Report from the AI-Assisted Programming and Copyleft Committee

Presented by

• 

  Stefano Zacchiroli
  @zacchiro
  https://upsilon.cc/~zack/

  Stefano Zacchiroli is full professor of computer science at Télécom Paris, Polytechnic Institute of Paris. His current research interests span digital commons, open source software engineering, computer security, and the software supply chain. He is co-founder and CTO of Software Heritage, the largest public archive of software source code. He is a Debian developer since 2001, where he served as Debian project leader from 2010 to 2013. He is a former board director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and recipient of the 2015 O’Reilly Open Source Award.

• 

  Denver Gingerich
  https://ossguy.com/

  Denver is a software right-to-repair and standards activist who is currently Director of Compliance at Software Freedom Conservancy, where he enforces software right-to-repair licenses such as the GPL, and is also a director of the worker co-operative that runs JMP.chat, a FOSS phone number (texting/calling) service. Denver writes free software in his spare time: his patches have been accepted into Wine, Linux, and wdiff. Denver received his BMath in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. He gives presentations about digital civil rights and how to ensure FOSS remains sustainable as a community and financially, having spoken at conferences such as FOSSY, CopyleftConf, LibrePlanet, LinuxCon North America, CopyCamp Toronto, FOSSLC's Summercamp, and the Open Video Conference.

• 

  John Sullivan
  https://alliterativeadvising.com

  John Sullivan is an independent free software activist and consultant (Alliterative Advising LLC), with specialties in communication, community organizing, licensing, fundraising, strategic planning, and nonprofit governance. He is a Debian Developer, and member of its keyring team. He is also a board member of F-Droid, and currently its vice chair. Previously, he worked for the Free Software Foundation for over nineteen years, including two as its union steward and eleven as its executive director. Prior to the FSF, John worked as a speech and debate instructor for Harvard, University of Kentucky, and Michigan State University, coaching undergraduates and high school students on public speaking, research, and critical thinking. He holds an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (which is real) at Naropa University, and a BA in Philosophy from Michigan State, but he has been spending too much time with computers and online communities since running a 1990s BBS on his Commodore 64. Also he co-owns a pen store.

• 

  Karen Sandler
  

  Karen M. Sandler is an attorney and the executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy, a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology. As a patient deeply concerned with the technology in her own body, Karen is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software as a life-or-death issue, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. She co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for people who face under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in tech. She is an adjunct Lecturer-In-Law of Columbia Law School and a visiting scholar at University of California Santa Cruz. Prior to joining Software Freedom Conservancy, Karen was the executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was the general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. She began her career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Karen received her law degree from Columbia Law School where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. She also holds a bachelor of science in engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Sandler has won awards for her work on behalf of software freedom, including the O’Reilly Open Source Award in 2011. She received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2023.