Public Money? Public Code! A campaign framework to promote software freedom
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Mehring, Bonnie
Kirschner, Matthias
Do you want to promote Free Software in public administrations? Then the campaign framework of "Public Money? Public Code!" might be the right choice for you; no matter if you want to do it as an individual or as a group; no matter if you have a small or large time budget. More than 170 organisations, and more than 26,000 individuals demand that publicly financed software should be made publicly available under Free Software licenses. Together we contacted politicians and civil servants on all levels - from the European Union and national governments, to city mayors and the heads of public libraries about this demand. This did not just lead to important discussions about software freedom with decision makers, but also already to specific policy changes. In the talk, we will explain how the campaign framework including the website publiccode.eu, the videos, the open letter, the expert brochure,and example letters can be used to push for the adoption of Free Software friendly policies in your area; be it your public administration, your library, your university, your city, your region, or your country.
 All right everyone, welcome to the talk. We are here to present you what we have already done in the public money public code campaign, what tools are available with the goal to enable you to use them yourself and get active yourself. So in school we learn that in a democracy we elect people for different institutions and then they have the power over this area. While in a world where more and more things are decided with technology and with software, the situation might look more like this. And so the goal of the FSFE is that in governments, in public administrations, that the administrations can use the software and control that software in their area. So free software always gives them certain freedoms that a government, public administration, can use that software for any purpose so that no third party can decide what the government or the public administration can do with the software and what not. They can always use it for any purpose without getting permission first. They are also allowed to study the software, so to get the source code and see what actually the software is really doing, to understand what implications certain things have to see if this is right or wrong, what the software is doing and check if the software is in compliance with the laws and regulations they introduced. Furthermore, free software always gives the governments the freedom to share the software with others, be it the citizens, be it the other public administrations, companies, wherever. And furthermore, that the public administration is always able to improve the software or adapt the software to their own needs. So governments should never be in a situation where they cannot do a change in law, in a regulation because a software company or developer doesn't allow them to do this. So you are always allowed to do it. You can make modifications so that you adopt the software to your needs and you don't have to change your behavior of the public administration to what someone else, a developer of the software decided. So that's the background here. As I said, what we want to present here is what tools are available, what parts of the campaign we already have. And our goal is that you can then afterwards also use those tools, be creative and hack your public administration that they afterwards also make sure that software which is published, software which is financed with public money will afterwards be published under a free software license which allows the public administration but also each one of you and all the other public administrations to use the software for any purpose, to study the source code, to share the software with others and to improve it. So yes, let's start with that. As I said, the goals we already had for a very long time that besides citizens, companies, governments should also receive those for freedoms of free software to use, study, share and improve it. And we lobbied for that for a long time, talked with politicians, people in public administrations. But in 2017 we thought, what can we do to give this goal a push? Can we come up with a campaign to speed it up? And so what we decided was that we have a campaign workshop about that. We invited lots of volunteers from all over Europe and spent one weekend together. That's our pad there where we noted down several ideas for the slogan. We thought about what components we need for such a campaign, what tools we need. And one of the outcomes was then the slogan here which you see there beside some others where I feel a little bit embarrassed almost when we came up with it. But yeah, so that was the time when we then came up with what we wanted to do, what components we wanted to have and under which slogan, the public money, public code slogan, we want to do this. From there on, some of us started to develop a website. So we wanted to make sure that when there are people who don't have any clue about free software yet, political decision makers, people in public administrations, but also the public, the general public, when they want to learn about this, that they have an easy entrance point for it. So we created this website and our volunteers started to translate it in many languages. So meanwhile, we have 19 languages available there. You see them on the button there. And if anyone of you is speaking a language which is not yet listed there, we want you after the talk, please help us that we can make 20 or 21 out of that. So yes, that was the first part. So that when you talk with people about that, you can point them to a website. The next step was that we started drafting an open letter which we want to send to politicians on all different levels. So we started talking with other organizations, developed a draft there, get some feedback, made some small readjustments to the letter. The CCC was one of the first signing it. There are others here whom you might also notice when you walk around here. And several of them were then the first initial people who signed it. And the idea there is that for different elections, for whenever there is a good opportunity to contact public administrations or politicians that we can point to the open letter, we can show them how many people and how many organizations are supporting this. And one of the easiest things for you to do if you want to support this campaign is to sign the open letter yourself and encourage others to do so. We are also especially interested in other organizations. Of course, it's very nice if the signing process works as smooth as in this case with DBRN, we just receive a merge request and say yes. But we are also very much interested in non-technical organizations signing this open letter. So not so much out of the usual suspects but organizations, a civil society which also want to support this or also public administrations themselves. So if you can help us there to get more people signing this demand, that's very helpful for us. Furthermore, we also said that we need a short video for people who don't want to read websites, who don't want to read open letters, something very short, very simple. And that's the video I also want to briefly show you. No, no, no. And for a moment, our government would treat our public infrastructure like our streets and public buildings the same way it treats our digital infrastructure. Our members of parliament would work in a rented space where they weren't allowed to vote in favor of stricter environmental laws because the owner, a multinational corporation, wouldn't allow that kind of voting in its buildings. Nor will it allow a long overdue upgrade to more than 500 seats. This means some members of parliament have to stay outside in the street. And a couple of blocks away, a brand new gym is already being torn down just six months after it was built. It's being replaced with an exact replica at great expense. And the only difference, the new manufacturer also provides streetball as an added feature. Meanwhile, every night through a hidden backdoor in the city hall, documents that contain sensitive information on citizens from bank data to health care records are being stolen. But no one is allowed to do anything about it because searching for backdoors and locking them would infringe the signed user agreement. And as absurd as this sounds, when it comes to our digital infrastructure, things like the software and programs that our governments are using every day, this comparison is pretty accurate. Because mostly, our administrations procure proprietary software. This means a lot of money goes into licenses that last for a limited amount of time and restrict our ruts. We aren't allowed to use our infrastructure in a reasonable way. And because the source code of proprietary software is usually a business secret, finding security holes or deliberately installed backdoors is extremely difficult and even illegal. But our public administrations can do better if all publicly financed software were to be free and open source. We could use and share our infrastructure for anything and for as long as we wanted. We could upgrade it, repair it and remodel it in any way to fit our needs. And because the open source in free software means that the blueprint is openly readable for everyone, this makes it much easier to find and close security holes. And if something practical and reliable was created digitally, not only can you reuse the blueprint all over your country, the actual thing itself can be deployed anywhere, even internationally. A great example of this is Fix My Street. Originally developed in Great Britain as a free software app to report, view and discuss local problems like potholes, it's now being used all over the world. And it's now being used in a way that is not only available in the US, but also in the UK and the UK. And it's now being used in the UK and the UK as a free software app to report on any problems that may arise. And it's now being used in the UK and the UK as a free software app to report on any problems that may arise. So, yeah, this video was actually something which was quite difficult for us. We had many people involved in the campaign. And when we started to think about what to put in the video, there were lots of people, we can't say it like this. That's too much simplification there. And in the end, we had to decide that it's just a small group of three people from us, plus the person doing the video, that we came up with this, which I hope that is now very easy to understand for politicians, political decision makers and people in public administrations. What we did later in the campaign was that we translated the video in several other languages. So, it's now available in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. And thereby, we should in theory be able to reach over one billion people in their native language. We are still interested to also have that in other languages. So, costs for that are around 900 euro if you want to do it professionally. We also had some organizations in other countries who were taking care about that. One organization was handling this for French. And we also found several people in other countries there who liked the campaign a lot and then helped us, yeah, either doing it pro bono or for a very good price. So, yeah, this video is there. You can use it. And then one other component which we also, which also people started using was that some activists spent their nights playing around with gobo projectors, those things where you can play around with light and bro check that on buildings. They are also, I have already seen some people around here who may have been part of this activities. And so, yeah, the reason for that is that it gives you afterwards have some pictures which you can use when you want to bring that in the press, talk about it with the media and also in general to have some images for something which is very abstract like talking about software. So, yeah, some people spent their nights in Frankfurt and in Berlin to project messages on public administration's buildings. And then one thing we did was that with the open letter and the video, we started contacting politicians for the federal elections in Germany in 2017. So, I know this is in German, I will briefly translate it. So, what we did there was that we sent an email to all candidates who candidate it for becoming member of parliament in the German Bundestag. And one experience we made there is that the feedback we received from politicians there was quite good. But what even worked better was that we encouraged people to contact their direct candidates themselves. And this is an example of a reply my mother received. So, she was also contacting politicians about that and asked them if they would be in favor of publicly financed software being published under free software licenses. And this was the reply by a conservative politician who is also secretary of state from that party. And he wrote that it's very, he's very impressed by the work her son and this FSE are doing and that after the election he would like to have contact with us and talk with us about this and it's an area where politicians are also dependent on the expertise from external people. And so that's something which is where you see that with some very small messages, short emails, you can already reach people on a more personal level and show them this video. I mean, he was also in the email replying, oh yeah, that video makes sense. I also forwarded that to our experts. I mean, for what they say, but I mean, for himself first, all the politicians said like, yeah, that all makes sense. We should do that. And the same political party just a few steps forward. A few weeks ago took a decision. So, it was the CDU and the CDU at their last party convention. They took the decision that publicly financed software should be published under free software licenses and be available for everyone, which was for us a big, big improvement there. Because it's usually, it came from a party which years before over 10 years was more blocking in this direction. And so that's of course something they say now and we have to make sure to monitor this and to remind them about what they want to do so that actually things are implemented there. But I want to show it to you to show that it's often, it's lots of people who have to do something there to make a change. And it could be one of the small emails which convenes is one of the politicians to say yes, when this is coming into the party convention and they have to take a decision there. Furthermore, what we also did before this decision already is that on the 14th of February, we always encourage people to thank free software developers for their work. So we call it the I Love Free Software Day because we think that not just the flower industry should have some benefits there. And last year what we did on this day was that we prepared letters and roses and each member of the German parliament received such a letter and a rose from us. And in those letters we explained them about free software, about public money, public code, and asked them to also be more aware about what free software is doing for our society. That was something, again, some opportunity to remind them about this topic and explain them what we are working on. One other component we had was that beside the website and the video and the open letter, we wanted to have something that when politicians or political decision makers in general say, that all makes sense, what can I do next? How can I learn more? That we have something to hand over to them first. So we decided that we wanted to create a brochure with more inside text, some more details about the topic. So together with other organizations who contributed text for this, we created a brochure for public money, public code, for the modernization of the public infrastructure of our public administrations. The brochure is now available also at our booth. You can hand it over whenever you talk with politicians about this topic and say here, something more for you or for your assistance to read. At the moment it's only available in English, but we are working on a German translation together with Öffit, which is a public body to help public administration modernize their IT. So soon there will also be a German translation, which then hopefully will help people in Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland to convince more people about this again. So, and by that I'm handing over to Bonnie, our current intern, who worked on this as one of her internship projects. Hello. Thank you for your applause. Bonnie. Yeah, all right. And just click. Doing my internship, as Matthias already mentioned, I worked on the public money, public code campaign, and I mainly did this by sending out letters to politicians. I wanted to get in contact with loads of administrations all over Europe to get them to sign the open letter, because so far we have only three of them and we want there to be more. Yes, so those three are Juntate de Generelle de Asturias, I hope I pronounced it correctly, some Commander Elbmarch and the City of Barcelona. How did I do this? I sent out some mails to the politicians all over Europe, I looked up their addresses and I found out if they have any connections with software or free software in the town. I also did this with my hometown, who I'm still in contact with. I basically sent them some basic information about free software as Matthias already introduced to you. And I also told them about the benefits from free software and the public administration, like collaboration with other communities, giving back something to the people, saving costs, for example, through collaboration and reducing dependencies. Also to support the local economy could be a good benefit from it and innovation, because you don't need to reinvent the wheel every time if you use free software in the public administration. Then I ended those emails with a question like how is your digital strategy and what are you planning for the next legislation. For this I also created a wiki page and our wiki so that you find there an example email and also loads of information on how to do this and how to get in contact with politicians. But then I also asked myself, well, is the politicians the only administrations we have? No, we have more. We have the universities, for example, who are the entities. Oh, now I need to click. And also schools. Those all use public money to fund their IT infrastructure. And also libraries. Libraries don't only have books, they actually also use software. And hospitals, for example, as well. Those are all public administrations who use public funds for their IT infrastructure. I also have some examples. Currently, as you already saw this picture in the video, by the way, there is a motion in the city parliament of Kassel. I know it's in Germany. And don't worry, later we'll have some examples from other countries. And that motion in the city parliament of Kassel asked the megastrat to follow the guiding principle of PMPC by the purchase and development of new software. Sorry, so that they buy new software. Well, there will be a vote on this in the mid of January in the responsible committee and in the end of January in the city parliament. This was already postponed a few times. So there's still time for all of you who live in the area of Kassel to get active and write them some emails. We already did this and we will be happy to help if you have any questions there. I also have another success story from a hack lab called Pika Pika in Asturias. As I already said, Asturias signed the parliament of Asturias signed the letter and they asked their parliament to do this. They got in contact with their politicians as well and told them about the benefits. Some parties were more interested in saving costs or supporting local economy and others were more interested in collaboration with others. And they used all these arguments with the parties and got in contact with them and convinced them eventually to be the first parliament to sign the open letter. For this we have an interview on our web page and you can look up the whole story there. Then I also have another example that's currently happening in the parliament of Luxembourg. There's a motion that says we invite the government to actively promote and support free and open source software and public administrations and to publish every new developed software which was financed from public funds as open source software. Currently there are at least three opposition parties. The pirates who have two seats, the CSV EPP who have 21 seats and Dylink, I hope I pronounced it correctly, GUIE who have two seats as well that are supporting this motion and also Vivian Riding, a former EU commissioner from the CSV, is speaking in favour for the motion. So there are all examples where you can still get active and write some emails. And if you're now motivated to do this, to get in contact with your local administration as I already said, there could be any administration, it could be a university, a school, or your hospital or your library in your local hometown where you're from. You can come to our booth and you find information material there. You can talk to me and I'm always happy to help you with this and you will also find information on our wiki page that I created for this and we are always happy to hear about stories like that. Yes, the booth is in the Merzweckflasche 3-4 in the cluster about freedom in the CCL. So, I mean, we showed you some examples of what we already have there. As I said before, we would be interested for you to see what you can make out of that. You should be aware that changing things in the public administration is a steep, stony, rocky, long way because for many, many years they were driving in a one-way road and it's very difficult for them to make changes come out of those vendor lock-ins they drove into. And so be aware that when you reach out to politicians, political decision makers, to people in public administrations some of them will not understand what you want to talk about. Some of them will don't want to talk with you about that. Some might say yes, but how should I do that? There are so many reasons why we can't do that. So, it can be quite, you have to be aware that it's something which takes a lot of time and it will not be like when you try to convince public administrations to contact some, there might be 20 of them who say no or who are not interested in what you want to talk with them about. But there might be then one or two where you are successful and where you can make a change. And in the end it's, I mean the FSFE, we are working on this, many people in Europe are working on this campaign. We hope that we can encourage you to also be part of that for some time, to support us, to walk this way with us, to make sure that all the others are proceeding with that, that we can make changes there and that we can make sure that public administrations will publish software under software licenses so that everybody of us will benefit from that, that other public administrations will benefit from that. And I mean, that's one of the quotes which my first teacher wrote down for me at the time, an African saying, many small people in many small places do many small things that will alter the face of the world. So please don't wait for some heroes, some other people to do some changes, to fix some things which you think are important, but rather do something today, something small, start now to do something there and in the end it's the sum of all those activities from all of us that will make a change, not some big activity by some person or one big organization, it will be rather the combined sum of all the activities, the small things which all of us will do together. So I hope that you will start today with this and now we have some time to talk with you about your questions. Yes, looking forward to this. Thank you very much. And also thanks a lot to all the supporters of the FSFE who made it possible for us to come till here. Thank you. Okay, so we have sometimes left for questions. You can see a microphone over there and over there. You can go there to ask questions. Yeah, the microphone to the left. Hey, thanks first for your engagement for free software and to you and to the FSFE. My question would be when talking to officials, I often hear, okay, but we need this software now and if we do not buy this software from this commercial industry, then we will have the problem that no one else will develop it and they will stop developing it for us or to us to very high prices because we want to have it open source. What do you answer to this complain? I mean, there are definitely cases where something like that is the case. So that they say, well, we want to procure software for this area. There are just two providers for this at the moment and they say, well, we know that there are just two providers and we will not offer it as free software. It's very difficult for the public administration to do something about that. I think for it, it depends a lot on the area there. There are areas where the software has a lot of influence on our society where we should also push political decision makers more to make this mandatory that the software needs to be under free software license. There are other areas where maybe we don't have to focus our resources on this case at the moment because there are others where it makes more sense to focus on them to also find some examples where it's easier to do it as free software. So you can already show people what benefits they have from this, show the public administrations, how much they can benefit from that so that over the time they build up competency, how to deal with that and can then also easier tackle those difficult problems. But as I said, I think there are areas in which the software has a huge impact on society and on the people's lives where we should not just accept there, well, the companies say no, but where we should think hard about if we should not invest more resources, more money in this, that we develop solutions like that as free software, that we also reach out to other administrations all over Europe and think about if maybe resources could be combined to tackle such a problem. Thank you. Okay, now for the microphone on the right. Thanks guys for your work on this topic. The question I have is, do you have some resource on positive examples of software that is already open source and used in a lot of administrations that you can refer to when trying to convince people? There was already mentioned to fix my street in the video, for example, and for us I will have to think. I mean, in the brochure we mentioned some examples of software which is widely used, so there are some standards. There is on the European level the sharing and reuse award and it's something where the European Commission, they give out awards to public administrations who develop software which is then also reused by other public administrations in Europe and lots of them are published under free software licenses. So I would encourage you to have a look at those examples there. I'm a bit hesitant to mention concrete examples because one of the experiences we made was that sometimes people just look at some of those projects. For example, with Munich, before there were lots of people always there, Munich it's the lighthouse project of free software and then everybody is looking at that and they don't look around what else is happening and then through political changes things are not going that well for one of those projects, then people are so disappointed and think that this one thing, that's the big part there. I mean, I'm convinced that we don't need those big lighthouses but that we have many stars in the sky where people are doing something good in public administrations. So look at those winners of those awards, look at our brochure, what examples there are and then find those which you like personally because they are from an area which you care about and then use them to explain this. Yeah, exactly. I was looking for a list with all these projects to hand over a list to show that this is a big thing and not only individual projects, exactly like you said. So you don't have a list on your website? In the brochure there are examples and there are also references to other resources like for example the European Commission has joined up which published case studies about free software usage in the European Union. So those are very good resources to find good examples for yourself. Thanks. All right. Are there any questions from the internet? No. Okay, then let's go with the microphone on the left. Thanks for the talk. I'm interested in working in this area but I do not know about any funding. Like is there a European and German funding that will allow to fund a company or just work and get money from the European Union? When you have a project idea or to work on a project to finance yourself? You mean that you want with your company to develop free software for the public administration? Yeah, for example, like that you can live of it, not do it in your free time after 40 hours, do 40 hours for that. So when you want to make money with free software in this area you have to follow the same procedures as other companies have to. So there is a procurement process. You have to make your bid there in the procurement processes. And our goal is that public administrations will say more often that they want to have free software for this and that they don't allow proprietary software for those solutions. So that when you are making an offer that you have disadvantage there that you don't have to compete with other companies who don't want to provide those rights to the public administrations. But we don't at the moment do anything there that free software companies themselves that there is any program to just make money with providing free software to public administrations because that would be something which is against the procurement laws there. I mean there are some smaller things where you can get funding. For example, there are project funding opportunities for free software project about new internet technologies which might also be something for public administrations with the next generation internet. You can apply there for funds. That's one thing where we are also involved to help with license issues. And there is for like smaller things when it's very new. There's also funding from the prototype fund to develop some software which can afterwards be used for the public administration. But beside that, I mean you have to go the normal way. Our goal is to increase the demand for free software in the public administration and to have also regulation that it's very difficult to procure proprietary software. Thank you. Alright, then let's go with the microphone on the right again. Hello. So you probably know that in Italy since June of this year we have a law that requires in most of the case to use, reuse and implement free software from the public administration. So somehow there's a law. So we are entering into a new phase where there is the need to monitor the implementation of the law and to act when the law is not respected because almost no single authority have the duty to control this kind of very complicated software and public procurement law related things. We are going to implement a project to make a monitoring community around that. But I wanted to ask if there are other existing initiatives that already entered into this phase of monitoring public procurement of software acting on it legally and I mean not just advocating for it but enforcing it from a civil society perspective. You're from Hermes Center? Yeah. Yeah. So yes, we are in contact with, don't know who exactly from you, we're in contact with Hermes Center probably. Okay, with you. Perfect. Thank you very much for your work there. I mean that's something which is very important now that whenever we reach the state that a law is introduced or a party is making a commitment that we monitor this, remind them about that and see how this is actually going. So, for Italy this law that before there's a procurement that public administration should check if other public administrations already have a software which fulfills this need, else they should check if there's free software available to solve this problem and just if that is not the case then they are able to procure proprietary software. Well, the thing is always in political processes you have a law so someone formulated something, you have a decision about something and then comes a part about policy implementation and that's the part which is most complicated and where most policy fail. So, it's not so much that people cannot vote yes or no, we want to have this or not, the problem is in the implementation phase and that will be the hardest part and there we need the help of many people, many organizations to monitor what is actually going on there to then again remind them about that, to readjust laws, to think about what other things can be done to make the right incentives. Some laws are there, they say it's forbidden to do this, others are there like if you do it that way then you have lots of benefits. So, we have to see how to make such changes in a way that is sustainable, that the public administration is not so much forced to do something by law but that they see that they have advantages when doing that and that they want to do that and it will be very easier. So, yeah, in that case thanks a lot already to the Hammer Center which is working on this for Italy. We hope that we are able to monitor that for other countries as well together with other organizations. So, yeah, support organizations like Hammer Center and others who are doing this. So, if there are still no questions from the internet? No, then we'll go with the one on the left again. Yes, there are initiatives, even big ones, so if you don't focus your business on public money then actually I believe there's more money in open source consulting than in proprietary consulting. We made this experience. Can you come a bit closer? And the moment Germany together with France is starting the Gaia X initiative which was a little bit ridiculed because nobody expected this from the German government and I think they had to learn a lot of details about this initiative and there is a lot of money waiting to be pumped into the open source communities. On the other side, we make the experience that the open source community is not prepared, for example, to maintain projects in a stable state for 50 years. We are talking about projects which are critical infrastructure which means you have 20 years of maintenance to guarantee. Let's say, Python for 20 years and then normally this thing extended to up to 50 years. So, what you believe that Python 3 is supported for 50 years, we have to change the maintenance problem. On the other side, the proprietary software vendors have the same problem but you find Windows 95 systems in critical infrastructure which have not been updated for 25 years if I compute right. So, there is a big pressure and the politic has recognized it. But we have to organize business into the communities which are not prepared to do business. My opinion is you cannot do anything without doing business even in open source and we have to prepare the open source community for playing well with the money which is available in a way that they can take it and maintain it in a fair way. I think that's important. Okay, so we'll just take the next question from the mic on the right. Hello. Just a quick example of a project open street map I think is a very good example. It's a completely open map and I think there's a lot of cases where that could be used in public administration. I know all the tram information maps and Dublin have it. I want to ask is there a plan to bring public money, public code to the EU level because I think it's next year the seven year budget, the multi annual financial framework is going to be renegotiated. So it might be worthwhile just putting a requirement for public code in there. And also, could we look at developing pan European tendering processes for open source and could we develop that so say five or six administrations from different parts of Europe would work together to put together a joint tender to say improve an open source project if their needs were similar. I don't know had someone thought about that or could we maybe develop the policy a bit to include that. So I mean, we already are in contact with the European level. We are talking with politicians there and also contacted them with those demands and are thinking about how to move forward there. I mean, you have already the sharing and reuse award by European Commission where they say the sharing and reuse should be the default for public administrations. So that's something where we are encouraging them to go forward there and help them how to do this. And we also next year we want to reach more members of the parliament and think about how to how to establish this then after now most of the politicians got a bit understood a bit how the institutions work and now you can also start with them working on the content. So we plan if we if we are able to get funding for our next year we want to make sure that every member of parliament gets this brochure that every member of parliament will be when they are in the right working groups that they will be contacted. So that's something where we want to do this and we also I mean we hope that by spreading the news encouraging people to contact their members of the European Parliament as well that we will make a bigger impact there. The second question was about that meeting. Tendering at the tendering. Yeah, so different countries working together on an open source tender. Sometimes in something like that works that you bring a few people a few public administrations together and then think about that they share the costs and a procure your software. So in a lot of cases this also slows down the process and makes it very difficult and the failure rate is very high. So you have when you have seven people and they say what they want to have for a project and then they start with something and then you see okay we have to make some compromises. So it's very difficult to find to take a decision with seven administrations. Then if you have one or two. So that's something which I'm a bit hesitant to do this as a first step I would at the moment rather encourage public administrations for their small business to do this with free software and gather some experience there and then think about enlarging it doing it pulling it doing it together with others because else I see that the failure rate will be way higher if you if you combine this because I mean from the public administrations this process they are often a bit slow and the process are complicated and as for software companies public administrations are not always the best customers on this regard and when you then don't have like one public administration as a customer but you have seven that's for us something where we are very difficult. One last thing to the first question that's what I was talking about we also need you to step in and get in contact with your representatives in the European parliament because we can do this yes and we are on this we are going to do this but we need more and we need you because many people in many places can bring big things can do big things sorry. Yes so we have about two minutes left which fits quite nicely since we have one more question on the left microphone. Yeah thank you very much for the presentation and for the campaign. I think it's not only sensible but definitely necessary and coming back to your point about what we can do. I would like to talk to some of the decision makers or local politicians and I think the brochure would be very helpful at that moment. You said that the German translation is in progress. Yes. How would I go about receiving an actual sort of printed copy to take with me once that has happened. You can go to our website and there you find the contribute and spread the word page and then you can order some. You can also go to the public code website public code dot e you and there you find also spread the word and there you can order all the material and send it to you for free. Thank you very much. You're welcome and you can also come by it. We have some copies at our booth together with some other advertisement materials for public money public code lots of stickers t-shirts bags and so on. And yeah in general when you sign the open letter we also try to keep you up to date of what is happening when you do this then you will also get information when for example the German website is then at the German translation of the brochure is available. Yeah so those are ways to do there. So I think just one last word. Use those tools get creative. Hack your public administration there and let us know what experience you make give us some feedback so we can read just our our tools so we can think about what else is needed for this and don't wait. Just think about now whom could I contact my member of parliament local politician public administration and start doing it. Thank you very much. Thank you.
 All right everyone, welcome to the talk.  We are here to present you what we have already done in the public money public code campaign,  what tools are available with the goal to enable you to use them yourself and get active  yourself.  So in school we learn that in a democracy we elect people for different institutions  and then they have the power over this area.  While in a world where more and more things are decided with technology and with software,  the situation might look more like this.  And so the goal of the FSFE is that in governments, in public administrations, that the administrations  can use the software and control that software in their area.  So free software always gives them certain freedoms that a government, public administration,  can use that software for any purpose so that no third party can decide what the government  or the public administration can do with the software and what not.  They can always use it for any purpose without getting permission first.  They are also allowed to study the software, so to get the source code and see what actually  the software is really doing, to understand what implications certain things have to see  if this is right or wrong, what the software is doing and check if the software is in compliance  with the laws and regulations they introduced.  Furthermore, free software always gives the governments the freedom to share the software  with others, be it the citizens, be it the other public administrations, companies, wherever.  And furthermore, that the public administration is always able to improve the software or  adapt the software to their own needs.  So governments should never be in a situation where they cannot do a change in law, in a  regulation because a software company or developer doesn't allow them to do this.  So you are always allowed to do it.  You can make modifications so that you adopt the software to your needs and you don't have  to change your behavior of the public administration to what someone else, a developer of the software  decided.  So that's the background here.  As I said, what we want to present here is what tools are available, what parts of the  campaign we already have.  And our goal is that you can then afterwards also use those tools, be creative and hack  your public administration that they afterwards also make sure that software which is published,  software which is financed with public money will afterwards be published under a free  software license which allows the public administration but also each one of you and all the other  public administrations to use the software for any purpose, to study the source code,  to share the software with others and to improve it.  So yes, let's start with that.  As I said, the goals we already had for a very long time that besides citizens, companies,  governments should also receive those for freedoms of free software to use, study, share  and improve it.  And we lobbied for that for a long time, talked with politicians, people in public administrations.  But in 2017 we thought, what can we do to give this goal a push?  Can we come up with a campaign to speed it up?  And so what we decided was that we have a campaign workshop about that.  We invited lots of volunteers from all over Europe and spent one weekend together.  That's our pad there where we noted down several ideas for the slogan.  We thought about what components we need for such a campaign, what tools we need.  And one of the outcomes was then the slogan here which you see there beside some others  where I feel a little bit embarrassed almost when we came up with it.  But yeah, so that was the time when we then came up with what we wanted to do, what components  we wanted to have and under which slogan, the public money, public code slogan, we want  to do this.  From there on, some of us started to develop a website.  So we wanted to make sure that when there are people who don't have any clue about free  software yet, political decision makers, people in public administrations, but also the public,  the general public, when they want to learn about this, that they have an easy entrance  point for it.  So we created this website and our volunteers started to translate it in many languages.  So meanwhile, we have 19 languages available there.  You see them on the button there.  And if anyone of you is speaking a language which is not yet listed there, we want you  after the talk, please help us that we can make 20 or 21 out of that.  So yes, that was the first part.  So that when you talk with people about that, you can point them to a website.  The next step was that we started drafting an open letter which we want to send to politicians  on all different levels.  So we started talking with other organizations, developed a draft there, get some feedback,  made some small readjustments to the letter.  The CCC was one of the first signing it.  There are others here whom you might also notice when you walk around here.  And several of them were then the first initial people who signed it.  And the idea there is that for different elections, for whenever there is a good opportunity to  contact public administrations or politicians that we can point to the open letter, we can  show them how many people and how many organizations are supporting this.  And one of the easiest things for you to do if you want to support this campaign is to  sign the open letter yourself and encourage others to do so.  We are also especially interested in other organizations.  Of course, it's very nice if the signing process works as smooth as in this case with DBRN,  we just receive a merge request and say yes.  But we are also very much interested in non-technical organizations signing this open letter.  So not so much out of the usual suspects but organizations, a civil society which also  want to support this or also public administrations themselves.  So if you can help us there to get more people signing this demand, that's very helpful for  us.  Furthermore, we also said that we need a short video for people who don't want to read websites,  who don't want to read open letters, something very short, very simple.  And that's the video I also want to briefly show you.  No, no, no.  And for a moment, our government would treat our public infrastructure like our streets  and public buildings the same way it treats our digital infrastructure.  Our members of parliament would work in a rented space where they weren't allowed to  vote in favor of stricter environmental laws because the owner, a multinational corporation,  wouldn't allow that kind of voting in its buildings.  Nor will it allow a long overdue upgrade to more than 500 seats.  This means some members of parliament have to stay outside in the street.  And a couple of blocks away, a brand new gym is already being torn down just six months  after it was built.  It's being replaced with an exact replica at great expense.  And the only difference, the new manufacturer also provides streetball as an added feature.  Meanwhile, every night through a hidden backdoor in the city hall, documents that contain sensitive  information on citizens from bank data to health care records are being stolen.  But no one is allowed to do anything about it because searching for backdoors and locking  them would infringe the signed user agreement.  And as absurd as this sounds, when it comes to our digital infrastructure, things like  the software and programs that our governments are using every day, this comparison is pretty  accurate.  Because mostly, our administrations procure proprietary software.  This means a lot of money goes into licenses that last for a limited amount of time and  restrict our ruts.  We aren't allowed to use our infrastructure in a reasonable way.  And because the source code of proprietary software is usually a business secret, finding  security holes or deliberately installed backdoors is extremely difficult and even illegal.  But our public administrations can do better if all publicly financed software were to  be free and open source.  We could use and share our infrastructure for anything and for as long as we wanted.  We could upgrade it, repair it and remodel it in any way to fit our needs.  And because the open source in free software means that the blueprint is openly readable  for everyone, this makes it much easier to find and close security holes.  And if something practical and reliable was created digitally, not only can you reuse  the blueprint all over your country, the actual thing itself can be deployed anywhere, even  internationally.  A great example of this is Fix My Street.  Originally developed in Great Britain as a free software app to report, view and discuss  local problems like potholes, it's now being used all over the world.  And it's now being used in a way that is not only available in the US, but also in the  UK and the UK.  And it's now being used in the UK and the UK as a free software app to report on any  problems that may arise.  And it's now being used in the UK and the UK as a free software app to report on any  problems that may arise.  So, yeah, this video was actually something which was quite difficult for us.  We had many people involved in the campaign.  And when we started to think about what to put in the video, there were lots of people,  we can't say it like this.  That's too much simplification there.  And in the end, we had to decide that it's just a small group of three people from us,  plus the person doing the video, that we came up with this, which I hope that is now very  easy to understand for politicians, political decision makers and people in public administrations.  What we did later in the campaign was that we translated the video in several other languages.  So, it's now available in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.  And thereby, we should in theory be able to reach over one billion people in their native  language.  We are still interested to also have that in other languages.  So, costs for that are around 900 euro if you want to do it professionally.  We also had some organizations in other countries who were taking care about that.  One organization was handling this for French.  And we also found several people in other countries there who liked the campaign a lot  and then helped us, yeah, either doing it pro bono or for a very good price.  So, yeah, this video is there.  You can use it.  And then one other component which we also, which also people started using was that some  activists spent their nights playing around with gobo projectors, those things where you  can play around with light and bro check that on buildings.  They are also, I have already seen some people around here who may have been part of this  activities.  And so, yeah, the reason for that is that it gives you afterwards have some pictures which  you can use when you want to bring that in the press, talk about it with the media and  also in general to have some images for something which is very abstract like talking about software.  So, yeah, some people spent their nights in Frankfurt and in Berlin to project messages  on public administration's buildings.  And then one thing we did was that with the open letter and the video, we started contacting  politicians for the federal elections in Germany in 2017.  So, I know this is in German, I will briefly translate it.  So, what we did there was that we sent an email to all candidates who candidate it for  becoming member of parliament in the German Bundestag.  And one experience we made there is that the feedback we received from politicians there  was quite good.  But what even worked better was that we encouraged people to contact their direct candidates themselves.  And this is an example of a reply my mother received.  So, she was also contacting politicians about that and asked them if they would be in favor  of publicly financed software being published under free software licenses.  And this was the reply by a conservative politician who is also secretary of state from that party.  And he wrote that it's very, he's very impressed by the work her son and this FSE are doing  and that after the election he would like to have contact with us and talk with us about this  and it's an area where politicians are also dependent on the expertise from external people.  And so that's something which is where you see that with some very small messages, short  emails, you can already reach people on a more personal level and show them this video.  I mean, he was also in the email replying, oh yeah, that video makes sense.  I also forwarded that to our experts.  I mean, for what they say, but I mean, for himself first, all the politicians said like,  yeah, that all makes sense.  We should do that.  And the same political party just a few steps forward.  A few weeks ago took a decision.  So, it was the CDU and the CDU at their last party convention.  They took the decision that publicly financed software should be published under free software  licenses and be available for everyone, which was for us a big, big improvement there.  Because it's usually, it came from a party which years before over 10 years was more blocking  in this direction.  And so that's of course something they say now and we have to make sure to monitor this  and to remind them about what they want to do so that actually things are implemented there.  But I want to show it to you to show that it's often, it's lots of people who have to do something there  to make a change.  And it could be one of the small emails which convenes is one of the politicians to say yes,  when this is coming into the party convention and they have to take a decision there.  Furthermore, what we also did before this decision already is that on the 14th of February,  we always encourage people to thank free software developers for their work.  So we call it the I Love Free Software Day because we think that not just the flower industry should have some benefits there.  And last year what we did on this day was that we prepared letters and roses and each member of the German parliament  received such a letter and a rose from us.  And in those letters we explained them about free software, about public money, public code,  and asked them to also be more aware about what free software is doing for our society.  That was something, again, some opportunity to remind them about this topic and explain them what we are working on.  One other component we had was that beside the website and the video and the open letter,  we wanted to have something that when politicians or political decision makers in general say,  that all makes sense, what can I do next?  How can I learn more?  That we have something to hand over to them first.  So we decided that we wanted to create a brochure with more inside text, some more details about the topic.  So together with other organizations who contributed text for this,  we created a brochure for public money, public code,  for the modernization of the public infrastructure of our public administrations.  The brochure is now available also at our booth.  You can hand it over whenever you talk with politicians about this topic and say here,  something more for you or for your assistance to read.  At the moment it's only available in English, but we are working on a German translation  together with Öffit, which is a public body to help public administration modernize their IT.  So soon there will also be a German translation, which then hopefully will help people in Germany,  Austria and parts of Switzerland to convince more people about this again.  So, and by that I'm handing over to Bonnie, our current intern, who worked on this as one of her internship projects.  Hello.  Thank you for your applause.  Bonnie.  Yeah, all right. And just click. Doing my internship, as Matthias already mentioned,  I worked on the public money, public code campaign, and I mainly did this by sending out letters to politicians.  I wanted to get in contact with loads of administrations all over Europe to get them to sign the open letter,  because so far we have only three of them and we want there to be more.  Yes, so those three are Juntate de Generelle de Asturias, I hope I pronounced it correctly,  some Commander Elbmarch and the City of Barcelona.  How did I do this? I sent out some mails to the politicians all over Europe,  I looked up their addresses and I found out if they have any connections with software or free software in the town.  I also did this with my hometown, who I'm still in contact with.  I basically sent them some basic information about free software as Matthias already introduced to you.  And I also told them about the benefits from free software and the public administration,  like collaboration with other communities, giving back something to the people,  saving costs, for example, through collaboration and reducing dependencies.  Also to support the local economy could be a good benefit from it and innovation,  because you don't need to reinvent the wheel every time if you use free software in the public administration.  Then I ended those emails with a question like how is your digital strategy  and what are you planning for the next legislation.  For this I also created a wiki page and our wiki so that you find there an example email  and also loads of information on how to do this and how to get in contact with politicians.  But then I also asked myself, well, is the politicians the only administrations we have?  No, we have more. We have the universities, for example, who are the entities.  Oh, now I need to click.  And also schools.  Those all use public money to fund their IT infrastructure.  And also libraries. Libraries don't only have books, they actually also use software.  And hospitals, for example, as well. Those are all public administrations  who use public funds for their IT infrastructure.  I also have some examples.  Currently, as you already saw this picture in the video, by the way,  there is a motion in the city parliament of Kassel.  I know it's in Germany.  And don't worry, later we'll have some examples from other countries.  And that motion in the city parliament of Kassel asked the megastrat to follow the guiding principle of PMPC  by the purchase and development of new software.  Sorry, so that they buy new software.  Well, there will be a vote on this in the mid of January in the responsible committee  and in the end of January in the city parliament.  This was already postponed a few times.  So there's still time for all of you who live in the area of Kassel to get active and write them some emails.  We already did this and we will be happy to help if you have any questions there.  I also have another success story from a hack lab called Pika Pika in Asturias.  As I already said, Asturias signed the parliament of Asturias signed the letter  and they asked their parliament to do this.  They got in contact with their politicians as well and told them about the benefits.  Some parties were more interested in saving costs or supporting local economy  and others were more interested in collaboration with others.  And they used all these arguments with the parties and got in contact with them  and convinced them eventually to be the first parliament to sign the open letter.  For this we have an interview on our web page and you can look up the whole story there.  Then I also have another example that's currently happening in the parliament of Luxembourg.  There's a motion that says we invite the government to actively promote and support free and open source software  and public administrations and to publish every new developed software  which was financed from public funds as open source software.  Currently there are at least three opposition parties.  The pirates who have two seats, the CSV EPP who have 21 seats and Dylink,  I hope I pronounced it correctly, GUIE who have two seats as well  that are supporting this motion and also Vivian Riding,  a former EU commissioner from the CSV, is speaking in favour for the motion.  So there are all examples where you can still get active and write some emails.  And if you're now motivated to do this, to get in contact with your local administration  as I already said, there could be any administration,  it could be a university, a school, or your hospital or your library  in your local hometown where you're from.  You can come to our booth and you find information material there.  You can talk to me and I'm always happy to help you with this  and you will also find information on our wiki page that I created for this  and we are always happy to hear about stories like that.  Yes, the booth is in the Merzweckflasche 3-4 in the cluster about freedom in the CCL.  So, I mean, we showed you some examples of what we already have there.  As I said before, we would be interested for you to see what you can make out of that.  You should be aware that changing things in the public administration  is a steep, stony, rocky, long way  because for many, many years they were driving in a one-way road  and it's very difficult for them to make changes come out of those vendor lock-ins  they drove into.  And so be aware that when you reach out to politicians,  political decision makers, to people in public administrations  some of them will not understand what you want to talk about.  Some of them will don't want to talk with you about that.  Some might say yes, but how should I do that?  There are so many reasons why we can't do that.  So, it can be quite, you have to be aware that it's something which takes a lot of time  and it will not be like when you try to convince public administrations  to contact some, there might be 20 of them who say no  or who are not interested in what you want to talk with them about.  But there might be then one or two where you are successful  and where you can make a change.  And in the end it's, I mean the FSFE, we are working on this,  many people in Europe are working on this campaign.  We hope that we can encourage you to also be part of that for some time,  to support us, to walk this way with us, to make sure that all the others  are proceeding with that, that we can make changes there  and that we can make sure that public administrations will publish software  under software licenses so that everybody of us will benefit from that,  that other public administrations will benefit from that.  And I mean, that's one of the quotes which my first teacher wrote down for me  at the time, an African saying, many small people in many small places  do many small things that will alter the face of the world.  So please don't wait for some heroes, some other people to do some changes,  to fix some things which you think are important,  but rather do something today, something small, start now to do something there  and in the end it's the sum of all those activities from all of us  that will make a change, not some big activity by some person  or one big organization, it will be rather the combined sum of all the activities,  the small things which all of us will do together.  So I hope that you will start today with this  and now we have some time to talk with you about your questions.  Yes, looking forward to this. Thank you very much.  And also thanks a lot to all the supporters of the FSFE  who made it possible for us to come till here. Thank you.  Okay, so we have sometimes left for questions.  You can see a microphone over there and over there.  You can go there to ask questions. Yeah, the microphone to the left.  Hey, thanks first for your engagement for free software and to you and to the FSFE.  My question would be when talking to officials, I often hear,  okay, but we need this software now and if we do not buy this software from this commercial industry,  then we will have the problem that no one else will develop it  and they will stop developing it for us or to us to very high prices  because we want to have it open source. What do you answer to this complain?  I mean, there are definitely cases where something like that is the case.  So that they say, well, we want to procure software for this area.  There are just two providers for this at the moment and they say,  well, we know that there are just two providers and we will not offer it as free software.  It's very difficult for the public administration to do something about that.  I think for it, it depends a lot on the area there.  There are areas where the software has a lot of influence on our society  where we should also push political decision makers more to make this mandatory  that the software needs to be under free software license.  There are other areas where maybe we don't have to focus our resources  on this case at the moment because there are others where it makes more sense  to focus on them to also find some examples where it's easier to do it as free software.  So you can already show people what benefits they have from this,  show the public administrations, how much they can benefit from that  so that over the time they build up competency, how to deal with that  and can then also easier tackle those difficult problems.  But as I said, I think there are areas in which the software has a huge impact on society  and on the people's lives where we should not just accept there,  well, the companies say no, but where we should think hard about  if we should not invest more resources, more money in this,  that we develop solutions like that as free software,  that we also reach out to other administrations all over Europe  and think about if maybe resources could be combined to tackle such a problem.  Thank you.  Okay, now for the microphone on the right.  Thanks guys for your work on this topic.  The question I have is, do you have some resource on positive examples of software  that is already open source and used in a lot of administrations  that you can refer to when trying to convince people?  There was already mentioned to fix my street in the video, for example,  and for us I will have to think.  I mean, in the brochure we mentioned some examples of software which is widely used,  so there are some standards.  There is on the European level the sharing and reuse award  and it's something where the European Commission,  they give out awards to public administrations who develop software  which is then also reused by other public administrations in Europe  and lots of them are published under free software licenses.  So I would encourage you to have a look at those examples there.  I'm a bit hesitant to mention concrete examples  because one of the experiences we made was that  sometimes people just look at some of those projects.  For example, with Munich, before there were lots of people always there,  Munich it's the lighthouse project of free software  and then everybody is looking at that and they don't look around what else is happening  and then through political changes  things are not going that well for one of those projects,  then people are so disappointed and think that this one thing,  that's the big part there.  I mean, I'm convinced that we don't need those big lighthouses  but that we have many stars in the sky  where people are doing something good in public administrations.  So look at those winners of those awards,  look at our brochure, what examples there are and then find those  which you like personally because they are from an area which you care about  and then use them to explain this.  Yeah, exactly. I was looking for a list with all these projects to hand over  a list to show that this is a big thing and not only individual projects,  exactly like you said.  So you don't have a list on your website?  In the brochure there are examples and there are also references to other resources  like for example the European Commission has joined up which published case studies  about free software usage in the European Union.  So those are very good resources to find good examples for yourself.  Thanks.  All right. Are there any questions from the internet?  No. Okay, then let's go with the microphone on the left.  Thanks for the talk.  I'm interested in working in this area but I do not know about any funding.  Like is there a European and German funding that will allow to fund a company  or just work and get money from the European Union?  When you have a project idea or to work on a project to finance yourself?  You mean that you want with your company to develop free software for the public administration?  Yeah, for example, like that you can live of it,  not do it in your free time after 40 hours, do 40 hours for that.  So when you want to make money with free software in this area  you have to follow the same procedures as other companies have to.  So there is a procurement process.  You have to make your bid there in the procurement processes.  And our goal is that public administrations will say more often  that they want to have free software for this and that they don't allow proprietary software for those solutions.  So that when you are making an offer that you have disadvantage there  that you don't have to compete with other companies who don't want to provide those rights to the public administrations.  But we don't at the moment do anything there that free software companies themselves  that there is any program to just make money with providing free software to public administrations  because that would be something which is against the procurement laws there.  I mean there are some smaller things where you can get funding.  For example, there are project funding opportunities for free software project about new internet technologies  which might also be something for public administrations with the next generation internet.  You can apply there for funds.  That's one thing where we are also involved to help with license issues.  And there is for like smaller things when it's very new.  There's also funding from the prototype fund to develop some software  which can afterwards be used for the public administration.  But beside that, I mean you have to go the normal way.  Our goal is to increase the demand for free software in the public administration  and to have also regulation that it's very difficult to procure proprietary software.  Thank you.  Alright, then let's go with the microphone on the right again.  Hello.  So you probably know that in Italy since June of this year  we have a law that requires in most of the case to use, reuse and implement free software from the public administration.  So somehow there's a law.  So we are entering into a new phase where there is the need to monitor the implementation of the law  and to act when the law is not respected  because almost no single authority have the duty to control this kind of very complicated software and public procurement law related things.  We are going to implement a project to make a monitoring community around that.  But I wanted to ask if there are other existing initiatives that already entered into this phase  of monitoring public procurement of software acting on it legally and I mean not just advocating for it  but enforcing it from a civil society perspective.  You're from Hermes Center?  Yeah.  Yeah.  So yes, we are in contact with, don't know who exactly from you,  we're in contact with Hermes Center probably.  Okay, with you.  Perfect.  Thank you very much for your work there.  I mean that's something which is very important now that whenever we reach the state that a law is introduced  or a party is making a commitment that we monitor this, remind them about that and see how this is actually going.  So, for Italy this law that before there's a procurement that public administration should check if other public administrations already have a software  which fulfills this need, else they should check if there's free software available to solve this problem  and just if that is not the case then they are able to procure proprietary software.  Well, the thing is always in political processes you have a law so someone formulated something,  you have a decision about something and then comes a part about policy implementation  and that's the part which is most complicated and where most policy fail.  So, it's not so much that people cannot vote yes or no, we want to have this or not,  the problem is in the implementation phase and that will be the hardest part  and there we need the help of many people, many organizations to monitor what is actually going on there  to then again remind them about that, to readjust laws, to think about what other things can be done to make the right incentives.  Some laws are there, they say it's forbidden to do this, others are there like if you do it that way then you have lots of benefits.  So, we have to see how to make such changes in a way that is sustainable,  that the public administration is not so much forced to do something by law  but that they see that they have advantages when doing that and that they want to do that and it will be very easier.  So, yeah, in that case thanks a lot already to the Hammer Center which is working on this for Italy.  We hope that we are able to monitor that for other countries as well together with other organizations.  So, yeah, support organizations like Hammer Center and others who are doing this.  So, if there are still no questions from the internet?  No, then we'll go with the one on the left again.  Yes, there are initiatives, even big ones, so if you don't focus your business on public money then actually I believe there's more money in open source consulting than in proprietary consulting.  We made this experience.  Can you come a bit closer?  And the moment Germany together with France is starting the Gaia X initiative which was a little bit ridiculed  because nobody expected this from the German government and I think they had to learn a lot of details about this initiative  and there is a lot of money waiting to be pumped into the open source communities.  On the other side, we make the experience that the open source community is not prepared, for example, to maintain projects in a stable state for 50 years.  We are talking about projects which are critical infrastructure which means you have 20 years of maintenance to guarantee.  Let's say, Python for 20 years and then normally this thing extended to up to 50 years.  So, what you believe that Python 3 is supported for 50 years, we have to change the maintenance problem.  On the other side, the proprietary software vendors have the same problem but you find Windows 95 systems in critical infrastructure  which have not been updated for 25 years if I compute right.  So, there is a big pressure and the politic has recognized it.  But we have to organize business into the communities which are not prepared to do business.  My opinion is you cannot do anything without doing business even in open source and we have to prepare the open source community for playing well with the money which is available in a way that they can take it and maintain it in a fair way.  I think that's important.  Okay, so we'll just take the next question from the mic on the right.  Hello. Just a quick example of a project open street map I think is a very good example.  It's a completely open map and I think there's a lot of cases where that could be used in public administration.  I know all the tram information maps and Dublin have it.  I want to ask is there a plan to bring public money, public code to the EU level because I think it's next year the seven year budget, the multi annual financial framework is going to be renegotiated.  So it might be worthwhile just putting a requirement for public code in there.  And also, could we look at developing pan European tendering processes for open source and could we develop that so say five or six administrations from different parts of Europe would work together to put together a joint tender to say improve an open source project if their needs were similar.  I don't know had someone thought about that or could we maybe develop the policy a bit to include that.  So I mean, we already are in contact with the European level.  We are talking with politicians there and also contacted them with those demands and are thinking about how to move forward there.  I mean, you have already the sharing and reuse award by European Commission where they say the sharing and reuse should be the default for public administrations.  So that's something where we are encouraging them to go forward there and help them how to do this.  And we also next year we want to reach more members of the parliament and think about how to how to establish this then after now most of the politicians got a bit understood a bit how the institutions work and now you can also start with them working on the content.  So we plan if we if we are able to get funding for our next year we want to make sure that every member of parliament gets this brochure that every member of parliament will be when they are in the right working groups that they will be contacted.  So that's something where we want to do this and we also I mean we hope that by spreading the news encouraging people to contact their members of the European Parliament as well that we will make a bigger impact there.  The second question was about that meeting.  Tendering at the tendering.  Yeah, so different countries working together on an open source tender.  Sometimes in something like that works that you bring a few people a few public administrations together and then think about that they share the costs and a procure your software.  So in a lot of cases this also slows down the process and makes it very difficult and the failure rate is very high. So you have when you have seven people and they say what they want to have for a project and then they start with something and then you see okay we have to make some compromises.  So it's very difficult to find to take a decision with seven administrations. Then if you have one or two. So that's something which I'm a bit hesitant to do this as a first step I would at the moment rather encourage public administrations for their small  business to do this with free software and gather some experience there and then think about enlarging it doing it pulling it doing it together with others because else I see that the failure rate will be way higher if you if you combine this because I mean from the  public administrations this process they are often a bit slow and the process are complicated and as for software companies public administrations are not always the best customers on this regard and when you then don't have like one public administration as a customer but you have seven that's  for us something where we are very difficult. One last thing to the first question that's what I was talking about we also need you to step in and get in contact with your representatives in the European parliament because we can do this yes and we are on this we are going to do this but we need  more and we need you because many people in many places can bring big things can do big things sorry. Yes so we have about two minutes left which fits quite nicely since we have one more question on the left microphone.  Yeah thank you very much for the presentation and for the campaign. I think it's not only sensible but definitely necessary and coming back to your point about what we can do. I would like to talk to some of the decision makers or local politicians  and I think the brochure would be very helpful at that moment. You said that the German translation is in progress. Yes. How would I go about receiving an actual sort of printed copy to take with me once that has happened.  You can go to our website and there you find the contribute and spread the word page and then you can order some. You can also go to the public code website public code dot e you and there you find also spread the word and there you can order all the  material and send it to you for free. Thank you very much. You're welcome and you can also come by it. We have some copies at our booth together with some other advertisement materials for public money public code lots of stickers t-shirts bags and so on.  And yeah in general when you sign the open letter we also try to keep you up to date of what is happening when you do this then you will also get information when for example the German website is then at the German translation of the brochure is available.  Yeah so those are ways to do there. So I think just one last word. Use those tools get creative. Hack your public administration there and let us know what experience you make give us some feedback so we can read just our our tools so we can  think about what else is needed for this and don't wait. Just think about now whom could I contact my member of parliament local politician public administration and start doing it. Thank you very much.  Thank you.
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