Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison

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Hi I'm Jeremy Allison
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with Google's Open Source Program Office
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and I'm here at the Free Software Foundation's
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LibrePlanet conference here in Boston.
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And I'm very lucky to be here with Karen Sandler
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who is the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.
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Welcome Karen.
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Thanks Jeremy. [laughs]
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So Karen originally was a lawyer
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at the Software Freedom Law Center
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and then moved over to being the Executive Director
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of the GNOME Foundation
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taking over from Stormy Peters
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who I interviewed a few years ago.
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So Karen, could you tell us
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a little bit more about the GNOME Foundation
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and what it is that you do for
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Free Software?
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Sure, and actually I am still a lawyer
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so you made it sound like I was a lawyer
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and maybe people would like me better
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if I weren't still a lawyer
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but I am.
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Actually the legal work that I do now
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is almost entirely pro bono work
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at the Software Freedom Law Center still
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even though I no longer work there
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and also for Conservancy
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and also for QuestionCopyright.org
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and I've also just recently have become
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an advisor of the Ada Initiative
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which I'm really excited about.
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But you asked about the GNOME Foundation
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which I'm the Executive Director of
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and I'm the luckiest lawyer in the world
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to have that job. [laughs]
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What exactly do you want to know about it?
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You asked a good question and I got distracted
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by talking about my legal background.
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OK, so, for people who may not know
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GNOME is a Free Software desktop for, um,
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it shipped on most Linux distributions as the default desktop
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or as I am at the LibrePlanet conference
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[laugh]
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perhaps I should say GNU/Linux distributions.
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— as the default desktop, and
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it's, if people are used to it
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it's the visual interface that you would see if you're using the desktop
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so it's what drives the windows
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the mouse etc.
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It's the visual look of it.
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So what makes GNOME different from other desktop software?
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Yeah, and I'd also add that GNOME is also the backbone of
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quite of number of GNU/Linux distributions.
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There's a lot of GNOME in Ubuntu and also Linux Mint
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and the OpenSuSE distribution
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has GNOME 3 as a default.
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Don't forget Fedora!
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And Fedora has GNOME —
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yeah, well I mean I'm going through it —
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And also — so Fedora and also
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Debian uses GNOME 3 as default as well.
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So it is actually ah pretty well deployed.
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What makes GNOME different
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from other desktops, you ask,
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is, well, it's just so pretty!
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So when I was sitting there as a lawyer
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at the Software Freedom Law Center
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and GNOME 3 came out
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I was astounded.
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I hadn't really thought too much about
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the step before except to be frustrated
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that it was hard to explain to non-GNU/Linux users
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why I cared so much that
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I was using kind of an uglier desktop
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or you know I used my old computer
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and why freedom mattered so much.
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And when I saw GNOME 3 I was bowled over.
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It was so sleek and pretty and beautiful
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And I felt like it was exactly the thing
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that we need to bridge the gap to new users
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and to users who are just coming into this space.
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I mean, through my medical devices advocacy
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— and we may talk about that after, I'm not sure —
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I come across a lot of people
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who are Mac users
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or people who don't really know too much about
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Free and Open Source Software
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and the biggest complaint that they have
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when they start looking into it
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is that it's so difficult to use.
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And so what GNOME, and GNOME 3 in particular, has
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is that it's just so easy and so beautiful.
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So I'm really proud to be affiliated with it
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and I think that it's a great strategy.
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And we're about to release GNOME 3.4
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probably by the time this is posted
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3.4 will probably be out, since it's just coming out on Wednesday
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but there are a lot of amazing improvements
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that are coming in with 3.4.
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And it's only going to get better from there.
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So I believe the GNOME 3 slogan is
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'made of easy'
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I thought it was made of software.
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So one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions,
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or Linux distributions, is Ubuntu.
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And Ubuntu has chosen to use its own separate interface
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called Unity rather than sticking with the GNOME 3 shell.
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So what was the— what's behind that?
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And is there a chance that Unity can be unified
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as it were? With the GNOME desktop?
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I think that's a great question
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and I don't mean to turn the tables too much here
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but a lot of the decision to go to Unity
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happened before I became Executive Director of GNOME.
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I've only been Executive Director of GNOME
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for seven or eight months now and
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you I believe were an advisory board representative
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during that time.
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[laughter]
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Well thank you.
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But what I guess what is going on in the GNU/Linux space
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is that we're realising just what I said before
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which is just that we have a real challenge
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to reach new users and to reach unsophisticated —
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er, I think saying 'unsophisticated'
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that's really talking down to these users.
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I don't mean it like that, I mean non-power users.
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Not — you know, users that aren't developers
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and sort of understanding the fact that if Free Software is going to be successful
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we have to reach a much wider audience.
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And I think that's also what Canonical is trying to do with Unity.
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And so both of these efforts are actually
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building on the same technology.
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So Canonical is still very active in the GNOME community.
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They're still a member of our advisory board and
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you'll see that the GNOME 3.2 press release
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had a quote from Canonical on it as well.
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So there's a lot of work being done together,
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and there's a lot of you know a lot of sharing
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and a lot of combined efforts
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which I think is really good.
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And at the end of the day
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there are two different competing desktop experiences
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but that share a lot of technology.
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So there are actually three different competing desktops.
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Well there's more than that!
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Well this is true, but the other popular one is KDE
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which I believe these days just stands for
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the K Desktop Environment.
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Is there a chance do you guys work together with
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the other Linux desktop which is KDE
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and do you colloborate on technology?
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Well actually I would think that if we're going to
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talk about the main desktop environments
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I think we if I mean we talk about GNOME
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and we talk about Unity
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we should also talk about Linux Mint
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which is built on GNOME 3 technologies
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but is a distinctive environment.
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And then there are a whole other, a whole other host
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of desktops that people like because
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they're tailored to their particular needs.
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And that's great. That's one of the benefits of Free Software
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is that we can take the technology that people make
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and refine it and make it into something that we want.
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KDE actually pre-dates GNOME as a project.
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There was a licensing problem when
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KDE was originally launched about 15 years ago
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and after about six months the — Miguel de Icaza
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and Federico and other early GNOME developers
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decided that they wanted to fix that licensing problem
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and make a truly free desktop.
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And so two ultimately free desktops were born
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and they've been competing ever since.
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We do work with KDE quite a lot.
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We've had a couple of desktop summits,
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we do some hackfests together.
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We're trying to increase areas of collaboration
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whereever we can.
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So um here's an interesting thing:
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the desktop, the Linux desktop, is getting really pretty,
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very easy to use, and yet
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on the plane I was flying out here
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I went to the bathroom and looked around.
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There was one old guy using a laptop,
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myself, who also had a laptop which I wasn't using,
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another old guy who was using a laptop.
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Every other person using a computer on that plane
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was using a tablet PC, mainly an iPad.
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What is GNOME doing to address the complete change
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in computing that appears to be taking place
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that desktop computing is for old people
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and everyone else uses tablets?
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That's a really good question.
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I would actually say that a few years ago
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if you looked around on a plane,
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not that many people had laptops.
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Some people had laptops but not that many.
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And I think that largely, and this is actually just
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I'm sort of stepping away from talking on behalf of GNOME here
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I'm just saying that as an observer of technology in our society
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that I think what a lot of these tablet devices are doing
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are replacing a niche that we haven't had before.
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So I think that people are doing things with those
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with tablet computers that are not necessarily
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replacing laptops but they're sort of you know
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addressing a whole new need
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that phones were sort of starting to get at
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but weren't quite, so I think that that makes it a little more complicated.
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I do think that are— that technology is changing
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and the way that we think about it is changing.
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And the number of people who expect access
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to it have changed.
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Which is why you know all of these pushes
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in the GNU/Linux environments to make all of our interfaces
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very easy to use are coming from.
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Because we perceive the fact that people
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and again my mother hates it when I talk about her
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but five years ago she would have never used
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a computer for anything!
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I kept, every year I would try to do something
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"Mom, let's put our recipes in, you know,
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let's share information, you know!"
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And nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing.
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Now, she does everything.
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I mean, it's just, basically technology has gotten to a point
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her friends are started using it, everybody's started using it.
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She, you know, so people who didn't use computers before
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are using them and that means there's a whole
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different kind of computer usage
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that's being represented in these tablets.
9:47 - 9:49

And it's still early days for GNOME 3.
9:49 - 9:53

So basically we have gone and rebuilt GNOME as GNOME 3
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and created this awesome beautiful desktop environment
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and we'll have to see where it goes from here.
9:58 - 10:01

So I know there are efforts to bring it on to tablets.
10:01 - 10:03

There are efforts to bring it on to mobile space.
10:03 - 10:05

And hopefully we'll make sure they get somewhere.
10:05 - 10:07

But it takes time.
10:07 - 10:09

And Free Software unfortunately sometimes
10:09 - 10:10

because of its very nature
10:10 - 10:11

because they're community development
10:11 - 10:13

because often they're non-profit driven
10:13 - 10:16

takes a little longer sometimes.
10:16 - 10:17

But I hope we'll get there.
10:17 - 10:19

So your talk today was actually about
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accessibility on the GNOME 3 desktop.
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Could you describe for able-bodied viewers
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what accessibility on a desktop means?
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Yeah well as somebody pointed out in the question section of the talk
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accessibility means a lot of things
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and it means a lot of different things
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to a lot of different people.
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Accessibility to me means that people can use
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computers regardless of disability.
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So in the GNOME world or the things that GNOME is
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most focused on, are visual impairments.
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So, and that's partly for historical reasons
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but we have a lot of effort in trying to get the
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desktop much more usable by visually impaired users.
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And I would say that that's a very large portion
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of the accessibility efforts that we do.
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But we do other efforts as well.
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Actually we have a testimonial on our website now
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because we've launched an accessibility campaign
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with GNOME where we want to make
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2012 the year of accessibility at GNOME
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so you can donate on the GNOME website
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and give to our campaign.
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But along with the campaign to explain it to people
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we've launched these testimonials
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from people who are, who you know have disabilities
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who are using GNOME for every day.
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And one of those is a person with visual impairment
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who uses GNOME to you know
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basically to use a computer and make a living
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but — as a developer —
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but we also have somebody who I think
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I should have looked this up before today
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I think he has cystic fibrosis and he's severely disabled
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and he's just thrilled that GNOME 3 makes it possible
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for him to use a computer at all by himself.
11:55 - 11:58

So with GNOME 3 he can, he says he can,
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you know he can search on the Internet
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for music videos and talk with his friends.
12:02 - 12:04

And he never thought that he'd be able to do that by himself.
12:04 - 12:07

So accessibility means a lot of things.
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For us it means you know we will, we definitely
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want to push forward making our desktop usable by everybody
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partcularly people with particular disabilities like blindness.
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So the other thing that you're very interested in
12:22 - 12:26

is women in computing
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and I believe that’s the Ada Initiative
12:28 - 12:30

that you’re associated with.
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Could you tell our viewers
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a little more about that?
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Yeah I’d love to and
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it’s actually two things
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and I think one led me
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to the other. The first one is
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the GNOME Outreach Program
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for Women and Google is a sponsor
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of the program and we’re so
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grateful that Google sponsors interns
12:45 - 12:48

in our community
12:48 - 12:49

because what our program does
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is we specifically invite women
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to apply and take on —
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it’s inspired by Google Summer of Code actually
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— and it encourages them to come into projects.
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They don’t need to be [into?]
13:00 - 13:02

development although many of them are
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we have marketing interns,
13:03 - 13:07

design interns, you know, documentation interns.
13:07 - 13:08

And what these women do
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is that they come in,
13:09 - 13:10

and in order to apply
13:10 - 13:12

you must have made contributions already
13:12 - 13:13

into the project so basically
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it specifically invites women to come
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and participate in our community
13:18 - 13:20

and tells them how to get started.
13:20 - 13:22

And in order to even submit the application
13:22 - 13:23

you have to make contacts with people,
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talk to them, figure out, you know,
13:25 - 13:27

what the needs are in the project
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and make a real fix.
13:29 - 13:32

So the program’s been really successful
13:32 - 13:35

and what we’ve done is basically systematically addressed
13:35 - 13:36

all of those reasons why
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we think women are excluded
13:38 - 13:39

or have traditionally not been present in the
13:39 - 13:41

Free and Open Source Software community.
13:41 - 13:43

And at GNOME it’s been tremendously successful:
13:43 - 13:45

a very high percentage of the women
13:45 - 13:47

that participate in our programs
13:47 - 13:48

stay in our community.
13:48 - 13:51

I think, there’s a number that —
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I think it’s something like
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40% of the women who participated in, uh,
13:55 - 13:57

two rounds ago
13:57 - 13:58

and the round before that
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— not only stayed in our community
14:00 - 14:01

but were active in outreach.
14:01 - 14:03

So they were mentors,
14:03 - 14:04

they were speaking
14:04 - 14:06

on behalf of GNOME to get more people involved
14:06 - 14:07

because they had such a good experience.
14:07 - 14:09

And so it’s this kind of thing and
14:09 - 14:12

the GNOME community has changed so much since I first became involved in it
14:12 - 14:14

many years ago where now I go to a conference
14:14 - 14:16

and there are women there.
14:16 - 14:18

And not only that, there’s a supportive community
14:18 - 14:20

where, you know, sometimes when
14:20 - 14:22

I have a bad day
14:22 - 14:24

I posted a blog recently where I had spoken
14:24 - 14:26

on a panel at South by Southwest [SXSW]
14:26 - 14:31

and my discussion was so intellectual and high level
14:31 - 14:33

— but I posted a photo of me
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and the other three panelists and
14:35 - 14:39

somebody commented on a specific part of my anatomy
14:39 - 14:40

oh
14:40 - 14:42

and it shocked me and I remembered —
14:42 - 14:43

That is gross.
14:43 - 14:47

“Oh! That is why I don’t post photos of myself generally!”
14:47 - 14:48

But it was like
14:48 - 14:51

“I’m already a seasoned member of our community,
14:51 - 14:54

one bad comment isn’t going to turn me away.”
14:54 - 14:55

But five years ago,
14:55 - 14:58

I maybe would have just gone away.
14:58 - 14:59

But I knew that I could go to the
14:59 - 15:02

women’s outreach forum on the GNOME server
15:02 - 15:04

and I — you know, on the IRC channel —
15:04 - 15:05

and we all talked about it and
15:05 - 15:06

three other people said
15:06 - 15:09

“I had that happen to me last week”
15:09 - 15:11

and it’s unfortunate that it’s so common
15:11 - 15:12

but we’ve created infrastructure,
15:12 - 15:14

we’ve created ways that we can talk about it
15:14 - 15:15

that allows women to cope and understand
15:15 - 15:18

that our community is more valuable and
15:18 - 15:20

not just represented by the few bad actors.
15:20 - 15:24

So the GNOME Outreach Program which is the fantastic
15:24 - 15:28

and Marina who is actually at Red Hat
15:28 - 15:30

and she does this and she’s amazing,
15:30 - 15:32

she’s the one who spearheads this effort,
15:32 - 15:33

it’s incredible.
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You’re laughing?
15:34 - 15:36

No, I’ve actually interviewed Marina,
15:36 - 15:38

if people want to look back
15:38 - 15:40

you can find an interview with her
15:40 - 15:41

on exactly this topic.
15:41 - 15:44

Oh OK, so I’ll skip to the Ada Initiative.
15:44 - 15:45

Yeah.
15:45 - 15:47

which is — so I’ve just become an advisor
15:47 - 15:49

to that because I went to a conference
15:49 - 15:52

in Melbourne when I was there for Linux Conf Australia
15:52 - 15:55

They had this — it’s called AdaCamp
15:55 - 15:56

and I was astounded by
15:56 - 15:59

how many articulate amazing interesting women
15:59 - 16:00

there were who had so much more
16:00 - 16:03

information about women in technology
16:03 - 16:04

than I ever had.
16:04 - 16:06

I’ve been interviewed as a woman in Free Software
16:06 - 16:08

in the past and [laughs] —
16:08 - 16:11

following the old axiom that
16:11 - 16:12

in order to be an expert
16:12 - 16:13

about women in Free Software
16:13 - 16:15

you just had to be one.
16:15 - 16:16

Yeah.
16:16 - 16:16

[laughs]
16:16 - 16:19

So they — but these women had statistics
16:19 - 16:21

and they had real knowledge
16:21 - 16:24

and they had amazing recommendations of things that
16:24 - 16:27

Free Software projects and software companies
16:27 - 16:31

can do to make sure that
16:31 - 16:34

they’re actually encouraging women to participate.
16:34 - 16:36

And so that’s why I decided to affiliate with them,
16:36 - 16:37

and to support them.
16:37 - 16:38

Their work is incredible.
16:38 - 16:39

They’ve helped create
16:39 - 16:41

codes of conduct for conferences,
16:41 - 16:43

they’ve helped deal with problems as they arise,
16:43 - 16:44

they’ve helped draw attention to the issue
16:44 - 16:46

in the field, so it’s great,
16:46 - 16:47

the Ada Initiative.
16:47 - 16:48

That’s really good,
16:48 - 16:50

so that’s the search term if
16:50 - 16:52

people want to find out more about it.
16:52 - 16:55

Because we could do with
16:55 - 16:56

more women in engineering,
16:56 - 16:59

and in the Free Software communities.
16:59 - 17:01

So the other interesting thing that
17:01 - 17:05

you deal with is you have a very interesting
17:05 - 17:07

perspective on Free Software
17:07 - 17:09

as it relates to medical devices,
17:09 - 17:11

why that's really important.
17:11 - 17:13

I don't want you to go into any specific details
17:13 - 17:15

but maybe you could explain to our viewers
17:15 - 17:18

a little bit about how important that is.
17:18 - 17:21

Yeah, I don't know how to explain it
17:21 - 17:22

without at least getting into
17:22 - 17:24

the specific story of me
17:24 - 17:26

but I'll make it really short
17:26 - 17:29

and it's that I have a heart condition
17:29 - 17:33

I have a very big heart
17:33 - 17:35

and I'm fine, I have no symptoms
17:35 - 17:37

but I am at a very high risk of suddenly dying.
17:37 - 17:38

And I was already a lawyer
17:38 - 17:40

at the Software Freedom Law Center
17:40 - 17:41

when I was told that I needed
17:41 - 17:42

a pacemaker/defibrillator
17:42 - 17:46

so — and I'd been a programmer back in college
17:46 - 17:48

— so my first question was
17:48 - 17:50

"Well, what is the software on the device?"
17:50 - 17:52

And the doctor not only had no answer for me
17:52 - 17:54

he'd never thought about that question before.
17:54 - 17:56

The medical device rep came in
17:56 - 17:58

who happened to be there that day
17:58 - 17:59

had also never thought about that question
17:59 - 18:01

and had no answer.
18:01 - 18:06

And so I began this big discovery that
18:06 - 18:08

to make a long story short
18:08 - 18:10

brought me to the realisation that
18:10 - 18:12

actually the Food and Drug Administration
18:12 - 18:13

is not reviewing
18:13 - 18:15

the source code on these devices
18:15 - 18:19

because they're not asking for the
18:19 - 18:20

source code to review it,
18:20 - 18:22

they actually don't even keep a copy.
18:22 - 18:23

So there are all these issues
18:23 - 18:25

with the fact that we're all relying on these
18:25 - 18:27

medical device companies
18:27 - 18:30

for creating and testing their own software.
18:30 - 18:32

Which, you know, these companies
18:32 - 18:33

have an interest in making sure that
18:33 - 18:35

nobody dies
18:35 - 18:39

but when you have something that's
18:39 - 18:40

being implanted into your body
18:40 - 18:42

and being literally screwed into your heart
18:42 - 18:43

Yousort of start to realise that
18:43 - 18:45

"Well, why can't I look at the software
18:45 - 18:47

that's on this device?"
18:47 - 18:48

And not only that, I actually
18:48 - 18:50

even offered to sign an NDA, I wasn't even
18:50 - 18:52

asking "please publish it to the world"
18:52 - 18:53

I was just saying
18:53 - 18:55

"I would feel a lot better personally
18:55 - 18:57

if I could take a look at the code."
18:57 - 18:58

And that was a non-starter with these
18:58 - 19:00

medical device companies.
19:00 - 19:01

So what I've started doing is
19:01 - 19:02

in addition to the research about the
19:02 - 19:04

legal ramifications and what the framework are
19:04 - 19:06

are to just sort of start talking about it
19:06 - 19:08

and sort of let people know
19:08 - 19:09

that this is really a problem that
19:09 - 19:12

the medical devices that we have right now fail.
19:12 - 19:14

They're great, they're amazing devices
19:14 - 19:15

but they have software in them
19:15 - 19:16

and software has bugs.
19:16 - 19:19

So over time they will fail and
19:19 - 19:21

you know, just because software is available
19:21 - 19:24

for review doesn't mean it will be 100% safe.
19:24 - 19:25

It will also have bugs.
19:25 - 19:27

But the chances are that if there are problems
19:27 - 19:28

they'll be caught faster
19:28 - 19:30

that anyone can fix them;
19:30 - 19:31

all of the reasons why Free Software
19:31 - 19:34

is so great to work on and so great to have
19:34 - 19:36

in your company's products
19:36 - 19:37

are exactly the same reasons why
19:37 - 19:40

it makes so much more sense to have it in medical devices.
19:40 - 19:40

But on top of that
19:40 - 19:42

it's just an issue of public safety.
19:42 - 19:45

So, you know, you can come at it
19:45 - 19:47

from either just the sensible
19:47 - 19:50

"these devices fail and instead of —"
19:50 - 19:51

There are all these think tanks that
19:51 - 19:54

are going around researching these devices
19:54 - 19:55

and they are finding ways to
19:55 - 19:57

show that they're maliciously hackable.
19:57 - 20:00

And those same think tanks would be reviewing
20:00 - 20:03

the source code line-by-line and finding problems
20:03 - 20:04

so that they could be fixed.
20:04 - 20:06

You know there's a tremendous amount
20:06 - 20:07

of interest in this.
20:07 - 20:08

And once you start thinking about your
20:08 - 20:10

medical devices you think about all the software
20:10 - 20:14

you rely on, it's not just my medical device,
20:14 - 20:16

what about our voting machines?
20:16 - 20:17

What about our cars?
20:17 - 20:18

Our cars have been — there was a
20:18 - 20:21

security exploit on cars where
20:21 - 20:25

they could be remotely hacked into
20:25 - 20:28

through the most amazing of ways
20:28 - 20:32

and controlled: steered and accelerated
20:32 - 20:34

and — just amazing stuff.
20:34 - 20:38

So, you know, it's everything that we rely on,
20:38 - 20:41

and all that software interacts together.
20:41 - 20:44

So we need our software that we rely on
20:44 - 20:47

to be, you know, to be Free and Open.
20:47 - 20:49

We're building just so much infrastructure
20:49 - 20:52

both, you know, in our hearts, in our bodies,
20:52 - 20:56

but also in our society, our financial markets.
20:56 - 21:00

The only way we'll create a good society
21:00 - 21:01

going forward is by making sure that
21:01 - 21:03

it's freedom and —
21:03 - 21:04

As I like to often say
21:04 - 21:08

eventually your doorknob is going to have a processor
21:08 - 21:08

[laugh]
21:08 - 21:12

running software and who controls the code in that?
21:12 - 21:13

It will end up being extremely important
21:13 - 21:15

going forward.
21:15 - 21:17

So there's one final question I'd like to ask
21:17 - 21:19

— thank you so much for your time —
21:19 - 21:23

but what I always like to ask people
21:23 - 21:27

is for viewers who might not be currently in the
21:27 - 21:29

Free Software community,
21:29 - 21:31

who might be thinking about it:
21:31 - 21:33

how did you get to where you are?
21:33 - 21:37

So, you know, imagine that you're a young woman
21:37 - 21:40

in your late teens or early twenties
21:40 - 21:42

what advice would you give to someone like that
21:42 - 21:45

to be able to end up in the august position
21:45 - 21:48

of Director of the GNOME Foundation?
21:48 - 21:51

People actually do ask me — especially law students —
21:51 - 21:54

how they can emulate my career path
21:54 - 21:56

and I tell them that I wish I was as organised
21:56 - 21:58

as they are to even ask about it.
21:58 - 21:59

I kind of, to be totally honest,
21:59 - 22:02

just stumbled into these jobs.
22:02 - 22:06

I would say that interest in technology for women
22:06 - 22:08

happens very early.
22:08 - 22:13

So I would say to all of you
22:13 - 22:15

if you know of a little girl
22:15 - 22:18

try and introduce them to some kind of technology
22:18 - 22:20

because once you get past a certain age
22:20 - 22:24

for many girls it's too late.
22:24 - 22:25

At the AdaCamp we had a session
22:25 - 22:29

where we talked about how we could get
22:29 - 22:31

more high school girls interested in technology
22:31 - 22:33

and I was like "hang on, let's stop for a second
22:33 - 22:34

and let's go around the room really fast
22:34 - 22:37

and say what we think our earliest positive
22:37 - 22:38

technology experience was that we think was
22:38 - 22:40

the most formative."
22:40 - 22:41

So that we could sort of think of how to
22:41 - 22:43

create that for other girls.
22:43 - 22:45

And almost everybody as I went around
22:45 - 22:47

had a parent, notably a father,
22:47 - 22:49

who had been interested in computers
22:49 - 22:52

and who had encouraged us at a very early age.
22:52 - 22:54

So I would say that that — I had a father
22:54 - 22:56

who was an engineer
22:56 - 22:57

and he encouraged me from the get-go
22:57 - 23:00

and I'm very old in Free Software terms
23:00 - 23:04

so he encouraged me on Prodigy and Compuserve
23:04 - 23:07

and I had a computer from the earliest days
23:07 - 23:08

where I was running BASIC
23:08 - 23:13

and he looked at my 10 PRINT "KAREN RULES"
23:13 - 23:15

and said you know
23:15 - 23:17

— and GOTO 10 —
23:17 - 23:19

and he said "you know what else you can do with this?
23:19 - 23:20

You can do this, you can do that."
23:20 - 23:22

So I would say that was the earliest thing
23:22 - 23:23

and then I went to engineering school
23:23 - 23:25

because I was on this technology path
23:25 - 23:27

and I worked in a computer lab
23:27 - 23:29

where there were no women
23:29 - 23:31

and I went into the director and I said
23:31 - 23:34

"You have no women in this lab and all these women
23:34 - 23:36

are walking in and it's so hostile
23:36 - 23:38

and they just leave! It's horrible. Can you do something?"
23:38 - 23:39

And he said "You're hired!"
23:39 - 23:43

And that's how I wound up learning about computers
23:43 - 23:45

and spending all my time in the computer lab.
23:45 - 23:48

And so it's quite lucky in part.
23:48 - 23:49

And then I went to law school
23:49 - 23:52

and I didn't even know who Eben Moglen was
23:52 - 23:55

and I happened to be in his class
23:55 - 23:57

on perspectives on modern legal thought.
23:57 - 24:01

And I was so moved by — he's an incredible speaker
24:01 - 24:03

and I was just so moved by his teaching —
24:03 - 24:05

that he was my favourite professor in law school.
24:05 - 24:08

And then I went off and did securities law!
24:08 - 24:10

And I decided — I got fed up and I quit
24:10 - 24:11

and he heard I'd quit
24:11 - 24:13

and he'd started the Software Freedom Law Center
24:13 - 24:17

and asked me if I wanted to learn about non-profit law
24:17 - 24:18

and I was like "yes!"
24:18 - 24:20

But I hadn't actually thought about Free Software
24:20 - 24:21

that much since the 90s.
24:21 - 24:22

Even though I thought it was cool.
24:22 - 24:25

And then all of a sudden I had the opportunity
24:25 - 24:26

to be in the best spot in the world.
24:26 - 24:29

And over time I became really passionate about Free Software.
24:29 - 24:31

And then I had the medical issue happen to me.
24:31 - 24:33

And all of a sudden my personal and professional
24:33 - 24:34

were all combined.
24:34 - 24:36

And I've just been very very lucky.
24:36 - 24:38

So I would say as an advice to someone
24:38 - 24:39

who's starting out:
24:39 - 24:43

I would say "First, be open to new experiences
24:43 - 24:47

don't think that the next choice you're going to make
24:47 - 24:49

is forever.
24:49 - 24:51

And try to do good work in the world.
24:51 - 24:52

It has good ramifications
24:52 - 24:55

and it helps you out in the end too."
24:55 - 24:57

Thank you so much Karen.
24:57 - 24:59

That was really kind of you to spend the time.
24:59 - 25:00

I appreciate it.
25:00 - 25:02

Thanks for interviewing me.
25:02 - 25:03

Thanks.

Title:: Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
Description:: Jeremy Allison of Google's Open Source Programs Office interviewing Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the Gnome Foundation. Interview was conducted March 25th at the Free Software Foundation's 2012 LibrePlanet conference in Boston, MA.

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Video Language:: English
Duration:: 25:03

	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison
	puzzlement edited English subtitles for Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison

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Karen Sandler Interviewed by Jeremy Allison

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