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Reviewed-on: #4804
Co-authored-by: Bonnie Mehring <bonnie@fsfe.org>
Co-committed-by: Bonnie Mehring <bonnie@fsfe.org>
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<title>SFP#29: How South Tyrol is taking a step in the direction of software freedom</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>SFP#29: How South Tyrol is taking a step in the direction of software freedom</h1>
<p>For our 29th episode we have something very special for you. Marta Andreoli, the Italian deputy coordinator, talks to Paolo Dongilli about the FUSS project. Together they unravel
how FUSS is helping the schools in South Tyrol take a step towards software freedom.</p>
<audio-player />
<p>Paolo Dongilli, the technical inspector for the Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano, South Tyrol, is the brains behind the <a href ="https://fuss.bz.it/">FUSS project</a>. FUSS stands
for Free Upgrade for a Digitally Sustainable School, a complete operating system based on GNU+Linux. The system is currently used by 1900 teachers and 16.000 students. FUSS is installed
on 4500 computers.</p>
<p>How did South Tyrol's schools start relaying on Free Software and what are the social implications of this decision? These and more topics are discussed in this episode by Marta and Paolo.h</p>
<p>Listen to our 29th episode and find out what all the fuss is about!!</p>
<p>Show notes</p>
<ul>
<li><a href ="https://fuss.bz.it/">FUSS project</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.rivistabricks.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/04_2023_08_Dongilli.pdf">Background information on the FUSS project (IT only)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://fuss.bz.it/material/brochure-fuss-en-it-v6.pdf">Brochure on FUSS (IT and EN)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://home.provinz.bz.it/de/kontakte/732">Paolo Dongilli</a></li>
<li><a href="https://publiccode.eu/">Sign the Open Letter for “Public Money? Public Code!”</a></li>
<li><a href="/news/newsletter.html">Stay up-to-date and join our Newsletter</a></li>
<li><a href="/donate">Support our work for Free Software</a></li>
</ul>
<p>If you liked this episode and want to support our continuous work for software freedom, please help us with a <fsfe-cd-donate-link>donation</fsfe-cd-donate-link>.</p>
</body>
<tags>
<tag key="front-page"/>
<tag key="podcast">Software Freedom Podcast</tag>
<tag key="pmpc">"Public Money? Public code!"</tag>
</tags>
<!-- Meta data for podcast, update with each episode! -->
<podcast>
<subtitle>How South Tyrol is taking a step in the direction of software freedom</subtitle>
<duration>15:02</duration>
<episode>29</episode> <!-- number of episode -->
<!-- OPUS -->
<opus>
<url>https://download.fsfe.org/audio/podcast/SFP029.opus</url>
<length>3719908</length> <!-- size of file in bytes -->
</opus>
<!-- MP3 -->
<mp3>
<url>https://download.fsfe.org/audio/podcast/SFP029.mp3</url>
<length>12640535</length> <!-- size of file in bytes -->
</mp3>
<!-- Transcript -->
<transcript>
<url>/news/podcast/transcript/episode-29.html</url>
</transcript>
<chapters>
<chapter start="00:00">Welcome to the podcast</chapter>
<chapter start="01:26">Interview with Paolo Dongilli</chapter>
<chapter start="11:30">Closing words</chapter>
<chapter start="14:13">Outro</chapter>
</chapters>
</podcast>
<discussion href="https://mastodon.social/deck/@fsfe/"/>
<image url="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/original/c4/22/5b616c692f65d86b970397dd38d2.png" alt="Paolo Dongilli standing in front of a pin-wall with a 'Public Money? Public Code!' Poster and some FUSS posters" />
</html>

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<title>Transcript SFP#29</title>
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<body>
<h1>Transcript of SFP#29: How South Tyrol is taking a step in the direction of software freedom</h1>
<p><a href="/news/podcast/episode-29.html">Back to the episode SFP#29</a></p>
<p>This is a transcript created with the Free Software tool Whisper. For more information and feedback reach out to <email mailto="yes">podcast@fsfe.org</email></p>
<pre class="transcript">
WEBVTT
00:00.000 --> 00:04.640
Before we start with the podcast, we would like to say thank you to all of you who support
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the FSFE's work of money.
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Working for software freedom and producing podcasts costs money.
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Please consider supporting us with our nation on the FSFE.org slash donate and in the
00:18.200 --> 00:19.200
show notes.
00:30.000 --> 00:37.440
Hello and welcome to the software freedom podcast.
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This podcast is brought to you by the free software foundation Europe.
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We are a charity that empowers users to take control of technology.
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I'm Bonnie Merring and today we have a special episode.
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Marta Andreoli, who is the Italian deputy coordinator, is talking to Paul Lundjili
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about the first project.
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And with this I would say let's explore what all the fuss is about.
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Hello everyone, my name is Marta and I'm the deputy coordinator for the FSFE Italy
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project.
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I'm here tonight together with Paul Lundjili, who is the technical inspector for Italian
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schools in the autonomy of Bozzano Italy.
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Welcome Paolo.
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Hi.
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Hi.
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Nice to see you, Marta.
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Good.
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I'm really happy that you're here with us tonight with me, actually.
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And Paolo is also the coordinator of the FUSE project.
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Paolo can you tell me and can you tell us a bit more about what the FUSE is all about?
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Yeah, FUSE stands for free upgrade in software schools.
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We modified a little bit the acronym into free upgrade for a digitally sustainable school.
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And this project was born in 2005 with the idea of giving students and teachers the
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possibility to use free software, not only at schools but also at home.
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Okay, that's amazing.
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Thank you Paolo.
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I'm really fond of this project, I'm a big fan.
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And I know that this project is also really very much considered a project of public value.
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And I also know that the project has some ties with the FUSE campaign, public money,
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public code.
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So I would love for you now to share a bit more on this.
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Yeah, several projects and institutions around the world recognized not only to our project,
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so to the FUSE project, but also to all free software projects around the world that
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they bring, they constitute public value and why?
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Because especially for projects that are, let's say, funded by public administrations,
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those, that money that is used to develop those projects is converted into public code.
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And this is what happened with FUSE.
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We not only reused a very good free software starting from the Debian GNU Linux distribution,
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but we also reused a lot of applications that constitute all the, let's say, educational
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applications that we installed in the FUSE distribution.
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We also developed a lot of code using public money and this is why it is considered that
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the outcome of this is a public value.
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So the public code, the documentation, and everything that comes out of the project
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is, let's say, given back to the whole community.
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Okay, wow, that's really amazing and it's really a complete target for what the FUSE stands
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for for the public money, public code campaign.
03:57.080 --> 04:01.400
Could you tell me then a bit more about who uses the project and do you also have some
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metrics in terms of numbers of users?
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Yes, the FUSE project is used by all Italian schools of the autonomous province of Bolzano.
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And so the numbers are that it is used by around 16,000 students and 1,900 teachers.
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It is used in 74 schools and the number of PCs and desktops and the notebooks we have
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is around 4,500 and we also have 64 servers which have a complete free software stack starting
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from Proxmox and ending it to Debian and all software that is needed to run a school
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network.
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Okay, amazing.
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I was once in a presentation with you and I remember that you told us and you shared
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that you were saving a lot of money because you actually used this project.
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So I was wondering if you perhaps remember now without having the data with you, how much
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money did this project make you save and by you, I mean the province of Bolzano?
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Yeah, consider that before 2005, we were spending around 300,000 euro for proprietary software
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licenses.
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Starting from 2005, okay, we spent some money to exit the proprietary lock-in and starting
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from 2007 till today practically, consider that in 16 years we spent less than what we
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spent for one year of proprietary software licenses.
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So in 16 years from 2007 till 2022, we spent around 303,000 euro which is less than one
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year of proprietary software licenses.
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Wow, that's really amazing, Paolo and big congratulations for that.
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And because of what you just shared, I have a question that I think the audience that
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is listening to us might be interested in hearing and especially they might be interested
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in hearing your answer to this question.
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And my question would be if someone wants to replicate this project, do you have a blueprint
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that you created through the years and can you share it with us?
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Would you be willing to share it with us?
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We were in contact with some other schools and people around Italy.
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So first of all, I would like to say that Fuss is not only used in South Tyrol, it's
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also used for example in one high school in Venice.
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It has been used for several years.
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It's used in Florence, in a so-called Lichero, Nicolò Rodolico in Florence and some other
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schools in Italy for example, Ancona.
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We were asked by Liguria for example to give them a blueprint to replicate a project and
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we work with them towards a document for replicating it.
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And the last effort was doing more or less the same thing with the schools in Venice.
07:41.280 --> 07:51.080
So we were contacted by the region of Venice and they asked us to give them some help in
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recreating the ingredients for replicating Fuss in the region.
07:56.080 --> 07:59.200
Okay, that's beautiful and did you already achieve this?
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Did you do it?
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They decided to start with the three schools.
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So they chose three schools and the schools are going to start with Fuss.
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Okay, so I'm looking forward to hear the results of what they will do as well.
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And I hope many listeners to our podcast will also decide to get in touch with you where
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we share the podcast, we will also share your contact if that's okay with you so that
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people can get in touch.
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But before closing, I also wanted to touch on another point because I've seen by reading
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newspaper articles and links that you also sent me and other friends shared that this
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project also can be called as a social project because you interacted with other realities
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from the territory.
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And I'm really also always fascinated by these kind of corporations.
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So I would really love if you can elaborate a bit more on these and share your experience.
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Sure.
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I mean, together with the local Linux user group, the Linux user group, Bozano-Bulsana,
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we started in 2017 and so called Open Linux Desk where people could come and we were
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helping them in installing Linux and free software on their machines.
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And starting with a pandemic period, we saw that it was a great, two big digital divide
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in families and we decided to gather a lot of used PCs and believe me, there are companies
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that throw away and also public institutions that throw away very good PCs and we decided
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to gather them and install GNU Linux and lots of free software, practically the FUSD
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distribution for students and consider that in three, four years we were able to give
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to families and students in particular 800 PCs.
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So following this idea, we were also able to get in contact with other projects, for
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example MiniBizet, which is a project that started several years ago in order to create
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a small city for children and there are several other projects in Europe of the same kind
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as the one here in Bozano.
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And in 2024, so this year, this was the first year where they wanted to digitalize the
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whole city and they needed around 80 PCs.
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And so what we proposed them was to start a circular economy project where we gathered
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all PCs as we did with the school swap project and we installed free software on that.
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So the same FUSD distribution, so they've been GNU Linux and a lot of educational software
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and they were able to let's say work in a small city using computers for the first time.
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Yes, and computers with free software installed on it.
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Of the amazing, amazing, really great work and thank you for sharing with us.
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I hope listeners will be inspired by your stories.
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That's the whole purpose of having this interview with you.
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And yeah, to wrap it up, we touched on so many points and especially I think so many
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important values came up from the talk that we just had.
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So to close our talk, I would like to ask you if you can give us a bit of a summary of
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the main pillars that actually build up this project and that are at the core of the project.
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I heard some of them, for example, we talk about free and open source software, about
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open standards, about open teaching materials, open access and I would also say open hardware.
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Of course, if you can.
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Yes, we are talking very often about the concept of digital sustainability.
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So sustainability is a concept that has been used a lot, especially in the past few years,
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but we insist on the fact that we don't have only to talk about free software,
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but also, as you said, about open standards, the importance of using open standards in schools,
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because I work in schools and for public administrations.
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And the importance of starting creating open teaching materials, there's a lot of work that
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has to be done, Wikimedia projects as Wikibooks are working in that direction.
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And also Vikiversity, for example.
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So we very often say we don't need to reinvent or reuse or say redevelop new platforms
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for storing their teaching materials, for example.
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And of course, open access is quite important as one of the several pillars of digital sustainability,
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because without open access, we couldn't access neither free software and all other resources.
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And these four pillars are, let's say, built one of the most important things that we also have,
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we need in schools, this is one of the big objects of schools, which is knowledge sharing.
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So without, I mean, this main point, which is knowledge sharing, we couldn't have the other four resources
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that we're talking about.
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Yeah, and knowledge sharing is also the point of our podcasts and of sharing these experiences with you all.
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So I thank you, Paolo, for the talk we had.
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It was a very inspiring chat, and I look forward to many more.
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And thank you also to all the listeners who tuned in for the podcast episode on the FUS project with Paolo Dunjili.
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And see you next time, stay tuned for the next guest.
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Bye-bye.
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This was the Software Freedom Podcast.
14:15.920 --> 14:20.760
If you liked this episode, please recommend it to your friends and rate it.
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Stay tuned for more inspiring conversations that explore the importance of Software Freedom.
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This podcast is presented to you by the free Software Foundation Europe.
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We are a charity that works in promoting Software Freedom.
14:36.360 --> 14:41.360
If you like our work, please consider supporting us with our donation.
14:41.360 --> 14:47.160
You find more information under fsfe.org slash donate.
14:47.160 --> 14:48.160
Thanks.
</pre>
<p><a href="/news/podcast/episode-29.html">Back to the episode SFP#29</a></p>
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