1 00:00:18,510 --> 00:00:20,960 Well, normally there should have been a video in English. 2 00:00:20,770 --> 00:00:22,190 But rest assured, I will not speak in English 3 00:00:22,190 --> 00:00:23,910 because as you can see I'm very bad at it. 4 00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:29,860 And for a long time, I thought this huge weakness would prevent me from realizing one of my dearest dreams: 5 00:00:29,860 --> 00:00:31,950 to change the world. 6 00:00:31,950 --> 00:00:33,240 It's a beautiful project, to change the world! 7 00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:35,070 Besides, I have a question: 8 00:00:35,070 --> 00:00:38,450 how many of you have one day wanted to change the world? 9 00:00:38,460 --> 00:00:40,390 Or simply to change society a little? 10 00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:43,420 If so, raise your hand. 11 00:00:43,420 --> 00:00:46,650 Great! I see that there are many of us, and it was to be expected as we are at TEDx. 12 00:00:46,650 --> 00:00:51,390 So I'll tell you how I have tried, as some of you, to change a bit the world at my own level. 13 00:00:51,390 --> 00:00:56,020 Ever since I was little, I always wanted to do politics, in order to have an impact on society. 14 00:00:56,020 --> 00:00:59,080 So at high school, I thought of applying to Sciences Po [French school preparing for politics]. 15 00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:03,570 But at Sciences Po, there is a minimum pass mark in English 16 00:01:03,570 --> 00:01:07,140 and my English grades ensured me that I wouldn't reach that threshold. 17 00:01:07,140 --> 00:01:12,130 So I could already strike out Sciences Po of my plans, and maybe also my desire to do politics. 18 00:01:12,130 --> 00:01:15,200 Yet 20 years later, I do not regret anything. 19 00:01:15,200 --> 00:01:19,430 By chance, I enrolled for a computing degree at the Paris 8 university. 20 00:01:19,430 --> 00:01:22,990 While Paris 8 sounds appealing, in fact the "8" doesn't stand for Paris' 8th district [a rich district of Paris]. 21 00:01:22,990 --> 00:01:27,390 If I tell you that Paris 8 is in fact in Saint-Denis in the poor suburbs, all of a sudden it's much less sexy. 22 00:01:27,390 --> 00:01:29,620 And one wonders how to change the world from there? 23 00:01:29,620 --> 00:01:35,940 Yet it is there, in Paris 8, that I met for the first time people who have changed the course of my life 24 00:01:35,940 --> 00:01:40,670 and who have told me that we could have an impact on society through computer sciences. 25 00:01:40,670 --> 00:01:43,490 Paris 8 is a poor university. 26 00:01:43,490 --> 00:01:45,450 By poor, I mean that it had little money, and very few computers available. 27 00:01:45,920 --> 00:01:49,730 So rather than come in the morning to try to book a machine, 28 00:01:49,980 --> 00:01:51,410 and I assure you we tried that with friends 29 00:01:51,710 --> 00:01:52,800 but it was just really too early for us, 30 00:01:53,130 --> 00:01:53,920 what could do we do? 31 00:01:54,210 --> 00:01:58,180 We decided to spend nights working on our projects and also on those of others. 32 00:01:58,810 --> 00:02:01,520 I remember very well the first night, it was a Thursday in November. 33 00:02:01,850 --> 00:02:05,230 I apologize: it was on the day of the arrival of Beaulojais [a French wine] that the adventure began for us. 34 00:02:05,490 --> 00:02:09,730 So imagine a dozen computer scientists, geeks, around a table in a room, 35 00:02:10,470 --> 00:02:13,920 each working on his projects but also those of others. 36 00:02:14,270 --> 00:02:16,980 When one of us found an interesting thing, he shared it. 37 00:02:17,660 --> 00:02:22,510 It could be for instance a nice way of fixing a bug or it could a new functionality. 38 00:02:22,950 --> 00:02:26,120 We were in a real sharing process. 39 00:02:26,120 --> 00:02:28,360 Paris 8 is somewhat special. 40 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:30,400 It's not just the students who spent their night there. 41 00:02:30,400 --> 00:02:32,950 There were also teachers, lecturers. 42 00:02:32,950 --> 00:02:38,250 I know that in the public imagery, the geek is stuck on his computer all day long ... 43 00:02:38,250 --> 00:02:40,420 or in our case all night long. 44 00:02:40,420 --> 00:02:47,850 And yet, I assure you every once in a while we made breaks, and especially with a teacher I will always remember. 45 00:02:47,850 --> 00:02:49,840 His name is Marc Detienne. 46 00:02:49,840 --> 00:02:54,360 He radically changed my life and my friends' lives. 47 00:02:54,360 --> 00:02:59,860 He was the first who explained that the practices we had in Paris 8 were not at all standard. 48 00:02:59,860 --> 00:03:04,510 The pieces of software that we downloaded 20 years ago were software free to use. 49 00:03:04,510 --> 00:03:06,860 But such pieces of software were not standard. 50 00:03:06,860 --> 00:03:11,060 We also had their source code, that is their recipe. 51 00:03:11,060 --> 00:03:15,350 Thus we could study how they worked, possibly add features or correct errors. 52 00:03:15,350 --> 00:03:19,690 But this way of offering software was not dominant at the time, nor is it today. 53 00:03:19,690 --> 00:03:23,650 Instead, the dominant way of offering software is proprietary software. 54 00:03:23,650 --> 00:03:29,920 That is to say, software for which you do not know the inner working, for which you do not have the recipe, and that only the publisher can control. 55 00:03:30,610 --> 00:03:34,890 As for us, our software was and still is Free Software. 56 00:03:35,230 --> 00:03:46,580 It was also he who told us that among those who dedicated their lives to Free Software, there was an American computer scientist called Richard Stallman. 57 00:03:46,950 --> 00:03:51,140 He conceived Free Software, and he had also created a foundation dedicated to its promotion. 58 00:03:51,910 --> 00:03:54,250 One day, Stallman comes to Paris 8. 59 00:03:54,750 --> 00:03:58,110 You have to imagine that for us, computer science students, Stallman was an icon. 60 00:03:58,660 --> 00:04:03,950 He was one of the best Free Software developers around the world, one of those who developed the pieces of software we used at the time. 61 00:04:04,490 --> 00:04:09,110 I could perhaps compare him to the Zinedine Zidane or the Mozart of Free Software. 62 00:04:10,490 --> 00:04:13,670 And he was coming to Paris 8 in Saint Denis! Of course, we went to see his lecture. 63 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:14,900 There were lots of people. 64 00:04:15,310 --> 00:04:17,090 We expected Stallman would talk about technical topics, but in fact not at all. 65 00:04:17,810 --> 00:04:20,540 He told us about society, sharing, cooperation. 66 00:04:21,180 --> 00:04:22,960 He spoke very little about computer themselves. 67 00:04:23,280 --> 00:04:26,550 Or rather, he explained how Free Software can have an impact on society. 68 00:04:26,900 --> 00:04:35,220 According to him, Free Software is the incarnation within the computing world of the French Republican motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity [Brotherhood]". 69 00:04:35,820 --> 00:04:44,040 Liberty because we have the right to use the software, we have the right to study the way it works, we have the right to change it, and we have the right to redistribute it. 70 00:04:44,610 --> 00:04:47,630 Equality because everyone shares the same right, regardless of their condition. 71 00:04:48,220 --> 00:04:52,410 And Fraternity because such pieces of software promote sharing and cooperation. 72 00:04:53,090 --> 00:04:58,720 Let's just make a short break here to explain the importance of computing today. 73 00:04:59,400 --> 00:05:05,860 You will agree with me in saying that computers are everywhere in our daily lives: social networking, banking services, public administrations ... 74 00:05:06,290 --> 00:05:08,870 It is therefore essential that we keep these tools under control. 75 00:05:09,290 --> 00:05:12,920 Free Software is not just a technical alternative to proprietary software. 76 00:05:13,810 --> 00:05:15,630 It is much more importantly fundamental to our freedom. 77 00:05:16,090 --> 00:05:19,140 And it is a philosophy based on sharing and openness. 78 00:05:19,810 --> 00:05:24,870 We just mentioned the Internet: Free Software and the Internet have grown harmoniously together. 79 00:05:26,090 --> 00:05:28,380 The software architecture of the Internet is Free Software. 80 00:05:29,060 --> 00:05:32,230 And conversely the Internet has fostered the development of Free Software. 81 00:05:32,720 --> 00:05:41,280 If anybody in this the room believes he has never used Free Software, remember that every time you surf on the Internet, Free Software is part of your ride. 82 00:05:41,580 --> 00:05:44,460 Without Free Software, there would be no Internet as we know it. 83 00:05:45,100 --> 00:05:55,470 And Internet is a primarily tool to facilitate the contact and linking of billions of people, thus encouraging sharing practices and especially for Free Software. 84 00:05:55,750 --> 00:05:56,660 Others have followed that path. 85 00:05:57,030 --> 00:06:05,660 A decade ago, could we have just imagined that the main on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia, would be freely accessible and freely editable. 86 00:06:06,340 --> 00:06:09,000 Back to Stallman and his conference. 87 00:06:09,300 --> 00:06:12,350 After those nights spent with Marc Detienne, this conference was a kind of revelation for us. 88 00:06:12,960 --> 00:06:17,680 The revelation of a fundamental issue relative to society for which some should spend time. 89 00:06:18,590 --> 00:06:19,320 It was only waiting for us. 90 00:06:19,850 --> 00:06:28,160 We realized that even as computer scientists, we could have an impact on society by using and distributing Free Software. 91 00:06:29,060 --> 00:06:40,350 At the end of that year, I think it was '96, with some friends who also had just finished their studies, we asked ourselves what we were going to do. 92 00:06:40,700 --> 00:06:43,440 We concluded that "naturally, as we had learned computer sciences using Free Software, we would continue making Free Software". 93 00:06:44,100 --> 00:06:47,520 We decided that we would increase awareness in France about it, just like Stallman was already doing in the United States. 94 00:06:47,990 --> 00:06:53,010 So we created an association, whose objective was simple: to promote Free Software. 95 00:06:53,490 --> 00:06:57,840 So we embarked on an adventure from scratch, without any predefined road-map or business model. 96 00:06:58,890 --> 00:07:05,290 We invited people to join us, we created a website (remember that it was fifteen years ago) to publicize our activities. 97 00:07:05,420 --> 00:07:14,900 For 15 years, we have acted so as to promote and defend Free Software, gradually changing society a little and changing us as well. 98 00:07:15,480 --> 00:07:21,720 Doing so, we learned many new things and we have had to step outside our comfort zone. 99 00:07:41,520 --> 00:07:45,590 Together, we learned how to defend a project, a cause. 100 00:07:46,530 --> 00:07:51,070 For example, we spoke publicly of HADOPI [a French law "to control and regulate Internet access and encourage compliance with copyright laws" (source: Wikipedia)], and in the process we learned to analyze bills and laws. 101 00:07:51,480 --> 00:08:00,000 For computer scientists such as ourselves, we tend to study computer code, but if you come to think about it, a bill is just a code written in a different language. 102 00:08:00,300 --> 00:08:05,640 It can be studied, you can read it and possibly correct it, suggest improvements. 103 00:08:05,860 --> 00:08:07,670 In our computer jargon, we would call such improvements "patches". 104 00:08:09,030 --> 00:08:12,450 Of course, we also have to defend our cause, so we went to see politicians. 105 00:08:13,080 --> 00:08:21,150 We learned to speak their language; and we hope that, perhaps, over the years, they learned to speak our language. 106 00:08:23,010 --> 00:08:30,500 We studied and acted on these bills, because they had an impact on society, and so it was essential for us to act on these projects. 107 00:08:32,890 --> 00:08:38,270 And fundamentally, beyond all these activities, why do I find the Free Software cause so appealing? 108 00:08:39,180 --> 00:08:41,170 Why I am here today talking about it? 109 00:08:41,440 --> 00:08:46,010 Because it is intrinsically a cause that we cannot lead alone. 110 00:08:47,170 --> 00:08:49,100 There are plenty of causes that can be led alone, just requiring an exceptional individual. 111 00:08:50,490 --> 00:08:52,310 But the Free Software cause is one that needs to be led together. 112 00:08:53,060 --> 00:09:00,450 Free Software is written by people together, and within our association, we work together to promote Free Software. 113 00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:04,990 Over the years, we have matured and we have grown. 114 00:09:05,490 --> 00:09:12,130 We have known successes, such as the adoption of amendments in draft legislation, our participation in the rebuttal of a European directive on software patents. 115 00:09:12,390 --> 00:09:19,830 But more than that, we built a "micro-society association" in which people can act. 116 00:09:21,750 --> 00:09:25,920 Had we been alone, even the greatest willingness would not have brought such results. 117 00:09:26,330 --> 00:09:29,090 If everyone had acted on there side, we would not have had the same impact. 118 00:09:29,530 --> 00:09:35,900 But together, we have successfully dealt with the legislative processes, the communication material as well as our presence and visibility. 119 00:09:37,100 --> 00:09:38,710 In '96 there were 5 of us ... 120 00:09:39,220 --> 00:09:40,300 5 computer scientists ... 121 00:09:40,560 --> 00:09:41,130 5 geeks. 122 00:09:42,400 --> 00:09:46,090 Today we are thousands, over 5000 in fact and most are not computer scientists. 123 00:09:46,590 --> 00:09:50,680 Most are from the general public, they use Free Software and they have understood it's importance. 124 00:09:52,770 --> 00:09:57,510 Our work is now recognized and relayed by the press and it is recognized as well by the government. 125 00:10:00,190 --> 00:10:06,430 We succeeded simply because we managed to build together and to gather energy. 126 00:10:06,820 --> 00:10:14,020 What we have built is primarily a framework in which those who want to create and share can feel at ease and can contribute to this project. 127 00:10:15,400 --> 00:10:17,180 In this adventure, I also learned a lot personally. 128 00:10:17,540 --> 00:10:18,660 I have evolved. 129 00:10:19,660 --> 00:10:21,120 For instance, I learned to trust people. 130 00:10:21,740 --> 00:10:24,470 I learned to delegate objectives but not the way to reach it. 131 00:10:25,050 --> 00:10:27,670 For example, to ask for a communication document, without requiring a given way to achieve it. 132 00:10:28,460 --> 00:10:34,580 It is fundamental when we work together to learn to be tolerant, and to accept that people are different. 133 00:10:34,950 --> 00:10:40,500 We must make room for others' initiative, to allow them to invest and improve themselves. 134 00:10:40,970 --> 00:10:50,190 When working together, it is fundamental to trust others' ability and also to promote their work. 135 00:10:52,520 --> 00:10:58,940 The association contains all kinds of members: young one, retirees, lawyers, translators, graphic designers. 136 00:10:59,960 --> 00:11:03,430 There are even people who come from Sciences Po, like one of my colleagues. 137 00:11:03,850 --> 00:11:05,420 As you can see, this is everybody's cause. 138 00:11:06,300 --> 00:11:14,510 Today, we often tend to think that money is what motivates people, and that it is their main driver. 139 00:11:15,080 --> 00:11:20,220 It's a flaw of our current society to consider that the best way to increase someone's motivation is to give him more money. 140 00:11:20,740 --> 00:11:22,630 Obviously people need money to live. 141 00:11:23,540 --> 00:11:32,520 But what they need above all in order to be motivated and to feel recognized, is to feel useful for something, and to participate in a larger project. 142 00:11:33,180 --> 00:11:42,860 That is perhaps the most extraordinary part of this adventure I lived within the microcosm of associations: via Free Software, we are changing a bit society. 143 00:11:43,420 --> 00:11:56,120 But it also allows people throughout the organization - members, volunteers or even just people wishing to participate - to make their own small contribution to this broader project. 144 00:11:57,150 --> 00:12:04,170 These people can express their talents, their desires, in a kind environment where their work is recognized. 145 00:12:05,120 --> 00:12:09,500 What is fundamental within associations is that there are no obligations. 146 00:12:09,870 --> 00:12:11,950 People join them because they want to contribute. 147 00:12:13,750 --> 00:12:21,860 Without extending too much on my allocated time, the idea that I want you to keep from this is that Free Software is just a human adventure. 148 00:12:22,280 --> 00:12:25,890 Those were the words of Eben Moglen, who is another important figure of the Free Software cause. 149 00:12:26,100 --> 00:12:28,280 And in this adventure, the person who plays meets the person who builds. 150 00:12:28,980 --> 00:12:33,220 It's a game because we have a lot of fun, and so in that way we "play", but at the time we are also "building" something. 151 00:12:33,750 --> 00:12:35,720 Thanks to Free Software, we have an impact on society. 152 00:12:36,420 --> 00:12:39,430 Free Software allows people to express their creativity. 153 00:12:39,740 --> 00:12:42,280 And you know what? 154 00:12:42,570 --> 00:12:44,720 When you give a place for people to express their creativity, they do so. 155 00:12:45,030 --> 00:12:47,150 I have less than 30 seconds for my last message. 156 00:12:48,690 --> 00:12:54,410 If I wanted to sum up my career in a nutshell, I would say: "I participated in creating a community. 157 00:12:54,950 --> 00:12:56,680 I learned to work with this community. 158 00:12:57,010 --> 00:13:04,350 We have taken action and we have fought, because a few years ago I found my driving cause. 159 00:13:05,210 --> 00:13:13,790 It makes me get up enthusiastically in the morning, it allows my wife and children to endure my long hours behind a keyboard or out of home. 160 00:13:14,300 --> 00:13:16,780 It is what the Japanese call my "ikigai", my reason for being. 161 00:13:17,510 --> 00:13:23,410 My purpose in life is simple: to have an impact on society, to be useful to others and to interact with others. 162 00:13:23,100 --> 00:13:31,500 Thanks to Free Software, I feel I enrich society, I interact with and for others." 163 00:13:32,210 --> 00:13:38,760 And today, I can only wish to each one of you that you find your ikigai, if it's not already the case. 164 00:13:39,450 --> 00:13:41,540 Thank you.