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All right, everyone, welcome to the
top public money public code
held by Bonnie and
Mathias, and they
work for the FSA, and I guess
you can start now.
Thank you very much.
So, yes, my name is not just.
I work for Free Software Foundation
Europe and does this spawn emerging will
also be part of the talk
and we are here to present
you what we have already done in the
Public Money Public Code campaign.
What tools are available with the goal
to enable you to use them yourself
and get active for yourself?
So in school,
we learned that
in Denmark, in a democracy,
we elect people for different
institutions and then they
they have to power over this area.
While in a world where more and more
things are decided with technology
and with software, the situation
might look more like this.
And so the goal
of the offensive is that in governments,
in public administrations
that the administrations
can use the software and control
that software in their area.
So free software always
gives them certain freedoms
that a government and public
administration can use that software
for any purpose so that no
third party can decide what
the government or the public
administration can do with the software
and what not.
They can always use it for any purpose,
for any purpose without getting
permission first.
They are also allowed to study
the software, so to get the source code
and see what it actually does, software
is really doing to understand
what implications certain things have to
see if this is right or wrong, what the
software is doing and check if the
software is in compliance with the laws
and regulations they introduced.
Furthermore, software free
software always gives the governments
the freedom to share
the software without us, be
it the citizens, be it the
other public administrations,
companies,
wherever.
And furthermore, that
the public administration is always
able to improve the software or
adapt the software to their own needs.
So governments should never be in a
situation where they
cannot do a change in law,
in a regulation because a software
company or a developer doesn't allow
them to do this.
So you are always allowed to do it.
You can make modifications
so that you adopt a software to your
needs, and you don't have to change your
behavior of the public administration
to what someone else, a developer
of the software decided.
So that's that's the background here.
As I said, what we want to present here
is what tools are available,
what parts of the of the campaign
we already have.
And our goal is that you
can then afterwards also use those tools,
be creative and
hack your public administration that
day afterwards.
Also, make sure that software,
which is published software, which
is financed with public money, will
afterwards be published under a free
software license, which allows
the public administration, but also
each one of you and all the other public
public administrations to use
the software for any purpose to study the
source code to share the software with
others and to improve it.
So, yes, let's start
with that.
As I said, the the
goals we already had
for a very long time that besides
citizens companies, governments should
also receive those four freedoms
of free software to use, study, share and
improve it.
And we lobbied for that for a long
time, talked with politicians, people in
public administrations.
But in 2017, we thought,
what can we do to give
this goal a push?
Can we come up with a campaign to
to speed it up?
And so what we decided was that
we have a campaign workshop about that.
We invited lots of volunteers
from all over Europe and spend
one weekend together.
That's our head there,
where we noted down several ideas
for the slogan.
We thought about what components we need
for such a campaign.
What tools we need.
And yeah, I'm one of the outcomes.
Boston the the slogan here,
which you see there, besides some of us
where I feel a little bit embarrassed
of what we came up with.
But yeah, so that that was at the time
when we then came up with what we wanted
to do, what components we wanted to to
have, and under which slogan the
public money public code slogan.
We want to do this
from now on.
Some of us started to develop
a website.
So we wanted to make sure that when
there are people who don't have any clue
about free software yet, political
decision makers, people in public
administrations, but also the public,
the general public, when they want to
learn about this, that they have an easy
entrance point for it.
So we created this website
and our volunteers
started to translate it in many
languages. So, meanwhile, have 19
languages available there.
You see them on the button
there. And if any one
of you is speaking a language which is
not yet listed there, we
want you after the talk.
Please help us so that we can make 20
or 21 out of that.
So yes, that was the first part so that
when you talk with people about that, you
can point them to a website.
The next step was that we
started drafting an open letter, which
we.
Which we want to send to politicians
on all different levels.
So we started talking with other
organizations, develop the draft there,
get some feedback, made some small
readjustment to the letter.
The CCC was one of the first signing
it.
Are RCO, whom you might also
notice when you walk a volunteer,
and several of them were then the
first initial people who signed
it.
And the idea there is that
for different elections, for
whenever there is a good opportunity to
contact public administrations or
politicians that we can point to the open
letter, we can show them how many people
and how many organizations are supporting
this. And one of the easiest
things for you to do if you want
to support this campaign is
to sign the open letter yourself and
encourage others to do so.
We are also especially interested in
other organizations.
Of course, it's very nice if these
signing process works as smooth as in
this case with Debien, which has received
much requests and say
yes. But we are also very much
interested in non-technical
organizations signing this open letter.
So not so much out of the
usual suspects, but organizations
a civil society which also want to
support this or or
other public administration stem cells.
So if you can help us there to get
more people signing this demand, that's
very helpful for us.
Furthermore, we then
we also said that we need a short video
for people who don't want to read
websites who don't want to read open
letters. Something very short, very
simple.
And that's the video.
I also want to briefly show you
the funnel.
For a moment, our government would treat
our public infrastructure like our
streets and public buildings the
same way it treats our digital
infrastructure.
Our members of Parliament would work in a
rented space where they weren't allowed
to vote in favor of stricter
environmental laws because the owner,
a multinational corporation, didn't
allow that kind of voting and its
buildings.
Nor will it allow a long overdue upgrade
to more than 500 seats.
This means some members of parliament
have to stay outside in the street
and a couple of blocks away, a
brand new gym is already being
torn down just six months after
it was built.
It's being replaced with an exact replica
at great expense and the only
difference the new manufacturer also
provides straightforward as an added
feature.
Meanwhile, every night, through a
hidden backdoor in the city hall,
documents that contain sensitive
information on citizens from bank data
to health care records are being stolen,
but no one is allowed to do anything
about it because searching for
back doors and locking them
would infringe the signed user agreement.
And as absurd as this sounds
when it comes to our digital
infrastructure, things like the software
and programs that our governments are
using every day.
This comparison is pretty accurate
because mostly our administrations
procure proprietary software.
This means a lot of money goes
into licenses that last for
a limited amount of time and restrict
our rights.
We aren't allowed to use our
infrastructure in a reasonable way.
And because the source code
of proprietary software is usually
a business secret, finding
security holes or deliberately installed
backdoors is extremely difficult
and even illegal.
But a public administrations
can do better if all
publicly financed software were to
be free and open source.
We could use and share our infrastructure
for anything and for as long as we
wanted, we could upgrade it,
repair it and
remodel it in any way
to fit our needs.
And because the open source and
free software means that the blueprint is
openly readable for everyone.
This makes it much easier to find
and close security holes.
And if something practical
and reliable was created digitally,
not only can you reuse the blueprint
all over your country,
the actual thing itself can be
deployed anywhere, even internationally.
A great example of this is Fix
My Street, originally developed
in Great Britain as a free software app
to report, view and discuss local
problems like potholes.
It's now being used all over the world.
Everyone benefits because new
features and improvements are shared
by everyone.
If all our software were developed
like this, we could stop
struggling with restrictive licenses
and could start thinking about where and
how software could help us.
We could concentrate on creating a better
society for everyone.
So if you think that tomorrow's
infrastructure should be in our own
hands, help us now
by sharing this video and visiting
our website public code top
EU.
It's time to make our demand
public money public
code.
So, yeah, this video was actually
something which was quite difficult for
us, so we had many people involved in the
campaign.
And when we started to think about like
what to put in the video, there were lots
of people. We can't say it like this.
That's too
hard, too much simplification there.
And in the end, we had to decide that
it's just a small group of free people
from us, plus the person doing the video
that we came up with this, which I hope
that it's now very easy to understand
for politicians, political decision
makers and people in public
administrations.
What we did later in the campaign was
that we translated the video
in several other languages, so it's now
available in English, Spanish, French,
Italian, Portuguese and Russian.
And thereby, we should, in theory, be
able to reach over one billion people
in their native language.
We are still interested to also have that
in other languages.
So the costs for that are
around â‚¬900 if you want to do it
professionally.
We also had some organizations in other
countries who were taking care about
debts of one organization was handling
this for French.
And we also found several people in
other countries there who
like to complain a lot and then helped
us.
Yeah, I don't doing it pro bono
for a very good price.
So, yeah, this video is there.
You can use it.
And then one
other component, which we also
which also people started using, was
that some, uh,
some activists spent their nights
playing around with global projectors.
There were things where you can play
around with light and projected that on
buildings.
They are also I've already seen some
people around here who
may have been part of this activities.
And so
they yeah, they're the reason
for that is that it's it
gives you your offer.
It's have some pictures which you can use
when you want to bring
that in the in the press talk
of out of if the media and
and also in general, to
have some images for something which is
very abstract, like talking about
software.
So yeah, some people spend
their nights in Frankfurt and
in Berlin to protect messages
on public administrations buildings.
And then
one one thing we did was
that with the open letter and the video,
we started contacting politicians
for, UM,
for the federal elections in
Germany in 2017.
So I noticed in German I will
briefly translate it.
So d
d, what we did there was that we
sent an email to all candidates
who can be dated for becoming a member of
Parliament in the German Bundestag.
And one experience we made
there is that the the feedback
we received from politicians there
was quite good.
But what even worked better was
that we encourage people to contact their
direct candidates themselves.
And this is an example
of a reply and my mother
received. So she was also contacting
politicians about that and asked them if
Dave would be in favor of
a publicly financed offer being published
under free software licenses.
And this was the reply by, um,
by a conservative politician
who is also secretary of state from that
party. And he wrote that
it's it's very he's
very impressed by the work who her
son and if this FSF
e are doing and that
after the election, he would like to have
contact with us and talk with us
about this because it's an area
where politicians are also dependent on
the expertize from
from external people.
And so that's something which
is where
you see that with some very small
messages, short emails, you can
already reach people on a more personal
level and and
showed him this video. I mean, he was
also in the in the email replying, Oh
yeah, that video makes sense.
I also forwarded it to our experts.
Let's see what they say.
But I mean, for himself, first
of all, the politician said, Look, yeah,
that that all makes sense.
We should do that.
And the same political
party, just a few
steps forward, a few
a few weeks ago took a decision.
So it was the CDU and
the CDU at their last party convention.
They took the decision
that publicly
finance software should be published
under free software licenses and be
available for everyone, which was
for. A big, big improvement
there.
Because it's usually if it came from
party, which years before our ten years,
it was more blocking
in this direction.
And so that's of course something
they say now.
And we have to make sure to monitor this
and to remind them about what they want
to do so that actually
things are implemented there.
But I want to show it to you to to
show that it's often
to lots of people who have to do
something are to to make a change.
And it could be one of the small
emails which convinces one of the
politicians to say yes when this is
coming into the party convention and they
have to take a decision there.
Furthermore, what we also did before
this decision already is that
on the 14th of February,
we always encourage people to
thank for software developers for their
work. So we call it the Ilove Free
Software Day because we think they're not
just the flower industry should have some
benefits there.
And
last year, what we did understand was
that we prepared letters
and roses.
And each member of
the German parliament received such a
letter and arose from us.
And in those letters, we explained them
about free software, about public money,
public code, and asked them to
also be more aware
about what free software is doing for our
society.
That was something, again, some
opportunity to remind them about this
topic and explain them what we
have working on.
One other component we had
was that beside the website
and the video and the open letter,
we wanted to have something that when
politicians or political decision makers
in general say, that all makes
sense. What can I do next?
How can I learn more that
we have something to hand over to them
for us? So we decided that we wanted
to create a brochure with more
insight. Text some more details
about the topic.
So together with other organizations who
contributed text for this, we created
a brochure for public money, public
court for the modernization
of the public infrastructure
off of our public administrations.
And this brochure is it's
now available all said our booth.
You can hand it over whenever you talk
with politicians about this topic
and say, here's something more for you or
for your assistance to read.
And yeah, at the moment
it's only available in English, but
we are working on a German translation
together with iFit, which is a public
admin public body to help
public administration to modernize it.
So soon, there will also be a German
translation, which then hopefully will
help people in Germany, Austria
and parts of Switzerland to convince more
people about this again.
So and by that, I'm handing over to
Bonnie, our current intern, who
worked on this as one of her internship
projects.
Hello.
Thank you for having us
on.
Oh yeah. All right.
And just like doing my
internship, as Mattie has already
mentioned, I worked on the Public Money
Public Code campaign and
I managed it as by sending out letters
to politicians.
I wanted to get in contact with lots of
administrations all over Europe
to get them to sign the open letter
because so far we have only three of
them and we want there to be more.
Yes. So those three are
the addition of other dystopias.
I hope I'm pronouncing correctly
some commander up March and the
city of Barcelona.
Wow. Well, how did I do this?
I sent out some mails to the politicians
all over Europe. I looked up the
addresses and I found out if I have any
connections with software
or free software in the town.
I also did this with my hometown,
who I'm still in contact with.
I basically sent them some basic
information about free software as
materials already introduced to you.
And I also told them about the benefits
from free stuff and a public
administration like collaboration
with other communities, giving
back something to the people, saving
costs, for example, through collaboration
and reducing dependencies.
Also too far to support
the local economy could be a
benefit from it and innovation
because you don't need to reinvent the
wheel every time if you use free
software in the public administration.
But then I ended those emails with a
question like How is the digital
strategy and what are you planning for
the next mega station for this?
I also created a Vicki page and
our wiki so that you find an
example, email and also
loads of information on how to do this
and how to get in contact with
politicians.
But then I also asked myself,
but as politicians, the
only, say administrations, we have no,
we have more. We have the universities
for examples who are entities.
So now I need to click
and also schools.
Those all use public money to fund their
IT infrastructure and also libraries.
Libraries don't only have books, they
actually also use software
and hospitals, for example, as well.
Those are all public
administrations who use public
funds for their I.T.
infrastructure.
I also have some examples
currently of Oh, you
already saw this picture in the video.
By the way, there's a motion in the
parliament of Castle.
I know it's in Germany and
done very late, obviously examples from
other countries.
And that motion in the city parliament,
of course, asked the magistrate
to follow the guiding principle of being
busy by the purchase and development of
new free software out of new software.
Sorry. So today you buy
new free software.
Well, there will be a vote on this in
the middle of January and a responsible
committee, and in the end of
January in the city parliament, this was
already postponed a few times.
So there's still time for all of you who
live in the area of castle to get active
and write off some emails we already did.
And we will be happy to have if you have
any questions there, as
I have another success story
from a heckler called Pica
Pica in Asturias,
as always, had a serious sign.
Department of a serious side of letter
and they asked their.
Parliament to do this, they got in
contact with their politicians as well
and told them about the benefits, some
parties were more interested in
saving costs or support
the local economy and others very much
interested in collaboration of others.
And they used all these arguments with
two parties and got in contact
with them and convinced them eventually
to be the first parliament to sign the
open letter.
For this, we have an interview on our web
page and you can look up the whole story
there.
Then I also have another example that's
currently happening in the
parliament of Luxembourg.
There's a motion that says we
invite the government to actively promote
and support free and open source software
and public administrations, and
to publish every new developed software
which was financed from public funds as
open source software.
Currently, there are three at least three
opposition parties the Pirates
who have two seats, this SVP
who have 21 seats and delink.
I hope I pronounce it correctly.
Q. You have two seats as well
that are supporting does this motion
and also Viviane Reding, a former EU
commissioner from Disease V, is
speaking in favor for the motion.
So they're all examples where you can
still get active and write some emails.
And if you are now motivated to do this
to get in contact with your local
administration, as a result, there could
be any administration it could be in
university or school or
your hospital or your library and your
local hometown where you're from.
You can come to our booth and you find
information material there.
You can talk to me and I'm always happy
to help you with this.
And you thought you will also find
information on our Wiki page that I
created for this, and
we are always happy to hear about stories
like that.
Yes, Rufus.
And amid speculation that I was here in
the cluster about freedom in the Seattle.
So I mean, we showed you some examples
of what we already have there.
As I said before, we would be interested
for you to see what
you can make out of that.
You should be aware that changing
things in public administration, it's a
steep, stony, rocky,
long way because for many,
many years they were driving in a one
way road.
And it's very difficult for them to
make changes, come out of doors, bend or
lock ends.
They they drove into.
And so be aware
that when you reach out to politicians,
to political decision makers, to people
in public administrations, some of them
will not understand what you want
to talk about.
Some of them will don't want
to talk with you about that.
Some might say yes, but how
should I do that? There are so many
reasons why we can't do that so
it can be quiet.
You have to be aware that it's something
which takes a lot of time, and
it will not be like when you
try to convince public administrations.
When you contact some, there might be 20
of them who say no or
who are not interested in what you want
to talk with them about.
But there might be then one or two
where you are successful and where you
can make a change.
And in the end, it's
I mean the FSF Eve.
We are working on this.
Many people in Europe are working on this
campaign.
We hope that we can encourage you
to also be part of that for some time,
to support us to walk this way with
us to to make sure that
all the others are proceeding with that,
that we can make changes there and that
we can make sure that public
administrations will publish software
under free software licenses so that
everybody of us will benefit from that
and other public administrations will
benefit from that.
And I mean,
that's one of the qualities which my
first teacher wrote down for me at that
time, an African saying many
small people in many small places
to many small things that will alter the
face of the world.
So please don't wait
for some hero as some other people
to do some changes to
fix some things which you
think are important, but rather
do something today, something small.
Start now to to do something
dear. And in the end, it's the sum of
all those activities from all of us
that will make a change, not some
big activity by some person or
one big organization.
It will be rather
the combined sum of all the
activities, the small things which all
of us will do together.
So I hope that you
will start today with this.
And now we have some time
to talk with you about your questions.
Yes, looking forward to this?
Thank you very much.
And also, thanks a lot to all the
supporters of the FSF who made
it possible for us to come to here.
Thank you.
OK, so we have sometimes left
for questions, you can see a microphone
over there and over there.
You can go there
to ask questions.
Yeah, the microphone to the left.
Hey, thanks first for
your engagement for free software
and to you and on to the FCC.
My question would be when talking to
officials, I often hear, OK, but we
need to suspend now.
And if you do not buy the software from
this commercial
industry, then we will have the problem
that no one else will develop it and it
will stop developing it for us
or afford to us to very
high prices because we want to have it
open source. What do you answer to
this?
Complain.
Hmm.
I mean, there are definitely cases where
something like that is the case so that
they say, Well, we we
want to procure software for this area.
They asked us to provide us for this at
the moment. And they say, Well,
we know that there are just two providers
and we will not offer it as free
software.
So it's very difficult for the public
administration to do something about it.
I think for it, it depends
a lot on the area there.
There are areas where the software is
a lot of influence on our society,
where we should also push
political decision makers more to
make this mandatory that the software
needs to be under free software license.
There are other areas where maybe
we don't have to focus our
resources on this case at
the moment, because there are others
where it makes more sense to focus on
them to also find some examples
where it's easier to
to do it as free software.
So you can already show people what
benefits they have from this sort of
public administrations, how how
much they can benefit from that so that
over the time they build up competency,
how to deal with that and can then also
easier to tackle those difficult
problems. But as I said, I think
there are areas in which
the software has a huge impact on society
and on the people's lives
where we should not just accept
how well the companies say no,
but where we should think hard about
if we should not invest
more resources, more money
in this, that we develop
solutions like that as free software that
we also reach out to other
administrations all over Europe and think
about if maybe resources could
be combined to tackle such a problem
today.
Thank you.
OK, now for the microphone on the
right.
Thanks, guys, for
your for your work on this
topic.
The question I have is do you have some
resource on positive examples of software
that is already Open-Source and used in
a lot of administrations that you can
refer to when trying to convince people
there was already mentioned to fix my
street in the video, for
example?
And for us, I
have to think to, you know,
I mean, in in the brochure, we mentioned
some examples of
of software, which is widely used.
So there are some, some standards
there is
there is on the European level, the
sharing and reuse of art.
And it's something where
the European Commission, they give out
awards to public administrations who
develop software, which is then also
reused by other public administrations
in Europe, and lots of them are
published on a free software licenses.
So I would encourage you to
have a look at those examples there.
I'm a bit I'm a bit
hesitant to to mention
concrete examples because one of the
one of the experience we made was
that sometimes
people, they just look at some of those
projects.
And for example, if Munich
before where lots of people always
Munich, it's the Lightning
and lighthouse project of free software.
And and then everybody's
looking at that and they don't look
around what else is happening.
And then then through political
changes,
things are not going that well for
one of those projects.
Then then people are
so disappointed and think that this this
one thing, that's that's the big part
there. And I mean, I'm I'm convinced that
we don't need those those big
lighthouses, but that we have many
stars in the in the sky
where people are doing something good in
public administration.
So look at those those winner,
those winners of those awards, look in
our brochure, what examples there are and
then find those which which you like
personally because they are from
an area which which you care about
and then use them to explain this.
Yeah, it's OK. I was looking for like a
list with all
these projects to hand over, like a list
to to show that this is a big
thing and not only individual projects.
Exactly like I said, you know,
you don't have a list on your website, do
you? Because it's in the brochure, there
are examples and there are also
references to other resources like,
for example, the European Commission has
joined up, which published case
studies about free software usage
in the European Union.
So those are very good resources to find
good examples for yourself.
Thanks.
All right. Are there any questions from
the internet?
No. OK, then let's go with the microphone
on the left.
Thanks for the talk.
I'm interested in working in this area,
but I do not know about any funding.
Like is there a European German
funding that like will allow to
fund a company or just work and
get money from the European Union?
When you have an project idea, are to
work on a project to finance yourself.
You mean that you want with
your company to develop free software for
the public administration, for example.
Like that you you can live off of it,
but do it in your free time after 40
hours to 40 hours for that.
Hmm. So.
When you want to make money for free
software in this area, you have to follow
the same procedures as other
companies have to.
So there is a procurement process,
you have to make your bit, they are into
procurement processes and some
public. I mean, our goal is that
public administrations will say
more often that they want
to have free software for this
and that they don't allow proprietary
software for those solutions so that when
you are making an offer
that you have disadvantage there,
that you don't have to compete with other
with other companies who don't want to
provide those those rights to the
public administrations.
But there are
we don't at the moment do anything to
audit that free software
that companies themselves address any any
program to teach
us to make money with providing free
software to public spaces, because that
would be something which is against the
procurement laws there.
I mean, there are some smaller things
where you can get funding.
For example, there is
the Our Project Funding Opportunities
for Free Software project about new
internet technologies, which might also
be something for public administrations.
50 next generation internet.
You can apply there for funds.
That's one thing where we also involved
to help with license issues and
there is for like smaller things
and it's very, very new.
You can also funding from the
D prototype fund to develop some
software, which can afterwards be used
for the public administration.
But beside that, I mean, you have to go
the normal way.
Our goal is to increase the demand
for free software in the public
administration and to
have also regulation that it's very
difficult to to procure
proprietary software.
Thank you.
All right, then let's go with the
microphone on the right again.
Hello. So you probably
know that in Italy, since
that June of this year, we have
a law that's required in most
of the case to use the re-use
and implement free software
from the public administration.
So somehow
that there's a law.
So we are entering into a new
phase where there is the need to monitor
the implementation of the law and to
act when the law
is not respected because almost
no single authority
have the duty to control this kind of
very complicated the software and
public procurement law related things.
We want the way we are going to implement
a project that would make our monitoring
community around that.
But I wanted to ask if there are
other existing initiatives
that already entered into this phase
of monitoring public procurement
of software acting on it
legally. And I mean, not just advocating
for it, but enforcing
it from a civil society perspective
from having a center.
Yeah, yeah.
So yes, we are in contact with
don't know with whom exactly from
you, but we are in contact with the
family center. Probably OK with you.
Perfect. Thank you very much for your
work there. I mean that that's something
which is very important now that
whenever we
we reach the state that a law
is introduced or party
is making a commitment that we monitor
this, remind them about that
and and see how this is actually going.
So I mean, for Italy, this law that
before you as a procurement, that
government added public administration
should check if other public
administrations already have a software
which fulfills this need.
Else, they should check if there's free
software available to to
make to to make
to solve this problem.
And just if that is not the case,
then they are able to procure proprietary
software.
Now the thing is always in
in political processes,
you have a law, so it's somewhat
formulated something.
You have a decision about something and
then comes the part about policy
implementation.
And that's the part which is most
complicated and where most policy fail.
So it's not so much that people don't,
cannot vote yes or no.
We want to have this or not.
It's the problem is in the implementation
phase, and that will be the hardest
part. And there we need the help of
many people, many organizations, to
monitor what is actually going on there,
too. Then again, remind them about
that to readjust laws, to think about
what other things can be done
to, to make the right incentives.
So I mean, some some laws are, they
are. They say it's forbidden to do this.
Others are. They are like, if you do it
that way, then you have a lots of
benefits. So we
have to see how, how to make such
changes in a way that is sustainable,
that the public administration
is not so much forced to do something
by law, but that they that.
They see that they have advantages when
doing that and that they want to do that,
and it will be easier.
So yeah, in that case.
Thanks a lot. Already today, the Hamas
center was which is working on this
for for Italy.
We hope that we are able to monitor
that for other countries as well,
together with other organizations.
So, yeah, support
organizations like Hamas Center and
others who are doing this.
So if there are still no questions
from the internet, no,
then we'll go with one on the left again.
Thank you, Bonnie and Matthias.
And there are initiatives,
even big ones.
So if you don't focus
your business on public money,
then actually, I believe there's
more money in open source consulting
than in proprietary consulting.
We made this experience
and now can you come a bit closer?
It's yeah,
and there is.
And the moment Germany, together with
France, is starting to gain
initiative, which was a little bit
ridiculous because nobody
expected us from the German government,
and I think they had
to learn a lot of details
about this initiative.
And there is a lot of
money waiting to be
pumped into the open source communities
on the other side.
We make the experience at the open
source community is not prepared,
for example, to maintain
projects in a stable state
for 50 years.
We are talking about
projects which are critical
infrastructure, which means you have
20 years of maintenance
to guarantee, let's say,
Paisan for 20 years.
And then normally these things
are extended to up to 50
years. So what you believe,
says Popov three, is
supported for 50
years. We have to change a maintenance
problem on the other side of property.
Proprietary software vendors
have the same problem, but you find
Windows 95 systems and critical
infrastructure, which have not
been updated for
25 years if I compute right.
So there is a big
pressure and the politik has recognized
it. So but we have to organize
business into
the communities which are not prepared
to do business. So my opinion
is you cannot do
anything without doing business,
even in open source.
And we have to prepare the open source
community for playing well
with some money, which is
available in a way
that they can take it and maintain
it in the fairway.
Yep.
But I I think
that's, yeah, that's important.
OK, so we'll just take the next
question from the mike on the right.
Hello.
Just a quick example of
a project.
And OpenStreetMap, I
think, is a very good example.
So it's a completely open mouth,
and I think there's
a lot of cases where that could be used
in public administration.
I know all the trial information, maps
and Dublin harvest, and I
want to ask, is there a plan to bring
public money public codes to
the EU level?
Because I think it's next year, the
seven year budget, the Multiannual
Financial Framework is going to be
renegotiated, so it might be worthwhile
just pushing the requirement for a public
code in there.
And also, could we look at developing
pan-European tendering processes
for open source?
And could we develop that?
So say five or six administrations
from different parts of Europe would work
together to put together a joint tender
to say, improve an open source
project if their needs were similar?
I don't know. Had someone tell us about
that, sir, could we maybe develop
the policy of this term to that?
It's a policy level.
And so, I
mean, we already
are in contact with the
European level.
We are talking with politicians there
and also contacted
them with those demands and our
thinking about how to move forward.
I mean, you have already the sharing and
re-use of art by the European Commission,
where they say
the sharing and reuse should be the
default for public administrations.
So that's something where we are
encouraging them to go forward
there and help them how to do this.
And we also next year we want to
to reach more members of the
parliament and think about how to
how to establish this then after.
Now most of the politicians
got a bit.
Yeah, understood to be told
institutions work.
And now you can also start with them
working on on the content.
So we plan if we if
we are able to get funding for our next
year, we want to make sure that every
member of Parliament gets this pressure
that every member of Parliament will be
when when they are in the right working
groups, that they will be contacted.
So that's something where we want to
do this. And we also I mean, we hope that
by spreading the news, encouraging
people to contact their members of the
European Parliament as well, that
we will make a bigger impact there.
The the
second question was about
let me
think tendering at
the tendering. Yeah, so
like different countries working together
on an open source tender.
So sometimes in
something like that works that you will
bring a few people, a few public
administrations together and then think
about that they share the costs and
procure software.
But
in a lot of cases, this also slows
down the process and makes it very
difficult.
And the failure rate is very high.
So you have and you have seven people
and they say what they want to have
for a project, and then they start with
something and then you say, OK, we have
to make some compromises.
It's way more difficult to find
to to take a decision with seven
administrations, then
if you have one or two.
So that's something
which I'm a bit hesitant
to do this as a first step.
I would at the moment rather encourage
public administrations for their smaller
projects to do this before a software and
get us some experience there and then
think about enlarging it, doing it,
pooling it, doing it together with
others. Because else I see that
the failure rate will be way higher if
you if you combine this
because I mean, from the experience
public administrations to this process,
they are often a bit slow
and the process are complicated.
And as for software companies,
public administrations are not always the
the best customers on this regard.
And when you then don't have, like one
public administration as a customer,
but you have seven.
That's that's for us something
where we are very yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, it's difficult.
One last thing to the first question that
that's what I was talking about.
We also need you to step in and
get in contact with your
entities in the European Parliament
because we can do this.
Yes, and we are and we are going
to do this, but we need more
and we need you because many
people in many places can
bring back. Things can do big things.
Very
yes. So we have about two minutes left,
which fits quite nicely since we have one
more question on the left microphone.
Yeah, thank you very much for
the presentation and for the campaign.
I think it's not only sensible, but
definitely necessary and
coming back to your point about what we
can do. I would like to
talk to some of the decision makers
or local politicians, and I think
the brochure would be
very helpful at that moment.
You said that the German translation is
in progress yet.
How would I go about receiving an actual
sort of printed copy to take with me once
that has happened?
You can go to our website and there you
find the contribute
and spread the web page and
then you can order some.
You can also go to the public code
website Pubblicata, the EU and
you find also spread the word and there
you can order all the promo material
and to send it to you for free.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome and you can also come by
at our booth.
We have some copies at our booth,
together with some other advertisement
materials for popping money, puppy code,
lots of stickers, T-shirts, bags
and so on. And yeah,
in general, when you
sign the open letter, we also try to
keep you up to date of what is happening
when you do this and you will also get
information. Then, for example, a German
citizen at a German translation of
the brochure is available.
Yeah, so those are ways to do there.
So I think just one last word.
Use those tools.
Get creative.
Heck, you're a public administration
there and let us know
what experience you make.
Give us some feedback so we can readjust
our our tools so we can think
about what else is needed for this.
And don't wait.
Just think about now.
Whom could I contact my member
of Parliament, local politician, public
administration and start doing it?
Thank you very much.