In the Scheme of Things, How Important is Software Freedom?

With the state of US and global politics, many in our  communities are becoming galvanized to fight for what they believe is right in the world. But does software freedom even fit into that context? And if so, how?

There are obviously so many critical issues like hunger and human trafficking that software freedom cannot equal in importance. After struggling for a long time to reconcile ideological rhetoric with this reality, I've concluded that software freedom is a threshold issue. If we hope to solve our biggest social problems, we'll need software and if that software is not free and open, it is much less likely to be effective in the long term. It's become apparent to me that software freedom underlies our ability to effectively solve any social problem.

In this talk, Karen will talk about the overall place for free and open source software relative to the important social issues of today. She will discuss how to frame the work of free software in a way that is useful and supportive of greater social good.