Etalab shows how Free Software can be made available for the public sector

Etalab maintains two lists of Free Software. One is about the Free Software recommended for the public sector (called SILL) while the other one links to Free Software repositories created by the public sector. To find out more about the two lists we conducted an interview with Bastien Guerry from Etalab.

Etalab, a department of the French public administration in charge of digital affairs, has created two lists of Free Software. One lists the Free Software recommended for the public sector (called SILL) while the other links to Free Software repositories created by the public sector. So far there are 3,739 Software repositories that contain Free Software developed by the public sector. These lists are available online, to browse through, since 2019. This move is in line with the FSFE’s “Public Money? Public Code!” Initiative, where we demand that software developed from and for the public sector should be made publicly available. To find out more about the two lists deployed by Etalab, how they came into being, and the ideas behind it, we conducted an interview with Bastien Guerry from Etalab.

Could you briefly explain what Etalab is and what are its goals?

Bastien Guerry: Etalab is a department of the administration in charge of digital affairs, named direction interministérielle du numérique (DINUM). In this organisation, Etalab coordinates efforts made by the french public sector to release its data and administrative documents as open data. To accomplish this, Etalab operates the data.gouv.fr platform since 2011.

Why did you start the repository to collect Free Software used by the public sector? Why do you see a need for this?

Bastien Guerry: Well, there is no "repository of free software used by the public sector". Such a list would be too long and probably never complete.

Etalab maintains two lists: the catalogue of recommended free software for the administration and the list of source code repositories published by public organisations.

The first list is called the SILL (for "Socle Interministériel des Logiciels Libres") and you can read it on sill.etalab.gouv.fr.

In 2006, a group of public agent tried to gather information on the use of some free software like LibreOffice (OpenOffice at the time) within central administrations. In 2012, the french prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault published a note stating why and how free software should be preferred in the public sector. After this note, the 2006 group had a more targeted goal: listing all free software that public agencies should prefer. At the time, the big idea is mainly to let administrations converge toward common solutions.

Up to 2018, the SILL was published once in a year as a PDF document and helped administrations knowing what free software they could use, what version was recommended, etc. In 2020, Etalab built a website where the SILL can be easily accessed and updated, not just once in a year. Also, the initial purpose of the SILL slightly evolved: it is not to let public agencies converge toward the same solutions but to make them confident that free software X or Y is significantly used by another agency and thus can be trusted as a mature and useful solution.

Note that the SILL has really two functions: sending a clear message to the public sector ("You should consider using these free software") and to gather tech-savvy agents and let them share their knowledge about detailed use cases of these software within their own central administration or agency.

“Etalab maintains two lists: the catalog of recommended free software for the administration and the list of source code repositories published by public organisations.”

What are the requirements for software to be published on code.etalab.gouv.fr?

Bastien Guerry: This is the second list Etalab publishes and maintains: the website code.etalab.gouv.fr lists source code repositories authored by public agencies.

We manually collect links to public organisations, then we automatically retrieve source code repositories from these organisations.

The law for a digital republic of 2016 considers source code to be an "administrative document" and, as such, public agencies are required to publish it under one of the allowed licenses, just like other open data documents - given, of course, certain restrictions.

How many repositories do you have so far?

Bastien Guerry: As of 18 May 2020 we have 422 groups or organisations and 3739 repositories.

How was the resonance of the public administrations, have they submitted software on their own?

Bastien Guerry: Yes. Etalab started to list organisations manually, then some organisations spontaneously submitted their own links.

Note, that while most of them use GitHub to publish source code, some use GitLab and some other use their own GitLab instance.

What kind of software is published most often and by which actors?

Bastien Guerry: I don't have detailed numbers but my guess is that we have 20% of the organisations publishing 80% of the repositories.

I cannot answer about what kind of software is published most often, this requires a careful scrutiny – but I do encourage you to see by yourself.

Could you give an example of a software that was widely reused by another administrations?

Bastien Guerry: We are working on this. For now code.etalab.gouv.fr addresses two simple needs: it promotes the efforts of public agencies which take the time to publish their source code and it helps developers from other public organisations finding out whether some source code has already been written by other administrations.

But as of today, we don't know yet what is reused by who. We are working on this.

Do you have numbers on how often the website is used to find a software?

Bastien Guerry: Our stats for sill.etalab.gouv.fr and code.etalab.gouv.fr are public on stats.data.gouv.fr.

Statistics for code.etalab.gouv.fr from 30.07.2019 till 28.05.2020 Statistics for SILL from 30.07.2019 till 28.05.2020

Would you encourage other countries to also have a collection of the Free Software used by public administrations? If so, why?

Bastien Guerry: I would encourage other countries to make a list of recommended free software for their own administration: it helps small public agencies by strengthening their trust in free software and guiding them toward the right tools. It also helps administrations by letting knowledgeable persons discuss with each other about the use of these free software.

“I would encourage other countries to make a list of recommended free software for their own administration”

What are the next steps in the development of the repository?

Bastien Guerry: For sill.etalab.gouv.fr, we want to enrol more public agents to help with identifying more free software and publishing more use cases.

For code.etalab.gouv.fr, we focus on identifying free software published by the public sector that other administrations would want to reuse.

Bastien Guerry CC BY-SA 3.0

We are looking forward to the future use and development of SILL and code.etalab.gouv.fr. Thank you very much for this very interesting interview!

Questions asked for FSFE: Bonnie Mehring

The "Public Money? Public Code!" initiative aims to set Free Software as the standard for publicly financed software. The Free Software Foundation Europe together with over 180 civil society organisations and more than 27.000 individuals signed the open letter. We will use the signatures to contact decision makers and political representatives all over Europe and convince them to make public code the standard. You are invited to add your signature to make a bigger impact on publiccode.eu.

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Router Freedom challenged by new European rules

From 21 June a new set of rules will guide the implementation of Router Freedom in Europe. The internalisation of the rules by the 27 EU member states will face challenges with negative consequences for Router Freedom. The FSFE contributed to several improvements of the guidelines and will monitor compliance with them.

The COVID-19 pandemic shows how dependent people are on the Internet for their work and personal life. In times of lockdown, when people need to stay home and work remotely, the whole internet traffic, encryption, business and work interaction are transferred through personal routers. Since 2013, the FSFE has been advocating for Router Freedom in Europe with outstanding results in Germany and effects beyond its borders. Now, a new set of rules, for which the FSFE contributed to improve, will guide the implementation of Router Freedom in Europe. We summarise the positive outcomes as well as the challenges ahead.

Router Freedom's legal framework

In Europe, Router Freedom is regulated by three sets of rules. The first one comes from the Net Neutrality Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2015/2120), which establishes that people are free to choose their own digital equipment. The second set are the new Guidelines on the Location of the Network Termination Point (NTP), drafted by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). National legislation and administrative acts in each EU member state will compose the third set. These are to be implemented locally by states' National Regulatory Agencies (NRAs) in accordance with the aforementioned Net Neutrality Regulation and Guidelines on the NTP.

The Guidelines on the NTP have the objective of providing guidance to the NRAs to determine in their jurisdiction if the router/modem should belong to users or to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In March, BEREC published the final version of the text, after a public consultation which the FSFE took part in November 2019. The Guidelines will come into effect on 21 June 2020, and the NRAs are supposed to take utmost account of these Guidelines when defining the location of the NTP.

"The FSFE welcomes BEREC's effort to provide a set of principles to determine the Network Termination Point. However, due to the unclear terms in the new Guidelines, the lack of enforcement commitment by the NRAs and abusive behavior of ISPs, the implementation of Router Freedom by 27 EU member states will be challenging. Our task at FSFE will be the compliance monitoring and the reporting of illegal practices", says Max Mehl, FSFE Programme Manager.

Timeline of the Router Freedom's legal framework.

FSFE's contribution

The final version of the Guidelines on the NTP brought changes of a clarifying and explanatory nature. Fundamentally, BEREC kept the original proposal of the draft to give the NRAs the possibility to choose from three different locations for the Network Termination Point:

1. The NTP is at point A. This means that routers and modems are under the control of the user, who can decide which device to use - either the one recommended and provided by the ISP or one from a third party. That would result in Router Freedom.
2. The NTP is at B. This means that the modem (so the device connecting to the ISP) will be part of the ISP's network, but additional routers or media boxes will be in the user's domain. We advise against this configuration because it will have a negative impact on users' local networks, obstructing Router Freedom.
3. The NTP is at C. That's the most restrictive option as it results in the modem and router or a combined device being solely under the control of the ISP. This arrangement completely denies Router Freedom, since the users have no right to use their own equipment.

NRAs will choose which NTP model to implement in their jurisdiction. Source: BEREC.

Although the FSFE argued that only point A could be Router Freedom compliant, BEREC kept the possibility of having the NTP in three different configurations. Nevertheless, we exerted a positive influence, stressing the necessity of keeping Router Freedom as the major principle when defining the NTP. Here are the key changes and reactions to the FSFE's input:

• BEREC slightly modified the official text in order to adopt our position to the extent that point A should be the rule when determining the NTP. They clarified the fact that an objective technological necessity must exist if an NRA wants to determine the NTP at B or C, and therefore denying Router Freedom.
• BEREC explicitly recognised our argument that it was not possible to find a real case where any incident with Router Freedom could justify the violation of the Net Neutrality Regulation. The experience in Germany with NTP at point A since 2016 serves as a positive example that devices chosen by end-users do not cause technological damage for ISPs.
• BEREC explicitly agreed to our argument that locating the NTP at point A contributes the most to innovation and competition in the router/modem market.
• BEREC acknowledged our comments that liberalisation of the router/modem market did not cause harm to the public network. BEREC therefore asks ISPs and manufacturers to work together instead of trying to create a false sense of security by isolating the public network.
• BEREC acknowledged our argument that points B or C would seriously hamper end-users' digital sovereignty, data protection and ecological footprint, and largely increase end-users' switching costs.

Some of the various benefits of Router Freedom.

Challenges ahead for Router Freedom

Notwithstanding the efforts BEREC made to carefully weigh the different possible locations for the NTP and accepting the stakeholders' suggestions, there are still threats that could have a negative impact on Router Freedom in Europe. They are related to the vague terms used by the Guidelines that will cause discrepancies during the national implementations, the lack of commitment by NRAs to protect Router Freedom, and the abusive behavior of ISPs.

The NRAs' discretionary power to define "technological necessity"

The Guidelines on the NTP grant the NRAs the discretionary power to decide whether there is an "objective technological necessity" for routers to be part of the ISP's network. Allowing NRAs to decide the location of NTP based on "technological necessity" opens a dangerous precedent for discretionary and abusive interpretation of the Guidelines. While such necessity to establish the NTP on point C would be hard to prove, political and economic influence could easily override the high thresholds for these necessities in order to have at least the modem at ISPs' premises (point B) – and thereby cause serious harm to the Router Freedom of users. Besides, the decision by the NRAs to determine "technological necessity" would be hard to counteract, perhaps only through judicial channels.

The NRAs' lack of commitment to protect Router Freedom

A recent study has demonstrated that NRAs have been extremely conservative in applying penalties against Net Neutrality violations. Even worse, some countries, like Ireland and Portugal, have completely failed to establish sanctions against non-compliant ISPs. Other NRAs have set their fines at a very low amount, which certainly will not hinder ISPs from violating Router Freedom again. Big ISPs in Europe have annual revenues in nine figures and above. For them, a four to seven figure penalty is neither dissuasive nor effective as a deterrent for economically lucrative infringing activity. Therefore, Router Freedom could be easily violated by ISPs without any effective counteraction by NRAs.

Penalties chart for net neutrality violations. Source: epicenter.works, 2019.

The soft and hard barriers imposed by ISPs

As we have experienced in Germany, ISPs are very creative in forcing their routers on customers, creating barriers that can completely block Router Freedom. We call these soft barriers when ISPs do not prevent customers by contractual means from using their private routers, nor deny vital information for the router configuration (login data), but otherwise try to persuade customers not to use their own routers with unscrupulous arguments. In many cases, this is sufficient to scare people away from Router Freedom. Sometimes, ISPs push the limits and create hard barriers for customers. For example, ISPs impose contractual limitations, do not provide necessary login data, or completely refuse to provide technical support.

Some usual barriers imposed by ISPs. Check here what you can do against them.

Help us monitor the future of Router Freedom in Europe

The FSFE will continue monitoring the new developments of Router Freedom in Europe closely. The new Guidelines on NTP will have to be enforced by NRAs of 27 different countries, which will certainly lead to a lot of discrepancies. The next six months will be essential to understanding if the NRAs' approach will benefit or harm Router Freedom. Our long-term expertise advocating for users' right to choose their own equipment, and the groundbreaking success we have achieved in Germany, put us in the best position to continue being a leading advocate for Router Freedom.

But this kind of long-term engagement is only enabled by your help. You can make a difference by joining us as a sustaining supporter and thereby make a stand for Router Freedom! As you can see, there is a lot to be done.

There is a lot to be done for Router Freedom in Europe.

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FSFE calls for a more inclusive competition law in Europe

In order to contribute to the EU Commission assessment of the Market Definition Notice, the FSFE has taken part in the public consultation to call for more attention to smaller stakeholders and civil society in topics of EU competition law.

The European Commission has launched an evaluation of some central concepts of EU competition law. The so-called EU Market Definition Notice (the "Notice") enables the Commission to identify actual competitors of relevant products and geographic markets to enforce prevailing competition policy and law. The purpose of this evaluation is to determine whether the Notice, introduced in 1997, remains fit for its purpose in light of recent developments. This is especially necessary when we also consider the dramatic digitalisation of the European markets that has occurred in the past 23 years.

In order to contribute to a fair and inclusive assessment, the FSFE took part in the public consultation to highlight the necessity of having the experience of grassroot organisations and civil society actors heard by the Commission. Notwithstanding the deep expertise in competition law in the software and telecommunications field these smaller stakeholders have, they might be disadvantaged in raising attention to essential competition topics, since the Commission might hear a biased account of the needs of the market when only large and well-funded business organisations have sufficient resources to effectively provide feedback in consultation procedures.

Since 2001 the FSFE has strongly advocated in favour of Free Software technologies because of their benefits to a competitive market. The FSFE has collaborated with the Commission in top antitrust cases, providing a substantial contribution in the defence of landmark decisions that have shaped competition case law, both in court and in the public outreach fora. You can learn more about the FSFE's feedback at the initiative's page.

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FSFE nudges emergency ventilator project towards a Free Software License

After a nudge by the FSFE, the Dutch OpenAIR initiative has provided licenses on their material to support reuse.

In the Netherlands an initiative has started to cope with COVID-19 by developing an easy producible emergency ventilator for which parts could mainly be sourced locally: OperationAIR. This project was started on 16 March by professor Harlaar and students of the Department of BioMechanical Engineering of Delft Technical University in order to ensure enough ventilator capacity for treating COVID-19 patients. The team intended their design to be publicly available for reuse. To adhere to the principles of Open Science all documentation, technical design and source code was published in a coherent fashion on their website.

Render of the OperationAIR ventilator. CC-BY-4.0 International OperationAIR

The Dutch FSFE team noticed however that the project as published was not reusable. It lacked a license and contained a disclaimer prohibiting commercial use. The FSFE reached out to the team to make them aware that their current publication did not meet their intentions. The team agreed and after a meeting with their lawyers decided to change the disclaimer, put a CC-BY 4.0 Internation license on all documents, and provided the software under a Free Software license (Apache 2.0 license).

The FSFE applauds the OpenAIR team for adhering to the principles of Free Software and Open Science and for contributing in the COVID-19 crisis. We hope that more people will follow this example to to release solutions for COVID-19 under a Free Software License for reuse, say Nico Rikken, the FSFE's coordinator for the Netherlands.

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Public Hackathons +++ Munich supports Public Code +++ New Podcasts

Read about our demand to publish the results of publicly financed hackathons as Free Software, about a new coalition-agreement in Munich that aligns with our principles of "Public Money? Public Code!" and what happened inside the FSFE and our community. You will also read about the results of our web-sprint, about our regular podcast and an extraordinary one.

COVID-19 Hackathons: Only Free Software creates global solutions

In recent weeks we have seen many hackathons that have been organised to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, many of them have been organised by governments and other public bodies who are hosting or funding these hackathons. As with our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign, at the FSFE we demand that software resulting from publicly funded hackathons can be re-used globally by publishing it under a Free Software license.

Especially in a time when humanity needs to work together to find solutions for a crisis, we cannot afford to reinvent the wheel again and again for software that helps us contain the spread of COVID-19. Global problems need global solutions! It is Free Software that enables global cooperation for code development. Any proprietary solution will inevitably lead to countless isolated solutions and will waste energy and time which we as humanity cannot afford in such a critical situation.

At the FSFE's hack-a-thons, everything we code is free.

Munich commits to "Public Money? Public Code!"

Just a few years ago, a Munich government formed by SPD (social democrats) and CSU (conservatives) decided to abandon the local administration's migration to Free Software under the project name "LiMux". Since the election in March a new government has been in place and the coalition agreement between SPD and Greens in Munich includes a positive statement on the use of Free Software: the principle "Public Money? Public Code!" should apply in future.

While we welcome that the City of Munich seems to have come back on track, the agreement leaves room for improvement as it includes some typical loopholes such as the vague limitation to software whose code does not contain personal or confidential data. The FSFE will continue to closely monitor the progress of the implementation of the "Public Money, Public Code!" policy and how procurement procedures will be handled in the future.

Governments publish Corona tracing apps under a Free Software licence

In early March the FSFE published its demand that the use of any tracking technology to break the chains of disease infection may only be promoted on a voluntary basis, with fundamental rights respected, and that the software be published under a Free Software license. As a reaction to this, EU member states, supported by the European Commission, released a "Common EU Toolbox for Member States" including "Recommendations for a common approach to mobile tracing apps" asking to "openly publish the technical specifications and the source code for the apps, as a way to maximise re-use, interoperability, auditability and security".

Now more and more governments, like Germany, Austria or the Netherlands, follow the FSFE's demands and stipulate to publish the code of Corona tracing apps under a Free Software license. Still, we will closely monitor the process and want to achieve that the whole development process happen transparently as we know it from Free Software - and not to publish the code only after its development.

The biggest financial impact the FSFE faces in these times of physical distancing is the cancellation of Free Software conferences, including our own events. To keep the software freedom movement solid and alive, please consider donating a part of your conference budget to Free Software organisations, including the FSFE.

Upcoming events

• On 16-17 May will be the online event Özgürkon during which Alexander Sander will present recent developments in our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign. The FSFE is a partner organisation of the event.
• On 17.-18 June will be OW2online20 during which our legal coordinator Gabriel Ku Wei Bin will speak about REUSE and the NGI project.

What have we done? Inside and outside the FSFE

• We have a new episode of our regular Software Freedom Podcast, this time with Professor Lawrence Lessig, founder and present board member of Creative Commons. Together we discuss the different types of regulation that affect society both online and offline, such as laws, norms, the market, or architecture.
Katharina Nocun, Lawrence Lessig and Matthias Kirschner while recording the Software Freedom Podcast.
• We also published a special episode of the Software Freedom Podcast in which we talk about some of the advantages of GNU Health and how it can and already does help with the current COVID-19 pandemic. Our guests are Dr. Luis Falcón who is the author of GNU Health and Dr. Axel Braun who published the first live CD of GNU Health.
• The FSFE has joined the Advisory Board of NGI Pointer, one of the projects within the European Commission's Next Generation Internet (“NGI”) initiative. Within this role, the FSFE will provide license compliance support to successful applicants. The first call for applications to join NGI Pointer is now open until 1 June 2020.
• The FSFE co-organised the online event "Forum Bits&Bäume" with the topic "Sustainable Soft- and Hardware". Erik Albers gave a session about the role of Free Software regarding sustainability of software.
• We ran a "little web sprint" to improve some major things regarding our website. Among the visible things are the relaunch of our front page and the our team site. Many other major improvements have been happening in the background and are only "visible" in our issue tracker.
• Matthias Kirschner and Max Mehl have been covered in two episodes of the Librezoom podcast which is done by the FSFE's local group in Zürich. Max Mehl talks about security and privacy and Matthias Kirschner about "cloud" and Free Software. Both episodes are in German.

Netherlands commits to Free Software by default

In an open letter to the Parliament, the Dutch minister for internal affairs, Raymond Knops, commits to a "Free Software by default" policy and underlines its benefits for society. A rewording of current market regulations shall be proposed to allow publishing of Free Software by the government.

Stories from the FSFE Planet

• Hannes Hauswedell writes about Game-streaming without the "cloud": how to stream a native Windows game, "Divinity Original Sin 2", installed DRM-free from GOG, via Steam Remote Play from his Desktop running Devuan GNU/Linux in 4K resolution and maximum quality directly to his TV running Android.
• Dmaphy writes about a new update for the terminal emulator Terminator 1.92, now supporting Python 3.

Get Active: Convince hackathons to create global solutions

We are still looking for hackathons that are organised by public entitites and trying to convince them to publish their software under a Free Software license. If you know such a hackathon, then help us to gather more of them on our dedicated wiki page.

Please ask for others to help you or directly get in contact with the organisers yourself to make them aware that the results of these hackathons should be made ready to be used globally and adapted locally - which is only possible if the software can be used, studied, shared and improved. You can find help for your communication on the very same wiki page.

Contribute to our newsletter

If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to us. As always, the address is newsletter@fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

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Thanks to our community, 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.

Stay safe,

Erik Albers

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