82 lines
5.1 KiB
HTML
82 lines
5.1 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<html newsdate="2021-06-11">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>Netherlands: Participation app remains closed to the public</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>Netherlands: Participation app remains closed to the public</h1>
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<p>The Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) debates in public, as it should. But as not everyone has the opportunity
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to go to Den Hague and sit in the gallery, the Tweede Kamer released an app to follow the debates via livestream. Unfortunately,
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this app not is released under a Free Software licence. Our Dutch volunteer Jos van den Oever wanted to participate but was not able
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to run the app on his device and got active.</p>
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<p>In principle, it is a good idea to create and use technical solutions to increase the transparency of parliaments. However, the implementation in the
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Netherlands with the Debat Direct app is the opposite, as the app is not accessible to everyone. With the Debat Direct app, citizens can follow parliamentary
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debates easily from everywhere – but not with every device. The app is only available in the Apple, Google, and Microsoft app stores and is not available
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under a Free Software licence. A similar functionality is offered in an online webapp. Our Dutch volunteer Jos van den Oever wanted to participate and
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use the app on his Firefox OS phone - a Free Software operating system for mobile phones - unfortunately without success. Therefore Jos tried to get the app's
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source code in January 2018 in order to make it also accessible on other devices. It turned out to be a long fight.</p>
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<figure>
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<img src="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/medium/d9a1339d919cc9aa979241a4738e7c9d.png" alt="PMPC"/>
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<figcaption>Public Money? Public Code!</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<h2>Request under PSI</h2>
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<p>The request for the source code invoked the Dutch implementation of the European Public Sector Information (PSI) directive (Wet hergebruik overheidsinformatie).
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The PSI directive allows public information to be requested in the original, reusable form in which it is present at the public institution. It is worth noting
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that the Parliament is exempt from Freedom of Information requests to make non-public information public, and so the PSI directive is only applicable if
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information is already public. However, for almost two decades now a large majority of Dutch MPs have been asking their government to use and publish
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software under a Free Software licence in order to give everybody the right to use, study, share, and improve the code. But so far Parliament has not
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led by example. Jos' request was not complied with; the code remained closed to the public. Jos did not give up and brought the case to court.</p>
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<h2>Reverse Engineering</h2>
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<p>Unfortunately the court did not agree with Jos and decided that source code is not the reusable form of software. However, most of the source code was made public
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on the website of the app as source maps. Jos wrote a script to save the js files from the source maps and managed to largely recreate the app from these files and
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reverse engineered build files. But even though Jos, and anyone else, may retrieve the source code, it remains without a proper licence; it can be studied,
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but not shared or improved.</p>
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<h2>Court Case</h2>
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<p>Jos appealed with the newly discovered source maps, which resulted in a hearing on 17 March 2021. Jos was the plaintiff at the hearing at the highest
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general administrative court in the Netherlands, the Administrative Jurisdiction Division at the Council of State (CoS). In the hearing, the Parliament
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argued that the source maps do not contain the source code, even though Jos submitted the source code that he extracted to the hearing. On 31 March 2021,
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the CoS ruled that Parliament does not have to publish the source code since, in their judgement, the source code is not public. So even though it is
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factually public, via source maps, it is not legally public according to the CoS judgment. In other words: it is not public because Parliament says it is not public.</p>
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<p>As weird as that may sound, from a legal perspective the PSI directive does not apply to the Parliament and thus the app does not need to be made public.
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The bright side of the decision is that this does not say anything negative about the possibility of obtaining source code for software that is available publicly.</p>
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<p>The FSFE therefore calls upon the Dutch Parliament to impose rules on itself, to act transparently, and to publish the source code of such applications
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under a Free Software licence in the future.</p>
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<p>Here you can read more about the activity (Dutch): <a href="https://broncode.org/">https://broncode.org</a></p>
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</body>
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<tags>
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<tag key="front-page"/>
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<tag key="pmpc">Public Money? Public Code!</tag>
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<tag key="public-administration">Public administration</tag>
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<tag key="nl">Netherlands</tag>
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</tags>
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<discussion href="https://community.fsfe.org/t/699"/>
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<image url="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/medium/d9a1339d919cc9aa979241a4738e7c9d.png"/>
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</html>
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