So Martin and I, I think we met seven months ago, six months ago, eight months ago, something
like that.
When you started to get interested more and more into policy, and I was in Eclipse trying
to make something out of the CRA so that we can solve all the issues that we've been discussing
during the first session.
And we quickly realized that we had backgrounds that are very complementary.
In a sense that he has obviously this all open source background, and I have this policy
background into advocacy and how to advocate in terms of policy.
So out of our four matters combined, we sort of decided to combine our efforts.
So here today I discuss what it's like to do advocacy, and then Martin will explain
what it's like from an open source perspective to be new in Brussels and try to do something
about it and how we try to organize the whole thing.
So I think what we need to do here is share the information about how policy making is
done in Brussels.
In Brussels you have several institutions gathering together in order to create those
policies.
The main three ones not entering into details of all the policy making procedures are the
commission, the one that is drafting the proposal, for example the one that drafted the PLD, the
one that drafted the CRA, the two policy officers that were here this morning are the one who
did it together with their teams.
Then you have what we call the co-legislators.
One is the parliament, the one that we directly elect, and the other one is the council, the
council of the EU which is representative of all the government of the EU.
So we're talking France, the Netherlands, whatever country you're from in the EU, that's
your government that is there.
Then the question is how do you actually influence those policies?
There are I'd say several things to keep in mind as a community to do that.
If you want to influence that policy, first is to get interested so that you gather the
knowledge on the policy, to gather the reason why this policy is happening, to gather the
actual details of the text or the issue that the policy makers are trying to address.
The second one is get organized, trying to actually have an impact so that you have credibility
and the policy makers don't see just one citizen coming to them but a group of citizens that
is organized enough to represent a part of the society.
The other one is just write down stuff so that you have clarity.
Then you have to identify the different elements within the policy making process that can
allow you to get involved.
Here I'm talking about contacting policy makers, the REC-1, being able to identify them properly.
I'm also talking about getting support in your network, in the companies that you know
because the open source community in the case of the CRA for instance, we won part of the
overall challenge for policy makers but they also have to discuss with industry, car companies,
large tech companies that are closed source as well and all of this needs to be addressed.
I'd go back to Marty now giving details and then we'd be exchanging throughout the presentation
as well to see what didn't work, what worked, what could have worked if we would have acted
differently and then if you have questions we try to do that as well.
I'll start with a quick promise.
I was here last block and this will be the last time you see me here and then I'll just
sit down and other people can talk because we take this rule seriously.
What I will be sharing with you is my personal story of how I got here because that was not
really my plan.
So my role is to work between policy and technology from an Elnet Labs which is a small R&D organization
in doing DNS enrouting from Amsterdam.
In September and because this is not about me but about the lessons I learned, I'll
give you the lessons first then you can plug your ears for the remainder of my talk and
then that works for the deal.
My lessons first, I think we were too late and if you're too late, if the commission
makes a proposal then you're chasing the train, right?
So we did a lot of train chasing and that means you need a lot more effort than you
would have needed if we were in front of the train at the station discussing where the
train would be headed.
I also think and I learned that we cannot expect FOSS to organize as an industry organizers
because if it turns out that it is nicely organized like a trade organization and you're
probably not talking to the whole community but just to the industry part of it.
And I think because of these facts that the digital dossiers in the European Union needs
to change a little or we need to figure out the mechanisms to do advocacy from the community
because for all the digital dossiers software is relevant and for software open source is
relevant.
And I'll try to illustrate why I think these are the lessons because I think I and we all
got quite lucky on this one.
So two last lessons, I think we should be talking more to parliament as a community.
They should be the people that are most accessible to us.
I think I personally didn't talk enough to parliament and it turns out that even if you
don't have any EU policy experience you can figure this out if you have enough time and
if you're lucky then you can make this work.
So now to the story and you can plug your ears if you want to because you just had the
lessons.
So in September 2020 I found out that there was this thing called the CRA and I read it
and I thought hey this is weird, open source is mentioned which is great but it's also
clustered under the whole idea of non-commerciality and we all know that there's also a lot of
open source and commercial products right.
So I sent some emails and I got lucky real quick because I reached out to the Dutch digital
civil rights organization Bits of Freedom, they connected me to a law professor and they
connected me to a wonderful recent graduate who had a lot of context on this law because
she had recently interned with the team that actually wrote it.
And I want to thank Francine because she delivered the mental model to me and to a lot of people
I work with later about how this actually fits in with the NLF and that's thanks to her.
So in October I contributed to the first blog by ISOC, they were the first I think to mention
hey there's this thing coming and I wrote a little newsletter saying oh I'm spending
some of this time reading this stuff and I send a little tweet and then I got lucky again
because the tweet was noticed by the commission, by Benjamin specifically and he said hey maybe
you should come and talk.
So that was kind of a surprise, I mean you write.
So I was planning a visit to Brussels, I bought a t-shirt, super relevant detail, yeah.
So I was there because my organization works in DNS right so I was attending a DNS conference
in Brussels and I decided to drop by the commission because I was invited.
So I learned a couple of things, they have really nice rooms with really nice flags and
you get, they receive you friendly people and then you get kicked out because that room
was for the boss.
And what also really stuck with me and Benjamin repeated this morning, one of his colleagues
said oh it's so refreshing not to talk to a lobbyist for once and I was like yeah I've
no idea what I'm doing here but so but it was really constructive and I'm not saying
this to please people, I'm saying this, this was November 2022, we actually had conversations
about whether compliance work would increase security of open source and I was arguing
it probably wouldn't and we got the question like is there anything we can do that will
increase security and so we got into the conversation about if a vendor is obliged to report a
vulnerability maybe they should also be obliged to send the patch if they have one and that
was just a conversation and I don't know how it got into the law, maybe Benjamin will tell
us someday but I think at that point already they were thinking oh maybe you can tweak
this a little which I think was great.
I also learned and this is about talking to parliament, Benjamin and his colleagues were
very insistent that I should talk to the co-legislators and I was like what I'm here now so co-legislators
others also other and it turned out they were actually done already because they made the
proposal they could explain the proposal but they were not the party making changes at
that point in time.
So in December I visited Brussels again and I came with a list of examples like hey this
is the ways that people write software and maybe interpret it as a commercial activity
and people told me yeah it's great but you need to talk to the co-legislators.
I was like oh great maybe I'm doing this wrong but I'm not talking to you so maybe you should
come to Fosdam.
So last year we had a Janssen, the session with Omar with Benjamin and I think that was
the first time we did EU policy at Fosdam and some questions were raised because Benjamin
told us, it's on camera, you should be talking to the co-legislators and Alex who is chairing
this room today was in the audience and asked so what is your plan because you're talking
to the wrong people and he was right right but I didn't know so we're just trying to
get.
So what it did get us though was it started building alliances right because a lot of
people started interacting with me with others, Open Forum Europe became very active and I
think that was what Fosdam did for us.
Now remember that blog it did three things so I got in touch with people who did know
how Brussels worked and that was useful because I didn't.
I got an email from an aide to the Dutch senate and they were interested to understand
what was it what this about so they started writing questions to the commission, they
started writing questions to the Dutch government and these questions are obligatory to answer
right so it created some pressure and we got a visit at an outlet lab from the Dutch
delegation writing the CRA from the national like from the council perspective and it turned
out that the Dutch were both very pro CRA but they also grasped FOS so that I think was
a win because at that point in time we kind of or at least I could start to talk to the
right people instead of the friendly people because that was kind of how this works right.
So the questions from the senate helped for the civil servants to actually show up because
they need to focus their time on where the relevant problems are right and I got some
help from people that are more experienced working the Dutch government so I want to
thank Bert.
Then came some silence because FOS was over and I talked to the Dutch and then everything
moved back into its own room right or just silence and I got a rejection from parliament
because I applied to go to the hearing and they're saying yeah we don't know you we were
mostly talking I mean there's limited seating and we're talking to the people we've heard
from before so that was a bit of disappointed I mean it was a very kind rejection letter
but it didn't help me as like a random Joe trying to but also open forum Europe built
up steam so in and so open forum Europe was the place where a lot of us met on a weekly
basis Kiran made an agenda every week I was now in the corner and he basically made sure
that people were actually discussing the same topics no matter whether and we or maybe I
got lucky again because about every couple of weeks I got from random people leaks from
the council discussion from what the parliament was discussing and I learned how to analyze
these and just share like oh this is what is being discussed and I also had to I also
learned how not to write a position paper because we wrote some they were very lengthy
and I think they were completely ignored so that was a good thing to learn and we yeah
and we learned that the policymaker perspective perception was that we were just trying to get
out so I and I think a number of people shifted focus to challenge some specific assumptions
instead of arguing about the scope so over the summer I started emailing some me piece the
commission the council there was a lot of silence and a bit of despair but then in the
October November time frame suddenly communication started flowing we got emails not just me anyone
asking for reviews we got asked questions for input there was a proposal floated about an open
source steward and no one saw coming and I think at that point we started to be in the position
where we should have been before the train left there were people engaged on a topic talking to
the right people about the policies they were making and I think the policy makers delivered in
parliament in the commission and in council by actually having conversation about these topics
with people working on the specific aspect so this is how I got to these lessons learned we
were too late we cannot expect the community to organize like industry and I think digital
dossiers need a way to get us involved at a stage where where in a way that actually works for
the community oh yeah and you should talk to the co-legislators that's it for me I'm having
over the end so because I let it did a lot of things weirdly and I'm happy to hear about it so I
think it raises the questions then from the very beginning I sort of said this is how it normally
works you get organized you get interested and then you start writing stuff and then you speak to
the co-legislators but the question is and Martin raised it very well he got lucky I wish I could
be that lucky in my life but how are we gonna get organized who is gonna be the person that is
enough interested in the open source community so that we get the information at the right time
who is gonna write the stuff how are we gonna agree on the stuff that we want the open source
community to say all those questions we need to figure them out figure them out on our side
because Martin just said the co-legislators and basically all the institutions need to figure
out a better way to interact with us but how do we also get better at interacting with them
and that's the question that we're probably going to have to discuss today during the workshop
the and then the fishbowl and that's I think the question of today in this specific session
are the two what do we want the co-legislators to do so that they can come to us more often and in a
better manner and how can we step towards them as well so that we also get better at interacting
with co-legislators and the commission thank you