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Transcript of SFP#4 about REUSE with Carmen Bianca Bakker

Back to the episode SFP#4

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 fourth episode of 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 Matthias Kirschner, I'm the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe and

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I'm doing this podcast with Bonnie Merring, our current intern.

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Hello, our guest for today is Carmen Bianca Baca.

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Carmen was an intern at the FSFE, a volunteer and freelancer.

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Besides the FSFE, she also volunteers for GNOME and Fedora and translates the user interface

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into Esperanto.

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Today we have invited Carmen, as she worked together with Max Mehl on the Reuse Initiative.

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The Reuse Initiative is developed by the FSFE.

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It aims at making license information better understandable by humans as well as machines.

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So, welcome Carmen.

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Thank you.

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How did you get involved in Free Software Carmen?

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I got involved in Free Software through Linux basically.

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I was bored out of my mind one day and I figured let's do something weird, let's install

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Linux.

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So I started using Linux, I really liked it and through Linux or GNU-Slasher Linux, the

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philosophy of Free Software started seeping through and I started really agreeing with

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that and really being like excited about that.

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And how did you get started with the FSFE then?

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I was reading up on Free Software, like just generally doing some reading up.

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I got on the website of the FSFE and the very first news article is we're looking

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for interns and I was looking for an internship at the time.

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So it was very, I'll just send an email immediately and I got email back like within a couple

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of hours I believe and I was like, yeah, sure, come over and I was like, what?

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This is the easiest internship ever.

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Well, so and then you started with your internship and during the internship you got involved

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in our reuse initiative.

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Yes, that wasn't the goal though.

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I was initially going to work on some kind of backend software but that didn't really

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work out because of some communication problems.

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So I had nothing to do in the office and I said, oh, there's this reuse thing and it's

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really cool but there's no tool for it.

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So what if I just, you know, what have I made that and I made that and then well, it was

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actually really good and I kept working on that.

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Going one step bare can you quickly explain what reuse is and what problem it wants to fix?

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Reuse is a project that aims to solve the problem of licensing which is very broad but very

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specifically it wants to make it so that if you have a project with which consists of

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many files that you know which exact licenses every single file is under where currently

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there is a lot of ambiguity and a lot of projects.

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Okay, so going back a step there when we were talking at the beginning with people working

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in the compliance area, we also had workshops and then we asked people like, what do you

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have to keep in mind to make sure that the software is really compliant and then we had

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many, many bullet points there of things you should consider but our goal was always

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that reuse should be something for people who don't have a lot of time.

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So we asked them like, what is the most important of those points for you?

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And in the end, I didn't have that many sticky notes with me where people can vote for

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the points so everybody just got three and could put them there and in the end we had three

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points which were the real winners of that and people realized, oh yeah, if people do

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those three things, the other parts are not that problematic anymore.

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So can you explain what are those three points we came up with in the end?

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Yes, they've changed a little bit since the third iteration of reuse.

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Very briefly, the first step is to choose your license and to provide it verbatim to the

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user.

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So if you use a license, you say you use the GPL, you have to actually include it with

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your software.

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Then you add copyright and licensing information to every single file in your project, just

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a tiny little commentator that says who the copyright holder is and what licenses this

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file is available under.

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And as a third option, you check this, you confirm whether you did it right and towards

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that end I wrote a very handy little tool that just checks everything and if it works

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you get a smiley face at the end.

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Do they really get a smiley face?

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You really got a smiley face.

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Okay, I have a question here because you mentioned the GPL, could you briefly explain to

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me what a license actually covers?

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Because there are so many differences between licenses, could you just give us an overview.

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The most important thing towards understanding licenses is copyright.

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If you don't understand copyright, you cannot understand licenses and copyright very briefly

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is if I create something like a document, I have copyright over that, so I can, I make

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it, I show it to people and it's fine, but you can't then copy it and show to other people

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without my permission.

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That's just a right, a copyright that I have.

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And a license is a way of saying, okay, I want you to have this, but I also want you

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to be able to share it afterwards.

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And the license determines the terms under which you are allowed to use this.

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So there are free software licenses and non-free licenses, what exactly do the difference

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between them?

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The difference between those licenses is whether they grant you certain rights.

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So a free program, a free license will always give you the right to use the program, study

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the program, share the program and improve the program.

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If any of those rights are missing for the user, then it is not a free program or a non-free

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license if you will.

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So any license that doesn't give those freedoms is a non-free license.

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Add a different free licenses.

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Yes, there are different free licenses.

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There are the very basic ones that just cover the four freedoms, such as MIT, BSD, Aviva

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Apache as well.

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And there are slightly more complicated copy-lapped licenses.

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And what they do is you get the source code, you get all the freedoms and it's really cool

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and you start hacking on it yourself and modifying it a little bit.

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And you give it to someone else and then the condition of giving it to someone else is

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that they must also have the four freedoms again.

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So what does this offer license covers?

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Like, does it cover the code or do it read me?

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Technically, it covers everything that is copyrightable.

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That's kind of an issue we're running into sometimes with reviews like our configuration

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files copyrightable.

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But technically, something that is copyrightable is anything that has some kind of usually

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artistic effort put behind it, but like efforts.

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Like, someone else couldn't have made this up.

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This is your personal expression, which is a bit weird when it comes to software, but

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that's what we've got.

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So if I have a program, yes, and I have many files there, because usually programs exist

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with many files.

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What do you need to license then, like, do it just have to make one file where the license

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is?

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That's how many people used to do it, but with reuse we're trying to change that and

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just put a tiny little comment header inside of every single file in the project, which

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is a lot of files, that's we find the best way to do it.

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And it's also why the name of the project is reuse, because very often, I'll find a

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very handy file on the internet, and I'll just take it like, oh, that's a good code.

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I'll take it.

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I'll put it in my own projects.

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But the problem you find is that that file that I just took doesn't have a nice header

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that says who the copyright holder is and what the license is.

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And I have to search for myself who is the copyright holder.

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What license is it on it?

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And usually it's like somewhere in the read me, but maybe I made a mistake.

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Maybe I made a mistake and I put it in my projects and I say, oh, this is copyright

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so and so.

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This is under the MIT license.

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And then someone else finds my version and they copy that onwards, but they also copy

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my mistake in when I initially detected the copyright.

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And to fix all of that, we just say, well, just put it in the file.

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You can't go wrong there.

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I mean, when you explain it, I think it's clear for many that that's an issue for companies

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or for companies in general because they include a lot of software in their products.

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Like when you look at some of the big, big players, they build a car, they build a train,

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they build other larger devices and they have many, many lines of code in there, many

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different components.

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And they have to make sure that it's all compliant with the different licenses from GPL

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to Apache to other licenses.

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So they also invest a lot of time into checking all the licensing there because else if they

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are sued, it's a problem for their company.

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But why should I as an individual developer, when I write code in my spare time, why should

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I care about following the rules of reuse and provocatively ask, make the life of the

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company's easier?

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Yes, that is a bit of a problem.

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And it's hard to definitively say, yeah, definitely.

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It's just like the real, real advantage, but the advantage I'd say is if you write code

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in your spare time, usually it's a little bit of a labor of love, at least a little bit.

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And you want people to actually use it, like that's the joy of software you wrote it and

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you see other people using it and it's just, that's great.

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And you make it so much easier for other people to be able to use your software if you license

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it correctly because some people will not touch a piece of software if it is not correctly

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licensed, they just won't touch it.

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Okay, that's one of the problems probably that occur with licensing and you already

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mentioned another one that maybe you don't know under which license something is and you

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make a mistake.

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What other problems occur with licensing?

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A problem I would have run into if I didn't use reuse in my own programs is I have a piece

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of code and it's all under the GPL, GPL 3 or later.

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And that's great, but I found a piece of code that was under the Apache 2 license and

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it was really good code and I wanted it in my project and that is totally possible, like

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I can put Apache code inside of my GPL project.

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The problem was I would have had to edit the readme file that says, oh, this project is

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under GPL, I would have had to edit that to say, oh, and it's also under Apache.

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Now in the end, I did do that, but let's say I also somewhere else said, oh, this is

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just a GPL project and like every or say, this is a GPL project and that wouldn't be true

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anymore because there is a bit of Apache code in there and by including the comment header

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inside of the file that says, oh, this is an Apache file, it is absolutely clear that

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this software is also licensed under the Apache license.

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So would you say that nowadays licenses are way more mixed than they were in the past?

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Yes, definitely, like you can find good code anywhere, like a lot of developers find code

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on Stack Overflow and that's good, like there is a little good example code on Stack Overflow

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and some of it is quite long, but all the stuff that you find on Stack Overflow is technically

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licensed under a creative commons license, I believe.

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And it's really good if you actually like make sure like, oh, this is creative commons

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code, by the way.

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Let's re-use help with licensing.

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Reuse helps with licensing by making it really, really easy, like a lot of the other resources

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you'll find is like, oh, put the license in the copying file and then like edit, you

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read me a little bit and also go to the setup.py file and make sure it's right, it's all

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really complicated.

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Whereas reuse, we have three steps and if you just follow the steps, it's like the

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most easy thing in the world and especially when you get to step three, you can verify

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whether you did it correctly and then it just says, yeah, you did it correctly and it's

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all good.

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So you think that the recommendations there are also for people who usually say, I don't

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care much about licensing, I just put my code somewhere without caring about the license

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and that's fine with me, I don't want to care about the rest.

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Yeah, it's like, it's fun if you don't care about the license, like if you just want

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people to use it, just put it on a permissive license, that's cool, but you do have to actually

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like care at least a little bit to at least put the headers there and that's all the

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efforts that is needed of you.

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One of the problems is that when people say, well, I don't care all about licensing and

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I just put the code there that it's under no license, so that means it's not free software.

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So you're not allowed to use that, you share and improve the software there.

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So at one point, you have to define what license you're using.

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Yes, and technically there is a very, very simple way to do that in reuse.

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I wouldn't recommend it, but you can like edit like a tiny file and just say, oh, everything

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is under GPL and then you're also covered.

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It's a bit of a hack, you can do it, I wouldn't recommend it, but it's totally possible.

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How is reuse at the moment maintained and developed?

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It has currently maintained, co-maintained by me and Max Mail.

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I do it in my volunteer time, Max chooses his paid time, I imagine, by the FTAV.

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And we've got a bit of a cooperation going on, but it is a little bit of a volunteer project,

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like everything concerning reuse is available or on the internet, currently on GitHub,

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hopefully soon we'll move off of that.

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And you can just drop in and say, oh, I'd like to change this.

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Is it possible or even do poor requests?

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I really like poor requests.

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One of the next steps is to move it away from GitHub and what are the other next steps for reuse?

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Moving away from GitHub is kind of a big one, because GitHub is not free software.

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And it is a little bit difficult when you're the free software

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finished in Europe and you're on GitHub, but for getting reuse started,

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it was very good to collaborate with a lot of people who were on GitHub.

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That helped a lot, moving off of GitHub is a little bit difficult,

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because we do have our own GitHub instance, GitHub year I believe,

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but it's not trivial for other people to create an account there,

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or I don't know if anything changed recently, but it wasn't easy in the past.

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So that would be like the larger steps and then your future to move it away.

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Are there any other things you want to do with reuse in the future?

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There are a lot of things that I'd like to generally improve,

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but I think the foundation for use has very much been settled.

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There are some really cool suggestions with regard to how we can alter the spec a little bit,

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but the spec is always very difficult to change the specification,

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because then you upset people and they have to change their stuff again.

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So probably not going to do that for a while, but the tool,

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like there's a lot of stuff I could add.

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In a previous version, I added a way to automatically add headers to files,

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though you can just say, oh, I've got all these files,

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just add headers to them for me, please.

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I don't want to do that myself.

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That's really busy work. I don't want to care.

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And there are a lot of improvements to me made there.

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Currently, it only supports 20 file types,

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and you have to kind of muck about a little bit if you want to do other file types.

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Ideally, very soon, I'd like to have a mechanism

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where you don't even need, like, specify your own name in the command line.

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Just say, oh, you already know my name.

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It's in my Gitconfig. Just take that and it's fine.

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That sounds easy.

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Yeah, it's really easy.

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What are the biggest hurdles for making software reuse compliant?

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Because it sounds really easy, and now I'm sure a lot of people want to use it.

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So what do they need to do to be able to use it?

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Getting started for very big projects is usually a bit of a hurdle.

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Because very big projects, like they have had a lot of contributors,

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they aren't sure which licenses all of those contributions were under.

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You mean projects like the Linux kernel?

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Yes, project like Linux kernel.

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I know very famously Firefox ones tried to re-license their code,

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and they had to rewrite bits because they couldn't determine the licenses

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under which that was licensed, or they couldn't contact the author

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to give them permission to re-license their code.

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So they had to literally rewrite bits of code

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to be able to be compliant with their own license.

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But yeah, that is the biggest hurdle.

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Like finding the actual copyright holders and licenses of every single file.

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And there is going to be a lot of busy work there,

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and probably you might want to find like a legal expert for that.

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But once you've got that settled, it's really easy.

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For all the other contributors, just keep it going.

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You can add reuse to your continuous integration.

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So every commit you do, it will just be tested.

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And if there's something wrong, a red button will show up and say,

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over the way, fix reuse, please.

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So you have to smite first and you have a red button that shows up

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if something is wrong and tells them what to do to fix it?

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Yes, that's exactly it.

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Technically, you get a side face if it fails.

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And now I mean, with reuse, we thought about what are good recommendations.

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We created tools for which help you to make your software reuse compliant.

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Now, I mean, for me, the big step is that people actually use those recommendations

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so that we then, afterwards, have the benefits where almost everybody agreed

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we talked to that those steps are very important steps.

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So where are we there?

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Who's already using it?

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I know that the Linux foundation is using a variety of reuse.

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Basically, we got in contact with the Linux people very early on

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in the development of reuse and they took some of that,

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they added some of their own and they went ahead and did all of that.

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So you find almost every single file in the Linux kernel

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now has a kind of reuse compliant header and that's really cool.

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We also have our project called Next Generation Internet

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where we are involved and also help projects which are accepted there

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to check if their software is compliant.

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And we also use the reuse tools there.

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So two of our staffers, Gabriel and Lukas are working on that

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and they're the feedback.

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It's quite mixed till now.

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I mean, we have people, they're very happy that you informed them about that

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and they just implemented it and all's fine.

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They have of course also some others who, for them,

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like licensing is more hurdle and they might already have some code

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and you explain that well then it's also some more effort

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to implement it there.

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When you talk with people about reuse till now,

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what was the feedback you received about it?

18:54.360 --> 18:59.000
Well, specifically the NGIO, I've noticed a lot of stuff coming from there.

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Like they come to the reuse tool and they write issues like,

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oh, this is broken and I'll fix it and it's fine.

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But you definitely notice some people who are really, really like collaborative

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and they want to help fix the tool and you know,

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they've got all cool sort of ideas and they like really get involved.

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But you also have other people who are like,

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oh, I just want it to work.

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Can I just do this and after all, no, you can't really do that.

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I mean, you could maybe, but it's a little bit hard.

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As for the other comments I've received about reuse,

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it's mostly been really positive.

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Like, oh yeah, I've never really thought about licensing much

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and I don't really know how to do it.

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But if it's really that easy, then I might.

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So a lot of positive feedback.

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Just a little positive feedback and then some negative feedback

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about people who just really, really don't want to bother with licensing.

19:47.400 --> 19:50.280
You've worked on reuse during your internship.

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What was the motivation for you to continue working on that afterwards?

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This is an obligation that I feel that a lot of programmers have.

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Like, they've started a project that's kind of like their baby

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and they feel like a responsibility towards keeping maintaining it.

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And that's what I did and it wasn't a lot of time and I really like the people

20:11.480 --> 20:14.520
in the efforts of years well and I really like free software.

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So I just kind of stuck around and it's been really good.

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I've been to Barcelona to talk about what licensing,

20:21.000 --> 20:24.680
well, I'm here currently in Bosano to also talk about licensing.

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I'll have a talk later about reuse.

20:27.080 --> 20:29.880
Okay, one last question regarding reuse.

20:29.880 --> 20:33.080
And the virtual license is the reuse tool itself.

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The reuse tool itself is on the GPL three or later

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and a couple of other licenses.

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It's also under the Creative Commons license

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for some of the documentation.

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It's under the Creative Commons zero license

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for some of the configuration files and it's under the Apache license

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for that really good bit of code that I stole.

20:52.680 --> 20:55.080
Well, not stole but borrowed.

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Reused. Reused.

20:58.280 --> 21:01.640
Okay, then the last question I have, as you know,

21:01.640 --> 21:06.440
on February 14th we are always celebrating the I love free software day

21:06.440 --> 21:10.440
because during the year we complain a lot.

21:10.440 --> 21:13.320
People complain about bugs in the reuse,

21:13.320 --> 21:17.880
linter tool, people complain about problems with the documentation

21:17.880 --> 21:19.800
and how you can further improve it.

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They might complain that, well, it's still too complicated

21:22.680 --> 21:27.000
and we try to fix that but people often forget to say thank you

21:27.000 --> 21:30.760
and we ourselves also have to remind ourselves to say thank you

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to all the people whose code we reuse in our tools

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and so on 14th of February we encourage people to say thank you

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and use it as a one-day reminder but of course you can also say thank you

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all the rest of the year when we think about it like we do now.

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So my question would be which program or which developer would you like to thank?

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In the spirit of the question I think I'd like to thank the GNOME programmers

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I know I can't really do a little bit to GNOME myself

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mostly translations, I haven't done a lot of coding for GNOME

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but I really, really like the GNOME projects.

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They make my life a lot easier just having a very nice tidy interface

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and they don't get a lot of love sometimes.

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There's a lot of criticism towards GNOME and I'm sure some of it's valid

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but I'd like to make sure that they also feel loved in a way

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for all the amazing work they do.

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Okay thank you very much Carmen.

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Thank you so much.

22:31.880 --> 22:32.840
Thank you for having me.

22:33.480 --> 22:35.480
This was the Software Freedom Podcast.

22:35.480 --> 22:39.000
If you liked this episode please recommend it to your friends and rated.

22:39.000 --> 22:41.960
Also subscribe to make sure you're the next episode.

22:41.960 --> 22:45.080
This podcast is presented to you by the free Software Foundation Europe

22:45.080 --> 22:48.600
we are a charity that works on promoting Software Freedom.

22:48.600 --> 22:52.040
If you like our work please consider supporting us with a donation

22:52.040 --> 22:56.360
you find more information under my.fsfe.org slash donate.

22:56.360 --> 22:59.560
I've been looking forward to our next episode and I hope you will

22:59.560 --> 23:00.760
then again listen to us.

23:00.760 --> 23:01.560
Thank you very much.

23:16.760 --> 23:19.320
Here's another voice from our large community.

23:20.680 --> 23:22.040
My name is Florian.

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I've been a volunteer with the FSFE since 2012

23:26.120 --> 23:31.640
and I continue volunteering for the FSFE because whenever I have an idea

23:31.640 --> 23:35.160
and I approach someone about it and I say I'm willing to do the work

23:35.160 --> 23:37.960
people actually let me and I find that very motivating.

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