Alyssa Rosenzweig, who spearheaded the reverse-engineering of Apple's GPU, to keynote LibrePlanet
Companies like Apple make software freedom hard to achieve. One major obstacle is their graphics hardware, which often ships without public specifications, free drivers, or native support for free operating systems such as GNU/Linux. On top of that, Apple's drivers are not conformant to any industry standard. But there are free software projects like Panfrost, which defy these companies and build a graphics stack that respects the users' freedom. Alyssa Rosenzweig, who spearheaded the reverse-engineering of the Apple GPU, will keynote LibrePlanet 2024 and explain how the conformant OpenGL® 4.6 support beats Apple and thereby protects software freedom, i.e. the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software that surrounds us. About her work, Rosenzweig says: "The heart of the software freedom fight is resisting abuses of power: surveillance capitalism, vendor lock-in, planned obsolescence, and more. As software freedom activists, we stand in solidarity with marginalized people against oppression, laborers against exploitation, dissidents against authoritarianism. I am merely a graphics developer, but I am glad to do my part, reverse-engineering the way towards a more just world."