camp2023-57139-eng-Free_Software_opus.vtt

WEBVTT

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 [MUSIC]

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 [MUSIC]

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 All right, welcome everybody.

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 Day three, first talk on the Bits and Bombers stage.

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 How's everybody doing?

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 [APPLAUSE]

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 Yes, still a bit tired, but we have nice weather today, not too much sun,

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 so you can fully enjoy the talk by Joseph Devo Geis.

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 He will talk briefly for about 25 minutes on the impact of software

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 on energy and resource consumption and give us an overview of the environmental harm

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 and the potentials for savings there and how free software in special

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 is well positioned to address the issue.

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 And in the end, we will have a Q&A session.

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 And, yeah, if you have any questions, you can raise your hands,

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 and we will get a mic to you.

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 So give Joseph a warm round of applause again and enjoy the talk.

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 [APPLAUSE]

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 Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.

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 Thank you to the organizers at Bits and Bomber.

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 This has been great so far.

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 So the title of my talk today is Free Software, Software Design for the Environment.

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 And this is part of a larger KDE eco-initiative

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 working on sustainability issues in KDE and free software.

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 Before I get started, though, I like to make my talks a little bit interactive.

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 Feel free, if when I'm talking you have a question that's burning

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 and you want to ask it right away, you can just raise your hand,

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 and either the mic will come to you or I can repeat it for the audience.

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 Before we get started, though, I wanted to ask you,

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 what are some words and phrases that you associate with free software?

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 And I'll repeat here for the people who are online.

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 Great.

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 Great, yeah, good.

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 Empowerment.

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 Empowerment.

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 Powerful.

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 Say it again.

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 Powerful.

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 Powerful.

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 Customizable.

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 Customizable.

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 Collaboration.

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 Collaboration.

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 Collaboration.

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 Great.

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 Sustainable.

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 Sustainable.

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 So most people don't say sustainable,

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 and I hope by the end of this talk all of you,

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 next time someone asks you that question, will say sustainable.

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 I have many links in the slides.

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 If you want to download them, they're available at our repository.

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 I will also return to the slide if you remind me at the end of the talk.

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 Just wait a second.

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 Great.

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 So to get started, just to frame the issue that we're talking about.

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 So this is a post on Macedon from Ed Hawkins.

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 He's a climate scientist at the University of Reading,

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 in which he has a graph.

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 I don't expect you can really see the graph,

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 but I hope you can see that all but one have an upward slope to it.

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 Okay?

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 You can probably guess what these are measurements of.

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 This is the global temperature, CO2 emissions, sea levels.

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 There's only one that's going down.

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 That's the ice thickness.

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 And he writes in the post,

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 "Changes are emerging across the climate system.

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 Everywhere we look, the climate is changing rapidly.

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 These changes are not normal.

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 They're caused by the burning of fossil fuels."

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 Fossil fuels are also being burned in the ICT sector.

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 So information and communications technology is right now an area

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 that's being researched to figure out how much energy is consumed

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 and how much the ICT sector contributes to CO2 emissions.

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 This is a graph, again, all having upward slopes,

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 which is a meta study looking at various research papers

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 trying to estimate what the CO2 emissions are of the ICT sector.

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 One thing I want to point out here is that the estimates vary.

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 You can see some grow exponentially, some grow linearly.

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 However, they're all growing.

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 And if you take it, sort of try to average over what all of the studies seem to show,

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 it appears that ICT sector contributes between 2 and 4 percent of CO2 emissions globally.

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 To put that into perspective,

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 that's roughly the equivalent of the global aviation industry,

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 which is estimated around 2.5 percent.

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 This analysis for the ICT sector includes everything

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 from production, transportation, end-of-life treatment of devices,

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 to energy consumption of the Internet,

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 to energy consumption driven by the software you're running at home or in your office.

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 Also includes Bitcoin, machine learning, training, etc.

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 Right now, the current trajectory, if you look here as well as here,

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 if things don't change, it's going to continue growing.

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 And some estimates put that up to about 30 percent of global CO2 emissions by 2050.

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 So it's growing. It's increasing rapidly.

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 One thing I want to point out here, and I like this quote from this,

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 it's a tech brief from the Association of Computing Machinery,

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 computing can help mitigate climate change.

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 How? By substituting other activities that we're doing.

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 But it must first cease contributing to it,

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 because it's growing in some cases faster than it's substituting.

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 I'm going to focus today in this talk on the different ways

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 that software is driving energy consumption specifically.

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 Of course, energy consumption does contribute to CO2,

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 depending on what the power grid mix is.

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 I'm not going to talk too much about estimates of CO2.

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 I'm going to talk specifically about power consumption,

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 as well as production costs.

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 I'm going to do that in two different ways.

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 I'm going to talk about efficiency, energy efficiency,

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 in terms of achieving the same result when doing the same task,

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 but consuming less energy, as well as conservation,

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 that is reducing the waste that's driven by software.

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 And let's look at some examples of this.

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 First, in terms of efficiency.

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 This is a comparison of two word processors.

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 It's from the Umweltbundesamt.

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 It's some research done by the Umweltkampus Birkenfeld,

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 in which they compared various software products doing the same thing,

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 and then looking at their energy consumption differences.

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 Word processor one, the green bar plot,

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 is a free and open source software product.

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 They don't mention which one.

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 The blue one is a proprietary one.

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 Again, they don't mention which one.

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 And as you can see here, to do the exact same thing,

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 to achieve the same result,

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 word processor two consumes about four times the energy.

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 Okay, for an individual, this may not make much of a difference.

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 But you can't think of software's energy consumption on an individual basis.

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 Word processors are in every office, in every university,

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 on everyone's computer.

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 People are using it globally all the time.

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 If you think about these numbers when you scale it up,

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 they add up very quickly.

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 And to give an example of that,

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 this is from a talk from Hasso Plattner Institute, Detlef Thoms,

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 in which he does a back-of-the-envelope calculation,

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 in which you reduce a process by one CPU second.

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 Okay, it's a very minimal change.

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 That's about the equivalent of a savings of 10 watt seconds.

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 And if you multiply that by 1.5 million users,

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 now that's not very many users,

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 and you assume that there are 20 such reductions a day,

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 so this reduction in the CPU usage happens 20 times a day,

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 and you multiply that by 230 working days a year,

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 you end up with 19 megawatt hours of savings.

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 Now, if you're like me, that doesn't mean much to you.

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 To put that into perspective,

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 if you take a modern electric vehicle

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 and drive it back and forth from Shanghai six times,

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 that's about the equivalent of 19 megawatt hours.

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 Okay, so these are very simple changes

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 that result in big savings once you scale it up.

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 And the thing about software is that you're not only changing on one computer,

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 but you're changing every computer that gets that update, right?

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 And when you think about it on a global level,

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 these savings really add up very quickly.

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 If I can convince just 500 developers--

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 and I've been giving similar talks now for about a year and a half,

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 so this is a very realistic goal--

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 500 developers to try to achieve just 10 of those efficiency gains,

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 multiply that by 19 megawatt hour savings,

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 and you're talking about the energy consumption

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 of 30,000 two-person households in one year.

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 So scaling it up, you get to really big efficiency gains.

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 Okay, now conservation.

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 Reducing the waste.

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 And when we're talking about waste,

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 let's start where the waste lands in the landfill.

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 And this is a graph--infographic representing the e-waste from 2016.

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 Already one year before that,

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 Akim Steiner from the UN commented that there's a tsunami of e-waste

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 rolling out over the world.

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 In 2015, there was 44.7 million tons of e-waste produced.

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 That's about the equivalent of 4,500 Eiffel Towers.

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 If you were to stack those Eiffel Towers,

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 it would be about 17 times Mount Everest high.

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 Okay, this is in one year, and it's growing.

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 In 2019, the World Economic Forum said

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 that e-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world.

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 In 2022, 60 million tons of e-waste, a 33% increase.

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 Of that e-waste, about 20% is estimated to be recycled.

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 And in what ends up in the landfill,

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 although e-waste accounts for about 2% of the total waste,

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 it's 70% of the toxic waste.

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 What does software have to do with e-waste, right?

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 So, e-waste is hardware.

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 Software can drive e-waste.

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 Some of you may have had this warning message

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 that your device is no longer supported.

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 If your software is tied to that device,

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 then that device becomes unusable,

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 at least not without serious disadvantages to you as a user.

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 The software might become more and more bloated

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 as more features are added,

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 and the energy that's consumed

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 or the processing power that's needed by the hardware

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 is so much that older hardware can no longer support that software.

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 As a result, what you have is devices that are now produced

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 and transported unnecessarily,

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 and functioning devices end up as e-waste in the landfill.

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 This is particularly problematic,

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 thinking about it in terms of CO2.

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 This is a graph from a book from Lange and Santorius

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 called "Smarta Kuhn-U-Neveld".

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 This is data from Apple's own sustainability reports

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 from an iPhone in which they estimate

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 how much CO2 is produced per device

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 and then what it's attributable to.

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 They find, Apple reports, that the production,

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 end-of-life treatment and transportation

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 accounts for about 80% of the CO2 emissions of a device.

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 So, sending a device into the landfill before its time

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 is a huge waste of resources.

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 So, to me, they're both the same thing, right?

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 I mean, if the hardware doesn't allow the software,

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 it's because the software can't function on that hardware.

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 So, what could the hardware vendors

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 where to open or provide support?

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 Right, okay, so the question is,

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 so things like bootloaders being proprietary

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 and then not allowing devices to then run other software, right?

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 That's a design decision.

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 That's maybe not directly a software in the sense of...

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 It is a software decision because that's proprietary.

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 You can't then access the device.

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 So, I would say, I mean, software and hardware,

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 those are the...what you're describing,

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 so the question was about when the hardware is so locked down

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 that you can't install other software on it.

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 And that's a situation where you have a device

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 that's tied to one particular software product, right?

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 But that's a design decision and it's still related to software.

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 And I would say we should all be fighting

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 for the right to repair, to include software,

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 including things like opening up bootloaders

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 so that you can install other software products on it.

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 So, yeah, production and end-of-life treatment

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 and transportation are going to contribute

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 to much of the CO2 emissions of a device.

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 But it's not only CO2 emissions.

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 The end-of-life treatment also contributes

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 to polluting air, soil, et cetera,

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 often in countries in the global south,

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 both where the devices are...the metals are mined,

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 often under horrible conditions,

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 and then they return there to then end up

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 in treatment centers or in landfills.

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 This here is in Ghana.

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 So, I mentioned at the beginning that there are cases

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 where digitization can substitute other activities,

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 and one of the questions there is is,

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 what is the relative harm difference

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 between the digital product and the non-digital one?

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 This is, again, from Lange and Centorious.

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 It's a comparison of e-readers

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 in terms of their environmental harm and books, paper books.

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 Paper book production also contributes

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 to environmental harm in terms of polluting water and soil

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 with the chemicals used to create the paper.

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 And the production of an e-reader contributes also

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 to environmental harm in terms of the different materials

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 that go into it, often toxic.

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 Per device, 300 liters of water are required,

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 and one estimate has CO2 emissions

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 at 170 kilograms per device.

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 And Lange and Centorious estimate that if you read

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 about 30 to 60 paper books or more,

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 at that point, the environmental harm,

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 it's worth getting the e-reader

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 from what you're contributing.

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 This is one estimate. These are very hard estimates to make.

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 The point being that these are things

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 that you have to consider.

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 Substitution is not in itself always better.

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 In the case of e-readers, statistics about how many books

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 people read per year in comparison

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 to how long devices are supported.

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 So one Wikipedia article had the start date

00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:54.000
 and end date for production of e-readers

00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:57.000
 as 1.5 years on average.

00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:04.000
 The average US-American reads 60% read less than five books per year.

00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:06.000
 So to get to the number of 30 to 60,

00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.000
 it's going to require using that device for a long time,

00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:13.000
 which likely won't be the case given the short-term lifespan

00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:15.000
 of these devices.

00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:20.000
 So one of the things I want to point out there in those parts

00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:25.000
 is software design in terms of the energy consumption,

00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:28.000
 as well as its support for hardware,

00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:34.000
 can influence the environmental harm of the ICT sector.

00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:40.000
 And this was the motivation for eco-certifying software.

00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:43.000
 Many people ask, well, what does software have to do with eco-certification?

00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:45.000
 That's what I'm going to talk about now.

00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:50.000
 The Blue Angel released the award criteria for software in 2020.

00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:58.000
 The award criteria are aligned with FOSS values of transparency

00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:01.000
 and user autonomy.

00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:06.000
 And there are three main categories to the award criteria--

00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:08.000
 resource and energy efficiency,

00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:11.000
 potential hardware operating life, and user autonomy.

00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:16.000
 Just to get an overview before I focus on some of the user autonomy characteristics,

00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:21.000
 which are inherent to software license with a free software license.

00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:25.000
 Before we get there, though, let's look at some of the different criteria--

00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:30.000
 resource and energy efficiency--that's related to the energy consumption of software.

00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:35.000
 The criteria don't have a threshold, but rather a transparency requirement

00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.000
 so that users are aware of how much energy this software consumes

00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:42.000
 when running typical tasks.

00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:44.000
 Potential hardware operating life--

00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:47.000
 the requirements are that it runs on hardware at least five years old.

00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:49.000
 I think this is a little too low,

00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:55.000
 especially given that many Linux distributions run on hardware much older than that.

00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:59.000
 And the user autonomy requirements include things like uninstallability,

00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:05.000
 modularity, which influences the sort of software feature creep and bloat,

00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:08.000
 continuity of support, documentation,

00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:12.000
 so that there's long-term reuse and repairability of software,

00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:16.000
 transparency so that users can decide which software products to use

00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:19.000
 so you're not locked into an inefficient program,

00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:22.000
 as well as offline capability and freedom from advertising,

00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:25.000
 both of which consume energy.

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:30.000
 Just some background, the Blue Angel Oculus from KDE

00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:32.000
 is the first Blue Angel certified software.

00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:34.000
 Currently, it's the only one.

00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:38.000
 I hope to convince at least some people that it's worth at least meeting

00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.000
 the award criteria if you're interested in the topic

00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:46.000
 or considering applying for ECO certification.

00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:49.000
 So here, getting to the characteristics about free and open source software

00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:54.000
 and how it relates to energy efficiency and resource consumption.

00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:57.000
 So looking at the criteria,

00:18:57.000 --> 00:19:02.000
 it's hard to single out a single one when it comes to the topics of efficiency and conservation.

00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:04.000
 They're all interrelated.

00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:08.000
 But here, I want to focus on a couple of them together in three different parts.

00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:12.000
 So first, I want to look at the energy consumption and hardware performance

00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:15.000
 related to uninstallability and modularity,

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:21.000
 and perhaps related to offline capability and freedom from advertising.

00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:24.000
 So we take it for granted in the free and open source software community

00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:27.000
 that you can uninstall software.

00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:29.000
 This is something that is obvious to us,

00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:34.000
 and many of us probably have never thought about that in terms of efficiency gains.

00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:38.000
 But unwanted software components that remain on a system

00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:43.000
 contribute to longer boot-up times, longer shutdown times,

00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:47.000
 perhaps extra processes running when you're using that software, et cetera.

00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:51.000
 All of which, if you go back to the one CPU second reduction,

00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:56.000
 all of which adds up when you multiply that over millions of users.

00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:03.000
 So uninstallability is a way to create a more efficient system.

00:20:03.000 --> 00:20:08.000
 Again, going back to this graph comparing the two different word processors,

00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:12.000
 if you want to take a deeper look at what the energy consumption looks like over time,

00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:15.000
 here's a plot, again, from that same measurement,

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:20.000
 looking at the word processor, the open source word processor,

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.000
 which is on the bottom plot in comparison to the proprietary word processor,

00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:26.000
 which is on the top plot.

00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:31.000
 And what you can see here is doing the exact same thing.

00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:33.000
 They have very different energy profiles.

00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:37.000
 The x-axis is showing over time while running different tasks,

00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:42.000
 things like opening a document, changing the layout, and then saving the document.

00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:46.000
 And I want to focus here on what happens after that blue line.

00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:52.000
 That's the point at which the document is saved and the software goes idle.

00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:56.000
 And what you can see here is that the proprietary software

00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:58.000
 continues doing things in the background.

00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:01.000
 It does it quite a bit, actually.

00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:08.000
 And in comparison, the free and open source software product goes idle as you would expect.

00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:13.000
 The report doesn't say what exactly is happening in this time period.

00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:19.000
 There is also measurements in this approach where they're looking at network traffic,

00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:22.000
 writing to disk, etc.

00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:26.000
 That data is not in the report, so I don't know what's happening here.

00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:30.000
 It might be telemetry.

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.000
 I think that's a reasonable guess.

00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:37.000
 If it's proprietary software, you can't turn this off necessarily

00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:40.000
 unless the company decides that you're allowed to.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:42.000
 If this is free and open source software,

00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:45.000
 developers can then take a look, see what it's doing,

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:50.000
 and then decide to remove this functionality if users don't want it.

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:57.000
 All of this is contributing to that energy profile of these two word programs.

00:21:57.000 --> 00:22:03.000
 So, again, yeah, just that this adds up when you start thinking about it,

00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:09.000
 scaling it up across millions or billions of users.

00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:14.000
 Okay, the next topic, so potential hardware operating life,

00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:16.000
 as well as continuity of support,

00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:20.000
 which is what determines how long you can use that device

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:25.000
 and not have disadvantages opening yourself up to malware and things like this,

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:28.000
 known malware, documentation,

00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:31.000
 how long can that software be supported over time,

00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:35.000
 will depend to some extent on how well it's documented,

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:40.000
 transparency that users can decide which software they want to use

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.000
 and then move to different software products if they want to.

00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000
 And this will all influence how long you can continue to use a particular piece of hardware.

00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:56.000
 This is an image from a 2009 Macbook.

00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:02.000
 This end of life was in 2019 where it was no longer supported by Apple.

00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:08.000
 And so the last version of MacOS that was supported was 1010.

00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:12.000
 This is from a KDE contributor who was asking around

00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:18.000
 if KDE users were using hardware that was no longer supported by the original vendors.

00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.000
 This is now currently still in use today,

00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:26.000
 running Kabuntu 22.04 with all of the security updates, et cetera,

00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:29.000
 and is apparently working just fine.

00:23:29.000 --> 00:23:31.000
 I know I have this experience.

00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:35.000
 I'm running also older hardware at home on my desktop computer,

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.000
 which is no longer supported running Linux.

00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:47.000
 This device would otherwise end up in the closet or perhaps worst case

00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:50.000
 where it doesn't end up being treated or it goes to end of life treatment center

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:58.000
 and all of that CO2 that is associated with the production has now been wasted.

00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:11.000
 Okay, and the last section that I want to talk about in terms of the user autonomy criteria

00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:16.000
 is the offline capability and freedom from advertising.

00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:23.000
 This is a report from a research and consultancy group

00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:26.000
 which does policy reports for the EU

00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:30.000
 in which they looked at what is called unwanted data use.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:38.000
 And they define unwanted data use as the data for data mining and advertising

00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:40.000
 that users can't shut off.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:48.000
 Given a statistic that in the EU, about 60% of users would shut it off if they could.

00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:50.000
 So they call this unwanted data use.

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.000
 And they try to estimate what the energy consumption and CO2 emissions are

00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:57.000
 associated with that unwanted data use.

00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:02.000
 This graph here is just showing that there are several components to energy consumption.

00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:04.000
 I've been focusing on desktop software.

00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:07.000
 That's most of what KDE does.

00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:10.000
 But of course, if you're doing anything that's distributed,

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:13.000
 client server or similar type systems,

00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:18.000
 you're also going to be consuming energy in the network and in data centers.

00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:28.000
 And this unwanted data use is at best attributable to about 3 million metric tons of CO2,

00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:33.000
 according to this report, at worst 8 million metric tons.

00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:38.000
 And this would be, according to this report, equal to the carbon footprint

00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:43.000
 of about 370,000 to 950,000 EU citizens.

00:25:43.000 --> 00:25:47.000
 This is for something people don't want.

00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:52.000
 So the blue angel recognizes that if users can turn it off when they want,

00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:57.000
 you remove this energy consumption from the ICT contributions

00:25:57.000 --> 00:26:02.000
 to energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:05.000
 Of course, these things are all intertwined.

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:11.000
 Things like advertising and data mining, et cetera,

00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:17.000
 might also make it hard to run a browser on an old piece of hardware.

00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:21.000
 In fact, I find one of the biggest problems when upcycling hardware

00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:26.000
 is opening a browser the minute you try to do anything on the internet.

00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:35.000
 Currently, website design is so energy consuming that it can break your system.

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:40.000
 That's related to Roberta's great talk yesterday.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:43.000
 So these things are, of course, interrelated.

00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:50.000
 Offline capability for your advertising will influence how long you can run hardware, et cetera.

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:58.000
 So we wanted to document our experience applying for the blue angel eco-certification

00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:02.000
 so that other free and open source software developers can also do this.

00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:10.000
 We released a handbook in February this year, Applying the Blue Angel Criteria to Free Software.

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:15.000
 You're welcome to download it from our website, eco.kde.org.

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:23.000
 The book goes over what I'm calling the three steps to eco-certification, measuring your software.

00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:28.000
 So to do that, you need to define what typical usage of that software would look like,

00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:33.000
 emulate it using a script, which is all documented in this handbook,

00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:37.000
 and then run it several times, run some statistical analyses,

00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:41.000
 which you can do with a tool provided by the Unveiled Compass called Oscar,

00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:44.000
 the open source software consumption analysis in R.

00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:54.000
 And once you have that, you document your user autonomy criteria that you're compatible with them and submit it.

00:27:54.000 --> 00:27:56.000
 The book, though, is more than that.

00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:00.000
 It's something that you can send to your friends if you're interested in this,

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:03.000
 send it to your marketing department if you work at a company,

00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:06.000
 send to your project manager if you're on a team,

00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:10.000
 in which it goes over various aspects of this topic.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:13.000
 The first part is the why. Why does this matter?

00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:17.000
 So related to energy consumption, resource consumption driven by software.

00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:23.000
 What is the blue angel? What's its history?

00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:28.000
 How is it recognized internationally as well as in Germany?

00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:33.000
 And then how do you fulfill then the requirement for software?

00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:38.000
 You can also read it online here.

00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:44.000
 For those of you who are interested in this but don't have access to a power meter,

00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:46.000
 power meters are...

00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:49.000
 So the approach that the blue angel recommends and the one that we're using in our lab

00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:56.000
 is an external power meter attached to a machine that then is emulating user behavior.

00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:59.000
 Power meters are expensive.

00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:02.000
 Really good power meters are really expensive.

00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:08.000
 The off-the-shelf solutions, which are okay, they don't have great resolution.

00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:14.000
 The one that is recommended, the Guta power meter, gets like five measurements per second,

00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:17.000
 which you can then average and get an idea of what's happening.

00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:22.000
 Better ones can get like a thousand measurements per second.

00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:26.000
 However, you're going to be out of three to four hundred euros to buy one.

00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:31.000
 If you're interested in just checking this out but don't have five hundred euros,

00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:37.000
 you can invest ten euros and buy a power plug and hack it and turn it into a power meter

00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:41.000
 that gets about one measurement for every 200 milliseconds.

00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:47.000
 And that's also documented in this.

00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:53.000
 Say it again.

00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:59.000
 I don't know.

00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:01.000
 Can we ask that at the end?

00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:03.000
 Because I also wanted to open up...

00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:05.000
 I usually like to do Q&A where also other people in the crowd,

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.000
 because I don't have a monopoly on this information at all.

00:30:09.000 --> 00:30:15.000
 So if someone here might know the answer to that but I don't know it, ask it again in the Q&A.

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:17.000
 The lab setup looks like this.

00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:20.000
 You have a system under test. That's the machine that you're testing.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.000
 A power meter attached to it and then another computer that's then collecting the data

00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:29.000
 and then used to evaluate it.

00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:33.000
 We set up a lab in KDAB Berlin.

00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:38.000
 This is a picture of one of the sprints.

00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:45.000
 This is Arna Tarara from Green Coding Berlin who was very helpful with Folker Kausa,

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:53.000
 Nicholas Fela and several others in the KDAB community who helped us get this lab setup.

00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:59.000
 The current setup is only accessible if someone is there in person.

00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:02.000
 We're working on that. I'm going to come back to those slides.

00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:06.000
 Right now in a project which should be done by next month

00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:10.000
 in which we are making the lab remotely accessible so that a developer,

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:13.000
 and we want to open this up to all free software developers,

00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:20.000
 this is not only a KDE thing, can design their usage scenario that they want to measure,

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:25.000
 upload it with their code and then it will automatically run in the lab in KDAB

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:30.000
 and then give you a report back so that all you have to do is define the usage scenario

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:35.000
 and then you get some energy consumption measurements related to your software.

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:46.000
 And of course all of this is KDE free software so anyone can take it, adapt it to their needs as they see fit.

00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:50.000
 What you would need to do if you wanted to use a lab like this,

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:57.000
 you have to define a standard usage scenario that requires identifying typical tasks done by a user,

00:31:57.000 --> 00:32:03.000
 perhaps identify particularly the high energy ones to get an idea of energy consumption related to that,

00:32:03.000 --> 00:32:06.000
 create a flowchart of actions and then emulate it.

00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:08.000
 There are many ways to emulate it.

00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:17.000
 Right now KDE is focused on using Selenium, which is often used for web emulation,

00:32:17.000 --> 00:32:23.000
 adapting that for desktop software.

00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:28.000
 There were several talks at Academy just a few weeks ago which you can watch about this approach,

00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:32.000
 but it's also useful for user emulation.

00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:38.000
 Once you have that, then you upload it to the machine you want to test,

00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:45.000
 you get the results back and then there's this tool, Oscar, where you can then upload the data and get a report back.

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:52.000
 The nice thing is that with this lab set up with a remote access, all of that's automated.

00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:58.000
 Just a little bit more generally, KDE has a current goal of sustainable software.

00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:03.000
 Every two years we vote on three unifying goals for the community.

00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:06.000
 One of the things that we're working on is measuring our software,

00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:09.000
 but there are several other things related to this,

00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:19.000
 such as documentation of the ways that free software, in particular our software at KDE, supports sustainability.

00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:25.000
 Maybe I'll end on this and then we can open up to a Q&A.

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:32.000
 When you look at the big picture, this can seem like small drops on hot stones.

00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:40.000
 This is perhaps nothing compared to what it's required to train a large language model

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:47.000
 or the explosion of IoT devices, etc.

00:33:47.000 --> 00:33:55.000
 This is a comic from XKCD, of course there is a comic about this, in which Q-ball says,

00:33:55.000 --> 00:34:00.000
 "I'm trying to fix the problem of the world, can you help?"

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:07.000
 White hat says, "It's obvious you don't actually care, if you did, we'd be trying to fix this other bigger problem."

00:34:07.000 --> 00:34:10.000
 Q-ball asks, "You want to help me fix that bigger problem?"

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.000
 White hat says, "No, for another reason I'll think of later."

00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:20.000
 The bigger problem fallacy, saying there's something bigger that's a bigger problem than what you're trying to fix,

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.000
 is a fallacy, it doesn't mean the other problem is not a problem.

00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:30.000
 Also, sometimes tackling the biggest problem is not the most effective approach.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.000
 You have to think about what resources you have available to you.

00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:39.000
 At KDE, we are desktop software developers, we can influence this.

00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:44.000
 I hope I've convinced you that it does add up, once you start looking at the numbers.

00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:48.000
 I'd also say climate change and combating climate change

00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:53.000
 require changes in every single aspect of society.

00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:56.000
 This is where we can contribute and where we can focus our energies.

00:34:56.000 --> 00:34:59.000
 There are areas that maybe you can contribute to.

00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:02.000
 I hope that I've convinced you it's worth working on,

00:35:02.000 --> 00:35:06.000
 because most people here are involved in some sense with ICT,

00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:09.000
 and you can make a change, and you can make a difference.

00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:12.000
 I want to leave it on that note, and then go to Q&A.

00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:19.000
 [applause]

00:35:19.000 --> 00:35:23.000
 Thank you. Thank you so much, Joseph, for that insightful talk.

00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:30.000
 By the way, before we start with the Q&A, just a reminder that if you found that talk so insightful as I did,

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:33.000
 and learned something new, maybe you can post that out to the Fediverse.

00:35:33.000 --> 00:35:37.000
 The hashtag from this stage is #bitsandboimer.

00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:41.000
 Now to the Q&A. We have our wonderful stage manager, Rico,

00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:48.000
 who can come along and pass you a microphone, so everybody will hear you just fine.

00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:51.000
 As I said earlier, I don't have a monopoly on information.

00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:55.000
 If anyone here has an answer, please feel free to speak up.

00:35:55.000 --> 00:36:01.000
 I feel like this is a wonderful crowd to crowdsource information gathering.

00:36:01.000 --> 00:36:09.000
 Well, actually, it seems to me that this problem is an efficiency problem, more or less.

00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:19.000
 We want to do a task with the fewest resources possible in the fastest way, of course,

00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:28.000
 which is shouldn't we just continue to optimize our code, which is the way to do it,

00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:32.000
 and to remove stuff we don't need.

00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:36.000
 That's basically put it in a short way.

00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:42.000
 Is it this correct, or are there other things also to it?

00:36:42.000 --> 00:36:47.000
 So thinking about things like uninstallability, right?

00:36:47.000 --> 00:36:49.000
 That's beyond just optimization.

00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:54.000
 That's a design decision for how you then allow users to use that software.

00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:57.000
 So I would say it's beyond just this one efficiency.

00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:02.000
 I think that's absolutely important, but you have to think about it also in that holistic sense of

00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:05.000
 can users -- okay, you might make the most efficient software,

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:08.000
 but can users uninstall it if they don't need it?

00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:10.000
 That's a design decision.

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:16.000
 I don't think many people think of free software licensing as a design idea,

00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:20.000
 but in many ways it determines how users can interact with your software.

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:25.000
 This is an example, one, of uninstalling something or only installing what you want.

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:30.000
 So it's more than just optimization, I would say.

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:38.000
 My question is that there is a sustainable supply chain law in the European Union

00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:44.000
 and in Germany, Lieferkettengesetz, which if it would be taken serious,

00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:51.000
 you could not import or sell any other phone here except the Fairphone,

00:37:51.000 --> 00:37:59.000
 because other phones would fall under this law, which is prohibiting importing things

00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:08.000
 where parts of it in the production process have violated human rights or environmental laws.

00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:14.000
 So my first question is, is there anybody talking about this in this community,

00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:18.000
 about this not fulfilling this law?

00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:25.000
 My second question is if this Lieferkettengesetz, this supply chain law,

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.000
 could be applied also to software?

00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:34.000
 Is there some idea that you just say it could not be sold

00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:43.000
 if it doesn't comply some minimum standard of environmental responsibility?

00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:47.000
 So I don't know anyone talking about that, the supply chain issues,

00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:50.000
 maybe someone here does.

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.000
 I'll let the moderator decide.

00:38:54.000 --> 00:39:00.000
 If someone has a comment on that, please feel free.

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:05.000
 Well, I wanted to ask a question that goes into the similar direction,

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:11.000
 because I was wondering, are there legislations being discussed

00:39:11.000 --> 00:39:19.000
 about reducing the energy consumption of software and to the supply chain law?

00:39:19.000 --> 00:39:26.000
 I personally thought that it's more about the human rights problem,

00:39:26.000 --> 00:39:34.000
 mainly about hardware then, and that then this law would not apply to software,

00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:47.000
 but that's only how...

00:39:47.000 --> 00:39:58.000
 Can you pass the mic so that...

00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:01.000
 So, yeah, so anyone else have a comment on that?

00:40:01.000 --> 00:40:06.000
 Yeah, software in general and Lieferketten,

00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:13.000
 we also have kind of Lieferketten supply chains, we have libraries,

00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:17.000
 we have operating systems, we have whatever,

00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:20.000
 and these things also need to be produced in some way,

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:23.000
 someone needs to sit down and code them.

00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:29.000
 So it would make sense that it applies there.

00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:34.000
 I'm not a lawyer, I cannot really answer this question,

00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:40.000
 but it makes sense that we also look at our supply chains

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:46.000
 and how they are ecologically, that we are good or bad.

00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:50.000
 For example, we could choose a framework that is more efficient,

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.000
 we could choose a framework that makes stuff easier for us,

00:40:54.000 --> 00:41:00.000
 and of course, software can also be produced under conditions

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:03.000
 which are not compatible to human rights.

00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:07.000
 You can force people to sit down and program stuff,

00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:18.000
 and this code would be unethical to use in a way as programmers.

00:41:18.000 --> 00:41:25.000
 Do we have time for another question?

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.000
 Yeah, so what do you have to say about the law of diminishing returns?

00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:33.000
 For example, is there a way to know what's the point

00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:36.000
 when we already reached those diminishing returns

00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:41.000
 and we have to move on to something else to keep optimizing and doing that stuff?

00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:47.000
 Is there some finger rule?

00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:54.000
 I don't have a rule of thumb for when that is.

00:41:54.000 --> 00:41:59.000
 I do think we still have a lot of low-hanging fruit, to be honest,

00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:03.000
 before we get to the problem of diminishing returns.

00:42:03.000 --> 00:42:08.000
 I think there's enough that we could do in terms of designing your website,

00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:13.000
 following green-coding practices, being able to turn off advertising,

00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:16.000
 continuing to support hardware, opening up bootloaders

00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:20.000
 so you can install any software on any device that you bought.

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:23.000
 These are all things I think are pretty low-hanging fruit,

00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:27.000
 which already make a big contribution before we're even at that point.

00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:30.000
 That's my personal opinion on that.

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:37.000
 Thanks.

00:42:37.000 --> 00:42:45.000
 What's your opinion on these bloat solutions like Docker or Snap and stuff

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.000
 who actually for a small application ship a whole operating system

00:42:49.000 --> 00:42:56.000
 and thus bloat my disk so that I think next time I need a bigger SSD in my laptop

00:42:56.000 --> 00:43:01.000
 because some applications take up to a couple of hundred gigabytes?

00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:04.000
 Is there an estimation?

00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:10.000
 What's the difference in CO2 footprint of half a terabyte and one terabyte?

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.000
 What's your opinion there?

00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:17.000
 I don't have a particular opinion.

00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:21.000
 I do think it's an empirical question that we have a lab we could maybe start testing

00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:25.000
 to see if these differences in how you install,

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:28.000
 which approach you take to installing software,

00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:31.000
 if that influences things like general energy consumption.

00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:34.000
 I think we could look at that and see it.

00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:41.000
 I can imagine that there are arguments that upgrades can result in more efficient software

00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:47.000
 that might outweigh the disadvantages of installing it through a flat pack

00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:52.000
 if there is a difference there, but I don't know.

00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:54.000
 We have two more questions left.

00:43:54.000 --> 00:43:59.000
 Unfortunately, then we have to close, but discussions can also unfold afterwards.

00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:00.000
 Maybe you're around here for a while.

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:01.000
 I'm definitely around for a while.

00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:04.000
 Great. Please.

00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:13.000
 On the CO2 footprint of software, Docker Solutions and something else,

00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:21.000
 look just into the power consumption of Hello World in C or in Python.

00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:31.000
 It's 20 times more in Python to realize a Hello World program than in C or in some other languages.

00:44:31.000 --> 00:44:38.000
 All the time in the back head when we talk about software or something like that,

00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:45.000
 the big bloat solutions who do need Python and bigger compilers, Rust,

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:52.000
 and whatever has a high power consumption.

00:44:52.000 --> 00:45:04.000
 We have to go in our mind if it's useful to make this all including big systems in software and hardware,

00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:16.000
 or if we do not split it in small pieces, which can be done in a sampler in C and save us a lot of energy.

00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:17.000
 Thank you.

00:45:17.000 --> 00:45:18.000
 Thank you for that comment.

00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:22.000
 Last question, but not least.

00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:28.000
 I would like to highlight that besides efficiency, there's another thing that I would say is rather important

00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:35.000
 and we talk too little about, which is sufficiency using less in general.

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:40.000
 For example, the supplies to social media or streaming services,

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:49.000
 being nudged into using those media for many hours a day, which is probably not very healthy for ourselves,

00:45:49.000 --> 00:45:55.000
 but also if we didn't use the software for that long and the hardware as well,

00:45:55.000 --> 00:46:00.000
 we might be happier in the first place and use less resources.

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:02.000
 Fully agree.

00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:05.000
 Sufficiency is definitely a good question to ask.

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:06.000
 Thank you so much.

00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:11.000
 I think these are good closing remarks. You want to add anything for the audience?

00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:14.000
 I would love to talk with you some more.

00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:18.000
 [Music]