Great work! I used the following brief text to share the PMPC campaign with software developers:
Public Money, Public Code: Publicly Funded Software Has to Be Free Software We want legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence. If it is public money, it should be public code as well. "I can't say how much I support this, it is so obviously a good idea" -- https://twitter.com/hanno/status/907904636283224064 I have nothing to add. Sign the open letter! :-) Many organizations (incl. WikiMedia, CCC, KDE, OSI) signed the open letter, please sign it too: https://publiccode.eu/openletter/ Press coverage (German): * http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/public-code-aktivisten-fordern-freie-software-vom-staat-a-1167416.html * https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Kampagne-Public-Code-Software-fuer-die-Verwaltung-soll-frei-sein-3830705.html * https://netzpolitik.org/2017/kampagne-oeffentliches-geld-oeffentlicher-code/ Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15236686 On 13.09.2017 15:58, Erik Albers wrote: > Dear list, > > some news portals already picked it up and every FSFE supporter received a > message about it in his inbox: today in the morning we launched a new campaign > "Public Money Public Code". > > For the campaign we published an open letter [1] together with 31 > organisations in which we call for lawmakers to make it mandatory to publish > all publicly financed software under a Free Software licence. Among the > initial signatories are CCC, EDRi, KDE, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, > openSUSE, Open Source Business Alliance, Open Source Initiative, The Document > Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland, as well as several others. > > Prominent support we also got from Edward Snowden, who says: "Right now, the > blueprints for much of our most critical public infrastructure are simply > unavailable to the public. By aligning public funding with a Free Software > requirement -- "Free" referring to public code availability, not cost -- we > can find and fix flaws before they are used to turn the lights out in the next > hospital." > > You find the whole press-release here: > https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170913-01.en.html > > Now it is up to you! Please help and join us by signing this letter and ask > your friends and colleagues to do likewise: > > https://publiccode.eu/#action > > Why is this important? Public institutions spend millions of euros every year > for the development of new software for them. But the public sector's > procurement choices play a significant role in determining which companies are > allowed to compete and what software is supported with taxpayers' money. This > means, that changing policies in public procurement will have a huge positive > impact on the Free Software community. > > The open letter will be sent to candidates for the current German Parliament > election and, during the coming months, until the 2019 EU parliament > elections, to other representatives of the EU and EU member states. > > Since it is our public money, it should be our public code as well! > > This mail can and shall be copied and forwarded. > > Best regards, > Erik > > > [1] https://publiccode.eu/openletter/ > _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
