Well, thank you, everyone, for attending.
It's lovely to see all of you.
My name's Mike.
I go online under the handle, Nolski, so you'll find me as Nolski in the Matrix chat as well
as in IRC.
I have a bunch of titles because I choose to have titles instead of a social life.
But probably the most important in the context of this talk is the bottom one.
I am a scholar of political economy, of science and technology.
I'm a graduate student, and this is kind of the field that I study.
So political economy is kind of a funny word, but essentially what it means is it's the
study of how economic systems and political systems are intrinsically linked.
And so this framing is really what drives the analysis of my talk today.
And so political economy has been around for a very long time.
It's been the primary subject of many very, very famous and loved thinkers throughout history
that I'm not going to name.
But what are we talking about here today?
Well, first, I want to do a quick history of free and open source software, like a very
abridged one to kind of drive home a couple of questions I've been asking myself for
the last few years.
Second, I want to kind of posit a question about, are we really building the same software
now that we were when the initial foundations of the ideology around free software began?
And if we aren't, how is this software we're building today different?
Then I want to talk about kind of where we are today as a community, as a society and
ideologically.
And then lastly, I kind of want to, you know, posit some questions that will hopefully generate
a very lively but hopefully respectful discussion that adheres to the code of conduct with this
event.
So let's get started, or actually let's not get started because I talked to my boss and
I have to give a couple disclaimers.
So first, you know, I want to, I'm going to be talking about politics here and economics
of free software.
And I want to be clear, you know, this talk, it doesn't seek to analyze or make any stance
on like the morality of who you work for or whether your employer makes you a good person
or a bad person.
It doesn't even seek to analyze whether certain organizations are good or bad.
This talk is to analyze the structures that exist in our technological production and
see whether, you know, we might be interested in changing those structures, not like who
is good and bad.
Furthermore, I got to read this verbatim according to my boss.
The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily
reflect the views or positions of any entities that I represent.
So now that that's out of the way.
Thank you.
Yes.
So hopefully I will have a job when I get back home.
So let's do a quick timeline of free and open source software.
This is very abridged, so I'm leaving out parts for brevity so we can have a discussion
and focus on other things.
But in general for this talk, I want to bisect the history of FOSS into two periods.
And these dates are very generalized, but you know, the first period I would argue is
between the 70s and the early knots, particularly during the beginning of this period.
You know, computing hardware was just becoming, starting to become standardized, right?
Previously, if you bought a computing machine, it would come with a software provided by
the manufacturer, and it was custom made for that model, right?
And you couldn't easily transfer software from like one model by one manufacturer into
another.
But, you know, soon after, hardware architectures became standardized, right?
And so people could write software that runs on many different kinds of machines.
They could share it with each other, they could trade it, and software became what's
called a commodity, right?
And so this generated all sorts of new industries that, you know, I'm sure you're all aware
of within like information technology and so on.
And you know, as part of this, you know, businesses formed to develop and sell software and services
around that software.
And at the same time, so too did communities of practice, of production that sort of formed
their early, you know, ideas of what we imagine as open source or free software communities.
And so from this situation arose the beginnings of, you know, what I would call one of the
foundational ideological pillars of free and open source software.
In particular, Richard Stallman proposed these four essential rights or freedoms for
users as like this, you know, kind of core ideological pillar of what free software should
allow and kind of be about, right?
These aren't like licensing terms, but rather kind of a stance, right, ideologically.
Specifically, right, it's for any software user, you know, obtains, they should be able
to use it for whatever purpose they want, they should be able to understand how it works,
they should be able to share it onward to whoever they think might want it, and they
should be able to modify it to suit their own needs, right, and improve it potentially.
And so, you know, one thing I'm really interested in considering during this period is the underlying
assumptions and technological context during when these four freedoms were initially positive,
right?
At this time, most software was this very discreet thing that like oftentimes came in
a box or like on a floppy disk or whatever, right, and when you ran it, it was on your
own machine, it was limited in its size and complexity, it was portable and understandable
largely, right, and it was, you know, it was discreet.
So, you know, many businesses at the time would license their software in this way that
explicitly forbade these rights, right, like when, you know, you can download my copy of
Windows but, you know, you have to pay for it and you can't modify it and you can't like,
you know, do whatever.
And so, this causes tension between these communities of developers creating free and
open source software and businesses who are specifically seeking to profit off of their
ability to generate revenue through these proprietary licensing strategies.
You know, Bill Gates, you know, had this infamous quote where he referred to free software
activists as, at the time, as communists on a television interview, and you know, I would
argue if you talk to, talk to folks from this period, you know, many free software organizations
actually struggled with like being labeled as like communists or anarchists at the time,
and so, you know, this was kind of almost like a meme, and you know, just as a disclaimer
here before I get sued, this poster wasn't made by Microsoft, so this, this poster was
a meme created by someone else, so, you know, this is not representing Microsoft's views
at the time or now, so Microsoft please do not sue me for false light.
So, anyways, you know, this struggle led to there being many projects and products both
open source and proprietary, right, oftentimes like competing products, right, and many businesses
offered their own solutions that actively marketed against open source software alternatives
that were trying to accomplish the same goals, fulfill the same features as their proprietary
counterparts, right, and you know, these businesses, a lot of their ideas at the time is they're
relying on their greater cohesion to try to build like a better product and software
ecosystem to the, you know, when compared to their sometimes fragmented open source
alternative, and this is how they seek to try to capture the market for any given like
use case, right, so in short we had this situation where we see directly competing products whose
common differentiator is really their licensing strategy, this is the thing that made them
stand out apart from each other, right, you got Windows and Linux, you got Firefox and
Internet Explorer, you got OpenGL and DirectX, right, all these were competing products to
see which was better, and all these cases as a competition between, you know, which
organization, the community or the firm could build what capacity is more effectively, right,
and many of our debates and discussion at the time revolved around, you know, which method
of production was more efficient at building these capacities, and you know, I'm sure even
if you go around today or you talk to your friends, we still hear these discussions,
right, when we're talking about trying to encourage people to develop open source, it's
more effective, you know, it's just easier, we can share costs, and so, you know, during
this time licensing was this huge part, if not the most important part of when we thought
about the battle between free and open source software and proprietary software ecosystems,
you know, IP rights at the time were really coming to a fore with the advent of like a
lot of, you know, digital intellectual property, and when considering this initial ideology
focused on, you know, user autonomy, freedom, user autonomy and freedom, this idea of IP
ownership in order to facilitate that through licensing was like the sort of core method
that many people thought about how to achieve this sort of more ideological goal, right?
So now I want to kind of jump ahead to the sort of second phase where we are today, right?
So this relationship between open source and proprietary software, it didn't really stay
this way, right?
Now as we all know, as you know, you come to any one of these conferences, you've probably
seen this statistic already today, you know, free and open source software has become this
foundational infrastructure upon which like pretty much all of our digital services are
built, right?
And before I go ahead, I just want to drop like a thank you and a note that a lot of
the graphs I'm going to be showing in the next couple of slides come from this amazing
2021 report written by the Digital Commons Policy Council.
So I got a link to that policy council in the slides which you can download off of the
FOSTA website.
I encourage you to check it out, but they did a lot of really great work for getting
the data and the empirical sort of findings here.
So anyways, you know, today we see some of the biggest antagonists towards free and open
source software actually directing the most significant amounts of their workforce towards
its support and budget, especially when compared to other firms, right?
Microsoft was like the big bad in open source, right?
And now they're actually one of the largest contributors of it, right?
They're very much bought in to open source software production and not only have major
firms change their tune in relationship to each other, but now when we look at open source
communities and the largest projects and most important projects on the internet, employees
of these firms now generally outnumber independent contributors.
And you know, I'm careful to use the term independent here rather than volunteer because
independent contributors are oftentimes contributing in the context of like an organization or
institution, but it's not really one that is focused specifically on maximizing profit
for themselves.
So these types of contributors, I would argue, face like very different incentives in terms
of like what they're trying to build and for what purpose.
Furthermore, you know, as time has gone on, the ratio of firm employees to the independent
contributor has increased steadily, right?
So year over year in most or in pretty much all major projects, the amount of firm employees
when compared to non-firm employees has increased, right?
So this is not just like a finding, but it's a year over year trend that's increasing steadily.
So you know, I would argue one thing to note in this case then is that we can sort of find
that independent contributors oftentimes have less power in these communities simply because
they're being outnumbered by a much more cohesive group of other contributors and they just
have less power to develop, right?
And so, you know, while these projects are majorly developed at the explicit discretion of firms,
what I think is most important is actually the shift between these two periods is actually
how the form of software itself has shifted when thinking about open-source software.
So if you look at this list of projects, so this was I think the top 20 or 25 projects
that in terms of contributors and activity founded by the Digital Commons Policy Council
and if you look at this list, nearly all of these projects, they aren't really end-user
software anymore, even of the technical sort, right?
Many have for use solely in the development of these sort of large-scale products and
platforms that can really only be applicable to users who have significant resources to
run them, right?
So like, let's have a look, right?
We got, you know, a number of server orchestration software such as, like, you know, Kubernetes,
Mobi or Ansible.
We also have machine learning and distributed systems projects such as, like, Spark, PyTorch
and TensorFlow.
And I'm sure as you attend talks today, even at Fostum, a conference, you know, it's quite
community focused, you'll likely find the majority of software programs being discussed
are of this type.
So you know, why has the production of free and open source software shifted so incredibly
to this one very kind of specific niche within software applications?
So I'd like to argue that most of the software we interact with on a day-to-day basis, and
you know, maybe I'm leaning out of the, you know, free software developer archetype here
when I'm saying this, but most of the software we interact with aren't really discrete applications
anymore, but rather what I would call platforms, right?
And because of this, the relationship of much of our open source software and our proprietary
software has, like, fundamentally changed, right?
So why are these projects that are, you know, important now so different than the projects
that were important before?
Now I'd like to argue that many of the most powerful technology firms have largely pivoted
away from licensing discrete software products as their core sort of revenue model to the
development and, you know, managing of platforms to generate revenue for them.
So you know, before we go forward, I'm sure you've all heard the term platform before,
but I'd like to try to formally define it in economic terms, right?
And so this, this sort of, I'm paraphrasing here, but this definition was first posited
by a Nobel Prize-winning economist, learner, and to roll.
So platforms, when we think about a platform, you oftentimes think about it like a software
system or something like that, right?
But these software systems aren't really commodities in themselves, but rather they're made as a
system to manage access between like networks on two sides of a wall or like commodities
on two sides of a wall.
So to give an example of this, you know, Facebook is a platform which manages access
to communities and media for end users on one side, and then, you know, willing eyes,
data and ad positioning for advertisers on the other side.
And Facebook has kind of this monopolized access to both of these networks, right?
Or at least like a very preferential access to both.
You know, Amazon is a platform which facilitates access to distribution networks and a global
marketplace for producers on one side, and then a network of goods and services for consumers
on the other side.
Google is a platform which facilitates information and digital services for end users on one
side, and again, you know, willing eyes and user networks for those digital service providers
and advertisers on the other.
So the nature of the platform has positioned their creators to exploit what are called
these multi-sided markets with these sort of two networks by acting as a mediator and
a gatekeeper between access across this sort of divide.
So, you know, I'd like to posit this question to everyone that we always hear all the time.
It's honestly probably getting a little old in the tooth, but, you know, has open source
one?
Like, you know, have we done it?
We are foundational to the operation of like the entire world.
You know, open source is really important.
More people than ever are creating it, right?
And so, you know, no, I don't think so.
I mean, there's clearly more open source, right?
There's probably a similar or larger proportion of open source software to proprietary software
that we use on a daily basis, at least within the dependency chain.
However, we still have little to no control over the vast majority of services that impact
most people's lives, particularly digital services, right?
From e-commerce to social media to health care provision, all of these, you know, might
heavily rely on free and open source infrastructure to function, but we still have no actual control.
So when we think about the ideological pillars of our movement in the first place, I don't
see any significant gains in this area.
So, you know, to me, when looking at this history, it really seemed that many free and
open source advocacy programs have been outmaneuvered in this way due to the shape of our software
changing.
So, you know, I know that's like a little depressing and everything, and I'm sure many
people have a lot of opinions about, you know, maybe the validity of that, but, you know,
I kind of want to talk about, well, if this is the case, right, and if this is a problem
that we as a community are facing, then what do we do about it, right?
So first, I want to kind of review a couple of key points that I wanted to make, and then
I want to, I know this is like a stage shock, but I want to have a lot of Q&A afterwards
to have a discussion with the audience.
So first and foremost, you know, I want to claim, you know, free and open source software
isn't competing with proprietary software anymore in any significant way.
I know, I know there's, you know, probably examples, but when we look at the largest,
most active, most important free and open source software projects, they are not competing
with proprietary alternatives.
They're helping host them, right?
The second is our labor as free and open source software contributors in general is being
increasingly dictated by firms.
We see this year on year because we're being continually outnumbered by firm contributors,
and we're having less of a say in the communities that we act in.
You know, furthermore, more of us are working directly for firms when contributing and are
therefore, you know, required to represent their interests.
And even when we aren't, certainly the most important projects, our ability to dictate
the direction of these is, you know, we're outnumbered.
On the flip side, we are finding when these firms suffer any loss in their rate of profit.
Usually it is us who are among the first to be cut, right?
This precarity and increasing control that firms have over our collective labor powers
means that oftentimes we're losing autonomy as creators over our own labor.
You know, so this original framing of user control over, you know, our software that
we download and run on our machines, you know, I would argue is no longer relevant because
we live in a time where, you know, we majority interact with these really complex, massive
platforms.
Most critical software we interact with is no longer these discrete packages offering
specific functionality to users, but rather, you know, these platforms are gating and mediating
access between markets, commodities, and other networks, right?
Therefore, our original conception of simply increasing the amount of openly licensed software
products is no longer as relevant as the projects we're building are largely infrastructure
to maintain these platforms, right?
So we can no longer avoid this very political question about how we attempt to reorganize
free and open source software labor on behalf of these original ideals of, you know, user
rights.
You know, labor organization has frequently been a topic avoided previously in free and
open source software, and I would argue is due to this major focus on licensing instead.
You know, we didn't talk about, like, who we're working for or how we're organizing
our work because we wanted to focus on where the ownership was, and if we can create more,
you know, open licensed things, then the ownership goes to everyone and the power is distributed.
And I would argue we've seen that we've been kind of outmaneuvered in that sense because
our interaction with owned software has largely changed.
So you know, this all sounds not great, but if this is the case, then how can we adopt
a more sort of labor-oriented approach to the topic of free and open source values and
ideals, right?
How can you, as a foster, or me, you know, I'm not off the hook here, help bring about
this change?
So you know, I can't claim to have all the answers here, you know, I'm just a guy interested
in this topic, studying this stuff, especially now, you know, I understand the topic of political
change is a very touchy one, however, there are some ideas I've researched that I think
would be, you know, at least worthwhile for us as a community to investigate further.
The first is the idea of understanding that not all free and open source software contributions
are equal.
So when considering the value of free and open source software contributions, you know,
maybe we should prioritize developing alternatives to existing platforms that are controlled
by firms, right?
And so when I say alternative here, I don't just mean an openly licensed clone, but rather
a solution design specifically with these ideals of user autonomy in mind, right?
It may take an entirely different form to create something that would be comparable.
The second I want to talk about that I think is very important is organizing within the
workplace.
You know, I've met many, many, many burnt out free and open source software maintainers
in my life, and I understand the pain there.
And so, you know, our ability to produce what we want requires that we have greater control
over our own labor.
So, you know, while technology roles are oftentimes compensated well, at least, you know, within
certain geographic areas.
It doesn't eliminate our precarity as workers, right?
And I think in particular, you know, many of us are finding that out now.
So, you know, in this case, what do we do about it?
Well, you know, historically, the formulation of labor unions have allowed us as workers
to better bargain with our employees and regain control over our labor power.
And I think, you know, when thinking about how we can, like, manage to have the time
and capacity to be able to build what we want, thinking about regaining that control within
your own workplace, particularly through labor unions, is, you know, a great first step.
The third thing I want to talk about, which is a little touchy, is, you know, explicit
political organizing within the context of our free and open source software community.
You know, I don't think we can just build and license the solutions that we want, but
rather we need to organize ourselves along explicit political lines that go beyond that
of licensing.
When you think about free and open source software, I was in Bradley Kuhn's talk today
in the legal dev room, where he was kind of talking about his personal history in this
case.
And he talked about how there were a lot of, I forget the word he used, but, like, collaborations
between groups that had different interests, right?
And he was questioning, like, you know, I don't know if we should have worked with them
or worked with someone else.
And I think it's very hard to determine these sort of partnerships that you enter unless
you have a very clear political line that, you know, you as a community are agreeing
to work together on.
And I think defining this is really important, probably just as important as something like
the open source definition.
Lastly, you know, I think finding and developing new workplaces is going to be a really important
fact when thinking about, you know, kind of figuring out how we can organize ourselves
to develop the software that we want, right?
I get that this isn't an option for everyone immediately, but, you know, the role of institutions
such as, you know, NGOs, nonprofits and universities have historically been, you know, key creators
of foundational free and open source software infrastructures.
And you know, furthermore, I think we as a community see our ability to represent ourselves
lessening in general, right?
You look at organizations like the Linux Foundation, and they pretty much exclusively represent
the interest of their corporate members, that is literally how they're incorporated, right?
And they have no public good mandate.
So I would argue that we should organize, agitate and push for these institutions in
our society to support this production, to draw power away from firms.
So now this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, you know, I'm not claiming you should all be
communists, but this is my poorly made rendition of the earlier poster, you know.
I want to wrap up with, you know, free and open source software, you know, I would argue
was largely outmaneuvered due to this lack of cohesion and organization within a specified
political framework.
And so if we do, you know, seek to reorganize ourselves for a new era in free and open
source software, then we should consider how we got here and, you know, see if we can correct
some of those mistakes.
So, you know, I want to, this is my second to last slide, and I'd like to open it up
for Q&A if that's okay, but I thought I would leave this here, you know, if you found this
stuff interesting, I'd like to leave kind of further reading lists.
And so these were some of the primary citations that drove this research for me, but also
I think just were interesting, relevant sort of pieces of written work.
There's a couple of books in here, I link to them on LibGen, if you can't afford them,
you should be able to download the e-book at least.
And yeah, thank you, I'm Mike, and I'd like to hopefully try and answer any and all questions
you might have.
Thank you very much for the talk.
You presented a very interesting table regarding the leading firms for each of your stories,
etc.
So I'm an NixPKG contributor, and it was mentioned that the leading firm was Logic Blocks.
I think it doesn't exist anymore.
I'm very interested in how you generate such tables, because it's super interesting.
Also how do you deal with corporations or firms which are not really firms?
For example, on the table there was Home Assistant, and the leading firm was Affolter Engineering,
which to the best of my knowledge is Two Person, which I don't know if you can qualify
this as a firm or not.
And what about those group stories or projects where you have a lot of people which comes
from very different backgrounds?
Yes, that's pretty much it.
So as I understand it, there's a little bit of rattling.
You're kind of asking, what is the methodology for generating the data that you're showing?
How did you get it?
Am I able to click on this?
So these tables were generated by the Digital Commons Policy Council as part of the Ford
Foundation Digital Critical Infrastructure Research Grant.
I don't know if I...
Oh, wow, that was small.
So this is the research grant.
I don't have Wi-Fi.
That was silly of me.
But essentially, they detail in this report their exact methodology for doing it.
It was a lot of...we had to deduplicate identities.
We compared emails for frequency commits and mangled it all together into a single report.
But they can detail it pretty well.
I did look over it because I was asking myself the same questions and I was pretty satisfied
with it.
It was a while ago, so I probably would do a poor job of repeating it.
I'm over here.
Hi.
I found that really interesting and very provoking.
An outcome, I see a conclusion of this.
The idea that free software has become platformized and has become this sort of substrate is a
sort of two-tier society where we in this room are a sort of intelligence here and we
have access to these free tools and we get access to the four freedoms.
We can use free software licensed products and we can study them, share them and improve
them and then we build services, a software substitute and everybody else is a kind of
London proletariat who doesn't get those freedoms and doesn't get to sort of benefit
in the intellectual fruits of free software.
Is that necessarily connected to the kind of corporate capture of free and open source
software that you were talking about and what are the organizational roots or the agitations
that we can take to actually extend those freedoms out beyond the experts and to the
people who use computers?
Yeah.
So a very big question, you asked for sure.
If we imagine the free software community, oftentimes we're very technical people.
I use Linux desktop and I'm a social scientist so I would consider myself probably fairly
non-technical here but it allows us to have these sort of freedoms by having this technical
knowledge and many people I'm sure many of you have interacted with maybe don't have
that technical knowledge or that capacity or whatever to sort of interact with free
software in the same way and use it, maybe their job requires that they don't or whatever.
And so does this play a part in sort of figuring out how we can advocate for these ideas to
be more equitable across people?
Is that correct?
Cool.
Yeah, I would argue that for sure as technologists we face unique labor pressures, right?
In particular, I was at the EU policy forum thing yesterday and there are a lot of policy
people that go up and they're like, technology, the coders are going to save the planet because
they're genius and we get a lot of lip service towards our technical ability.
But on the flip side, I would argue that we still face many of the same precarities that
we've seen workers have throughout history and for sure it's a struggle and it's a discussion
we need to have as we're organizing ourselves but I think first and foremost, if we want
to have better free and open source software, we got to have more control over our own labor
power to create it.
We've done a lot of really cool stuff just like as hobbyists and things like that.
Imagine if there was an army of us all working together and dictating like, oh, this is what
we want.
I don't want Facebook.
Who likes Facebook anyways, right?
I want to build the thing that's like actually allowing me to connect with people in the
ways that I dictate is best for me.
It takes a lot of organization and agitation to get there and I think even as intellectuals
or a person in the professional managerial class, we still have a lot of incentive to
work at that.
I hope that answers.
It's kind of a vague answer.
Yeah, so when open source is being developed in discrete ways for discrete products, there
was no cost to the developers of the software when someone used that software in whatever
setting.
So you could produce a thousand or a million and the open source project almost didn't
know who was there and who was using it.
And I understand your concept that there's more of a consumption at the platform level
now than discrete software.
But the question is how does, how do projects evolve in an environment where you have to
provide now, there is now a cost to that platform.
So you've got to have infrastructure, you've got to have networking, you've got to have
admins and so forth.
And there's now a per user cost in a lot of ways to how your software is consumed in
a way that before it was zero cost.
And it feels like that change is pretty significant and does almost open the door or close the
door frankly for pure open source projects to almost operate at scale in that environment.
Yeah, great question and very, very relevant and not one I think I have the answer to but
like I want to maybe propose a couple of potential answers that I think, I can't choose, right?
We have to choose.
And so when thinking about platforms, there's a lot of different ways, currently many platforms
are kind of exploitative, we don't really have a choice in terms of whether or not
we use them if we want to have access to a certain thing like social networks or whatever.
So part of it's like, oh, maybe we just need to collectively own it, maybe just nationalize
it is like one very political way of thinking about solving this problem.
If we nationalize it, then it's like democratically controlled theoretically and like this is one
way of approaching this problem of user autonomy, then if someone wants to change it, then we
have democracy to help facilitate that somehow.
Another way of approaching the problem though is like, do we need platforms at all, right?
Is this approach of one specific technological solution to solving one specific need within
our society, is this the right way of going about it or was this just like the most effective
way of running it?
Can we return to, can we imagine futures of which like our technology is progressing,
but it's still discreet enough that we can maintain control over it?
And then what does that look like and how do we get there?
I think these are the kind of different sort of arguments and kind of maybe factions that
might arise within the open source community.
I think if we start, begin really rethinking like what we're doing on a more fundamental
level.
Does that sort of, yeah, thanks.
Hi.
I was wondering what would we see or hear when there's good organization within the
workplace and that question is sort of in context of major strikes in the UK at the moment
around a lot of public services and also in context of a blog post by Carl Mitchell called
It's a Trap, which is basically warning that the union sphere in the US is very heavily
legislated and there's lots of sort of bad political context when it comes to saying
we should have a union for this, basically being something that you shouldn't ask for
unless you really know what you're getting into.
Yeah.
So, I guess maybe before you hand it off, is your question more on like what do we do
about unions kind of being portrayed in a certain way or is it like as a union applicable?
That's organized well.
Right?
What does that look like?
Yeah.
That's a great question.
I have a lot of friends and as part of my research, I do lots of research with how unions
currently organize and how they use technology and so, you know, there's not like, there's
not one, you know, everyone I talk to, whenever I ask them this question, they're like, well,
I can't give you a blueprint, right?
But I can like tell you some things that work for us, right?
Within, you know, I work with a couple union organizers at Amazon, right?
And they have huge turnover.
So, you know, focusing on like new employees as a point of organizing and getting people
in educating them is like very important for them.
However, I have another friend that works as a technician in a hospital who has a very
small department.
And when they start, when they started focusing on unionizing or at least like collectively
bargaining amongst themselves, they started in a very small but critical part of their
organization saying, you know, we can't do the whole hospital at once, we'll just get
fired, right?
Or we'll have a bad time and it'll be very hard and we don't have the capacity.
But maybe within our department, if we, you know, begin forming certain lines about what
we want and like what we care about, we can begin starting our organization from there
and then moving outward if we gain momentum.
You know, I think particularly within the technological context and people within, you
know, like sort of tech companies, this might be an interesting thing to try out.
But you know, that said, we haven't seen, we don't have a lot to learn from in this
sense, right?
There aren't a lot of existing tech company unions.
But like, you know, maybe that's a place to start, maybe looking at some of the smaller
ones or, you know, if you work at Amazon, check out Amazon Workers United.
If you're at Google, check out Alphabet Workers United.
There are existing unions within these companies, even if they aren't contract unions.
Thanks for your talk.
And this is also related to like organization, you mentioned software foundations.
I mean, unfortunately, a lot of them have similar structures and like business models.
So I mean, because I've been thinking about like alternatives to software foundation,
is it that we need to work on like a different membership or a different business model or
governance?
Do you have any thoughts on this?
Yeah.
It's a big question.
And certainly when I hear a lot of folks talking about, you know, I think it's, you know,
I would argue, and I know I called out many companies here, but I would argue the Linux
Foundation is quite different from most open source software foundations.
You know, Linux Foundation is a membership organization that is formed specifically to
represent, you know, its corporate members.
You pay for a membership to get into the Linux Foundation.
They have a summit and stuff like that.
And they're supposed to advocate on your right, on behalf of your interests as a tech
company that utilizes open source.
And they, you know, they've grown quite a lot due to their funding.
But I would argue that's like very different from something like the Python Software Foundation
or the Rust Foundation or even like Apache or something like that.
You know, I would argue, I would like to see more collaboration of, you know, I don't think
software foundations for every project that exists in their own little ecosystem.
I think that's good so you can receive funding and stuff like that.
But we should start figuring out ways that like, you know, what if there was a Linux
Foundation that wasn't, you know, driven principally by like members who paid for ownership, right?
Maybe we could think about things like, oh, you know, the top contributors might get membership
if you contribute a certain amount or, you know, some other form.
There's a lot of different ways that you could go about it.
But I think like figuring out how to bring communities together with similar interests
even if they aren't the same project or in the same tech stack is important because,
you know, then you can begin organizing along ideological lines rather than just like, how
do we make Wayland work better in GNOME or something?
Hi.
I feel like there are a lot of pieces to kind of dismantling these platforms and I feel
like a few of them are being discussed around here like the cooperative company structures
and building new like open platforms but when it comes to unionizing, because there aren't
really many tech unions, I've been thinking about a lot about how these would work and
I wondered what your thoughts were on the idea of kind of using tech unions to try and
dismantle some of the existing platforms like, say, we're not going to work on AWS because
we don't agree with Amazon and what it's doing with its other employees, for example.
What are your thoughts on that way of approaching this kind of thing?
Yeah, you know, there's, I would say like, you know, one step at a time, you know, before
giving the talk, obviously I talked about the subject to a lot of people and there's
a sense of like, ah, you know, things are pretty bad now, like how are we supposed to
like deal with all this stuff?
It feels like everything's collapsing, we're kind of in survival mode.
I would argue at least right now, right, at this moment, the real benefit of unionizing
within technology workplaces is it gives a little bit more time and autonomy and stability
back to technology workers and so, you know, when I think about the crisis and open source
around like volunteers who are just overburdened and stuff and I think about like everyone
I know that works in tech that's like on call all the time and, you know, like software
services are crashing and now like, you know, their coworkers are being laid off or maybe
they are, you know, this is the problem that I think like, you know, if we can claw back
some of our own time, if we can get a little more autonomy on our own, a little more reasonable,
you know, working conditions, like even, you know, I get that the pay is good in some conditions,
then we can begin, you know, just having the headspace to think about these new solutions
and have the time to, you know, organize with each other where like our boss isn't watching
us either, right.
Thanks for your talk, you talked about software, but do you think we can observe the same shift
from individual and independent contributors to software companies and big firms paid contributors
in the international standardization organization like IETF, for example.
I think about how the first version of HTTP protocol was defined and the third version
which was mostly the result of a bargain between Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
Is there any data or work on it?
I'm sure there is.
I don't have any, I have anecdotal data, like I served on a couple IEEE standards committees
and, you know, noticed this sort of, you know, major differentiating where you get people
who are there on developing a standard specifically for the interest of their company, right.
They're like, oh, my boss is like paying me and I'm supposed to help manage this and like
make it so, you know, our organization can accomplish the goals that we want to do and
like, I'm not saying it's evil to want to do that or anything like that, but, you know,
I see a lot of that and I don't see a lot of people where it's like, I think this standard
is pretty cool, like I did a thing with something related one time and I want to, you know, it's
like showing up at your town hall meeting, who has time for that anymore, right.
So, you know, I would argue the same principles are at play here, right.
More and more organizations are interested in forming standards with each other because
it helps share the cost of development of a lot of their infrastructures, right.
No one wants to reinvent the entire stack for whatever thing they're building, so by
utilizing standards, you know, you can more effectively do that the same way that you
could by utilizing open source software to do that.
And so I would say, like, principally, there are a lot of similarities, but I don't have
like a, I certainly, at least at this time, I couldn't empirically prove it.
But a great point for further research on the road from here.
Right, is that better, fascinating talk.
I just wondered whether we've made life easy for the big corporations.
I think we all enjoy writing software, we enjoy solving a problem, and it's a bit like
an academic researching something, and then you get an entrepreneur making his fortune.
How can we fight back as developers?
Yeah, so I guess your question is, you know, if I understand correctly, you're kind of
like, you know, we kind of made it easy for us to get into the situation that we are in
now, like, what do we, how do we fight back?
Is that it?
Yeah, well, you know, I think, you know, I'm not a huge fan of like kind of the self-flagellation
where it's like, you know, we got corrupted or whatever.
You know, as the last 50 years of history around, you know, the development of digital
technology has a lot of very major incentives, it was very complex, it was not necessarily
super obvious that we would be where we are today.
You know, I think the most important thing is like, you know, the future is yours if
you fight for it, right?
It's not like an easy, you know, the things I suggested, if you want to try to unionize
your workplace, it's not an easy thing to do, you know.
I have many people that have like tried and failed, and I know many people that have succeeded
as well.
But, you know, I think like, if this is something we want, right, if you think about like the
four freedoms or these ideals of open source as like user autonomy, you're like, you know,
this is the world I want to live in, and as a technologist I can create this stuff, then
you know, like anything, it will take work to try to do that, and it's more about recognizing
that and then figuring out what to do next.
I think we're at time too.
One more question.
Thanks for this.
It's a really kind of great thing.
I want to ask not only you, but everyone else here, you know, do you think that we as humans
can step away from that kind of, that you always need to have someone like in charge?
So we have that, you know, pyro meal kind of thing, and that to like to go more, you
know, flat.
So that's what I'm saying, so no, we are so used to have someone in charge and to someone
as you said, word that I don't like a lot, I can dictate to someone and dictate what
you should do and actually team up.
I'm not sure that we as humans really can do that on some bigger scale, and it's a left.
I'm very left, but I don't go far left, so I am on the real left side.
So I'm saying that it kind of feels like if you play in a small band and you make a nicer
songs and, you know, with music, and as soon as you get to my mind there, you sell your
soul, and you're gone.
So how we can go more flat without losing our soul?
Yeah, I mean, it's tricky, you know, the human nature and needing someone in charge.
This is a little bit of a joke here, but like, you know, I would love to introduce you to
my four-year-old nephew.
He might have you changing your thoughts on that very quickly with respecting authority
and wanting that.
You know, I think there's no easy question about like, but you have to think about our
organization scientifically, right?
I don't think it's like a matter of preference, but we have to think about our relationships
to each other.
We have to test and evaluate various modes of organization, and we have to approach it
like any other difficult scientific problem in our lifetime, and, you know, through that
hopefully we can find a better solution if not the right one.
Thank you.
We have many thanks for the amazing talk.