Oh, yeah. What the fancy folks talking about? Prittles? We always have better people. I guess so. It is going through guidance. We discussed enforcement and compliance. Okay, so we couldn't tell if the title of this was compliance or endorsement. So we just added an end in between and now you get both. Which I think does tell us something about sort of the state of where things are, right? Compliance with licensing, enforcement with licensing, two sides of the same coin. And I think pendulum swing between years that we're talking a lot more about enforcement, years that we're talking a lot more about compliance, like proactive compliance. So hopefully we'll walk through that some. For those of you who joined us after lunch, I'm Luis Villa. I'm the general counsel of Tidelift, which is a new VC-backed startup where we're helping support developers by and support enterprise users of open source. The longer pitch is long. So I'll bore you with it. Previously I've been in Madeline Wikipedia and I'll let you each introduce yourself briefly for... Oh, and we have one speaker drop out. So Justin is a very last minute addition to the panel. Wow, I actually realized that we're all... We all had a comment at one point. Oh, yeah. It's been a long time. You didn't? I never definitely did. I was trying a bit of progress. There was a time in 2009 when we were all hanging out on the upper west side of New York City. Yeah. In 2006 we were sharing the same office at least like one or two days. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. We just all inside and made sulfur and no one who knows us. So we'll tell you about that, right? My name is Karen Sandler. I'm the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservation, which is an organization that does a good amount of the visible GPL compliance plus enforcement work. And I am also a lawyer and I do provodal legal work at some time for the FSS and canoes. And before that I was the executive director of canoes, but before that I was the general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center, which was in contact with that previous, beginning to know your conversations. So my name is Justin Colonino. I'm an attorney at Microsoft in the open source and standards group. The group. Previously I've been in private practice as a patent litigator, but I started my career for the first year and a half at the Software Freedom Law Center, working with Karen right after Richard left. I got Richard's extension so I used to get all these calls for Richard. And when I started out I was doing GPL enforcement work, compliance enforcement work for client software freedom conservancy. And Eric Anderson represented them, put them just from New York in the Cindy Box litigation. And I'm Richard Fontana. I'm a lawyer at Red Hat and I've been doing work around open source for probably over 10 years now. He does the software freedom law center too. I was? Yes. I'm one time. Yeah, I just hung out there because one of my professors ran out there. I think he gave me some credit at some point. So when I think about compliance and enforcement there's sort of micro level stuff, like what are individual companies doing about enforcement and compliance, and that was something that came up a fair bit in the last panel. There's also macro level stuff. Like what are the big picture changes in the environment? And so I think where I want to start is that I think one of the big changes in the macro environment in this past year, especially in the past few months, is that a bunch of big Linux kernel contributors issued a statement in November about how they're going to enforce their GPL copyrights. And that announcement was led by Richard. So Richard, why don't you kick us off by talking a little bit about that announcement and what you think is... Oh, yeah. So the Linux project has a thing called the Technical Advisory Board. I think it's sort of actually technically an arm of, sort of associated with the Linux Foundation, but it's really kind of collected by the developers of the project. And they came out with this enforcement statement, which was sort of signed on to by about 100 or so developers of the Linux kernel project as of, I think, recently. The statement says that the developers commit to applying a specific GPL version of three termination provisions relating to pure opportunities, two violations of GPL v2 license code. So the Linux kernel is licensed basically under GPL v2. GPL v2 has a kind of simple automatic termination provision. So the idea is to kind of give a more forgiving, kind of lenient termination enforcement policy to GPL v2 license code from the kernel. And then following up on that, Red Hat led a coalition of companies, including Google, IBM, and Facebook, announcing about a month after the Linux kernel statement came out that they were granting the same commitment essentially to all of their GPL v2 license and LGPL v2.1 or 2.0 license code. So regardless of project, they were granting the same commitment for all of their pre-GPL v3 license GPL code. And so I assume you think that was a good idea. How impactful do you think that is? So I think it's important to understand this is coming out of some specific concerns that have existed for a few years because primarily because of there is one litigator in Germany, a former contributor to net-filtered Linux kernel named Patrick McCarty, who is rumored to have brought a large set of cases using kind of tactics, the enforcement that have been criticized by many in the Linux kernel community and in the community of commercial companies involved in using and distributing Linux. So the tab statement, the Linux kernel enforcement statement grew out of that that these developers wanted to make some kind of statement about what they thought norms of correct enforcement were for their project. And then the motivation for Red Hat and the other companies and our little coalition of companies was very similar. So it's also really coming out of this concern about this one litigator in one country who's kind of caused a lot of angst in the Linux community over his enforcement. And so we think it sends a really good message about what is the right way to do enforcement of GPL versions who in particular need the idea that most acts of GPL non-compliance are inadvertent in nature and that it's appropriate to give those who don't comply with the license a fair opportunity to correct those errors, which was historically the enforcement policy of the Free Software Foundation. So Karen, I mean you've been involved in an even broader attempt to, I might say somewhat proactively bind hands of GPL licensors to, you know as Richard said, essentially be slightly more lenient than the license formally requires. What do you? Yeah, I mean to give a little bit more background, a lot of this, the history of what Patrick McCarty had been doing, it was really shrouded in mystery. We talked about this a little bit last year actually during the name track, but the cases that they were brought in Germany have strong privacy components to that. So the defendants were unable to, or the public is unable to get a, like a, Yeah, it's not like the US law where we have the documents, we can see all the cases. It was really, we were relying on the defendants themselves to tell us what was happening. And people were claiming that Patrick McCarty was really that actor, and we just didn't know. Can I step back since this has come up in both of your, for those of you who are not familiar, Patrick McCarty is a Linux kernel developer who's been bringing a series of cases. He owns, he's a copyright holder in a small, though it's disputed exactly how small portion of Linux kernel, and he's been bringing a series of cases for three, four years now in German courts. So that's the information that we don't, that we can't just search on. Right, right. I mean we don't really know who he brought these cases against. I know from back room discussions that some companies say that they have been approached by him and sued by him, and that I know that there have been some hearings that have been done. And we're still, people were confusing these actions with the work that Conservancy did to enforce the TPL, and so we started wanting to take back, take back the principles for starters.  And so we sort of took it back to principles and said, what is it that we find potentially problematic about these actions that this prison may or may not be doing? And what can we do about it to bring stability and take the risk out of the field? And so what we did was we decided to write down what our principles are in doing our own enforcement, and to really, and then to promise publicly that we'd always do them this way. And we wrote the principles and the FSM published them with us when we went public with them. And they say all the things that we've been thinking before about how, you know, the, you know, litigation is the last resort. We say that the goal of the enforcement actions must be compliance and not monetization. That we will verify that there's a violation before we, you know, like as part of the process that, and then we also included this provision that we thought that it was much fairer to exclude GPLD3-style termination over P2. And so we promised all of that in our principles document. And then we brought that to, so we published that for ourselves because we thought this is the enforcement we can stand behind. And that companies should know that that is what they should expect from us. If they get a letter from us that, because, you know, they're not, you know, we got a no-sourcer offer going on and we can't find someone to talk to. Eventually we send a formal letter. And when that letter gets illegal, at least when they research FLC, oh, they have principles about this. Then, oh, maybe this is something we can talk about and not get scared and also can help factor into the risk analysis and adopting the software. And so we did that. And I think, like, that has had a really good impact. And I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about the Patrick McCartney stuff they were hearing just a, yes, a few days ago. Two days ago, right? And some of the members of our coalition were there and like we've had a lot of discussion about it. It's all really fascinating stuff. I'm not sure, but a lot of it is based on speculation. So the good thing that's come out of it is that it caused us to, at least write down what we do, and then it gave the Nest filter team the tools so that they could say to Patrick, this is what we believe. Do you agree too? And if you don't agree, then we're going to suspend you from our team, which is what they did. And then further, basically, you know, set the playing field so that then other people can take the pieces of the principles that they think are the important ones, and they can do things like the one external enforcement statement or the state's covenant that that group of companies did, which I think is really cool.  Are people going to break out other bits and pieces of it? I think everybody should adopt wholesale. Are you going to be that? I don't know about the principles wholesale, but we're continuing to try to get, see if there's interest among other companies and kind of make signing onto the same kind of commitment and maybe doing it on a project specific basis. So projects with multiple contributors contributing under the GPL or LGPL in version two, seeing whether projects will make that same sort of commitment that the Linux kernel is made for or that certain developers in the Linux kernel project. So I think there will be some news about this in the upcoming year. Oh, that's great. I mean, for what is worth it? Oh, yeah. Oh, I was going to say, I don't have an etherpad because I think everybody's been really terrific at actually asking questions and not giving mini lectures instead of questions. So if everybody can keep that up, just throw up your hand and go for it. That makes sense. It comes to make it fun to sort of, what do you mean? Red Hat, Red Hat may not have realized the consequences of data constricted. Everybody was like, wait a minute. Red Hat never enforced open sources of power. Why are they saying that now, are they now, that now, oh my God, now they're giving me a chance to come on and put in a substance understanding or a form. I think that's the commercial nature of Red Hat. So it's sufficient about why are they saying that? I think that's fair. We did have a fact about this with that included that, an answer to that question. So we made very clear, this does not signal that we're going to go out, we're suddenly going to go out and start enforcing the GPL. And the same thing with, you know, I can't speak for Facebook, IBM or Google because I don't think they got the same, they didn't actually sign on to hardback. But certainly for Red Hat, Red Hat has lots of GPL and held GPL code. So it's a fair question. You know, Red Hat has historically not been active in enforcement. The only real example of it is the defensive assertion of GPL kind of counterclaim in one patent, kind of a patent control lawsuit that Red Hat's in the book was sued under a few years ago. So it doesn't signal a change in that in Red Hat's historic tendency not to get involved in enforcement itself. It is designed to send a signal about what the community thinks the proper sort of approach to enforcement ought to be. So if others do engage in enforcement, this starts to build a kind of, in a sense, kind of record about what consensus view of enforcement policy ought to be in GPL communities. But to be clear for those who aren't into the nitty-gritty on this, it's not really binding on other folks. It's certainly not binding on, it's binding on the companies that have signed on to this amendment. Not binding on others. And the Linux kernel enforcement statement is an additional permission for the portion, for the people who signed on for the, you know. So it's not a... That is for companies. It's written differently. So it doesn't use the phrase additional permission as far as I know, in the Linux kernel statement, but I think it's analytically... I'm not sure it really matters that much, but analytically... Well, since you two jumped into the deep weed of... I'm going to steer us into a different part of the deep weed. So one of the cases, one of the litigations that was going on this year was Hancom versus Artifex, which was a case in which Artifex has some software called GhostScript, which reads PostScript files, PDF files, Hancom allegedly infringed on it. What was interesting from the deep license surgery perspective was that Artifex alleged that the GPL was a contract and attempted to enforce on that basis, which is something that's relatively new in most previous cases, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it was a copyright infringement license theory. This case was brought on both. This case was brought on both, whereas most in the past have the only alleged copyright violation of copyright. Although the topic came up in 2006. That's true. Which involves the Apache license, I'm sorry, the artistic license. I think they were both contract and copyright infringement. Does this reopen the age old? Is it a license? Is it a contract debate? You guys went into the weeds first. Sorry, you all went into the weeds first. Yeah, I mean a contract theory or a copyright theory. In other words, there was an allegation that the alleged infringer in the case had agreed to the GPL when they downloaded the software and were not abiding by it. And so therefore the court held the GPL, they accepted it and then they didn't comply with it and therefore there's a contract agreement. The other issue there relates to whether or not those contract agreements are preempted because of copyright law because there's already a cause of action in the federal statutes for not complying with the copyright law. And the court held because there was alleged territorial infringement that both claims could stand independent of one another. Now what does that mean for whether or not the GPL is a contract or a copyright? I think it means you can Yeah, it's alleged both in addition to the Jacobson case there's an interesting case not specifically about free software licenses but the World of Warcraft case out of the Ninth Circuit dealt with whether or not particular provisions in a click-wrapped license were a condition or a covenant. So the covenant would reach of the covenant in all in one document which of the covenants of the condition would sound under copyright. And the Ninth Circuit held that there was there needed to be a nexus between the rights granted by the Copyright Act in order for the breach of a particular provision to be sounded in copyright. So in other words, there needs to be a nexus between the copyright rights and the provision in the agreement in order for to maintain a copyright cause of action versus a contract. And so Microsoft had similar language in there which leads to some language in MPL level for people with that one. Moving on, I just want to point out that the license versus contract thing from a more global perspective this plays out a little differently in different jurisdictions and there was a really good panel at Osam that Pam Chastick organized to check out. For those of you who are interested in diving more into some of these topics, FOSM, which is a big conference in Brussels, has a bunch of streamed videos from their day long legal track just a month or so ago. I don't think they have mine up yet because there was a serious technical glitches in mine. But yeah, that's an excellent point about the jurisdiction stuff. I wanted to tease out one more thing before we get away from litigation specifically. We've talked about Patrick McCarty, there was in the hearing earlier this week it was alleged that there's been nearly $2 million in payments to him so far from 38 different defendants. That's obviously a lot of money, a lot of interest. You already mentioned that you think there's some hope of a good outcome from this in the sense that it brought some more cohesion around in the form of the various statements and principles that have been circulated. Any hopes of any other positive outcomes out of this? You're all looking at me. She's looking at you. Go ahead. I was trying to process your question. Let me frame it a different way. This is something you and I were just talking about over lunch, Justin. Traditionally one set of enforcers like Free Software Foundation concerns the very driven by the principles that are now codified. I will say having represented clients on the other side of that that the principles are very helpful because they do help call a client who is an inadvertent violator. You can point to these and say, hey look, they're not trying to argue. It's just how they do it. So that's very helpful. So there's that class of enforcers. There's the sort of Patrick McCarty class of enforcers. And for some time there was sort of Harold Belty. There's been some other sort of in the middle enforcers who aren't as profit motivated as Patrick but do seek to collect some damages and fees. I think Harold was solidly in the epidemic emergency model. I thought at some point we did it as part of GPL violation and so FSS and Conservancy will seek to cover their costs. So unfortunately our missing panelist was going to take some of the heat of this question because he has represented some clients who have sought some damages not on the McCarty scale but sufficient, frankly to go slightly above and beyond merely paying his legal fees. So I'm wondering, do you think there's a space in the ecosystem for this Justin? You had a great answer for that. I think the question is you know, essentially I think is private enforcement you know, this for-profit that brings lawyers to the table where the lawyers can make some money and the developers can make money and I think last year you made the point that it can be good because the money goes back into the developer's pocket and the developer can continue developing and making software and releasing it under I think the issue with that position is that in order for individual contributors but take a large robust project with many, many different contributors, each contributor goes out and seeks rent in a for-profit way that private lawyers bring private enforcement action and they can make money off of it then you get a royalty stacking issue where things kind of go out of control and folks kind of like the patent control problem where you have the same or one patent applied against multiple different companies to generate a huge stream of revenue and then people start going out and speaking out other business slices of the property right and closing up I think that if you got into that type of situation where the patent control type of problem was applied to open source and free software projects what you'd end up with would be a lot of people would just be scared away and it would be really hard in the business case that we've been building, we've been working towards for a last 20 years would be put in jeopardy I'm particularly scared away from I think use of the kinds of projects that have what we historically have thought of as the healthiest in a tactical sense healthiest kind of development problem in terms of like size of contributor communities, maybe such projects might have other problems of course but I used to point maybe naively to some degree I used to point to the Williams Kernel project as kind of a model project because it was so successful in attracting so many contributors and it was sort of like a poster child for free software and open source but this is now sort of the flip side that there's this danger of associating what we talked about as a kind of anarchistic project of lots of developers as a sort of special source of concern about my ability so these are really tough questions and believe it or not, we get tons of heat from folks who are either working for companies or strongly affiliated with companies that tell us that insurgency, whatever we do, we have to be really confident about adoption and we have to do everything we can to make our lawsuits or we don't even consider many lawsuits as many but our compliance work to be as company friendly as possible so that more companies learn how to come into compliance and will continue to use free open source software even as an advocacy matter to get more free open source software being used and then at the same time we get tons of heat from individuals primarily who think that we are doing a terrible job because we're not going after violators who have been in violation for a long time because we're so soft we're not as impactful as we should be and so in some ways it's been a little bit of a relief to have a monetizer out there because it's like we've been doing the best we can but we do enforcement at a loss and it's been like a funny balancing act to kind of figure all this out and I think the answer is I don't know where we struggle to do the best that we can with the situation and I think that the collaboration that is created in free open source software you cannot underestimate how much that is tied to this camaraderie and this willingness to work together and a lot of it comes out of ideology and a lot of it comes out of this corporate view of well we can use this free and the no cost software and collaborate with these other companies and there's good that comes out of it and I think that when you start having monetizers even if it's in a small way I think it impacts both sides of the equation so I'm not sure we at Conservancy don't think that you're community oriented if you are trying to monetize your GPL. Well I mean that brings I think to an interesting this is in some sense been a very interesting year for GPL and open source license compliance generally right a fair bit of litigation in particular a fair bit of litigation yet also simultaneously I would guess that all of you own a device at least one device in your home that is in GPL violation in some way shape or number right not just GPL violation many open source right so the level of enforcement relative to the level of infringement they're not I don't know what the intermediate balance is but they're definitely not in balance I mean do you think they're do you think there should be more I mean how would you I absolutely think there should be more I think that are so present at events like this I think the companies that invest heavily in their compliance infrastructure that have heads of open source that support GPL they're investing millions of dollars in their own compliance what I don't understand is that like as an industry those companies should be funding community driven enforcement so that we can you know so that there's consequences for the company to have a competitive advantage for not spending those millions of dollars on their own compliance so like I think that we would have much better compliance which is like we better first code which would the tide draw I think we would be so much better off either of you have any thoughts on I feel like there's there's there is a right balance out there so I just don't know I don't know what I don't know that we currently have the right balance I mean I can point to say the McCarty litigation as a bad thing and I used to I gave another talk kind of related to the topic a year or two ago where I pointed to the busy box lawsuit sort of an example of what I thought the right sort of getting the right sort of balance out on on GPL enforcement so I think that the balance is you want you want and you do need a certain degree of enforcement to make sure that that you know that there's a late level playing field for the companies and individuals were involved in contributing to these projects because it's not fair for some companies and maybe this is sort of the point that Karen is making about not not fair for some companies to sort of invest a lot of resources in compliance while other companies sort of you know get to benefit from a project like Linux without being compliant on the other hand I think that there's a point at which enforcement of certain types at least can be hard to discourage use of the software and contribution software and that's sort of where I think you have to kind of find the right the right approach and right balance. Yeah and that's why I think that funding community driven enforcement is so important where the first goal is that someone who's in violation today is part of the community at being exceptionally impressed about that and if we all work together to provide the right educational materials alongside the community driven enforcement we would be in a completely different world. Yeah I mean I think because in a lot of ways the busy box litigation kind of sparked you know sparked a lot of companies thinking a little more heavily about you know how to how to do it and how to do it right and you know that's probably a benefit that came out of that was that you know this is a real license and there are real people who are impacted by or they're real people who might come around and knock on your door. This is amazing to me because at the time we're shortly thereafter and everybody here knows the busy box clusters were deprived of being terrible. A disaster for free and open source software and what's amazing is like just like GPLV2 became beloved once GPLV3 had been released. I was like only we could go back to the busy box one. So let me I mean I totally correct a very darkly hilarious point I want to jump back a little bit to something that Justin was saying though you know where people are thinking I think a little more about compliance and certainly to shift gears and shift the discussion a little bit one of the one of the macro proactive trends that we're seeing is a lot more people investing in data and tooling in order to comply better for at least certain definitions of compliance. So we we recently got just as two examples. The Linux kernel got license information machine readable license information added to something like 70,000 files a few months back and this was something that traditionally Linux kernel had said oh we already know what the license of the Linux kernel is we don't need more machine readable information that's just extra noise and extra work for us to please don't do it and then a couple months ago that position sort of changed and a lot of metadata was added let me give the one other example and then just this week there was a project launch called clearly defined.io which is another initiative to improve metadata around project information among other things sponsored by this is yeah and it's actually hosted by the open source initiative so it's at opensource.org it's clearly defined if you're interested in finding out more this is simultaneously tens of thousands of new files and I think clearly defined as targeting the top 1,000 projects simultaneously maybe not a very big 10. I don't know what do you guys think about this trend towards more metadata? I mean I think it's good I mean from a standpoint of your shipping and you want to provide proper licensing, you want to make sure that your licenses are compatible as they should be knowing what's in a code base when you're ingesting free software at scale which is what Microsoft does is extremely important and so to be able to kind of get a clear overview of what is inside the packages you're using because a lot of time developers will say what solved my problem this is what I want to use and they won't go through and look through stuff files or dependencies and having that known and defined is extremely helpful so that you can find people with proper attribution and also helps you talk about what you're using so if security vulnerability comes along or anything like that it's kind of all right there I'm a little skeptical about some of this activity so in the case of the Linux kernel what we have, what happened what I think you're referring to is kind of a standardization of how on a source file base is how licenses are sort of notated anyone using the Linux kernel project should have basically known that it's GPLD2 license and yet people who are kind of really obsessed around open source license compliance and the self culture of people who are kind of annoying me they can tell you that there's actually 200 different licenses in the Linux kernel and you have to make sure you're in perfect compliance with all of them basically it's GPLD2 license and in any case you should be building from source code and shipping source code with your Linux based product and you will be in compliance if you do that properly in a kind of self auditable way I don't know if you really benefit that much from having these sort of SPEX standardized licenses versus the kind of licenses that preceded them so I've talked to Kate Stewart about that she's one of the people who's been involved in the Linux kernel and she pointed out that there were some Red Hat copyrighted files in Linux kernel that say copyright Red Hat 2000 GPL and she said don't you think it would be a good idea to change this to SPDX license identifier GPL dash 1.0 it's still GPL if you have decent tooling it'll be identified by your tooling who do you think has decent tooling? well that's the question I think the value of the metadata is that we do so this is really in another sense we step outside the Linux kernel which is maybe a special case this is all really complicated we have these code bases that are developed anarchistically to a large degree and in a very informal way and they're a complexity sort of licensing data that makes up any open source project code base and the more that you can use tools to extract information from source code to make conclusions about licensing I think the easier your compliance task is going to be so I think to that extent these efforts around metadata and improved information of that sort is valuable I don't know if we really have such good tools yet for that purpose I think that's sort of part of the objective we need tools that can reliably extract useful information from these very complex and in many ways informally developed corporate so you're skeptical of the tools so I'm skeptical of some of the efforts around the metadata I think that there's a certain degree of bike shedding that occurs and there's some sort of subculture for the lawyers who aren't experts bike shedding I don't know if that's the right term to use in this context bike shedding is sort of getting obsessed over trivialities I mean it's not just trivialities it's getting really caught up in maybe the less important aspects of open-source licensing so printing out I know one person who's part of the subculture will come to conferences and show these phone book sized printouts of all these permissive license notices that they ship with their product that's I think less important than getting these companies in the embedded device industry into getting them to kind of make sure that they're building stuff from source code shipping their source code shipping buildable source code I think that that's more important than getting really obsessed over some of these details of file formats and so I wouldn't dig in on something but Kevin was going to say something and say yeah it was actually a presentation about that particular project and the reason I'm saying is that they had to tell each of us to have our own files and he said I have the rights to do the file there was no way to continue to use the file so that was the first reason yes there's lots of people to focus on career analysis and he could make a claim that there's no license to use the file at all and so that's what it tackles those first with this culture and there's a so when the DCO was originally adopted by the kernel it was not the general practice to put a license on it in each file and everybody knew that and the DCO has been used for 15 years or so with that sort of practice in place and I don't think that's a good enough reason I don't want to criticize it too much because there is some value to it and I think it's maybe not where the focus of efforts should be I agree go ahead actually let me take a slightly different tack here that all three of you may be able to because Karen certainly many conservancy projects are not the Linux kernel I think as you were just saying Richard the kernel is an outlier in a lot of ways some of the research we've been doing for Tidelift shows that even the most what is the name of this license in like for example in the node ecosystem something like between 5 and 10 percent of packages disagree between what GitHub says the licenses and what the package manager says the licenses like forget forget looking at all the files forget looking at each individual header like just the very top most level of license information is inherently contradictory and so I'm wondering like in these more new ecosystems outside of the Linux kernel what do you all see any best practices emerging any terrible practices emerging where do you think we need to go with that so people often associate the sovereign conservancy with GPL compliance or GPL enforcement but we have over 40 member projects and they are under a variety of licenses so many of our projects are under copy less licenses so just that in the way of background we have our projects are very widely licensed and in diverse technology as well with different traditions of how you do things yeah I do what I see what I see with copies I'm trying to set as I want to say well you know Justin wanted to say something in the meantime I mean I think I agree with Richard that probably Karen as well that the most important kind of educational aspect to enforcement or where we should be devoting resources is education about how to build how to ship code to build that said our licenses we have to comply with it Red Hat has a different philosophy because they ship all their source they ship your source you're in compliance you're done it's a great recommendation for everyone but when you have a business model it doesn't involve shipping source you need to comply with license and in order to do that you need to know what's in there what's going on in there a lot of these efforts there are a lot of different companies that rely on a lot of different projects a lot of different projects to make close source binaries if they're all looking at the same project getting together and trying to figure out exactly what the proper attribution of the right licensing is and sharing that information in a centralized way I think is a great use of resources so that we don't have these people spinning their wheels it's all the particular problem that maybe Red Hat doesn't have but it's one that other people do I totally agree with that I think it is valuable for these companies to get together and make this effort I think for the Siemens Free Software Project their wider adoption is definitely a factor for encouraging that kind of effort but at the end of the day a lot of the time it comes down to focusing on the wrong things from a community perspective because from our perspective it's like the days when companies would provide Black Duck audits as proof that they couldn't possibly be a compliance a lot of times these initiatives do a good job of getting started or a good job of tagging things so that if you have someone who's knowledgeable and you're doing the right thing you'll be helped and that's a good thing but it doesn't really help the overall field of compliance so it does help the residential especially for companies that are using free and open-source software to support their proprietary business model that's a fine use for them but it doesn't help the whole field in the same way that it could otherwise and there are other initiatives that might provide education on compliance that might help solve those problems so I think it's a valuable effort from where I'm sitting quite much I'm going to shift gears one more time here you know Richard the Red Hat blog had a great post a couple months ago about how licenses are really shared resources where a lot of information gets in there there's the text to the license itself but then as I think the previous panel was pointing out there's also a lot of wisdom and meta that builds up around that and you mentioned what we were prepping for this that Red Hat is thinking about that a little more do you want to talk to them about how or if that's impacting how Red Hat complies? It's not really focused so much on our compliance but how we're seeing it's a really direct model like what's going on with enforcement we're looking at the cardi enforcement the rumors around the cardi we're looking at what conservancy is doing what some companies are doing around GPL enforcement so this idea of shared resources it's an idea that my co-worker Scott Peterson came up with this sort of my gloss on it is that most of these open source licenses in terms of the actual use of licenses we're using 80%, 90% of open source free software code is using a small set of licenses, they are standardized licenses they're not negotiated they're sort of like contracts of adhesion they're used across projects, across stacks across technology and so there's a certain benefit to that economically of course there's a standardization a backup standardization but there's also a kind of grittleness to it because it means that when you start thinking about the risks of enforcement in the litigation system at least there's a danger of any particular court decision having an outside impact on a really large community so any court decision on any given negotiated contract might not have too much in the way of implications for contract parties in general but maybe if they're using semi standard language it might but with something like the GPL during the GPL it's going to potentially affect hundreds, thousands of GPL licensed projects the danger is that what if courts get this wrong from a kind of community they're not likely to take community viewpoints into account maybe if one of the litigants has community credibility that's helpful but in general litigants to a dispute would be raising arguments that are not necessarily tied to how the community views licenses or what the interests of the community are so that's the danger we see in having any kind of increase in judicial treatment of widely used open source license so one way of sort of addressing that is things like shaping norms around enforcement so making sure that there's kind of a kind of expectation of forgiveness for the community to license code things like the principles of community or GPL enforcement are helpful maybe kind of getting other kinds of activities involved where you try to shape consensus on how to interpret the license and so you start to kind of shape and potentially influence future courts and how they might interpret the license so I think that's the idea behind the shared resources I like that idea but it's like a race because the thing is that at the same time as some companies have been or yeah some companies have been arguing that we should be community oriented actors should be very hesitant to litigate because the case might come down the wrong way and then in fact you should avoid bringing a case at all costs because the risk of having about a vision is so high the problem with that is that if we do that and we try to establish this community norm as much as we try to do that and publish principles publish all these other things court reactors are going to have disagreements as they have done over the years and it's only a matter of time before these cases are tied with messy fact patterns in ways that courts will just view as commercial activities and it won't be set up with any possible ideological view and so I think it's just no win and if we don't we're not eager to go to court but I'm revisiting this shyness that we've had or this communal fear of litigation because I think if we bring these blockings with good fact patterns that are thought out that are isolated in the questions they ask then we'll get answers to the questions in ways that we can interpret in the long run I agree to that to a larger I think we might disagree on what those busy box cases were sort of got the right balance I think that's partly my view on that is because there were straightforward violation cases I would say I think that there could be other kinds of cases raising novel those of you who have not been around the space for decades the busy box cases involve devices through VETFY right some of them VETFY was one of 13 there were 13 defendants that included no offer of source code no source code a very straightforward classic black and white kind of violation of the white it was one filing but it was related to 13 cases so very factually straightforward it really wouldn't be a lot of disagreement in the community over issues of GPL interpretation there were at the time and folks were really upset and really worried and it feels entirely the same to me now as it is then but now that we're looking back on time to 2020 but I'm glad those suits were brought because we had some results and then we had that some additional context might be helpful here because I don't know if you guys can provide it but I think what Richard's referring to is in his view the busy box case was a kind of straightforward like someone took the software put in their product and didn't even tell anybody about it right so that was that's what we mean by kind of a straightforward in for in connection I think Richard's saying that that's a very you know open and shut that type of enforcement has good educational value I think what Richard might be saying is not so good an enforcement mechanism would be a case around an ambiguous term in a like ambiguous provision that people have been interpreting different ways and that ambiguity might be a feature rather than a bug in the license and by getting certainty around it it may harm the license environment I think the certainty may be in the direction we don't we don't like so so you know one of the concerns around McCarty is that he is apparently and this is where we really don't have good facts unfortunately but he's apparently raising what some people say are kind of relatively bizarre theories of GPL non-compliance and so that's the kind of concern that we have what if we got and maybe the real concern is maybe more like the litigant like artifacts so what if artifacts assert a theory of GPL non-compliance that really is out of step with how most of us in the industry who are dealing with distributing GPL codes think the GPL ought to be interpreted in a very restrictive direction because they have kind of an incentive to do that you might argue because of their business model so that's the kind of concern it's very far removed from the more straightforward kind of busy box scenario that I see of you know you ship a device GPL code and if you didn't write any source there were quite some but the main point that I want to say is that it's a race because there are co-kinetics out there I don't know if anybody read the complaint in co-kinetics but it's just wild you know it's a kind of sonic right right yeah I mean in that case it's correct me if I'm wrong but it was a third party speaking to enforce the GPL there was sort of some anti-trump thrown in he did a very interesting read the case settled fairly quickly but yeah it would have presented I think it's exactly what you were saying about the fact pattern in so unusual where he was a predator with a sort of third party claim and even a judge we're just completely out of control in our country and it was messy and our community could be collateral on that I think that that's what amicon breaches for I mean my view on this is you know trying to shape community viewpoints on licensing probably won't make a difference to a judge I mean the judge is going to look at the license and they're going to decide this is what the license means at least at the trial court level and if that gets appealed there might even be an opportunity below before the trial court for years we heard over GPL v2 there might be an implied patent license there might be an implied patent license and the Zimpleware case comes along and the court is like yeah there's a patent license it says you is right there in GPL v2 you know and and you know that wasn't how I'd say most of the people lawyers in the community viewed GPL v2 they didn't think that there was a patent license or there might be an implied patent license I think maybe I would characterize my position on that for those of you again not super into the weeds on this a lot of the older licenses because they gave back to a point in time where software patents were not necessarily to be viable and you know don't specifically license relevant patents they speak of the use of the underlying code and so there's been a question that implied patent law in the U.S. as well as other places it's sort of a password of mess of all kinds of things and so certainly my position would have been I can make a plausible argument that there isn't implied license here but I feel like going to a court would be a coin point and what you're trying to say is that when you take a case like this to court you're flipping a coin on behalf of the whole community and maybe it comes up there's a patent license and so don't flip the coin I don't want to be misunderstood Conservancy is not looking to bring lots of watches like I just said what we're trying to do at all but what I'm saying is that when you get to the instance where you have companies that are out of compliance and that after years of effort they still don't come into compliance and the fact pattern is clear at some point if you don't bring those suits then the whole thing is great because what we've seen as companies do everything I think they can get away with and without you never are willing to bring that lawsuit then you may have, you may is that ambiguity that you think that you may be benefit from the license it's as if it doesn't exist at all so would be on that like forceful punctuation though so for for somebody that's trying to be in compliance that maybe is not a type of way that the organization is going to be law-abiding what are the things that trigger the enforcement and are there those enforcement that you would recommend because there's not a lot of enforcement in the case and if there are good enforcement that might fall summarize ongoing so for us we try to do everything simple say what we look at if there's the way that we get a matter brought to us is that really someone has purchased a product who's in developer and looks at the product and can't get the first code and they want to do something cool with that product or something and so they file a report with us and then you contact the company and we try to do it in a friendly, in the best case scenario we once got a problem fix so sort of like if you bring information internally and responsibly but I think a lot of it has to do with building the right procedures so we've partnered with EFSF on copylaw.org where we try to talk as extensively as possible about our interpretation of the DPL and there are a lot of example enforcement actions we also published what we think is an analysis of a 15 candidate so you can see what we look at what we try to evaluate it so that's one resource that we provide there are others too I would have said the same one and it's under copy left itself and so if you read it and something looks like it could be written better you can please propose a patent and we can help you do that that could be your first lawyerly contribution and that's opensource.com it's law tag written by a variety of people many of them are head employees but not all of them Mark Radcliffe does an end of the year roundup every year it's exactly one blog post a year but it's usually pretty good in terms of hitting the high notes Heather Meeker just published a second edition of Purple it's a really good one if you're ready to dive into something from Flanks I'd say booklinks I think she does a good job of distilling it it's not like textbook links it's like booklinks reading it a few days and it's not heavyweight it's a great overview yeah and reasonably it was even still a year ago I was still recommending people the first edition even though it was probably 10 years old at that point it was still worthwhile oh and then what for your engineers who are bandwins who targeted more explaining all these concept engineers in a way that's familiar and used in analogies that will work for them that's not going to touch out of date but for you especially for some of your top engineers who are interested in it oh yeah yeah it doesn't really deal with compliance but it's a good introduction to how open source project is all and they do we have time for one last question if anybody has one perfect thank you so much for having us Chris up there we're not just making $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9 $9


Welcome to Movie Poster Breakdown. I'm Adam and every Tuesday I plan on breaking down film posters by popular franchises. Sometimes they're great, sometimes they're X-Men First Class. Yeah, that's a real poster, that's an official poster. Since it's the month of scares here in October, I thought I would look back on the Alien franchise, specifically the first four entries in the saga. Let's begin with Alien. All right, so what? Ridley Scott? Oh, I should ask them to subscribe and hit the notification bell for future videos, okay. Ridley Scott wants you to subscribe to the channel. We're friends. Artist and poster designer extraordinaire, Philip Gips has done some amazing posters over the years. His most prominent, most recognizable one though, is Alien. Everything from the font treatment to the minimalist approach he uses here is just flawless. You have that one egg oozing out what I can only assume is the mutagen that turned the ninjas into turtles, falling down into the black void below, a weird alien planet ominously floating down underneath, and then some simple text in space. No one can hear you scream. This is the type of visual splendor I'm constantly alluding to in other past videos where I say, just keep it simple, stupid. You have a clean alien type base followed by an egg that spills down to lead your eyes to the tagline of the poster. Then you have that green carrying on in the background showing the audience that there's something in the distance. Hope, fear, I don't know, but I gotta get there, which means I gotta drive to the theater and watch this thing immediately. This poster's awesome. If you are a fan of movie posters, it should be up in your room already. You know it is. And if not, shame on you. It's a classic. And Philip Gips, you will be missed. Thank you for the countless amazing posters such as Rosemary's Baby, Superman, and right here with Alien. Much like the Jaws posters, which I haven't talked about yet, but I promise I'll get to, Alien peaked with the first, as far as I personally am concerned. The sequel, Aliens, phenomenal movie, I think arguably better than the first. I think I would put it above the first now. I go back and forth though. They're both so freaking good. The second poster that was very much focused on Sigourney Weaver, her giant BFG, and then the eggs below again. But now they're popping up. Now they're coming towards our heroine. She and Newt are in dire straits to say the least. You have these eggs, hatchlings, face huggers, ready to explode and take them out.  They're clearly in an alien territory now. They're not in the black void. They're very much in the fray, in the cut. And if that wasn't obvious enough, the tagline drives it home. This time, it's a war. I mean, it's pretty on the nose. It's a big step back from in space. No one can hear you scream. This time, it's war. It's so generic. Come on. Aliens deserves better than that. It's still a pretty badass poster though. You got the bloom lighting all around our characters. That blue is really tying it all together. Even if Sigourney Weaver and Newt aren't really lit up the same, they definitely feel a little bit out of place. There's also some very harsh lighting on that gun. It's very prominently displayed, isn't it? It's really telling the audience, look it, there's big guns in this movie. We're not gonna be having tea with these things.   Now, there's plenty of people that like Alien 3, especially the, I think it's the director's cut, or the assembly cut, or the director's assembly cut, or the director's assembly special edition pre-enhanced cut, or whatever, whatever it is. There's a bunch of them.  I mean, we got Weaver without the hair. We have three taglines on the side, really building up to not much of anything.  This tagline is just trash. In 1979, it came from within. In 1986, it was gone forever. In 1992, our worst fears have come true. It's back. How can you be gone forever and then be back? That just contradicts itself. And even if that were the case, this is just a terrible, terrible set of words. I'm sure the studio bigwig said, listen, we gotta put Sigourney on the poster. She's the draw, it's her franchise. Okay, but really, is this the photo you're leading with? Is this the one that's gonna get people in the seats?  Is this supposed to be sexy? Is this supposed to be sons out, guns out? I don't really get what we're going for in this poster at all, which is fair because I don't know what the movie was going for. There is one other Alien 3 poster and it's definitely better. It's just the little baby alien kind of serpentine around itself kind of coiled up in the fetal position. We even have the eye strategically placed at the belly of the alien, like it's giving birth, which if we know the plot of Alien 3, it's that Weaver has got a little baby inside of her. She's growing. I also like the use of the Baby 3, kind of like it's a trademark or a registration mark. That's cute, it's fun, it's playful. Not so big on the gradient going on here, the ugly gradient, not doing it for me. Come on guys, what happened? You can just tell where the focus of these posters are now. In the first Alien, it had the bright white alien at the top. Now it's Sigourney Weaver in white. That's the focus for them. They say, look who's in it, she's back. Who cares about the xenomorphs? We got Sigourney Weaver. And I love Sigourney Weaver, don't get me wrong, but come on guys, alien, that should have been in white. Prominent, strong, fierce, sexy. Well, maybe not sexy, but maybe a little. Let's move on. Possibly the least creative of the bunch. I told you these posters keep getting worse. I'd say Alien 3's baby poster's better than this one. This definitely beats out the bald Sigourney Weaver. We have Wynona Ryder, we have Weaver on the cover. They're definitely the focus. Not an alien to be found anymore. Not a hint. Well, I guess there are some arms. Are those arms? They're like arms wrapping around the eye again, which is exploding. They're going back, they're harkening back to Alien 3's approach, where we know that there's a baby in this one. Ripley has a baby on board, and it even calls her mama by the end of the film. So yeah, we got the little alien xenomorph arms wrapping around it, doing a little mama embrace. The alien font has been changed as well. It's more futuristic. The E are just bars. The A doesn't even finish itself. It doesn't have time to kind of dig it. I kind of like it. The gradient is once again on fleek. I'm bringing on fleek back from a few years ago. I'm doing it.  I guess the same could be said for the movies. These aren't all the alien movies, of course. There's a jamboree of other posters out there. You have Prometheus. You have Alien Coven Shit. You have the two AVP movies. So there's more to talk about.  We have an alien ranking video coming up where I'm gonna rank all of these films, including the crappy ones I just listed. I'd love to know your thoughts now on these beauties. Leave a comment down below. Like the video if you had some fun. Subscribe if you haven't. Notification bell, share, other things that people tell you to do.  Why am I insulting you? If you're a subscriber, thank you. If you're not, leave. That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over. Yes, Ridley, I'm just wrapping up. Thanks. Oh, you're still here. Hey, if you haven't already, maybe think about joining me on Patreon at patreon.com slash adamdoesmovies. You can join for just $1 a month. And it says, you know what, Adam? You're doing a great job. Keep it going. I love the poster breakdowns. It's brilliant. No one else does these. Or you can join right here on YouTube via the join button. It's a beautiful thing for everyone involved. Isn't that right? Oh, Ridley's leaving. I gotta go.


Welcome to the Argos Toy Unboxing with beautiful Charlotte from the design of Friend Range by Chad Valley. As you can see, she comes gift boxed. Let's take her out and play with her. Her beautiful blonde hair is really long, isn't it? Perfect for styling, maybe into a simple chic ponytail. Or perhaps a chunky side-plat. She has this silky soft braid and wears this delicate floral headband. Her dress is really pretty in a pale, shimmering blue, and you can change her look by turning this maxi into a knee-length dress. Her look is topped off perfectly by these little shoes that match. She's all ready to join you on your adventures. She's really soft to hug and very flexible, meaning it's easy for you to change her outfit. You could buy this designer friend college outfit for her. You have to agree she looks very stylish in this tartan skirt and blouse set. It comes with a pair of navy blue shoes, a satchel for her school books and other belongings and a pair of glasses to top off her look. And when she's finished her school day, she can do her homework at the designer friend desk set.  The desk is finished with drawers and there are storage compartments to pop on the top where she can keep her stuff neat and tidy. It's a very simple set to assemble and will provide creative play and hours of fun for you and your new best friend Charlotte. We hope you've loved this Argos unboxing with our gorgeous doll from the Chad Valley designer friend range. We just know you and Charlotte will get along really well together.


to the performing arts community, particularly Nairobi, but in the Eastern African region about how a lot of our practices are really distinctly defined just as any regions are by our history and our ancestry and our sort of pre-colonial, during the colonial and present histories and stories. So we thought, why not speak to different women who have been working in the field in different capacities and learn about their experience and journey? So Wanjiku, why don't you tell us who you are as a theater artist, start with. Well, I'm an actor. I started out as an actor before I transitioned into directing. So that being said, I have a lot of respect for actors. I began my practice early 2012, yeah, as an actor in school. I went to Kenyatta University. And once there, we used to have a small society for theater actors. And we'd perform our shows and so basically I just got a lot of interest and started looking at what is happening in the Kenya industry in general. And so I got to perform on a lot of professional shows at the Phoenix. I performed one show at the Phoenix and some with Friends and Sample. And yeah, I got to experience directors like Millicent Ogutu, Ogutu Muraya and Lydia Gitashu who really owned my skill and helped me to blossom as an actor. Of course, I didn't get to the level that, I didn't get to a professional level as an actor before I was tagged into directing quite accidentally by a few friends of mine at our society who said, you know, we have this show, we don't have a director. How about you come in cause you have more quote unquote professional experience cause you've worked in the industry. And I decided, you know what, why don't I try it? It couldn't be had. It was. And after that, I realized directing is a craft that needs work like any other. And I just fell in love, fell in love with creating a vision, creating a dream and helping other people execute it. And after that, after directing my first show in campus, I ended up directing another as the final year project. And then that opened doors for places like the theater company that I worked with. And years later, I found myself, I found myself pregnant and I thought, oh my God, I need to do something with my art, something more because at the time we were still very focused on British passes cause those were the only scripts we could access, play writing hadn't opened up. So with a couple of friends, I got an idea to do a show called We Won't Forget which was like my debut as a professional director. The first show I co-directed with a lady called Alice Combane. She really helped me come up with the idea and actually make it work. I worked with a team of actors who coincidentally also ended up being the actors I went with to 24 Buds. So yeah, We Won't Forget ended up getting a lot of critical acclaim. We went to festivals like Ubumuntu, the Kampala International Theater Festival. And after that, we started doing it in Kenya more because it focused on the post-election violence and terrorism as domestic terrorism, basically for the post-election violence and terrorism as a whole. And that gave me purpose as a person because I felt like I'm now saying something. I'm actually talking about our stories and actually making a difference in the world. And after that, after doing We Won't Forget, we had a lot of reruns because the show spoke to a lot of people. That's when I worked with Abu Sense for the first time, Gatia for the second time, actually not second, we'd worked with Gatia a lot. And because we'd worked together so well on the last run of We Won't Forget, Abu Bakar and Gatia thought, you know what, come through and direct. We have this brain child of ours called 24 Buds. Could you come and direct? And of course they passed it through the Kadzitu Sisters Code Inc. They run a company called Code Inc. And our producer Miriam Kadzitu was like, yes, we want her. So we also worked with her on We Won't Forget. And that's beautiful. Partnership proceeded to 24 Buds and we worked on the first, second, third and fourth series, which was the Brazen edition. On the Brazen edition, we had different writers which was, they were Ann Mora, Aleya Kasem and Laura Ekumbo and the three ladies who now run the Lam sisterhood thought, you know what, we also want to work with you. And yeah, so they gave me an opportunity to also direct the Brazen edition, which was basically a retelling of, a retelling of Kenyan heroine stories from the side of, from our side. We've always had stories about our heroes told from the side of the oppressor. So for the first time we were hearing it from our side and women have been excluded from time immemorial from history. So this time we decided, you know, they decided and then they brought the stories to me. They're going to do it differently. They're going to tell the stories of women. They're going to put women where they're supposed to be because women did a lot to fight for our independence. And it's ended up being a very beautiful show. We learned a lot, we formed very good relationships. And yeah, so yes, that's, I think, too much about myself. It's never too much. It's never too much. I have so many questions. I don't even know which one to start asking. So when you spoke about kind of your transition from being an actor into directing, how has your sort of background in acting influenced your practice as a director, if at all? It really has because that's where I'm comfortable. I find that there's a quote that Jody Foster said, if you want to understand, if you're a director and you want to understand actors, acts, you'll be humbled, which is true. And that humility is what I bring to my craft because most of the time I'll find an actor has a problem that I already went through when I was acting or can resonate with at the time because I can also, I also have that in my system. I practiced the craft and I was very dedicated to my acting. I still love acting, acting is amazing.  So that usually is where I'm comfortable as a director. Of course, there's a lot that comes with directing the story, the design and everything, but acting, my conversations with actors, that's where I feel like this is home, you know? Yeah. And just to follow up on some of the responses for our audiences, the land sisterhood that Wanjiku mentioned will actually be a part of this series in the coming week. So it's going to be exciting to hear from their perspective what that process was like. But just to go back to one thing that you said is that in between that journey, you found yourself pregnant and your mom. And I'm a very proud auntie to Shani and Naya. So I, you know, just given that we speak about the idea of directing as mothering as the sort of title of our episode, how did that change your life, if at all? I'm sure, of course, but like how did it change your life? Okay, so first of all, as our director, first of all, as when I directed the first, first we wouldn't forget, the first one we wouldn't forget, I was pregnant. And the first run of 24 BADs, I was pregnant. And it said that when you're pregnant, your empathy levels rise. So I feel like that really impacted my style without me knowing because I could really, I could resonate with the stories and the actors on another level. I felt very connected to them, to what they were going through. I could actually feel the pain of the characters. And it's helped me understand how to deal with people better, being a mom and all. And also being an, it's not a very big difference to be a mom and a director because, and we've had this conversation before. Sometimes I'll come for rehearsals and I'll be blocked and then I'll go home, look at my kids and I'll get an instant idea of what I'm supposed to do as a director because inherently we are all children deep down. So sometimes you can just understand, oh, this is what the actor is going through. If the child is being difficult, for instance, I'll understand, oh, the child is just trying to communicate with me. So if my actor was difficult during rehearsals, I'll realize I'm not listening or this is what I need to do as a director to actually get them to open up and feel confident in the process or in me, yeah. Yeah, this is just, I mean, it's so interesting how you're kind of translating the sort of experiences that you're having in the household within a space that is professional. What other things do you do or do you think about when you walk into a rehearsal room? Is there a ritual? Is there a kind of space that you aspire to what's creating? Tell us a bit more about what it would be like for our viewers today if they were walking into your rehearsal room. Okay, so I try as much as possible to create a safe space for everyone. That means complete vulnerability because there's no way we're going to be at our best as actors, as performers, as artists if we are not completely open. And so that is usually the first thing. I want us to bond as much as possible. I want to create a space where everyone feels hard, everyone feels seen and we leave all our problems at home. And any person who's practiced theater knows that the first thing is working out. Like the first 30 minutes of warm up just usually just helps us like leave things behind. And for some of my shows, not all of them though, we usually have a little activity where we walk around the space at different energy levels and we literally envision ourselves living the day behind and wearing the body and everything that becomes the artist. There's a lot of meditation, there's a lot of introspection and there's a lot of letting go. I prefer to concentrate on the process rather than the product. It's a learning process for me too. If you'd have asked me this a year, I would have told you, yeah, I've had it. But the more I work with people, like recently I worked with Ogutumoraya who's also of the same opinion that process trumps product. And he also taught me different ways of going into that. And as a director, I feel like that's the thing that I would bring to the table. If you allow me, I'll tell you my first experience as a director, which was horrible because I thought that directing was supposed to be about shouting and being the boss and that and setting my dominance in the space and it is not. So by the end of before the show, one of the actors approached me and she was a dear friend of mine and she told me that, you know, when you come with that energy in the space, it makes us shrivel and we can't just be ourselves.  And I was like, oh, wow. So I learned two lessons. One that that process does not work for me because I do not want to make my actors shrivel, I want them to be at the best that they can be. And the other lesson that I learned was listening as a leader because as challenging as that is, that if I hadn't listened to that lady at that time, I wouldn't have gotten to where I am. I wouldn't have learned that important and valuable lesson. And after that, I had to lock myself up after that show, that show was not the best but I still stand by it. I'm proud of my work. That was the best I could do at the time. Once I sat down and thought about it, I realized it's more important to get an actor to a place, to a better place than I found them rather than getting perfection because perfection is so far-fetched and it sexually does not exist, you know? And by shouting and as setting my dominance, all I was doing was reflecting my insecurities because I'd been an actor and I knew the kind of excellence I wanted to bring to the table, you know? This is the kind of process I go through as an actor. So of course you as an actor need to do that because I usually give brilliant performances you as my actor should do that. So it wasn't productive in any way. And nowadays, I'm okay with an actor delivering one amazing moment. I'm okay with that. If that's not where you are when we started rehearsal, I am okay with letting go and letting you just blossom in that one moment even if you couldn't deliver a whole show, you know? And it's not something that a lot of people are actually like okay with because we're very product driven as the entire world. So sometimes people are like, why not focus on making this person excel? And that's also another lesson in directing you. There are things you can't make an actor do. They have to be there as an actor. So if you cast that person, that's on you and you have to accept them as they come. Same way, you can't give birth to a child and then return them to their maker and tell them okay, she's broken. Give me another one. You have to mold this child as they come and accept anything they do wrong as a reflection of just growth. This is what needs to happen. This is their journey. And every actor has their journey, yeah. You know, I just, first of all, I want you to direct me, please. Just to make sure you've talked about working together for such a long time, I think. We do work together in various capacities, but I'd love to just be your apprentice in a room and learn about your process. I'm so dying. Thank you. I mean, I guess this I think is coming also from a personal place which I'm curious about in the Kenyan theater industry and also in the international work that you've done at the Compile International Theater Festival and various other opportunities you've had. How do you navigate creating that safe space that you've spoken so eloquently about? How do you facilitate that growth but then also navigate the sort of unspoken pressure of the product? That there has to be something on stage at some point. And fortunately, unfortunately, not everything that you've directed is in progress. So how do you make sure that the work is on the stage and it's open to thousands of people to come and watch whilst also keeping the rehearsal space a temple? I'm reminded of two things. Parts of creating is learning how to let go. So I'll get back to that. The other thing I'm reminded of is like it's growth. It's a journey. I remember during KITF, the Kenya International Theater Festival, it was high pressure. It was a very big production. For Kenya? Oh, sorry, Kampala, sorry. Okay, okay, okay. Just making sure it was. I got something there. Wait, wait, did we talk about Kenya? Please tell me about that festival. Hello, I meant the Kampala International Theater Festival. Thank you. It was very high pressure. And I was taking on the role of Associate Producer with NBMTI and I was also directing. And you were with me there. You know, it was like, we wanted to give like a remarkable show for this beautiful audience. And part of my growth is understanding that it wasn't about, now the lesson that I learned and I took home with me was, it wasn't about the show by the end of the day. The show ended up being whatever it ended up being. It was beautiful. But it was about how now that I look back, it was about how I as a director carried myself and how I protected my actors. At that point, I don't believe I did my best to create that safe space because there was a lot, there was a lot going on. And my insecurities from the fast production that I did, thinking that this is it. You know, this is how, this is what I've been working towards, you know, and all that unnecessary pressure that I was putting on myself. That made me not create the space that I wanted to create. But that being said, that was also a very big impactful lesson that I learned. And moving forward, I know now how to create what I, how to believe in myself enough to say, okay, I understand that things don't go this way in certain spaces, but this is how I do things. And if by the end of the day, the product is not up to par, at least we are all safe, we are all happy. And, but the beauty of that whole experience is also having a team of people that helped me, you know? And that's another lesson I came out with. I had like a remarkable team of people who are always there to work with me. And it also taught me to be very careful about my team because when I'm not at my best, my team carries me. And if my team is not there for me, then yes, you know? So yeah, so KITF 2019 was a very, very big.  There's merit in how I approach directing and I shouldn't let go of it, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's something I always remember. There's an, I'd say an idol of mine called Karolodongo. She's a lovely woman and a brilliant Kenyan director. She's phenomenal. And the first time I met her after being ostraced for so long, I finally got to my guts to ask her like, a couple of questions on directing. She told me it will all make sense with time, just give it time. And whenever I'm under pressure now, I go back to those words and I'm like, okay, regardless of the space, regardless of the experience, regardless of the people, it's about time. So if, and the same thing with actors, if an actor is not there yet, it's about time, you know? This is their first show and let them go through their journey, let that actor fall, let her succeed, let that actor just get their own experience as opposed to interfering with the actor's process. Yeah, I mean, what I hear you saying really is giving people space and time to breathe and holding the space for them, but also making sure the space is held for you for you to fall back. Oftentimes, in different contexts, that's not necessarily done in the same way. And so it's really interesting to hear about your experiences when it hasn't happened and how that's been for you and when it has and what that has helped you grow from. But talking about idols and mentors, actually that was the next question I wanted to ask you. Who are some of the people? First of all, just to say, I think there's an entire generation of young people that look up to you as their idol, myself included. And so who are the people you look up to and why? What about their work fascinates you?  You know, how did they get on your radar? Tell me more about who you would have when you're official sort of empowerment committee that have made you who you are today. Like I said, there's Carol O'Donnell. I've already mentioned her. I find her work amazing, especially her work with actors. Her nickname in the industry is Coach. So it tells you a lot about her process and how nurturing she is to the actors. There's also Julissa Ro. I love that woman. I was lucky enough to go for a refresh. Of course, this early this year, at the beginning of this year with Sanifo Productions, they had held a director's workshop. And Julissa was just amazing in how she helped. You could see, like you could tell, this is the energy she brings into a rehearsal room. And when she talks about her process, it was just like, wow, yeah. And then there's Sheba, Sheba Hust. I love that woman. I love her because she empowers. She's like a giver of, I don't know, I don't know how to explain it. Being in a room with Sheba just makes you be the best that you can be. And then there's a lot of women but they've always kept my mind. But the other people that I can think of is Good Inc. Good Inc. have been there for me through thick or thin. And I remember when we were working together and I was pregnant and I told them, I think it was Josika Zito. I told her, I don't want to give up because a lot of women give up after their given birth and she was like, okay. And when I was ready to give up on directing and just be whatever, she came to my house, she and Miriam Kazito, they came to my house and they held my hand and they were like, no, you're going to direct the next show because we want you to direct the next show. Do you want us to carry your baby for you? They shall do that. So those are some of the experiences with those women that have just like made me realize these are the people that I want on my committee that's folded.  There's also you. I can't leave you out from that, too.  And the Lam sisterhood, the Lam sisterhood has been there for me, like they made me, I remember during brazen, they made me, their whole experience with brazen just made me blossom more as a director, as a young female director. It made me embrace my awkwardness. It made me embrace my brilliance. It made me just be and just summon all the heroines that have fought for Kenya and for the world. So yeah, that is my team. I'm sure there are a lot of other people that have left out. It's just the...  They're all there. They're all there. It's beautiful. You mentioned Shiba, you mentioned the Lam sisterhood. You mentioned so many folks that I know personally that you've worked with and that you continue to work with. Now, like for example, Miriam Shiba produces and the Lam sisterhood are writers for our viewers who may not have context. I'm just presenting that. How...  And how... I guess the question I want to ask is, how does that change or does that affect the way you're working in a room together? Because oftentimes, within various contexts, the producer becomes the decision maker logistically or the writer kind of has a specific say with the kind of text they want on stage, of course. And in many ways, from what I've heard you say from my experiences, directing really becomes a way to navigate all of these other externals, like the designers and producers and the writers to put this new piece of work on stage or whether it's a new work or not. What I'm saying is that I understand directing more is like this idea of facilitating, but how is your relationship affected? Or how is your presence as a director affected in the room, especially when some of these people have titles like they are producer or they're calling the shots and you aren't? I'll speak... I don't think that's clear. Yeah, it's very clear. Thank you. Okay, great. I'll speak of my experience with Miriam Kazitu as producer. We had a code of sorts. Every time we'd work together, we still do. We trust each other enough not to interfere with the work that someone is set out to do. For instance, if I've come up with the creative vision of the entire show, Miriam and I will have a lot of pre-production meetings where she gets to understand like, okay, so this is your vision. That is why you are so persistent on getting this particular bottle for the production design. And she won't trample my decision just because she is like the producer. She will try to accommodate their vision and believe in it as much as possible. And I've not worked with Sheba on a creative project per se as the producer, but I've also seen her. I was lucky enough to shadow the director of Return on the Body, Mugambin Diga, when he was directing the show. I just marveled at how Sheba would work, how she would also create space for the director and not interfere. She would make sure she was more of a cushion to the director than a hindrance. And that's the same thing I've experienced with Miriam. She'll be there to cushion you. And she'll be there when you're venting because as much as I love actors and they are the best people in the world, they could also be very, very, very, very, yeah. I won't finish that statement.  And you also have, because of our relationship, I have so much respect for them that I never want to give them anything other than my best when we are working. And when it comes to the Lam sisterhood, we also have that conversation before I'm like, so once you give me the script, I'm the director and you're the actors or you're the writers. So you let go of the script and trust that. Yeah, trust that. I have read the script and internalized the story and I am ready to hold it down. And with Brazen specifically, sorry, with Brazen specifically, yeah, with Brazen specifically, we had a lot of meetings and because I also was the drama tag for the production, it's helped them like let go as writers, you know, and also trust me. And I feel like we had a very beautiful experience in that way because they let go and just that trust, that trust is hard to achieve. I'm not going to lie, it's work, but it happens over time, over time working together and even knowing each other personally helps a lot. Yeah, so yeah, so. I just want to, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, you just wanted to ask. You told it, yeah, but I'm like trying to catch you just as you're finishing a sentence because I'd love for you to speak a little bit more about what it's like to be directing people that have been writing the piece and then all of a sudden they're actors and then they jump out to become the dramaters and then, so there's constantly shifting roles, right? Within our context, you're not just only the director, you can't ever just be the director, I feel here, specifically, how does that manifest? Even when it comes to power dynamics, not only that, I think you've spoken about that, but when it comes to collectively creating a piece, but then being told because the director. I've actually like come to think of it, most of my productions have had the actors also being the writers or the writer being the producer. So again, it just goes back to the element of trust but how that works is like, for instance, with Abusens and Gatia who used to have an entire ritual where we'd meet at the cafe above our Kenya National Theater and they would literally come with a printed copy of the script, hand it to them and then tell them, now pass me the script. Okay, you've given me the script, I am now the director, you are now officially not writers but that works only after you've worked on the script like a lot as now the drama tag, enough for the writers to be confident enough to be like, okay, so we are okay with this copy. It involves a lot of communication and in that way, you foster a lot of trust and for the first 12 for buds, it was not as easy as I'm saying it but by the time we got to the second 12 for buds, we were already like accustomed to, oh, so this is how it goes and Abusens and Gatia would easily like just let go of the script and they are good in that way, they will leave the director has space or his space to create, to come up with and give them whatever they need to grow and blossom and that's also my experience with the Lam sisterhood. They also have that ability, once they have a finished work of art, like finished script, they'll be like, okay, so here's your script, we are done, we are not going to interfere and I remember with Brazen, Mora had this beautiful moments where she'd have a discovery about a line after I'd talk it through with an actor and I should be like, oh, I didn't even know that and I was the writer and she had the grace of saying that in front of the other actors, which even if it's not true, even if she was just playing it for confidence sake, it gives the other actors a lot of reassurance but it's not easy also having the writers in the room because the other actors will constantly ask a question and then turn to the writers. So if you have the support of the writers, they'll just be like, me, I'm not the writer, over here I'm an actor, just like you, so maybe ask the director. So that's how we've, that's the dynamic we've created with those productions. It's always been like, this is your turn, I'm done. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and almost quite literally a physical gesture of like handing this over to you now, kind of is also something that I hear you saying it's part of the process, yeah. Yeah, so it's just been dramatic, but it helps. I mean, we are in the field, right? So I think we justify it too. Keep the drama on the stage and out of our personal lives, that's really the way we go. Exactly, exactly. Let's switch gears a bit in the last few minutes that we have together. What do you do to feed yourself artistically? You help others grow so much in the room, so how do you grow?  Okay, so for a long time it's been, I love movies by specific directors. They're specific directors I look for who feed me and feed my style. I've recently also become like very keen on the kind of books I read. I read a lot, not as much as I want to, but yeah. What kind of books do you read? I like character-driven narratives, whether it's a movie, whether it's a book, whatever. I also read a lot of screenplays because it helps you, it's something I got from a certain director called Elia Kazan. When you're not in the process of a production, it's better to get a script from wherever and still work on it like you do when you're in production. So the same steps you take whether it's like breaking down the script, thinking of the vision, thinking of production design, thinking of everything, like seeing, literally seeing the production on stage. It's actually helped me a lot, especially during this COVID season because not been working as much as we'd like to. So that has been like, it's like constant exercise. And it's actually, okay, it's different from its theory once you're there and there's the pressure, there are a lot of things that change, but it's helped me get a farmer grasp on the story and the world of the story and becoming and belonging. I've also recently realized there's a beauty in taking music and other forms of art, like a painting and trying to, or a photo, photos also work, trying to build a world around it. Like for instance, with music, taking an album and actually like listening to the album and trying to envision what the artist is going through from song to song to song. That usually feeds me a lot. And working on myself as a photographer as a human being, a lot of introspection. I've realized we were speaking with also a director in Kenya, a new director, she's called Nyokafi Masharia. And we were talking about how directing is basically, it's a journey of self-growth because there's so many challenges that are thrown at you as a person, as a leader and how you react in that moment just makes or breaks the show or past the show, the post-production basically. So we've just been, we had that conversation and that to me is a perfect summary of directing. It's just self-growth and I've realized a lot of introspection and working on myself and working on the things that I expect the actors to bring, like working on my physicality, working on my acting, working on all these things, that gives me more confidence and more knowledge and wisdom when I go into that room. I'm constantly not ready, but constantly preparing. Yeah, so that's what feeds me when I'm not in production. I just love the fleeting moment. The idea that every moment of yours is that you are constantly preparing even when you're in the rehearsal room or even when you're walking in and the fact that you're preparing is what makes you ready. Go ahead. It's a work in progress. I'm not going to live, but yeah. We all are, we all are, we all are. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we all are. Well, I'm conscious of time so I'm gonna ask you two last questions and then we can wrap it up. But my first question for you, well, not first, but my first of the last two questions, first of the last two questions for you is, tell me a bit about some of your more international work and how, or if you can speak to one specific example and tell me how, what you found different about working abroad than working here and maybe what you wish we had here or what they wish they had of us. Okay, I'll speak of my experience with Da International Theater. Yeah, it's based in Sabia. I went there last year. I think, yeah, last year. And it was an amazing experience. It was like eight years ago because correct, right? Yeah, I was like, it's been five years. It's just been a year. So the best part of it, I've always been very fascinated with movement theater because when I was an actor, we used to have conversations of this talking head place where you're just constantly seated and talking to a person.  So when I went to Da for the, I'd call it a residency, it was amazing seeing how the director worked with the actor from the body before they got to the text. That to me was just my blowing. And I was like, oh my God. Yes, this is something I really want to take home. And it forces the performer to understand the text that they have not seen with their body before they can actually tell the story. And essentially what it does, it makes you own your body, own your instrument to an extent of no matter what is thrown at you, you know how to communicate. Whether in whatever form or manner you are constantly ready. And the amount of energy they had on that stage was mind blowing. Because I remember I had chills the whole time just watching their final performance. It was just beautiful. And because we've had those conversations with actors at home, that's the one thing I feel like our dark times in theater, which was when I feel when we were so stuck to British fastest, not as a fault of ours because we were colonized or playwrights like Kunguguiwa Diyongawa, Exiled and all that. It's because of that we were just used to, I'll sit at all, I sit, you talk, I'll talk. And it's helped actors in whatever ways that it's helped them, but that movement, that understanding of the body is what was lacking. To be honest, I've seen a lot of film actors presently and TV actors. Actually pushing themselves. Actors like Audie Roir, she's a phenomenal, brilliant actor. And Moa Jumabel and Moa Oranganga, they have been like pushing themselves to do a lot of physical acting. So yeah, so that's changing. And that experience that I got, I'm definitely, definitely ready to now impart it on any actor that I work with, like more and just see them growing that way. To be honest, what I feel like we could give is hearts. There's a certain kind of, like there's a performance by a Kenyan actor.  Like we have really brilliant actors who bring so much heart, so much commitment to our role and so much believability that it's just, it's mind blowing. And in my head, I'm thinking of Brian Ogola. Like any performance of his that you see, you cannot separate him from the character. You can definitely see this is Ogola, this is the character, but he's given so much of himself to it. And he's just one in the list of actors that we have that I'm like, if you guys, if people can out there, can just see what you do. Oh man, yeah, so that's something. I am, of course there are brilliant actors all over the world, but that is something that I can confidently boost about when it comes to our actors without a doubt, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, you've mentioned so many names, so many companies in our conversations, hopefully what our viewers will be able to do is, either comment on our posts asking for clarification or search them up and really get a sneak peek into this world that is thriving over here. My final question for you is, and you've sort of answered this, but just for our younger audiences out there, an aspiring young African director, what would you say to him or her? It gets better. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, but land, like I mentioned before, back on yourself, like it's so interesting how when I was acting, I was so consumed and working in the craft, and I'm not saying this is typical to all actors, this is just my personal experience. When I was acting, I was so keen on, I want to master my body, I want to master my voice, I want to read more and work on my memory skills, and as a director, it's totally different. I want to work on myself, and in that way, the more I work on myself, the more I challenge myself to work on my body and to work on my voice and to work on my craft, it just translates so flawlessly, because every day I'm like, if I'm going to tell that actor to learn a new language because it's somehow enriches them as an actor, why am I not doing it myself? If I'm telling this actor to read more, why am I not doing it myself? Because integrity is so important to me, I end up just naturally doing it because I'm working on myself. So yeah, so work on yourself, yes read, yes work on your craft, but working on yourself and being self aware, helping yourself be self aware as a leader just makes everything so much better in directing, so much easier because you're not like projecting your insecurities 24 seven in that rehearsal room, you're not breaking a human being when an actor is not at their best, you're not here, you're just bringing goodness into a room and yeah, so work on yourself in short. Yeah, self awareness is lifting. I mean, you're so uplifting with everything you say, so thank you, thank you for that piece of wisdom. Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we say goodbye to our viewers today? Not really, but I really thank you for this, for having me. Well, thank you. I've had a lovely time and thank you for the conversation. It's also given me a lot to think about. Thank you so much, Anjiku, for taking time on your Monday evening, for making the time for us to share your journey. And I hope that people are able to follow you on your social media and keep abreast of your work as we move forward. If you want to share your handles with us, let us know, yeah. Yes, I'm mostly active on Instagram and my Instagram handle is at Wanjiku Moabu Ganga. I'm sure Moabu Ganga is really complex, but... It's on the screen, so people should be able to follow you. And then my Twitter handle is Wanjiku Moabu, so without the Ganga. And yeah, so those are my most active social media. Awesome. Thank you so much, Wanjiku. Thank you all so much for tuning in from around the world. I just want to wrap up by thanking our two, three sign language interpreters. Just a quick note that this is actually the first series that HowlRound is doing that has both American Sign Language and Kenyum Sign Language interpretation. So for our viewers, thank you. Thank you so much to Lucy, who was earlier our KSL interpreter, and to Raphael for your time. And of course, thank you so much to Julia for holding the fort for our American Sign Language interpretation. Thank you to the HowlRound series, and we will see you at the same time, same place, at the comfort of your cushioned couches next week with Asimwe, who will be our panelist, Asimwe Debarakawai, who's a playwright from Uganda. So we hope one to our neighboring country to chat a little bit about the arts seen over there. Thank you again, Wenjiku. Thanks, everybody. You're welcome. Bye. Bye.