Public Money - Public Code: Helping with the campaign

[Matthias Kirschner]

Hello everybody,

I just realised that this message was not yet sent here, also it might
be interesting for you. The more people help us with that task the
better the results will be. Thanks already for your help!

Best Regards,
Matthias

* Erik Albers [2017-08-01 14:09 +0200]:

[...]

we are preparing a campaign named "Public Money Public Code". The aim of this
campaign is to ask all the public authorities in Europe that develop software
inhouse or that pay external software development and finance or co-finance
the development with public funds, to release the software under a Free
Software licence.

Along with the other PR-instruments we in particular like to underfed the
campaign with data and knowledge about the use / misuse of public fundings for
software development. We like to shed light on the best and the worst cases.

In order to do so, we need to collect information first. We will then use this
information for analysis and publications to highlight the importance about
publicly financed software to be published as Free Software.

And this is where you come in: We will use Freedom of Information requests to
collect information about the status of non-free software used and released by
public authorities in local, state and European level. If you do not know what
a Freedom of Information request (FOI) is or how to file it, please find more
information about it on the campaigns wiki page.

	https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/PMPC

If you are interested in getting active for Free Software and to help the FSFE
to get this important campaign big, please read this wiki page carefully. It
should give you all information necessary. If it misses something or something
is unclear, please ask.

On the page you will find:
 - general information about the campaign
 - general information about FOIs
 - written drafts for FOIs to use
 - helpful links for FOIs in specific European countries
 - Country information pages to collect succesfully filed FOIs to be analysed


= How you can contribute =

 - File in FOIs and document them in the wiki accordingly
 - help the readers of your country page to understand the campaign in your
   language and give them orientation to get active -> this way the campaign
   can spread much better
 - help to translate the drafts for FOIs in your language and enable people to
   easily participate
 - spread this campaign, the idea and how people can contribute in your local
   group, in your channels, on mailing lists and wherever you see it fits


In know it is summer and you might have already your vacation planned. But on
the other hand, maybe you have some spare time in your vacation to contribute
for Free Software. Or you meet a lot of people during summer events to let
them know about the campaign and they again find some time to contribute. Or
you wait for autumn to get active : )

Really, there are so many ways to get active in this campaign and every bit
counts. Aside from the effects for the furthering of Free Software, IMHO the
sexyness of this campaign is that people immediately understand the request
even if they do not care about software: that public money should lead into a
public good is an easy and understandable request.

Happy hacking,
   Erik

-- 
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030  |   (fsfe.org/join)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner)  -  Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)