 Hello! I am Lucas LaSotta and welcome to my presentation, Device Neutrality – Leveraging the Benefits of Free Software on Hardware. I work as a legal project manager at the Free Software Foundation Europe. Today we will learn more about device neutrality and how this concept helps to empower users to control technology. But first, let me thank the OW2 organizers for the hard work in making this event happen. This is my first time on this venue, so I am very honored and thankful for you having me here. In case you have any questions regarding this presentation, we will have time for Q&A, but you are also welcome to drop me a message. My email is displayed right now on this slide. So, let's get started. This talk aims to introduce the concept of device neutrality as a policy term and explain how this concept helps leveraging the use of free software in devices. In order to do so, first we need to understand how we, as users, are losing control over devices in the last decades. As a matter of fact, we observe a depressing reality. The more we use digital services, the less control we have over them. As we will see this presentation, this is mainly due to the fact on how large tech corporations exercise their power over end monopolies could be broken by allowing end users to bypass the gatekeepers to access 30-part software, content and services on their devices. Device neutrality would translate in these contexts as safeguarding software freedom in devices, protecting end users from lock-in and allowing end users to recover control over their data. Then, we will get acquaintance in details of the principles of device neutrality and the practical steps taken by the FSFE in making this term affect a reality. Let's start with a sad observation. We are losing control over our devices. But how? Digital devices are a present reality in all aspects of life. Use them for work, communication, entertainment and internet access. Such devices are powerful machines, allowing us to have access to an incredible amount of features and perform an infinite number of tasks. Our tablets, phones, laptops and other connected devices are general-purpose computers. It means we can potentially run any software we want to make full use of the hardware. However, our experience as end users has been pushed away from this freedom. While we use more and more devices, the number of such equipment on which we cannot run the programs we want is exponentially increasing. The consequence is loss of user control over technology. Due to the complex digital environments, manufacturer and regulatory lock-in and market monopolization, users' freedom has been gradually reduced. What is happening in the market for smartphones and browsers is paradigmatic. Let's begin analyzing the situation with smartphones. The number of people using smartphones has achieved constantly new records every year. Nevertheless, the number of operating system providers remains incredibly low. The example of this chart shows how concentrated the market is. In Europe and across the world, there are in fact just two dominant mobile operating systems, Android and iOS. Both of them are proprietary. Android born free software, but after the Google acquisition in 2005, the company has developed more and more apps under proprietary schemes that have trapped users into a restrictive environment. The Google Play Store, the mobile application store, and Google Play services are also proprietary. While Android runs on hardware from different device manufacturers, whether under license from Google or not, the case with Apple is much worse, with the hardware being bundled with the operating system. Similar concentration is happening with the browser market. This graph demonstrated just 10 years how insanely concentrated the browser market has become. Google Chrome, which is a proprietary program, is by far the most used browser in the world today. This colossal market concentration leads to serious distortion and abuse on how these companies behave towards end users. For instance, this concentration leads to a complete submission of end users to a digital environment controlled by such companies. While Apple and Google dominate almost completely the operating system, app store and browser markets, users are trapped into these company's terms of services. These very few firms have strong commercial incentives to restrict access to their app stores, which they may misrepresent as being for technical, security, privacy or other reasons. The negative consequences for software freedom, individual autonomy and digital sovereignty are obvious. Why we call companies such Google and Apple gatekeepers? These firms controlling devices may perform a gatekeeper function in the same way that a provider of an internet access connection controls a gateway to the internet. In general terms, they achieve such power by restricting software freedom by limiting users to install the term operating system, browsers, app stores, driver, etc. Locking devices down by controlling pre-installed apps, hindering interoperability and applying proprietary standards. Increasing switching costs by restricting users on ecosystems, tying devices to online accounts and services and hampering control over personal data. As we can see, the situation is pretty bad. However, we need to understand that the global oligopoly that we are now facing is not a technological issue, but a political one. Software freedom, individual autonomy, consumer welfare and digital sovereignty are all backslashed by commercial interests of a few giant companies. Therefore, the challenge now is to find ways to disintermediate the power of gatekeepers to re-establish competition on markets and end user control over devices. Corey Docherov, in his excellent book How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, recognized that the size of the giant tech corporations give them power to cause such distortion on their markets and users' rights. For him, the impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be central to any allies and any remedies we seek. User freedoms, including the ones relating to free software, depends on a political and economical environment in which they can exercise their free choice when using their devices without being stuck on closed environments under control of gatekeepers. And here the concept of open internet and device neutrality can provide us with policy and regulatory elements for us to start dealing with that. What device neutrality means? Device neutrality aims to prevent discrimination of services and apps by platforms or hardware companies exercising gatekeeper control. Therefore, what is desired for end users is that they should be able to bypass device gatekeepers to access 30-part software and devices. Device neutrality is understood as a policy term which the main goal are resolving the monopoly on devices and safeguarding users with alternative routes to reach software, services and content with their devices. Similarly, to policy terms as open internet and net neutrality in which information should flow freely through the internet service provided infrastructure, device neutrality borrow some of this concept and seek to apply them to gatekeepers. The FSFE has been promoting device neutrality to help decision makers understanding that what is necessary to reestablish end user control over technology. We want to consolidate the necessary courses of action to empower users to regain control over their devices. We believe the following principles are fundamental for a fair, competitive and contestable digital market. For us, device neutrality relates to safeguarding software freedom in devices, protecting users from vendor lock-in and regaining control over data in devices. Free software and open standards are key to achieve these goals. Let's talk more on each of these principles. As we discussed before, blocking end users freedoms to install, run and uninstall software on their devices is a central source of gatekeeper control. Although gatekeepers may argue that installing third-party software could be potentially harmful to users due to security or that integrity and privacy concerns, in fact, commercial interests are the main drive to lock users in. Instead, regaining control over devices requires safeguarding software freedom. We defend, therefore, that users should have the ability to install and uninstall any software, including operating system and app stores. Besides, gatekeepers should provide to third-party software the same access privileges as to pre-installed ones. This may sound common knowledge for the free software community, but it's far from being current commercial practices by gatekeepers. Keeping users in a very restrictive environment is another key source of gatekeeper control. Users can only access and use different devices if their devices can interact and communicate with other devices and services. Companies such as Apple exercise direct control over their customers by locking them into a very limited number of proprietary alternatives that operate within the same compatible ecosystem. This results in less freedom for users and increases of switching costs. That's why we defend that gatekeepers should provide interoperability based on open standards, open drivers and open hardware. Besides, providers of operating system should make available specifications for API and functionalities invoked by third-party apps. Equally important, devices should not be bundled with app stores and online accounts. Gatekeepers should permit third-party app stores and code repositories in their devices. Last but not least, we believe that breaking monopolies over devices necessarily requires empowering users to control their own data on equipment. Our smartphones, smartwatches and computers are very personal equipment which accumulate a large amount of personal and non-personal data that we care about. Such data constitutes a switching cost that, taken together, can be decisive for users to exercise the control and their freedom to change in devices, especially if this included switching between operating systems. We think the importance of the correlation between data and software tends to grow. We, therefore, advocate for data portability, and users should easily transfer personal data from apps, operating systems and devices. And most importantly, gatekeepers should be bound to open standards and common interfaces for data transfer. Facilitating data portability contributed for more user-controlled data and facilitate competition among device solutions. At this point, you may be thinking that all these principles sound quite utopistical, or maybe far-fetched. In fact, we are very happy to report that device neutrality is becoming a reality. Software freedom depends on how freely users can run software in their devices. Since it is Genesis, the FSFE has been working to put control over technology in the hands of end users. Along the years, we have gained experience with several dedicated activities focused on how users can keep control over their devices. For instance, the demands of our newest campaign, Upcycling Android, although concentrated in sustainability, intersects with several components of device neutrality, as the freedom to install and run software in general-purpose computers and full interoperability. Other successful activities, like router freedom and radio lockdown, refer to the hardware layer of net neutrality principles. Such activities relate with what could be considered the first step for device neutrality from the perspective of telecommunications law, and the users should be able to use not only their computer and smartphones, but also routers and modens. Recently this year, device neutrality received attention from policymakers in Europe and was included in the Digital Markets Act, the European Union's largest initiative to regulate gatekeepers in digital markets. The Digital Markets Act is a strong piece of legislation oriented to regulate the behaviour of very large digital platforms. Its provisions have included the FSF demands on software freedom by safeguarding the right to install and uninstall any software in devices, including operating systems and app stores. Besides, the new law contains several interoperability provisions. However, unfortunately, open standards were not contemplated at an important facilitator of interoperability. Nevertheless, the concept of data portability has been very enforced in the law text, enabling better protection for end users. Device neutrality has a strong component in favour of sustainability. The FSFE has been promoting an open letter, which was consigned by 38 organisations on the universal right to install any software in any device. Such initiative is a major win for the eco design and sustainability of products and hardware. Free software system and services enable reuse, repurposing and interoperability of devices. The universal right to freely choose operating systems, software and services is crucial for a more sustainable digital society. You can check the content of the open letter in this slide. So, if you stayed with me until now, thank you very much for the attention. Please join us and support our work with a donation. Your help enables our work for empowering you to control technology. Thank you very much.