YouTube doesn't want you to watch this video, they don't want you to know about this, they don't want you to start thinking about it, but this is something that you need to know, it is something that you need to be thinking about, because narcissism is everywhere on YouTube, it is everywhere in our lives, and it's evil, it's affecting the way in which we live, it's affecting our quality of life, but it's nothing new, it has always existed in our world, it's just taken a different form, now it's on television, it's on social media, it's on YouTube, and it's become widespread in our societies, which is why we are now seeing suffering, destruction and distress as a result of people's narcissism, narcissism is in our families, it's in our relationships, it's affecting our finances, it's affecting our individuality, it's affecting our identity, a lot of people don't even know who they are anymore, they don't know who they're supposed to be, they don't know what they're supposed to do, they have no path to purpose, they have no deeper meaning to their lives, they're just merely existing, they're biding their time, they're like zombies moving aimlessly through life until the day they finally die, they're alive but they're not really living, they can smile, they can laugh, but on the inside it is darkness, there's nothing there at its effect in our society, they love nothing but themselves and money, they're both full arrogant and proud, they mistreat people, they show a lack of respect, they're very ungrateful, they show you fake love because they only care about themselves, they're detached, they're disconnected, you can't reach them, you can't get through to them because they don't care about their actions, they don't care about the consequences, they don't care about how it affects you, it's like they hate anything that is good, they hate love and commitment, they hate marriage, they hate children and if you value those things it's like they hate you even more because they're not concerned about any of that, which is why they will betray you, they will deceive you because they're only concerned with their own self-indulgence and pleasure, which is why they're only in the relationship if it's pleasant and enjoyable, if it's fun and satisfying and if it's not they will move on to something else, I spoke about these events many years ago in my videos and many of you may wonder how I was able to see into the future, you may wonder how I was able to predict all of this stuff and it was actually very easy for me to do that because none of this stuff is new, these were things that I already knew about, these were things that already existed even at the time that I spoke about them, it's just that people weren't aware of it at the time, they didn't know much about it and I made a great effort to build a community of love and purity, a community free from immorality, a community free from contamination, where we can keep the narcissism out, where we can keep out the thieves, murderers and rapists, the people who gossip and slander, but now these types of things are creeping back into our lives, it's not getting better, it's getting worse, our communities are falling apart, there's nothing to protect us from things that are bad and evil, there's nothing to protect us from narcissism, which is why we end up being involved with people who we shouldn't be involved with, we end up doing things with people that we shouldn't be doing things with, because now narcissism is everywhere, it's normalised in our world, to the point where a lot of people can't even see it, which means that it's only going to escalate, it's only going to get worse, which is why we must stand up for what we believe in, we must defend and support our ideas and opinions which are being criticised and attacked, we must strengthen our communities, YouTube may not want you to watch this video and the elites of this world may not want you to see it, but I think it's something we all need to be aware of and understand, if we wish to protect our children and our future, one man can make a difference and every man should try, so let's make a difference, let's change the world by making a positive social impact, because that's the only way that we're going to see an improvement and you can do that today by giving this video a thumbs up and sharing it with anyone who you believe will help, we are the creators of our future, thank you for watching, I hope this video wears in it with you, please like, comment, share and subscribe, if you would like to donate, my PayPal link is in the video description, coaching inquiries, you can email me at coaching at narkson5.uk, thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.


Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this virtual book talk with Grant Quartamas, author of A Georgetown Life, The Reminiscences of Britannia Wellington Peter Kennan. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Monday, December 7th at noon, we'll welcome author Larry Tai and former Senate historian Don Ritchie, who will discuss Tai's new book Demagogue, The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. And that same evening at 6 p.m., join us for a program titled The Four Continents, an open dialogue. Michelle Cohen, Curator for the Architect of the Capital and Brent Leggs, Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, will discuss the four continent statues at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City. I hope you can join us for these two programs. Just 14 years after Congress first met in Washington, D.C., Britannia Wellington Peter Kennan was born in the newly designated District of Columbia. Living into the first years of the 20th century, Kennan saw firsthand about half of the history of the nation's capital. We were able to discover her unique view of early Washington D.C. because of the written record left by Kennan and other family members. Grant Quartamas has made this historical documentation available to the public by editing and annotating a manuscript found in the Tudor Place archives known as the Reminiscences of Britannia W. Kennan. The National Archives, through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, has long supported the preservation and publication of primary records of significant historical value. The Commission made its first grants in support of editing and publishing manuscripts in 1964. Since 1974, NHPRC has funded projects in every state and territory to preserve and increase use of historical records. Today's guest author introduces us to a remarkable witness to life in the District of Columbia from its earliest years through the Civil War and into the 20th century. Grant Quartamas is the Curator and Director of Collections for the Classical American Homes Preservation Dress. As the former Curator of Tudor Place Historic House and Garden, he spent five years researching the Custis Peter family and using the collection to interpret their nearly two centuries of ownership of the National Historic Landmark property in Georgetown and their familial ties to George and Martha Washington. Prior to his arrival at Tudor Place in 2015, he was the Assistant Curator of Collections at James Madison's Montpelier, where he worked for nearly nine years on the Mansions Interiors Initiative to Research and Furnish the Mansions following its architectural restoration. Now let's hear from Grant Quartamas. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here this afternoon. And I'm going to focus on how Britannia's reminiscences were created, the work of her grandchildren to capture and record these fascinating stories that she told them in my PowerPoint going here. When subscribers to the Century Illustrated Monthly magazine received their current issue in May of 1890, they would have been presented with a variety of reading options. A new poem by Walt Whitman. A treatise on agricultural irrigation for the desert southwest by John Wesley Powell, then Director of the U.S. Geological Survey or an article by William Armstrong about a collection of relics associated with George and Martha Washington that was owned by Miss Britannia Wellington Peter Kennan of Tudor Place. As the article noted, Mrs. Kennan was, at the time, the closest living descendant of Martha Washington, her only surviving great-granddaughter. The article described how Britannia lived at Tudor Place surrounded by a collection of objects that had been used by the President and Mrs. Washington at the Executive Mansion they inhabited in New York, as well as the one in Philadelphia, and later during their retirement at Mount Vernon. The article also described the important archive of family papers that Britannia owned, including two of the only known letters from George to Martha Washington, written by the General in 1775, just after he was given command of the Continental Army.  Aside from her importance as a member of the Custis Washington family, she was a lifelong resident of Tudor Place and the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. During her long residency, she bore witness to many of the significant events that occurred in and around the nation's capital over the course of the 19th century and into the first decade of the 20th. The article in the Century Magazine made Britannia somewhat of a celebrity. Three years later, she was invited to attend Virginia Day at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition where the state of Virginia had constructed an exact replica of Mount Vernon in the Chicago fairgrounds. Britannia was also an early member of both the Colonial Dames and the DAR. The following year, Britannia's grandchildren recognized the importance of their grandmother as a source of collective family history and living link to the Calvert, Custis, and Washington ancestry. And for this reason, they began conducting a series of interviews with her, prompting her to share recollections of past events, as well as her vast knowledge of family history. As she spoke, they began to write, capturing all the information she provided and the memories exactly as she has recounted them. Some of the notes appear on neatly lined notebook paper like these you see here, whereas others are on the backs of envelopes or any scrap of paper that was at hand, as the notes were being taken and they were later recopied. The compilation of these notes from these conversations form the manuscript known as Britannia's Reminisances that's now found in the Tudor Place archives. The document that I've edited and annotated to present in my book, accompanied by essays where I contextualize Britannia and how these reminiscences were created. But before I delve too far into the creation of the reminiscences, I want to provide a brief biographical overview of Britannia's life. Born at Tudor Place in 1815, Britannia was the youngest child born to Thomas and Martha Park Custis Peter. It was through her mother Martha that Britannia was descended from the Custis Washington family. Born in 1777, Martha Park Custis Peter was a namesake for Martha Washington and the only one of her four Custis grandchildren to be born at Mount Vernon. In 1795, 17-year-old Martha married Thomas Peter, eldest son of Georgetown Tobacco Merchant and Georgetown's first mayor, Robert Peter. In 1805, Thomas and Martha purchased the Tudor Place property, later asking their friend Dr. William Thornton to design a suitable house for the 8.5-acre property. This is the presentation drawing Thornton provided to the family that's also found in the Tudor Place archive. This is a good time to mention that Thomas and Martha Peter were ardent Federalists, one possible reason why they bestowed the names Columbia, America, and Britannia on their three daughters. Unlike her older sisters, Britannia was educated locally in Georgetown, spending four years at the Young Ladies Academy at the Visitation Convent, the school that's known today as Georgetown Visitation. In 1842, Britannia married Beverly Kennan, a career naval officer who was commandant of the Washington Navy Yard. Tragically, their marriage lasted only 16 months before his death in a shipboard explosion aboard the USS Princeton. During those 16 months, Britannia gave birth to the couple's only child, a daughter, Martha, who she called Markey, who was only four months old at the time of Commodore Kennan's death. Newly widowed, Britannia and Markey returned to Tudor Place to live with Britannia's mother. Except for a brief period at the onset of the Civil War, Britannia made Tudor Place her home for the rest of her life, living there for 67 years. As I mentioned earlier, beginning in 1894, Britannia's grandchildren starting prompting her to share her recollections of past events, as well as her vast knowledge of family history. This undertaking allowed the grandchildren to commit to paper the stories they'd grown up hearing from her about Lafayette's 1824 visit to Tudor Place, or her recollections of attending parties at the president's house during Andrew Jackson's administration, or about interactions with notable political figures of the era, including Daniel Webster and Vice President John C. Calhoun, a neighbor who actually lived across the street from the Tudor Place property at the estate known today as Dumbarton Oaks. Calhoun's daughter Anna-Maria was a friend of Britannia's and the girls attended dancing class together. Now, another story that Britannia recalled, or another information that Britannia recalled to her grandchildren was her role as a bridesmaid in the June 30th, 1831 wedding of her first cousin, Mary Anna Custis, to a young army officer named Robert E. Lee. In telling her grandchildren about the Lee wedding, Britannia recounted a rather humorous story about how the minister, Reverend Ruel Keith, got caught in a summer rainstorm and arrived at Arlington House soaking wet. He ended up having to borrow a pair of trousers from Britannia's uncle, George Washington Park Custis. Now, apparently Reverend Keith was rather tall and lanky, whereas Uncle Custis was short and stout. So this gave the minister a rather comical appearance in the borrowed trousers, whose him set several inches above the tops of his boots. Another fascinating person with whom Britannia interacted was Elizabeth Skyler Hamilton, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, who along with her daughter rented Britannia's H Street House, where the elder Mrs. Hamilton died in 1854. More tumultuous memories are also described in Britannia's recollections, like her decision to take on union officers as boarders during the Civil War in an effort to prevent tutor place from being seized by the federal government. Another instance she recalled was the hanging of her cousin and nephew after they were captured and accused of being Confederate spies in Tennessee in 1863. This image of their execution actually made the front page of Harper's Weekly on July 4th of 1863. In addition to her own memories and experiences, Britannia shared anecdotes and information passed on to her by her mother, Martha Custis Peter. This information recounted secondhand included details of Martha's childhood visits to Mount Vernon and of accompanying President George Washington to the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol building in 1793. Valuable information that illuminates how Martha and George Washington were perceived and memorialized by later generations of their family, including the for Custis grandchildren and their descendants. Britannia served as a beloved maternal figure to her five grandchildren, particularly following the death of their mother, her only daughter, Markey, in 1886. At the time of Markey Kenan Peter's death, her children ranged in age from 18 to six years old. So much like her great-grandmother, Martha Washington, had done a century before, Britannia stepped in and raised the grandchildren, several of whom even resided with her at Tudor Place. As the grandchildren reached adulthood and moved away, Britannia remained an important part of their lives and someone with whom they frequently corresponded and visited whenever possible. It was Britannia's grandson, Armistead Peter Jr., who was the primary force in ensuring that his grandmother's recollections were preserved for later generations of the family. A majority of the notes are in his hand. Other notes are also in the hand of his younger siblings, Freeland and Agnes Peter, who both lived with Britannia at Tudor Place until the time of her death in 1911. In addition to his role as the unofficial family historian, Armistead Jr. followed his grandmother's example of adding labels to important objects in the family collection. And like his grandmother, he compiled his own reminiscences in the mid 20th century after he reached old age. His reminiscences contain additional stories and information passed down by his grandmother as well as other members of the family. Now, Britannia recognized her grandson's interest in family history and frequently gave him objects from the family collection as well as bundles of old papers that were left in the Tudor Place attic. He went on to note that Britannia said he was the only family member who took the slightest interest in them and she knew that he would preserve and care for them. Each time Armistead returned to Georgetown to visit his grandmother, he continued to conduct oral history interviews with her. After spending the day with her on May 13th of 1899, he confided to his diary a desire to write down all she tells me of the past, a most interesting volume it would make. Armistead carefully preserved the notes from his conversations with his grandmother and today they're found within his personal papers in the Tudor Place archive. When Armistead was interviewing his grandmother and most actively engaged in his research on the Custis Peter family in the final decade of the 19th century, there were few repositories to house public records. Thus, his grandmother's memory and the collection of Peter family papers at Tudor Place were valuable and accessible research tools in much the same way earlier 19th century historians such as Jared Sparks seen here and Benson Lossing sought audiences with Britannia's mother, Martha Custis Peter, eager to hear her memories of George and Martha Washington and utilize the same archive of family papers. Sparks recounted his February 28th, 1828 visit to Tudor Place in his diary summarizing a conversation he had with Martha Peter about Martha Washington's decisions to burn much of General Washington's correspondence and the eventual discovery of those two surviving letters by Mrs. Peter behind the drawer in Mrs. Washington's writing table. Prior to her 1911 death and division of her estate, Britannia possessed a large collection of family papers including the two George Washington letters Sparks mentioned. She also owned letters of condolence that were received by Martha Washington from President John Adams and other former members of her husband's cabinet. Since Britannia's father Thomas Peter served as one of the executors of Martha Washington's estate, the archive held important documents about the settlement of the estate, other correspondence including some of letters between Thomas Peter and George Washington about the sale of tobacco and letters from Britannia's siblings written while they were away at school in Philadelphia. In contrast to the archive of family papers and objects that Britannia possessed in the 1890s, the bulk of George Washington's correspondence was not publicly accessible as it was held by the State Department. Originally purchased from George Corbyn Washington, the President's grand-nephew, the personal papers and diaries of the President as well as state papers from his administration were not transferred to the Library of Congress until 1904. As part of the library's institutional reorganization in 1897, the manuscript division was created to house important papers including those of former presidents after they came under the ownership of the federal government. And most important for our discussion today, the National Archives and Records Administration was not created until 1934. Prior to that time, each government agency or branch was responsible for keeping its own records, and they weren't always stored in ideal conditions either. Washington DC of course had its historical society, but the organization was in its infancy. Founded in 1894 as the Columbia Historical Society, its role at the time was to serve as a forum where its members presented papers of historical research, many of which were then published in its journal. Up until the late 20th century and the advent of census databases and online repositories like those I utilized for my research working on this book, individuals like Armistead Peter Jr. would have needed to spend hours in courthouses searching probate records or climbing into church attics to locate old vestry books and baptismal records. Now, don't get me wrong. I spent my share of time during this project in various archives and tracking down sources and documents, but being able to do a search across multiple census years or find a digital copy of a family member's will certainly speeds up research and makes it possible, especially now in the era of COVID when so many repositories have been temporarily closed. Birth and death records found in the leaves of Bibles like Martha Peter's Bible, which was used to replace archive, also acted as another important source. Britannia inherited her mother's Bible in 1854 and she continued to add family records to it, carefully noting every birth, marriage, and death of an immediate family member. Here you can see where she's added the names of her mother, her brother, and her own daughter. The other thing to keep in mind is that elderly members of the community who served as first-hand witnesses to significant historical events or historical research. Many of the 19th-century histories of Washington, D.C., and the articles that appear in the early volumes of the Historical Society's journal contain the same type of personal recollections as those Britannia Kennan provided to her grandchildren. Washingtonians such as Christian Heinz and Marian Campbell Gouverneur, seen here, even wrote and published memoirs of their lives in the nation's capital during the 19th century. In contrast, Britannia appears to have had no interest in writing and publishing a memoir. She frequently granted interviews to local reporters, to whom she recalled events like Lafayette's visit in 1824, but everything of historical nature that she wrote appears to have been written for her grandchildren and other family members as the primary audience. Britannia Kennan died on the eve of her 96th birthday in January of 1911. According to the terms of her will, the whole estate, including her possessions and the five-and-a-half-acre Tudor Place property, were divided equally among her five grandchildren. The siblings also devised a way to equally divide the collection of objects and papers that had been at Tudor Place since Martha and Thomas purchased the property in 1805. Now, I should also say that the obvious solution to splitting the entire estate five ways would have been to sell the house and just split the proceeds. Fortunately, Armistead Jr. was able to buy out his sibling's share to own Tudor Place outright, and by forfeiting his share of another family property, he was able to do that. The siblings also divided, like I said, the collection, and they took an inventory because the collection included furniture, jewelry, clothing, and decorative objects, including numerous objects formerly owned by George and Martha Washington. To ensure that the collection of Washington objects and everything at Tudor Place was equally divided, Armistead Jr. and his siblings began the arduous task of inventorying more than a century's worth of family possessions. Each object was given a number and have given a small sticker, and objects associated with George and Martha Washington were given an additional Mount Vernon label. The siblings identified more than 500 objects ranging from Martha Washington's writing table to a piece of soap that formerly belonged to George and Martha Washington, and yes, the piece of soap is still in the Tudor Place collection today. The 1911 inventory is an equally important historic document describing each object and noting its location within Tudor Place. The nucleus of the collection at Tudor Place Historic House and Garden today of the Washington collection are objects and papers that were selected by Armistead Jr. during the 1911 division of his grandmother's estate. Some of the objects that left Tudor Place as part of the 1911 division, objects that went to his siblings, have since returned to the museum collection while others can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and of course, Mount Vernon. Here you can see a plate from the Neal Americana collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Washington's French porcelain service that still has its 1911 Tudor Place inventory number and Mount Vernon sticker affixed to it. The archive of family papers was equally divided in 1911, although Armistead Jr. claimed it was Britannia's intention for him to receive the bulk of the papers. However, his siblings were adamant that the family papers would be divided equally as well. In the division, Armistead received his grandmother's account books, a portion of her correspondence related to Beverly Kennan, his grandfather's military naval career, as well as that June 18, 1775 letter from George to Martha Washington. Today the family archive that existed at Tudor Place until the time of Britannia Kennan's death is split among three institutional collections. A portion inherited by Armistead Jr. is now found in the Tudor Place archive along with Mr. Peter's papers and those of later generations of the family who lived at Tudor Place. Other portions of the papers are found at Mount Vernon at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the study of George Washington and at the University of Virginia at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Two institutions that I visited numerous times to utilize those portions of the family archive for my book project. In addition to keeping original notes, transcribing the conversations with Britannia about the family's history, excuse me, Armistead Jr. compiled a handwritten version seen here where he anthologized a portion of the notes into a single document. At a later point around 1920, he also created a typescript version. However, I learned during the process of my project that not all the notes were included in this anthology that he made, so that was a great process of discovery, finding these additional notes that didn't make it into these later drafts that he compiled. Given that many of the reminiscences were committed to paper in or around 1894 when Britannia was in her late 80s or early 90s and that she was recalling events that had recurred 60 years earlier, her accuracy is impressive. In many instances, receipts or papers found in the Tudor Place archive or in the other collections I mentioned made it possible for me to precisely date an event that Britannia described to her grandchildren, such as the funeral of her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Scott Peter, a receipt for which from the undertaker survives in Thomas Peter's papers. In fact, one of the best clues to help me determine the date of an event she described during her Civil War travels came from materials held in the National Archives in one of the collections. The records of the provost marshal at Fort Monroe, a union held fort in Hampton Roads, Virginia. To provide a bit of context, Britannia and her daughter were traveling when the Civil War began in April of 1861. They first settled in Stanton, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for several months, then moved on to Richmond, Petersburg, and finally Garfield. Through an appeal that Britannia made to Confederate general Benjamin Eugene, she and Marquis were able to leave Confederate held Norfolk aboard a flag of truce vessel, a neutral ship that took them to Fort Monroe. At the fort, all passengers aboard the boat were registered and their luggage was searched. Britannia described the event to her grandchildren. The mention of a Mrs. Beverly Kennan and a Miss Kennan in the passenger list helped me to establish an exact date for this event, December 6th of 1861. Following the inspection, Britannia and Marquis were allowed to remain on the boat, which traveled at the Chesapeake Beta Baltimore. From there, they made their way to her brother's plantation near Ellicott Mills, Maryland, and then on January 1st of 1862, Britannia returned to Tudor Place. Later that spring is when she decided to take in borders as part of her effort to prevent the house from being seized, which is an equally interesting facet of the Tudor Place story, given Britannia's overt Southern sympathies. As I suggest in my first essay of the book, when reading this historical document, the reader needs to keep several things in mind. First, the Britannia's primary audience for this document was her grandchildren and other members of her immediate family. Thus, personal opinions are frequently included and information that was sometimes of a rather gossipy nature makes its way in there. Always proper, Britannia undoubtedly would not have made some of these comments if her intended audience was more public. Second, the reader should also understand that Britannia was a product of the time and place in which she grew up, the antebellum south, and that her family owned numerous enslaved individuals and used their labor both at Tudor Place as well as on their agricultural lands in Maryland and the District of Columbia. An unapologetic southerner, Britannia herself was an enslaver and relative comfort due in part to her family's use of an enslaved labor force to cultivate tobacco and other crops. Britannia's mother, Martha Park Custis-Peter, received two large bequests of more than 100 Dower slaves from the Custis estate. The first group in 1795 at the time of her marriage, a number of which were sold the following year in 1796 by Thomas Peter noted here in his account book something that actually displeased George Washington. And the second group in 1802 after Martha Washington's death. Now, according to 17th century Virginia law, any child born to a female Dower slave became a Dower slave themselves regardless of the status of their father. In this way, the Peter family came to own multiple generations of Custis Dower slaves. Many of these individuals were inherited by Britannia or her brother at the time of Martha Peter's 1854 death and remained in their ownership until the eventual abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia in Maryland. Following her husband's death and her move back to Tudor Place, Britannia hired out a number of the enslaved individuals previously used in their household, meaning for lack of a better term, other Washingtonians literally rented these slaves from Britannia paying her monthly for their labor. And in her role as executor of her husband's estate, she approved the sale of some 50 enslaved individuals from her late husband's Henrico County Virginia plantation. Here's the newspaper advertisement for that sale. Her attitude toward slavery is apparent when she discusses several of the individuals at Tudor Place prior to the Civil War. In an aside about Hannah, the daughter of her enslaved ladies made, Britannia recalled to her grandchildren that Hannah quote belong to me, of course. Her statement is especially interesting because Hannah was likely fathered by one of Britannia's brothers. So in addition to being owned by Britannia, she was also a blood relative. Britannia's attitude toward slavery was clearly one of matter of fact acceptance as it was an institution that she had known and been surrounded by for the first five decades of her life. Her surviving letters as well as information she provided to her grandchildren suggest that from her point of view, she was kind to the individual she owned. However, we're only hearing one side of the story. We don't have the perspective of the enslaved on working at Tudor Place or of about Britannia as an enslaver. However, it should be noted that she maintained relationships with her former slaves more than three decades after the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Her account books include notations of charitable gifts to former slaves, and in the very first passage of her reminiscences, she discusses Hannah and the man who would become her husband Alfred Pope. Both Alfred and Hannah remained in Georgetown following their 1850 emancipation, and Britannia described them to her grandchildren as a most respected couple. One of the most intriguing relationships of Britannia's life was her role as employer to longtime Tudor Place gardener John Luckett, an escaped slave from Virginia, whom she hired when slavery was still legal in the District of Columbia. Luckett remained in Britannia's employ at Tudor Place for more than 44 years until his death in 1906. In 1899, Luckett recounted the story of his escape from slavery to Armistead Peter Jr., who later wrote about it in his own reminiscences. While residing on a Fairfax County plantation, Luckett and several other enslavemen were seized by the Union army as contraband, not wanting to drive the army supply wagon he was assigned to drive. Luckett escaped, crossing the chain bridge from Virginia into the District of Columbia. While walking down the street in front of Tudor Place, he saw Britannia cannon out in her garden, called out to her and asked if she wasn't needing to hire anyone. It appears that their relationship evolved from employer and employee to friendship and a mutual respect garnered by a lengthy association of more than four decades. Luckett was frequently called upon by Britannia's grandchildren to take them fishing or hunting, and he attended important events in the lives of her grandchildren, including graduations and ordinations. Upon hearing the news of the birth of Armistead Peter Jr.'s son, Armistead Peter III, seen here with John Luckett in about 1898, Luckett asked Britannia to pass along the message that he felt proud to hear that Armistead has a son, and I hope that I may live long enough to drag him around as I used to do Armistead Jr. Despite numerous offers by the Peter family to secure housing for Luckett and his family in closer proximity to Tudor Place, he always declined, stating that his wife preferred to reside in their neighborhood on Capitol Hill. At the time of Luckett's death in 1906, Britannia's grandchildren wrote an obituary for the longtime gardener that appeared in Washington newspapers. Britannia's quoted in the obituary saying, if I were asked to name a fault in John, I could not do so. It's a pity there are not more like him. In the late winter of 1911, when the contents of Tudor Place were inventoried after Britannia's death, the list of objects in her bedroom included a photograph of John Luckett, the only photograph in that room of someone who is not a member of the extended Custis Peter family. For all the wealth of information that Britannia provides to her grandchildren in these reminiscences, she's relatively quiet about the transitional period in 1863 when enslaved labor was no longer used at Tudor Place and she began employing paid servants. In the District of Columbia, the Emancipation of Slavery occurred in April of 1862 when President Lincoln signed the District of Columbia's Compensated Emancipation Act. This act provided for compensated emancipation whereby slave owners who made a loath of loyalty and oath of loyalty to the Union and voluntarily emancipated their slaves would receive financial compensation, up to $300 for each individual they emancipated. The act was passed nearly nine months before President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st of 1863. It's not surprising that Britannia's name cannot be found among the surviving records of district slave owners who sought compensated emancipation as it's doubtful she would have been willing to sign a loyalty oath to the Union given her overt Southern sympathies. After she made the decision to take in borders in the late spring of 1863, she hired two Irish immigrant servants, a maid and cook, and had Luckett as gardener. Another tragic episode that Britannia doesn't directly address in the conversations with her grandchildren is the death of her husband Beverly Kennan when she was just 29 years old. Commodore Kennan was one of the six victims killed when a debt gun exploded during a firing demonstration on board the USS Princeton on February 28th, 1844. Britannia herself was on board the boat as were a number of very important individuals the president of the United States, John Tyler, former First Lady Dolly Madison, a number of other cabinet members, but Britannia did not directly witness the explosion that killed her husband. She was likely below decks enjoying the dinner, the food that was served as part of this day-sailing excursion. The funeral for the victims was held two days later in the East Room of the White House. One can only imagine the loss that Britannia must have felt after just 16 months of marriage. Thus without, she was also a single parent to her infant daughter. Correspondents from other family members suggested that Britannia was devastated by the loss of her husband and spent nearly two weeks confined to her room. It's possible that the events surrounding the February 28th, 1844 disaster on the Princeton represented such a dark and painful time of her life that she couldn't even bear to speak of it more than 50 years later. Another incident from February of 1904 further illustrates the lasting effect that her husband's death and funeral likely had on her. That month, Britannia received an invitation from President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt to attend an event at the White House. This invitation, now in the Tudor Place Archive, still retains the response card and other inserts suggesting that Britannia did not return them or attend the event. While she was quite advanced in age by 1904, she would have turned 89 the previous month. She was still very spry and in excellent health. It's likely she had other reasons for not attending. The event to which she was invited was a reception that was held in the public rooms in the White House. Now, I think it's very possible that Britannia associated these spaces, especially the East Room, with that very dark time in her life as it was the location for the March 1st, 1844 state funeral held for her husband and the other cabinet members who died aboard the Princeton. In 1893, Washington Post reporter George Alfred Townsend, known by his pen name Gath, visited Britannia at Tudor Place. In the course of their interview, he asked her whether a clever woman should submit to an inferior husband. To this, Britannia replied, quote, I believe that women, by putting themselves forward in the world, do not elevate but degrade themselves. It's a woman's part in life of where she loves. Now, while this statement might be construed by a historian today as anti-feminist, it further illustrates the mindset in which Britannia Kenan was raised and the philosophy to which she adhered. Now, the statements especially ironic, considering Britannia never remarried after her husband's death in 1844 and during that 67-year period of her widowhood, she was afforded rikes and privileges not typically granted to married women at the time, and her son-in-law later recalled that as a widow, she had received no less than three proposals of marriage. Britannia Kenan has been called the first curator of Tudor Place and it's a title well deserved. In addition to providing news reminiscences to her grandchildren, she painstakingly arranged and labeled many of the objects in the family's collection, especially pieces that her parents, Thomas and Martha Peter, acquired at the 1802 sale of the decade she owned Tudor Place. Britannia carefully displayed these objects in the house and lived among the various heirlooms and relics. For her daily correspondence, Britannia set at the writing desk formerly used by her great-grandmother, Martha Washington, something that astounded reporters and writers when they came to interview her at Tudor Place. This was a piece of furniture that George Washington originally purchased in New York City from the outgoing French ambassador. Mrs. Washington used the table in the executive mansion in Philadelphia and back home at Mount Vernon, later bequeathing it to granddaughter Martha Custis Peter from whom Britannia inherited it. Here you can see Britannia's grants on freelance seated at the writing table where it was placed in the Tudor Place parlor and an image of the piece that's now back in Mount Vernon's collection. In Britannia's reminiscences she provides a fascinating insight into life not only on the Tudor Place property, but in Georgetown surrounding the estate. She included histories of some of the adjacent houses and properties and some of the fascinating individuals she had interacted with such as the former Empress of Mexico who after her husband's abdication and execution brought her large family to the United States, eventually settling in Georgetown. Britannia actually recalled that she attended visitation with several of the Empress's daughters, the former royal princesses. Another interesting person she discusses is Harriet Williams who as a schoolgirl of 16 married the much older widow or Russian ambassador Alexander Dibudisco in 1840. Britannia also focused on 19th century Washington. She discusses the early infrastructure of the city describing Pennsylvania Avenue as a mud hole prior to its paving, then going on to discuss several variations of road surface materials used on it during the 19th century. She also talks about early public transportation systems including the horse drawn omnibus line that came through Georgetown until it was replaced by horse drawn street cars in 1862. Now in the five years that I was curator at Tudor Place, Britannia's reminiscences offered a wealth of information to me about room use within the house and other important facts for interpreting Tudor Place. In addition to the basic room use information, she includes more macabre details such as specific rooms in which various family members passed away. Again another clue to room use as in which rooms that are no longer bed chambers now were formerly used as bed chambers earlier in the 19th century. She provides valuable details about the historic landscape of the Tudor Place property and what plants were found in the garden and in the conservatory during her childhood. These clues along with materials found in her papers in the Tudor Place archive continue to give Tudor Place staff a more complete picture of life at the estate during the 19th century. Following Britannia's lead each subsequent generation of the Peter family did its part to further ensure the survival of Tudor Place. Armistead Junior who became the next owner in 1911 conducted a sympathetic restoration of the house in which he addressed several decades worth of deferred maintenance and added modern conveniences like electricity and modern bathrooms bringing the then 100 year old house into the 20th century. His grandmother had largely shun those modern conveniences preferring to use gas lighting throughout the house. Armistead Junior continued Britannia's tradition of making notes about the provenance of objects like this note about a soup plate from George Washington Society of the Cincinnati Porcelain Dinner Service that he received from cousin Mary Lee whose grandfather George Washington Park Custis had received the service after the Washington's death in 1802. Following Armistead Junior's death in 1960 his only child Armistead Peter III became the owner of Tudor Place. Armistead Peter III was Britannia's first great-grandson and she was always eager for news of him or when he visited Tudor Place as a young boy. He in turn was captivated by his great-grandmother the stories she could tell and the family's long-time ownership of Tudor Place. Here they are out in the Tudor Place garden just a few months before her death in 1910. This is actually one of my favorite images because you see Britannia a woman who met Lafayette as a young girl with her great-grandson Armistead Peter III who would be the last owner of Tudor Place and lived there until 1983. In addition to preserving the house collection and five-and-a-half acre property Armistead Peter III further documented the family's historic ties to the house and garden with a publication of his book Tudor Place in 1969. And as a further measure to ensure the preservation of Tudor Place Armistead Peter III had placed the entire five-and-a-half acre property in a conservation easement with the National Park Service in 1966. This action ensured that the property would never again be reduced in size as it had been when portions were sold off by Britannia in 1854 and 1866. President Johnson's Secretary of the Interior, Stuart Udall seen here with Armistead Peter III called the easement a gift to the nation. In 1972, Armistead Peter III wrote about the first time that he came back to Tudor Place after his great-grandmother's death and the division of her collection was completed. Then 15 years old he recalled that he found the house stripped of every picture, every stick of furniture, everything that I had known and only a lone packing box empty in the center of the living room floor. I sat on this box and I looked around me and I believed that at that moment was born the resolve that such an outrage would never again happen in that house. Armistead Peter III spent much of the 23 years of his ownership of Tudor Place acquiring furnishings and in some instances engravings that were identical to the ones found throughout the house during his great-grandmother's ownership. And it was Armistead Peter III who with his wife Caroline Ogden Jones made the decision to create a foundation to the safe Tudor Place to the public. A foundation that would operate the estate as a historic house museum and garden following his death. Not only would this once private house become public but the family's unparalleled collection of objects and manuscripts would also be made available for visitors to enjoy and scholars to utilize. Now all this was made possible because of Britannia Kennan with her stories and lifetime of work on the house and collections of the love of Tudor Place and an appreciation of its history to these later generations of the family preserving the house through the Civil War and into the 20th century. So, thank you very much. Now I'm going to end my screen sharing here and I am happy to take some questions. Oh, I'm sorry, it looks like we are out of time. Thank you all. It's been a pleasure to be here. I hope you will purchase the book if it's of interest. Thank you.


Nice to meet you, Joe. How you doing, man? I'm doing good. Doing good. How you doing? Other than midterms. Yeah. I'm all right. I'm all right. Hello, everyone. This is Jamey Johnson from CalTV Entertainment here at Castro Theater for the early red carpet screening for the film, Bohemian Rhapsody. Let's check it out. Being a biopic for a band like Queen, that's a really big deal, man. How'd you hear and get involved in it? You know what? Rami is someone I've known for 10 years. We've been working together a long time ago. I found out he got the role. I was in London. I happened to run into one of the producers and they were like, oh, oh, and my manager was there and he's trying to push me like managers do saying, oh, you got to put Joe in this movie.  And I said, you know, not as good as Queen. And they were like, okay, yeah, whatever. And I was like, okay, I'm not getting this. But then a month later, I got a call saying that they felt like I really looked like John Deacon. And before I knew it, I had a bass in my hand. I was trying to learn how to play that. They wanted to hear my accent. I showed it to them and I got the role. It was crazy. So how did you hear about it and get involved in the project? You know, the producers, Graham King and Dennis O'Sullivan, they saw Mr. Robot. This television show that I do. And for some reason, I don't know how they thought that that guy would play Freddie Mercury, but thank God they did. The cast director, Suzy Figgis, to whom I am very, very grateful, has always kind of followed my career and she's been very supportive of me and asked me to come in and play Brian. She actually said, kind of do a little bit of homework, look at his voice, look at his gesture and come in with a bit of performance. And I did. So I went into that read-through and brought a bit of Brian May with me. And I think the producer's ears pricked up and after that, they gave me an audition the following week and it went from there basically. Every band has to start. How'd you guys all come together? Oh, it's been a long journey to find everyone and Queen has been an amazing band to tribute because of all the variety of music. So finding players who are strong musicians and talented females is a challenge. And we all love Queen. Yes, to start. What was one of your favorite parts about filming a movie? I think for just the opportunity to jump up and down on stage and pretend to be a rock star. Every time we got to put a song up on stage and have a concert scene, that was probably the most thrilling.    They would scream and you kind of like raise your hand.  It's just this euphoric feeling that I honestly, I wish I could have back. Now last question. We'll get you some trivia. Okay, ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can only fail in this situation. All right, let's go. Another one bites a dust. A huge song. What year was released? 1979, 1980, 1981 or 1982? Another one bites a dust. I'm going to say 1980. Correct. 1980, 1979, 1980, 1981 or 1982? I'm going to say another one bites a dust is 1980. 81? You had the first time was 1980, 1980. Either 80 or 81, I'm going to go with 80. Correct. Nice, nice. She's the only one that got it right. 1980. Well guys, thank you for tuning in. Bohemian Rhapsody drops November 2nd for all things entertainment tuning the Cal TV and as always go Bears.


Hello, my amazing math minds, and welcome to this week's math tip Monday. My name is Heidi Rathmeyer, staff developer at ESU 8, and this week I want to talk about a Google Chrome extension called EquatIO, and it's been around for a couple years, so some of you are probably using it, though I thought it would be a great one to highlight considering. We have a lot of remote learning happening right now, whether you have kids on quarantine. So I think this is a great tool for everyone, K-12, and I will show you some of the many things you can do such as creating equations, graphs, number lines, clocks, fractional representations, and much more, and you can insert them into documents or Google Forms, which I think is a great idea if you need to do a short assessment, whether it's formative or summative. So EquatIO is a Google Chrome extension, so you have to go to the Chrome web store and you will find it here, and it will give you the option to add to Chrome. You can see I already have it, so it's asking if I want to remove it, which I do not. So that is where you can find EquatIO and download it, and then once you have done that, you should see a little icon that looks like this called EquatIO. So I went ahead and opened a Google Doc, and if I select this and you notice it says has access to the site, then down at the bottom here I suddenly have all sorts of options. So a lot of options that you can do here, the first one is just by typing, so you could type an equation, and then just insert the math in the document. If you want to clear this, you just hit the trash button, you also have some options here for different text symbols, maybe a layout, maybe you need to make a table. So just by typing is one way to do it. The latex editor I'm not going to go into, but that is a special text editing tool that's often used in academia, but I don't think for most of our purposes we won't use it. Okay, graph editor, maybe you need to make a graph. This is great for algebra and upper level math classes, and if you notice, it looks a lot like Desmos because it is generated by Desmos. So now maybe I want to use, that's maybe I want to put in a sign function, and then it also gives you some suggestions, and now I want to insert the graph, there I put it in my Google Doc as well, I could also do handwriting, it does have some handwriting abilities, so how about two, and I think it recognized Pi one time when I did it. Oh, look at that. Okay, so I can do it that way just by handwriting. I can also do speech input. So a squared plus b squared equals c squared, and then I could also insert that into my document. Okay, there is a mobile version of this. Here's another one that I think would be really useful, especially for our elementary teachers. I did have to create an account, but I just used my Google account here, and you notice it has a lot of the same features, except we have a couple others here. You could put in some shapes, some smart shapes, which I really like, so maybe I want to put in a number line. I can tell it how many segments I want, I can tell it, I want to put the placement on the bottom or the top, I can tell how many steps I want to use, maybe I want to go by twos instead of ones. Okay, so that's a great way to do a number line, and then up here is how you would insert it into your document where it does its magic. Okay, I'm going to go back to that space. We can also do a fraction bar, and again you can change the number of segments, you can change the number that are highlighted. We can do a fraction circle, we can do a protractor. If you wanted to put a protractor and have them read an angle, you can actually put an angle in first and then put the protractor on top of it, and you could decide the dimensions of the angle. You can do a clock, and now I could do an elapsed time question. Okay, so that is the math space part of EquatIO. There are some other things you can do, some STEM tools where you can, I don't think you can put these actually in the document unless you want to take a screenshot, but it provides information on the periodic table for any of my science teachers. It will give you a scientific calculator. Again, if you needed to take a screenshot, you could include that. Here is the molecular view. Let's do water H2O. And now I have a molecular view, and again you could use a screenshot of this and maybe put it in your Google Doc if you needed to, but those are just some tools that they have up and available. Okay, so that is one way is that you can create all these on a Google Doc. However, I think it is very powerful in its use on Google Forms. So if you notice, once you have downloaded the extension, these little icons are going to show up in your Google Forms. So now I have all of the same capabilities right here that I did in Google Docs. I could put in a graph, I could put in a clock, I can put in a number line, I can do fractions, and have all sorts of questions. And as you'll notice, you can do the same thing on the answers for the options. So for example, let's maybe input a graph. Maybe I want to put that sine graph back in, or maybe I want to do, let's do tangents to X. Okay, now I'm going to insert the graph. Okay, now it is part of my question. Okay, and then you could do the same thing down here with your options for your answers. You could put in an equation, you could put in another graph. You could go back to the math space and add some other things. So a lot of power in using this for math teachers in collecting feedback from your students on how things are going or doing some homework. So there's great power in the EquatIO. So that is my math tip for this Monday. So try out the EquatIO extension, wonderful tool for math teachers, especially given the remote learning that we may find ourselves in. So let me know how EquatIO goes for you. In the meantime, stay well, be kind.


Good afternoon. I think this panel is what is between you and lunch. So the theme of this panel is an important one. And actually, having been involved in this summit for several years now, it's a theme which is somewhat familiar. And in fact, I think as we will find out today, it's increasingly more acute. And similarly, tomorrow at FOSDEM, there are a couple of policy tracks looking at this development in terms of these unintended consequences for open source. Indeed, last night looking through the OFE community email, which was on fire. And similarly, during this event, so those who keep emailing focus, you're going to be here in the room. But there's quite a lot of concern around a number of areas of policy, in particular the Cyber Resilience Act, which we'll touch on briefly today, but also, again, in deep tomorrow. So I guess we're going to use the beef burger analogy in terms of how we're going to structure this. So the bun will be just a bit of a context setter. The burger will be going into a few examples. Again, we don't have time to touch on all of them. Previous panels did so. So we're going to riff off what they were talking about and not, hopefully, duplicate. And then finally, time permitting the secondary bun is to understand a bit better about what we could do together, both as a community, but also, importantly, with EU policymakers. If I may say, many of whom are equally frustrated that there are these unintended consequences as they adopt and contribute more and more into open source. So I'm James Lovegrove. I'm the policy wonk for Red Hat based here in Brussels, but looking at the region. And it's my honor to be the moderator and co-panelist today at this event. So Deb is going to be first up. She's a policy advisor to the Eclipse Foundation, also former Red Hatter, and brings together some really interesting experience from both the government side and academia. So I think you're going to kick things off, aren't you, Deb, just gives a little bit of a perspective of, in terms of scene setter, what you see as perhaps some of the drivers behind this situation we find ourselves in. So Deb. Thank you very much. So I appreciate being here as a non-EU citizen, but I have a perspective of about 25 years down the open source community. Today in the United States, it's been a software economy for some time. European Commissioned and the EU has an admirable and incredibly creative ICT roadmap, which is envisioning lifting all boats along with the digital sovereignty program. But the thing that's a common thread now that has been disruptive and a game changer is in the United States we've never really had public policy that addresses open source. It's been an operational concern government agencies have viewed it for years here in the European Union. Similarly, but again, a deliberate strategy for innovation going forward. The game changer has been the arrival of cybersecurity concerns. And so for the first time, open source community, the industry, the vendors are faced with potential regulatory concerns. And what we haven't really been prepared for is being part of the policy discussion, how that might actually impact the very industry and ecosystem that all of our plans rely on. And so we're a bit behind. We've not done a great job over the last several years of informing policymakers of what the open source ecosystem actually looks like. You know, what is the flow? Where are the economics? Who's making money? Where are there contributions? And so this I think is something that's a challenge both in the United States and in Europe where it's not well understood who the stakeholders are that might be better informed and involved in deliberating and forming public policy. And I think that's the fundamental landscape for us globally. We know there are other countries that are considering public policy making as well. Great, thank you, Deb. I'm gonna bring in Simon, who is the Director of Standards and Policy at OSI. As we all know in the room, but just for those who don't and those online, it is a global charity that is stewarding the very definition of open source. And indeed, the previous panel of seats in front of me brought up some of those key concerns about the importance of permissionless. So Simon, maybe give us your take on what's going on in Europe. Thank you. Thank you. So I've been watching over many years as open source has gradually moved from being a marginal curiosity to a central reality of the technology industry globally. And legislators have gone through several phases as they've reacted to this. They started out by having no idea that their legislation even impacted open source because they were unaware of it. They've gone through a phase of noting open source but not consulting any stakeholders. I believe we're now at a stage where legislators are responding to open source but they're consulting the wrong stakeholders as they're putting the legislation together. And I hope we're going to move into a Nirvana where that changes. I think the reason it's happening is because the way we've approached legislation is very much an industrial revolution approach to products. We have producers who make things. We have workers who belong to unions who do the labor of making things. And then we have consumers who use their money to buy things. And we're well set up to see legislation consult each of those modalities of engagement with the economy. So we have lobbyists who are representing the producers and we have unions who are representing the workers and we have civil society consumer organizations representing the consumers. But it turns out that open source is a fourth modality where the participants span the previous three modalities and our legislators are simply not equipped or set up to consult that fourth modality. And as a consequence, they consult with proxies that they believe represent that modality but they don't. So for example, in the recent CRA, we suspect that the framing about open source came from researchers who were involved in industrial open source who very much believed that open source was fit a particular mold and that that was the universal truth about open source. And so in the process, they accidentally misdefined it and may well ruin Europe's software economy as a result. So that's what I think is going on. I think we're still stuck with legislation in an industrial revolution approach and we need to help legislators progress into a modality where they understand that the new way of producing software spans the previous realities. Great, thank you. Talk about the fourth modality, it's a good, and you mentioned CRA, a good link to Martin who's the senior internet technologist at NL Labs, not-for-profit R&D Foundation. Previously, Martin was a security advisor, senior security advisor at the Dutch National Cybersecurity Center. And I've been working, and many of you here had the pleasure of working with him over the last few weeks, months on the CRA and he seems to feel that he's unwittingly found himself in the Brussels jungle. So it would be interesting to hear your take as a developer what your observations are. Thank you. Thank you, James, and hello. Yeah, I've been actually, I was not planning to be here. I work, I have some mic now, great. Yeah, thanks. I was not planning to be here in the sense that I work for a charity that has been making protocols and software for the internet for two decades. We make domain name system and routing software that you will likely have used today, even, when you use some of the internet. And we are quite used to work in communities to define these protocols and work on improving the standards and their resilience, the implementations and their resilience. And we are used to work on these in multi-stakeholder forums where the makers of these things are well represented. So when in November, or in October, I dove into the CRA and published a bit of an analysis in November, I was super surprised to really have hit a nerve within the wider community. The thing I wrote had 20,000 unique views within a couple of days worldwide. And it sparked quite a discussion. And I think that shouldn't have happened, because the analysis is of a train that has left the station. And I think it would have been far nicer if we could have had the discussion while the commission was deciding which way the train was going to drive. Because I think the goals they are achieving are very worthwhile, and more on that in the second segment. But I'm not sure if we are reaching the goals for this community in particular. And seeing that open source is becoming the foundation to most of everything, I think achieving those goals is very important. So I came to Brussels. I hope to have a tiny contribution in this space. And I'm happy to talk to you about this topic. Great. Thank you. I like this analogy of trains leaving stations. I think you're right. We needed to have been in the waiting room to have that consultation even before the text was released. Because I think we're not geared up to cope with that process. It's a very heavy process, both here in Brussels, but all the national capitals. So again, it's particularly important that these summits are taking place. We're galvanizing our interests together and then therefore being able to collaborate and mitigate some of these unintended consequences. I think that the theme of this panel was to avoid. I think that's unrealistic. There is no possibility of avoiding. But there is a possibility of getting more engaged earlier on to fend off some of those possible impacts to open innovation, which is absolutely critical to European recovery, but longer term competitiveness. So let's turn now to the meat, the burger, and go into a little bit of granularity as to what these unintended consequences can look like. The previous panel, as I said, has touched on a couple of areas. And this one, we're going to try and avoid the duplication. So I think, Martin, I think you mentioned the CRA. I think the audience would be interested to understand a bit more about what some of those concerns are. And again, noted there is going to be an event tomorrow of FOSDEM and multiple discussions within OFE and the network across Europe on what this means and how we can work together to improve it. Martin, that's you. Thank you, James. So yes, tomorrow at 11 o'clock on the main stage in FOSDEM, there will be a more detailed discussion about the CRA in particular, with the commission presenting and different stakeholders presenting their views, including Gijs on behalf of the European Commission Open Source Program Office. So what do we feel is particularly needs attention in the CRA? So the CRA basically tries to apply the CE marking to the space of software and hardware. And so it uses an existing piece of regulatory instrument to a new domain. And the commission was so good to put a exception for open source in a recital. However, the exception uses a very problematic qualifier, which, namely the word commercial. And it turns out that commercial is not actually a well-defined or a term that is very clear in the context of making software. And in particular, if you have a very broad interpretation of what it means to be commercial, then the exception has a very narrow basis for exclusion. And to make this more specific about NLNet Labs and the public benefit we do work on on internet infrastructure, one of the examples that qualifies for commercial activity is technical support services. And that is basically what we have relied on for two decades to exist. Because we make software and protocols. We give them away for free. We do our utmost best to make them resilient. And I think we, together with the whole DNS community, have made a system that has been super resilient for 30 years. But the 15 people doing this work need to pay their mortgage. So money has to come somewhere. And the way we've found is to actually find network operators willing to pay for support services. And what is problematic specifically about commercial to qualify is the essential truth that development and maintenance of open source and its cost is independent of the commercial benefit that arises from its deployment. And that is why it's very hard to define an exception that works. So I really do believe that the goal that the CRA is aiming for that is driving down the number of vulnerabilities in software is worth achieving. As a citizen, I really want to be able to rely on the solar panels in my home, the heating system to actually have some meaningful security in there. But I think the method that the CRA is currently including may not actually achieve that goal. And I think that is important with the rising importance of open source. So that's on the CRA. If you want to hear more, please come to FOSDEM or watch it back. Very good. Thank you. It's tempting to go into a bit more detail on CRA whilst people are here. But I would just add as a co-panelist the importance of squaring away components out of the scope of this proposal. I think what the lens that's been applied is very much a tangible product approach, something which you can drop on the floor and hear break and smash into millions of pieces. The fungibility of software is incredibly different. The supply chain is incredibly complex, let alone being open source. So I think this is the start of a long discussion. And again, initial contact with regulators has been actually very receptive. And it's quite humbling to see that, OK, we need to fix this. So I don't think it's a need to cry out that the sky is falling. But certainly we do need to act together to fix this and do this quickly and effectively before it goes into this rather protracted and heavy process, which we all know. And I was going to say in love. But maybe that's another statement. So Simon, talking about love, tell us a bit more about your love of IP and perhaps where there's a disconnect sometimes, because thanks. Well, there's been previous examples of things that have gone wrong. This isn't our first rodeo. So the first time that I spent a lot of time in Brussels was in 2005 around the Software Patent Directive, which was in the era of we didn't know that open source even existed for legislators. And then the next time around the loop was for the copyright directive, or the revision of the copyright directive, which was in the category of, well, we kind of know software exists, but we don't know who the stakeholders are. And it turned out that the stakeholders were significant enough to make people really worried in the European Parliament around the copyright directive. One of the hidden aspects of this is that within Europe we have a great deal of respect for Europe's industrial sector. And Europe's industrial sector is heavily anchored in what are described as open standards. I have to clarify for you that open standards, in the phrase open standards, the word open is used differently to the word open in open source. In open standards, the word open means that everyone is entitled to participate in the process, whereas in open source, the word open means that the final work product can be used freely by anyone for any purpose. And misunderstanding those two opens leads to people making ridiculous statements from stages like this about how open source and open standards are almost the same thing. But they're not. And there is a big sector of European industry which doesn't rely on a process, such as Red Hat users, to create wealth. We heard earlier from Andrew Katz, who was talking about how you have a permissionless environment and you create wealth via mechanisms that draw people together around standards. Well, there's a whole load of standards in Europe where the companies involved monetize the friction. And they're very worried that their ability to monetize that friction is going to go away as they see that everything in the world is turning from things that break when you drop them on the floor to things that live on a USB key. And those companies are stepping into the void I mentioned in the first section where there is no one to speak up for open source. And they're claiming that they are representatives of open source, that they have a big commitment to it in their company. There are some Scandinavian telecoms companies that do this, for example. And the result of that is we often discover that legislators have heard that open source is somehow about violating people's patent rights, that it is in some way anti-competitive, that it is wrong to have reciprocal rights. And so when we come to see the legislation, we discover this has already been whispered. The place we need to be is actually not in the train waiting room. We need to be in the first class carriage where these conversations are taking place between the special relationship consumer electronics companies of Europe who have got a special regard towards their monetization of patents and standards. And help people understand that more wealth is going to be created in Europe through open collaboration and the sharing of resources and through interoperability than is going to be created in the future through monetizing the friction of patents within standards. I think that's where we keep on finding in each act as it comes along. Someone has whispered sophistry into the ears of policy writers. And it's about time we stepped in and whispered some truth to them, I think. Thank you, son. Again, I don't want to flog this analogy of the train. But I think this open rail opportunity we see in front of us, the whole opportunity, which is once a lifetime digitally transforming our rolling stock across Europe, it will be telling if that doesn't have a strong open source component to it. If it doesn't, then I think we've missed the train. The other way I want to go to now, Deb, is yes, a carriage just for ospos. Let's talk about that. Buffet cart. The importance of using ospos in some way as a kind of window for policymakers into open source. But also, I think the proof is in the eating, I'm looking at the case there, the experience of civil servants who then start to contribute upstream, start to collaborate with communities, start to build product, start to abstract away the sort of vendor ecosystem is really powerful. I think it is a big step in understanding open source and that reflected in better policy making. So, Deb, maybe some thoughts from your side on this, but a positive swirl on this discussion. Thanks. Well, thank you. And I can always count on James to pop a surprise question. But I understand the way the question comes. So I spent eight years of my career running the open source program office for Red Hat. But I'd also worked at a university where we built a lab. And I'm also a government practitioner because I served as a deputy state CIO for a state in the US. And it was really struck a few years ago when the commission included the notion of creating funding and a construct for create open source program offices. I asked if they couldn't consider making that multi-industry, multi-stakeholder, not just government offices. Because there's really two things. One is I've described a concern I have about the lack of understanding of stakeholders. It's something that's really critical in the open source ecosystem. It's complex, but it's not enough to say you don't understand us. I think there's an important role for open source program offices in any sector to be able to serve as a convener and a surveyor and an identifier of who the stakeholders are in any regulation, regulatory body, or any policy that's created. So that's an important component. But I also think in support of upcoming adjacent areas that are going to be critical and may impact the open source ecosystem, AI data. These concepts are closely related. And open source program offices should also serve in a multi-industry construct to be able to find ways to find stakeholders that can help inform in that respect and also in a positive way to be able to create the kind of synergy and collaboration across industries that really becomes important in actually implementing and seeing a vision of collaboration actually come true. So I hope that continues to grow as a standard here and that you to have that kind of collaboration between open source program offices. These do not have to be a huge staffing concerns. This is really just saying we're resourcing an idea. We're resourcing a function and we're giving them a charter and an ear and we're going to rely on them to help us identify who the stakeholders are in any of these regulatory conversations. Thank you. I think this adage don't waste a good crisis is apt here. To the extent that there's significant amounts of funding in the recovery resilience packages across the union and that slide earlier on about the growth of OSPOS. I mean it's just the start of something quite special. So any governments listening out there you know where to put some of that money at least. So we're going to move to the third and final part of this panel, the under bun if you like. And also if we have some time for Q and A we'd love to hear from you guys as to some of the course correction that we could consider and how we can constructively and fruitfully engage on mitigating these frustrations that we've been talking about. So Deb, how can we better explain the life cycle the ecosystem of this global commons? I mean some of those insights you have from your past and also now at Eclipse in terms of using these tangible examples in the Eclipse Foundation in OSPOS across the public sector so better educate, better engage policymakers or is the audience too different? Are we not getting to the people in the first class carriage? No, I think we're quite behind in rising to this challenge. I think most of the conversations I've had in the last 48 hours since I've been in Brussels have been around what we can do to protectively respond. So Eclipse Foundation is a Belgium based foundation and our response was to immediately think about writing a case study to try to describe in more concrete terms rather than in the abstract. Concerns around where does liability fall? How do you define what a supplier is? If a software foundation is distributing software, is it really, should it really be accountable and liable down the chain and is the example for the CRI? So our instinct was to actually write a case study and explain in more concrete terms how the legislation would actually impact. I think we need more of that. We need to find 10 organizations that can describe in more concrete terms what proposed legislation might impact in the context of what their ecosystem looks like, who their stakeholders look like and then more generally we do need to move quickly to create better education. So we do need to write more. I have the privilege of being on an IEEE special edition guest panel for an edition on open source in the public sector and we were to reflect a comment and earlier panelists mentioned, we were quite surprised that we didn't have more contributions. I think governments have been shy to share their experience good or bad on implementation. So we need more, we need people to write more, we need more case studies and I also think we may need to consider doing something as simple as creating a video to describe the complex but important open source ecosystem. Who are the stakeholders? How does actually software development for open source happen? Who are the developers? Who are the suppliers? Who are the large corporations that are benefiting from it? Where does the money flow? How should we consider who's accountable and who's contributing and then of course that shouldn't form where investments might be made and I think we're going to have to do more concrete educational material and we're just at the beginning of that process. Again, we're at the caboose and we need to plow through the training, get to the front but I'm certainly looking forward for any ideas, Eclipse is very committed to help contributing to or help leading any of those kinds of efforts. Great, thank you Deborah. Now just a quick time check, I think we've got about 10 minutes left and then there's lunch. So I think we're going to have a slide or slides and I appreciate we're under time constraints so maybe Simon can touch on them. No, no, they're all here, I'm going to speak to them. We don't need to spill the book. Okay, fine. You had them panicking at the back there. Just seeing that you're awake, well done. Okay, so a few minutes on that and then Martin I've got a couple of questions for you to close us out, thanks. So in putting together OSI's response to the CRA, we focus very much on correcting one specific problem rather than trying to look at the whole bill and in the process of doing that, I realized that many of the issues we've had with previous legislation fall into a fairly reasonable taxonomy and so they appear to relate to four things to the identity of the stakeholders and misidentifying who the stakeholders of open source are. Secondly, in misunderstanding the motivations of the participants in open source projects. Thirdly, in understanding which mechanisms for compliance might be applicable and fourthly, to understanding what the path to sustainability for a project is and in each of those categories you can see that there are fairly straightforward lessons that we could take forward to policy advisors to help them to understand not how to favor particular business models, but how to frame legislation so that it has the intended consequences rather than unintended consequences. So I'm gradually working through all of that to produce a paper on those four areas in the taxonomy to give you a flavor for the things that fall under those categories. Under stakeholders, I think it's very important to understand that civil society voices are key even though you may perceive that it is an industrial matter and in particular, voices from that fourth mode are extremely important and it's very important to realize that the voices from the fourth mode have no representatives here in Brussels. The representatives of the other three modes they've got offices all over this area but the fourth mode has no office here and so legislators need to go out of their way to identify and consult with the voices of that fourth mode. Under who participants are in open source communities, people misunderstand the word volunteer, an open source project that is operating within say the Apache Software Foundation, everybody who participates is a volunteer in their relationship with the Apache Software Foundation but almost everyone who participates is actually the employee of a beneficiary company in their relationship with their employer and so when you use language which talks about volunteers or which talks about financial benefit, you'll almost certainly get it wrong. You need to use other language that talks about the putting of the software into deployment for trade, for example, rather than in terms of the commercial use of the software itself. It's very important to focus on the liberties to produce and collaborate. It's easy for people to be drawn into thinking about money the whole time and the result of us having used the word free about software for so long is people come onto the stage and they come here to talk about how it's cheaper, how the total cost of ownership is lower but the reason that governments want interoperability isn't to save money, it's to make the government succeed. It's to let the citizens be free, it's to allow them to put into place the sanctions that will end Russia's uncalled for attack on Ukraine. Those are the objectives, they're not about the aspects of the price of the software and so it's good for legislators to focus on the liberties that produce the outcomes rather than to focus on the price. It's very important also to note that the participants in software, their geographical location is not relevant. Every project I know has contributors from embargoed countries. Every project I know has contributors from at least three continents and so treating digital sovereignty as a matter of drawing a European border around software is a profound and fundamental mistake and should not be made. Then in terms of compliance, it's very important not to allow people to try and define open source afresh. Open source is a term of art that is globally understood and it results in the applicability of liberties to the way that you produce software. It's important also to note that open source software remains a social byproduct until it's deployed in commerce and consequently it's the deployment in commerce that needs law applied to it. And then it's very important that software that is going to implement standards, the standards have their embedded patents on a royalty waived basis. Not to say that people can't monetize patents in markets where that's appropriate but to say that if you want the collaboration you have to leave your guns at the door. So I'm working on a paper that looks at those things and some more things as well and maybe we'll bring that back to IFE or to some meetings at the commission at some point. That's music to our ears and we'd love to see more of that as you say. You have a draft, is it something which you want to sharing it more input from? It's just a little early for that. It's eight slides so you're very lucky to get in under half an hour just then. Yeah, well done. Covered a lot of territory. So in the final five minutes and Paolo if we do have time for some... Oh, okay. Then the developer in the room. Tell us more about how you see this in terms of being better understood and how you can manage your day job which is development as opposed to your night job which is lobbying. So I suppose it's quite difficult to make comments after Simon has just given this pretty elaborate analysis of the factors that I actually mostly agree with. So I think I want to talk about one aspect that is I think important within at least the CRA which is the aspect of putting a fence around Europe or balkanisation. I think it's a very... A topic that is on the minds of people in the space of internet. The question of whether it's a global network or not. And I think specifically with respect to the CRA what is important is that we don't end up in a situation where the makers of this network such as us are somehow... Our work product is made inaccessible outside of Europe or the other way around. But if you, for example, put an obligation to report incidents on us as a software maker relating to third-party use of our software, then we get into a position where we're conflicted between sharing information that we receive from the user of our software about what happened and our role to remediate any vulnerabilities that underlie the incident. And this relates to the balkanisation thing because surely Europe will not be the only government which requires us to do incident reporting. So, and someone else mentioned an example where if you place heavy...  And I think that really resonated with us because I work at an organisation with 15 people, 15 of... 14 of which are either researcher or developer. So we don't have legal, we don't have compliance and we would be very incompetent in trying to prove that we do the right thing yet we have been doing it for two decades and somehow we still have working DNS sometimes. So I would really like to help in the coming months to kind of keep the policy goals of the commission and at the same time not suffer some of these unintended consequences. And if you have a means to help in this regard I would very much welcome them. And then I'll look at James to see if we... if I need to cover any other aspects of the question you just asked. Well, I think we're going to torture you tomorrow at Fastem with lots more questions. I'm going to go a lot more in detail about CRA but also other regulatory initiatives. We're doing rather well. I would love to open up. If there's anybody has a short question, then be my guest. You're obviously very hungry. Yes. So very good. Well then I'll close out by thanking this wonderful panel. In a very short time we've covered a lot of territory. You can clap in a second and throw gladioli. It would be great. So thank you. Thank you panel. Cheers. Thank you.