Newsletter

CDU wants public code +++ Community Meeting +++ 36C3

Written by Erik Albers on 2019-12

The last Newsletter of the year ends with exciting news for software freedom: the biggest conservative party in Europe, the German CDU, endorsed the principle that software developed with public money should be under a Free Software License. We further invite you to to read about the FSFE has done and achieved during the last 12 months and to dig into Florian Snow's report of our Annual Community Meeting 2019. Also you find an outlook on our participation at the biggest hacking related conference in Europe, the 36C3 and a call for your support and help to continue our mission towards empowering users to control technology.

Biggest conservative party in Europe aligns with our demand for public code

During the last week of November, Germany's conservative party "CDU" had their 32nd Annual Conference in Leipzig. As part of the event, the party updated their convention and included a tribute towards Free Software in their Chapter for Digital Innovation. With this update, the CDU resolved to join the FSFE in demanding that software developed with public money should be publicly available as Free Software.

The CDU's party convention resolution states: "[...] This is why the following will apply to all (public) digitalisation projects in Germany in the future: the awarding of contracts and funding will be subject to compliance with the principles of open source and open standards. Software financed by public funds should serve all citizens. In addition, free and open APIs should facilitate access for independent developments." (Translation provided by the FSFE)

We are happy to see that the good energy and resources the FSFE community dedicates on creating, translating and promoting the campaign's objectives keeps increasing support from major public stakeholders. "We now expect the CDU to immediately work within the government to create the legal basis for publicly funded software to be released under a Free- and Open-Source Software license." says Matthias Kirschner, President of the FSFE.

End of the Year Retrospective

At the end of this Year, we are inviting you to take a moment to read about the important things the FSFE has done and achieved during the last 12 months. In our recently published Annual Report we cover the biggest and most important activities of the FSFE in 2019. You will find insights about our campaigns and projects, about our policy work, our community and its members.

Read for example about the first Parliament in Europe who joined our demand for public code or about how we aim at bringing together environmental communities and digital rights communities to discover the sustainability of Free Software. Maybe you are interested in our write-up of the updated set of best practices within our REUSE project or you like to discover the diverse community who form the FSFE ... Whatever you are most into, enjoy the read, discover your personal favourites and be assured that we keep on advocating for software freedom in Europe throughout 2020!

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Do not miss: upcoming events with the FSFE

The FSFE will be present at the annual Chaos Communication Congress, the 36C3, happening from 27 to 30 December in Leipzig. We will host our own assembly and organize the cluster "about:freedom". A cluster that brings together like-minded organizations from the digital-rights hemisphere and also from the environmental communities within our child-cluster "about:future". As usual the FSFE is running its own track with many sessions and workshops, covering various topics regarding Free Software. Find more info in our event announcement and If you are going to 36C3, check out the regularly updated wiki page.

As every year, the FSFE will be present at FOSDEM, Europeans biggest Free Software conference with a booth and talks. More details about our participation at FOSDEM will follow in January.

What have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE

On November 28, the Local Group of FSFE in Zurich organised a workshop under the name "There is no cloud, just other people's computers". The participants were shown how to run "their own cloud" where they can store and share files, photos, contacts, calendars and more. All attendies were given the opportunity to try different cloud services.

From November 15 to 16 we have been inviting to this year's FSFE Community Meeting that was composed of social meetups, breakout-sessions, future-plannings and an official track organised by the FSFE as part of the SFSCon. If you like to get a feeling of the good vibe we had, read the report by Florian Snow. But also if you like to catch up on the talks and presentations we had, you find slides and videos of most of the presentations linked from the same report.

FSFE Booth at SFSCon. Photo credit: SFScon, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 We have a new multilingual t-shirt in our shop: Now you can show your love for Free Software in 24 languages! Get one for Christmas or at least before the next "I love Free Software"-Day : )

Surprise your friends, families or colleagues with our special edition of Christmas cards dedicated to the 4 freedoms to use, study, share, and improve.

Code paid by the people should be available to the people! Ask others to join the cause and show your commitment with our t-shirt.

Get Active

2019 was a year with a lot of challenges and we have seen quite some changes within the Free Software environment. On one hand Free Software usage is as widespread as never before and our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign receives a lot of endorsement - on the other hand Free Software is constantly under threat. Big economic players buy into Free Software and politicians create laws that directly endanger software freedom. Not to forget that with every proprietary app developed by a public authority or solely offered on a proprietary platform, more citizens are forced every day to expel their freedom. And with every app more, the threshold gets higher for everyone to break free from the proprietary world and from vendor lock-ins.

Since 2001, the FSFE promotes software freedom and on this road we have achieved many things - but protecting freedom never ends. Help us mastering the upcoming challenges and support software freedom in Europe by donating to us now: https://my.fsfe.org/donate

Contribute to our newsletter

If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to us. As always, the address is newsletter@fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

If you also want to support us and our work, join our community and support us with a donation or a monthly contribution: https://my.fsfe.org/donate?referrer=nl-201912

Thanks to our community, all the volunteers, supporters and donors who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators, who enable you to read this newsletter in your native languages.

Best Regards,

Erik Albers

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