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