Why is software, created using taxpayers' money, not released as Free Software? We started raising this question with our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign, and received a lot of international attention and support. At the time of writing, more than 18.500 individuals and 155 organisations signed our open letter, demanding that code paid for by the people should be available to the people. As another strong sign that now is the right time to ask for public code, we have found the first public administration to sign our open letter: the City Council of Barcelona.
+Why is software, created using taxpayers' money, not released as Free Software? We started raising this question with our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign, and received a lot of international attention and support. At the time of writing, more than 18.500 individuals and more than 150 organisations signed our open letter, demanding that code paid for by the people should be available to the people. As another strong sign that now is the right time to ask for public code, we have found the first public administration to sign our open letter: the City Council of Barcelona.
On the other hand, little is known about how much public code is already a reality in many public administrations throughout Europe. To change this, we shed light on outstanding examples, to learn from each other and to put positive pressure on decision makers. We started a series of expert interviews in different areas to learn more about their experiences and their motivation, as well as their challenges: Francesca Bria, CTO of Barcelona, elaborates on how Free Software helps build a more democratic, inclusive and sustainable digital society; Elena Muñoz Salinero, who leads the Technology Transfer Centre of the Spanish Government, speaks about best practices between public administrations in the re-use of software solutions, by publishing code under Free Software licenses; and Timo Aarnio, GIS expert at National Land Survey of Finland which coordinates the development of Oskari, explains development practices under public funding within a network with over 38 organisations from both the public and private sector.
@@ -95,7 +103,7 @@However, offering expertise to decision-makers is only one factor. It is just as important to apply pressure by raising awareness inside our society and offering people tools to explain the benefits of public code to each other. For the overall campaign's success, it is essential to empower activists and organisations from all over the world to become a part of this movement. One key to achieving this is to offer material and explanations in a person's mother tongue. Thanks to the priceless help of our outstanding volunteers, we have managed to translate the campaign website into 18 languages. The corresponding popular campaign video is dubbed into six different languages (English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Russian) and offers subtitles in a total of 15 languages. This way, we enable more than 1.5 billion people to learn about "Public Money, Public Code" in their language.
-After a long and intense debate that we accompanied with our Save Code Share campaign, and after collecting more than 14.000 signatories for our open letter to avoid any negative impact for Free Software, we obtained some limited exclusion for Free Software in the text of the European Parliament's directive. With amendment 143 and 150 of the current copyright reform proposal, we now have at least an exclusion for “open source software developing platforms (..) within the meaning of this Directive”. However, the council proposed this exclusion to only be valid for “non-commercial open source software developing platforms”.
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Since the beginning of October the European Parliament and the Council have been in the Trialogue in which we keep raising our voices and demanding for an appropriated exception of commercial as well as non-commercial Free Software in the upcoming Copyright Reform package. Most likely, this debate will continue until the beginning of next year, so if you have not yet done so, back our demand and help keep a healthy environment for Free Software development by signing our open letter or helping us finanicially.
+The FSFE aims to support developers by helping them understand the legal implications of reusing a given piece of Free Software, and how to comply with these legal requirements by adding copyright and license information. To achieve this, the FSFE has embarked on our REUSE Initiative, which introduces a set of best practices for license information in ways not only humans can read, but computers as well, helping to automate licensing. These guidelines have been in place since December 2017.
+ +In September, the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano published a study analyzing a fixed data-set of GitHub projects, and the extent to which these projects respect our REUSE Initiative guidelines, concluding that compliance with our guidelines is low. While low compliance can be attributed to the relatively recent availability of our guidelines, the study also found them overly complex, as they suggest a variety of options rather than a single simple method of compliance. Many of the recommendations in the guidelines are also worded to suggest that they are optional, which adds to the complexity for developers trying to understand and comply with the legal requirements of their repositories.
+ +The study has also made suggestions for alternatives and/or improvements for some of our main guidelines, which includes the proposal to use the so-called “flight rules” developed by IDM-Südtirol. The FSFE takes these criticisms to heart and works to improve on these guidelines in order to see greater compliance in the future, and greatly appreciate all feedback that can help us make this a reality.
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Again, there have just been too many outstanding love declarations by individuals and organisations to be listed here. If you are interested in more details, read this year's report and do not miss #IloveFS-day in 2019!
If you would like to keep up to date throughout the year and read good news about Free Software and the people behind it, subscribe to our newsletter and if you would like to help us spread the love about Free Software, support us financially.
+ + +The FSFE participates in public events to spread the message of Free Software. We are organising more and more successful events on our own, and extending our presence at events organised by others. In 2018 we participated with informative booths and talks at more than 40 events in ten European Countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Sweden).
+The FSFE participates in public events to spread the message of Free Software. We are organising more and more successful events on our own, and extending our presence at events organised by others. In 2018 we participated with informative booths and talks at more than 40 events in ten European Countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Sweden).
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In July, we combined our annual community meeting with the FSFE's presence at the Libre Software Meeting (aka Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre) in Strasbourg, France. The Libre Software Meeting is a community-driven Free Software meeting in France, and the FSFE had the chance to run its own freedom-related track during the conference. Our community meeting is the annual event to bring together our community across Europe for a weekend to discuss and set the FSFE's agenda for the months to come.
@@ -156,7 +177,7 @@In January, the FSFE partnered up again with Open Forum Europe for the third edition of the European Free Software Policy Meeting in Brussels, at the heart of European decision-making. The aim of the meeting was to shed light on topics important for Free Software in public policy all over Europe, and to exchange experience for policy action within different regions to help political decision-makers understand how software freedom is related to other freedoms in our society, as well as the economic impact of Free Software. This year, 17 different groups were represented at the European Free Software Policy Meeting, from national Free Software groups to public sector representatives and international organisations.
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In the days before New Year's Eve, the FSFE aligned with European Digital Rights (EDRi) and other friends to form a Cluster “Rights & Freedoms” at the 34th Chaos Communication Congress, one of the largest community-driven technology-events in the world. This cluster offered a stage with a full-time programme about digital rights and the FSFE Assembly forms an integral part of this program with our own Free Software track.
@@ -172,7 +193,7 @@For those who feel inspired by the FSFE and would like to help keep the FSFE running with their official support, we offer a supporter programme, previously known as the Fellowship programme. The supporter programme includes a financial contribution to the FSFE and is crucial to our success. Joining the supporters program is as easy as any online transaction and it is said to bring good karma!
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It has always been an aim for our community to offer a friendly and peaceful environment for every participant at the FSFE's events and in its infrastructure, online and offline. Since last year, we have officially codified this in our Code of Conduct. To further ensure its availability and enforcement, we created a CARE team at the beginning of this year. Whenever you encounter a situation in which our Code of Conduct was breached, do not hesitate to get in touch with our central CARE team.
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In 2018, the General Assembly also approved the removal of the "Fellowship seats". In future, access to membership of the FSFE shall be facilitated through the normal membership procedures for active FSFE contributors. The FSFE believes that encouraging active contributors to become GA members, without the downsides of the elections, is a better way to achieve our mission.
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Besides promotion material, the FSFE sells clothes, bags, baby bibs, and magnets as merchandise items. This year, we have newly released a "100 Freedoms of Free Software" shirt, a "There is no Cloud just other people's computers" magnet, and a "Public Money? Public Code!" bag.
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