The title of this year's talk is The Ethics Void. Here's a rough abstract:
Medicine, legal, finance, journalism, scientific research—each of these fields and many others have widely adopted codes of ethics governing the lives of their professionals. Some of these codes may even be enshrined in law. And this is for good reason: these are fields that have enormous consequences.
Software and technology pervade not only through these fields, but through virtually every aspect of our lives. Yet, when compared to other fields, our community leaders and educators have produced an ethics void. Last year, I introduced numerous topics concerning #privacy, #security, and #freedom that raise serious ethical concerns. Join me this year as we consider some of those examples and others in an attempt to derive a code of ethics that compares to each of these other fields, and to consider how leaders and educators should approach ethics within education and guidance.
For this talk, I want to solicit the community at various points. I know what _I_ want to talk about, but what are some of the most important ethical issues to _you_? Unfortunately there's far too much to fit into a 40m talk! Also feel free to e-mail me at mtg@gnu.org.
Yesterday at the @fsf's office I met a fine gentleman who was helping me prepare name tags / lanyards for the conference. He was modest enough that I feel like I only got information out of him by asking the right questions, and because I inquired about how close he and rms were (Richard had come into the office and asked him to do lunch/dinner some time).
That person was Alexandre Oliva, and tonight rms presented him with the annual award for the Advancement of Free Software. He was brought to tears, and expressed that he was glad to know that he made a difference. I wish I remembered his words directly---he stated that he wasn't sure if he _had_ made a difference. It was hard not to share emotion with him. Richard had to ask the audience to stop their standing ovation so that Alex could continue talking.
Yesterday I mentioned that one of the biggest things missing with online communities is small talk---those random encounters that might only last moments, but yield relationships that are otherwise unlikely. This is an excellent example; I may have otherwise never gotten to know him. I've gotten to know many others here well, and everyone has had interesting stories to tell, big or small, free software hacker or not.