Adrien Bourmault for Board 2024

My name is Adrien Bourmault and I am applying for the XSF Board.

Contact

JID: neox@a-lec.org

MAIL: neox@a-lec.org

About me

I am a free software activist: maintainer of the GNU Boot project, associate member of the FSF and former contributor of the Free Software Directory where I maintained the Conversations XMPP client page, also co-founder of the Libre en Communs non-profit which promotes and acts for free software in France notably by providing its computing infrastructure to projects.

I am operating a free and ethical XMPP service through Libre en Communs: Chalec.

I'm also currently a research engineer (currently for a company) in the fields of processor and integrated circuit architecture/firmwares, and I teach on the time I have left. My field is hardware oriented, and this is where GNU Boot came from.

Also I speak French (the best cryptosystem ever !), and a bit German (etwas rostig...)

About my nick

My nick name is neox.

It does not have any meaning, except that I carry that nick for a long time and it probably finds its inspiration in the Matrix trilogy.

Affiliation

• XMPP Standards Foundation, as a member
• JabberFR, as a member
• GNU Project, as maintainer of GNU Boot
• Libre en Communs, as treasurer, board member and IT infrastructure manager, also in charge of the Chalec project
• French Data Network, as the XMPP service operator

My XMPP projects and activities

I have been an XMPP service operator for a long time. The first service I opened to the public was os-k.eu (it no longer exists) and that was in 2017.

I was one of the operators of the chapril.org service, within the french association April, and I left those functions in 2020.

I am currently the operator of the a-lec.org service (the XMPP service of Libre en Communs, used for the activities of the association), and chalec.org (service open to the general public). I am also the operator of the XMPP service of French Data Network, a non-profit Internet Service Provider.

I am the main translator of the monthly XMPP newsletter for the French language, jointly published on the LinuxFR and xmpp.org websites. I sometimes participate to the original newsletter when I find time to do so. I was able to do it regularly in early 2024 and I'm trying to do it again now.

I help and motivate people to move their chat activities from GAFAM and co. to join decentralized networks. I generally help people join XMPP when it is relevant to their use case. I sometimes contribute to XMPP-related free software, such as ejabberd where I created a new captcha script (called next-gen).

I'm also contributing to GNU Guix when it comes to update the XMPP packages (such as Gajim or Dino).

Through Libre en Communs, I regularly give conferences on free software and in particular XMPP, I explain the characteristics of the protocol and how it is decentralized, and I explain in particular the principles behind OMEMO and how it works.

My interest in XMPP

I'm interested in free software, decentralization, user empowerment, and freedom in general, and XMPP helps us bring these ideas to some life. Also, I do like this community very much.

I became interested in the technical standards in 2021, and started to follow and study the work of the Council. The fact it is open and so easily accessible (in terms of how much work you have to do to find the documents and be able to start reading etc, and also find the right one etc) helped me a lot.

The reasons of my candidacy for Board 2024

My investment in the XMPP world is growing. I'm more and more interested in it, and I want to do more and more for XSF.

On top of that, the XSF is one of the only organizations I know of that functions not so badly democratically-speaking, which motivates me to help preserve this way of working, and perhaps to help look for improvements, to further improve governance? So many things are possible. All I want to do is help maintain what exists and improve what can be improved, in collaboration with all the members.

What could I do for the XSF board

I think XSF has a real role to play in the community by being as inclusive as possible, the most accessible source for anyone discovering XMPP, and helping the community bring in new people seems a priority to me. XMPP has a role to play in the context of the freedom to communicate safely and privately, and we can help with that.

I'm personally the treasurer of an association in France, and i got a few experiences. I don't know if I'll be able to help in that matter, but I'm available to do so if the need arises. I have a good culture of compromise and appreciate consensus.

I'm also very interested in the legal side of things, I've done some self-taught studies in (french and european) legal principles. I'm not a lawyer but I enjoy researching and checking things from that point of view.

I'm also a technical person that can adapt to many tools and help create new ones if needed.

What I could not do

Sometimes you don't know what you can't do until you meet it. Honestly I'd be hard pressed to tell you what I can't do for the board, but probably I couldn't commit anything illegal and sometimes I need to sleep at regular times? 🤣️

Anyways, I am at your disposal to discuss my candidacy. Feel free to contact me via XMPP !