'll link to them some time this week.

After taking one year off, I will be back in Karlsruhe for Linuxtag this week. I have two papers in the Linuxtag conference proceedings and will giving talks based on each. These include:

• Problems and Strategies in Financing Voluntary Free Software Projects - The talk will be at 16:00 on June 24th. I've already distributed a draft of this paper and received some good feedback.

• To Fork or Not To Fork: Lessons from Ubuntu and Debian - There are, believe it or not, two Ubuntu talks running head to head at 17:00 on June 25th and mine is one of them. It seems that Michael Kofler (who I did not even realize was giving a talk on Ubuntu until I saw the schedule ) is giving more of a general overview and introduction to Ubuntu. My talk will go into a good deal more technical detail and be geared more toward developers who want to learn from Ubuntu's experience in trying to create a project that is developed in parallel with an existing project by diverging and maintaining a sustained inter-project relationship over time.

  It's tricky stuff and I don't claim to have all the answers but I hope I can shed some light on the situation. There's been a lot of noise about this lately on Debian lists -- some positive and some very critical. I hope that my talk can help describe the processes so far and the thinking behind them, distill some solid advice out the criticism we've all heard, and package it all in a way that is educational and helpful for folks working on very different types of projects.

I'm going to work a little more on my paper for the second talk and I'll link that that here when I'm done. As always, I'll also post slides and such for people that want to give similar talks of their own.

I am told that the Ubuntu community in Germany has arranged for some space sharing with GNOME and will have a bit of table space in that booth. I'll be there there for some time handing out CDs and answering questions. There will also, I'm sure, be a great Debian booth packed full of hackers and you should be able to find me there as well.

I'll be staying in Europe until the very beginning of August and will be at RMLL/LSM, Debconf5, and WhatTheHack. I'll have a bit of time in between and will be popping up here and there for talks on Ubuntu around Europe and in areas nearby. If you'd like to host such a talk, and especially if you've got a great LoCo Team, get in contact with me and lets see if we can arrange something.

I own a pair of lace-up leather pants (i.e., trousers, thanks) but, while it helps, the costume doesn't make the rock star.

The Debian and Ubuntu teams that I'm on are (in a weird, dysfunctional way) slightly like rock bands. We have the long hair. We have the late nights. We have the binge drinking. Putting out a release is a bit like putting out a album.

So, to round it off, I've decided to go on tour. It's a pretty wimpy tour but it's a start. After some time locked in the studio, I'm out to promote Ubuntu's newly released "Hoary Hedgehog" and to play a few tracks from Debian's upcoming "Sarge" offering.

The two next stops include:

• On Sunday April 10, I'll be rocking out with the Southern Connecticut Open Source User Group in New Haven, CT. I'll talk about Ubuntu, the latest release, and the derivation process in relation to Debian. The event will be held at Innovation Software and feel free to drop by.
• On Monday April 11, I'll be playing at the The Northern New Jersey Linux Meetup in Fort Lee, NJ. You should reserve a spot on that web page if you plan on attending.

Both events promise to be relatively laid-back with manageably-sized groups that should leave enough time and space for questions, chatting, food and drink. I'll bring key fingerprints if anyone wants to trade keys while I'm there.

As announced earlier, I recently gave a talk on Ubuntu and its relationship to Debian and the process of derivation and the difficult process of balancing forking and collaboration in Manizales, Colombia. This talk ended up being more of an introduction to Ubuntu and to Debian and Debian derivation and I didn't really get to dig my teeth into the key issues that the title might imply to the degree that I'd hoped. The talk was mostly a combination of my recent talks Customizing Debian given at NYLUG and BaDoPi and Introducing Ubuntu given at GULEV.

In addition to the fact that there was a packed gym of more than 1,500 highly receptive people, the talk will probably be most memorable for the fact that I managed to spill water onto and severely damage my laptop during the talk and for the fact that the power went out for 10 minutes in the middle of the speech.

For folks that are interested in a general introduction to Ubuntu and its relationship to Debian, or who want to give their own version of the talk, you can use all of the information I have:

• Slides in English in the following formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • OpenOffice Impress
• Slides translated into (Colombian) Spanish in the following formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • OpenOffice Impress
• Talk Notes (which I didn't actually stick to very closely and was mostly recycled from the earlier talks) in the following formats:
  • HTML
  • reStructured Text

I hope to revisit this topic again soon and do a small part to stimulate a productive discussion in Ubuntu on ways the relationship to Debian can be improved and reinforced and in Debian about ways that we can manage relationships with derivers more constructively.

Clearly, Ubuntu folks are learning a lot, through things done right and through things we can do better in the future, on how to collaborate in doing what I really believe has the potential to become a new, better kind of fork that -- if we can pull it off -- may have a lasting impact on the way that Free and Open Source software (and distributions in particular) and developed. The CDD folks are shedding light on the issue from another interesting angle.

I've recently given two talks on Custom Debian Distributions and on deriving distributions from Debian more broadly. I finally got around to putting the information on my website so I thought I would mention it here for anyone that was there and wanted the notes/slides, for those that want to derive their own version or just for anybody who is interested.

The first talk was given on November 17th at my current "local" LUG, the New York Linux User Group (NYLUG). It was called Customizing Debian: Fork Yours With Debian GNU/Linux (a name I can't and won't take credit for). The talk was two hours and focused on the goals and techniques used by a number of groups that are deriving new distributions from Debian. I introduced Debian and gave an overview of the universe of Debian customizers. I then broke down the idea of customizing into a number of logical pieces and, using the examples of UserLinux, Ubuntu, and Debian-NP and Skolelinux (representing internal "CDD" groups), I walked the audience through the nitty gritty of customization using in-depth descriptions and a couple code samples.

You can get information on the talk in the following forms:

• Announcement: link
• Talk Notes: HTML, ReST,
• Slides: HTML, PDF, Openoffice.org Impress

The second talk was simply a shorter stripped down version of the NYLUG talk. It was only 45 minutes and was given at the Grupo de usuarios de Software Libre de Barcelona, AKA, Badopi. The modified versions of the slides I used are below. I gave the talk without notes.

• Slides: HTML, PDF, Openoffice.org Impress

I am writing this from the plane returning from Veracruz, Mexico where I gave a keynote talk on Ubuntu at GULEV's Congreso de Software Libre. The keynotes at the conference were given by Randall Schwartz, Maddog Hall, Richard Stallman and myself talking about Ubuntu. Another Ubuntu developer asked me, "you were in parentheses, right?" Well, apparently not! There was massive turnout for the talk which went extremely well and generated a lot of energy that culminated in what nearly turned into a physical tussle over who got the last Ubuntu CDs. It was an honor to share the stage with both the other keynote speakers and the local Mexican hackers and just to be able to address the extremely interested and active Mexican Free Software community. I had a great time and hope I can make it next year.

In any case, direct from the parentheses, I've got notes and slides for folks that want to derive and present Ubuntu at their own LUG or who just couldn't make it and would like to know what happened:

• Slides are in the following format: HTML, PDF, Openoffice.org Impress

• Talk notes for the narrative part of the talk: HTML, ReST

For the last bit of the talk, I should have paid attention to the two cardinals rules of technical talk-giving:

1. Doing a live demonstration of software is an invitation to Murphy's law.
2. Doing an untested demonstration -- for example, an install onto untested hardware -- basically eliminates any ambiguity about Murphy's appearance in rule 1.

I didn't. I did an Ubuntu install, on the projector, onto a brave soul's laptop. Through a stroke of luck (and the hard work of everyone in Debian and Ubuntu who ironed out all the bugs), it worked perfectly and gave me the opportunity to highlight many things I didn't make it to in the formal talk.

At the risk (read: sure thing) of appearing to self promote, I want to plug two talks I'll be giving soon:

• Tomorrow (Wednesday November 17, 2004), I'll be talking at the New York Linux User Group (NYLUG) giving a talk on customizing Debian. The talk will be about customizing in a general sense pulling from my experience with Ubuntu and in a specific CDD sense pulling sense pulling from my experience with Debian-NP. You need to RSVP to attend and should do it quickly. If you miss the RSVP, you can meet up in the bar across the street for the Real Event afterward. Details are on the NYLUG website.
• Next Friday (Friday, November 26, 2004), I'll be giving a keynote address on Ubuntu at the GULEV Congreso Internacional de Software Libre in Veracruz Mexico. It's just been finalized so it hasn't even hit the conference website as I write this. You'll need to visit the conference website for information on attending.

I know I'll see some old friends and I hope to meet some new folks as well. Feel free to get a hold of me if you'd like to meet up at either event.

I recently gave a talk at Gnubies: the New York City GNU/Linux group for beginners. The talk was aimed at complete beginners so it won't have a lot of new information for anyone who is already familiar with the topics covered.

The talk discussed both Debian and Ubuntu and explored the overlap to introduce the concepts of Free Software philosophy that are important to both projects.

For those that are interested, I've posted the notes I used (I gave the talk without slides) for those that want to give their own talk in HTML and ReStructured Text source.