 Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the kind introduction Yeah, as said, I will tell you a bit about The role of free software during the corona crisis and also give you a outlook on what happens next So this spot that was quick So for those of you who don't know us the free software foundation Europe So we are charity empowering users to control technology and among these users are us But also governments public bodies, and this is what this talk is about and also what the public money public code campaign is about Roughly one and a half year ago in March last year borders have been closed. I think you all remember this and Europe relies heavily on the principle of the free movement free borders and Traveling so while borders have been closed to Corona we had the situation that we yeah needed to somehow open these borders up again and Software has been involved, which I'm going to show you later and in particular free software has been used Also, all of us Have been working in home office. We are still working in the home office doing remote events Hybrid events like here and also here. We heavily relied on free software, and this is also what I'm going to show you in the next Yeah, 10 and 15 minutes. So the universe needed free software and free software helped During that time to tackle the crisis and also will help us to tackle future crisis But first of all what is free software free software and gives you for freedoms You can use study Share and improve so and whenever you have these four freedoms then we call it free software Sometimes it's also called open software Libre software also on but whenever we have these four freedoms to use study share and improve Then we call it free software and this means you can use the software for any purpose without any restrictions You can study the code. It is transparent. So anyone can analyze the code can see what the software does Also, you are free to share the software Again without any limitations and also the price doesn't matter So free is not like free in beer, but you can also earn money with free software And the first freedom is to improve or to modify the software so everybody can not only see the code but also contribute to the code to the code and But us give back to the community and does also doesn't mean necessarily that you need to be a coder to contribute This is also something we will see in the next minutes But also others can contribute to software and this is also very important to make make it clear I have a Slide to show you The advantages of every software and the problems coming space a proprietary software First of all is proprietary software. You don't have any interoperability and this is a huge issue So systems and don't work together. You are not connected So there is no interoperability or so and a very close system and this is also coming with a vendor look in so Whenever you buy proprietary software, you're stuck in the window lock in and you always need to go back to this one vendor to get APIs to get Updates upgrades and so on and this is a huge problem, especially when you want to work together across borders This also comes with Unpredictable costs for maintenance as said you have to pay for updates and upgrades and you never know in the beginning what you have to pay at one At one day and thus you never know how much you have to pay in the future and this also means your investments are Lost because you have to pay for licenses as well So whenever you buy proprietary software, you buy a license to get this and when you want to work on another workstation You have to buy for another license. So this is not the case if you use free software And also what we've seen during the corona crisis just remember for example tracing apps And there's a low acceptance by citizens as the code is not transparent and you can't see for example fundamental rights are protected So this is also something we have seen during the crisis that free software open transparent code gives you Acceptance by citizens and you also have security issues as you can't look into the code and thus it makes you Gives you a hard time to find back doors for example or other security issues So the solution to all of these issues is free software coming is to for freedoms as you have open standards You always have indoor availability by default so which is key if you want to book across borders across languages and Also, you are very independent through free licenses. So we don't have to pay for a license. You just get it and you are independent Yeah, do you have these for freedoms? You can modify for example and so on and by thus you can also Collaborate and share risks and cost you can collaborate across borders which is again key also for global crisis and Also, you can on the other hand involve local partners So whenever you buy proprietary software, you go just to a vendor then you get the piece of software and that's it and Mainly they are based in the US or in China or somewhere else With free software you can involve local partners and we see whenever public bodies or governments procuring free software Then this is mainly done with local partners, which is also good for your local economy And as said we have this transparent code So it's transparent by default which gives you a lot of acceptance by citizens and you can see for example If fundamental rights are protected as you can see in the code What's happening there and this transparency also gives you the chance to search for security risks so you can yeah see what the code does and find back those for example and So what happened during the crisis? So we had this global problem and On the same side. We need a global solution to tackle this and software played an important role during the crisis so these global problems comes with Mainly similar demands everywhere in the world So they are slightly different, but it's more or less everywhere in the world the same demand and This came with specific hardware and specific software. We need it during the time Just remember home office, but also these tracing and now The certificate apps so this is something we heavily used in the last one and a half years These apps, but also for home office video conferencing what we are using here now I think you use Chitzi as far as I see for Hyper talks, so this is also based on free software. We heavily need software to stay connected to Yeah, take a this crisis and the global solution again here is to use Systems with open standards so that we can work together where we have interoperability where we can work across borders Without any issues and we need these free licenses with the four freedoms to use study share and improve the code and But thus we can collaborate and foster innovation because there is no sense that every country Makes its own solution, but we need one to lose one solution Mainly fitting and all maybe we need to do translations sure, but in the end it's mainly Always the same solutions and also we have seen during the debate especially on the tracing apps That transparency is key. So acceptance by citizens. They wanted to know what happens with the data So it's it's it's health data. We are Processing and thus we want to have a transparent code and see if fundamental rights are respected and also this is key We can involve all stakeholders. This means Yeah, creating an app It's not about only talking to coders and do coding thingies and they have app in the end But we have seen that we need scientists from every area to tackle this crisis And thus they can also contribute to this app So all stakeholders can be involved in such a process of developing free software in this regard many apps to tackle the crisis and On the apps, I want to give you some concrete examples what happened. So in the very beginning This was also around March in the last year We had this debate about the apps should they be centralized decentralized open source not and stuff like this and so we Very early when we when we've seen that there's a debate and that there might be the solution going in the direction of app We released three demands on these apps. So first demand is all of these apps need to be used Voluntarily, this is very important. The second one is that they must respect fundamental rights and to prove that they respect fundamental rights We need this transparent code and the third one is we they shall be free software So and our demands were heard that was very interesting so for example the World Health Organization released a paper in May 2020 just like one month about After our press release on this and after our lobby attempts on this and they said It's a very good idea and all apps need to be full transparency and the publication must be open source and open access of code So the World Health Organization understood quickly that the global crisis can only be tackled with open source or and free software Also, the European Union followed us. There's a e-health network The e-health network is the European Commission and the member states of the European Union and they also released back in April 2020 A toolbox for member states what they shall do in order to release software to tackle this crisis and here again They recommended that openly published and technical specs specification and the source code of the apps as a way to Maximize and this is important reuse interoperability Out of it auditability and security so they completely followed our arguments And I think it's very important that they and not just said yeah It should be somehow open source because it's good But for example that they use the argument on security so we had the first time Very strong papers coming from the World Health Organization But also from European entities saying we need open source because of and then these arguments came which is very important And then we have seen the development of the tracing apps for example, so you can see the code it was developed openly. I mean still there has been some issues For example, it was not available on f-toilet a free software app store And so volunteers use the code and make it available to everyone so that you don't Needed to have an Android phone for example, but you can also use it with another free software operating system on your phone But this was mainly doable because First of all we had free software here in place Also for the cough bus app to get your certificates Some countries released them completely as free software for example in spitzer land It was directly available on f-toilet in Germany again We had to fix it with the help of volunteers to make it available on f-toilet But this is mainly done because we have the chance With free software to modify and to make it available to everyone And so this is key in the crisis to have free software But what happened later after we had all of these apps and all of the commitments was in October 2020 the European Commission gave itself an open source strategy for the next three years called sync open and we Yeah, we awaited at this Strategy for a long time and then we were a bit disappointed because it happened half a year after the strong Commitment by the Commission to say yeah, it must be open source because of security reason and so on but then with this paper They said we want to have open source whenever it makes sense. So without explaining when it is like this and also they Introduced a loophole to allow them to choose non-open technologies where there are good reasons to do so and this also remains open When such a situation arrives So we see the strong commitment directly after the crisis was Washed watered down in the in the in the next Months and then it happened that we got such a paper Still, I mean we have this open source strategy and we now have something for the European Commission where we can say please follow this somehow but again at the same time it coming there's a lot of loopholes and Also, they want to set up a small Program office to make sure that open source comes into European Commission So it's not a very strong paper. They released and so that's why we Already before the crisis started a campaign called public money public code and with this campaign We demand that publicly financed software must be made publicly available under a free software license because it helps us all not only administrations, but also citizens and There are very good reasons to Have free software. So first of all, it's about digital serenity So you should be in control over the systems you use especially as a government as a public body as an administration And also they are financed by Texas. So our money and so if we pay for the software should be also available to us and So that's why really released this campaign and just a reminder 25% up to 27% of the revenue of software firms is Generated by public bodies. So just imagine if we use this money to invest in Yeah, so far we need for home office for example because administrations are also in home office And we would have way better solutions than we see today. And so therefore Yeah, we have to campaign public money public code already before the crisis and it's going to be even more important after the crisis So if you haven't supported you can sign this campaign and support us with this campaign And we are going to continue to lobby for free software in Europe. Thanks a lot