media.april.org/.../TEDxBordeaux-Frederic-Couchet-C-est-juste-une-question-humaine.ogv

Well, normally there should have been a video in English.

But rest assured, I will not speak in English

because as you can see I'm very bad at it.

And for a long time, I thought this huge weakness would prevent me from realizing one of my dearest dreams:

to change the world.

It's a beautiful project, to change the world!

Besides, I have a question:

how many of you have one day wanted to change the world?

Or simply to change society a little?

If so, raise your hand.

Great! I see that there are many of us, and it was to be expected as we are at TEDx.

So I'll tell you how I have tried, as some of you, to change a bit the world at my own level.

Ever since I was little, I always wanted to do politics, in order to have an impact on society.

So at high school, I thought of applying to Sciences Po [French school preparing for politics].

But at Sciences Po, there is a minimum pass mark in English

and my English grades ensured me that I wouldn't reach that threshold.

So I could already strike out Sciences Po of my plans, and maybe also my desire to do politics.

Yet 20 years later, I do not regret anything.

By chance, I enrolled for a computing degree at the Paris 8 university.

While Paris 8 sounds appealing, in fact the "8" doesn't stand for Paris' 8th district [a rich district of Paris].

If I tell you that Paris 8 is in fact in Saint-Denis in the poor suburbs, all of a sudden it's much less sexy.

And one wonders how to change the world from there?

Yet it is there, in Paris 8, that I met for the first time people who have changed the course of my life

and who have told me that we could have an impact on society through computer sciences.

Paris 8 is a poor university.

By poor, I mean that it had little money, and very few computers available.

So rather than come in the morning to try to book a machine,

and I assure you we tried that with friends

but it was just really too early for us,

what could do we do?

We decided to spend nights working on our projects and also on those of others.

I remember very well the first night, it was a Thursday in November.

I apologize: it was on the day of the arrival of Beaulojais [a French wine] that the adventure began for us.

So imagine a dozen computer scientists, geeks, around a table in a room,

each working on his projects but also those of others.

When one of us found an interesting thing, he shared it.

It could be for instance a nice way of fixing a bug or it could a new functionality.

We were in a real sharing process.

Paris 8 is somewhat special.

It's not just the students who spent their night there.

There were also teachers, lecturers.

I know that in the public imagery, the geek is stuck on his computer all day long ...

or in our case all night long.

And yet, I assure you every once in a while we made breaks, and especially with a teacher I will always remember.

His name is Marc Detienne.

He radically changed my life and my friends' lives.

He was the first who explained that the practices we had in Paris 8 were not at all standard.

The pieces of software that we downloaded 20 years ago were software free to use.

But such pieces of software were not standard.

We also had their source code, that is their recipe.

Thus we could study how they worked, possibly add features or correct errors.

But this way of offering software was not dominant at the time, nor is it today.

Instead, the dominant way of offering software is proprietary software.

That is to say, software for which you do not know the inner working, for which you do not have the recipe, and that only the publisher can control.

As for us, our software was and still is Free Software.

It was also he who told us that among those who dedicated their lives to Free Software, there was an American computer scientist called Richard Stallman.

He conceived Free Software, and he had also created a foundation dedicated to its promotion.

One day, Stallman comes to Paris 8.

You have to imagine that for us, computer science students, Stallman was an icon.

He was one of the best Free Software developers around the world, one of those who developed the pieces of software we used at the time.

I could perhaps compare him to the Zinedine Zidane or the Mozart of Free Software.

And he was coming to Paris 8 in Saint Denis! Of course, we went to see his lecture.

There were lots of people.

We expected Stallman would talk about technical topics, but in fact not at all.

He told us about society, sharing, cooperation.

He spoke very little about computer themselves.

Or rather, he explained how Free Software can have an impact on society.

According to him, Free Software is the incarnation within the computing world of the French Republican motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity [Brotherhood]".

Liberty because we have the right to use the software, we have the right to study the way it works, we have the right to change it, and we have the right to redistribute it.

Equality because everyone shares the same right, regardless of their condition.

And Fraternity because such pieces of software promote sharing and cooperation.

Let's just make a short break here to explain the importance of computing today.

You will agree with me in saying that computers are everywhere in our daily lives: social networking, banking services, public administrations ...

It is therefore essential that we keep these tools under control.

Free Software is not just a technical alternative to proprietary software.

It is much more importantly fundamental to our freedom.

And it is a philosophy based on sharing and openness.

We just mentioned the Internet: Free Software and the Internet have grown harmoniously together.

The software architecture of the Internet is Free Software.

And conversely the Internet has fostered the development of Free Software.

If anybody in this the room believes he has never used Free Software, remember that every time you surf on the Internet, Free Software is part of your ride.

Without Free Software, there would be no Internet as we know it.

And Internet is a primarily tool to facilitate the contact and linking of billions of people, thus encouraging sharing practices and especially for Free Software.

Others have followed that path.

A decade ago, could we have just imagined that the main on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia, would be freely accessible and freely editable.

Back to Stallman and his conference.

After those nights spent with Marc Detienne, this conference was a kind of revelation for us.

The revelation of a fundamental issue relative to society for which some should spend time.

It was only waiting for us.

We realized that even as computer scientists, we could have an impact on society by using and distributing Free Software.

At the end of that year, I think it was '96, with some friends who also had just finished their studies, we asked ourselves what we were going to do.

We concluded that "naturally, as we had learned computer sciences using Free Software, we would continue making Free Software".

We decided that we would increase awareness in France about it, just like Stallman was already doing in the United States.

So we created an association, whose objective was simple: to promote Free Software.

So we embarked on an adventure from scratch, without any predefined road-map or business model.

We invited people to join us, we created a website (remember that it was fifteen years ago) to publicize our activities.

For 15 years, we have acted so as to promote and defend Free Software, gradually changing society a little and changing us as well.

Doing so, we learned many new things and we have had to step outside our comfort zone.

Together, we learned how to defend a project, a cause.

For example, we spoke publicly of HADOPI [a French law "to control and regulate Internet access and encourage compliance with copyright laws" (source: Wikipedia)], and in the process we learned to analyze bills and laws.

For computer scientists such as ourselves, we tend to study computer code, but if you come to think about it, a bill is just a code written in a different language.

It can be studied, you can read it and possibly correct it, suggest improvements.

In our computer jargon, we would call such improvements "patches".

Of course, we also have to defend our cause, so we went to see politicians.

We learned to speak their language; and we hope that, perhaps, over the years, they learned to speak our language.

We studied and acted on these bills, because they had an impact on society, and so it was essential for us to act on these projects.

And fundamentally, beyond all these activities, why do I find the Free Software cause so appealing?

Why I am here today talking about it?

Because it is intrinsically a cause that we cannot lead alone.

There are plenty of causes that can be led alone, just requiring an exceptional individual.

But the Free Software cause is one that needs to be led together.

Free Software is written by people together, and within our association, we work together to promote Free Software.

Over the years, we have matured and we have grown.

We have known successes, such as the adoption of amendments in draft legislation, our participation in the rebuttal of a European directive on software patents.

But more than that, we built a "micro-society association" in which people can act.

Had we been alone, even the greatest willingness would not have brought such results.

If everyone had acted on there side, we would not have had the same impact.

But together, we have successfully dealt with the legislative processes, the communication material as well as our presence and visibility.

In '96 there were 5 of us ...

5 computer scientists ...

5 geeks.

Today we are thousands, over 5000 in fact and most are not computer scientists.

Most are from the general public, they use Free Software and they have understood it's importance.

Our work is now recognized and relayed by the press and it is recognized as well by the government.

We succeeded simply because we managed to build together and to gather energy.

What we have built is primarily a framework in which those who want to create and share can feel at ease and can contribute to this project.

In this adventure, I also learned a lot personally.

I have evolved.

For instance, I learned to trust people.

I learned to delegate objectives but not the way to reach it.

For example, to ask for a communication document, without requiring a given way to achieve it.

It is fundamental when we work together to learn to be tolerant, and to accept that people are different.

We must make room for others' initiative, to allow them to invest and improve themselves.

When working together, it is fundamental to trust others' ability and also to promote their work.

The association contains all kinds of members: young one, retirees, lawyers, translators, graphic designers.

There are even people who come from Sciences Po, like one of my colleagues.

As you can see, this is everybody's cause.

Today, we often tend to think that money is what motivates people, and that it is their main driver.

It's a flaw of our current society to consider that the best way to increase someone's motivation is to give him more money.

Obviously people need money to live.

But what they need above all in order to be motivated and to feel recognized, is to feel useful for something, and to participate in a larger project.

That is perhaps the most extraordinary part of this adventure I lived within the microcosm of associations: via Free Software, we are changing a bit society.

But it also allows people throughout the organization - members, volunteers or even just people wishing to participate - to make their own small contribution to this broader project.

These people can express their talents, their desires, in a kind environment where their work is recognized.

What is fundamental within associations is that there are no obligations.

People join them because they want to contribute.

Without extending too much on my allocated time, the idea that I want you to keep from this is that Free Software is just a human adventure.

Those were the words of Eben Moglen, who is another important figure of the Free Software cause.

And in this adventure, the person who plays meets the person who builds.

It's a game because we have a lot of fun, and so in that way we "play", but at the time we are also "building" something.

Thanks to Free Software, we have an impact on society.

Free Software allows people to express their creativity.

And you know what?

When you give a place for people to express their creativity, they do so.

I have less than 30 seconds for my last message.

If I wanted to sum up my career in a nutshell, I would say: "I participated in creating a community.

I learned to work with this community.

We have taken action and we have fought, because a few years ago I found my driving cause.

It makes me get up enthusiastically in the morning, it allows my wife and children to endure my long hours behind a keyboard or out of home.

It is what the Japanese call my "ikigai", my reason for being.

My purpose in life is simple: to have an impact on society, to be useful to others and to interact with others.

Thanks to Free Software, I feel I enrich society, I interact with and for others."

And today, I can only wish to each one of you that you find your ikigai, if it's not already the case.

Thank you.