= Public code for publicly financed international development cooperation =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20201210-01.fi.html ]
International development cooperation is increasingly digitised. Free
Software thus is becoming a fundamental technology to reach the United
Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. Together with experts in the
field, the FSFE summarises these interrelations in an article and
demands publicly funded software to be published as Free Software.
Inherent attributes of Free Software and its communities include equal
access to the sources, an international culture of sharing and
developing software together for the benefit of everyone. While many of
us find these freedoms to be universally acceptable, we see that this is
not the case once we look in the world of proprietary software.
Unfortunately, the same is to be said for the distribution of natural
resources around the globe.
In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly set the Sustainable
Development Goals, aiming at "a better and sustainable future for all"
by trying to reduce inequalities and offer equal access to the most
basic resources of our societies like food, health and education.
International development cooperation strives to achieve the UN
sustainability goals by improving global conditions and the empowering
of local partners. In some extend similar as to software freedom,
existing dependencies should be reduced and new dependencies avoided at
all costs.
Nowadays, international development cooperation is becoming increasingly
digitised and shifting its focus towards digital cooperation. Whether in
agriculture, industrial production, health care or public
administration, the development and maintenance of modern social
processes is no longer conceivable without software. To some extent
functional software becomes the basic technology of social organization
as well as of modern administrative services. The roll-out of
proprietary software, however, exacerbates the dependencies of users in
the developing countries on the currently market-dominating software
industry from the present industrial countries. Free Software, in
contrast, allows emancipation and independence of its users - be they
individuals or state-owned organisations.
Free Software allows development investments once made to be reused
around the globe without (further) license costs and without legal or
technical restrictions. The simultaneous publication of its source code
on public code repositories also enables one's own software development
to profit from reusing, improving and republishing by other actors
around the globe. In terms of international cooperation, the freely
licensed source code serves as a basis for organized or self-empowered
knowledge multiplication and transfer. Free Software allows the
development of digital cornerstones and provides international standards
without creating new monopolies and dependencies.
The reasons just mentioned show that Free Software is an essential part
of any sustainable digital development. Consequently, the "Principles
for Digital Development" require the publication of software, data and
standards under free licenses. The FSFE, together with experts from the
German Corporation for International Cooperation, has analyzed and put
together the main benefits for international development cooperation
when relying on Free Software in one article [1].
The article is part of our series about the basics of Free Software [2].
It delivers background on the ongoing process of digitisation in
international devlopment cooperation, its effects and the status quo. It
sheds light on the multiple benefits that international development
cooperation can profit from, when using and developing Free Software.
They build reason the FSFE demanding that in all international
development cooperation, any software development (co-)financed with
public money be published as Free Software [3].
Read the article [4]
Nico Lück, co-author of the article and expert from the German
Corporation for International Cooperation sums up: "Minimising
dependencies and building up local partner capacities fosters
sustainability of IT solutions: Free Software and other open resources
are the enabling instruments to be preferred and promoted for
sustainable development cooperation." Discuss this [5]
1: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/developmentcooperation/index.fi.html
2: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/index.fi.html
3: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/developmentcooperation/index.fi.html#pmpc-for…
4: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/developmentcooperation/index.fi.html
5: https://community.fsfe.org/t/555
== About the Free Software Foundation Europe ==
Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our
lives; and it is important that this technology empowers rather than
restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights to use,
understand, adapt and share software. These rights help support other
fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, press and privacy.
The FSFE helps individuals and organisations to understand how Free
Software contributes to freedom, transparency, and self-determination.
It enhances users' rights by abolishing barriers to Free Software
adoption, encourage people to use and develop Free Software, and
provide resources to enable everyone to further promote Free Software
in Europe.
https://fsfe.org
= German Corona tracing app available without Google services =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20201208-01.fi.html ]
A handful of Free Software developers today achieved what official
bodies have been missing for months: They have made available the German
Corona Warn App for tracking Covid-19 risk contacts in a version that is
completely free of dependencies on Google and available in the F-Droid,
the Free Software app store.
Already in April this year, the FSFE formulated two fundamental
requirements for so-called Corona apps [1]. First, there must be no
obligation to use them, and second, they must be available as Free
Software. At first glance, the German /Corona Warn App/ (CWA) published
in June, meets these criteria, like many others in Europe by now.
However, the exchange of device keys via Bluetooth, on the basis of
which the risk is calculated, is handled by an underlying interface.
The problem is that this interface software, called /Exposure
Notifications API/ and significantly developed by Apple and Google, is
largely proprietary. This means it cannot be freely used, investigated,
distributed and improved. In Google's Android operating system it is
also necessary to install and use the Play Services. These Google
services intervene deeply in the system and undermine the digital
sovereignty of the users. By default, this prevents the use of many
Corona apps for people who value privacy and software freedom on their
Android devices [2].
== Volunteers solve problems step by step ==
A first major improvement was provided by Free Software developer and
FSFE supporter Marvin Wißfeld in September. He built the exposure
notification functionality into microG [3], a Free Software
implementation of the proprietary Google services. This allows at least
people who own a Google-free Android phone [4] and have microG installed
to use various Corona apps.
A few days ago, Christian Grigis, Fynn Godau, Marcus Hoffmann and Marvin
Wißfeld went one step further. They integrated the exposure notification
component of microG directly into the German Corona Warn App [5]. This
so-called Drop-In-Replacement enables even people who have neither the
Google services nor their Free Software alternative microG installed, to
use the CWA. In addition, as of today they are making the app available
on F-Droid [6], an app store with exclusively Free Software. This is
therefore also advantageous for those users who have installed microG or
Google services, but prefer to obtain their software via F-Droid for
security and convenience reasons.
microG main developer and FSFE supporter Marvin Wißfeld adds:
"The previous solution of installing microG is often out of the
question for various reasons. But the new app from F-Droid,can also
be run without problems on all current smartphones from, for
example, Huawei some of which have been delivered without Google
services since mid-2019. The German government and the RKI may have
lost thousands of users of the Corona Warn App in recent months, as
only Google and Apple users were targeted."
It is now up to the responsible bodies, the German government, the
Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and their contractors SAP and T-Systems, to
incorporate the changes into the main development branch [7], and thus
to pull together with the Free Software community. In addition, this
method can in principle also be used for Corona apps in other countries.
== Free Software once again in a pioneering role ==
We see a familiar pattern here: the Free Software community presents a
problem and a possible solution [8], but is turned away [9] until
volunteers solve the problem themselves with unpaid work and without
official support. In this case, the resources of the authorties and
companies involved would have easily sufficed to make these significant
improvements themselves, or at least to support them. It is laudable
that the CWA was consistently developed and published as Free Software
from the very beginning, but it lacked the necessary consistency to
remove technically and meanwhile unnecessary dependencies on proprietary
software.
The FSFE appeals to governments and administrations to publish developed
software as Free Software, to break dependencies on Google's and Apple's
app stores and instead make their apps installable from independent
sources like F-Droid, and to renounce proprietary dependencies. As
Wißfeld explains, the Corona Warn App already offers concrete additional
advantages in the fight against the pandemic:
"The free implementation has the potential - in the spirit of Free
Software - for improvements that Google's proprietary interface does
not allow. For example, it would be possible to display the time of
a high risk encounter. This could - if the user voluntarily provides
the data - help public health authorities to identify hotspots or
clusters, or be used for statistical purposes to increase the
effectiveness of protective measures."
We would like to thank all persons involved who made the use of the
Corona App in Germany possible without having to accept any loss of
software freedom.
Discuss this [10]
1: https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20200402-02.fi.html
2: https://fsfe.org/activities/android/index.fi.html
3: https://mastodon.social/@larma/104630652216622243
4: https://fsfe.org/activities/android/index.fi.html
5: https://codeberg.org/corona-contact-tracing-germany/cwa-android
6: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.corona.tracing/
7: https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-app-android/issues/1483#issuecomment…
8: https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/issues/5
9: https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/issues/5#issuecomment-…
10: https://community.fsfe.org/t/552
== About the Free Software Foundation Europe ==
Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our
lives; and it is important that this technology empowers rather than
restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights to use,
understand, adapt and share software. These rights help support other
fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, press and privacy.
The FSFE helps individuals and organisations to understand how Free
Software contributes to freedom, transparency, and self-determination.
It enhances users' rights by abolishing barriers to Free Software
adoption, encourage people to use and develop Free Software, and
provide resources to enable everyone to further promote Free Software
in Europe.
https://fsfe.org