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/
--
No one shall ever be forced to use non-free software
Erik Albers | Communication & Community Coordinator | FSFE
OpenPGP Key-ID: 0x8639DC81 on keys.gnupg.net
Hi all,
«Without that evidentiary basis, there's no way to know you need self-help
measures, nor is there any way to convince regulators to take action,»
Cory Doctorow nice article (as usual)
https://boingboing.net/2017/11/25/la-la-la-cant-hear-you.html
explains us why Yale Privacy Lab [1] and Exodus Privacy [2] **cannot** give
the world scietific evidences that similar spyware is **likely** (there are
rumors) also distributed in similar iOS apps
«iOS is DRM-locked and it's a felony -- punishable by a 5-year prison
sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense in the USA under DMCA 1201,
and similar provisions of Article 6 of the EUCD in France where Exodus is
located -- to distribute tools that bypass this DRM, even for the essential
work of discovering whether billions of people are at risk due to covert
spying from the platform.»
I believe this is another strong evidence to offer to the EU Council and
Parliament to review EUCD and never again permit _code_ like DRM to **become
the judge** of what can and cannot be done with digital works
could be this one oincluded in a _curated_ section of "evidences" in
http://drm.info ?
ciao
Giovanni
[1] https://privacylab.yale.edu/
[2] https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/
reports for many apps: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/
--
Giovanni Biscuolo
Xelera - IT infrastructures
http://xelera.eu/contact-us/
**per favore** Quota Bene: http://wiki.news.nic.it/QuotarBene
**please** use Inline Reply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
Hi!
I think it was not a good idea at all to change the "Join the ..." to "Become a supporter".
My point is that "being a member" of something (even if just an associate one) suggests a much stronger bound than being just a "supporter". So I think using phrases as "Join the FSFE", "become a(n associate) member" etc is way more compelling for most of the people.
In my view "supporter" is someone outside of the circle while "any-kind-of member" is someone who is inside of the circle. So I do believe demoting "fellowship members" to mere "supporters" made this status too cold and less compelling.
I think FSF is doing this much better. If you visit fsf.org this time of the year you immediately run into a very encouraging and inviting banner about joining them.
I really miss this inviting spirit from fsfe.org.
(Also, why is no similar banner on fsfe.org in the last two months of every year?)
I think recruiting members and encouraging people to donate is important.
So it worth making extra efforts to doing it right.
What do you think?
Best,
Gergely