Software Freedom in Europe 2022
We continuously work to promote Free Software in Europe. In 2022
we addressed technological sustainability, advocated in the DMA and
AI act on European level, and defended Router Freedom in
Europe – among other activities. To reach younger
people, we organised a coding competition for
teenagers and published a children's book on software
freedom.
“Software Freedom in Europe” is the yearly report of the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), your charity organisation which
empowers people to control technology. Every year we refine our
manifold activities to address the current needs of software freedom
in Europe. This yearly report covers the FSFE activities from
November 2021 to August 2022.
Global digitization has increased in the pandemic times and
developments in the IT sector accelerated rapidly. The climate
consequences of such a rapid growth are significant. The longevity of
hardware and software is a central element of digital sustainability.
With this in mind, we launched the Upcycling Android campaign,
demonstrating that Free Software can help overcome software
obsolescence. Our open letter to the EU legislators, calling for the
right to install any software on any device, received over 100
signatures from tech companies and from digital rights and
environmental organisations.
Meanwhile, new technologies reintroduce the question of ownership.
Artificial intelligence increasingly determines aspects of our
everyday life, from picking which content we see online to estimating
the length of hospital stays. How are the results generated? As a
society, we need to be able to track what input leads to each output
and to evaluate the results. Free Software can make AI systems more
transparent and trustworthy. The FSFE advocated in favor of Free
Software in the Artificial Intelligence Act, with clear results. A
European Parliament resolution on AI proclaims that public
procurement should require Free Software.
Another critical challenge for our movement is that more and more
devices prohibit us from running Free Software on them. As these
restrictions often establish monopolistic practices, we were able to
give our input to policy makers who created the Digital Markets Act.
This was another win for software freedom: the Digital Markets Act
enhances interoperability and control over personal data, while
limiting monopolistic practices.
We address country-specific cases too. We submitted a position and
formed a coalition to defend Router Freedom in Greece, and hosted a
debate about Router Freedom in Austria.
We have always advocated for Free Software in public administrations,
to allow knowledge sharing and innovation. After all, software
created using taxpayers’ money should be released as Free Software.
We run electoral activities asking political parties their stance on
Free Software, and we share good practices from public entities which
already use Free Software. In 2022, we interviewed Free Software
developers in Sweden who created a digital school platform. The
'Public Money? Public Code!' brochure for public administrations was
translated into Spanish and Italian, steps that were marked with
dedicated events. We even created an application prototype to make
public procurement more transparent. The application made it to the
finals of the EU Datathon!
We acknowledge that developers have to deal with legal matters
regarding copyright, patents, and trademarks. The FSFE continued
providing legal support to Free Software projects, and published a
new version of REUSE.
Looking into the future, it is clear that the software freedom
movement can only thrive if younger generations join. Therefore, the
FSFE introduced two new activities to appeal to the young people. We
organised a hacking competition explicitly for teenagers to spark
their interest and enthusiasm about technology and Free Software.
Also we published a children's book narrating the adventures of
developing Free Software.
We are grateful for all the successes we have had throughout these
recent months, yet our real strength lies in our thriving community.
Our volunteer translators make our message accessible throughout
European language zones. Our local groups and country teams introduce
people to Free Software and run local activities across Europe. Our
newly formed Women's group empowers women and non-binary people to
network on the cause of software freedom. And last but not least we
started to be present again in person at events across Europe,
letting people know about the benefits of software freedom.
We hope you enjoy reading our yearly report as much as we had the
pleasure of writing it.
Your editor in representation of the whole team, Fani Partsafyllidou
Table of contents
- Software sustainability
- Upcycling Android
- ‘Public Money? Public Code!’
- Artificial Intelligence and Free Software
- Router Freedom: Keeping your gateway to the Internet free
- Device Neutrality: Regaining control over our devices
- Legal support for Free Software programs
- REUSE: Making licensing easier
- Youth Hacking 4 Freedom: A coding competition
- Children’s book: A tale of software, skateboards, and raspberry ice cream
- Free Software in Education
- What is Free Software? - Our work on public awareness
- The FOSDEM 2022 conference
- The FSFE e.V. association
- The FSFE community across Europe
- Our fully Free Software technical infrastructure
- Join the movement
Software sustainability
In recent years, the FSFE has shed light on Free Software as a
central aspect of technological sustainability. Software dictates how
long and in what ways we are able to use and reuse hardware. With
Free Software, users can replace software and operating systems in
order to reuse, repurpose, repair, or upcycle hardware. With
interoperable devices and open standards, technical infrastructures
can be adapted efficiently and according to local needs. Only with
free access to the source code of hardware, drivers, and tools can
the right to repair be fully exercised.
State Secretary Rohleder visited the FSFE booth in the Open House
event of the German Federal Ministry of Environment. We
demonstrated old phones that can still operate securely with Free
Software. CC-BY-SA-4.0 BMUV/Christopher Wehrer. August 2022
Right now, the European Union is about to redefine the ecodesign of
products in the internal market. Our goal is to make sure that the dedicated
policies use Free Software to ensure a sustainable European
technological sector. To this end in 2022 we provided several
policy recommendations:
-
Telecommunications sector: The FSFE answered a public
consultation about the impact of the telecommunications sector
on the environment. The right to install any software on any
device, Free Software licensing, and device neutrality serve
digital sustainability as well as being consumer protection
measures. We contextualized our experience with Router Freedom,
explaining that some regulatory approaches taken by policy makers
had negative impact on sustainability by limiting freedom of
terminal equipment and increasing e-waste.
-
Sustainable products: The FSFE submitted
feedback to the European Commission about the Sustainable
Products Initiative, a proposal for a regulation that will revise
the Ecodesign Directive. Nowadays, most electronic devices, in
particular phones and tablets, can be reused and upgraded by
installing a Free Software operating system on them. In order to
establish the universal right to install any software on any device
we proposed several improvements to the text of the
Initiative.
-
Device Neutrality: We worked on the upcoming EU
legislation targeting redefining the current ecodesign criteria for
environmentally friendly products. In preparation, we provided an in-depth
study on software sustainability and its interplay with device
neutrality. More on this concept in its own chapter.
-
Sustainable consumption: The FSFE participated
in the consultation about the European Commission’s
‘Sustainable consumption of goods’ initiative. Within our feedback
we highlighted that in order to extend the usage lifetime of
devices, two factors are key: the universal right to install any
software on any device and the publication of source code of
drivers, tools, and interfaces.
Collaboration: The FSFE decided to join the
organising committee of the upcoming Bits & Bäume (‘Bits and
Trees’) conference. We congratulated Okular, a Free Software
universal document reader that was awarded the Blue Angel ecolabel
for being an
energy-efficient PDF reader.
Upcycling Android
“There are so many reasons to repurpose a device and to use open
technologies: right of ownership, learning, innovation, resource
conservation, environmental concerns, providing access to
technology, experimentation, system integration... pick
yours.”
Pedro Alcántara Martín from Tarsis, signee of the
open letter
for the right to install any software on any device.
In November 2021, the FSFE launched the Upcycling Android
initiative, highlighting phones as a poster-child of software
obsolescence and correspondingly unnecessary e-waste. The initiative
helps people to flash their phones with Free Software operating
systems and promotes the right for every user to install any software
on any device.
The initiative offers workshops, develops policy recommendations, and
receives a lot of attention. Erik Albers tells the thrilling story of the
Upcycling Android campaign in a podcast episode with Bonnie
Mehring.
Open letter: The EU is redefining their ecodesign
criteria in effect for environmentally friendly electronics. After
several months of internal discussion and external feedback, the FSFE
provided input to this process by publishing an open letter about
“The right to install any software on any device”. We published
the letter in April. Since then, more than 100 entities have
signed the letter, including the Nature And Biodiversity
Conservation Union (NABU), EDRi – European Digital Rights, the
European Right to Repair Campaign, and Fairphone. It speaks volumes
that tech companies, right to repair initiatives, and environmental
organisations support the right to install any software on any
device. Volunteers translated the letter into 9
languages: Catalan, German, Greek, Spanish, French, Italian,
Dutch, Portuguese, and Polish.
Video: Taking Android phones as example, we created a
video that explains in a nutshell the problem of software
obsolescence and relates to it increasing e-waste and resource
scarcity. The video continues with showing how Free Software can help
overcome artificial obsolescence and help save the climate at the
same time.
Watch the Upcycling Android video
with
subtitles or
in
German on our Peertube instance.
Phones DIY: How can people get a Free Software
phone? To make things easier, we offered a community-led
wiki page listing Free Software operating systems and phone
devices that come with Free Software operating systems pre-installed.
We introduced Plasma
Mobile, including how it is developed and how to get it, by
interviewing Bhushan Shah, a Plasma Mobile developer. We presented
the software development
of the Librem 5 phone and of Phosh, the popular graphical
environment for GNU/Linux phones, in an interview with one of Phosh’s
main developers, Guido Günther.
Outreach: The FSFE presented the necessity of Free
Software for digital sustainability, at the University of Applied
Sciences in Berlin, at the Digital Social
Summit (recorded, in German), and in a panel of experts organised
by Fairphone on Sustainable
software for phones that last (recorded).
On November 2021, the FSFE participated in the SFSCon by organising a
sustainability track with a phone flashing workshop and five talks
(recorded, EN):
‘Public Money? Public Code!’
"I wish the FSFE to keep up the good work, keep spreading the word
of the advantages of Free Software, and keep pushing for more just
regulations on political level such as the Public Money? Public
Code! campaign."
Lyudmila Vaseva, software developer at ctrl.alt.coop eG.
Interview in January
2022
Software created using taxpayers’ money should be released as Free
Software. The FSFE actively campaigns for ‘Public Money? Public
Code!’ in the EU and several countries in Europe. We advocate to
include Free Software in the EU legislation. We run electoral
activities asking political parties their stance on Free Software. We
showcase good practices from public entities which already use Free
Software. We translate our material into several languages and hold
events presenting ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ around Europe. We even
created an application prototype to make public procurement more
transparent; it attained the finals of the EU Datathon!
Digital Rights: The European Union is in the process
of discussing the Declaration of Digital Rights and Principles. The
European Parliament agreed on a common text recognising Free Software
as a way to ensure transparency in algorithms and artificial
intelligence. The FSFE keeps monitoring the ongoing
inter-institutional dialogue trying to make sure that the Parliament
proposal remains.
Germany: In November 2021, the newly formed German
government agreed with the FSFE's
‘Public Money? Public Code!’ demand and declared it as one of
their aims. The coalition agreement set digitisation as a priority
and Free Software as a secure and transparent solution. This decision
was an important development for the Free Software movement in
Germany.
However, 100 days into the new German government in office, no action
had been taken. The FSFE called upon the government to
follow its own plans.
Consequently, together with other actors, the FSFE demanded that the
German government should include digital sovereignty in the
2022 federal budget. In an open
letter (DE), the signatories urge the government groups in the
German Parliament, the “Bundestag”, to start implementing their plans
regarding Free Software usage.
German regional administrations: An association of
nine administrations have jointly modernised their administrations,
based on Free Software. Re@di –
regional.digital is an inter-communal cooperation of nine
southern German cities. Their common needs are met through synergy
effects in collaborative development. In our interview,
Alexander Gabriel and Eduard Itrich highlighted that the
administrations could use their resources cost-efficiently thanks to
cooperation and sharing Free Software.
Italy: Our Translators team translated the ‘Public Money? Public Code!’
brochure into Italian. Friends of the team kindly proofread the
brochure. Then, volunteers organised a tour presenting the ‘Public
Money? Public code!’ campaign in Italy starting with Bologna and Trento
(recorded, IT with EN subtitles) and will present it in
Caltanissetta.
Volunteers presented ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ in Italy
(recorded, IT
with EN subtitles
In Trento the event focused on Free Software in Education. In Bologna
the event focused on ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ efforts. Members of
the local government attended. Three concrete proposals emerged from
this event: Coderdojos in public schools, local Coding Gyms, and a
public hearing to bring the topic of ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ to
the town council.
Spain: Volunteers translated the ‘Public Money?
Public Code!’ brochure into Spanish.
To share this good news we organised an event dedicated to our
Spanish speaking community. We had the participation of experts
from GNUHealth, Lliurex, Pica Pica HackLab, Linkat, and KDE. All the
talks are recorded (ES).
France: The FSFE participated in a workshop on data
protection and Free Software organised by the French Data Protection
Authority (CNIL) in the context of the Open Government initiative.
The development of privacy-respecting technologies was the main
topic. For scalability, education on ethics and Free Software in
engineering and IT schools was proposed. A potential certification
for privacy-respecting technologies would create a gatekeeper
position, which is undesirable.
Winning prototype: The FSFE created an application prototype which made it
to the EU Datathon finals. The program TEDective aspires to connect
publicly available tendering and company data and to allow analysis
of this data. The goal is to allow citizens and experts to monitor
suspicious market activity of public interest. The project idea has
been a success and made it to the top three out of
26 entries in the ‘transparency in public procurement’ challenge of
the EU Datathon 2022. Our team has now been invited to further
develop and present the project in Brussels.
Outreach: Naming a few of our outreach activities,
the FSFE gave a ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ workshop at the esLibre
conference in Vigo, Spain, as well as at the rC3 conference. The goal
was to encourage attendees to contact their own administrations to
demand public code in the public sector. The FSFE
presented the role Free Software played during the corona crisis at
the esLibre
conference (recorded, EN) in Vigo, Spain, at SFSCon
conference (recorded, EN) in Bolzano, Italy and online in GnuHealthCon21.
We also explained why innovation needs Free Software at make-it.saarl in Saarbrücken,
Germany.
Artificial Intelligence and Free Software
"Keep advocating for software freedom especially at EU level and
public sector. Institutional changes can and must be achieved."
Matti Lammi, System Specialist at ETLA Economic Research.
Interview in January
2022.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be more verifiable, trustworthy, and
innovative with Free Software. Transparency in AI technologies is
necessary to test them, evaluate their results, and improve them. The
FSFE involves experts in the field of AI, makes policy
recommendations, and advocates in AI-related legislation in the
European Union.
Policy recommendations: The FSFE analysed
how AI can be more verifiable, trustworthy, innovative with Free
Software, and made policy recommendations. The use of Free
Software in AI technologies has the potential to increase their
adoption by reducing the level of technical knowledge that is
necessary to use AI. An existing algorithm that can be re-used
benefits the whole research ecosystem. In this regard, public
research and educational institutions inventing, using, or procuring
AI systems shall publish those, including a description, version
history, and the source code in a public register.
EU Legislation: The FSFE is following the AI Act to
ensure Free Software is included. In the effort of adopting
digital policies aligned with people’s fundamental rights, the
European Parliament is in the process of finding a position on the
legal framework for the development and use of AI technologies.
The European Parliament passed a resolution on AI with a huge
majority. According to the resolution, public procurement should
require Free Software, where appropriate, with the goal to encourage
cross-border collaboration. The Parliament acknowledges that Free
Software can enhance investments and boost innovation in AI
technologies in the EU. The FSFE urged the Parliament to transfer its
own position into the AI regulation.
Expert interview: Our interview with Vincent
Lequertier, researcher of artificial intelligence for healthcare,
unravels cutting edge topics such as the possibility of AI obtaining
the legal right to claim copyright.
Outreach: The FSFE presented the status of Free
Software and artificial intelligence in the European Union during the OW2
(recorded) and OSCAL
(recorded) conferences, and analysed the challenges of ethical AI
in KIDD-Fachkonferenz.
Router Freedom: Keeping your gateway to the Internet free
“Router freedom is essential for end-users to remain autonomous in
their capacity to access the Internet, employing devices and Free
Software they trust for security, privacy and data protection.
Users should not be tied down to any particular router or modem
package for internet access. The FSFE should continue to campaign
for Router Freedom and to collaborate with national digital rights
and Free and Open Source Software organizations in order to achieve
a neutral, safe and healthy internet”
Kostas Papadimas, GFOSS. Greece
Routers and modems are gateways to the Internet. Being able to
control these devices is key not only to software freedom but also to
security, privacy, and energy consumption. 2022 has been an active
year with several positive developments and new challenges. We saw
regulators putting forward laws safeguarding this freedom for
end-users, internet service providers (ISPs) being forced to comply
with the law, and coalitions of organisations and volunteers working
together to demand this right from policy makers. On the other side,
fiber connections (FTTx) represent a regulatory challenge for the
future.
Lucas Lasota presenting that Router Freedom is a reality in several European countries. Full talk available (EN). SFSCon, 2021.
We work, with growing success, with regulators to make them
understand that Router Freedom should be consolidated in legislation.
In 2022 we worked on several issues/challenges, ranging from
multi-stakeholder initiatives to bilateral cooperation with
regulators and strategic support from partner organisations in
Europe.
Freeing fiber connections: The deployment of fiber
networks in Europe has posed regulatory challenges for policy makers.
Deciding whether end-users can use their terminal equipment for their
internet connection has a direct impact on divergent interests of
consumer protection authorities versus large telecom operators. Major
ISPs seek to cover their investments in the deployment of
new-generation networks at the expense of end-users who suffer from
commercial practices that restrict their legitimate rights to
exercise digital freedoms.
In 2022, we have been collaborating with regulators to develop better
policies that take the interests of end-users into consideration. We
shared our concerns with regulators planning
to exclude Fiber to the Home constructions (FTTH) from Router
Freedom, as well as with those who still are analysing
the fiber market. We also contextualized the regulatory issues of Router
Freedom for the Body of European Regulators for Electronic
Communications (BEREC) from the perspective of the sustainability
of the telecom sector. During all these processes we have been
counting on support of several network specialists who have been
volunteering to study, research, and share their opinions with us.
Greece: The FSFE assisted a coalition of
organisations in Greece to help provide feedback to the Greek
regulator on the upcoming legislation that will consolidate Router
Freedom in the country. We highlighted in our position the importance
of securing this freedom for all kinds of networks, including DSL,
coaxial, and FTTH. Our position (EN),
(EL)
was supported by key stakeholders in the field of digital rights,
consumer protection, and business representation. The FSFE country
team Greece
helped in the translation.
Austria: The FSFE and the Alliance of
Telecommunication Terminal Equipment Manufacturers (VTKE), organised
an online session
(recorded, DE) where key stakeholders debated the future
perspectives of Router Freedom in Austria. Although industry
representatives raised concerns about the integrity of the networks
and user experience, the majority of stakeholders agreed on the
advantages of having Router Freedom secured in the legislation.
Italy: Italian volunteers and our partner
organisation Modem Libero
have collaborated with us in monitoring the regulatory panorama in
the country, especially in regard to FTTx and related antitrust
issues.
The Netherlands: The FSFE country team Netherlands
held preparatory
meetings for the upcoming reform of the telecommunications law in
Belgium and started coordinating efforts with partner organisations
for potential actions. They also have been following the enforcement
of Router Freedom rules in the Netherlands.
Survey: Internet users from all over Europe have
been participating in our Router Freedom
survey, sharing their experience with ISPs, reporting problems
and issues, and providing their opinion on relevant issues for
freedom of terminal equipment. The results of the survey will be
published at the beginning of 2023.
Infographics: Volunteers have translated our new
Router Freedom infographics into Dutch (1,2),
Italian (1,2),
French (1,2),
and Greek (1,2).
Groups of volunteers were active in Italy, the Netherlands, and
Portugal.
Device Neutrality: Regaining control over our devices
Code is law, as Lawrence Lessig put it. Therefore Free Software and
open standards are necessary for human freedom. Our freedom is
threatened by patents, copy-prevention schemes, locked-down devices
and spying. To counter these threats I support the FSFE's
campaigning for open standards, information security and device
sovereignty, and against ever more onerous copyright laws.
Björn Persson (Software Engineer)
Have you ever noticed that the number of devices you are using daily
is continuously growing, but it is ever harder to run Free Software
on them? This is not only your personal impression, but a fact: large
device manufacturers, vendors and system providers are increasingly
locking devices down, restricting end-users’ freedoms.
The FSFE kicked off the Device Neutrality
initiative to promote strategies for regaining control over devices.
In 2022 we dedicated efforts to get Device Neutrality in the EU
legislation.
Digital Markets Act: Since 2021, the EU has been
elaborating a comprehensive piece of legislation to regulate large
digital platforms. We have dedicated efforts to include Device
Neutrality in the new law
and collaborated with policy makers in the European Parliament.
The Digital Markets Act is an important advance for setting several
anti-monopoly obligations that impact software freedom,
interoperability, and control over personal data.
After many iterations and amendments, the European Parliament adopted
the Digital Markets Act by 642 votes in favour, 8 votes against, and
46 abstentions. With this vote, the principle of Device
Neutrality is introduced. At the same time, the Parliament missed
the chance to introduce strong requirements for interoperability
based on Open Standards. As a summary of our involvement, we have
prepared an analysis on how Free
Software is a crucial element for the law’s implementation.
Although Device Neutrality in the legislation is a major first step,
the law’s enforcement will be challenging, and will require close
monitoring from civil society. Free Software and Open Standards are
key factors for proper implementation of Device Neutrality in
Europe.
Radio Equipment Directive: The FSFE is on guard
about a Radio
Lockdown Directive. The EU Radio Equipment Directive may make it
impossible to install a custom piece of software on most radio
devices. This affects, for example, WiFi routers, phones, and
embedded devices. The regulation requires hardware manufacturers to
implement a barrier that disallows users to install any software
which has not been certified by them. Unfortunately we cannot report
major new developments of the last year. The European Commission, in
particular DG GROW (the department responsible for the internal
market and industry), does not share information about the current
state of the Delegated Act that is to be prepared. Even the results
of the last consultation in 2020 are not public yet. We are
continuing to monitor the situation and we are ready to act on the
next development. The topic is too important to ignore.
Public Awareness: We shared the concept of Device
Neutrality with several communities and venues to get feedback and
inputs so we could provide valuable insights for policy makers. We
presented the concept at FOSDEM 2022,
and debated it at OW2 2022
(recorded). We talked with legal folk at LLW
2022 and shared insights with the OSCAL
community.
Legal support for Free Software programs
"NGI0 not only made it possible to pursue our goals by supplying
funding. I was approached a number of times by professionals whom I
learned to respect for their knowledge. [We received] concrete
support, ranging from security to usability, internationalisation,
licensing, and copyrighting, and putting what we do in a
perspective of inclusiveness and diversity. Their help will go a
long way to improve our products and I am sure to seek out other
partners to the NGI0 project before we are done.”
Joop Ringelberg,
Perspectives-core Project
Programs often come with legal questions, and the FSFE is here to
help Free Software programs. We answer licensing questions, we
provide technical support to make licensing easier, we provide legal
education materials on Free Software, and we organise an annual
conference. Since 2008, the FSFE has organised the annual Free
Software Legal and Licensing Workshop (LLW) for the FSFE’s Legal
Network. It is a conference for legal experts in the field of Free
Software to debate over issues and share best practices surrounding
Free Software licenses.
Answering licensing questions: The FSFE runs a team
for License
Questions, composed of several volunteer legal experts from
around Europe who continuously help projects and individuals with
topics concerning Free Software licensing. Anyone who has a question
about Free Software licensing can reach out to the group with an to licence-questions@fsfe.org.
This year, we helped many members of the public with answering basic
license questions, mainly with the help of our online FAQ
resource.
Next Generation Internet Zero (NGI0): The FSFE
continued its activities in the European Commission’s NGI0 initiative this year, and
will wrap up its activities when the project comes to a close at the
end of 2022. Thus far, we have worked with almost 300
participating software projects to aid them by providing
recommendations to achieve REUSE compliance, as well as assisting
with any legal and licensing questions that they may have.
The goal of this NGI0 initiative is to provide support to developing
software technologies that can help to improve the internet into a
platform that facilitates and supports transparency, human rights,
and democracy. The FSFE is involved specifically in two NGI0 actions:
NGI0 PET, which supports software projects that support privacy and
enhancing trust online, and NGI0 Discovery, which supports software
projects that improve user ability to search and discover information
online.
Legal and Licensing Workshop: The 2022 edition of the LLW
was originally planned to take place in Gothenburg, Sweden. But
during the planning process the decision was made to take the
conference online once again, due to uncertainties about COVID-19.
Although holding the LLW online again was not ideal, we nevertheless
were pleased to organize a successful event over the course of 5
weeks in April and May with the help of many of our Legal Network
volunteers. All talks organized were held by default under the
Chatham House Rule, and included discussions on topics such as the
Netfilter v. McHardy settlement in Germany, the ongoing Software
Freedom Conservancy v. Vizio lawsuit in the USA, emerging trends in
the use of Free Software in Open Science, and other timely and
relevant subjects.
Legal Education Day: Understanding the legal matters
and complying with legal obligations can become a burden sometimes.
That is the reason why we were happy to organize the first Legal Education Day (LED). We
provided basic legal education on the legal context of Free Software:
copyright law and the concept of copyleft. Useful topics for software
developers followed, such as license compatibility, trademarks, and
containers. We plan to repeat LED next year.
New European Commission Projects: This year, we also
participated in the drafting and submission of three additional
European Commission projects that were planned to start by the end of
2022: NGI0 Zooom, NGI0 Entrust, and NGI0 Review. Despite a long
submission process and waiting period, we were pleased that all three
projects were approved, and that we will be participating in them in
a similar capacity to our work in NGI0. This means that we will
continue to provide legal support for a wide range of software from
all over Europe, when work for these approved projects begins at the
end of the year.
Similar to our existing activities with the NGI0 initiative, the FSFE
will be a member of a joint consortium of organizations that provide
support to software developments that participate in these European
Commission projects. Our primary role would be to provide assistance
with their legal and licensing needs, primarily through our REUSE specifications.
Public Awareness: The FSFE gave an online lecture on
Software Law and Free Software licences at the Humboldt
University of Berlin focusing on conceptual introductions to
licensing and copyleft.
REUSE: Making licensing easier
"Regarding REUSE, we have learnt a lot. We realise that the idea
behind REUSE is simple, clear, and powerful… Nowadays, Free
Software projects become more and more complicated, and many
components/files of a single project have different
license/copyright information. REUSE helps a lot on tracking the
status of this information in our project.”
Xianjun Jiao,
OpenWifi Project
Free Software is created by developers, and comes as everything
between small projects and huge corporate suites. Releasing code
while granting its users the four freedoms should be simple, but
third-party components might come with a variety of available Free
Software licenses and thus create some burden.
With REUSE we try to make all of this easier for everyone: individual
developers, users, businesses, and re-users. REUSE is a set of best
practices and tools with the goal to describe the copyright and
licensing information of all files in a repository in a pragmatic and
sustainable way. On a large scale, this makes Free Software more
transparent and safer to re-use.
New REUSE version: We released
version 1.0.0 of
the REUSE helper tool that makes the initial adoption of the best
practices in a repository more comfortable. Thanks to our awesome
volunteers and external contributors to the project, we aim for even
more features and simplifications for developers.
Implementations: Obviously, the best standard is
irrelevant if it remains unused. This is why we assist projects with
understanding their current licensing and copyright situation and
making it transparent via REUSE. A prominent example is cURL, an universally-known
tool for transferring network data, which became officially REUSE
compliant in July 2022. We are continuing this effort, e.g. with the
GNUHealth
project whose team decided to adopt REUSE for all their
components. Please feel free to reach out to projects you would like
to be REUSE compliant, and spread the word!
Outreach: The FSFE presented the REUSE activity and
the importance of licensing metadata in Free Software on several
occasions. We gave presentations at the Upstream
(recorded) event, at the esLibre
conference (recorded, in Spanish) in Vigo, Spain, and at the OpenExpoEurope2022
conference in Madrid, Spain. We also presented REUSE at the Weizenbaum
conference in Berlin, a venue dedicated to interventions for open
digital futures, at FrOSCon
(recorded, EN) in St. August, Germany, and at SFSCon
(recorded, EN) in Bolzano, Italy.
Youth Hacking 4 Freedom: A coding competition
“Taking part in this competition was personally a big step as
before it I have never ever programmed something and I did not have
knowledge to do so. During the project I learned a lot more about
programming concepts, how can I implement the modules and generally
the programming language Python.”
Ekaterina, one of the winners of the competition
The coding competition Youth Hacking 4
Freedom is a new initiative of the FSFE. Our goal is to make more
young people aware of Free Software by encouraging them to tinker and
experiment with technology. It is a chance for young people to
discuss and network with important people in the fields of computer
science and Free Software. The winners are rewarded with a trip to
Brussels and a cash prize, which might turn into an investment for
their own project. The first year of the competition was a success
with wide participation and well-made winning projects.
Participation: We had the pleasure to receive many
interesting and inspiring projects from all around Europe.
Over a hundred people aged 13 to 19 from 25
countries registered for the competition, making it a truly
pan-European event.
Coding period: The participants had five months to
come up with a Free Software project. 35 of them submitted a project
to the jury.
Jury: An independent jury evaluated the
submitted projects. The jury members excel in software development
and are deeply involved in the Free Software movement.
Six Winners: The winning programs offer sign
language transcription, a smart table robot, a personal assistant, a
music tutorial, file sharing, and a homework manager. Of course, all
Free Software.
Children’s book: A tale of software, skateboards, and raspberry ice cream
"A rousing tale of self-reliance, community, and standing up to
bullies...software freedom is human freedom!"
Cory Doctorow, Sci-Fi Author
In November 2021 O’Reilly published our book “Ada & Zangemann – A
Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream” (in German)
under a Creative Commons license. A children’s book for young and old
readers, ‘Ada
& Zangemann’ is a fun and educational tale.
The author, Matthias Kirschner, President of the FSFE, conveys to
readers, young and old, the importance of common ownership of
software, and even the basics of more complex topics around it.
Sandra Brandstätter brings the characters to life with her beautiful
illustrations. It quickly sold out at the publisher O'Reilly, right
before the holiday season, and received good reviews. In June 2022 we
distributed a non-profit Ukrainian translation of the book.
Ada unravels the mysteries of software in an adventure with her friends, after an unfortunate encounter with the rich and famous inventor Zangemann.
Book Donations: After the publication of Ada &
Zangemann, we asked our German-speaking community to bring copies of
the book to public libraries for children who cannot afford it or
have not heard of it. The response was overwhelming: over 60
books were donated to libraries in Austria, Germany, and
Switzerland.
Reviews: ‘Ada & Zangemann’ received a good
rating by EKZ-group, the organisation reviewing new publications for
public libraries in Germany and Austria. Therefore the book was
recommended to be added to public libraries. The review characterised
Ada & Zangemann as “attractively illustrated by S. Brandstätter,
[…] didactically well structured and very suitable as a basis for
discussion”. Among other magazines, the book received positive
reviews in the technological magazines Linux
Magazine and Golem.
Kirschner’s book introduces readers young and old to the power and
peril of software. It also highlights the accelerating effects of
sharing software freely – creating conditions for
direct and indirect collaboration which can be a metaphor for the
conduct of science. Behind it all is a backdrop of ethics
of knowledge sharing upon which the arc of human history
rides.
Vint Cerf, Computer Scientist, one of the inventors of the Internet
Ukrainian version: The FSFE
translated ‘Ada & Zangemann’ into Ukrainian, giving a freely
available e-book and
donating 2,750 copies of the book to public
institutions and non-governmental organisations all around Europe
which further distributed them to refugee children from Ukraine and
to public libraries.
Author reading of "Ada&Zangemann" to over 150 3rd graders from Offenburg schools. © CC-BY-SA Stadt Offenburg / herrfichtner
Outreach: The FSFE reached out to
the younger generation with author readings of the book: in a
hackerspace bus at re:publica in Berlin, in a large cinema
room filled with over 150 third-graders in Offenburg, in
a public library in Cologne, online at Chemnitzer Linux-Tage,
online at Wintercongress
(recorded, DE), and three readings in school classes in Berlin
and two in South Germany. The author participated in podcast episodes
at Open
source couch (DE) and GNU/Linux (DE).
Free Software in Education
Free Software has many practical advantages for businesses,
education and the public sector, but most importantly it should be
considered as a human right. I became a supporter of the FSFE to
help make that point - why Free Software is so important for a
lively democratic society and for every one of us.
Erik Grun
Students should learn information technology concepts instead of just
learning how to use products of proprietary software companies. Free
Software helps students understand technology and specifically
coding. Also, with Free Software development students can learn the
value of collaboratively working together for a common good. These
are just some of the reasons why
students should learn using Free Software and educational institutes
should use Free Software too. This year we had several activities
showing the importance of Free Software in education in several
countries.
Stockholm: We interviewed two major
contributors behind Öppna skolplattformen (‘Open school
platform’), the functional and secure Free Software alternative to
the proprietary school platform (‘Skolplattformen’). Parents spotted
irregularities and security issues in the €100 million publicly
funded proprietary platform. When they proceeded to fix the flaws
themselves, the city of Stockholm took legal measures against the
developers.
Netherlands: Students should not have to use
proprietary software to participate in the educational process. The
FSFE joined the Dutch
coalition ‘Fair Digital Education’ supporting privacy-respecting
solutions involving Free Software in schools.
Barcelona: The FSFE joined the Democratic
Digitalisation conference and gave input in a panel about the
importance of Free Software. The FSFE noted that public funds should
not be allocated to make education dependent on Big Tech.
Berlin: The local group
Berlin has monthly online meetings dedicated to Free Software in
Education.
Zurich: The FSFE local group
Zurich works on ‘Lernen
wie die profis’, a campaign presenting the available Free
Software tools that are suitable for classrooms. This year the group
focused on the outreach of the campaign.
What is Free Software? - Our work on public awareness
“The FSFE does great work to further software freedom locally,
nationally and in the EU and I enjoy the podcast and the News RSS
so it felt natural to become a supporter. I also want to be more
involved with the free software community.”
Einar Mostad, English teacher, musician, IT student.
To make software freedom a widespread reality, people need to know
what Free Software is. We constantly work on public awareness,
explaining Free Software to new audiences.
Videos: We published a short video in
English and in German:
‘What is Free Software (Open Source)?’. We explained the complex
topic of software freedom in under three minutes. This can help a new
audience grasp the importance of Free Software.
I Love Free Software Day: One more time, on 14
February, people around
the world celebrated the “I Love Free Software Day” by thanking
all the people who contribute to software freedom throughout the
year. On that day, as in previous years, #ilovefs has been
number one in the Fediverse network with over 47.000 mentions
and over 20 thousand users talking about their love for Free
Software. Numerous Free Software organisations, and, among others,
DINUM, the Interministerial Digital Directorate of France, spread the
thank you message.
This year’s I Love Free Software Day was gaming-themed. For the first
time, we held a dedicated
event for IloveFS: in our two-hour event the FSFE hosted four
speakers who took us into the world of Free Software games.
(recorded: Veloren,
Flare,
Vassal,
Wild
Jams). Roughly 60 people joined the event.
Afterwards, participants were invited to play Veloren together,
making the afternoon a ton of fun.
Want to learn more about Mesh networks? Elektra Wagenrad explained
the concept in the 14th Software Freedom Podcast
episode
Podcasts: The FSFE continued the Software Freedom
Podcasts throughout the year. We interviewed Stanislas Dolcini, a developer
of 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant, a Free Software real-time strategy
game of ancient warfare. Next was Elektra Wagenrad, one of the
original developers of the B.A.T.M.A.N. protocol and of the Mesh
Potato project, who presented these initiatives in a podcast
episode. And, as mentioned earlier, Erik Albers presented the Upcycling Android campaign.
Ada and Zangemann stickers
Promotional material: The FSFE offers promotional material at no cost
to people who want to spread the message of software freedom. This
year we enriched our collection with stickers for Upcycling
Android, Router
Freedom, and Ada and
Zangemann. We sent out 324 promotional packages
for free to 23 countries, so that those who
are interested could use the promotional materials and distribute
them. We also offer a collection of merchandise so that people can
show their affiliation to the FSFE. Try them
out!
The FOSDEM 2022 conference
Europe's most prominent annual Free Software conference, FOSDEM, once
more happened as an online event. We used the event to exchange
opinions and chat with people from the Free Software community.
We raised awareness on wider issues that impact our movement in the
Legal and Policy Devroom.
Policy Devroom: The FSFE co-hosted the Legal and
Policy Issues Devroom in FOSDEM, together with Karen Sandler and
Bradley M. Kuhn from Software Freedom Conservancy and Richard Fontana
from Red Hat. The talks, which are all recorded, covered:
-
How to
teach OSS licenses and compliances at a university, by Masafumi
Ohta;
-
A
globally unified governance framework for Open Source, by
Christopher Klooz;
-
Open
Source, Interoperability and the Digital Markets Act, by
Vittorio Bertola;
-
Why
Device Neutrality is important for Free Software, by Lucas
Lasota;
-
Why the
pandemic could help FOSS, but was a win for proprietary
software, by Italo Vignoli; and
-
closing
remarks by the organisers: Bradley M. Kuhn, Karen Sandler,
Richard Fontana, Max Mehl, and Alexander Sander.
Booth: For first-time visitors, we provided a shiny
virtual
booth presence on the FOSDEM website, showcasing the FSFE and our
most notable developments in recent months.
The FSFE e.V. association
General
Assembly: The General Assembly of the FSFE met for its
annual meeting on 26 November 2021. During the meeting the attendees
discussed long term strategies and challenges for promoting software
freedom and held elections for the FSFE Council. Matthias Kirschner,
Heiki Lõhmus, and Patrick Ohnewein were re-elected for two years to
the positions of President, Vice-President, and Financial Officer
respectively.
The FSFE community across Europe
Many people all over Europe support the use of Free Software and act
to promote it. The FSFE helps the Free Software community around
Europe to take action and stay up to date. Our community is organised
in local groups, country teams, and thematic groups. The local groups
and country teams discuss local issues and often create local
initiatives. Every action undertaken by the FSFE becomes stronger
thanks to our volunteers who spread our message across Europe.
Aarhus:
The Aarhus local group was relaunched after seven years with the aim
to raise awareness of Free Software in Denmark. The group decided to
focus on outreach and ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ topics.
Berlin:
The local group Berlin has monthly in-person meetings. The group
participated in the FSFE booth in the Open House event of the German
Federal Ministry of Environment. Volunteers were on the spot during
the event, explaining Free Software to the audience. They presented
upcycled Android phones and
explained how Free Software can help overcome software obsolescence.
Barcelona:
The Free Software Barcelona group had the first in-person event since
2020.
France:
The FSFE country team France revamped its wiki page, had two
internal meetings, and is planning to participate in large Free
Software events in the next months.
Greece:
The FSFE country team Greece opened its own Matrix room to
discuss challenging translations of technical terms and software
freedom topics.
Hamburg:
The local group Hamburg has monthly in-person meetings.
André Ockers and Nico Rikken at the FSFE booth in the NLLGG in
Utrecht, The Netherlands, May 2022
Netherlands:
The FSFE country team the Netherlands influenced policy on the
digital identity system in the Netherlands, offered advice to the
Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs, and provided a great number of
translations from English to Dutch.
An important topic for the country team is the Dutch government’s
Free Software strategy. The team finds the increased
dependency on DigID, the Dutch digital identity app, worrying.
The team members managed to achieve some political gains through
joint community efforts. They called upon parliament to prevent
big-tech lock-in through authentication services for governmental
usage. The Dutch community sent letters and emails together with
other organisations. In the end it resulted in concrete
motions by parliament for analogue alternatives and basing the
solutions on Free Software. Although the motions did not correct
the authentication process, they were a concrete action as a response
to volunteer efforts. Also the FSFE Netherlands country team advised
the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs (Binnenlandse Zaken, BZK)
about adopting and publishing Free Software.
Finally, as always, the group was very active in translating this
year: Dutch has the greatest number of new translated pages in 2022
(59), not counting the updated ones. Dutch is reaching German in the
total number of translated pages in the FSFE website: Dutch 1351,
German 1482. Quite a race.
For everybody interested, the FSFE country team the Netherlands runs
monthly online meetings. The team met in person in the Netherlands
Linux Users meeting, organised an FSFE booth in the NLLGG meeting in
Utrecht, and was present at the Public Spaces
conference. Overall, it is worth noting that the growth of the Dutch
community was an iterative process based on learning and
feedback, according to one of the coordinators, Nico Rikken.
Translators:
We want to abolish every barrier to software freedom, including the
linguistic one. Many volunteers in the FSFE translators team make our
message accessible to people across Europe. In August we published
the first pages translated into Turkish: our general page about Free Software and why Democracy requires Free
Software. The FSFE Translators team met to share advice on how to
translate the FSFE pages. The meeting offered instructions for using
Git and webpreview. At the end the participants played charades.
Overall in the last year we published 363 reports of news and events
in English and hundreds of translations. Among the most prominent
languages were Italian (306 pages), Dutch (160 pages), Spanish (92
pages), German (85 pages) and French (37 pages).
Vienna:
The FSFE local group Vienna had an information booth at the
Veganmania street festival.
First in-person meeting of FSFE Women. From left to right:
Francesca Indorado, Loria, Fani Partsafyllidou, Antje Kazimiers
Women:
The FSFE Women team runs monthly online meetings. This
year, the group met for the first time in person in Berlin. During
their regular meetings in June the team had an introduction to
content management systems, having three guests from CMS Garden. In
August, members of the group met at one of Germany’s largest
GNU/Linux conferences, FrOSCon in St. Augustin, and participated at
the FSFE booth.
Our fully Free Software technical infrastructure
The FSFE's technical infrastructure is in better shape than
ever before. It provides digital sovereignty and
privacy to our organisation, the FSFE's employees, and volunteers as
well as to other users of our services as we use fully Free
Software on our own bare metal servers. All services run in
some sort of virtualisation: 43 virtual machines are
distributed over different data centres. We recently upgraded our
monitoring system, which is now based on Icinga2, using it for 51
hosts and 747 services that are continuously checked. This year we
enriched our technical infrastructure with three new features:
-
We created ‘Docker2Caddy’
a Python application for the FSFE infrastructure to automate
reverse proxies for Docker containers.
-
We created our own Peertube
instance, media.fsfe.org, to share our videos on a Free
Software platform.
-
The FSFE officially opened the gates to its new Matrix server. All
FSFE supporters and volunteers can create their own Matrix
accounts.
Knowledge sharing: We presented our technical
infrastructure in an article. The article inspired other
organisations in the civil society to strive for similar goals as
dependencies on proprietary service providers are more and more
recognised as the severe problem they are. This is why we are
increasingly often asked to share our experiences, best practices,
and feedback. However, as for all technology, our infrastructure is
neither perfect nor complete. Our system administrators face a number
of interesting challenges that will keep them busy aside from the
routine tasks. We would like to thank them as well as the numerous
Free Software projects we depend on for their contributions to
software freedom!
Accessibility: Our website consciously avoids
practices that hinder accessibility, but there is still room for
improvement. This year we improved our consistency in adding
alternative text for images, and added a specific reminder in Git
flagging each time a contributor fails to add alternative text.
Join the movement
“The FSFE is inclusive and puts the learning perspective at the
heart of its mission. So I hope it thrives for many years to come,
inspiring people like it inspired me. GNUtopia here we come!”
George Brooke-Smith, Risk Management specialist in KPMG.
Interview in January
2022.
The FSFE would be nothing without its contributors. And it would be
so much more with you! There are many ways you can contribute: support us financially, join a
local group,
participate in our events to meet
like-minded people. Translate our
articles, or offer technical
support to the organisation. Subscribe to our Newsletter to stay
in touch.
Become a supporter: Advocating for freedom costs
money and we depend on people like you to support us. We guarantee that
all support is used to foster software freedom in Europe a little
more each day, step by step, bit by bit for the next decades.
FSFE Staff meeting at the SFSCon. From left to right: Matthias
Kirschner, Max Mehl, Marlene Kietreiber, Linus Sehn, Francesca
Indorato, Erik Albers, Linda Wagener, Alexander Sander, Gabriel Ku,
Lucas Lasota, Lina Ceballos, Fani Partsafyllidou, Niharika Singhal,
Bonnie Mehring. Bolzano, Italy, November 2021.
With your help we can keep on defending software freedom. Thank you
for your trust, your support, and your ideas.
Support FSFE
