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Transcript of SFP#15: All about Upcycling Android

Back to the episode SFP#15

This is a transcript created with the Free Software tool Whisper. For more information and feedback reach out to podcast@fsfe.org

WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast.

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This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation, Europe.

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We are a charity that empowers users to control technology.

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I'm Bonnie Merring and our guest for today's podcast is Eric Alvers.

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Eric works for the FSFE as a program manager for digital sustainability and he's a happy

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employee as he wrote in his self bio on the FSFE's website since 2012.

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Eric is largely involved in the FSFE's activity regarding software sustainability and thereby

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alter the FSFE's upcycling Android campaign.

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Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast, Eric.

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It's nice to have you here.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for having me here and inviting me and yeah, I was waiting for this for a while and

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now I'm happy that we finally managed to do this podcast.

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Me too.

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Why did you write that you are a happy employee?

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I was so distracted by this.

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I don't know how to say this in a better phrase but I was like, oh, he's a happy employee.

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Okay, I've built down already put this into the intro.

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Yeah, actually it's quite funny.

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I don't know because I mean at the FSFE, we have the freedom to self-describing ourselves

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on our page and I was just writing, I'm a happy employee because that's what is the

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reality.

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But just recently someone else picked this up at a conference where I was, where the

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host was talking about me and presenting me and they were also picking this up saying,

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oh, Eric, I was just a happy employee of the FSFE and now you picked this as well.

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Oh, sorry, I didn't know that.

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No, actually it seems to me, I mean it's cool, it's like, yeah, as you say, it's definitely

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catchy.

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It catches your attention, yeah, it catches your attention.

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And I'm wondering why is this maybe because I mean, normally I expect people to be happy

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in their work.

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I think that should be normal, but it seems to be to surprise some people and so on.

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I totally understand why you're happy.

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It's just that seeing it and seeing it written on a bio page, you know, I was like, why

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did he put in there that he's a happy employee, why is he not just an employee, but I love

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it.

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I think it's the best self-description I ever read.

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Cool, thank you very much for this.

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Anyways, so let's make a happy podcast now.

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Let's make a happy podcast.

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So you have been involved with FSFE for quite a long time and I was wondering what are

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your first thoughts or the first thing you think about when you hear the term free software

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because I'm sure you have such a relationship with FSFE because of your long time working

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with FSFE and for the FSFE.

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Yeah, of course, I mean, since I spend like the last decade of my life basically on free software,

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actually when I think about free software, I always think about the four freedoms.

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I think it's just the genius written down in four core rules giving users the freedom

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to work with software and to...

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So it's more the concept of free software and it's not so much the

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an actual software that is released and there are free and open-source software license or like

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you know what I mean, like I like the approach.

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Yeah, maybe I don't know, I think it's a little bit based on my studies because I was studying

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political science and during my studies, I mean of course you have a lot of aspects regarding

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you know laws, philosophy and rules about how to create societies that work just fine.

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And so that's why I think it's such a genius and then you have...

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And I mean these are really common, also really complex topics and you have books,

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really large books about these topics of state philosophy.

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And in software you have the genius, you have these four sentences that basically defines

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users freedom since over 30 years now and this is just, yeah, amazing, having this written down

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in such a dense rule framework. Yeah, okay, thank you very much for the insight.

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How did you get on both 50 FSFE?

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Yo, that's a good question and it's actually already a long time ago, so I don't think I can

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recall all the details now, but it started during my, when I was writing my thesis, I was studying

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political science and I was writing a thesis about software patents. And when I was researching

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for the thesis, I found the... I mean, I was already aware of course of free software before and

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about the free software foundation. When I researched for my thesis, then I found out, oh, there's

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also a free software foundation Europe. And that free software foundation Europe is actually

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having an office in Berlin and you can do an internship there. So, yeah, one, two, three,

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and I thought, okay, cool, I'm anyway now finishing my study, so let's do an internship

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at the free software foundation Europe. Yeah, I mean, we were having this talk about happy

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employee and I remember I was a happy intern and I think the others have thought that as well and

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so I was there at the right time and I was lucky, so I became afterwards a happy employee.

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Okay, I'm very happy. That's your happy intern and happy employee.

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When did sustainability, like you have been working with the FSFE for quite a long time now since

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2012, so it's 10 years now and when did sustainability become such an important topic for you and

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your work with the FSFE? I mean, I think there's two questions in here. So, for myself,

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I'm like, when did the topics sustainability become important? What's already during my studies?

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Well, I thought it's also very important, you know, to save our environment and to save the climate

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and so I was really interested in how this could be possible, what can policies do, what has been done

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and so on. So, that's actually for myself a topic since the long time and then, yeah, of course,

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I'm also interested in free software since a long time, but yeah, at some point, I mean, I

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found that the way to merge these two topics, because they're actually very related to each other,

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I mean, like at one point, the German H&C for environment, they were looking for input on

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software sustainability that was like in 2015 or so and that was, I think that was maybe the first

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time I was really thinking about, okay, what is sustainable software, what is software sustainability?

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And since then, basically, I cooperate with that H&C here and there and so I take deeper and deeper

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and found more and more relation between free software and software sustainability.

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And so now, these both important topics became basically one topic for me.

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So, it started with yourself and your personal life and your interest in sustainability and

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then you brought us into the FSFE and made it also an important topic for software sustainability.

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Exactly.

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I noticed that it might be good to explain a bit more about what you understand

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under sustainability, because I get the feeling that you also have sustainability on a hardware

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approach, like most people might think about just like, okay, reuse your devices, put free software

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on your mobile phones and stuff like that, you know, to be able to use them longer in a safe way,

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but also to also explain a bit more what software sustainability actually means,

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because it also means that you can use it for a longer time and also that it's very important

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to have efficient software, right? So that software is not taking up too much energy or power while

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computing. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you already covered several aspects of software sustainability.

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I mean, the first one, I think that's one that is the easiest to follow and to understand,

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and the most obvious one, the relation between the software and the hardware lifetime and hardware

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reusability. And I think this is also a topic we cover most today and we will dig deeper later

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when we talk about the absiting Android campaign, because this is very in the heart of there,

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of this campaign. But yes, so there's a relation between the reusability of software and the

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reusability of hardware. So this is one of the sustainability dimensions that is what I call

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an external dimension, because here the software has basically an effect on the hardware.

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And the hardware is made of natural resources. So the way I can use a reuse software has an

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effect on how I can use and reuse my natural resources. And then there's the internal I mentioned

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that you also already introduced quite good. So the question of how long can I use a software?

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The question how long is it possible for future generations to reuse a software? And this is

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also very important, because if you think about setting up infrastructure, for example, I think

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this is now this for example, this decade now will be a decade where we set up a lot of public

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software driven infrastructure that most people call something like smart city, smart agriculture,

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everything that is related to normally too smart is driven of course by software and we build up

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large architectures. So here's the question of course there's also a question of control,

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but it's also a question of sustainability. So is it will it be possible to adapt this infrastructure

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to the needs that I have on local level? Can I reuse this in the future or can I reuse this on

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another in another city, all these kind of things? This makes the internal sustainability of software

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the reusability of it in short. And the efficiency like the last sector you were mentioning,

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I mean this is something that is still very in the very beginning of us understanding the efficiency

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of software. I think it's too early to make clear conclusions now about what software is more

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efficient than what is less efficient, although there has been just recently given out it's also

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interesting and there has been given out the first blue angel for software efficiency and it has

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been given to a to a free software program, Ocular, the KDE Ocular universal document reader.

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But it's very interesting that it finishes though it's very interesting that definitely for the other

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sectors we were just talking about like the internal dimension of how long a software is available

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and how is it usable and the aspect of how long is the hardware available and usable.

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For both free software is key for sustainability that is the point we currently at the free software

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foundation Europe want to help people to understand this.

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Why did you choose mobile phones? Like I'm quite sure there's a lot more out there but yeah

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why? I mean there are some arguments that really yeah that are really in favor of choosing mobile

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phones for the topic because the first point is I don't know I have no curiosity but it's like 80%

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of humankind or something has a has a mobile phone so this is something people they use it in a

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daily life so everyone knows what we talk about. Second many people are annoyed like you buy a mobile

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phone today and two years later you have to buy a new one because the software doesn't run anymore

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like the way you want it to run or you cannot get this new train the application on your phone

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you don't get support anymore so like when when I talk to people and I explain them software of

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solace sense with their mobile phone basically for now everyone understands it so that makes it

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very easy you know to also talk people who who do normally not care so much about the deeper topics

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of a software but also I mean most humans on the planet have a mobile phone the numbers are really

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crazy I mean this this case so high like we produce 1.5 billion smartphones every year

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and 1.5 billion smartphones and all of them including all the resources and the energy that you

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need to produce them like we need 80% of all energy for mobile phones we use in the production of

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the mobile phone and only 20% in through all the time that we use it so if we can and that's

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now my point so if we can somehow try to bring down the production numbers of mobile phones by using

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it a little bit longer like using it just one year longer it has a really because it gets

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why there's a really big effect on the environment and on the resources that have been used to produce

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new mobile phones exactly this brings me to the question how could people use their mobile phones

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longer I think this is kind of the core of the campaign like of the upcycling Android campaign

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so how and yeah how can people do that it's actually quite easy you can install a free software

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operating system and you can keep using it so that's the sort of answer okay and the long answer

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so let's start with the free software operation system that people can install I think

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we used to call them customer arms but in our talk before we did the podcast you also

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mentioned that we shouldn't use the term customer arms anymore can you dive into this a bit

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yeah you can still say customer arms but the the customer some I mean many people think okay there's

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there are customer arms and that's it but there's more than just customer arms that was the

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mortar point like okay what is the customer arm a customer Android itself is developed by Google and

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the main components of Android they are published under a free software license so what is not

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published as free software is all the Google stuff all the G apps and some call libraries and so

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not everything is free software but a large part of the Android operating system is published

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under a free software license under the MIT license so there are communities out there who

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take that code reuse that code and publish a customized version of Android so that's why it's

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called custom ROM these are the custom ROM there's a lot of out there one of the more popular ones

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is lineage or s lineage or s is popular because it just runs on so many different phones and it's

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out there since a while now more modern versions are graphino s cardics or s e

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yeah they're quite a lot of customer arms exactly many more I cannot I cannot list all of them here so

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and the good thing about custom ROMs let's say the good thing for the user is if you install a custom

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ROM it's very close to your Android system so you are already used to the system that's not a lot

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of burden for you to learn something new but there's also the there's also a lot of communities more

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and more who want to offer a full GNU Linux operating system on mobile phones

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because the Android itself is also based on Linux kernel so the mobile phones are easy to run

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the Linux kernel and so it's also basically easy to run a GNU Linux system but of course you have

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to change the whole interface is because of course you have a touch screen you have a very tiny

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screen so and maybe you don't want to do the things you do with a normal like with your laptop when

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you run a GNU Linux system you maybe want to I don't know they are of course customized for mobile

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use and phones and although they are still in in the beginning so you can use them you can normally

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do most of the stuff that you want to do with a phone you can do with them

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you can not necessarily do everything there's sometimes issues with drivers so you don't get to work

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some component of your phone but I think this is a question of time and I'm really looking forward to

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let's say I don't know time saying time is always difficult but let's see how the development goes

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to three years something to having new Linux systems that I can run on my mobile phone on my

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computer as well and then I can really nicely interconnect these devices and shrink them and you

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know I mean that would be my favorite choice once it's developed and I see that coming so that

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gives me actually a lot of hope here um so you have started the upcycling Android campaign to

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rise awareness about this important topic of sustainability and reusing your mobile phones

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under a free software yes yes um could you give us an overview of what has happened during the

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last months and what was your biggest success with the campaign?

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I mean the publication itself was a quite a success so it has been picked up by media not only

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not only technical media but also larger news science and local newspapers and I don't know we

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had a really big success in in bringing out the first message about the campaign and of course

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then based on that of course a lot of reactions people writing us saying that's cool or can we

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give a talk here or there so that was that was basically a huge success and the generally the

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campaign is very well received we we have a lot of people interested in the topic itself

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and in the workshops we are doing so that can be seen as a challenge and says and I think one of

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the key stones that we now achieved was publishing an open letter so together with um initially 38

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organizations meanwhile there's around 50 organizations who co-signed this open letter

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we published an open letter in that we demand for key aspects for more digital sustainability

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that lead to more digital sustainability and we demand this in the up for the upcoming

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discussions surrounding the European equal design criteria so the European equal design

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area is a framework that says how products have to be made in order to be sustainable and to be

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recyclable to be reusable and these things so you have to follow these criteria in order to

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sell your product in the European Union because it's basically the baseline of how your product has to be

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sustainable and the current regulations they say no word about software not a single one and so

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they are and they are from 2008 or nine or so and now the European Union in the next two years

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is going to redefine them with several legislative initiatives and this is exactly the point where we

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want uh where we want to drop in and um of course explain how software relates to the longevity of

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hardware but also like um give give help on what exactly can be changed based on that finding to

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have more long lasting electronic products and uh yeah this is again made not only a lot of

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publicity but also i mean it's the first time for us that there are organizations really large

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organizations from who care about the protection of environment and large organizations who care

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about the right to repair and large organizations who care about free software that form an alliance

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and come up together with four core demands for a more sustainable digital society and

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i think this is a really huge success and will help us so much in the upcoming discussions

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on the equal design and making some things right hopefully okay um are individuals also able to

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sign your letter or is it just organizations no for now it's just organizations because i mean

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yeah what we want to achieve is we want to show politicians we want to show them there's a huge

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European civil society who supports these demands and uh having talked so much about these demands

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now the four demands that we came up with every uh so every user has the universal right to install

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any software any device so that's the first demand that we have in this whole letter

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the second is the right to to choose your online service because we especially like um with

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the internet of things or smart environments private smart environments i have devices and i

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have an online service connected to it so for example i have my smart whatever heating and there's

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an online provider who who regulates then to heat my living up or down then once the online service

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stops we have this problem now more and more the at some point the online service says okay that's

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not economic for us anymore we just stop the service then all the devices are also lost because

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they are not able to connect to another device so i as a user must have the right to choose my online

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service because this will also help a lot to you know having the possibility to reuse my device

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whatever online service i want to choose so it's not about the manufacturer to decide which online

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service i can use with my electronic device it's me who should choose it then the interoperability

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of devices that's the third one right exactly so that i'm not bound to uh like a product family of a

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specific um manufacturer so once i buy the i don't know the smartphone the smartphone from one

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manufacturer i also have to buy the computer from that and i have to buy the fridge from that and i

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have to buy the toaster from that just in order that all these devices smoothly integrate with each

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other and connect with each other and exchange information no they should exchange information

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based on open standards so i can choose the most whatever i'm looking for the most yeah

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and the fourth demand is the demand to publish tools drivers and specifications of any device

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under a free software license because this is crucial for the you know for the

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reusability of devices and for the repairability so yeah okay um so now we have talked a bit about

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the campaign and about the open letter and what you're doing with the campaign and how it's going

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so far so i was wondering you also mentioned the workshops could you elaborate a bit more

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the workshops as like those workshops are for people who want to flash their mobile phones and

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to unlock the bootloader right exactly so coming back from the open letter we want to achieve that

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everyone has the right to install any software any device but this is currently not the case

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because we talked about it manufacturers try to prevent me from doing it so it's sometimes a bit

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tedious and difficult to install a free software operating system on your mobile phone

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and that is why we set up the workshops in the first place so we can help users doing it

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users who are interested who have their phone and they want to keep using them longer

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they can come to the workshop and they can find help we have trainers there and they help people

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installing such a free software operating system the an explain of course also how it works

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of course people who are interested in so they can later on you know they can do this by

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himself they can maybe even in the best case they can even help their neighbor or they can tell

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other people and say hey where to find help and what if i just want to support upcycling android like

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if i'm not interested in doing anything else but i or if i already have done everything else and i

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also want to support the campaign how could i do this i mean

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every campaign lives by the word you know that people spread about it so if you like the idea

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about upcycling android go to upcyclingandroid.org you will find a lot of information material you

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find videos that you can share we have a campaign video but we also have

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recorded talks about the topic and so on so you can share the material you can share the

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campaign you can talk to people so this is always i think one of the most important things to do

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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

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you will learn a lot about your phone about sustainability you will also find a lot of help with

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people like if you are new to the topic go to a repair cafe maybe or to a hackerspace

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or to one of our workshops find some help do it by your own and this way you will learn a lot and

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yeah and get to know people who are also you know interested in topic and yeah that's how the

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community grows now i have my last question for you so i'm so sure that you know the campaign

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i love for a software day i have been working on this campaign for i think two years now

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and like a very nice campaign and i love it because it rises in the air it's my second favorite

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it's my second favorite campaign i have to admit your second favorite of course oh my gosh

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what's the first one after upcycling Android or maybe it's vice versa i cannot say that maybe they

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are on the same level okay oh my gosh i'm so glad to hear this because i think it's such an important

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campaign because it rises awareness of all the people that are behind free software and that are

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working so tirelessly throughout the year for our freedom yeah and it's always celebrated on the

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14th of february and i wanted to know who you would like to say thank you to is there a special

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project that you would like to say thank you or maybe are there many special projects so every year

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i have this problem this is a really difficult question because there's just so many

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uncountable projects i would love to think and i do think today i choose

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Macedon i'm using Macedon since i don't know for around four years now or so

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or those who don't know it so Macedon is an application in the in the fediverse so it's basically like

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it it feels a little bit like the proprietary twitter so you can write short text messages

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and attach a picture but it's free software and it's federating that means there's a lot of

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servers out there who connect with each other and who shared information and i think it's i just

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completely love the whole idea about decentralizing architectures and this is such a nice example

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of decentralized architecture that people can use to exchange and talk and share information

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and i have super nice discussions there i really love the community and it's really fun

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because just recently i mean since the big billionaire

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um

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allows to want to buy twitter there's a huge rush now on Macedon i hope that this will be you know

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it will stay like it is and all the people will enjoy it as we do it for now until now

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and it shows but it shows that i mean people want to communicate this is a really basic human

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need that we have and yeah Macedon gives us the way to communicate in freedom decentralized

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federated with free software and that's why i really love it

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okay then thank you very much Eric for your time and you're inside into the off cycling android

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campaign yeah thank you very much again for inviting me and having the chance to talk about

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the off cycling android and yes for everyone interested now please go to the website

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off cycling android.org and find find more information and material

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this was the software freedom podcast if you like this episode please recommend it to your friends

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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
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34:29.440 --> 34:34.800
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34:34.800 --> 34:41.840
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