Transcript of SFP#15: All about Upcycling Android
This is a transcript created with the Free Software tool Whisper. For more information and feedback reach out to podcast@fsfe.org
WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:18.280 Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast. 00:18.280 --> 00:21.680 This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation, Europe. 00:21.680 --> 00:25.560 We are a charity that empowers users to control technology. 00:25.560 --> 00:31.320 I'm Bonnie Merring and our guest for today's podcast is Eric Alvers. 00:31.320 --> 00:37.160 Eric works for the FSFE as a program manager for digital sustainability and he's a happy 00:37.160 --> 00:43.960 employee as he wrote in his self bio on the FSFE's website since 2012. 00:43.960 --> 00:49.640 Eric is largely involved in the FSFE's activity regarding software sustainability and thereby 00:49.640 --> 00:53.280 alter the FSFE's upcycling Android campaign. 00:53.280 --> 00:55.280 Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast, Eric. 00:55.280 --> 00:57.280 It's nice to have you here. 00:57.280 --> 00:58.280 Thank you. 00:58.280 --> 01:08.160 Thank you for having me here and inviting me and yeah, I was waiting for this for a while and 01:08.160 --> 01:12.880 now I'm happy that we finally managed to do this podcast. 01:12.880 --> 01:13.880 Me too. 01:13.880 --> 01:15.560 Why did you write that you are a happy employee? 01:15.560 --> 01:18.000 I was so distracted by this. 01:18.000 --> 01:23.080 I don't know how to say this in a better phrase but I was like, oh, he's a happy employee. 01:23.080 --> 01:25.880 Okay, I've built down already put this into the intro. 01:25.880 --> 01:27.480 Yeah, actually it's quite funny. 01:27.480 --> 01:33.240 I don't know because I mean at the FSFE, we have the freedom to self-describing ourselves 01:33.240 --> 01:40.480 on our page and I was just writing, I'm a happy employee because that's what is the 01:40.480 --> 01:42.120 reality. 01:42.120 --> 01:50.040 But just recently someone else picked this up at a conference where I was, where the 01:50.040 --> 01:56.000 host was talking about me and presenting me and they were also picking this up saying, 01:56.000 --> 02:02.120 oh, Eric, I was just a happy employee of the FSFE and now you picked this as well. 02:02.120 --> 02:04.600 Oh, sorry, I didn't know that. 02:04.600 --> 02:08.720 No, actually it seems to me, I mean it's cool, it's like, yeah, as you say, it's definitely 02:08.720 --> 02:09.720 catchy. 02:09.720 --> 02:13.080 It catches your attention, yeah, it catches your attention. 02:13.080 --> 02:18.200 And I'm wondering why is this maybe because I mean, normally I expect people to be happy 02:18.200 --> 02:19.200 in their work. 02:19.200 --> 02:25.440 I think that should be normal, but it seems to be to surprise some people and so on. 02:25.440 --> 02:27.920 I totally understand why you're happy. 02:27.920 --> 02:34.400 It's just that seeing it and seeing it written on a bio page, you know, I was like, why 02:34.400 --> 02:41.120 did he put in there that he's a happy employee, why is he not just an employee, but I love 02:41.120 --> 02:42.120 it. 02:42.120 --> 02:45.280 I think it's the best self-description I ever read. 02:45.280 --> 02:48.480 Cool, thank you very much for this. 02:49.200 --> 02:52.240 Anyways, so let's make a happy podcast now. 02:52.240 --> 02:54.480 Let's make a happy podcast. 02:54.480 --> 02:59.760 So you have been involved with FSFE for quite a long time and I was wondering what are 02:59.760 --> 03:05.920 your first thoughts or the first thing you think about when you hear the term free software 03:05.920 --> 03:12.120 because I'm sure you have such a relationship with FSFE because of your long time working 03:12.120 --> 03:14.240 with FSFE and for the FSFE. 03:14.960 --> 03:23.520 Yeah, of course, I mean, since I spend like the last decade of my life basically on free software, 03:26.640 --> 03:29.440 actually when I think about free software, I always think about the four freedoms. 03:30.240 --> 03:37.200 I think it's just the genius written down in four core rules giving users the freedom 03:38.080 --> 03:39.920 to work with software and to... 03:40.720 --> 03:44.320 So it's more the concept of free software and it's not so much the 03:45.520 --> 03:51.120 an actual software that is released and there are free and open-source software license or like 03:52.080 --> 03:54.880 you know what I mean, like I like the approach. 03:54.880 --> 04:00.240 Yeah, maybe I don't know, I think it's a little bit based on my studies because I was studying 04:00.240 --> 04:06.240 political science and during my studies, I mean of course you have a lot of aspects regarding 04:06.320 --> 04:16.080 you know laws, philosophy and rules about how to create societies that work just fine. 04:17.040 --> 04:19.280 And so that's why I think it's such a genius and then you have... 04:20.160 --> 04:24.080 And I mean these are really common, also really complex topics and you have books, 04:24.800 --> 04:28.080 really large books about these topics of state philosophy. 04:28.720 --> 04:35.920 And in software you have the genius, you have these four sentences that basically defines 04:36.560 --> 04:44.000 users freedom since over 30 years now and this is just, yeah, amazing, having this written down 04:44.000 --> 04:51.520 in such a dense rule framework. Yeah, okay, thank you very much for the insight. 04:53.200 --> 04:55.280 How did you get on both 50 FSFE? 04:56.240 --> 05:03.440 Yo, that's a good question and it's actually already a long time ago, so I don't think I can 05:03.440 --> 05:09.440 recall all the details now, but it started during my, when I was writing my thesis, I was studying 05:09.440 --> 05:16.960 political science and I was writing a thesis about software patents. And when I was researching 05:16.960 --> 05:22.720 for the thesis, I found the... I mean, I was already aware of course of free software before and 05:22.720 --> 05:27.760 about the free software foundation. When I researched for my thesis, then I found out, oh, there's 05:27.760 --> 05:33.680 also a free software foundation Europe. And that free software foundation Europe is actually 05:33.680 --> 05:40.160 having an office in Berlin and you can do an internship there. So, yeah, one, two, three, 05:40.160 --> 05:44.880 and I thought, okay, cool, I'm anyway now finishing my study, so let's do an internship 05:44.880 --> 05:50.800 at the free software foundation Europe. Yeah, I mean, we were having this talk about happy 05:50.800 --> 05:59.600 employee and I remember I was a happy intern and I think the others have thought that as well and 05:59.600 --> 06:07.520 so I was there at the right time and I was lucky, so I became afterwards a happy employee. 06:09.280 --> 06:13.280 Okay, I'm very happy. That's your happy intern and happy employee. 06:13.680 --> 06:22.400 When did sustainability, like you have been working with the FSFE for quite a long time now since 06:22.400 --> 06:30.320 2012, so it's 10 years now and when did sustainability become such an important topic for you and 06:30.320 --> 06:37.520 your work with the FSFE? I mean, I think there's two questions in here. So, for myself, 06:38.160 --> 06:43.440 I'm like, when did the topics sustainability become important? What's already during my studies? 06:43.440 --> 06:50.640 Well, I thought it's also very important, you know, to save our environment and to save the climate 06:50.640 --> 06:58.080 and so I was really interested in how this could be possible, what can policies do, what has been done 06:59.280 --> 07:06.400 and so on. So, that's actually for myself a topic since the long time and then, yeah, of course, 07:06.400 --> 07:11.280 I'm also interested in free software since a long time, but yeah, at some point, I mean, I 07:11.280 --> 07:18.640 found that the way to merge these two topics, because they're actually very related to each other, 07:18.640 --> 07:25.120 I mean, like at one point, the German H&C for environment, they were looking for input on 07:26.320 --> 07:32.640 software sustainability that was like in 2015 or so and that was, I think that was maybe the first 07:32.640 --> 07:38.320 time I was really thinking about, okay, what is sustainable software, what is software sustainability? 07:39.440 --> 07:48.000 And since then, basically, I cooperate with that H&C here and there and so I take deeper and deeper 07:48.000 --> 07:53.440 and found more and more relation between free software and software sustainability. 07:53.920 --> 08:03.520 And so now, these both important topics became basically one topic for me. 08:03.520 --> 08:09.200 So, it started with yourself and your personal life and your interest in sustainability and 08:09.200 --> 08:16.080 then you brought us into the FSFE and made it also an important topic for software sustainability. 08:16.080 --> 08:17.440 Exactly. 08:18.400 --> 08:23.120 I noticed that it might be good to explain a bit more about what you understand 08:23.120 --> 08:30.080 under sustainability, because I get the feeling that you also have sustainability on a hardware 08:30.080 --> 08:35.680 approach, like most people might think about just like, okay, reuse your devices, put free software 08:35.680 --> 08:42.400 on your mobile phones and stuff like that, you know, to be able to use them longer in a safe way, 08:42.480 --> 08:48.240 but also to also explain a bit more what software sustainability actually means, 08:48.240 --> 08:53.600 because it also means that you can use it for a longer time and also that it's very important 08:53.600 --> 09:02.320 to have efficient software, right? So that software is not taking up too much energy or power while 09:02.320 --> 09:10.480 computing. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you already covered several aspects of software sustainability. 09:10.480 --> 09:16.880 I mean, the first one, I think that's one that is the easiest to follow and to understand, 09:16.880 --> 09:26.480 and the most obvious one, the relation between the software and the hardware lifetime and hardware 09:26.480 --> 09:32.080 reusability. And I think this is also a topic we cover most today and we will dig deeper later 09:32.080 --> 09:36.080 when we talk about the absiting Android campaign, because this is very in the heart of there, 09:36.640 --> 09:44.720 of this campaign. But yes, so there's a relation between the reusability of software and the 09:44.720 --> 09:50.480 reusability of hardware. So this is one of the sustainability dimensions that is what I call 09:50.480 --> 09:56.960 an external dimension, because here the software has basically an effect on the hardware. 09:57.760 --> 10:04.000 And the hardware is made of natural resources. So the way I can use a reuse software has an 10:04.000 --> 10:10.720 effect on how I can use and reuse my natural resources. And then there's the internal I mentioned 10:10.720 --> 10:17.360 that you also already introduced quite good. So the question of how long can I use a software? 10:17.360 --> 10:24.640 The question how long is it possible for future generations to reuse a software? And this is 10:25.520 --> 10:31.040 also very important, because if you think about setting up infrastructure, for example, I think 10:31.040 --> 10:37.680 this is now this for example, this decade now will be a decade where we set up a lot of public 10:38.400 --> 10:47.280 software driven infrastructure that most people call something like smart city, smart agriculture, 10:48.160 --> 10:56.240 everything that is related to normally too smart is driven of course by software and we build up 10:56.320 --> 11:01.920 large architectures. So here's the question of course there's also a question of control, 11:01.920 --> 11:10.000 but it's also a question of sustainability. So is it will it be possible to adapt this infrastructure 11:10.000 --> 11:17.120 to the needs that I have on local level? Can I reuse this in the future or can I reuse this on 11:17.120 --> 11:25.360 another in another city, all these kind of things? This makes the internal sustainability of software 11:25.840 --> 11:33.920 the reusability of it in short. And the efficiency like the last sector you were mentioning, 11:33.920 --> 11:42.720 I mean this is something that is still very in the very beginning of us understanding the efficiency 11:42.720 --> 11:50.800 of software. I think it's too early to make clear conclusions now about what software is more 11:50.800 --> 11:56.000 efficient than what is less efficient, although there has been just recently given out it's also 11:56.000 --> 12:01.920 interesting and there has been given out the first blue angel for software efficiency and it has 12:01.920 --> 12:11.200 been given to a to a free software program, Ocular, the KDE Ocular universal document reader. 12:14.000 --> 12:19.760 But it's very interesting that it finishes though it's very interesting that definitely for the other 12:20.720 --> 12:26.560 sectors we were just talking about like the internal dimension of how long a software is available 12:26.560 --> 12:32.480 and how is it usable and the aspect of how long is the hardware available and usable. 12:33.520 --> 12:42.720 For both free software is key for sustainability that is the point we currently at the free software 12:42.720 --> 12:47.040 foundation Europe want to help people to understand this. 12:50.320 --> 12:56.640 Why did you choose mobile phones? Like I'm quite sure there's a lot more out there but yeah 12:57.440 --> 13:03.520 why? I mean there are some arguments that really yeah that are really in favor of choosing mobile 13:03.520 --> 13:10.320 phones for the topic because the first point is I don't know I have no curiosity but it's like 80% 13:10.320 --> 13:15.520 of humankind or something has a has a mobile phone so this is something people they use it in a 13:15.520 --> 13:23.280 daily life so everyone knows what we talk about. Second many people are annoyed like you buy a mobile 13:23.280 --> 13:30.000 phone today and two years later you have to buy a new one because the software doesn't run anymore 13:30.000 --> 13:37.840 like the way you want it to run or you cannot get this new train the application on your phone 13:38.560 --> 13:43.360 you don't get support anymore so like when when I talk to people and I explain them software of 13:43.360 --> 13:51.440 solace sense with their mobile phone basically for now everyone understands it so that makes it 13:51.440 --> 13:58.400 very easy you know to also talk people who who do normally not care so much about the deeper topics 13:58.400 --> 14:07.200 of a software but also I mean most humans on the planet have a mobile phone the numbers are really 14:08.160 --> 14:15.680 crazy I mean this this case so high like we produce 1.5 billion smartphones every year 14:18.000 --> 14:24.560 and 1.5 billion smartphones and all of them including all the resources and the energy that you 14:24.560 --> 14:34.160 need to produce them like we need 80% of all energy for mobile phones we use in the production of 14:34.160 --> 14:42.640 the mobile phone and only 20% in through all the time that we use it so if we can and that's 14:42.640 --> 14:50.640 now my point so if we can somehow try to bring down the production numbers of mobile phones by using 14:50.640 --> 14:57.440 it a little bit longer like using it just one year longer it has a really because it gets 14:57.440 --> 15:03.360 why there's a really big effect on the environment and on the resources that have been used to produce 15:03.360 --> 15:10.960 new mobile phones exactly this brings me to the question how could people use their mobile phones 15:10.960 --> 15:16.880 longer I think this is kind of the core of the campaign like of the upcycling Android campaign 15:18.000 --> 15:26.320 so how and yeah how can people do that it's actually quite easy you can install a free software 15:26.320 --> 15:33.680 operating system and you can keep using it so that's the sort of answer okay and the long answer 15:35.280 --> 15:42.720 so let's start with the free software operation system that people can install I think 15:43.600 --> 15:49.760 we used to call them customer arms but in our talk before we did the podcast you also 15:49.760 --> 15:55.280 mentioned that we shouldn't use the term customer arms anymore can you dive into this a bit 15:57.280 --> 16:04.480 yeah you can still say customer arms but the the customer some I mean many people think okay there's 16:05.760 --> 16:10.640 there are customer arms and that's it but there's more than just customer arms that was the 16:10.640 --> 16:18.880 mortar point like okay what is the customer arm a customer Android itself is developed by Google and 16:18.880 --> 16:26.400 the main components of Android they are published under a free software license so what is not 16:26.400 --> 16:34.960 published as free software is all the Google stuff all the G apps and some call libraries and so 16:34.960 --> 16:42.480 not everything is free software but a large part of the Android operating system is published 16:42.480 --> 16:50.800 under a free software license under the MIT license so there are communities out there who 16:51.520 --> 16:58.880 take that code reuse that code and publish a customized version of Android so that's why it's 16:58.880 --> 17:04.880 called custom ROM these are the custom ROM there's a lot of out there one of the more popular ones 17:04.880 --> 17:13.120 is lineage or s lineage or s is popular because it just runs on so many different phones and it's 17:14.000 --> 17:21.840 out there since a while now more modern versions are graphino s cardics or s e 17:24.080 --> 17:31.840 yeah they're quite a lot of customer arms exactly many more I cannot I cannot list all of them here so 17:32.480 --> 17:39.680 and the good thing about custom ROMs let's say the good thing for the user is if you install a custom 17:39.680 --> 17:47.840 ROM it's very close to your Android system so you are already used to the system that's not a lot 17:47.840 --> 17:55.840 of burden for you to learn something new but there's also the there's also a lot of communities more 17:55.840 --> 18:01.360 and more who want to offer a full GNU Linux operating system on mobile phones 18:02.960 --> 18:10.560 because the Android itself is also based on Linux kernel so the mobile phones are easy to run 18:10.560 --> 18:18.000 the Linux kernel and so it's also basically easy to run a GNU Linux system but of course you have 18:18.000 --> 18:24.000 to change the whole interface is because of course you have a touch screen you have a very tiny 18:24.080 --> 18:31.440 screen so and maybe you don't want to do the things you do with a normal like with your laptop when 18:31.440 --> 18:39.280 you run a GNU Linux system you maybe want to I don't know they are of course customized for mobile 18:39.280 --> 18:51.040 use and phones and although they are still in in the beginning so you can use them you can normally 18:51.680 --> 18:54.800 do most of the stuff that you want to do with a phone you can do with them 18:56.240 --> 19:02.960 you can not necessarily do everything there's sometimes issues with drivers so you don't get to work 19:02.960 --> 19:09.120 some component of your phone but I think this is a question of time and I'm really looking forward to 19:11.360 --> 19:18.400 let's say I don't know time saying time is always difficult but let's see how the development goes 19:18.400 --> 19:28.320 to three years something to having new Linux systems that I can run on my mobile phone on my 19:28.320 --> 19:37.920 computer as well and then I can really nicely interconnect these devices and shrink them and you 19:37.920 --> 19:47.840 know I mean that would be my favorite choice once it's developed and I see that coming so that 19:47.840 --> 19:56.640 gives me actually a lot of hope here um so you have started the upcycling Android campaign to 19:57.840 --> 20:04.720 rise awareness about this important topic of sustainability and reusing your mobile phones 20:04.720 --> 20:13.040 under a free software yes yes um could you give us an overview of what has happened during the 20:13.040 --> 20:17.520 last months and what was your biggest success with the campaign? 20:19.760 --> 20:27.920 I mean the publication itself was a quite a success so it has been picked up by media not only 20:27.920 --> 20:38.080 not only technical media but also larger news science and local newspapers and I don't know we 20:38.080 --> 20:45.840 had a really big success in in bringing out the first message about the campaign and of course 20:45.840 --> 20:53.120 then based on that of course a lot of reactions people writing us saying that's cool or can we 20:53.120 --> 21:05.520 give a talk here or there so that was that was basically a huge success and the generally the 21:05.520 --> 21:13.040 campaign is very well received we we have a lot of people interested in the topic itself 21:14.480 --> 21:22.720 and in the workshops we are doing so that can be seen as a challenge and says and I think one of 21:22.720 --> 21:34.960 the key stones that we now achieved was publishing an open letter so together with um initially 38 21:34.960 --> 21:41.840 organizations meanwhile there's around 50 organizations who co-signed this open letter 21:41.840 --> 21:52.880 we published an open letter in that we demand for key aspects for more digital sustainability 21:52.880 --> 21:58.240 that lead to more digital sustainability and we demand this in the up for the upcoming 21:59.200 --> 22:09.520 discussions surrounding the European equal design criteria so the European equal design 22:09.520 --> 22:20.480 area is a framework that says how products have to be made in order to be sustainable and to be 22:21.200 --> 22:29.520 recyclable to be reusable and these things so you have to follow these criteria in order to 22:29.520 --> 22:37.120 sell your product in the European Union because it's basically the baseline of how your product has to be 22:37.120 --> 22:46.000 sustainable and the current regulations they say no word about software not a single one and so 22:46.880 --> 22:53.840 they are and they are from 2008 or nine or so and now the European Union in the next two years 22:53.840 --> 23:00.720 is going to redefine them with several legislative initiatives and this is exactly the point where we 23:00.720 --> 23:11.440 want uh where we want to drop in and um of course explain how software relates to the longevity of 23:11.440 --> 23:22.560 hardware but also like um give give help on what exactly can be changed based on that finding to 23:22.560 --> 23:33.760 have more long lasting electronic products and uh yeah this is again made not only a lot of 23:33.760 --> 23:44.640 publicity but also i mean it's the first time for us that there are organizations really large 23:44.640 --> 23:53.600 organizations from who care about the protection of environment and large organizations who care 23:53.600 --> 24:02.240 about the right to repair and large organizations who care about free software that form an alliance 24:02.880 --> 24:12.320 and come up together with four core demands for a more sustainable digital society and 24:12.320 --> 24:19.680 i think this is a really huge success and will help us so much in the upcoming discussions 24:20.320 --> 24:29.680 on the equal design and making some things right hopefully okay um are individuals also able to 24:29.680 --> 24:36.160 sign your letter or is it just organizations no for now it's just organizations because i mean 24:36.160 --> 24:43.520 yeah what we want to achieve is we want to show politicians we want to show them there's a huge 24:43.520 --> 24:54.000 European civil society who supports these demands and uh having talked so much about these demands 24:54.080 --> 25:03.600 now the four demands that we came up with every uh so every user has the universal right to install 25:03.600 --> 25:07.120 any software any device so that's the first demand that we have in this whole letter 25:08.400 --> 25:16.880 the second is the right to to choose your online service because we especially like um with 25:16.880 --> 25:25.040 the internet of things or smart environments private smart environments i have devices and i 25:25.040 --> 25:32.480 have an online service connected to it so for example i have my smart whatever heating and there's 25:32.480 --> 25:43.600 an online provider who who regulates then to heat my living up or down then once the online service 25:43.600 --> 25:51.120 stops we have this problem now more and more the at some point the online service says okay that's 25:51.120 --> 25:57.120 not economic for us anymore we just stop the service then all the devices are also lost because 25:57.120 --> 26:03.120 they are not able to connect to another device so i as a user must have the right to choose my online 26:03.120 --> 26:08.160 service because this will also help a lot to you know having the possibility to reuse my device 26:08.880 --> 26:13.920 whatever online service i want to choose so it's not about the manufacturer to decide which online 26:13.920 --> 26:22.400 service i can use with my electronic device it's me who should choose it then the interoperability 26:23.120 --> 26:31.680 of devices that's the third one right exactly so that i'm not bound to uh like a product family of a 26:31.680 --> 26:41.360 specific um manufacturer so once i buy the i don't know the smartphone the smartphone from one 26:41.360 --> 26:45.280 manufacturer i also have to buy the computer from that and i have to buy the fridge from that and i 26:45.280 --> 26:51.200 have to buy the toaster from that just in order that all these devices smoothly integrate with each 26:51.200 --> 26:56.160 other and connect with each other and exchange information no they should exchange information 26:56.240 --> 27:03.520 based on open standards so i can choose the most whatever i'm looking for the most yeah 27:04.640 --> 27:14.400 and the fourth demand is the demand to publish tools drivers and specifications of any device 27:15.200 --> 27:23.200 under a free software license because this is crucial for the you know for the 27:23.760 --> 27:32.960 reusability of devices and for the repairability so yeah okay um so now we have talked a bit about 27:32.960 --> 27:38.080 the campaign and about the open letter and what you're doing with the campaign and how it's going 27:38.080 --> 27:44.560 so far so i was wondering you also mentioned the workshops could you elaborate a bit more 27:45.120 --> 27:50.880 the workshops as like those workshops are for people who want to flash their mobile phones and 27:50.880 --> 27:57.600 to unlock the bootloader right exactly so coming back from the open letter we want to achieve that 27:57.600 --> 28:03.600 everyone has the right to install any software any device but this is currently not the case 28:03.600 --> 28:10.640 because we talked about it manufacturers try to prevent me from doing it so it's sometimes a bit 28:10.640 --> 28:18.080 tedious and difficult to install a free software operating system on your mobile phone 28:18.320 --> 28:25.840 and that is why we set up the workshops in the first place so we can help users doing it 28:25.840 --> 28:29.760 users who are interested who have their phone and they want to keep using them longer 28:31.040 --> 28:37.600 they can come to the workshop and they can find help we have trainers there and they help people 28:37.600 --> 28:44.880 installing such a free software operating system the an explain of course also how it works 28:45.360 --> 28:49.680 of course people who are interested in so they can later on you know they can do this by 28:49.680 --> 28:55.280 himself they can maybe even in the best case they can even help their neighbor or they can tell 28:55.280 --> 29:01.360 other people and say hey where to find help and what if i just want to support upcycling android like 29:01.920 --> 29:08.640 if i'm not interested in doing anything else but i or if i already have done everything else and i 29:08.720 --> 29:12.160 also want to support the campaign how could i do this i mean 29:13.520 --> 29:20.560 every campaign lives by the word you know that people spread about it so if you like the idea 29:20.560 --> 29:25.680 about upcycling android go to upcyclingandroid.org you will find a lot of information material you 29:25.680 --> 29:30.480 find videos that you can share we have a campaign video but we also have 29:32.080 --> 29:37.600 recorded talks about the topic and so on so you can share the material you can share the 29:37.600 --> 29:43.600 campaign you can talk to people so this is always i think one of the most important things to do 29:44.080 --> 29:52.480 but also read it take it by your heart and i mean upcycling your own phone i mean that's 29:53.920 --> 30:02.480 that's really an interesting thing to do and in the end it will make a lot of fun 30:02.480 --> 30:10.240 you will learn a lot about your phone about sustainability you will also find a lot of help with 30:10.240 --> 30:19.440 people like if you are new to the topic go to a repair cafe maybe or to a hackerspace 30:20.880 --> 30:28.320 or to one of our workshops find some help do it by your own and this way you will learn a lot and 30:29.200 --> 30:34.640 yeah and get to know people who are also you know interested in topic and yeah that's how the 30:34.640 --> 30:44.880 community grows now i have my last question for you so i'm so sure that you know the campaign 30:44.880 --> 30:50.240 i love for a software day i have been working on this campaign for i think two years now 30:50.240 --> 30:55.760 and like a very nice campaign and i love it because it rises in the air it's my second favorite 30:55.760 --> 31:00.880 it's my second favorite campaign i have to admit your second favorite of course oh my gosh 31:00.880 --> 31:06.400 what's the first one after upcycling Android or maybe it's vice versa i cannot say that maybe they 31:06.400 --> 31:12.320 are on the same level okay oh my gosh i'm so glad to hear this because i think it's such an important 31:12.320 --> 31:17.040 campaign because it rises awareness of all the people that are behind free software and that are 31:17.040 --> 31:24.880 working so tirelessly throughout the year for our freedom yeah and it's always celebrated on the 31:24.880 --> 31:30.560 14th of february and i wanted to know who you would like to say thank you to is there a special 31:30.560 --> 31:36.880 project that you would like to say thank you or maybe are there many special projects so every year 31:36.880 --> 31:43.200 i have this problem this is a really difficult question because there's just so many 31:44.560 --> 31:51.840 uncountable projects i would love to think and i do think today i choose 31:52.800 --> 31:59.440 Macedon i'm using Macedon since i don't know for around four years now or so 32:00.160 --> 32:08.960 or those who don't know it so Macedon is an application in the in the fediverse so it's basically like 32:10.080 --> 32:17.040 it it feels a little bit like the proprietary twitter so you can write short text messages 32:17.280 --> 32:24.800 and attach a picture but it's free software and it's federating that means there's a lot of 32:24.800 --> 32:31.440 servers out there who connect with each other and who shared information and i think it's i just 32:31.440 --> 32:39.760 completely love the whole idea about decentralizing architectures and this is such a nice example 32:39.840 --> 32:49.280 of decentralized architecture that people can use to exchange and talk and share information 32:50.400 --> 32:57.680 and i have super nice discussions there i really love the community and it's really fun 32:57.680 --> 33:03.040 because just recently i mean since the big billionaire 33:03.760 --> 33:04.640 um 33:05.760 --> 33:13.520 allows to want to buy twitter there's a huge rush now on Macedon i hope that this will be you know 33:14.960 --> 33:20.880 it will stay like it is and all the people will enjoy it as we do it for now until now 33:21.920 --> 33:30.320 and it shows but it shows that i mean people want to communicate this is a really basic human 33:30.400 --> 33:39.360 need that we have and yeah Macedon gives us the way to communicate in freedom decentralized 33:40.000 --> 33:44.320 federated with free software and that's why i really love it 33:45.440 --> 33:53.680 okay then thank you very much Eric for your time and you're inside into the off cycling android 33:53.680 --> 33:58.960 campaign yeah thank you very much again for inviting me and having the chance to talk about 33:59.040 --> 34:05.360 the off cycling android and yes for everyone interested now please go to the website 34:05.360 --> 34:11.200 off cycling android.org and find find more information and material 34:12.800 --> 34:18.240 this was the software freedom podcast if you like this episode please recommend it to your friends 34:18.240 --> 34:24.160 and rate it also subscribe to make sure you will get the next episode this podcast is presented to 34:24.160 --> 34:29.440 you by the free software foundation europe we are a charity that works on promoting software 34:29.440 --> 34:34.800 freedom if you like our work please consider supporting us with a donation you find more 34:34.800 --> 34:41.840 information on the fsfe.org slash donate bye bye