Call for Papers for foss-north open (Gothenburg, April 2023)

foss-north is a Free Software conference in Gothenburg that brings together Nordic Free Software communities. This year, the Free Software Foundation Europe is organising a track covering political and legal aspects of Free Software, as well as best practices from Scandinavia. We're looking forward to your contribution by March 5!

This year's foss-north will take place on 24 and 25 April, following a community day on 23 April. It will be a local, face-to-face event. While in the past foss-north has focused on the technical aspects of Free Software, this year there will also be room for presenting best practice examples as well as political, legal, and social issues related to software freedom.

We are looking for your exciting talks and insights! Please submit your abstract directly to the foss-north website by 5 March 2023 23:59 CET.

Your contribution could address (but is not limited to) any of the following questions: Where in your community, municipality, city or region is Free Software helping to shape the digital infrastructure? What interesting Free Software projects are being developed and adopted by your university, school, library, job centre or elsewhere, using public money to create public code? How can administrations foster software solutions that preserve the freedom of citizens and the sovereignty of our democracy? How can we as programmers, users, scientists, officials, politicians, and citizens contribute to software freedom? How can we regain control of our devices?

Contributions on other Free Software related topics and projects will also be considered for selection. Our session slots are 45 and 25 minutes. Please indicate your preferred length in your submission notes and using tags. The final programme will be announced by mid-March 2023.

foss-north is the perfect opportunity for you to share your knowledge and get in touch with other people passionate about Free Software. We look forward to seeing you in Gothenburg!

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Let's code!

Youth Hacking 4 Freedom, FSFE's coding competition for young Europeans, has just started. The kick-off event took place on the 26th of January with an online meeting for the participants of this year's competition. There they got the most important information about the contest while starting to get to know each other.

Almost 70 young people from all over Europe have signed up for the new edition of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom. During the contest they not only have the chance to work on their own Free Software projects, but also to win great cash prizes.

The kick-off meeting for this project took place on 26th January with an online event where participants had the chance to get their questions answered about the coding requirements and the coding period, which will end on 30th June. It was a fun event which gave everybody the chance to get to know each other a bit better and to meet other participants from all across Europe. However, the FSFE team was also excited to learn about the participants and to find out what they are looking forward to in the upcoming months.

One of this edition's participants, 1337misom*, explains his motivation.

“I have never really released any of my projects because they mainly solved problems for myself and weren't optimized for ease of use etc. So this will be my first shot at actually creating a program that lasts for more than a few weeks".

The opportunity to work on a project they are really interested in, as well as gaining experience and having fun, is the main reason given by the participants. Jannes*, who has already taken part in the first edition of the contest last year, said that he joined "to have fun, meet exciting people with even more exciting ideas and develop a (hopefully) useful program in a limited time".

Over the coming months, participants will have the opportunity to discuss their projects once a month in an online meeting as well as through the dedicated Youth Hacking 4 Freedom Matrix room, where FSFE's team is also available to answer questions. These channels allow teenagers to share their ideas and questions, receive feedback from their peers, and see what other participants are working on.

The road to the awards ceremony in Brussels has already begun, and although most of the participants are not yet thinking about this event, they are excited about the opportunity to present a good and practical project and to have their code judged by a panel of experts. And although winning is not their main motivation, of course, “nobody is bitter for a sweet". Good luck!

*we are using the names that the participants are using in the internal contest Matrix chat.

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Thank you for helping us reach our goal!

Thanks to your valuable contributions, we have reached our fundraising target*. Thank you for your confidence and support, even in these difficult times. These funds will help us run our campaigns and organise events and talks to spread the word about our work, while continuing to promote software freedom.

Thanks to your donation, we will continue this year with our Public Money? Public Code! initiative that publicly funded software must be made available to the public under a Free Software licence. We will continue to focus on the need for verifiable and trustworthy AI technologies, and Free Software is crucial to achieve this. We have prepared a dedicated document for decision-makers crucial regulation. We are also asking the EU Parliament to incorporate its own position into the European AI Regulation.

In the coming months, we will also call for the consolidation of device neutrality to allow fair and non-discriminatory use of Free Software in digital devices, as well as Open Standards. Both are fundamental to achieving an open and competitive digital market. FSFE will continue to dedicate initiatives that focus on specific aspects of how end-users use and interact with devices.

*We'd especially like to thank one of our volunteers who, at the end of the campaign and after realising that we hadn't reached our target for a very small amount of money, stepped in and donated the amount we needed to reach our target.

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SFP#19: Why we need Free Software on medical devices with Karen Sandler

For this episode Bonnie Mehring met with Karen Sandler to talk about her relationship with Free Software. Karen depends on a medical device to keep her heart working. This led her to become an advocate for Free Software in medical devices.

In her daily life Karen relies on a defibrillator to help her heart work properly. Like many medical devices this defibrillator uses proprietary software. Therefore Karen had to put software into her body over which she has no control in order to let her heart keep working. In this episode Bonnie Mehring talks to Karen about the problems that are occuring with non-free medical devices and why it is important to have Free Software on them. What happens to people when their support ends when the company that manufactures their devices goes bankrupt? And what is the connection with Dick Cheney?

Listen to Karen and Bonnie talk about the importance of Free Software on medical devices and find out more about Karen's heartwarming story of software freedom.

Read more:

• SFconservancy
• Outreachy
• "Abandoned: The human cost of neurotechnology failure" in Nature
• Honorary Doctorate for Karen Sandler

If you liked this episode and want to support our continuous work for software freedom, please help us with a donation.

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I Love Free Software +++ Public authorities in Fediverse

In this issue we invite public institutions to join free, decentralised social networks. Watch our info-session on German municipalities using Free Software. An FSFE volunteer doubts the reliability of AI-generated text. I Love Free Software Day is just around the corner. Celebrate with us!

I Love Free Software Day

We know you love Free Software. We do too. Think of the program that means the most for you, or one that positively surprised you this year. Share a ‘thank you’ message on the 14th of February with #ilovefs to show your appreciation to its contributors. We celebrate ‘I Love Free Software Day’ with events too. Join us here:

• 🇩🇪 Germany - Berlin, Frankfurt a.M., Bonn, Hamburg
• 🇬🇷 Greece - Thessaloniki
• 🇮🇹 Italy - online, Merano
• 🇳🇱 Netherlands - Arnhem
• 🇨🇭 Switzerland - Zurich

Invite public bodies to the Fediverse

If public bodies are on social networks they should also talk with Fediverse users. FediGov, the campaign of the FSFE’s Swiss country team and GNU/Linux.ch, asks public bodies to use Mastodon, Pixelfeld and Peertube. Join the campaign and demand that your public institutions use ethical communication channels. The European Commission and several EU public institutions are already on Mastodon.

Video and mailing list on German municipalities

Dortmund is opening a new chapter in Free Software governance and inspiring municipalities across Germany. The recording of the dedicated event we hosted on 11 January 2023 is now online. Are you interested in Free Software and working in a municipal administration or in politics? Join our new mailing list to exchange information about Free Software in local institutions!

A word from the Planet

Watermarks that can verify whether a text was produced using AI, the provision of sources that led to the output of the text, or the count of back-references to a page can increase trust in AI- generated texts, according to FSFE suporter Vincent Lequertier. You can follow the thoughts of members of the FSFE community in our Planet.

Past events

• Last weekend we were at FOSDEM 2023 with a booth and various talks.
• We have held several Upcycling Android workshops and now it is your turn! Do you want to organise a workshop and teach others how to flash phones? Check out our train the trainers workshop. Marvin, one of the speakers, said in a recent interview that despite the imperfections so far, GNU/Linux systems on phones have the highest potential to extend the life of devices without running into security problems.
• Raul Masu presented ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ at LibreItalia Conference in Empoli in December 2022.

Groups

Germany: The FSFE local group in Bonn met online on 9 January. The group discussed how to make large amounts of data (JSONs) searchable in a browser and how to integrate Free Software Text-To-Speech into a blog. The question of coding without a 'real' computer led to a brief look at Android IDEs for mobile app development. Kilux and Chemnitzer Linux Tage might be good opportunities to meet besides FrOScon. The group is also interested in free musical instruments, this time featuring an opentheremin. Meanwhile, the FSFE local group in Berlin was discussing with the youth Free Software in schools and the benefits of the AlekSIS system.

Greece: In January the group discussed practices about translating Free Software into Greek. The group shared collaborative translation platforms and glossaries.

Netherlands: The government released the code of DigiD, the identity verification app. This great news comes after some months of advocacy by the team. This victory was therefore the main topic of the last monthly meeting, in January.

Switzerland: After a successful launch of the FediGov campaign, the Zurich group discussed next steps. Creating a Mastodon instance for public institutions in Switzerland or contacting data protection officers are ongoing ideas.

Women: In January the FSFE Women group discussed the Python tools Conda, Poetry, and mypy.

Translators: 337 FSFE translations in 2022! Our exceptional translators team has created 337 new files in 2022. The leader is Italian with 120 new pages, followed by Dutch, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Get involved by proofreading or translating our material.

Contribute to our Newsletter

If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, please send them to us. As always, the address is newsletter@fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from you! If you also want to support us and our work, join our community and support us with a donation or a monthly contribution. Thanks to our community and all the volunteers, supporters, and donors who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators, who enable you to read this newsletter in your native languages.

Your editor, Fani Partsafyllidou

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