(Software) Repair info on EnergyGuide labels: Conservancy replies to FTC's request

by Denver Gingerich on December 21, 2022

Software Freedom Conservancy has today submitted its reply to the FTC's request for comments on how repair information should be displayed on EnergyGuide labels. In particular, SFC has recommended that the FTC mandate a "Software Repair Instructions" section on the EnergyGuide labels that are already required on a variety of home appliances, including televisions, refrigerators, clothes washers, and dishwashers. This would not be a new notice requirement for most manufacturers, since it (currently) only requires manufacturers to provide the notice when they already had obligations under copyleft licenses to offer source code already. This merely changes the prominence of such notices, so that users can more easily see which products contain copylefted software (and thus software repair instructions) or not. This is important because many manufacturers make efforts to deemphasize or obscure their offers (if they have them at all), which prevents consumers from learning that they have rights with respect to their software.

We are very happy to see the FTC requesting comments on how repair information for home appliances can be better provided to purchasers of these products. While the FTC's EnergyGuide labeling program started out as a way for purchasers to better assess how much energy each appliance would likely use, and approximately how much that would cost them, the FTC has been taking a more holistic view of how appliance purchases impact the world, not just in terms of how much energy they consume while operating, but also how much energy is required to manufacture them and, consequently, how we can reduce the number of appliances going into landfills, reducing the number of new appliances that need to be manufactured. Free and open source software provides many answers to these repair and longevity questions, and we hope that appliance purchasers will be made more aware of this through the FTC's updated labeling requirements.

By making a lot more people aware that software repair information is available for a device, the chance of a repair community forming for that class of devices increases dramatically. And these communities are immensely helpful to device owners, both for fixing problems that may arise in the software (which can be shared quickly and easily after one person makes them to anyone with that device, regardless of their level of technical expertise), but also for maintaining that software long after the manufacturer has stopped supporting it, meaning they can keep that device operating safely for years to come rather than having to dispose of it, which increases landfill usage and needless new device purchases. We already have several examples of such communities, including SamyGO for older Samsung TVs, LineageOS for most Android phones, and OpenWrt for wireless routers. SFC has fought extensively to protect the right to install your own firmware on your devices. By showing people that software repair information is available to them, we can build many many more communities like these, keeping more devices lasting longer (and better serving their users' needs), and fewer devices in our landfills.

We recommend those interested in this issue read our submission to the FTC, and consider whether to make their own submission in support of this or similar (especially hardware) repair information requirements. While we hope our own submission carries weight and is deemed relatively easy to implement given that it requires no new information to be provided by most manufacturers, it would help for others to provide their own experiences with lack of easily-accessible software repair information to the FTC so they are aware of the extent of the problem. The comment period is open until December 27 (likely to be extended until January 31, 2023) and you can see more details about the FTC's request for submissions and submit your own comment here.

For those that do read our submission, note that the FTC has trimmed some of its attachments from the website. You can find the attachments here instead:

• samsung-wf46bg6500avus_manual.pdf
• lg-lrfvc2406s_manual.pdf
• sony-kdl_48w600b_manual.pdf

You may notice that SFC has suggested the FTC require manufacturers to provide a URL to their source code distribution website, while not mentioning other ways of fulfilling an offer for source code, which we normally request that manufacturers provide (such as offering the source code on a durable physical medium, e.g. a USB stick or optical disc). Our main reason for this usual request that manufacturers provide source code on a durable physical medium is that not everyone in the world has a reliable or fast Internet connection. As a result, if a manufacturer only provides source code over the Internet, the most disadvantaged people are further disadvantaged by not being able to download the source code for their device (most source releases are hundreds of megabytes, if not more).

With our reply to the FTC, we were trying to make the best argument based on current practices and the least amount of additional work for manufacturers (to improve the chance of our suggestion being adopted, and reduce the chance that a company could make any credible argument against it), while also keeping in mind the jurisdiction this ruling applies to (USA) and its Internet connectivity standards. Though not complete yet, the National Broadband Plan in the USA does have this aim: "Every American should have affordable access to robust broadband service". Given the balance of people in the USA already connected to broadband, and the strong intent to connect the rest, we felt it was practical to make the recommendation include only web-accessible source code as the labeling requirement applies only in the USA. Note that we still request manufacturers make source code available on a durable physical medium, and would advise the FTC to make this part of their labeling requirements as well if they felt it feasible to include.

Although we have much work to do to ensure that people purchasing free and open source software (as part of appliances and other devices they may buy) know that they can repair, maintain, and modify this software, steps like this from the FTC will bring us closer. We are looking forward to the FTC's decision on our recommendation, and hope to help more people access the information they need to make their devices work for them, for as long as they choose to keep them. Together we can improve our own lives, but also the lives of others, and our planet.

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Tags: conservancy, Filings, GPL, software freedom for everyone

Supporter Interview with Jondale Stratton

by Daniel Takamori on December 12, 2022

Next in our interview series, we have Jondale Stratton, a long time supporter of Software Freedom Conservancy. Jondale is the IT Manager for the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis and the Technical Director for his local hackerspace, Knox Makers. In his spare time he enjoys laser cutting, tractors, playing with his bunnies, and replacing people with shell scripts.

Software Freedom Conservancy: Why do you care about software freedom? How long have you been involved?
Jondale Stratton.: From a consumer standpoint, I like how free licences enforce a more honest relationship with vendors. There becomes a balance between the value of the software and how terrible the producer can be before the project will be forked or brought in-house. Personally, I like that the answer to whether I can make something work might be hard but it's never no.

SFC: How do you use free software in your life?
JS: Linux runs every server I administer and every device I use personally. I actively seek to use only FLOSS licenses and consider it a concession when I cannot.

SFC: How do you see our role amongst the various FLOSS organizations?
JS: Most FLOSS organizations seem to be focused on legislation. SFC seems to be the only one actively defending the GPL. Both are important. I really like the SFC's support of member projects. I learned of SFC through my desire to support Inkscape. I believe most people do not know the fiscal responsibilities and navigations required to run a larger project and I appreciate your role in helping with that.

SFC: What's got you most excited from the past year of our work?
JS: I'm happy that you are willing to litigate in defence of GPL. It's a big task and probably deserves more attention. Without defence the GPL loses value and meaning. The stance on Github is logical but tough. They have positioned themselves as ubiquitous with open source projects through early good faith and now seem to be taking advantage of that. It's the danger of being a consumer of closed/proprietary solutions.

SFC: Do you think we are doing a good job reaching a wider audience and do you see us at places you expect? (COVID has made this difficult)
JS: I believe there is room for improvement here. I would expect to start seeing involvement in more conferences and events in the future.

SFC: Have you been involved with any of our member projects in the past?
JS: Only as an end user for a few of the projects. I am mostly involved in the online community for Inkscape.

SFC: What other organizations are you supporting this year?
JS: I support SFC and the EFF.

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Tags: conservancy

Matcher interview with Justin Flory

by Daniel Takamori on November 30, 2022

This year for our fundraising season, we are highlighting some of the incredible donors contributing to our matching fund (of $104,759!!). First up in our interview series is Justin W. Flory who has generously provided matching funds. He has repped Software Freedom Conservancy at a lot of recent conferences and it's always exciting to see him handing out our stickers and speaking to people about it. We were so happy to catch up with them and see what drives his passion behind software freedom and ethical technology.

Software Freedom Conservancy: Why do you care about software freedom? How long have you been involved?
Justin W. Flory: My trajectory in life and career for the last eight years was molded by the Software Freedom movement. As a teenager, I used Linux and Open Source software to run my own multiplayer game server for Minecraft. This exposed me both to open source as a concept but also the communities responsible for the production of great things made together with others. Fundamentally, my interest and passion for Free Software come from a human-centered perspective as a method to build more responsible technology for and by society.

SFC: How do you use free software in your life?
JF: I run Fedora Linux since 2014. It began with my first personal laptop that I received as a high school student. Subsequently, since the Fedora Project only ships Free & Open Source software, libraries, and codecs by default, I have been exposed to a wide range of open tools and services. Since October 2022, I am now working full-time at Red Hat on the Fedora Project. We use a hosted Matrix server from Element for our community chat and a Discourse forum for project discussions. I am an ardent user of Firefox for many years, including my extensive self-made categorization system and library of bookmarks covering several topic areas.

SFC: On the spectrum on developer to end user, where do you lie? And how do you think we could do better bridging that divide?
JF: Somewhere in the middle. Today I work as a Community Architect, but I previously worked in systems engineering and received a degree in networking & systems administration. Being a community person in a project like Fedora requires me to wear both the developer and end-user hat, both for our actual users and the people who participate in many different capacities in the project.

SFC: What is it that you see Software Freedom Conservancy does that other groups are not?
JF: The SFC are the hidden heroes of the Software Freedom movement. I love the breadth of issues that the Conservancy addresses that are of particular relevance to the survival of the Software Freedom movement. The critically-important work of enforcing reciprocal licenses guarantees the promise of Free Software licenses and ensures that licensors of copyleft software have their rights respected. Additionally, the creation and sustenance of the Outreachy program introduces numerous people of many diverse backgrounds to the movement. Outreachy opens doors for others to become a part of the young story of Free Culture and Free Software.
For a lover and supporter of Free Software, I do not see any charity or foundation that has as much of a profound impact in the ecosystem as the Conservancy.

SFC: How do you see our role amongst the various FLOSS organizations?
JF: The SFC does both the hidden labor that strengthens the foundations of FLOSS as well as key advocacy and activism to further the collective interests of the movement. The activism includes copyleft compliance work (e.g. Vizio suit) and directly supporting the many member projects supported by the Conservancy.

SFC: What's got you most excited from the past year of our work?
JF: I participated as an Outreachy mentor for the first time since 2019 and I was so excited by how the Conservancy is growing the team around Outreachy. Getting back in as a mentor helped demonstrate to me how much care and empathy the Conservancy builds into how Outreachy is handled. It might not be new work, but it is work that has a high value to me and I definitely felt grateful for it in 2022.

SFC: Do you think we are doing a good job reaching a wider audience and do you see us at places you expect?
JF: I think COVID has made this difficult, and the most recent fragmentation of Twitter compounds it. I think Copyleft Conf filled an important space in the ecosystem, and I am hopeful for its return to continue filling this space and bringing people back together again on important issues.

SFC: Have you been involved with any of our member projects in the past?
JF: I have not participated directly, but I am the user of several projects like git, Inkscape, and Etherpad.

SFC: What other organizations are you supporting this year?
JF: I am also supporting two other organizations, Green Card Voices and the Rail Passengers Association.
Green Card Voices is a U.S. non-profit organization dedicated to build inclusive and integrated communities between immigrants and their neighbors through multimedia storytelling, and Rail Passengers Association advocates on behalf of America's rail passengers for improved, expanded, and safer train service. 

Justin W. Flory is one of our individual matchers this year. He is originally from the Greater Atlanta Area in the United States. Travel is one of his passions, especially traveling by rail. He knows a profuse amount about espresso and coffee, and once studied the secrets of wine from a Croatian winemaker. Music is one of his favorite artistic expressions and he curates both a physical and digital music collection. It isn't surprising when he ends up flipping through crates at a record store. The best way to find him online is through his blog at blog.jwf.io.

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Tags: supporter, volunteer

How we all develop and support free software

by Daniel Takamori on November 29, 2022

Today is Giving Tuesday, and I'd like to share part of my story that brought me to Software Freedom Conservancy. Having started as a donor over 5 years ago, I find myself now with even more passion for our mission as an employee.

I've been using software for close to 30 years; I wrote my first program around 25 years ago, and I've been working in non-profit free software for over a decade. Over all that time the thing that keeps bringing me back is that software is for people. Made by and for people.

Having worked in technical roles as a systems administrator, site reliability engineer and CIengineer, the last year and a half at Software Freedom Conservancy is the first non-technical role I've had. Stepping into the Community Organizer role has allowed me to reinvigorate my passion for FOSS by working directly with people. There have been the usual differences that have cropped up: feedback cycles with people are much longer than just pushing a new patch to see if the tests pass, prose is a lot harder to write than even the more esoteric programming languages (different people use different compilers!). I certainly never thought I'd have to help wih fundraising! But it turns out as a developer I often felt disconnected and distant from the people my code was supposed to support. So while stressful and juggling many things at once, it's a grounding activity that really drives home how connected our mission is to the people who help support us.

There are a few differences between non-technical and technical roles in free software development that I have noticed.

The first is bugs. There are bugs you learn to live with (screen sharing with Wayland and free software video conferencing is still a pain), and some that need the highest priority attention (it's been just over a year since the Log4J incident). Unlike debugging code, in community building spaces we don't have the luxury of thinking of problems as bottlenecks, with absolute solutions. With people, there are often no right or wrong answers. We work cooperatively over a long period of time to build a shared history that informs how we deal with issues that arise.

While in the technical context, I would often think of community building in terms of making it easier to get code upstream, or work with developers of an adjacent library. Community building itself has an intrinsic value, which is something we don't get when writing abstract code. The time scale for human interaction and relations is longer than the half life of an arbitrary patch and can thus use a bit more nuance and care when dealing with each other. Especially in the volunteer context of FOSS projects, understanding each others lives and timelines removes the ambiguity that text based communication often leaves.

Most starkly, the thing I never truly had to worry about in other jobs was fundraising. I thought I could dodge this aspect of my career by not continuing as an academic mathematician, but real work needs real resources. The technology field is an interesting one, we often have large amounts of money floating through what is often touted as a meritocracy. So in my mind if we could just talk about all the great work we do as a non-profit, by the meritocratic principles, we should have money flowing out our gills! Alas, the investors don't flock to non-profits as much as they do to startups.

So how can we work around the absence of a meritocracy to fund our work? I think it all comes back to finding the people who believe in software freedom as much as we do. And extending open arms to those people who haven't heard about it, but are equally affected by the encroaching proprietary software corporations. By sticking to our mission and actively creating a more equitable world in which software freedom is the default (and not an alternative we have to fight for) is how we'll gain momentum and win people over. Our dedication to software freedom speaks for itself through the projects we host, the diversity and inclusion efforts we sustain and by being the only organization in the world doing widespread license compliance.

The human side of open source is complex and requires deliberate, relationship-driven work. That deliberate work can be slow and doesn’t fit neatly under the profit and efficiency models that the tech industry often revolves around. The same mindset that coders apply to “bugs” doesn’t work for conflict resolution in communities, because people’s values and interests are multi-faceted. SFC works to sustain a thriving community around technology that works for people’s needs.

We at SFC do this work with your help. We are able to pursue a more just world, not just through code, but through relationship building with sustainers like you. Our community is incredible and I wouldn't trade writing unit tests for the joy and passion I feel working alongside contributors from all over the world. Please consider becoming a sustainer and helping us all year, or donating to us so we can work together to create a more just future for all.

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Tags: conservancy, FOSS Sustainability