 Today, I'm going to be talking about public money, public code in Europe and basically try to do a very brief overview of what has happened in terms of public money, public code in the EU institutions. Because of time and also because of the topic, I just want to focus on public money, public code because I know that at the moment there are a lot of legislation going on that is worrying a lot of the community but I'm just going to exclude those if you want to talk about those later will be mainly in the booth or you can just shoot me an email and we can exchange some ideas. So I always like to start with the basics and always to put everybody on the same page maybe this is very familiar for you but I think it's super important now more than ever to always remember that free software guarantees the four freedoms to use, study, share and improve the software and whenever one of those freedoms is excluded then we're talking about a non-free software project, how are you going to name it? We at the Free Software Foundation Europe so we empower users to control technology and we do this with free software and among different activities that we have, we have the public money, public code campaign. Maybe this is also very familiar for you and also mainly in this deaf room but also briefly overview of our campaign, we started this four, five years ago, 2017 and we're basically requiring legislation that demands that public procurement or public software that is procured for the public sector should be public code and for this then we have different reasons, we use different arguments whenever we are talking with public administrations with decision makers so one of those is definitely tax saving because then you know the public money should be spending the most efficient way so there is no point to spend public money on proprietary licenses if you can reuse free software then the collaboration part is also super important because we all know free software enhances interoperability and collaboration so administrations can collaborate with each other because it's open because it's there and there is no need to reinvent the wheel again and then it's also serving the public because then the public money given by the public you know the people will know what the money is being spent and then I think we all agree if the money is spending a good way we like that and of course to foster innovation because then we now have to start from scratch again but we can just reuse the solutions that already exist so we have in our open letter we have an open letter that you can sign as individual I mean organizations but also public administrations we have more than 10,000 signatures and now at the moment we have seven public administrations there are some from Germany from Sweden and from Spain I think three of them and then recently one from Luxembourg has also signed our open letter so it is not so many but it is nice to see some administrations supporting our call or campaign but yeah so now yeah there was a very brief overview of the public money public code campaign and within this we have different activities and we also actively try to advocate in the EU level in this regard so today I want to talk about two EU institutions I'm gonna first start with the European Commission what has happened in there over the last three four years and also I will talk a little bit about the European Parliament more specifically about the AI resolution a little bit of the AI ongoing AI act and then I will also talk very briefly about the declaration of digital rights because these are some of the files or legal documents where we have been active and yeah so let's start with the Commission I think in order to talk about the Commission we have to talk about these two pilot projects the EU Fossa and the EU Fossa too so basically these were projects that were given to the European Commission by the European Parliament so basically the European Parliament or the Commission get those pilot projects ready because we need to improve the security of the free software tools that it's that are have been or are used on the European institutions so they did that they did their best they within those those two pilot projects they did 15 back bunties three hackathons to actually you know audit the code of this free software tools within the institutions however that is there was not budget allocated to this projects and therefore they could not run any longer so this was basically you know like a kind of like the European Parliament told them how to do it and what to do it but there was not budget allocated and I think to the my talk you will see that this is a unfortunately this is a pattern there is a lot of nice wardings and a lot of nice initiatives but fortunately there is not budget so they stopped doing this project and in 2020 the European Commission released the open source strategy and this strategy is super interesting because this is as you can read there it's a communication from the Commission to the Commission so basically this is I mean this is not a legal binding document so it's basically the Commission telling themselves how they should work with open source what they you know should what they should do it's like a plan is not not something again and nothing legal binding so in this regard I mean we still have to say that we acknowledge that the Commission has the will has the initiative to set up this kind of things and then you know they're already realizing that open source it's been used in the US citizens and they need to do something about this however as a strategy by itself it's quite rather weak because it doesn't have any real indicators or anything that we can you know you can actually follow up what's happening and see the progress of such plans so far so if you go to the text then you can see warding such as like whatever it makes sense to do so the Commission will chair the source code and again here is like when whenever makes sense or whenever it makes sense what does that even mean like it is not clear when the Commission should chair the source code and then also in some a part there is a part there is a section that talks about that the Commission has the freedom to choose a non open source tool if there are good reasons to do so and again like what it's a good reason what it's not so all of this wording it's a little bit biased and not biased like ambiguous so to say so it is very unclear and therefore our analysis of these strategies like okay nice you want to do something but there is still some I don't know we're not quite happy with the wording and the way it was it was done however in 2021 then the European Commission also realized about this and then they had a decision so this is a decision then we saw this transition between a project strategy a communication to more like a legally binding paper so in this paper they are want to define the conditions under what the open European Commission is gonna chair open source and within this decision then we can we can see that they are trying now to implement all that is already happening the European Commission open source program office so basically this is kind of like the office that will be in charge of taking care of all these plans or all this decision from the past documents I already talked about so this is this is step I mean now there is a open source program office that is actually trying to act as a facilitator so they also do some backbent is they also do hackathons and I have to say that they're really trying to do something about about this they're trying to implement all these projects and all these plans and all these strategy but again we there is not budget allocated to these is a possible so for them it's really hard to you know do what they have to do because there is not human capacity because basically there is no budget so it's really difficult so here we find ourselves again with a very nice you know nice wording you know there is like the will and the initiative to do something about this but there is no budget allocated to to these initiatives within this decision then in the article 6 a public repository is also included and this is definitely something good I mean we have been advocating for public repository for all the open source tools that the European institutions used and this is I mean this is publicly available so this is again another step here from here we can see like that not only the European institutions are sharing what they're using but this is also trying to include member states so they're also trying to see you know to build this interoperable network among member states so in terms of public money public code this is this is again a step and I feel like this is going on on the right path but I can I mean I cannot really say enough that there are some things that need to be work at work such as the wording has to be more clear and again there should be more budget allocated to free software in general and this is not happening at the moment so this is basically what happened like what is happening in the European Commission I know that at the moment the European Commission is proposing a lot of legislation and initiatives towards open source they are realizing that open source or free software it's it needs a special regulation it is important they in my point of view they are noticing that but yeah within the European Commission this is what's happening we can see there is will there is something the Osboy trying to do whatever they can but not budget at all allocated in this so now let's talk a little bit about the European Parliament so as I mentioned very briefly I want to talk about the mainly the EU AI resolution this was a resolution that was led by the special committee that was created in the European Parliament to take care of to do this resolution and this is resolution is again not legally binding is just an opinion they are like a guideline for the ongoing AI act and the AI act is going to be a regulation so this is going to be legally binding but the European Commission the European Parliament decided to create this committee to exchange views to talk with experts with stakeholders and yeah they come up with this resolution so of course we also try to advocate there although we knew was not legally binding but again these are guidelines and the decision makers really this is a good argument for us you know if there are guidelines we can always bring them to these guidelines because that's why they're using them for right because they need to be used they always you always need to go and look back to these guidelines so in this regard it's hard to say if it was completely successful or not but there was a huge step there is a recital that talks about public procurement on AI again we see this pattern from the EU institutions to have this very ambiguous warning of whatever it's appropriate whenever it makes sense whatever there are good reasons and in this recital we see again as you can see I just caught this recital so nice I mean this is step and I guess in this regard we can always use it to benefit the community but it's still it's super ambiguous and so this recital was voted especially like this specific recital and the good thing is that it found a huge majority within the European Parliament so that tells something as well that tells also the will that the European Parliament has but the downside as I already mentioned is it's not legally binding it's just a guideline but at least we have something right so in this regard then we would say that decision makers understood the importance of open source on AI so to briefly talk a little bit about our FSF demands for the AI legislation we basically we are it's very straightforward we said like AI should be fair transparent accessible and this is only possible if it's open source and then of course we have an argument on public research and public AI so whenever there is public money invested on research on AI then it should be also public AI and at the moment the AI act has been still discussed at the European Parliament so nobody knows how the final text will look like we don't know if the European Parliament is gonna go back and see this guidelines for the AI resolution it is not clear but I feel like we step in in the moment that we could we're still gonna try to monitor what's happening there but as far it's really difficult to see how that's gonna develop and yeah from from now on until I don't know I think the last this is gonna be vote by the end of the year in the last plenary I don't know and finally I want to talk a little bit about the declaration of digital rights so this was also an initiative of course from the commission they just want to have this guidelines as well as a reference point for the digital transformation of Europe so we decide to also step in because as well as like with the Berlin Declaration and the Thailand Declaration these are always guidelines that we use to talk to decision-makers to public administrations because they are there and they talk about public procurement and free software so we start like let's try to also influence the way the wording is gonna happen in this declaration again I mean this is just like you know it's a it's a guideline document for their own going legislation so a lot of people didn't really like see the point to work on this paper but I personally I saw that it was like the baseline to discuss further legislation so we went for it and this was super interesting because we also try to we approach decision-makers on the European Parliament then they had an opinion as a European Parliament I win this opinion before going into the inter institutional negotiations the European position at European Parliament position was open source or free software was included on AI system so there was a nice a article there that was in which open source was included however once the three institutions sat down to discuss then this wording was completely gone and then at the moment like the the final text that was signed by the three institutions removed completely the part on open source on AI and then we just have a reference to promoting interoperability open technologies and standards that's the final text it's super and clear I mean is it open standards is it only standards it is for us it was like a it was not there the ideal outcome because we were quite happy yeah quite happy with the with the opinion from the European Parliament but then this was completely changed and that's what usually most of the times happens whenever the three institutions sit down to discuss however again I mean let's look at the bright side as well we saw that the European Parliament in its position included open source free software so again this shows that there is will or there is a there is an understanding from the European Parliament as well on this on the importance of open source free software on AI or on public procurement so yeah unfortunately this is how this end up not the best outcome but yeah I mean this is this is what you get when you try to advocate this European institution sometimes so just to maybe talk a little bit what's ahead of us we see and I think you already got it we have very ambiguous wording on the documents that we have so far so we just really trying to advocate for a clear and consistent wording but free software in ongoing legislation so we cannot change what's done already but we want to I mean now that this has been included we want to make sure that the wording is more clear and also consistent so again the European Commission doesn't have to come up with a new wording with a new inclusion with something different but they can just reuse what it's already there and we want to make sure that if we get to this point then this wording is clear and of course that it benefits the free software ecosystem in general and then of course there is a problem with implementation because now yeah we have nice wording documents but there to practice it's a it's a little bit different so we want to keep monitoring of like how much of this a legally binding documents are being properly implemented so we basically with this we just have to keep advocating for public money public card and then trying to make sure that there is a proper implementation implementation of such documents and last but not least I think that's one of the most important one is that we really want to keep demanding that is governmental budget allocated to free software because as we can see there is there is will there is some text but if there is not budget then that becomes very difficult so that's that's what we have ahead of us it's not quite easy but at least we have seen what's like the transition and not the whole process we have already pinpoint what we need to focus on and yeah we're just gonna try to do our best to to do so so and for this we also need our community we are I mean it is important to talk to decision makers but it's also important that the free software ecosystem the free software community also approaches administrations you know raise awareness of this matter as well so you can convince your local administration and for this if you might be interested I also invite you to see the talk from my one of my colleagues in the community there from he's gonna explain more how you can actually get active on our on the framework of our public money public code because there is this sometimes people don't really see the power that use that you guys have to reach out your local administrations and also you know like we're not talking about European Parliament European Commission we're talking about the library of your town that's also a public administration so I invite you also if you are interested to check that talk you can sign our open letter of course as individuals organizations or if also you want to convince your local administration to sign the open letter well that's pretty nice and of course I mean donations are always welcome with a charity and we are really trying to work as much as we can for to to come up with legislation that benefits the whole free software community and of course spreading the word I know that this public money public code campaign is quite well known but it is you know there is always people that don't know or people that don't really know what free software is so all these things are super important we also have a I mean we have a brochure on public money public code but then we also have a brochure that we have prepared for AI that we use also to reach out to decision-makers it's also on our website so if you also want to take a look at this position paper and distribute it feel free to do so and yeah with this just to close up I don't want to I don't want you to leave this room feeling a little bit upset or like you know sad I feel like personally I feel quite positive for what's happening at the moment with other files as well it is just a matter to you know we that's why I really like these spaces and these events where we can talk to each other we can you know discuss and then we can actually bring all these positions and all these concerns to decision-makers because there is a gap between the community and decision-makers and we're trying to close that gap or build the bridge so the future legislation that is happening it's yeah it really benefits free software so yeah thank you very much and now I'm very happy to take questions okay yeah yeah five years ago open source did not exist in any enterprise at European Commission and any organization nowadays anyone can use mainly or 100% 90% open source software and I hear your own complain that it's not free software the software that is graduated by CSEF in the standards it is supported by many organizations there's a rigorous process to get it through and to get a new release and I I don't hear anything about what happened how much of a change we had the last five years how much much much better the world is since five years ago then we had only Windows and VMware and IBM and now we have large large organization supporting huge amount of code and you complain yeah I mean okay why am I complaining that it's not like free software although we have seen some changes on inclusion of open source in the EU institutions over the last five years right that's basically well but I mean it was not available very like the open source solutions that have been used in the European Commission are not publicly available until they just released this public repository before they were not publicly available so they were using inter-source they were using open source within the institutions but that was not open to the public and that's what we are demanding but is it available to the public yeah but yeah exactly and that's not available to the public and that's our demand I mean nice they're using open source but is it available to us no until now and that's why I mean I I'm sorry but I was not really trying to complain at all I mean not only complaining I was also highlighting the will that these EU institutions have in because I can't see it as well I mean there has been a huge shift and a huge change and there is will now now we have a public repository of the free software used in the public in the EU institutions that's something but I'm sorry this is not good enough yet one short question maybe in the future like you can advocate for don't change why you just wrote the second thing is when you say that I must be accessible what do you mean by that yeah I mean with AI it's a little bit tricky yeah yeah that what what do we mean with AI being accessible I mean I also have to say I'm not an AI expert here but I mean AI needs a lot of data to be trained and then if you're using open data then the results of research of AI to build something to be at least available to people I'm not saying all the AI to be open I mean this is another discussion but if there is public money involved in the research then it should be open and people should be able to see how these AI systems are being trained and what kind of data has been used and yeah yeah sorry yeah yeah yeah I mean I yeah yeah this is a question I regarding the CRA and that maybe it's a huge threat for the free software community in the beginning of this talk I mentioned that I wanted to focus on the public money public codes so basically public procurement on an open source I would be very happy to chat with you about this because we have also been meeting decision makers on this file as well and so far it is still a little bit unclear how we're gonna move forward from our side and also from their side this is just starting so I cannot really tell you more but if for this for this topic I would prefer to keep this out and then I would be very happy to say with you after after this talk and then we can chat a little bit yeah I mean yesterday at 11 there you can see the recordings there was the European Commission was here also with Red Hat they did a panel on this CRA there was it was super interesting so I also invite you if you couldn't attend to see the recordings of this panel yeah this is my time sub yeah I'm gonna reply to this yeah so if this is in line with the research community as well and this is something we have noticed and we are really trying to focus more now on research because I feel like this is a community that we have left a little bit apart and behind and with AI we know we notice the importance of including all these research communities so this is definitely something we want to keep working on and keep I don't know try to do it but in a better way because it is definitely a community that can contribute a lot to us and I think they're quite open to this to to be open to be free software and so on so yeah this is on our agenda yeah thank you very much