Thank you for the talk. I mean, it was a fairly long one and we
had two very distinct parts, one which dealt with a
philosophy of Libre-Halaal software and then the application,
obviously, of BISOS. So thank you so much for the
presentation. Before we get started with the question, and
for the record, we have about 14 minutes of question time, is
there anything that you'd like to add on top of your
presentation, something that perhaps would not have fit in
the actual presentation format? Sure, but prior to that,
félicitations à tous les Français pour le rouvrir de
Notre-Dame. Thank you. I'll say thank you because I'm a
Francophone and I'm also French, but OK.
Yeah, so a few things have come up in various other talks,
that kind of EmacsConf 2024 talks, that kind of dovetail
with what I was saying. One idea was Peter Prevos's
observation of working with Emacs versus working on Emacs.
And I'm all for that. So the idea of BLEE is that
Others can package things, and we are seeing this in the form
of redistributions. There is Doom, there is Spacemacs, and
we are seeing the evolution of Emacs into layers. So there is
the core Emacs, and there are layers on top of it. And Peter
also mentioned about too much choice, this notion of
Not always too much choice is the right thing to have. And
packaging Emacs with a layer on top of Debian gives you a
platform and an environment where the choices are a lot
less. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.
So that was one idea. The other idea or the other theme
throughout the various talks that we saw was this concept of
mixing org-mode with programming languages and what Babel
has done is two things. One is it has successfully
integrated org-mode with all kinds of languages. And that
has happened in the context of literate programming. So
a talk coming after mine is literate programming for the
21st century, mixing org mode with program languages. And
what I am saying is that there is an alternative and that's
great, but we should also, consider a traditional
programming mixed with org-mode and, polymode is key to
that. So those were some of the key concepts that I saw a
resonance with as the conference went forward. Yeah, and I
think, if my memory serves me right, we have another talk
about hyperbole this year, right after this Q&A session.
And hyperbole, it's not Org Mode, but I'm not sure if you're
familiar with it, Mohsen, you might have seen it from
various talks last year, but it also tends to have a similar
stance than you, with the fact that text should be embedded
in programming languages rather than having Org-Mode
implement, I mean, integrate other languages. And I found
it funny that we have your talk and this talk which are about
the other direction, which I find very resonating as well.
Right, right, right. So in terms of other things that did not
fit into my talk is that the several concepts that I
introduced, namely
Dynamic Blocks everywhere and COMEEGA.
I'd be happy to expand on those by sharing a screen in due
course, whatever is appropriate. Sure, considering the
time that we have, we only have about 8 minutes 30 and we
already have about four, five questions actually. I
suggest we perhaps leave the screen sharing until later if
people are interested. I mean this Q&A can last as long as you
want. That makes perfect sense. OK, cool. So how about we
focus on the question now and starting with the first one.
You mentioned that there are two editions, one named at
Westerners and one for worldwide readers. I'm from Brazil.
Which edition would you recommend? It's a Western country,
but you didn't make the distinction exclusive for the
second edition. So I thought it would be better to ask.
Right. So definitely, I would say for everybody who is on
this conference, the international edition is the right
choice. In this book, I take some aggressive stances against
intellectual property and I link that specifically to the
American culture. So there are pieces in the book where the
typical American audience may be offended. And if your skin
is thick enough to deal with what I consider reasonable
criticism, then the International Edition is definitely
the better choice. Right. So yeah, I believe you also
mentioned it. Pretty much exactly the same thing in your
talk. So if you need to review, just watch the talk. And I
think Mohsen also provides extra information about this.
Moving on to the second question. Thank you for this talk.
How does your perspective interface with work such as Yanis
Varoufakis' Technofeudalism?
I haven't read much of that. I think there is a whole lot of
global growth and collective understanding towards this
notion that the direction we are headed in and by that, I mean
American digital ecosystems
are dangerous and that we should revisit
the entirety of the model and strategy.
If the person who asked the question has any additional
information, I'll be happy to hear it. Sure. We'll see if the
person actually comes back to this. All right. In the
meantime, moving on to the next question.
To what extent do
you agree that the introduction of proprietary systems in
education creates an environment for exploitation whilst
at the same time diluting the learning value of the
curriculum? My computing education at school amounted to
learning how to use the Microsoft Office suite, i.e. the
opposite of lasting open knowledge. Yeah, that's right on
the mark. That's right on the mark. So the idea is that
teaching and learning should be unrestricted. In the
Muslim tradition and in Iranian tradition, we say that
passing along the learning is the tax on having learned. So
absolutely. I think it makes very little sense for the
proprietary Microsoft software to be used as part of
education. So the question is right on the mark. Okay,
great. Let me just take a note of this. All right, moving on to
the next question.
As a specific example of how ownership is
not something clean, look at the Star Trek Picard series.
They continuously asked Patrick Stewart to come to do
another Star Trek series, but he couldn't because Star Trek
changed from what it used to be, at least until they came up
with a series that honored what Star Trek used to be. Does
this intersect? Let me read this for a moment.
Yeah, I am not sure I fully get the point, but. Let me make a
point about my criticisms of the FOSS movement
in the presentation and in the book. The idea is that we have
jumped on the FOSS movement and recognize it as an
alternative but we haven't looked deeply enough to see if
our own philosophy and movement have problems. The
problems that I note is that the FOSS movement does not
recognize clearly and explicitly that the entirety of the
intellectual property rights regime is flawed. The second
piece is that it's only now that we are seeing the FOSS
movement is broader than the Western world. The third
problem is that the labels of Free Software and Open Source
are not necessarily correct. The fourth problem is that we
are not paying enough attention to establishing a
relationship with society.
So there's a whole chapter in the book dedicated to this
topic. What I'm not sure about is if I got the point of the
question correctly. So again, if the person who asked the
question could clarify, I'll be happy to further expand.
Okay, considering the time, we only have about one minute to
ten seconds until we go. So what we're going to do, as we
usually do, Mohsen, is that we're going to move the stream
onto the next talk. And if you want to take a little bit of time
in this room to answer the question, I'm putting a link to the
pad in the BBB chat so you can open it on your end. But as we are
still live for 15 more seconds, do you have any last words?
Keep up the good work. Those would be my last words, that the
Free Software and the Open Source and Emacs are a very valid
strategy for inside of IPR resistance. And thank you, Leo
and Sacha and the rest of the folks for this wonderful yearly
event. Well, thank you so much. And it's always a pleasure to
have you. And thank you for your thankings. So we'll be
moving to the next talk in 10 seconds. Mohsen, thank you so
much. And I'll see you later. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.
All right. We are off air. So thank you so much, Mohsen. I'll
need to get moving to get ready for the next talk. So again,
feel free to take the time you need to answer the questions.
I'm going to stop sharing my screen because I need to leave.
But take all the time you need. And when you're finished, you
can just leave the room. OK. All right, bye-bye. Thank you.
Great. I see one more person in the room.
Hi, John.
I was looking at the questions.
To see if there is more that I can add. So,
through the regard of societal impacts on ethical,
philosophical and wider FOSS community. I'm involved in
politics in my country, my party is very sympathetic to
FOSS ideas and I have public...
Do you have any recommendation
to reading materials designed for such an audience? Um,
yeah, this is with regard to the last question
that's on the etherpad at this moment. The idea is
that my own book would be an excellent resource. I'd
say the bibliography in the book contains various
other pointers that could be quite useful.
I'm reading again.
Yeah.
Very good. If there are no other questions,
I think I'm going to consider this a day and move on.
Thank you.