Free Libre alternatives to GAFAMs Internet a review of French Initiatives

De April MediaWiki
Aller à la navigationAller à la recherche


Titre : Free/Libre alternatives to GAFAMs Internet a review of French Initiatives

Intervenant : Marianne Corvellec (April) and Jonathan Le Lous (April)

Lieu : LibrePlanet 2016

Date : mars 2014

Durée : 0h44mn23s

Page de la vidéo : [1]

Lien vers la vidéo : [2]

00' transcription HlnBo

Marianne : Well, first of all, thanks for having us. It’s a pleasure to be here, we were here last year, also representing April. We’ll say a few words about this french organization in one slide, but today we'll speak about free – in the freedom sense [meaning] as we know – alternatives to GAFAM's internet. "GAFAM" stands for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. And we'll kind of report on initiatives that has happened in France where we used to be activists. So it's not work that we necessarily directly got involved with but we were reporting on it. April was founded in 1996 in France, it has been super close to the FSF ever since. The mission is to promote and protect free software. It's an advocacy organization so it's very much like on a protocol level, institutional, with expertise, legally... [revoir la formulation ?] We have 3600 members, 3 full time employees and a large community and it's a french speaking organization. We're actually based in Canada.

Jonathan : Yeah and after you heard me, I think you know I'm a french speaking guy because... you know... when you hear Marianne [?]

Marianne : Should we say a few words about ourselves ? Well, we're both members for April and we actually also pay a tribute to an initiative that inspired another french organization called Framasoft that we'll introduce a little later. [They are] two separated organizations that don't [really] have the same purposes but we're aligned obviously in values and in missions, just so we don't get confused, but we'll come back to this later.

Should we review a bit what's happened over the past year ? There's been a lot ... of...

Jonathan : ... Last year, I think that all of you know that last year was a specific year for France. We had two attacks in Paris, we had many terrorist attacks. (Sorry, each time I start in English, I need to reboot my English brain.) That's been really a strange year because we also fought in Europe for many things in April. We fought against patterns on the software, as you know, in Europe, patterns are not applying on software, we are free, we could use software without patterns. But last year, I think French Government has made a move for more protection, after Paris attacks and when you motivate your decisions with fear, it's really hard. You take bad decisions, you would like to close more things, you would like to close internet, and that was a big issue last year to fight against the move the French Government went to.

Marianne : ... So, unfortunately, in the name of the fight against terrorism – and I'm sure that you guys in America are often [dealing ?] with this – there's been a lot of policy making in the wrong direction in the recent past. Unfortunately, as free software activists, we feel like five or ten years of battles that we've carried out are kind of being currently backlashed right now. That's kind of topical. There's also a bill called "Pour une république numérique" which stands for "For a digital republic"... So, many issues around the internet and around software are being discussed but unfortunately in the context of the fight against terrorism.

What is "Free libre software" is an exhibition, it's a current campaign by April where, well, everyone want to print out those boards and to reach out the general audience to explain what free software is and what it can do for digital freedoms.

Jonathan : That's really important to continue to educate people with what's exactly free software. You know in France, it's very easier because you don't have the double [meaning] of "free". In France we say "Logiciel libre" ("Libre software" directly) and it's really important to say, in moments like that : "When you share something, when you open something, we are not threatened by that. It's only more secured, you could both secure and continue to share, continue to open your borders even if you have some risky issues.

But we did many many things in one year because full employees [feel very involved ? want to feel rewarded ?], we [achieved] many works with political guys, that's really interesting but this year, we would like to focus more on initiative in France, as Marianne said, initiative against all the service oriented solutions. We have today all the web-centric internet. As you know, many years ago, when Google arose, [when] the Google area [came], [we've seen] a new vision of the software. Before that, we were focused on a laptop and a server, you have your [somewhere???], you need to install that and at this time, many companies like Microsoft would have liked to lock you on your laptop or to lock you directly on your machine. Today it's not the same thing, we change the mindset of all the market, the internal market or all the big companies. After that, we will see, we will focus on what exactly that move means for many industrial big companies in...

Marianne : ... online services.

Jonathan : That's really important to understand [that] today, like TV channels, Google would like to sell your brain, your identity, they would like to sell more and more about you. They don't care about the software, they don't care about what we're going to pay to access to technology. It's really important because that changes everything in your fight. We can't be only focused on "Against proprietary software", we need to move [to] other visions. That's really interesting because [in] the end of the last year, we had a very interesting paper from Wired, some arty newspaper who are [which is] ...

Marianne : ... setting the trend.

Jonathan : [Yeah setting the trend] They're not used to speak about Open Source and they said : "Open Source software went nuclear this year" That's true. Open Source today, it's nuclear. If you walk in IT – I walk in IT everyday – Open Source is everywhere. I walk [on] the infrastructure side if Open Source is everywhere. Yeah we could think we win about our [???] but we're not talking about open source today, we're talking about free software. And that way, yes for sure, open source contributes [to] media open source software, Facebook is one of the famous contributor in [it ---side?] the same thing with Twitter, all of the companies like that. But what we really win with their contribution in terms of freedom ? In terms of privacy ? We lost many many things. And that's why today we need to [keep] in mind : "Okay, we are not in the same battle. So last battle [was] about proprietary against free software, today it's more about privacy against ...

Marianne : ... control and surveillance.

Jonathan : And that's really hard because, as you know, that changes many things. And today the biggest example of the move : Microsoft free many of their codes, many of their technologies last years. You know, Microsoft, the leader of proprietary software says : "Okay, we're going to open source...

Marianne : "We love Linux !" and stuff like that...

Jonathan : Yes ! "We love Linux !" "We'll free the darknet." "We're talking about SQL database..." [?? ------ ??] many things...

I think we're really close to the next move which is Windows : "We're going to open Windows." Why ? Because today they don't care about technology, they're talking about your brain, they would like to sell your brain, they would like to sell your identity, they would like to [get your] ...

Marianne : ... personal data...

Jonathan : ... personal data and they would like to [enable you to] avoid [paying them for online] technology. That's why today we really appreciate the initiative of Framasoft...

09'33" transcription HlnBo

Marianne : Exactly, so, to dress [?] this changing paradigme, it's not really about installing and running software locally, it's more like "I'm using online services". Framasoft came with this campaign "Let's de-Google-ify the internet". It's not only about Google or against Google, it's more general but obviously Google is the dominant player there, so it's gonna catch you too to name the campaign after them.

Framasoft [was] founded over ten years ago, they also promote free software, free culture and now free services because that has become important. But unlike April who are more politically oriented fight on a legal and protocole way, they stand for popular education ("popular education" being the translation of the latin term, so not like [as] pop culture but like [as] empowerment, social justice, etc.). They have three full time employees and a large community of users and contributors. Their flagship project is "Let's de-Google-ify the internet" and their goal is to offer free libre alternatives to dominant proprietary services.

The "Why" first. The fact that GAFAM are so dominant causes a threat to healthy competition, innovation, it's very hard to play the game when your orders of magnitude are smaller and start ups [skipped ??] enquired independence (i.e. we can realize that we're all dependent on services that we use everyday like Gmail or GoogleDrive or Dropbox). And this really goes against our initial notions of an open and decentralized web and of course it threatens our privacy as well. So, what Framasoft wants to do, obviously, is not to compete directly with Google... although actually why not ? The bet is like super arrogant, that's the French stereotype so that's fine ! (Laughings). The initiative is mostly about raising awareness, at least realizing that "Oh ! We're dependent on a few dominant players whose revenu are so large that they're standing the rule beyond any nation and any other entity." It's about coming up to the proof of concept and then inspire and disseminate because, I think Framasoft have 17 servers, so it's not like : "Let's move away from Google and start using Framasoft services instead !", it's more about taking a stand, realizing this, carrying and then showing everyone they can do it themselves.

It's very arrogant, it's very ambitious so it's a long shot. [Their] roadmap [was] starting in October 2014 and will go through October 2017. The project is to offer a mutual non-agressive non-commercial space to promote self-hosting to decentralize the internet. So there was kind of a long term and global vision. In practice, it comes in the form of more than 25 alternative services.

Here is a map : we'd like to recall the reference to Asterix, maybe you know this little guy in his gallic village resisting the romain invasion ? For instance, we can see that there's an alternative to Google search that is [which is] Framabee, an alternative to Google Spreadsheet that is [which is] Framacalc, ... And I need to emphasize that, typically, those projects are not developed from scratch, they're based upon existing free softwares, the free software technologies are there so it's just about making good use of them and spreading the World and bringing them, taking them to a general audience.

Jonathan : That's really to reuse existing software, to work on that, to facilitate [That's really consisting in reusing existing software, working on [it], facilitating] the use of this software for all people, not only for Framasoft but if you would like to take this software and put it [on] your server, if you would like to offer a technology like that [this kind of technology], you could do the same thing locally in your country, in your city, and that's really interesting because today as we discuss, we discuss about how we could offer to the end user a new technology without [any] [enq---???] of techni[que] but also privacy. It's really important. I'm not sure you have an idea [how] huge this project is (laughing) : when you have to start against Google, you know you have many free software technologies [that] you can use today, but that's important to see [to the const---- to the consumer??] : "Okay you could use this thing with this thing, you have a range of technologies you could use instead of, you could use Google or another technology...". That's why we think it's really interesting. You could use all these technologies as you want, you could ...

Marianne : ... at home.

Jonathan : (Both laughing) At home. And you could install ... – and if you would like to go [on] Framapad just today during the discussion, you could see it – that's really important to guarantee the access [to] these technologies, we're not talking about theory, we're not talking about thinking, we are talking about how we could permit the access for the end user of the free software in the cloud computing world, in online services world, because that's the new, new war to be for free software : how we could [give] access easily to the end user.

Marianne : For instance, Framapad is actually an instance of hyperpad [light ??] that, probably, you might be familiar with, and it's a starting point because obviously you cannot just walk to anyone and everyone and tell them : "Well, just run your own cloud !". Those services are existing there and they're readily usable and it can support the discussion around those issues.

So what's next ?

16'19 transcription en cours HlnBo

Jonathan : [...] I never remember the name of Facebook creator but I don't care, that's not so important (laughings)... It's like a sugar I think, something like that...