FSFE launches a new campaign today: Public Money? Public Code!

[Henning Jacobs]

Great work! I used the following brief text to share the PMPC campaign
with software developers:

Public Money, Public Code: Publicly Funded Software Has to Be Free Software
We want legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed
for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open
Source Software licence. If it is public money, it should be public code
as well.

"I can't say how much I support this, it is so obviously a good idea"
-- https://twitter.com/hanno/status/907904636283224064
I have nothing to add. Sign the open letter! :-)

Many organizations (incl. WikiMedia, CCC, KDE, OSI) signed the open
letter, please sign it too:
https://publiccode.eu/openletter/

Press coverage (German):
*
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/public-code-aktivisten-fordern-freie-software-vom-staat-a-1167416.html
*
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Kampagne-Public-Code-Software-fuer-die-Verwaltung-soll-frei-sein-3830705.html
*
https://netzpolitik.org/2017/kampagne-oeffentliches-geld-oeffentlicher-code/

Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15236686

On 13.09.2017 15:58, Erik Albers wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> some news portals already picked it up and every FSFE supporter received a
> message about it in his inbox: today in the morning we launched a new campaign
> "Public Money Public Code".
> 
> For the campaign we published an open letter [1] together with 31
> organisations in which we call for lawmakers to make it mandatory to publish
> all publicly financed software under a Free Software licence. Among the
> initial signatories are CCC, EDRi, KDE, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany,
> openSUSE, Open Source Business Alliance, Open Source Initiative, The Document
> Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland, as well as several others.
> 
> Prominent support we also got from Edward Snowden, who says: "Right now, the
> blueprints for much of our most critical public infrastructure are simply
> unavailable to the public. By aligning public funding with a Free Software
> requirement -- "Free" referring to public code availability, not cost -- we
> can find and fix flaws before they are used to turn the lights out in the next
> hospital."
> 
> You find the whole press-release here:
> 	https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170913-01.en.html
> 
> Now it is up to you! Please help and join us by signing this letter and ask
> your friends and colleagues to do likewise:
> 
> 	https://publiccode.eu/#action
> 
> Why is this important? Public institutions spend millions of euros every year
> for the development of new software for them. But the public sector's
> procurement choices play a significant role in determining which companies are
> allowed to compete and what software is supported with taxpayers' money. This
> means, that changing policies in public procurement will have a huge positive
> impact on the Free Software community.
> 
> The open letter will be sent to candidates for the current German Parliament
> election and, during the coming months, until the 2019 EU parliament
> elections, to other representatives of the EU and EU member states.
> 
> Since it is our public money, it should be our public code as well!
> 
> This mail can and shall be copied and forwarded.
> 
> Best regards,
>    Erik
> 
> 
> [1] https://publiccode.eu/openletter/
>