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 it's
worrying a lot of the community, but I'm just going to exclude those if you want to
talk about those later, we'll 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 are 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 use 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 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,
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 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 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, 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 campaign.
But yeah, so now that 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 going to 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.
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 FOSA and the EU FOSA II.
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 have been or
are used on the European institutions.
So they did that, they did their best.
Within those two pilot projects they did 15 bantis, three hackathons to actually audit
the code of these free software tools within the institutions.
However, there was not budget allocated to these projects and therefore they could not
run any longer.
So this was basically, you know, like 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 through my talk you will see that this is a, unfortunately this is a pattern.
There is a lot of nice wordings 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 should
do.
And it's not, again, 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
are already realizing that open source has been used in the EU institutions 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 wordings such as like whatever it makes sense
to do so, the Commission will share the source code.
And again, here it's like whenever it makes sense or whenever it makes sense, what does
that even mean?
Like, it is not clear when the Commission should share the source code.
And then also, in some 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 bias and not bias like ambiguous, so to say.
So it is very unclear and therefore, or 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 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, a strategy, a communication,
to more like a legal binding paper.
So in this paper, they want to define the conditions under what the European Commission
is going to share open source.
And within this decision, then we can see that they are trying now to implement all
that is already happening.
The European Commission opens our 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 a step, I mean now there is an open source program office that is actually
trying to act as a facilitator.
So they also do some backbounds, they also do hackathons and I have to say that they're
really trying to do something about this, they're trying to implement all these projects
and all these plans and all these strategies, but again there is not budget allocated to
this easy possible.
So for them it's really hard to 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 wording, there is like the wheel and
the initiative to do something about this, but there is no budget allocated to these
initiatives.
Within this decision then in the article six 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 publicly available.
So this is again another step here, from here we can see 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 build this interoperable network among member states.
So in terms of public money and public code this is again a step and I feel like this
is going on the right path, but I cannot really say enough that there are some things that
need to be worked, 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 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 needs a special regulation, it
is important.
In my point of view they are noticing that, but within the European Commission this is
what is happening, we can see there is will, there is something that Osmo is 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 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 resolution is again not legally binding, it is just an opinion, 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 they
come up with this resolution.
So of course we also tried to advocate there, although we knew it 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, 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 wording 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 quote 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 super ambiguous.
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 FSB demands for the AI legislation, we basically,
it's very straightforward, we say 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.
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 going to
go back and see this guidelines for the AI resolution, it is not clear, but I feel like
we are stepping in the moment that we could, we are still going to try to monitor what's
happening there, but so far it's really difficult to see how that's going to develop from now
on until, I don't know, I think this is going to be voted 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 Tallinn 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 said like let's try to also influence the way the wording is going to happen in
this declaration.
Again, I mean this is just like, you know, it's a guideline document for ongoing legislation,
so a lot of people didn't really like see the point to work on this paper, but 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 tried to, we approached decision makers
on the new European Parliament, then they had an opinion as a European Parliament, and
in this opinion, before going into the inter-institutional negotiations, the European Parliament position
was open source or free software was included on AI systems.
So there was a nice 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 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 unclear, I mean, is it open standards, is it only standards?
It is, for us, it was not the ideal outcome, because we were quite happy, quite happy 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 or free software.
So again, this shows that there is will or there is an understanding from the European
Parliament as well on the importance of open source or 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 what you get when you try to advocate these European institutions 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're just really
trying to advocate for a clear and consistent wording about free software in ongoing legislation.
So we cannot change what's done already, but we want to, I mean, now that this is being
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, yeah, we have nice
wording documents, but there, to practice, it's a little bit different.
So we want to keep monitoring like how much of this 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 of such documents.
And last, but not least, I think that's one of the most important ones is that we really
want to keep demanding that it's governmental budget allocated to free software.
Because as we can see, there is will, there is some text, but if there is not budget,
then that becomes very difficult.
So 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 the whole
process.
We have already pinpoint what we need to focus on, and yeah, we're just going to try
to do our best 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 one of my colleagues in the community, that room.
He's going to explain more how you can actually get active on the framework of our public
money public card, because there is this, sometimes people don't really see the power
that you guys have to reach out your local administrations, and also, you know, like
we're not talking about the European Parliament, the 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, we're a charity, and we are really
trying to work as much as we can 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 card campaign
is quite well known, but it's, 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, I mean, we have a brochure on public money public card, 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, 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 so far.
So yeah, thank you very much, and now I'm very happy to take questions.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, I'll go.
I wonder why I don't hear anything about the cases compared to five years ago.
Five years ago, open source did not exist in any enterprise, at the European Commission
and any organization.
Nowadays, anyone can use mainly, or 100%, 90% open source software, and I hear you only
complain that it's not free software.
The software that is graduated by CNCF, it is standard, it is supported by many organizations,
there's a rigorous process to get it through and to get a new release, and I don't hear
anything about what happened, how much of a change we had the last five years, and how
much better the world had since five years ago.
We had only Windows, NVMware, and IBM, and now we have large, large organizations supporting
huge amount of code, and I hear you complain.
I don't get it.
It's a big reference.
Yeah, I mean.
Can you please repeat the question for the live stream?
Well.
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
using 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 Innersauce, they were using open source within the institutions, but that
was not open to the public.
And that's what we are demanding.
Since you have Kubernetes, Thanos, the whole RAM RAM, all the software is open source.
But is it available to the public?
It's available to anyone in the world, and it's used in the Commission.
Yeah.
They're used in the Commission.
Yeah, but that was.
They're building software in the Commission.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's not available to the public.
And that's our demand.
I mean, now they're using open source, but is it available to us?
No.
Until now.
I mean, 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 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 using the public in the EU institutions.
That's something.
But I'm sorry, this is not good enough yet.
When shall come on one short question, short comment is maybe in the future, like you
can advocate for, don't change what you just wrote, so that they can remove what we like.
The second thing is when you say that AI must be accessible, what do you mean by that?
Yeah, I mean, with AI, it's a little bit tricky.
Yeah, with that, what do we mean with AI being accessible?
I mean, I also have to say I'm not an AI expert here, but 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
that should 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, but not.
Yeah.
Don't you think the upcoming CRA is a very big threat to open source software?
Sorry?
The upcoming CRA is not one of the biggest threats of open source.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is a question 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 code, 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 going
to move forward from our side, and also from their side.
This is just starting, so I cannot really tell you more, but for this topic, I would
prefer to keep this out, and then I would be very happy to stay with you after this
talk, and then we can chat a little bit.
I think people should be aware of what they're doing now.
Yeah.
I mean, yesterday at 11, you can see the recordings.
The European Commission was here, also with Red Hat.
They did a panel on this CRA, it was super interesting, so I also invite you if you
couldn't attend to see the recordings of this panel.
Do you feel like this movement is collaborating with the movement in the scientific field,
where if it's the public research, the paper should also be public?
Yeah.
This is my time, so I'm going to 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.
With AI, we notice the importance of including all these research communities.
This is definitely something we want to keep working on, and try to do it in a better way,
because it is definitely a community that can contribute a lot to us.
I think they're quite open to be open, to be free software and so on.
Yeah, this is on our agenda.
Yeah, thank you very much.