A song about the GNU public license

There was a time, back in 1999 or so, when people were filled with revolutionary fire about the future of the internet and the merits of open source code. Recently, though, in light of so many abuses of binary blobs, like in the volkswagen scandal, and now Huawei, and shenanigans in the IETF, it feels as though we've lost our way.

I wrote this song at the famous 1999 linuxworld conference, where redhat had just gone public, and it seemed like we could truly change the world.

I recorded this version at the IETF 104 conference while fighting a battle with cablelabs over the last half a bit in the IP header. I've been playing it a lot. Is there a way back from the abyss, a way to recapture that fire we once felt?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gx_r5ohYaA