From press en fsfe.org Fri Oct 23 10:34:17 2020 From: press en fsfe.org (press en fsfe.org) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 10:34:17 +0000 Subject: [FSFE PR][ES] EU Open Source Policy: good analysis, missing concrete next steps Message-ID: = EU Open Source Policy: good analysis, missing concrete next steps = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20201023-01.es.html ] On Wednesday the EU Commission published its new Open Source Strategy. We are pleased that the Commission recognises the benefits of Free Software and the four freedoms to use, study, share and improve, but the commission lacks concrete targets and indicators to implement the strategy. Without these, we worry that the strategy will end up accomplishing too little! After the Commission's previous Open Source Strategy expired in 2017, we have waited three years for a new one. Instead of the hoped-for major step, which would reflect current developments around the debates on digital sovereignty and state of the art administration, the Commission has presented [1] only a fig leaf. The benefits of Free Software are fully emphasised and the Commission is ambitious in its future use of Free Software. But concrete goals are rare, and a clear commitment to the use of Free Software is lacking. A failure of the strategy is foreseeable at this stage as the objectives are ambitious but the measures merely establish the status quo. Therefore, we call upon the Commission to present and implement concrete measures and activities in the coming weeks and months. Apart from the establishment of a "small (sic!) Open Source Programme Office” and the definition and promotion of the "inner source" approach, which is not even connected to a publication under a Free Software license, there are no real changes to the Commission's working methods. Of course, the Strategy indeed states: "The title of this strategy, ‘Think Open’, points to a change in mindset whereby the development of software solutions takes account of openness, sharing and reuse, security, privacy, legal considerations and accessibility." But it is doubtful whether anything will happen simply by clarifying the change in thinking without having verifiable goals and by working on "inner- source" software. We believe that changes have to be implemented and lived, not just put on paper. The strategy mainly repeats previous commitments and activities; whereas sustainable and verifiable approaches are sought in vain. It says: "The use of open source software is already common practice in the Commission and a kind of open source culture already exists in large parts of the organisation. We simply have to do more and become better". Concrete terms of the plans for how to do this more and better are however not clear. The activities of the FOSSA2 project are also mentioned, but it is not clear why this project is not being continued or why new concrete projects are not being launched. There are also still strong dependencies on Microsoft [2], for its desktop operating system, office applications and mail programs. These vendor lock-ins are still a big issue, but it appears that there is no plan currently on how to end these dependencies. (There is also a documentary on YouTube in English [3] and German [4] on that) It is also striking that concrete indicators to measure the success of the activities are absent. The Strategy therefore seems to pay mere lip service, which is explicitly limited by vague formulations and loopholes. For example, the Commission intends to continue "to choose non-open technologies where there are good reasons to do so" and wants to publish software under a Free Software licence only "wherever it makes sense to do so”. What these reasons are and when something makes sense remains undefined and unclear. In many places the Commission leaves it at problematic descriptions such as: "The principles and actions of the new open source strategy will make it easier to obtain permission to share code with the outside world.". At the same time, it is clear to the Commission that "[c]urrently, the paperwork involved in this process takes time to complete and this holds back many of our in-house projects. This situation needs to change." - without proposing concrete solutions, such as a proposal for reforms. This also raises the question of how the Commission wants to “contribute to the knowledge society” in tangible terms. For example, instead of calling for Free Software to be made the default in the Horizon Europe research programme and following programmes and research activities funded by the EU, the Commission argues that "[t]his strategy therefore aims to enable the Commission to share software using a process comparable to that for its documents.” - again without a concrete proposal on how to achieve this. Although the Commission's wording about interoperability, security, reusability and cooperation possibilities repeatedly aims at the use of Free Software and repeatedly emphasises the advantages of Free Software, we feel that the Strategy lacks concrete plans to achieve these aims. How the development of a “world-class public service" can succeed this way remains questionable. Free Software is still not part of the EU budget, so it is not surprising that Commission online-meetings are still held with the proprietary software Zoom although there are viable Free Software solutions for this. With this approach, we fear that this situation will not improve. == Conclusion == What the European Commission presented is simply too little for a strategy. There is a lack of clear task descriptions and processes, concrete guidelines for the implementation of wholehearted statements and indicators to monitor success. Additionally, existing problems and how to address them concretely, like dependencies on single vendors, are missing. So it is not surprising that even the Commission itself, in the document, expresses doubts as to whether their strategy will be a success and identifies difficulties in its implementation: "Properly implemented (sic!), the strategy, its governing principles and its action plan will help us build and deliver better ICT solutions and services, to leverage the innovative and collaborative power of open source." It is therefore all the more important that we continue to critically monitor the work of the Commission and promote our "Public money? Public Code!" campaign. The "Public Money? Public Code!" initiative aims to establish Free Software as a standard for publicly funded software. Public administrations that follow this principle can benefit from numerous advantages: cooperation with other government bodies, independence from individual vendors, potential tax savings, promotion of innovation and a more solid basis for IT security. The "Public Money? Public Code!" initiative of the Free Software Foundation Europe is supported by over 180 organisations and administrations from several countries, including Sweden, Spain and Germany. To find out more, please visit: publiccode.eu/ [5] Discuss this [6] 1: https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/informatics/open-source-software-strategy_en#opensourcesoftwarestrategy 2: https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2017/europes-dire-dependency-on-microsoft/ 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duaYLW7LQvg 4: https://youtu.be/_ZaDuinGf2o 5: http://publiccode.eu 6: https://community.fsfe.org/t/535/ == 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 From press en fsfe.org Tue Dec 8 08:23:35 2020 From: press en fsfe.org (press en fsfe.org) Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2020 08:23:35 +0000 Subject: [FSFE PR][ES] German Corona tracing app available without Google services Message-ID: = German Corona tracing app available without Google services = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20201208-01.es.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.es.html 2: https://fsfe.org/activities/android/index.es.html 3: https://mastodon.social/@larma/104630652216622243 4: https://fsfe.org/activities/android/index.es.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-734491614 8: https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/issues/5 9: https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/issues/5#issuecomment-627848335 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 From press en fsfe.org Thu Dec 10 08:20:43 2020 From: press en fsfe.org (press en fsfe.org) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 08:20:43 +0000 Subject: [FSFE PR][ES] Public code for publicly financed international development cooperation Message-ID: = Public code for publicly financed international development cooperation = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20201210-01.es.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.es.html 2: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/index.es.html 3: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/developmentcooperation/index.es.html#pmpc-for-development-cooperation 4: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/developmentcooperation/index.es.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