Framasoft is 20 years old! Episode 1 – The first 10 years – A. Kauffmann & P.Y Gosset

Interview on the early years of Framasoft

Walid : welcome to this new episode of Projets Libres!. For the second time on the podcast, we’re going to talk about Framasoft. We had already talked about it for the first time last year, in December. I had received Pouhiou and Booteille to talk about the history of Peertube. And it was an episode that worked very well, which was really great. Today, I am lucky enough to have with me two other guests with whom we will talk this time about the history of Framasoft, since the association is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. And so with me, I’m lucky to have Alexis Kauffmann and Pierre-Yves Gosset, who will be running right after, and with whom we’re going to retrace all these first years. Well, listen up gentlemen, welcome to the Free Projects podcast! I hope you are both well?

Pierre-Yves : It’s going well.

Alexis : hello, thank you for the invitation.

Presentation of Pierre-Yves and Alexis

Walid : Great, to start with, to let the listeners of the podcast know who you are, could you start by briefly introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about what you do and how you discovered free software? Alexis, do you want to start?

Alexis : If I say how I discovered free software, I’m already starting to start the Framasoft story a bit, because that’s a little bit from there that Framasoft simply started. So we may ask Pierre-Yves and then I move on.

Walid : OK, okay.

Pierre-Yves : So, I’m Pierre-Yves Gosset, I’m an employee of Framasoft. I was the first employee and it will probably be part of the story that we will tell too. After having been director of an association for about ten years, I am now coordinator of digital services at Framasoft.

Walid : ok

Alexis : And I’m a teacher, it’s really my vocation. As a mathematics teacher, I have been a teacher, I have travelled in France and abroad. And today, I’m at the Ministry of National Education. I am officially, my title is software project manager and free educational resources at the digital department for education. It’s a bit long, it’s a bit pompous, but let’s say that I’m trying to breathe the wind of free culture into a ministry whose nickname is “the Mammoth”.

Pierre-Yves : I’m not going to specify, because suddenly, Alexis, you can afterwards, no doubt… I want to tell how you discovered free software, but I discovered free software partly thanks to Framasoft. It’s an opportunity to thank Alexis for that, since it was the time when I still had to join the army, so I was a conscientious objector at the University of Grenoble. And while I was doing my conscientious objection, I had to install and implement free software in this university for teachers and students. That’s when I discovered free software and in particular through the Framasoft forum, what a community was and how you could operate a community based on mutual aid, etc. I think that like many people, I discovered Framasoft more by the community aspect than by the aspect… we will say political today that free software has in the life of Framasoft.

The beginnings of Framasoft

Walid : Since you say that your encounter with free software is intimately linked to Framasoft, can you start to explain the story a little bit, Alexis? Where does it all start?

Alexis : ok, it started like that, as the other one would say. In any case, it’s true that it’s a great collective pride that we’ve been receiving for more than 20 years. There are a lot of testimonies from people who tell us “I discovered free software thanks to Framasoft” And in particular, I remember, when we went to the Huma festival, for example, in places that are a little different. And we had this kind of testimony that was pleasing, that justified our action a little bit and all the time and passion that we put into it and that we still put into it today.

So I’m coming, I’m a young math teacher. We are in the 90s… end of the 90s. And I’m in the first post and often you are sent to Seine-Saint-Denis, when you come from the Paris region. First post in Bobigny, in a college. Digital technology was not even called that by the way, it was called NTIC, New Information and Communication Technology. There were names like that, but in any case digital didn’t exist as such. Politically, the idea of giving more to those who have the least has emerged. This kind of slogan still speaks today. And in any case, in education, it has resulted in the establishment of priority education zones.

Alexis Kauffmann

It wasn’t exactly called that at the time. And then, there were resources that were allocated precisely to equip schools with computers, with Internet connections.

And so, I arrive in an establishment where all of a sudden… It is setting up a computer room, because today, there are fewer and fewer computer rooms as such in schools, because there is Wi-Fi, there is mobility, etc. But at the time, there were computer rooms. And so, we receive a brand new computer room. Few people even used digital technology in their personal and professional lives. And with a colleague, a French teacher, Caroline Atabekian, we say to ourselves, “what can we do with this computer room?” We had a class in common, we had a sixth in common, I remember. And in the give more to those who have the least, there was the possibility of having two teachers for a single course, French-maths, that too, I talk about it because those were the good years. I would like to see this kind of system come back. It’s means, but it justifies them, I think. So a maths teacher, a French teacher with the same class on the same schedules. And then we said to ourselves that we were going to experiment.

And the idea was quickly to… to use the web pages, in fact, the intranet browser, because Internet connections were scarce, etc. Finally, to use the browser. At the time, there was a battle between Internet Explorer 6, or even before, I think, and Mozilla, and Netscape, that’s it. It was Netscape and Internet Explorer.

Walid : Netscape Navigator.

Alexis : Yes, that’s right. And we started, in any case, to explore, like that, educational content via web pages, and then also we needed tools and I… So, as a result, we went looking for small software that could interest us as part of our pedagogy. We didn’t have too many resources though. So, I went fishing for free software that was called Freeware at the time. That’s it, and we started to list them by saying to ourselves “Hey, all these software are interesting as part of our project, but I think that overall, they are useful to teachers”.

And at the same time, while surfing the internet at the time, I discovered an article by a Canadian professor, who was not a science teacher, who was a professor of comparative literature, at least who came from the humanities. He wrote it in 1998, he wrote it for his Quebec minister, who lived in Montreal, for his Quebec minister of education. And the article was entitled How to intelligently computerize schools? (Editor’s note: the author is Jean-Claude Guédon). And he invited the minister and her teams to take an interest in Linux and to deploy Linux in schools. Not only as a tool, but also as an object of teaching. That is to say, in fact, Linux is also interesting in itself because you can lift the hood, you can better understand how computing works, etc. I’m telling you about it because today, in 2024, so that was 1998, today, in 2024, I’m at the ministry on a project to deploy a solution, a Linux distribution, which is called Primtux, in fact, it’s a meta-distribution. which is made by primary school teachers, school teachers for their fathers, for their colleagues and their students, to deploy Linux in schools. So in fact, more than 25 years later, in quotation marks, either nothing has changed, or it is really a problem that is present.

Alexis Kauffmann

So it’s also coming back to the charge for reasons of sobriety, that is to say that it’s computers that can recycle, the old machines that sleep in the cupboards. also for sustainability reasons, because these are free resources, we can take care of them… In any case, it’s interesting to see that… I put the article back on the occasion of this program. So, there are terms that are a little bit like the web, we don’t use the web anymore. But the fact remains that it’s fascinating to see that it’s still relevant. I’m still, five years later, trying to put Linux in schools.

Walid : There, you are two teachers. So, you start by listing the software that exists, actually. That’s right?

Alexis : Yes, that’s right. In fact, what happens is that I, by listing these softwares, these freewares, I discover that in free software, there is another category than free and paid: there is free, not free. And so, I dig a little deeper. I find documentation on the Internet. It fascinates me, you know. And I say to myself, yes, I am a teacher in a public school, a public service mission, which is the transmission of knowledge and knowledge. And so… We need to have free access to knowledge, to use it freely, to study it freely and to share it freely, this knowledge. So, these were exactly the freedoms that free software offers to its users. So, there was really that. There was a kind of proximity of value there, it clicked, it really clicked. And it hasn’t left me since.

Walid : How do you share at that time, how do you share these software lists?

Alexis : we shared it with our colleagues from the school. So we had an internal project called Framanet: French and mathematics on the intranet. And my colleague Caroline, she tells me, Alexis, the page on the software, in my opinion, it could be of interest to others, you should create a website on it. And I tell him, “Oh my, no, I remember, there are already a lot of things that exist on the Internet”. It’s true that at the time, there were things that existed. “What more will it bring? etc”. It’s not at all to be pretended to be modest, I remember it very well. She told me: “yes, yes, it’s interesting the way you distinguish them. And then, you’re not afraid to mix free and free, to distinguish them, but you mix them. Go ahead.” So I went. And I think I registered the domain name. I don’t know, it must have been in 2001, I think. And it actually started like that. That’s how it started for the first site, which was framasoft.net. In fact, the ending was .net at the time. There you go.

Walid : Then, after that, it’s word of mouth? Because at that time, to get publicity, you either met people in real life, or it was word of mouth.

Alexis : yes, but there were also sites like LinuxFR that you were talking about (Editor’s note: see the episode on LinuxFR). When we announced a news item, we still had an impact. When we participated, there were forums. So, I don’t know when we put ours down…

Pierre-Yves : 2004.

Alexis : On the occasion of this show, I also contacted via LinkedIn, I wouldn’t want to say that it’s LinkedIn, but I also managed to find Paul Lunetta, who is one of the co-founders of the association, and I told him, you have memories a little, and for him, the striking memory is when the forum was set up. That is, it’s really… And the second thing he told me was when Pierre-Yves arrived as an employee in the association. But it’s really there, on the forum, where there has really been activity, the community… We were able to distinguish the people who were also motivated by the approach. Because it’s true that in quotation marks, I don’t like to say originality because it’s a bit pretentious, but there was a user-first approach and not a developer’s approach. And then, we weren’t afraid to say, the first slogan tonight was to start from Windows to discover free software. I don’t know if you remember, Pierre-Yves.

Pierre-Yves : Absolutely.

Alexis : And we played on the double word, we played on the double express. Start from, start from, but also quit Windows after a while. And we mixed free and not free. And besides, it earned me criticism or it earned us criticism from purists. Today, when I talk to the people at Framasoft, Framasoft sometimes seems a bit like the purists who are quite exemplary, there are no compromises, etc. At the time, no, no, that was the approach, it was really, we weren’t afraid. First of all, we were users, we had discovered computers under Windows, in an overwhelming majority. And then, little by little, with a discourse not only to equip, but also to reflect together on this emerging digital technology and all these societal values, rather, moreover, that free software could bring.

Walid : If the forum arrived in 2004 and you started working on the subject at the end of the 90s, it means that during all that time, communications are made either by email or…

Alexis : Mailing lists, lots of mailing lists.

Walid : ok mailing-lists.

Pierre-Yves : There were also, technically, I think you started with Dreamweaver, the first site.

Alexis : (laughs) That’s right.

Pierre-Yves : remember. Then, we moved on to SPIP, which is still an existing and well-known CMS, whose French-speaking community remains very active. And in fact, SPIP allowed discussions to be held under the articles. So, it wasn’t really a forum mode as such. On the other hand, there was a community that expressed itself under the articles of the various software sheets that could be written, essentially by a very small group. For me, Alexis’ talent was still on a very small group of people who finally wrote these software sheets, since at the time, there were already… several hundred. When I discovered Framasoft or rediscovered Framasoft, let’s say in 2004-2005, there were already several hundred software sheets, but most of them were written by a very small number of people and the community had this feeling that the structure, whether it was associative or not, was much bigger than what seemed to it. And that’s something you find in a lot of free software communities where you get the impression that in fact, there are 100 people behind it, when in fact, the community can be extremely large, but the active people are really a small core of a handful or a few dozen people in total.

Alexis : Absolutely. On Wikipedia, we find exactly the same phenomenon. There are very few authors compared to users.

Walid : Were you surprised at first by the first feedback?

Alexis : I was fascinated. Fascinated that others say it’s interesting what you do.

You also have to look at what era we were in. I don’t want to be a bit of an old idiot, but that is to say, a teacher, his life was his school. We were reduced, we didn’t even know what was going on elsewhere. And then, all of a sudden, we could completely go out and enter into a relationship. So, I started more at the beginning with colleagues, then it expanded with profiles like Pierre-Yves. But what I want to say, it fascinated me to be able to get in touch with other teachers from elsewhere who were a little interested in the subject and to see what we could do together.

Alexis Kauffmann

And so, obviously, it gave me energy to continue. We were really in pure volunteering and passion, interest. It also helped me a little bit in my practice. And another element I wanted to say is that we weren’t on full Internet at all and that downloading applications, testing them on our premises, on our computers, was important, that’s how we worked with digital technology. And it wasn’t easy to find them. There were no social networks to ask your friends right away, there you go, two, three tips. So there was a real need to be able to easily find software that is useful both professionally and personally.

Pierre-Yves : There were a few other directories that existed, but none had, I was going to say, the dynamism. that Framasoft had at that time. Here I’m talking about when I was outside the project, clearly it was the site that was the most provided and on which you could request via SPIP, the SPIP comment system, oh well, does this software allow you to do this or that? And there were still people who answered, who were not necessarily from the hard core of the people who wrote the software manuals, but who came to explain how this software was good, not so good, etc.

I want to say that the transition to SPIP and the web that was called 2.0 in the era, the possibility of getting users to contribute. This model has made it possible to create a dynamic, unlike other directories on which we could not comment and which could be very interesting from a content point of view. but on which there was a lack of a human dimension, in my opinion, to these sites.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

Alexis : I wanted to add something as well. Initially, it was a community of users. Pierre-Yves, I think that your arrival is a little bit the… You’re between user and developer.

Pierre-Yves : yes, absolutely.

Alexis : I don’t know how you…

Pierre-Yves : I found my first message on Framagora and I introduced myself as a developer.

Alexis : You’re a bit of a first developer. In theory, when I had information about free software, it was user-friendly. But I still had imposter syndrome. We had our annual free software meeting, which no longer exists, it was called the World Free Software Meeting. The first time I went there was in 2002 in Bordeaux. There were only developers. They were all on Linux and they were typing like crazy on their black screens with white characters. And frankly, I was making myself small and I had the impression that it was not my world, very clearly. And I had… I was just presenting, I think it was Framasoft which had just arrived under SPIP. And I was just after the SPIP team. In fact, I was very happy to pass just behind them. It made sense, but I didn’t feel like I belonged to the community yet.

There was that feeling. When we say, we speak, how can I say, yes, if I was able to get to this point, it’s because the shoulders of the giants here were the developers. They were the ones who made this free software. So, there was that. But it’s true that… that little by little, it was accepted and we integrated well. It’s also interesting to see how, from a community of users, we have become a global stakeholder in the players, at least French-speaking, of free software in general.

First collaboration with developers

Walid : Yes, exactly. From that moment on, the developers see that you exist and in fact, in addition, it brings them users. How do you fit in? Indeed, you say that we fit into it, but how do you actually fit in?

Alexis : What I can say is that we wore… First of all, at the beginning, there were still a lot of teachers and pedagogues. Pierre-Yves, we can also say that you were part of that movement. And so, it is still a know-how in documentation, a little in communication too. For example, we may talk about it later, we can also talk about it, but there is one of the projects, it was the Framabooks. Framabooks were initially software tutorials that helped to get hold of them. We were talking about how to use it better, how to make it known. How to increase the mass of users? To push also, me, in my institution, to push the ministry to use them, etc.

Pierre-Yves : I’ll add to that. I do find that the angle and the strength, the added value of Framasoft, was to have an angle around communication that was still quite strong, which is still the case today. That is to say, it was not just a question of having information, which suited developer users very well, but of knowing how to address people. And I really think that the qualities, because the founders were, I’m talking about the association in any case, I think you were quoting Paul Lunetta earlier, but it was the case for Georges Silva too, the three founders, so Alexis in addition. The three founders of the association were all three teachers. There was an educational dimension that was in the DNA from the start anyway. And this communication aspect meant that the site was aimed at the general public, which was not necessarily the case of other sites or directories at the time, where typically LinuxFR was spoken, which I read almost every day with pleasure, but which is not aimed at the general public. Framasoft had a consumer target. And it’s this general public goal that meant that when we had to enter the free software community, I have memories, my first LSM was 2004 or 2005, indeed we were looked at a little bit like UFOs, but we brought a dimension that the other software development communities didn’t have. And it wasn’t always appreciated. I remember doing demonstrations of Framakey, it must have been in 2007. I’m thinking of Paris, the trade show, the equivalent of Open Source Experience today.

Walid : Linux solution ?

Pierre-Yves : Indeed, it was called Solution Linux. And there were Linux people who came to turn off my computer during the demo because I was doing a demo of the Framakey which was a set of free software on a USB key, but for Windows. And as a result, since it was not possible and conceivable for these people to run a computer on Windows, at Solutions Linux, when I was only presenting free software, which was a promotional axis, as Alexis said, to start from Windows and move towards free software. There was a bit of a conflictual dimension that could appear with certain free software communities that had been there for a long time and who had an extremely purist, militant vision, pushed very far. which was problematic in my opinion.

Walid : yes, I remember very well, I have memories of GCU_Squad going to Microsoft’s booths.

Pierre-Yves : Yes, that’s right. But at the end of the day, I GCU_Squad, I understand why, because it was the Microsoft booths, but we were there to promote free software, really. And that was our goal, and we weren’t there to say, look at how Microsoft does free software. That was how you can run Firefox on a USB stick. And indeed, we did it with a vision that was to say that free software must exceed 2% of users. And at the time, Firefox didn’t represent much in terms of market share. It must represent, if I’m being mean, about as much market share as it does today. But that was before the heyday of Mozilla. And I think that Framasoft has very modestly participated in the movement to democratize free software among the general public.

Framasoft and the national education system

Walid : And with the national education system? In other words, over these first years, do these initiatives find an echo within the institution? That is to say, the teachers, we understand that they do have an interest in this, but are there people at the upper echelons who are interested in what you are putting in place?

Pierre-Yves : That’s a difficult question because it has been relatively fluctuating. I think Alexis will be able to complete it, but the way I experienced it is that on the national education side, and I, at the time, worked for the ministry… Higher education and research, there was something very, very ambiguous behind it. In fact, it was a bit three steps forward, three steps back.

So we have lived through this situation a little bit during, since the 90s and early 2000s, when the national education, depending on the people who could be in the ministry, according to the ministers, according to the political interest that there could be at the level of the prime ministers or others, around the issue of digital technology and free software, one time it was advancing, the next it was going backwards. And I really think that we should not at all underestimate the power of lobbying, particularly from Microsoft, Apple, Google, but in particular from Microsoft if we are talking about the early 2000s, when indeed there was an extremely strong stake for Microsoft to ensure that in national education, it was rather Windows and Word, Excel that were used, rather than other solutions.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

Afterwards, there were really good times, well I experienced them a bit like that, where there was an acceleration and a strong interest, not necessarily from the ministries, but in any case from… including from the base, so whether it’s teachers, parents of students or others, why would we pay for licenses? It was more the economic argument than the political, social or ethical argument, but there was an interest in pushing free software to the school level. And once again, it’s different if we take primary, secondary, etc. And for me, who was on the higher education and research side, there was something a little more flexible because overall, in the research community, researchers are left a little more in peace about the software they can use, whereas in the national education system, when the teacher arrives in his classroom, And in particular the computer rooms, there was the software that was on them, and he couldn’t necessarily choose what to install on them.

Alexis : What is certain is that it was still a disappointment, overall. When I discovered free software, I said to myself, “Damn, but it’s of course”, and for me, it was very naive, I said to myself, this is a… It will be common sense for free software to penetrate the national education system. And that, as my director says today, it is not to quote him, but he says “they were made to meet and to live together”. But no, unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. And by the way, I don’t know if you quoted it, Pierre-Yves, but you wrote an article, Nous n’irs plus prendre le thé, that’s it, rue de Grenelle , which was a little bit the culmination, that’s it, of these procrastinations and hesitations of the institution. And Framasoft more or less decided that it wasn’t necessarily worth spending energy on people who didn’t give guarantees, or at least policies that didn’t really give guarantees, to really want to develop a strategy around free software in education.

Walid : Those years are also, I just looked, it’s 98. The release of a book that had a big impact on me at the time was a book by Roberto Di Cosmo and Dominique Nora, the Planetary Hold-Up.

Pierre-Yves : Yes, which caused a stir about the power, once again, of Microsoft’s lobbying. And I completely agree with Alexis,

Finally, it was in 2016 that we wrote this bias Why Framasoft will no longer go to the Ministry of National Education for tea?, which is an article that was written by Christophe Mazutti, who was the president at the time of Framasoft and who is still a director of Framasoft. He had written this bias because I, as an employee, spent a lot of time going to meetings at the ministry, whether it was national education, but it could be in other national education bodies, there was a desire for co-construction, but which was still with a very clear or very pyramidal organizational chart, By telling you “ok, we want to co-construct with you, but this is our project”.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

And for us, after a while, as Alexis said, we put energy into trying to support projects that were carried out. I am thinking of Open-Sankoré or others, supported by the ministry. And then, two years later, we had to backtrack because, I don’t know, a license problem or something, etc. And so, we went back and forth like that for a very long time. And we, as an association, who were absolutely not subsidized, said to ourselves, “but in fact, either we serve as a guarantor, which is not very pleasant, or they use us, simply to be able to say, behind the scenes, if, if, but that’s been worked on with Framasoft, which had a pretty good reputation”, and so… We served as a guarantee as an image, we also served as a potentially free volunteer workforce behind it. And it’s true that it was necessarily a problem behind the idea of saying, in fact, we provide volunteer energy to try to get things moving in a department, but this department, because the minister changes, let’s say, at least every five years, or even much more often, well, much more often, but rarely less often. We had this problem anyway of knowing who was going to be the next minister, whether this minister was going to follow the directives that had already been put in place by the previous Minister of National Education, and so on. And so, it explains one of the important turns that Framasoft has taken, but rather from 2014.

Alexis : I’m going to follow up well and surpass 2014. Because when Pierre-Yves says that we didn’t want to serve as a guarantor, that’s exactly the question I asked myself personally when I joined the ministry three years ago. And by the way, I came back because the lockdown didn’t go very well at the digital level for the Ministry of National Education. We’ll put it like this to sum it up. And besides, some have called on the Framasoft service without even warning them because they were working while what had been set up by us, Sup & Sco, well when I say higher education and national education of national education together. We held a digital general assembly for education, that is to say, we put things on the table a little and invited people to express themselves. Often, these things can be quite political, sometimes it’s even to drown the fish, but there are teachers who have expressed themselves, and among the 40 proposals that came out of the report, there is one that was more in favour of software and educational resources. It was published, and I, at the time, was working in Italy, at the French high school in Florence. And I throw out a tweet saying, listen, I’m coming to the end of my contract, if you want that for this proposal, to favor free software, me, if I am, I propose my spontaneous candidacy. And the digital advisor at the time, it was from Mr. Blanquer, came across this tweet and he said Banco And that’s how I arrived at the ministry. And what I want to say is that I am a teacher: generally, when you work in the central administration, it is often teachers who have followed a somewhat agrégation, inspection course. Finally, I won’t go into details, but a fairly classic path of graduation, etc. I didn’t at all. I arrived completely from below without having these references at all. But it’s true that I arrived, not for what I did as a teacher, but precisely to become an association within Framasoft. And now, I won’t talk to you about the purpose, but the fact remains that one of the achievements over these three years, we don’t go into details, but it’s still to have taken into consideration everything that teachers do in the field. Framasoft is an initiative from the field, initially by teachers. There are many others. We saw a lot of very interesting projects. We have even seen some of them die, Pierre-Yves, of their beautiful death when they were… There was full potential. I remember Abulédu, I don’t know if…

Pierre-Yves : Yes, very well.

Alexis : There were real projects that were transformative, but they were under the radar. Sometimes, it was vaguely spotted by the territory, the academy, but it didn’t go any further. And then, it was up to the people. And when people left, it fell away. Here, what I try to bring, I say I but we are still a team, is to recognize, accompany, promote the projects that come from teachers, teachers’ associations, free projects that have potential. We put millions into educational commissions outside, to what we call ITEC: the technological education industry that is innovative and offers lots of tricks, no problem. Still, we also have a lot of things to promote and know-how and that it’s not always worth not only ordering… Obviously when you order, the one who wins the contract keeps all his intellectual property, which means that we help him get off the ground, and then you have to pay him subscriptions to use his services… Which means that, well, we see that today when we are in a period of budgetary restrictions, this model has its limits and so at least we have mechanisms, we have associations that are supported, we have events, etc. We try on these teachers’ projects… Because there are 1 million teachers in the second, there is a unique potential. There are digital talents, there are developers, there are reconversions… We even have computer science teachers because computer science has arrived as a discipline in the new high school. At least it has progressed, but it has taken an incredible amount of time, it has taken a quarter of a century.

Pierre-Yves : And really for me, what’s happening is that there are great people in the national education system who want to move digital technology in the broadest sense, free or less free, but there are absolutely wonderful people. The difficulty for us as a Framasoft association was to be dependent on a political change over which we had absolutely no control. And so, we felt like we were making progress and poof, we took two steps back. There, I think that people from APRIL will be able to give you all the details of all the decrees, all the proposals, the reports, etc., that have been made throughout the last few years. On the national education side, there have been a lot of them. And it’s true that it’s… For us, at least in the form of an association, it was far too complicated to say that we are putting a lot of energy into a ministry to try to change things in a ministry, when in the end, we have much easier access to other types of people who are potentially already convinced.

Alexis : To come back a little bit to this period, because I wanted to address the example of Sésamath, who was born around the same time as us. Sésamath is an association… as a mathematics teacher, who is really a pioneer in free software, because they have succeeded in creating textbooks, textbooks, in paper and digital, under a free license. It was for the whole school, well, it was something impressive. And what I mean is that I, today, say that I try to support these projects. I can tell you that for these Sesamath, it took more than three years to convince them to do something with the ministry, because there was a past, not to say a liability. And that… when you arrived, even if Alexis Kaufmann, OK, we know you, you’re reassuring, but that doesn’t prevent you from representing the institution, that you arrive with education.gouv.fr behind, and that they were extremely suspicious. And there is a lot of confidence to be regained at this level.

The creation of the Framasoft association and the forum

Walid : I would like us to go back to the chronology and arrive at two events. The first is the creation of the assault. And a priori, the second one that also seems to be striking is the creation of the forum. Can you tell us a little bit about the history?

Alexis : There are some significant moments in the association. I remember that in 2003, because we were hosted by Amen, which is a host that has disappeared, but which is a bit like Gandi, OVH, etc. So I had the subscription, we had the basic subscription. And then all of a sudden, faced with the crowds and traffic, Amen completely cuts off the server because we had exceeded the quotas. And me, a little naively, I rebel about LinuxFR, I remember, I say, there you go, really, “Amen doesn’t like free software, they removed Framasoft”, when it was just because they had their automatic quota thing, you exceeded and boom, you were deleted. So I arrived a little naively, but it was an important event because the article still exists. There were a lot of positive comments and that’s when I really realized that Framasoft would have represented something. And in addition, Amen accepted afterwards to make us an offer to the category a little higher in terms of machine resources.

But that’s when I really realized that it had spread and that we were first accepted by the community, especially for the LinuxFR which is still historically a community of free software players, let’s put it like that, and that we had a certain impact. So that for me, it was an important date, I remember well this removal of the service, the temporary removal of the site on Amen in 2003.

Alexis Kauffmann

And then 2004, that’s it, it’s the arrival of the forum. Really, you really have to imagine that there were no social networks. So, we didn’t have time to waste on social networks, saying “me, I, me”, I. And so, we had time to devote to helping each other. And it’s true that if you don’t know how to ask, if you know how to share, it worked at full speed at that time.

Pierre-Yves : And so, that’s when you decided to create the association with two other teachers?

Alexis : yes, actually, what was happening was that we were starting to be invited to events. And so, we were simply starting to have costs. And then, we also wanted to make posters, kakemonos, things like that. Really, really. And so, we had no structure. And then, the fact that we didn’t have a structure too, when we were invited, didn’t necessarily give confidence. People had free electrons, etc. And so, it was really, it was almost an administrative formality. I even remember thinking to myself, but it’s going to be weird because there’s going to be an association that comes along when we’re a community. Is it really…

I even remember the discussions, “Is the associative structure, is it really soluble in the commons?”, I want to say. I remember those discussions. In fact, ideally, it may have been a foundation, but not a French foundation. It didn’t fit. But I remember those discussions.

Alexis Kauffmann

So, in any case, it was above all administrative, because we didn’t plan at all to have employees and to welcome people like Pierre-Yves, for example, quite simply, at the time.

Walid : who is hosting the forum at the time? You need to have a minimum of technical knowledge at the time to set up a forum.

Pierre-Yves : That, as a result, was hosted by CITIC 74, which is also one of the structures that have disappeared. That is to say that it was a public body, perhaps a GIP, perhaps a public interest group, I don’t remember, from Haute-Savoie, which provided us free of charge with a machine that was itself administered by an administratorsys (Editor’s note: system administrator) from the University of Aix-Marseille, who did a wonderful job, who for years managed the technical parts. Because at the time, in the Framasoft association, there were almost no technicians. Almost all of us came from the national education sector. Really, I want to say, people who didn’t have a technical profile at all.

Alexis : It’s a succession of opportunities, encounters. Sometimes I say that I am at the initiative of Framasoft, but that’s not even true. It was Caroline and I when we were in this school, she was the one who pushed me. I won’t go into private life, but there was even a little story between us. So there’s a bit of love in the creation of Framasoft (laughs).

I would still like to say a word about perhaps the context of the time, the Internet as well as the time. It was very engaging, it was very motivating. There was still something promising, that is to say… We have to imagine, we are not going to be old fighters of the internet. There were no social networks. You have to imagine that, for example, on Google, they gave the same result to everyone. Of course! All the press was completely accessible for free, since the press sold the paper, sold the paper newspapers. So, they said to themselves, let’s put it online, it’s not a problem. Press articles were accessed via RSS. It was the press that went towards us. We didn’t go to the press, which was divided into articles, etc. It was a whole other world. There was Napster, it was something absolute and Emule, but Napster, it was absolutely fascinating. All of a sudden, we were sharing world music and besides, we were sharing it in a totally non-commercial way. And Emule too, in my opinion, it was also an interesting moment. There was also the emergence of blogs, little by little. There were discussions, there were exchanges, there was something that was perhaps a little different from the Internet we know today. I’ve sometimes intervened, I’d been asked a question and I might have thought that Framaceur couldn’t be created today because people may be less available and because the Internet is too centralized.

Walid : The models may have… That is to say, at the time, it was certainly much more logical to create an association and everything.

Pierre-Yves :

There are many projects that were created around those years, where the question of the creation of the common and projects of general interest or to be aimed at of collective interest, stronger where today we have more structures and associations, and that’s very good, which are militant on a subject, but which will above all aim to try to change a law, a share, etc. With always an associative landscape that is unfortunately very, very fragmented. And I think that today, creating an association in 2024 is administratively simpler, but politically more complex, because the levels of subsidies have collapsed, because associations are in competition with each other, whereas, as Alexis must remember, we worked a lot with other associations in fact.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

And we could have the same subject, there was room for everyone. Where today it has perhaps become more complicated. When I see the number of structures that are celebrating their 20th anniversary today, etc., I say to myself, “oh yes, in fact, these are still important projects that were created at those times”. As you said, Alexis, I’m not sure that launching Wikipedia in 2024 would actually work. Where space was free, there was perhaps a desire to co-construct differently. That doesn’t mean that there is no co-construction today, quite the contrary, but it was done in a different way. And as a result, Framasoft was able to find its place, at least in 2004-2006, very quickly. I remember, at the end of the post-creation of the association, a lot, a lot happened over these few years.

The arrival of Pierre-Yves Gosset

Walid : How did you actually get there? Did you arrive in 2004?

Pierre-Yves : Absolutely. I arrived in 2000… So, I found my first message on the forum. It dates from the end of 2004.

Alexis : it’s historic!

Pierre-Yves : That’s it. And I had already used the services of Framasoft. I had already contributed to Framasoft in the form of comments, etc. In fact, in 2004, I was working on an LMS, so a Learning Management System, a free software that allows you to distribute courses, etc., which was called Ganesha, because I think it no longer exists today. So I’m both a free software user, I’m a little bit of a developer, I don’t have a developer training at all, I’m an economist by training. On the other hand, my meeting with Framasoft was also through a very simple message where I write, in fact, I am wondering about a software that was called PHP-Nuke at the time, which was one of the first CMS in PHP.

Walid : I used it for a long time.

Pierre-Yves : I saw your reaction on the video. And indeed, I had a problem with PHP-Nuke. I’m going to ask the question on the Framasoft forum. And really, I think, within half an hour or an hour, my memories are a little fuzzy, but in any case, during the day, I have an answer from someone who answers me and this person, I have no idea who it is. I have no idea why she takes the time to answer me. She takes the time to answer me in a polite, clean way, explaining the different steps I have to take to solve my problem. For me, it clicked at that moment. So, it wasn’t by reading Jean-Claude Guédon’s article, but it was done by reading a response. And I said to myself, ah, but in fact, there are people who give their time without asking themselves the question of the quid pro quo. what was quoted earlier, if you don’t know, ask, if you know, share. And it is this world of sharing that, for me, makes the click. So, at that point, I started contributing to Framasoft. I am indeed, I think, one of the few developers to manifest myself as such on the forum. Alexis sees me arrive with my big clogs and does a very nice seduction act, in the mode “Ah, but a developer, but it’s so good, hey, wouldn’t you like to help us?”.

So, I am starting to give a helping hand. And in fact, I’m starting to work on different projects, especially from… It was in 2004-2005 a project called The OpenCD, which was a compilation of free software on CD-ROM – not even DVD at the time – and which I translate. I help with the translation into French and to make a French version of this tool for the distribution of free software that did not exist at the time. From The OpenCD will be born two other sub-projects and… that I’m going to port to Framasoft, which are FramaDVD, because suddenly, a CD was 600 megabytes, while a DVD was 4 gigabytes, so you can put more content, we put videos, we put a lot of things, etc. inside. And the Framakey project, which was a project for the distribution of free software on USB keys.

And so, these three projects interest me because it’s really something that allows free software to be distributed on a large scale. And somehow, Framasoft gives me the capacity and the structure to do it. And when I say the structure, the fact of being part of an association, then it is not the first association in which I participated, but it is the one in which I will invest myself a lot at that time. And I think it was in 2005 or 2006, I was secretary of the association. In 2007, I changed jobs. At the time, I was working for the CNRS on a project on which I was hired thanks to Framasoft.

So, the CNRS is launching, I’m going to say, an equivalent of Framasoft which will be called the Plume project for a free, useful, controlled platform, well, a useful and controlled software platform. And so, the CNRS hired me on a fixed-term contract because I was a member of Framasoft at the time and therefore I had a good knowledge of both a little bit of code, but especially of software. And this contract at the CNRS ends, because it was a fixed-term contract, the research lab that was called the UREC, the CNRS network unit, dissolves. The Plume project, we can see that it is coming to an end because the CNRS technology transfer department, at the time, did not like it. not really the idea of free software, because free software doesn’t bring in money for the CNRS, not in the way it would like it to make money.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

And so we were told nicely, and I was kindly told, that we would have to look elsewhere, and there was still a little bit of possibility to continue working, because the Plume project was still running, and two important elements were happening for Framasoft at that time. The first is that we had a little bit of money because we had Google advertising. at that time.

Framasoft’s financial resources in the early years

Walid : That was one of my questions, but how do you get money?

Pierre-Yves : In concrete terms, I remember Framasoft’s resources, I joined the association, the treasurer who is still a friend, Thomas Cézard… I think we should have had a budget of 800 euros per year, and so with 800 euros per year, we don’t get very far. And at some point, we said to ourselves, if we want to have a little bit of means, what do we have as a solution? And Google, so we have to put ourselves in place, we are in 2007, in the historical context, Google is not the bad guy. Google is not perceived as an enemy of free software at all

Walid : It’s the other way around

Pierre-Yves : That’s right, and Google doesn’t have at all the financial power that it has today and the economic, technical, and political dominance that it can have today. And suddenly, we decided to put Google advertising, which brought us in the most prosperous months up to 1200, almost a month I think, we were close to 2000 euros. It lasted I think 18 months of advertising. And so, it allows us to accumulate because at that time, there are zero employees at Framasoft. So, we are starting to have a bank account that is filling up a little. Not enough to pay a full-time person, but overall, we are starting to have a little bit of cash. And at the same time, I finished my contract at the CNRS and the CNRS told me, “in fact, we can’t renew your fixed-term contract. On the other hand, we still need your skills. Would you accept a performance?” And I said at that time, I discussed it in particular with Alexis, with the association’s office, and I said, “I found it interesting that there were employees at Framasoft”. Alexis also pushes in this direction by saying, “well yes, in fact, if we want to go second, it would still be not bad”. And the proposal that is made to the CNRS is to say, “pay the Framasoft association which will make Pierre-Yves Gosset’s working time available to you”. And the advantage is that this service was better paid than what Google advertising paid at the time.

And so, the first position was created both on the desire of the association to say, in fact, with employees, we will probably be able to better manage a certain number of projects within the association and give them a larger size. And on the other hand, money coming in… and I will nevertheless mention a third financial contribution that was significant for us at that time, which was the result of the dissolution of the Mozilla Europe association, which was managed by Tristan Nitot. And this association was dissolved. I’ve never had the underside of the story, you can always ask Tristan about that. But suddenly, the European association that supported Mozilla is dissolved. And the leaders of this association, including Tristan, decided to distribute the remaining funds among various associations, including APRIL, including Framasoft and other associations. And so, we ended up with money at that time. And one person, so I was secretary, so I left the association’s office at that time, saying “Ok, we can try to recruit someone today and we’ll see where it takes us”. Alexis?.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

Alexis : We can still say that it’s a little bit thanks to Google that you’re here (laughs).

Pierre-Yves : Google, the fact that public services are not always very well managed and the fact that there is an association that has been dissolved.

Alexis : It’s interesting to point out. And it’s true that I said earlier that today, Framasoft appears a bit like… a little bit the way forward. But then, we found ourselves putting Google ads and we weren’t necessarily proud of them because sometimes, the ads sent to adulterated downloads.

Pierre-Yves : OpenOffice is corrupted.

Alexis : OpenOffice, GIMP, etc. So, we were deceiving our users. I remember that. Our emails and our discussion groups, we were on Gmail at one point. I don’t know if you remember.

Pierre-Yves : yes, yes, absolutely.

Alexis : You pointed out that I started with Dreamweaver. And another anecdote also to say that it’s a journey too. By the way, more freedom, I want to say, the first license I adopted, by the way, was the Wikipedia license which was the GNU FDL, that is to say the GNU GPL adapted to documentation. And then came Creative Commons. And there, we were already in associative mode because I wanted it to be the CC by SA. And I remember that the others, overall, well, the first license we adopted, was the CC by NC SA. We put in the non-commercial clause because the members had decided that way. And we backed down later because we told ourselves that it wasn’t quite in line with all the freedoms of free software. But there was also a time, I don’t know if The Wayback Machine recorded it, but there was also a time when our license wasn’t purely free, in quotes, because there was the non-commercial clause.

I wanted to say that it’s true that, as much as the creation of the association was… Rather an administrative registration chamber and the importance, it was done next. It was retrospectively, retroactively that the creation of the company was fundamental because otherwise, we would not have been able to welcome Pierre-Yves. But it was really the arrival of Pierre-Yves that took us up a notch because we were a little overwhelmed by the loads and solicitations. We arrive in volunteer mode, at the end of the day, etc. We couldn’t do it anymore. And so, it really, the arrival of Pierre-Yves really took us to the next level. I think you can maybe develop the framaki a little bit because it was a project that was… There are people who quoted Framakey to me and didn’t even know that there was Framasoft behind it, for example.

Pierre-Yves : This is also the case for other Framasoft projects, from Peertube, for example, where people don’t know that it is Framasoft behind it.

The Framakey

Alexis : It makes you develop the Framakey project a bit, its history, because it’s quite interesting.

Pierre-Yves : In fact, once we had made The OpenCD that I was talking about earlier, that we said to ourselves, hey, it works on a USB key, Alexis sent me a message saying, “hey, it would be interesting to do this on a USB key”. So, my geek side, once again, I’m not a developer by training, but my geek side makes me, yes, in fact, it’s possible, there are solutions to run software on a USB key, and it’s much more interesting than having them on a CD, because if OpenCD or FramaDVD, etc., they were media on which you chose what software you were going to install on your machine, and they were transferred from the CD to your computer, and that’s it. But then, suddenly, it was really the idea of being able to say, I’m going to run Firefox on the USB key. And so, I plug in the USB key, I launch Firefox from the USB key, I find my bookmarks, etc. Then, I’m going to unplug the USB drive and I’m going to go to another computer and I’m also going to find my history, bookmarks, etc.

And that, as a result, I think I was hated within the national education system and a lot of companies by a lot of IT managers because it allowed people to run software that wasn’t installed and that was problematic for a long time. And so, at least for them. And so, the number of Framakey downloads over the years… I had started, the original project was largely due to the skills I had implemented on The OpenCD. Then, there is a person called Pascal Parraud who came to help me at that time also on the key. Later, there were other people who came back, I’m thinking of Laurent Sakka or others who came to the promotion aspect of the key. There was Arnaud (FAT 115), who also came later to complete. And so, we had a whole succession of people who came to enrich a software project that was totally community and some of whom still work today for the national education system.

Behind it, we have this USB key that spreads and we decide to make it a physical object. And here, I make the link with another Framasoft project which is Framabook. That’s how Framasoft decided to get out of the computer, in quotation marks, to focus on physical objects, whether it’s the book, whether it’s the USB key, etc.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

And there was another dimension that was given to the project, which was when the Île-de-France regional council decided to broadcast, for two or three years I think, maybe even more than that, the equivalent of the Framakey to all high school students, I don’t remember which class, to all high school students in Île-de-France. And so, we found ourselves overnight with a massive distribution. So that’s not at all us who managed it, it’s a company called Meliweb, which has long supported Framasoft financially, I was going to say in return, because we had provided the software base that they adapted for the Île-de-France Regional Council. And it made it possible to distribute the Framakey on a scale that we would never have reached, because it was, I think, 800,000 keys per year. If I don’t say too much nonsense, it wasn’t us who sold them, so I don’t have the exact figures, but it has spread very widely.

And in the end, I know that the last time I looked at the Framakey download figures, we were at more than 4.5 million. So, 4.5 million downloads for a software project is still starting to add up to a lot. All of this is spread out over, let’s say, about ten years, because today, it makes much less sense to do a project like Framakey. There are still people who use it, but it’s totally part of the projects, as Alexis said, through which people discovered free software, used free software, without necessarily knowing that it was free software and what free software was, and moreover, without knowing that it was made by a French-speaking association.

Indeed, it’s one of the projects that sums up quite well what Framasoft does, that is to say to offer something useful, tools, to the widest possible audience, by trying to package it in a slightly nice way, so that these people, in the end, find themselves using free software without necessarily knowing it.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

And I forgot, we also made a key with the Ubuntu FR association, on which there was the Framakey Windows and Ubuntu, so you really had a key that allowed you to go to just about any computer to use free software in total autonomy.

Alexis : The idea was anyway, so it was a minority of users, but to try to involve the minority of these users in the sharing of free software values, it doesn’t seem like much. And what could also make the association or the core of contributors grow, etc. There was also this dimension.

You mentioned the project of, how can I put it, the adventure a little bit in the material. The book is interesting. Framabooks, I think they’re something interesting in themselves, but also because if there are Pouhiou and Christophe Mazutti, it’s with Framabook that they arrived. So for that alone, it’s important.

Les Framabooks

Walid : Can you explain what Framabook is for people who don’t know and how the idea of Framabook comes about?

Alexis : It’s always a question of opportunity, of meeting. Here, it is one of the members of the creation of the association, Georges Silva, who was a school teacher, a teacher who must still be one, but unfortunately, I have not managed to contact him again. So there you go, so we have Georges Silva who was writing documentation and who had made a tutorial on Thunderbird which was quite substantial. I think there were about twenty pages in our house. And he was contacted by a publishing house that no longer exists, but it was O’Reilly, but O’Reilly France. O’Reilly still exists, it’s an institution in documentation, free software tutorials, but there was also a French branch. And so he decided to publish a book on the use of Thunderbird. So, Georges wrote this book with the publisher, but it was in classic copyright mode. That was how O’Reilly worked. Simply, the French publishing house, it is in fact in decline. O’Reilly, the parent company, decides, no, no, it’s not profitable, we close, we close everything. And so, Georges finds himself with this book on his hands, quite simply. He negotiated with O’Reilly to recover the rights, so that a free license could be put on it. And we, as we already had this book that was done, that had been done in an editorial way with O’Reilly, we decided to publish it ourselves. Because we already had a substantial book that had been written in that context. And that’s how the first Framabook was born, and others are chained together. But it was also a question of… There was an opportunity to seize, we said to ourselves, come on, why not, let’s go. And we also relied on… Pierre-Yves, maybe you can add to it about a publishing house in the making called InLibroVeritas.

Pierre-Yves : Absolutely, and it’s with Mathieu Pasquini, who was the director of this publisher, which is called InLibroVeritas, that we start to distribute other books, because you have to see, there, when you have… So the Framabook project is now, in quotation marks, frozen, because it gave birth to another Framasoft project called Des Livres en Commun, which aims to overturn the publishing model rather than anything else. But when Framabook was launched, it was still a bit of a crazy bet, for me, it’s really one of the projects I’ve worked on the least in Framasoft. But we had to go there to say to ourselves, we’re going to write books and publish them books under a free license. There weren’t many at the time. This project on Thunderbird, which Alexis is talking about, of which I still have a copy I think at home, Thunderbird 1.5, was the first one. And in the Framabook publishing house, I think we have gone up to 50 books ranging from comics, novels, tutorials, etc. So a biography of Richard Stallman, when you look at the number of books produced via Framabook, it represented, I had done the math once, I like to count things, we were at more than 20,000 pages written and published within this publishing house.

I don’t see it at all as a side project (Editor’s note: project launched in parallel) of Framasoft. Often, people say your main project is the free software directory, and then Framakey, Framabook are projects on the side. But in fact, all these projects aim at the same thing, which is how do we make people aware by making them manipulate whether it’s a software object, a book, a USB key, etc., that another world is possible, to quote a famous phrase. And that this other world can be non-commercial, it can be based on sharing, it can be based on the commons, etc. And so, on the contrary, it’s very, very coherent that it was Framasoft that carried out such a project at a given time.

Alexis: And on top of that, we were starting to be more proactive, especially in the Windows -> Linux migration. And I remember that among the books, the one on Ubuntu, you were more successful. It was Didier Roche who had written it and who managed to follow the different versions every six months. At the time, I think that…

Pierre-Yves : It was a lot.

Alexis : It was a lot. It was a lot, but in any case, we were at several thousand, or even 10,000 copies if you add it up. And 10,000 copies in the technical edition in French. It’s really not bad. And if not, there is also indeed the biography of Stallman which is still interesting. It’s true because it made us meet Christophe Mazutti, who is also a key member of the association’s history. There was a biography that had been written by a journalist, Sam Williams ?

Pierre-Yves : I think so.

Alexis : I don’t know. Well, it doesn’t matter. An American journalist who had done a bio on Stallman saying that he is still a major figure of the Free Software Foundation and the movement. And Stallman had insisted that this book be under a free license, of course. I came across it and said, “yes, it’s still interesting”. But the thing is, I was bad at English, and I still am. And so, that’s when I met Christophe who had a much better command of the language of Shakespeare and who says that it was interesting and that we got in touch with Christophe Stallman like that, the two together, it was quite funny. And Stallman’s answer was funny, it was, he said, “I agree, but on the other hand… There are a few small points to change because the journalist was not precise enough.” So we said okay, there are a few points to change, so we’re going to make a translation with a few points to change. No, not at all, in fact it’s a third of the book that has been modified. I think more or less, you gave a different biography from the first version, which also makes sense when you make free software with the different versions that follow. And it was a great project. After Christophe… To tell you about it, it hasn’t always been easy. It wasn’t always easy with Richard Stallman, it wasn’t always easy with the publisher who was Eyrolles, but the fact remains that we saw it through and that was also a great adventure.

And one last element is that there was, we didn’t have, I remember at the beginning we were really focused on tutorials, and then there was Stallman’s bibliography. And then I remember, I had a talk in Toulouse, I think it was on the issues of free license, with someone called Benjamin Jean.(Editor’s note: see his interview) who was also part of the Framasoft adventure, which is now at Inno3. Among the audience, there was someone called Pouhiou who told us that your publishing house is really interesting, but do you also accept novels? Oh yes, well no, we don’t have any, but why not? And that’s how Pouhiou got into the association and the adventure.

Framasoft’s graphic identities

Walid : There is also a question I wanted to ask you. There is really a graphic identity around Framasoft.

Pierre-Yves : That’s more recent.

Walid : Is it more recent?

Pierre-Yves : There have been two graphic identities that have followed one another. The first one around the penguin/penguin that was called the LL de Mars Pinguin. And then Alexis, maybe you want to talk about it?

Alexis : I can only tell Walid to do a complete show on LL de Mars. Because he’s a personality… For me, he is simply the greatest living contemporary artist. And he’s really an extraordinary personality. That’s all I can say. Among all these works, there were penguins, but they were completely depressed penguins. He had romantic problems with his girlfriend. And he had made a collection of penguins set in a situation, a little with irony, but with a lot of black humor. And it was really a moment of sadness. And I had extracted a few penguins that seemed a little more joyful in the story. I was a little clumsy, a little fat. I don’t remember. In any case, I say big because today, the logo is much thinner and slender. That’s why. And so, that was the first identity. But it’s true that you can speak for Dave, for David Revoy and the others, it’s true that today, the identity, it’s magnificent first of all, and it’s really anchored in people. As we have more than 25 years of history, so, obviously, there are differences. In any case, it was recuperation. At first, by the way, I didn’t even say it, it was after I got in touch with LL from Mars. At first, it was just wild recycling, but authorized by free licenses. I had extracted two or three things and then I had put a penguin with this idea of a clumsy penguin, but which… who still tries to fly and who can succeed in flying. And penguins don’t fly, so nothing is impossible in the lower world.

Pierre-Yves : That’s right. And it is rather from 2016-2017 that we meet via Pouhiou another artist called David Revoy, who is the illustrator of a comic book called Pepper and Carrot, which is today… I think, internationally known and which again has a very particular history in terms of free licenses, is that this comic book, it is published on the Pepper & Carot website under a free license, but it is also distributed by a huge comic book publisher which is Glénat. And so, David is for me, in my opinion, one of the few free authors who has managed to break down the boundaries of “Ok, actually, you can find Pepper & Carot at all good comic book distributors, but still the comic book is still under a free license”. And it just so happens that David is just one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life, but also one of the most talented.

In fact, we asked ourselves the question of how to illustrate the Contributopia campaign that was coming in 2017. And I remember that at that time, it was Pouhiou who said “I’m going to contact David, I’ll see what he can do”. And I think, in the half-day, he had made a drawing that was absolutely magnificent and that represented something that we had trouble projecting, which was what a positive imaginary of digital technology could be. And so, for me, it was absolutely wonderful. Well, I really had wonder about the thing, really, that he had done in sketching on Krita. Because David is also one of the big contributors to Krita. As a user, I think that if Krita today… Basically, there are three softwares, GIMP, Krita, Inkscape. And the fact that Krita is growing today is partly thanks to David. Because David is living proof that by using only Krita, but by using it intelligently and using it well, you are quite capable of producing something professional-grade. And so, he had just made us a small drawing, but a small pencil under Krita of what the Understoodbutopia campaign was going to be with characters that we see from behind, who look at planets in the distance, kind of flying globes that represented a little bit of the digital worlds in which we wanted to take our audience by saying that “digital, it is not necessarily something harmful or toxic.” We can have a positive imaginary of digital technology.

And David was able to illustrate this with a crazy talent. And since that year, we have been working with David several times a year. And there you go, we get along extremely well. And he perfectly understood what was the state of mind of Framasoft, which did not want to detach itself from the general public. And the other advantage of David’s illustrations, apart from the fact that they are indeed very recognizable because there is a style, I suck at it, but I’m going to say a little kawaii, a little manga. it’s very cute, etc. But it also allows, in this graphic communication, to keep the Startup Nation at a distance.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

That is to say, when we go to, I don’t know, framapad.org, the first drawing that welcomes us does not correspond to the graphic charters, I don’t know, I’m going to say from the DINUM, which are very pretty by the way, the question is not there, but which have something very clean, with their own graphic codes, etc. and who say, hello, you’re on an institutional site. We wanted to break that code. And it’s thanks to David and Pouhiou that we managed to do it.

Walid : The clock is ticking. We talked about the first employee. If we go as far as the launch of Degoogelions Internet, which we will talk about in a second episode, then the number of employees increases, in fact? What’s going on in the meantime, actually?

Alexis : That’s interesting. I said that the arrival of an association in a community that was informal was already something important and delicate. It’s a tricky passage. The arrival of the first employee as well. And… It was a lot to do with Pierre-Yves’ personality, skills, profile who knew how to work remotely, who knew how to take care of himself. There were a lot of things that we hadn’t necessarily anticipated. We thought that all the employees were going to be like Pierre-Yves, for example (laughs). Not to throw flowers at him, but it’s true. What I remember is that we welcomed a second employee, really very friendly, competent, we won’t name him, but because it didn’t go well. Why didn’t it go well? Because the board of directors of the association I was part of, we managed it badly, we didn’t have that experience, we didn’t necessarily have the time, it was remote, it was difficult. So it’s not self-evident, the question of all of a sudden, already an association in a community of facts, then an employee who is paid full-time to do it, while the others are volunteers and do it a little when they want. It’s not easy. And by the way, Pierre-Yves, it also took a lot of flexibility to respond from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., because that’s where we were available, it’s not working hours, but that’s how it is. And this second employee, in any case… What I remember, it made us think because we had trouble managing it, quite simply, managing it. But in any case, I remember that there was a moment of great hesitation. Then in the end, it’s what can we make him do? Especially since we had already agreed that he was leaving. And I remember that we had in the pipeline to install an instance of Etherpad at home. I remember very well. And I said well… We’re going to call him Framapad and then we’re going to ask him to take care of that over the two months he has left. And that’s how Framapad was born and that’s how all the Framas, Framasoft’s cloud instances, were born.

And so, I also wanted to end with my own personal experience, because as I was talking about the difficulties of managing employees in the association, I don’t know what it means. My arrival, especially my departure, is also a significant date in the association and founder. I think Pierre-Yves will tell us about it later in the next section. But I think it was there too, it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t necessarily well anticipated. And I, I went from founder, president for years to employee, it was quite catastrophic, it must be said, for many reasons. But what I want to say is that it also illustrates the difficulties of these associations. We were talking about Wikipedia or APRIL or La Quadrature… All these associations, they have also experienced crises with their employees. It hasn’t been a long quiet river. And these are questions that arise precisely when we are in the commons, when we are a community, when there are volunteers, employees, people who are available, not available. It’s not easy to manage all that. The decision-making process. When there is consensus, it is quite easy. But then, when you have to choose and you don’t agree, you have to decide, how do you make decisions? All this is an interesting question in the life of a structure.

The departure of Alexis Kaufmann and the transitions in the associations

Walid : That makes me think of a question. A few days ago I was transcribing my old episodes (Editor’s note: GLPI in community mode). And I was doing a transcript of an episode that was a bit special for me because it’s an episode that talks about my own experience on a software called GLPI. So a historical software. And I interviewed the two founders, the two historical maintainers of the project. And we were talking about the transition of maintainers. And there’s one of them who says, actually, the transition for me, it was very simple because GLPI was my baby. And three months later, I had a real physical baby, a real baby. And so, in fact, the transition was made very quickly. And in fact, when you left Framasoft, didn’t you have a period of depression?

Alexis : Very complicated because, obviously, Pierre-Yves is a friend, in fact. I mean, it’s not fair, he wasn’t a co-worker. And all of these were people who were also in… That’s it, I considered them friends. We have experienced some very strong things. Even if sometimes, they could be friends without knowing their private life. There are some, I didn’t even know if they had children or not. Because we didn’t necessarily go into that field. For some, yes, but for others, no. So yes, it was extremely complicated. And I went straight to Taiwan. So I went very far. And for two years, absent from the networks, absent from social networks, I did something else altogether. I was a math teacher in Taiwan and I didn’t want to hear anything more. No, no, it was difficult. It was frankly difficult. Because we mixed the professional side, the personal side, the friendship side. And no, it was personally difficult and at the same time, I think it was also necessary for the association.

Pierre-Yves : I think back to what you said Alexis on the side where we saw that in other associations. I think you were quoting La Quadrature, Wikipedia, etc. I’m seeing this in many other associations and I can still live it today. There is something very Freudian about killing the father. And I think that there are these phases in the associative environment that are quite different from the entrepreneurial environment where it is the person who has invested or who carries out his project, etc. In the associative environment, it is quite special since it is the members who make up the association. However, the members change, the members evolve. And at some point, I will continue to defend to the end all the contributions that Alexis may have had, because, very clearly, the projects were driven by a vision that he had of the free. And if I hadn’t had my job at the CNRS, I might never have been interested in free software, if at some point, there weren’t people like Alexis who had said, “Hey, there’s a project in which you can find your place.” And at the same time, as nothing lasts forever in this world, there aren’t that many projects that are 20 years old. But what makes the projects last is also a… The ability to say, “Okay, actually, the project… must evolve or can evolve, it depends on how you position yourself obviously, with the people who make it up.”

And so, for me, who was there in the association in 2004 and who is still there in 2024, I see the populations – here we are digressing on the associative world – but it is not only related to free software, I see it in ecologist or other circles, where necessarily every 5 to 10 years, In other words, there are crises of mutation of the associative project which make up the people who make it up have to either question the vision or distance themselves. That’s exactly what I did when I left the co-management of Framasoft a few months ago.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

It’s something complex, obviously. And obviously, these creators of suffering, I am unfortunately very aware of both what Alexis has experienced, but what other founders of associations have experienced. And there have been a lot of them who have gone through this, including in the free software sector, I’m thinking of the FDN, La Quadrature, etc. And these are environments that are not necessarily kissing bears. We can be on projects that are, but the associative project, when we actually meet… When Alexis left, we said to each other “Ok, what do we do?” And we have to think back to that moment. I very sincerely… We may talk about it again in the next episode, but there were a few thousand euros left in the account. At that time, there were two employees. And we said to each other “Ok, do we stop or do we continue?”

Alexis : So yes, I suffered, but I don’t victimize myself at all.

Pierre-Yves : No, no, absolutely.

Alexis :

As much as I was a good president for a certain time, I was simply a bad employee. The problem is that I couldn’t really know before. And besides, why did I make this request? I was the one who made this request, because I could no longer reconcile my professional life, Framasoft and my personal life, family, child, etc. Milestones to cross, it’s interesting. I think that there are also visions. And so, killing the father, I hear it very well – some of them did it with Stallman too, by the way – (laughs).

Alexis Kauffmann

On the other hand, the bad employee, I remember that at the very beginning, I met Frédéric Couchet, who has been an employee of APRIL since the beginning. And he said to me: “But what is your mission letter?” I say “Well, I don’t have a mission letter”. “But you’re sick!” “No, we get along very well, there’s no problem”… That’s it, we were a bit at that level at the beginning, you know. Things weren’t necessarily written, so it floated quite a bit. And then I was absolutely with my years as president, I didn’t get you used to being outvoted or to being told to do this. So, I started to open my mouth and say, “But are you sure I really have to do this?” And that’s it, it was the beginning of the end.

What can we learn from this period?

Walid : If now, we take a step back… What do you remember from this whole period?

Alexis : I remember that it’s still relevant, quite simply. The little extra soul that free software had, in any case, when I discovered it, it is more than ever present and necessary. And today, where I am positioned at the ministry, there is talk of achieving the dual digital and ecological transformation at the same time, for example, at the intersection. I think there are the values of free software. So, I call it digital commons at my level, but it’s still and urgently relevant. What we didn’t foresee in relation to the origins is that there are things that were technological advances, but that may have complicated our task, such as the cloud, the mobile, the advent of the telephone. It’s not a great tool for editing, for writing. It’s reading, yes, but less writing, even if you can write little messages. To make real projects, it’s more complicated. Today, AI is not easy. Because Pierre-Yves, he said, I asked on a forum, I was answered in such a way that it made me… Today, you can ask AI and not necessarily on a forum. Will AI bring us closer together or will it rather bring us closer together – these are real questions – will it rather distance us.

Pierre-Yves : What I take away from it seems like a great plan to say that, but it’s still the human side. Indeed, as Alexis said, I wasn’t a good employee, but the fact is that during those ten years, I took a monstrous step of working for Framasoft, whether as a volunteer or as an employee. I made friendships that still exist today. I think we have transformed the lives of some people. A few weeks or months ago, a person who is now a member of the association, who is a volunteer in the assault, who told me, but… “For me, Framasoft just changed my life. The person I am today, I wouldn’t have been without having listened to conferences on what the GAFAM problem is, without having shown that there was another digital that was possible, etc.”

And so, what I remember is the capacity for transformation, admittedly minimal compared to that of Google, but absolutely not negligible that a tiny French-speaking association can have. There you go, finally, and Framasoft… This was also the case in Alexis’ time, it is always between 30 and 40 members. There are not more of us today than there used to be. I find it quite fabulous to think that with so few means, we have managed to transform so many things. It seems totally lacking in humility: but suddenly, factually, I can demonstrate it. I have activity reports. feedback, we have user surveys, etc., which tell us no, no, but in fact, you have changed things.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

Alexis : I’d like to add, so I don’t want to talk about money when you talk about humans, but it’s true that when I was at Framasoft, it’s there in the middle, we launched the first donation campaigns.

What is still impressive is that Framasoft’s independence, because most of these funds come from donors. And I remember that on the donation campaigns, we also gave people the opportunity to just tell us, to comment, to say something. Going to read was heartwarming because of the impact we could have.

Alexis Kauffmann

It’s the encounters and then you find yourself with people, I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but with a kind of confidence. Because I look back at environments where there is still, in quotation marks, sometimes a little hypocrisy, where there are markets, where there are customers, things like even if it’s at the public level, but where there are also strategies of power and careerism, you name it. When we found ourselves like that, in quotation marks, free software players, sometimes having exchanged throughout the year remotely, as we say today, there was immediately a connection, something that made it very pleasant to share time with all these people, perhaps a little too masculine, that’s also true. It is an extremely valuable driver to continue to want to move forward together.

Final Words

Walid : That’s kind of a nice last word. I don’t know if you want to say a final word too, Pierre-Yves, before we go back on air.

Pierre-Yves : What I was saying earlier suits me about what we have been able to bring to the world… which is once again with a lot of humility, which is not something gigantic either.

But once again to have been a transformative element, and I think it will make the transition with the second episode, but to move a little bit from national education to popular education. We were somehow forced to go through this phase of the first ten years to be able to start the second. And I don’t think we could have gone straight into a phase, well, we’re going to do popular digital education, without going through this whole phase where we experimented with a lot of things and where we asked ourselves very, very few questions because it came, as Alexis said, from opportunities, from encounters, of alignments of planets. And we said to ourselves, hey, we just have to try this. And that, once again, I am an associative activist before being a free software activist. I think that associations still allow this today and that is still wonderful.

Pierre-Yves Gosset

Walid : Not much more to say except that I am absolutely in awe of everything that has been done, everything that is still being done at Framasoft. That’s exactly it, I find it quite crazy how you can have an impact when you can be a small structure. But we’ll talk about it in more detail in the second episode. Alexis and Pierre-Yves, thank you very much for taking the time to exchange and talk about your memories. I see that Alexis, it allowed you to rethink a little bit and reread things about it.

Alexis : I was saying that I had very, very… I didn’t even remember OpenCD, for example, Pierre-Yves. It had completely passed me. That’s right, it was Open CD, I remember. It’s true. And then, it also allowed us to reflect on our own journey, the way we live things. What is certain is that there are people who have told me that I am not a good person. It’s still every day. “Really? This time, he was at the Initiative. with Framasoft”. It’s very impressive to have managed to go through different stages like this over this quarter of a century. Not all structures succeed in this, knowing that in addition, the technology has evolved enormously. You will have the opportunity to say that.

Pierre-Yves : on the second episode.

Alexis : There is a great deal of flexibility, which I also appreciate very much, but that, you will say, is that there has been a renewal, especially of generations, which not all the associations have managed to do, I won’t name names, but it’s… There was really a fresh air that blew through the association. I admire what she is today. I’m proud to have driven this when I was in Bobigny.

Walid : Thank you both very much. For the listeners of Projets Libres!, I hope that once again, you enjoyed this episode. There is a second part that will arrive with the second part of Framasoft. I invite you to share this episode, to comment on it too.

See you soon for the second episode. For those who will be there, we can meet at the Capitole du Libre too, where I’m going to give a conference on Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m . to talk about the podcast and explain everything I do. For those who want to make the comeback, it will be with me. Listen, Alexis and Pierre-Yves, be well. And then I hope to see you next time. Pierre-Yves, see you soon, but see you next time, Alexis, to talk to you.

Pierre-Yves : Thank you Walid.

Alexis : Thank you very much.

This episode was recorded on October 19, 2024.

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later.