Free Software

PLUG has been a great community resource for more than 25 years. We want
that to continue being the case throughout the shutdown. #FlattenTheCurve

PLUG is a volunteer run group. Everything we do is because volunteers have
stepped forward to do the work for the activity.

Tonight, at 19:00, we're having an open organization meeting to all who want to
productively help PLUG continue to be an excellent community resource.

Attending is not a promise to volunteer. It's promise to be interested in
helping PLUG be a resource for the community and hopefully consideration
of volunteering.

Good news is that we already likely have some extra participation coming
in. We can also be open to more people as it will be easier to
participate. Hopefully we'll even get some out of state PLUGgers to
partcipate more :).

We have already planned a general meeting with the theme of tech careers
for Thursday. There is also job networking and Free Software Stammtisch
two weeks from tonight.

Beyond those events, we need some volunteer assistance to keep things running.

We also want feedback

We have an agenda in etherpad.

https://pad.sfconservancy.org/p/PLUG_open_meeting.20200407

The meeting will be using a hosted jitsi ( Free Software video
conferencing ) account.

https://8x8.vc/estammtisch/plug_org

We have some backup options should there be an option. Keep an eye on the
list and the IRC channel.

You can chat during the meeting via etherpad or our IRC channel.

The first live podcast of Free as in Freedom, hosted at SeaGL 2019 in November 2019. Hear questions from the studio audience and answers from Bradley and Karen.

Show Notes: Segment 0 (00:38)

Producer Dan speaks on mic to introduce that this is a live show.

Segment 1 (01:17)

• This is a live show from SeaGL 2019, a community-organized FaiP (02:15)
• Carol Smith from Microsoft asked about being a charity in the USA under recent tax changes regarding tax deduction and, and asked about Conservancy's annual fundraiser which had completed by the time this show was released. (04:53)
• Deb took a photo during the show (07:30)
• A questioner asked about the so-called “ethical but-non-FOSS licenses”. Bradley gave an answer that is supplemented well by this blog post (10:15) and Karen mentioned at CopyleftConf 2020 there was a discussion about this. (15:15) The follow up question was also related to these topics (15:44).
• Eric Hopper asked about how Conservancy decides when a project joins, and what factors Conservancy considers in projects joining (18:14)
• A written questioner asked how to handle schools requiring proprietary software as part of their coursework. (22:00)
• Michael Dexter asked about Karen's teaching at Columbia Law School. (27:25)
• A written questioner asked about copyleft-next's sunset clause. (29:22) Karen mentioned “Copyleft, All wrongs reversed” as it appeared on n June 1976 on Tiny BASIC, which inspired the term copyleft to mean what it does today. (30:45)
• Karen spoke about the issues of copyright and trademark regarding Disney, that is supplemented by this blog post. (32:52)
• Carol Smith asked what Karen and Bradley thought were Conservancy's and/or FOSS' biggest achievements in the last decade. (35:20) Karen mentioned Outreachy was a major success. (37:08)
• A questioner asked about using the CASE Act to help in GPL enforcement. Bradley discussed how it might ultimately introduce problems similar to arbitration clauses. (41:42) Since the podcast was recorded, the CASE Act has also passed the Senate, but does not seem to have been signed by the President. (47:30)
• Bradley noted that Mako Hill has pointed out that FOSS has not been involved in lobbying enough. (48:10)
• A questioner in the audience asked about the Mozilla Corporation structure would allow Mozilla to do lobbying for FOSS. (50:57) Karen explained the Mozilla corporate legal structure (51:35).
• A questioner in the audience asked about Mako Hill's keynote and how individuals can help further the cause of software freedom. (54:53)
• Michael Dexter asked if software patents are still as much of a threat as they once were. (1:01:30)
• Carol asked about the supreme court hearing the Oracle v. Google case (1:09:04)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

We had already decided to cancel meetings for the rest of the month when we were informed that the room was going to be off limits until May because to the risk of public gatherings due to COVID-19.  That's a little longer that we had discussed cancelling things, but it's better to be safe than sorry, so until May there will be no meetings unless things change.

We will be back in May with some really good presentations that we already had lined up.

See you at the next meeting.   Stay healthy.

This month we'll be treated to PLUG's second Space themed night.

Space Night 2

Description:
Join PLUG for a space panel featuring members of the MASTCAM-Z team discussing the roles of Free Software and open standards in their projects and the open science they're investigating as part of their missions.

Based at ASU, the panel members have worked on projects such as the MASTCAM-Z and MASTCAM projects for Mars rovers, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Psyche Mission.
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Video from previous Space Night panel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnxge96YO3A

Panelists:

Ernest Cisneros

Ernest received a Bachelor's of Science in Geology, from the University of Texas at El Paso (1989). After a stint in graduate school at Northern Arizona University, studying the metamorphic history of the Old Woman Mountains, he began a 27 year career combining his love of geology and computers. Ernest has worked at the USGS in Flagstaff, Duke University, Northwestern University and most recently at Arizona State University. Ernest has supported science and data processing for Clementine, MSI on NEAR, CRISM on MRO, MDIS on MESSENGER, Pancam on MER. His most recent work was developing the Science Operations Center for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, supporting multispectral data processing of MASTCAM images from MSL, developing the ground data system for MASTCAM-Z instrument on the Mars 2020 rover, and developing the Science Data Center for the Psyche Mission. During his career, Ernest has seen Linux grow from "just something we are playing with for SysAdmin stuff" into a mainstay in server rooms, desktops and at home, tackling a wide-variety of roles. He has used a variety of Linux flavors: Slackware (installed from floppies), Redhat, Debian, CentOS, SuSE, and Ubuntu (most recently), installed on everything from SBC (Raspberry Pi and Tinkerboards), Intel/AMD PC's, PowerPC, RISC and a variety of other architectures.

Kristen Paris

Kristen is the Down-link Operations Lead for the Mastcam-Z camera for the Mars2020 rover mission and previously worked with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera also at ASU. Kristen has been using Linux-based systems for NASA Instrument Operations for over 10 years. Usually she uses her Linux-y powers for good, but sometimes her powers have other (unintended) consequences. Kristen automated myself out of a job and enjoyed it! She has also brought a 200+node computing cluster to a screeching halt (know if 3rd-party software is secretly trying to be "helpful" and know how to disable these "helpful" features). Kristen loves Space, enjoys computers (when they do what she intends for them to do), and considers herself a Danger Linux Power User.

Corrine Rojas

Corrine is a NASA Mars 2020 Rover Mastcam-Z Instrument Operations Engineer based at Arizona State University (ASU). She is a science team collaborator for the Mars Science Laboratory, formerly at the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Her specialty is spacecraft operations (orbiters and rovers), research in planetary geology, and creating all kinds of maps, particularly 3D terrain maps that are out of this world. She has a BSc in Geography and Geographic Information Science from ASU. She was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ to loving immigrant parents from Durango, Mexico. In college, she was a Shirley G. Schmitz Foundation Scholar for entrepreneurs; participated in an ASU-funded start-up DemocraSeed in which she mentored high school-aged kids in a rural AZ town about creative problem solving issues in their community using design thinking; and interned at Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the Curiosity rover mission operations team. She is currently on the board of the Society of Women in Space Exploration, and on the leadership council of Latinas in Earth and Planetary Sciences (Geolatinas). She does not consider herself a technical computer science person, though she is slowly coming to terms that her job is 80% bash scripting to manipulate a ton of data, and you kinda have to have a good idea of what you’re doing in order to spare your perfectly obedient hardware from being smashed by a 2x4.

Nathan Cluff

Nathan is the Lead Systems Administrator for the Mastcam and Mastcam-Z cameras on the Mars Science Laboratory and Mars 2020 rovers in addition to supporting operations for various other missions such as the Luna Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-map) mission. Nathan has been involved in various Linux administrative positions for the last 18 years and has been in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU for the last 4 years.

Donald ‘Mac’ McCarthy: Firewall Fundamentals and Network Segmentation with pfSense

Description:
This presentation will cover two fundamental steps in properly securing networks.

Firewalls are one of the most basic and universal network and security controls in a security engineer’s tool bag. We will cover some basic setup and rule creation with pfSense.

Network segmentation is critical for maximizing the effectiveness of security controls. We will discuss some strategies for segmenting networks, practical segmentation, segmentation challenges, and how to best deploy network controls within network segments.

About Mac:
Mac is a 17 year veteran of the IT industry. He has experience worked for organization ranging in size from 10 to 200,000+ employees. Mac has been involved in information security for the past 9 years with organizations in the academic, healthcare and financial, and public sectors. Mac is a linux enthusiast with a passion for using large compute clusters to help solve the most challenging problems in security analytics. He has given presentations globally on business email compromise and credentials stuffing. Mac currently serves as the Director of Field Operations for Open Source Context.

Jill Rouleau: Ansible Everything! Description: Ansible is an IT automation tool designed for simplicity and ease of use. This talk will cover what that means, how it works, and what you can do with Ansible. About Jill: Jill is a long time member of the Free Software community, serving on the PLUG steering committee and as BoF organizer for the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE). They are a member of the Ansible core development team at Red Hat, focused on AWS and other Cloud modules.

Sebastian Tuchband: Webserver Practices Through Nextcloud

Description:
A showcase of Nextcloud and using it to show a few modern security practices on web servers.

About Sebastian:
Sysadmin and privacy advocates who finds and implements the open-source, self-hosted softwares for control and ownership.