diff --git a/free-software-and-cooperative-platforms/abstract.md b/free-software-and-cooperative-platforms/abstract.md index 190338f..d02cbb7 100644 --- a/free-software-and-cooperative-platforms/abstract.md +++ b/free-software-and-cooperative-platforms/abstract.md @@ -1,47 +1,40 @@ # We're Better Together: Why Free Software needs cooperative hosting -It is not someone else's computer if we own it collectively. This isn't far from the early days of Free Software, when computing power was a shared resource. - - -Free software has always been first and foremost about an ethical imperative: to respect the freedom of people using the software and the right of all people to learn from the shared knowledge embedded in software. - -But this has not been enough, as shown both by the continued vitality of proprietary software and the prevalence of the amoral 'open source' framing in free software. - -One part of this is we need to accept a new, unambiguous name, such as Libre Software, or Liberatory Software. - -The bigger part is living up to such a new name by empracing the need to expand our ethical considerations for software to its real-world impacts. - - - Existing Contact: ben@agaric.coop Session information Session type: presentation -Session Title: The World Needs Cooperatively-Hosted Free Software +Session Title: Embracing the Freeing Potential of Free Software A brief summary (This description will be printed on the Web site and in the program. Please aim for a maximum of 150 words.) Free software, in part, begins with the premise that those who are most affected by something should have control over it. As a movement, we need to embrace the principle that everyone should have the most control possible over their own lives. -To reach its liberatory potential, the Free Software movement needs LibreSaaS and an embrace of cooperative principles. +To reach its liberatory potential, the free software movement needs LibreSaaS and an embrace of cooperative principles. + +We need to rethink this and in many cases go for breadth-first— covering as many people as possible, impacting as many lives as possible. There may never have been a time of more awareness of the dangers posed to us by proprietary software and unaccountable services, but we still need to meet people more than halfway. Abstract (This is a more elaborate explanation than the summary for the committee to understand your proposal. Please limit this to 300 words.) -Free software, in part, begins with the premise that those who are most affected by something should have control over it. Your software should answer to you, not to anyone else. +Free Software has always been first and foremost an ethical imperative: the freedom of people to use software, to make it better, and to learn from the shared knowledge embedded in software. Part of this is the premise that those who are most affected by something should have control over it. Your software should answer to you, not to anyone else. -As a movement, we have tended to —depth-first, if you would. +This is a fairly narrow view of how software can and does affect us. This session is a detailed call to zoom out and think strategically as a movement how software can give people more control over their lives, not merely how people can have more control over our software. -We need to rethink this and in many cases go for breadth-first— covering as many people as possible. +As a movement, we have tended to —depth-first, if you would. Do I understand and control the program I am running, the dependencies it relies on, and hardware it runs on? This is important and good! -In other words, as a movement, we need to embrace the principle that everyone should have the most control possible over their own lives. +We need to rethink this and in many cases go for breadth-first— covering as many people as possible, impacting as many lives as possible. There may never have been a time of more awareness of the dangers posed to us by proprietary software and unaccountable services, but we still need to meet people more than halfway. -Is it available, accessible, usable to all who could benefit from it? +We need to embrace the principle that everyone should have the most control possible over their own lives. How then, does software fit into that? Being free in itself is only part of the way free software can be truly freeing. What does the software do? Is it available, accessible, usable to all who could benefit from it? -To reach its liberatory potential, the Free Software movement needs LibreSaaS and an embrace of cooperative principles. +To reach its liberatory potential, the free software movement needs to embrace cooperative principles: one person one vote, member economic participation which should include users, and educating and benefiting our communities. + +It is not someone else's computer if we own it collectively. This isn't far from the early days of Free Software, when computing power was a shared resource. + +We must embrace the need to expand our ethical considerations for software to its real-world impacts. Biography (Please keep this around 100 words.) @@ -69,6 +62,7 @@ A Drupal developer for 15 years, he has presented on a wide range of topics from * DrupalCon Portland (2013) – Decision-maker training, http://portland2013.drupal.org/training/drupal-for-decision-makers.html * NYC Drupal Summit at United Nations (2014) – Powering Your API with Drupal 8 * NERD Summit (Amherst, Massachusetts, 2015) – The future is here. What's Drupal got to do with it?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_etsXa2YNk +* IndieWebCamp New York City (2017) * DrupalCon Nashville (2018) – Migration training, https://events.drupal.org/nashville2018/sessions/drupal-8-migrations-example * MinneDemo (Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2019) * DrupalCon Seattle (2019)