[gull] With Free Software against Covid-19

lionel.g at bluewin.ch lionel.g at bluewin.ch
Thu Jun 11 21:24:40 CEST 2020


Message de la FSFE à transmettre SVP 
Désolé pour l'urgence, je viens de rentrer en France mon email enregistrée sur la liste du Gull est lionel.g at bluwin.ch
Merci de transmettre.
Hello Lionel,
What seemed unthinkable just a few weeks ago is now well on the way to becoming
the norm across Europe. The Austrian Red Cross has published the source code 
of their contact tracing app. The developers of the German app have now 
followed suit. Numerous other countries have also pledged to pursue an open 
approach. Even the eHealth Network, in which EU member states and the 
EU Commission exchange information about digital applications for the health 
sector, now expressly recommends an open source approach to the development 
of contact tracing apps.
This change of course would have been unthinkable without the diverse European 
Free Software community. Just a few weeks ago, the question of code 
transparency threatened to be ignored in many countries. Throughout Europe, 
committed people began to comment and contact MPs on social networks. The 
change of heart of many governments is also due to the tireless efforts of 
numerous organizations and individuals.
But much remains to be done. Hackathons are currently taking place across 
Europe to find solutions to contain the pandemic. Financial support is promised
to the winners. But only in some of the competitions is it that the results are 
placed under a Free Software license. The website of the EUvsVirus hackathon 
launched by the EU Commission says nothing about the license issue. Many people 
from the Free Software community ask themselves: "Weren't we actually further 
on there?"
More than 28,000 people support the "Public Money, Public Code" campaign. As 
Free Software Foundation Europe, we are convinced that everyone would benefit
if it were possible to freely use, share and improve such software. A Free 
Software license allows the creative potential of a global developer community 
to be used. Especially when it comes to sensitive health data, the publication 
of source code contributes to greater transparency and thus also creates trust.
Instead of having to reinvent the wheel again and again in every country, we 
could adapt existing software projects to the respective needs in the 
individual countries.
As FSFE, we are currently in intensive discussions with political leaders and
institutions to convince them of the urgency of this matter. You can support us
in this. It often helps to contact decision-makers by email or social media. 
An FSFE activist described his experience to us as follows: “A few weeks ago I
saw an announcement for a hackathon and was annoyed because, as so often, the
license question was not mentioned. I wrote to the organizers on Twitter. To my
surprise, they answered a short time later. A little later it said on the 
website that the results of the hackathon should be put under a free license. 
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was!"
The pandemic is an international crisis – therefore cross-border responses are 
needed. Free Software licenses can make an important contribution to this. 
Please help us so that this message reaches those who can initiate change. 
If many people participate, we can make Free Software licenses the standard 
for the hackathons currently taking place.
Kind regards
Alexander Sander
EU Public Policy Program Manager
PS: Like many others, the FSFE is affected by the effects of the pandemic. All 
of our events planned for this year will be canceled for the time being. These 
included the “Public Money, Public Code” conference in Berlin and our workshop 
in Barcelona. That presents us with financial challenges. If you would like to 
support our work financially, it would help us a lot:
https://my.fsfe.org/payonline/FC20066675C6
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