 Herzlich willkommen im Hacker-Morgen-Grauen, im Stream der Siebe ist der Raumstation unter Berlin Mitte. Das ist schon der zweite Talk heute. Wir begrüßen diesmal Alex. Hallo Alex. Hallo, guten Morgen. Alexander Sander zum Thema Public Code in der Pandemie. Public Money Public Code, genauer gesagt. Also wir möchten doch gerne für das sauer abgesparte Steuergeld auch Dinge zurückbekommen und nicht Dinge, wo wir hinterher nicht ran dürfen und nicht reingucken dürfen und nichts mitmachen dürfen. Und welche Bedeutung das hat und warum das langfristig noch wichtiger wird, das wird Alex uns gleich lang und breit erklären. Solang und so breit wie nötig, ist ungefähr 1 Uhr. Und wenn ihr Fragen habt, dann benutzt den Hashtag RC3 und dann werden wir versuchen das in dem Pad zu materialisieren und noch kurz darüber zu sprechen um eins. Gut, Alex, dann halbe Stunde für dich. Viel Spaß. Ja vielen Dank. Guten Morgen, everyone. 12.30 Uhr. Good morning. Das ist schön. Ja, also in den nächsten 30 Minuten, ich werde über die Public Money Public Code sprechen und was die Rolle der Free Software spielt während der Krise. Mein Name ist Alexander Sander. Ich bin der Policy Consultant der Free Software Foundation in Europa und wir sind eine Charité, die uns die Technologie zu kontrollieren empfiehlt. Und ja, wir glauben, dass Free Software hier eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Um uns in der Mood zu kommen, ich denke, du erinnerst uns alle. Es war ca. im März letzten Jahr, wenn die Borders auf die Krise geschlossen haben. Wir wollten Kontakte und eine Soluzion erzielen. In den Tagen war es, die Borders zu schliessen. Und wie ihr seht, Free Movement ist ein fundamentaler Recht. Und um dieses Problem zu fixen, hat die Software eine wichtige Rolle. Und Kontakttracing-Apps, zum Beispiel, haben auf den Markt gedrückt, um das zu fixen. Und ich werde das ein bisschen später sprechen. Und auch, wir haben uns und viele uns im Homeoffice gesehen. Und hier, die Software war sehr wichtig. Und auch Free Software hat eine wichtige Rolle. Und wie gesagt, in den nächsten Minuten, ich werde dir sagen, warum Free Software wichtig ist und was die Soluzionen für Free Software helfen. Und wie man die Krise betrifft. So, everybody loves Free Software, especially, I think, here around Seabase and the Conquest. Free Software is pretty well known. However, let me introduce you quickly the concept of Free Software. So, it's also sometimes called Libra Software, open source software. But Free Software always comes with four freedoms. And it's the freedom to use, study, share and improve. This means Free Software gives you the freedom to use the software for any purpose you want without any restrictions. You are free to study the code so it can be analysed by anyone. So you can see the code, you can see what the software is going to do, what it does. You're also free to share the software without any limitations. So there are no license costs or something like this. So you can install it on as many workstations as you want and so on. But here, please keep in mind, the price doesn't matter. So Free is not coming with the price in general. So you can also sell Free Software and this is also done. But you are free to share it afterwards. And also you are free to improve the software, you can modify it. And by this you can give back to the community. And whenever we have these four freedoms to use, study, share and improve, then it is Free Software or a set of many names like Open Source, Sleeper Software and so on. And these four freedoms helped us during the crisis a lot when it came to software solutions. To give you a better understanding of the four freedoms I just named in practical terms. I have this slide here for you, where I will first show you the problems of proper terrorist software. So Software is not coming with this four freedoms. And on the other hand, on a practical way, do you feel four freedoms as a solution for free software? So first, the major problem with proper terrorist software is that there is no interoperability at all. You might have this problem as well a lot. So it's the thing that you are stuck in an ecosystem. And if you buy a piece of software from one vendor, you always have to go back to this one vendor to broaden your system. So programs are not working together. So there is no connection. And by this we call it interoperability. This is something we don't see at proper terrorist software. And by this you are coming into this vendor login asset. If you buy one piece of software, let's say an office solution, then you need to buy a mail program or a presentation thingy or something like this from the same vendor, because as you want to have interoperability, these property vendors only give you interoperability in their own system. But if you want to go out of the system, then you run into struggles and there is no interoperability at all. So this is a problem with data sharing with others, but also collaborative working and so on. And this also means that these pieces of software come with unpredictable costs. So first of all, you have to buy a piece of software, then you don't know how much you have to pay for the other pieces you might need in the future. But also you don't know at one point you have to pay for upgrades, for updates and so on. And so it's really hard to estimate the costs for the software in the future. And this is also a huge problem, which is coming with proper terrorist software. And also as you have to pay for the license first and mainly also like for a license for every workstation and so on, your investments are lost. So you can't invest the money into the coding, but you just pay for licensing. And so that's why your investments are also just lost in the very beginning. And we have seen during the crisis, I will show you some examples later, that there's also a very low acceptance by citizens if they have to, or if they are forced to use proper terrorist software. And in the end there are also security issues. As you can't look into the code, you might don't find backdoors for example or you can't see if a software really is going to do what it's supposed to do. And so therefore proper terrorist software also comes with security issues. And so on the other hand we have the solution. It's with free software because we have there we have these open standards. This is coming from the four freedoms as you are free for example to look into code as you can modify it and so on. And as a base on open standard we have this interoperability by default. And so we can like work together across borders and it's very easy to collaborate if you are using free software because you have these interoperability by default. Also you are highly independent through the free license. So the four freedoms are always guaranteed when it is free software so you are free to modify and adapt it to your needs. You are free to share it to use it in as many workstations as you want and so on as just said. So you are highly independent. And by thus you can also collaborate. And this is also something we have seen heavily during the crisis that collaboration is key. Especially when it comes to global crisis we need to work across borders we need to collaborate across borders. So with this collaboration we can share risks but also costs. So this is a big advantage of free software and also you can involve local partners. So this is especially something we see when it comes to the use of free software in administrations, public bodies. So whenever governments are using free software then there is a huge involvement of local partners also like strengthening not only the software project but also the region and so on. And it is transparent by default as you can see the code this is very important it's also one of the freedoms and because of this transparency you can see the code and by thus you can for example identify bugs you can fix bugs quickly and so free software gives you the advantage to make your software even more secure and so free software isn't secure by default but you have the chance to quickly find security issues but also other issues and fix them immediately. So and this is also a big advantage so you don't have to go back to a render and ask him if he can fix something you can simply do it by your own or the community can do it. So with all of this you can also already see why it is a very good idea to use free software in general but also in particular during a crisis which is what we have seen especially during the corona crisis. So we need to work together because global problems need global solutions so and as already said during the corona crisis we have seen a lot that there was free software around and that it was very good that we used free software not proprietary software especially in the beginning there were very interesting debates around it, I think you might remember the tracing apps and so on but we have seen that here in global crisis the demands are very similar so for example when it comes to contact tracing or something like this we have seen that specific software is and was needed and for home office for example or for remote work working we have seen especially with the tracing and now with the certificate apps we see that there are more or less the same demands around the world and especially if we look at Europe there are more or less the same solutions as we want to be a European region without borders and so on and here again the solution is that we need interorability so we need these open standards to be able to collaborate to work together to also use the free licenses to spread the software as wide as possible and also that we need to foster the innovation and collaborate so we have seen that it was very important that it's not only coders who work on a project or not only a nation or a specific region working on a project but that we have to involve many stakeholders from many countries working on specific projects and this is only possible with free software as we can collaborate across borders and we have also seen that the transparency of free software and this is very important especially if you want to roll out software projects on a very large level you need acceptance especially by citizens that they use the systems and therefore transparency is an autoworth key and as you can involve all stakeholders this is also a big advantage and I want to give you a concrete example now with the apps I think most of you are using at least one or two of these free software apps which are around at the moment and when the debate started it was also like one and a half years ago we were discussing these contact tracing apps and it was a discussion if it should decentralise, decentralised if it should be free software or proprietary software and so on and we very quickly jumped in with a press release advocated around governments with three demands and they are still valid today and the first demand is that no matter what it is these apps need to be used voluntarily so this is not that much on free software but it's also a key that it's voluntary but then it also must respect fundamental rights so whenever these apps are introduced and when we have our health data for example in these apps then we must respect fundamental rights for example privacy and so on and we can only see if fundamental rights are protected if the code is transparent and if we can prove that the software is really going to do what it's supposed to do and in the end so we said all of these apps and solutions need to be free software so was this demand and there was a very huge debate and what made us very happy was that there was not only a debate and not only the apps have been released as free software but there were some fundamental statements during that time for example from the World Health Organisations and they said they need to be full transparency and these apps will be open sourced and also the European E-Hearts Network so this is the European Commission and the Member States of the European Union released a toolbox for the Member States where they said or where they defined how these mobile applications need to be designed in the European Union and here they said also that it need to be open sourced and what makes us very happy that they not just said it need to be open sourced but they also said it's good for reuse it's good for interoperability it's good for the security and the transparency and so they followed our arguments fully and this is very important that the European Union but also the World Health Organization quickly understood that it's only free software in this time and the crisis and we have quickly seen that there is this community engagement and that it's not just about hackers and coders who improve apps but it's also about translations for example so we need people with language skills but also especially when it comes to the tracing apps we also need scientists from all areas who can tell us how such a virus spread and so on and how we can trace it so here we have seen how global cooperation can work and can like lead to a situation that we have a very good app in the end which helps us in this case for contact tracing in the very beginning and here you can see what happened on Git but also with the Koffpass app we have seen that it's now available on EFTROID unfortunately in Germany the Koffpass app so this is the app which gives you your Covid certificate that you are vaccinated for example so in Germany this app was free software but it was not released on EFTROID and EFTROID is a free software the better app store compared to play store because in EFTROID you can only find free software but what happened is that the community again stepped in so volunteers helped us to make it possible that this app is now also available on EFTROID and by that it's also possible to use it on more devices than before and it's also free to use it without any google services which is also very important so so here we have seen that with the use of free software we can make this app available to everyone and we can ensure that fundamental rights are respected and that everything is based on free software and that you for example don't need google services to use these apps but on the other hand what happened later so after the good news there are also always bad news in the European Commission released an open source strategy so just half a year later after they said when it came to the cough pass apps and covid apps where they said it's important that they are transparent because of security reasons, interoperability and so on they gave themselves a strategy so the European Commission released an open source strategy for themselves so they want to use free software in the future and unfortunately there they watered down so it was not like they said so now we learned and we want to have everything on free software because this is all learning from the crisis this is all learning from the last decades no they said they want to release their solutions wherever it makes sense to do so but at the same time they never ever defined what are good reasons and where something makes sense so this is completely open and so what is good on the one hand is that they have something like open source strategies so that they are thinking about it that they are giving themselves a strategy but at the same time if they are releasing this paper with so many loopholes we fear that there won't be a major change here and I think or we do believe that not only the crisis has shown us that free software is the way to go but also like last decades and also before the crisis we have advocating a lot around this we have seen many administrations who have very good experience with free software not only when it comes to crisis but also in general when we think about home or when we think about video chats what we are using here today free software but also big blue button so nobody has to be forced to use proper solutions like zoom or something like this so there are very good free software tools on the market and there are good reasons to use them especially when it comes to administrations and I think this is again a learning from the crisis transparency for example is key but also interoperability so that we are free to use whatever device we want but are still in the position to communicate with administrations so and they also said they want to set up a small open source program offers there is no budget at all for this so what sounds very good the very first page so think open that's the title of the strategy turns out to be a paper full of loopholes and we are still in contact with the European Commission in order to learn what they are doing from what we have seen so far it's not that much they just released another new paper but still we don't see any budget we don't see any people working on this so that we are specifically hired after the strategy was introduced so but stay tuned hopefully we can release some news on this soonish on our website but the commission is very closed when we ask about their think open strategy which is at the same time very strange so I said already before the crisis not only us but hundreds of organizations tens of thousands of individuals demanded that publicly financed software must be made publicly available under a free software license and I think with the crisis we have learned that it's now even more important than ever before to tell administrations to convince administrations to use free software and it's not only about crisis but it's also about digital sovereignty for example in our state administrations it's good to know what a software does if they use it so it's in the core of our state digital infrastructure and therefore the administrations need to have the full control over the software they are using and this is also true for everybody else like for us individuals but also for companies civil society and so on so it's in terms of digital sovereignty Freie Software, aber es ist auch über unser Geld. Es ist öffentliche Geld, es ist taxpayerische Geld und die öffentlichen Barsche sind finanziell durch die Texas und deswegen müssen sie sich auf die meisten Efficient-Barsche betreffen. Und wie ich es dir gezeigt habe, ich denke, es ist nur eine Lösung und das ist Freie Software in den Ende. Und um euch eine Nummer zu geben und einfach zu erwähnen, dass das Geld in Freie Software in den letzten Jahren. So die Regeln und die öffentlichen Barsche, die öffentlichen Regeln sind die größten Purchsäte von IT-Guts und Services und sie comprise up to 27% der Revenue von Softwarefirms. Und so jetzt, einfach denken, wenn wir diese 27% verwenden und investieren in Freie Software und denken über die Lösungen, die wir damals hatten, während der Krise schon, zum Beispiel, um zu haben, eine secured workspace for home office and so on, but also to be available to be in the digital administrations and so. I think, yeah, this number is very important and shows us that there are many investments lost because we are, our administrations are still buying proprietary software and didn't switch to Freie Software. So in the end, Freie Software gives you many advantages. You can, as said, involve local partners, so whenever administrations or public bodies are procuring Freie Software, we can see that it's also strengthening the local economy. So licensing fees are not going anymore to Ireland and the US, but it's also highly efficient, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel again and again. So administrations all over the world have pretty much more or less the same demands. And so why do we have to reinvent the wheel again and again and buy one piece of software again and again. And so there's absolutely no reason. And it would be way more efficient to collaborate and we can also see that when administrations are doing this, it's happening. And also again, we have this digital sovereignty so you can have software which is tailored to your needs and you can modify it whenever you want and adapt it to your needs. And it's not just like a Wenders Business Model, what you are following. And so therefore Freie Software is a very good idea. So and if you are in line with our arguments and if you like our arguments, you are still free to sign our campaigns or three years, four years ago now, we started our campaign Public Money, Public Code, where we demand that whenever it's public money, the code should be also public. And so we want legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector need to be made publicly available under free software license. And we are seeing in more and more treaties and also, for example, in the Coalition Treaty in Germany. We have some sentences on the use of free software. And so we see that there is some progress here, but still we need to do more pressure here. We have to fight for public money, public code still. We see more and more commitments, but at the same time we need to also follow up with the implementation, as we have seen, for example, with the European Commission, their open source strategy, which is called Sink Open, but full of loopholes. And now it's important to see that there's a good implementation, because this is key. Papers are important. Sure, this is the first step, but now we need to make sure that there's also a proper implementation. And if you want to support us with our demand, you can also sign this campaign. If you haven't done already or reach out to us, we have several activities. We have also an Activity Package telling you how you can contact your local administration and convince them to use free software. Lots of our volunteers are doing this sometimes successfully. And so I think this is important that we continue to talk about the advantages of free software and also use the example from the crisis I just have shown to you and continue our efforts to convince administrations to switch to free software. And with this I want to end my talk and would be up for questions, if there are some in the past in the meantime. Thank you very much. There's essentially one question popping up on our pets here, and this is about this term of digital sovereignty and whether digital sovereignty funded by national state actors would eventually mean that we are sooner or later hacking for the national security agencies of our countries. And what that would imply to free software and the ethics of free software. I mean, there was a bit background noise, so I'm not sure if I fully got it, but it's about if we would like, if our community would like hack or fix governments software, if this is in line with the ethical principles of free software, was this the question or did I get it wrong? I'll try to address this, I think governmental bodies are using free software or should use free software as they are handling our data, as they are communicating with us. And for sure also governmental bodies are using software for survival for example, for reasons we might personally don't like. And this is very different, so nobody should be forced to invest the time or resources to have governments to fix their software. And it's also again on procurement, so a set free software doesn't need to be priceless. Also for us it's important that if public bodies are using software, then whatever it is, it should be free software. And this gives us the chance to see the code and for example to discuss. And this also opens debates. If we want a solution, we're just going to work like this and this doesn't necessarily mean that we contribute to the code, but we can also contribute to software by discussing what it does, is this something we want to have for our society, is this the software we really need. And this is I think only possible if we have something like for example a repository for governmental software, which is used. And then we can check what they are doing. And it doesn't mean that you have to do it, but you are free to do it. And I think this is important. And this is also what we have seen during the crisis. So there are some general or fundamental discussions about the apps and about tracing and so on, but this is possible because it is free software and it doesn't mean that you have to contribute to the code or that you have to use it. So as we said, it's important that people can use it voluntarily. But still you can contribute even if you just debate around it. So, and I think this is important and that is why we want free software. And I think in the end, it's better to have a free software project where you can see what the software does and where a government tells you transparently what they are going to do instead of doing it completely secretly. Very well. So that demonstrates that we have maybe another problem or a new problem, but a constructive one, something we can work on. And this whole issue of digital to sovereignty and national state actors must be discussed, as you said. This was the main question from the PAD. So thank you for the talk this morning. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, it was fun and yeah, I enjoyed the rest of the conference then. Yes, I hope you do too. Thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot. See you. Bye bye. Everything is licensed under CC by 4.0. And it is all for the community.