 something, some presentation that I'm really interested in seeing from Alexander here, down here, Alexander Sander. He's the European Union Policy Manager from Free Software Foundation Europe and he will have, I'll guess, a very interesting talk about public money, public code. Yeah, thanks for having me, okay, thank you. Yeah, so actually my talk is more on the government side and not so much on the business side, it's about a campaign we started two years ago, it's called Public Money Public Code and we are trying to modernize the public infrastructure with free software. First of all, what is EFSFE? The Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers people to control their technology and we strongly do believe that this is done with free software. I'm the Policy Manager of EFSFE so I'm taking more or less care that European policy is good in terms for free software. Well, let's start with a short comic in order to give you an impression why free software is good for governments. I mean, I think all of you know the chain of command for the US nuclear bombs but the question is who installed this red button? So and that's the main question if you can't look into the code, you are not able to see what the code is going to do and so that's why it's a very good idea to have as a government as well as companies but especially for governments it's a good idea to have a code where you can look inside and see what the code does because else it might end in a very strange situation. So what is free software? Free and open source software, open source software. So you have four freedoms, you can use the software, you can share the software, study and improve it. So it means you can use the software for any purpose and there's no restriction with the license or anything else, no limitations so you can use it forever and you can use it for whatever you want. Also you are allowed to share the software. This means also you can sell it so it doesn't mean that free software is for free but it can be but it don't have to be so I mean we've seen already some companies here but imagine for example the redhead deal, billions of dollars so you can make a lot of money with free software. Also you can study the software, you can look into the code, you can see what the software really does and you can improve it. I mean you are also allowed to make it worse but normally if you are working on the software you should make it better so that's why you can improve it. So if these four freedoms are guaranteed then it's free software, open source software, free and open source software. So this is what we are talking about and this is what we want to bring to governments in order to have a transparent system not just for the governments but also for us the citizens. So why should we support free software in governments? So first of all we need trustworthy systems and public bodies must ensure that they have the full control over the software and their computer systems. I mean this is, I showed you the the the bomb button, it's very crucial that we have control over our software as a government as this is the core of our digital infrastructure for governments. And also public bodies are financed through Texas with our money and so therefore they should spend the money in the most efficient way which is possible and therefore we should use free software. Free software projects for governments help to foster your regional IT information, your regional SME partners, it gives you strong independence so you are not you're not in a window lock-in and it's very efficient because you don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time. Governments are more or less having all the same needs and therefore collaboration is a very good idea and the money you waste on licenses you can spend them on free software projects and a way better solution. So let's let's have a look what problems arise when we use proprietary software so something like I don't know a Windows product and something like this. So first of all we don't have any in the upper ability so if we are using the software from one vendor it doesn't communicate with another vendor so we have this vendor lock-in we have don't have any in the upper ability and also if we look to the future we have unpredictable costs and maintenance so if we want to have any changes in the software we are we have to go to the vendor if the vendor says we change our license for the next two years or we are offering you now an office solution where you can buy it for one year subscription or something else yeah so then the vendor just do this for you. There's also a low acceptance by citizens I mean just imagine you are going to school and you have to do a PowerPoint presentation then you have to buy the software rather than so it's also kind of a problem for citizens to to communicate with the governments when you have to use proprietary software. Also your investments are lost because the money you're paying for the license is just gone and you can't do it you can't invest it anywhere else and there are also some security issues I mean imagine a code where you can't just look in there might be backdoors you don't see there might be any problems in the software you don't see so I mean it doesn't mean in general that free software is secured by default but still you can look into the code and see if there's a security issue you can't do it that easily with proprietary software so the solution the solution is then free software so we have in the availability due to open standards we have free licenses so we are very independent so we can switch from one vendor to another one we can make at least minor changes if we want we can make big changes and we can yeah we can improve the software on and scale it to to wherever we want and we can collaborate as I already said governments are more or less having the same needs imagine two cities they normally do the same so city A is doing the same as a city B so if they are buying a software together they can share the costs and also the risks in terms of if it doesn't work and the system is transparent by default which is also very good for citizens I mean you can see what your government does for example with your data and it's very easy to involve local partners and again if you want to make some minor changes in your software you just look for a local IT company doing free software and then they help you to improve the code and make the changes if you just go to a big vendor with proprietary software you always have to go back to this one vendor in order to get your changes and they might even say we don't want to do it because it's just a minor change we don't have money with this so we are not interested if you are doing the specific software there might be a startup or SME who is willing to do your minor changes there's no problem you will definitely find a partner who will do this for this and you have this code where you can look inside and and see if they are for example any backdoors and it's not just you who can look inside the code it's all of us so we as citizens can have a look at the code as well so there are many good reasons to use free software for governments also for for business but yeah so and if we if you have a look at the the governments as a purchaser of software then it's very interesting that up to 27% of the revenue of software firms is done by government so that's really a lot and as I mean a very strong buyer and therefore they they should have yeah somehow a lot of power in order to have the best software solution they want and yeah and and let's have a look to one example it's France they they started back in 2012 to to change their free software policies a bit this led to the situation that up to more than 5% we see that their companies increasing that using free software we are having like up to 18% the increase of number of it related startups and 40% it jobs and what I find very interesting 16% less software patterns so you can see if you're changing your your your policy if you're deciding as a government to go in the direction of free and open source software there is there are spillover effects to your local IT related jobs and and business and it helps you to foster your regional as a means and business also when we go on a city level there are lots of cities switching to free software in the last years I think one of the best examples for this is Barcelona and they are collaborating a lot with other cities so they are not doing this alone they are collaborating for example is Paris Amsterdam Helsinki and others and they decided to spend 70% of their but software budget for open source software so they they have a rule and they say so 70% of our money have to go into free software projects and they do a migration step by step and so they don't go there like in Munich and do a migration from one day to another and completely switch the system but every time they are starting something new every time they are looking for a new software then they are looking for open source solution and spend their money on this and this also led to the situation that there are since the since they started to do this 3,000 companies have been involved and 60% of these are SMEs who contributed to the code and took 70% of this money so you can see it helps your local IT infrastructure your SMEs and your companies and business and so having this in mind we we just thought about starting and campaign to convince governments to use free software and yeah it's very easy we we started to campaign call it public money public code and yeah so first of all we are asking to use taxpayers money in a good way and to lease them the code as free software and so code paid by the people by the people should be available to the people and we have something like open letter so this is the main point of this is that we want legislation requiring that publicly finance software developed for the public sector be made a publicly available under a free and open source software license if it's public money it should be public court so it's very easy we are using these arguments and since we started this campaign had just a lot loads of organization supporting our demand we have like more than 200 organizations now who are scientists there are international NGOs national NGOs regional NGOs and also administrations for example the city of Barcelona who signed this campaign and we have also individual signatures there are more than 20,000 so if you haven't signed so far yeah would be happy if you just do so and help us in order to promote this campaign we also made recently a brochure which is dedicated for administrations so it's like all the arguments I was showing you in a very concrete way and written for administrations in order to to help them to give them arguments why to to switch to free software and to show them a way how to do this sometimes people do in administrations are afraid of procurement procedures or they are afraid that of usability and stuff like this and so we put all our arguments together in one brochure and gathered some best practices and show them the administrations a way on how to go and how to migrate their systems to free software project and I think one key point for us is to do it step-by-step so don't switch a whole system from one day to another but every time you are doing something new then switch to a free software project and then step-by-step you will have a free software solution in the end and your government is run by free software in the end so also if you know any cities governments administrations whatever who are interested in this please let us know we are happy to get in contact with these guys I mean we can see that for example Paris Amsterdam Helsinki and all the others these are good examples they they are quite happy with their free software solutions and I think it's for us as a taxpayer also a very good solution to push the governments to switch to free software we have for example the talent declaration which is signed by all the member states of the user Portugal signed as well and they are asking so the member states said and signed that they want to go into the direction of open source in the future but still I think there's a lot of improvement that could be done and so we have to put a bit of pressure on the government and convince them to use free software and also what we did is in order to convince the people is to make a video which I'm going to show you now this video is also available in Portuguese but I will show you now the English version of it and I would be also happy if you are willing to share this within your networks and to help us with our campaign so now we have to do some magic of the presentation here to see the video or not shall I push any buttons do anything in 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 didn'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 rights 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 everyone benefits because new features and improvements are shared by everyone if all our software were developed like this we could stop struggling with restrictive licenses and could start thinking about where and how software could help us we could concentrate on creating a better society for everyone so if you think that tomorrow's infrastructure should be in our own hands help us now by sharing this video and visiting our website public code.eu it's time to make our demand public money public code well yes so I think the arguments on the table I guess you are somehow convinced because you are here on the open source conference but let's now convince our governments our administrations to switch to free and open source software help us by supporting our campaign and if you have any contacts to administrations which could be useful for this and who could be convinced by this campaign please let us know please get in contact with us and yeah let's fight for free and open source software in governments and administrations thank you. Thank you. Thank you Alexander. It's a great presentation and great video by the way and we'll be sharing it later on on the social networks and so on and in fact it's true almost everywhere because here in Portugal we face the same thing open source is everywhere but it has gone much further on the private sector than on the public sector so that makes us think and it's the same all over.