#+TITLE:     State of the Goblin
#+AUTHOR:    Christopher Allan Webber
#+EMAIL:     cwebber@dustycloud.org
#+DATE:      2014-04-23 Sun

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* About me

/Hi, I'm Chris Webber!/

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 - Lead MediaGoblin developer!
 - Python developer!
 - Free software and free culture activist
   - I've been doing this for a while...
   - Worked at various FOSS orgs (CC, PCF)
   - Now doing MediaGoblin fulltime
 - You are not here to hear about me

* Framing things

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The present reality of network freedom isn't pretty...

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 - Corporate control of the web
 - NSA spying
 - Freedom for developers, but not for users
 - What to do?

** About MediaGoblin

MediaGoblin is:

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 - MediaGoblin is a FOSS web media publishing system. (Okay, we've got
   a better pitch)
 - Released under the AGPL
 - A sizeable community: more than 75 contributors, and growing
 - A vision-made-reality of what future we want to see

** MediaGoblin's campaign for network freedom & privacy

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Running a fundraising campaign with the FSF

Let's open it: http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html

*** The video!

Going to show the video (best intro we have... and frames the rest of this talk)

I'm going to kind of improv this audio-wise...

* COMMENT MediaGoblin and last year's campaign

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Ran a fundraising campaign from the FSF toward end of 2012.\\
Success!  Paid full time to work (well... for now...)

# totem ~/gfx-proj/mediagoblin_pitch/renders/mediagoblin_campaign_pitch.webm

We had a video... which probably is the best intro we have...\\

*** MediaGoblin campaign video!

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*** COMMENT So what about this last year's campaign?

[[file:../static/money_raised.png]]

I promise a more complete breakdown, need to check with the FSF... but
as far as I can tell:

 - *7% / $3834* <- campaign expenses (includes costs of rewards, shipping...)
 - *10% / $5128* <- Fiscal sponsorship (ie, FSF, who handle a lot!)
 - *20% / $10250* <- Paying other developers (OPW participation
 - *63% / $32072* <- Paying me (for ~1.5 years? cheap!)

But what did we get done...?

* Messaging

One of the most critical components of network / computing freedom success!

But wait... why?

# /Apologies in advance for the "quoting dead US presidents" trope./

# #+BEGIN_QUOTE
# "Freedom is indivisible, and when one [person] is enslaved, all are not free." -- John F. Kennedy
# #+END_QUOTE

# #+BEGIN_QUOTE
# "Only an educated and informed people will be a free people." -- Also John F. Kennedy
# #+END_QUOTE


** Computing freedom as a human right

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 - Software freedom is treated as a nerd issue, even by most of us
 - Maybe an anti-ego self defense (fair enough!)
 - But as computing gets closer to directly augmenting thought and
   action, computing freedoms no longer a "nerds rights" issue, but a
   human rights issue

** But mostly just nerds understand it :\

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 - Outside of hackers and academics, how many people understand what
   FOSS really means, as an ethical issue?
 - Network non-freedom has a network effect
 - Freedom for the technically-skilled few, or freedom for society?
 - Surely we're in the broader social movement camp!
 - Smugness is not the answer

** Can we make better resources to improve awareness?

[[file:../../mediagoblin/static/censor_scan.png]]

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 - "Teachable moments" abound
 - What if we created materials that explain core principles of free software?
 - MediaGoblin campaign video partly an attempt to prove this possible

** Neither tech nor messaging independently enough

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 - Laws are not enough
   - Seems unlikely corporate surveillance/censorship will be made illegal
   - Much of it probably illegal, and happened anyway!
   - But policy reform /is/ critical, certainly
 - Messaging is not enough
   - If people know there's a problem but have no way to change their
     habits, things will not change
   - It's a metric for how bad things are that most internet activist
     campaigns point back to FB/T/G+
 - Tech is not enough
   - If we build it and nobody knows it or how to use it,
     what's the point?
   - I iterated on this already enough

*** Let's work together

tech + policy + messaging = <3

There's never been a better time to bring us together... let's take
advantage of it!

* Licensing and community

Lots of stress about the adoption of copyleft vs permissive
licenses...

[[file:../static/dont_panic_terminal_crop.png]]

but maybe this is a symptom of something else?

** The mid-2000s->today shift

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 - Rise of the "web 2.0 world"
 - The release of the "mactel" leads to large apple switchover
 - Rise in anti-copyleft sentiments
 - "Release everything but your secret sauce"
 - Anti-copyleft attitude is /not/ mostly coming out of a principled
   anti-copyright policy, but a "we want to proprietize"
   strategy (tricky!)

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Most devs make the license choices their role models do...
So, who are the role models of today's webdev hackers?

** Are we in a copyleft crisis?  Or an ethical crisis?

[[file:../../mediagoblin/static/agplv3-whitebg.png]]

Libraries are always more condusive towards permissive licenses

That's okay!  We're doing *just fine* infrastructure-wise

We're really struggling not on the developer-freedom-tooling side, but
the user-freedom-tooling side...

** People still seem to choose copyleft for web *applications*

To name a few...

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 - Wordpress (GPL)
 - MediaWiki (GPL)
 - CiviCRM (AGPL)
 - StatusNet / GNU Social (AGPL) # <- pump.io licensing switch was partly
   for "become infrastructure" reasons
 - Pagekite (AGPL)
 - Mailpile (AGPL)
 - Diaspora (AGPL)
 - MediaGoblin (AGPL) ;)
 - Gitorious (AGPL)

** In other words

We're struggling with getting polished user-facing software (and in
the hands of users)

But when it happens, copyleft seems a common choice

** Freedom-aware communities are the antidote

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 - Build the developer-focused tooling of tomorrow, but with
   pro-freedom communities
   - Lots of opportunities... but that's another talk...
   - Permissive licensing is probably fine here!
 - Build the user-oriented networked appliations of tomorrow
   (like MediaGoblin? ;))
   - People will probably choose copyleft licenses for these!
   - Free talking point: "I copyleft what you proprietize"
   - There aren't enough polished examples though

* Deployment / adoption

User freedom oriented software requires our software is used by
users :)

This means quality software, but also deployable software

We're struggling here...

** Deployment is hard

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 - Often not packaged, but even if so
 - Trend towards language-specific packaging and environments (see
   Virtualenv)
 - Editing application config files, getting about 5 separate
   application configs in sync

** Deployment of free network services: challenging :\

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 - Most modern web applications
   - Challenging to deploy if not a $LANGUAGE developer
   - But we have to engage it
 - Users don't tend to see these issues because companies abstract
   deployment away.  Network freedom doesn't have that luxury!

** The PHP exception?

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 - "Sort of" easy, but only if you're using shared hosting
 - Lots of good communities using PHP!  But not everyone wants to code
   in it (including me), many new projects not written in PHP
 - MediaGoblin's hosting challenges *aren't solved* by PHP + shared
   hosting... modern web applications require things like daemonization,
   web sockets, etc...
 - Shared hosting isn't very good for user freedom anyway
 - PHP + shared hosting isn't sufficient.  (But we should give it credit
   for being the closest to "easy" we've had.)

** Not just web services!  Email is easy, right?

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 - Email is federated, has been around a long time
 - "How hard could it be?  Surely a solved problem, I just install a package?"
 - "Tell me about your setup, Chris"

** We need user-centric config/deployment management

[[file:../static/deployment_logos.png]]

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 - We need some layers above the packaging world
 - Cool things happening in the world of deployment, but they're mostly
   sysadmin/corporate oriented!  (Salt, Puppet, Docker)
 - We need to make config/deployment management for people who will never
   touch a config file
 - PaaS?  OpenShift???

** "A layer above apt"?

System packaging for free network services will help!  But not
totally.  We need another layer.

What I'd like to see:

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 - A configuration recipe system designed for users, not sysadmins
 - "A layer above apt"
 - Super minimalist, hopefully a web interface, but maybe something
   not far from SaltStack?
 - Generic: not just for VMs, not just for plug computers
 - GNUToo: "Maybe look at Luci" (I haven't yet)

** The silver lining

file:../static/install_fest.jpg

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 - The free software desktop used to be hard to run and maintain also
 - We need to encourage exploring this frontier until it gets easier
 - When things are hard, that's an opportunity to learn cool things
 - Bring back the install fest!

* Federation

[[file:../static/purple_federation.png]]

Not just for Star Trek!

** The current state of federation

[[file:../static/ostatus_to_pump.png]]

# https://identi.ca/uploads/evan/2013/7/26/pioe_g.jpg
# http://ostatic.com/files/Evan%20Prodromou.jpg
# http://status.net/wiki/File:Evan_stationc_192.jpg

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/(Note: StatusNet != OStatus; Pump.IO != Pump API)/

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Why the switch?

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 - Cleaner
 - Easy to understand
 - Privacy
 - Switch from StatusNet (PHP!) to Node an opportunity to reapproach things

** Federation, MediaGoblin, and PyPump

[[file:../static/pypump_frame.png]]

* Cohesiveness

[[file:../static/jpope_lotsa_applications_bigger.png]]

So, federation is cohesion between sites, but what about within a site
itself?

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 - Multiple applications hard to theme
   - Different templating languages
   - Different layout decisions and patterns
 - Differeing and incompatible authentication systems
 - Other inter-application inconsistencies 

** Do we need a "desktop suite" of web applications?

[[file:../static/GnomeLogoVertical.svg]]

???

* Accomplishments of the last year

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 - Five *major* releases
 - Six successful Outreach Program for Women and Summer of Code internships
 - One grant-funded project for MediaGoblin in academic institutions

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/What a deal!/

* So where is MediaGoblin now?

We're pretty close...

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 - image/video/audio hosting already hosts pretty well
 - Already very extensible, great plugin/theming system
 - Things mostly work... we're almost at 1.0!  Except...
   - We need federation features
   - We want privacy features
   - Various other bits of polish
 - We're so close...!

** But is that it?

[[file:../static/think_of_the_kittens.png]]

Are we calling it quits and leaving the kittens out in the cold?

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/No!/

* So, back to this campaign

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Super easy to find!  Let's go there right now:

http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html

Or from the homepage even!

** A critical opportunity

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 - There's never been more awareness of why this stuff is needed
 - We're definitely at a crossroads
 - We have the people, the community... we can do this!
 - But we need *YOU*!

* Credits (p1)

Mann Glass and Google Glass picture: CC BY-SA 3.0,
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Pump.io image parody, uses a bunch of Evan Prodromou's heads, plus image from CC BY 2.0 image:
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NSA graphix, courtesy EFF, CC BY 3.0 US: https://www.eff.org/pages/eff-nsa-graphics

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All of GNOME, OpenShift, etc... logos are belong to them, we have no
chance to survive, observe their trademark policies

* Credits (p2)

List of icons from http://media.jpope.org/

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Install fest pic, CC BY 3.0 US:
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Music from second campaign video, "A Dark Hero", CC BY-SA 3.0
http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/1010817/a-dark-hero

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Quick thanks to Bassam Kurdali, Fateh Slavitskaya, Deb Nicholson for
help on the video plus a million things

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This talk CC BY-SA 4.0 International

* Please help :)

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 - Join our community! Use & contribute: http://mediagoblin.org/
 - Please donate in the campaign (everything helps, seriously)
 - Please spread the word

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Thank you!  Any questions?