Three conclusions to draw from Google denying Huawei access to software

Google denies the Chinese IT giant Huawei access to Google's proprietary components of the Android mobile operating system which threatens IT security. This highlights the importance Free Software has for technology users, public bodies, and businesses. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) presents three essential lessons from this case.

Following the U.S. administration's decision to effectively ban American companies from doing trade with the Chinese company Huawei, Google suspended all business with the company. This affects all software which is not covered under Free Software licences. In practice, Huawei's upcoming and potentially also current phones will no longer get support and updates for the Android operating system. They will also not have access to the proprietary Google apps and services like Gmail and Google Play. Although proprietary software should be avoided in the first place, especially the latter will put future Huawei user at risk because without access to the default app store on most stock Android phones they will miss important security updates for the apps installed through it.

Google offers only a base version of Android under a Free Software licence but bundles it together with proprietary apps and services. The non-free components of most stock Android devices have numerous downsides for users, as the FSFE has documented since 2012. Now, the current case demonstrates that event tech giants like Huawei face similar dependencies and vendor lock-in effects as any individual users if they rely on proprietary software.

Three Conclusions

The following lessons can be drawn from this case:

The FSFE urges users to use Free Software operating systems and applications on their computing devices. With proprietary software, they are on the receiving end only and vendors may deny them access to crucial security updates if the vendor or a government changes its strategy. Free Software enables control of technology, and the more important that technology becomes in our daily lives, the more relevant Free Software becomes for users. For Android, the FSFE helps users to regain more control with its Free Your Android initiative. Governments and especially the European Union should invest more resources in Free Software to gain independence from large enterprises and other states. The current case highlights the lack of influence the EU has on outside technology providers. Instead of waiting for a future European IT monopolist to enter the stage, the EU and its members states should invest in Free Software development and focus on supporting local Free Software organisations as well as businesses. This would effectively foster the inner-European market and enable independence for European citizens and the EU economy. This step is essential for avoiding exposing European infrastructure to shutdowns controlled by external factors. The FSFE urges companies to use as much Free Software as possible in their supply chains. Proprietary software makes a company dependent on its vendor and this vendor's government. The current case shows that the US was able force Google to stop delivery of its proprietary products - but could not stop delivery of the Free Software components of Android. Had Huawei invested more resources in Free Software apps and services, the US strategy would not have hit them as hard. Although the current events are linked to the scrutiny the Chinese company is under right now, it is obvious that this could happen to any other company based in any other country as well.

The earlier allegations against Huawei already showed that code for all critical infrastructure should be published under a Free Software licence. The latest episode of the Huawei affair illustrates that the same applies to apps and services. Just days before the European Elections, this should be a wake-up call for the next constituent Parliament to ask the European Commission for European directives that foster independence of European technical infrastructure and that build on Free Software, starting with the demand to release publicly funded software as public code.

Support FSFE

FSFE Newsletter May 2019

This newsletter edition gives special attention to the upcoming EU Elections. We are telling the story of the Spanish Pica Pica Hacklab who successfully used our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign to influence the Parliament of Asturias. Pica Pica's story takes us to the upcoming EU Elections that will bring in new MEPs into the European Parliament and so we provide advice and tips on how you can get active in promoting Free Software to them. As always, you will also read about the events the FSFE is going to be part of this month, as well as a retrospective of what has happened in the past month.

EU Elections 2019 and Free Software

"The Parliament of Asturias commits itself to the international Public Money? Public Code! campaign" - this is a quote from the first demand in a recent proposal brought in by the Parliament of Asturias towards its government and it marks the happy end of continuous lobbying efforts from Oviedo's local hackerspace "Pica Pica Hacklab".

Pica Pica Hacklab team in front of the Parliament of Asturias after the Parliament's decision to support Public Money? Public Code!

This was already the second attempt of Pica Pica to lobby the Parliament of Asturias and demand the use of Free Software within public administrations. However, in contrast to their first attempt in 2015, this time Pica Pica had "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign materials at hand and used them extensively, together with their self-developed social hacking skills, to convince the politicians.

Pica Pica's success story is highly motivating for local activists and so we interviewed Iyán Méndez Veiga, member of Pica Pica, to highlight key elements of their activities, the usage of our campaign material and their lobbying. Read how Pica Pica successfully emphasised different benefits of Free Software depending on the agenda of the political party they were talking to respectively, how they turned emails into face-to-face meetings and how they finally landed even more meetings with officials from different parties by simply walking through the Parliament's building.

Pica Pica's story is not only motivating but it also clearly shows how local engagement by a small single group can influence even the highest political levels. Still, it is one story out of many, happening continuously in many parts of Europe. Be it a group of people or individuals: every talk, explanation or sometimes even the mere handing out of a well-formulated and informative leaflet can make the difference and convince a decision-maker to care about Free Software.

That brings us to this year's EU Elections of the European Parliament taking place next week throughout Europe, from May 23rd to 26th. Let us follow the recent example of Pica Pica and make sure that as many candidates as possible are aware of Free Software and its benefits, and convince them to join us in empowering users to control technology.

This is even more important now, as forecasts predict that half of the Members in the current European Parliament will not be back in the next term. That means that there will be new members appearing on the scene that do not yet know about Free Software.

Help let them know about the benefits of technologies that respect users freedom. Help us establish new contacts with advocates for Free Software in the next European Parliament's term. Seek out the candidates in your region and get in contact with them. Use our "Public Money?Public Code!" campaign as a source for arguments. Find more general hints and tips in our wiki.

And then get out there and vote for the candidate that convinced you most concerning the topics and values that matter to you!

The European Parliament during a plenary session in Strasbourg. (Picture by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Vote for freedom and join our community: https://my.fsfe.org/support

Do not miss: upcoming events with the FSFE From May 17th to 19th the Maker Fair Berlin will take place and the local FSFE group Berlin will be present with an information booth. On May 18th the FSFE's Policy Manager Alexander Sander will be present at the Albanian Open Source conference OSCAL to promote the FSFE's "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign to the local community. On May 21st Erik Albers, FSFE's Communication and Programme Manager, will talk at the Magdeburger Developer Days about the sustainability of software and how to preserve software resources for future generations. From May 24th to 26th the FSFE will host its own web-a-thon in Frankfurt (Main) to have a fruitful collective work on improving the FSFE's homepage together. You can find all details on the corresponding wiki-page. On May 29th, the FSFE's legal intern Lucas Lasota will present FOSS legal trends at the Libre Graphics Meetings in Saarbrücken, Germany. On June 8th, the FSFE's Project Manager Galia Mancheva will present the Public Money? Public Code! campaign to the Bulgarian tech community at TuxCon in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. On June 13th, the FSFE's President Matthias Kirschner will give a keynote about Free Software in our society at OW2con in Paris, France. On June 25th, the FSFE's Policy and Project Managers Alexander Sander and Galia Mancheva will talk about the Public Money?Public Code! campaign and the updated Copyright Directive at Libertybits in Sofia, Bulgaria Save the Date:

This year we are running the FSFE community meeting on November 15th and 16th in cooperation with the SFSCon in Bolzano, Italy. The FSFE country team Italy will use this occasion to prepare and run a dedicated FSFE track during the conference and the conference day will be followed by a dedicated community day. The general Call for Participation of the SFSCon is already up and running, while the one for the FSFE track in particular will be published soon. If you are interested in the publication of the call, follow our news (RSS feed)

What have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE On 27 April, Max Mehl, the FSFE's Programme Manager, gave a keynote at Grazer Linuxtage about Free Software and why security and openness are not contradictory. If you are curious about what he said, you can watch the keynote video. On April 27th, there was an FSFE's info-booth at the the local FLISoL event in A Coruña, Spain and on 11 May, the FSFE was present with a booth at T-Dose in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Alexander Sander, the FSFE's Policy Manager talked about the importance of supporting the Public Money? Public Code! campaign on May 3rd at the LWW2019 in Vienna, where the FSFE also hosted an infobooth. FSFE booth at Linuxwochen Wien Carmen Bianca Bakker writes about elitists and laypeople and uses this distinction for a comparison between the development of the Game of Thrones script with her own development and history from Spacemacs to Emacs to VSCodium and more. Syncthing is a Free Software sync-solution on F-Droid. Andrea Scarpino explains the customizations he has done to use it for simple but automated phone backup with Syncthing Matija Šuklje sums up different way and methods he used to archive and organise his bookmarks in the last years. Get Active

As already brought up in the beginning of the Newsletter, the European Parliament's Elections are ahead and forecasts predict that many new members will be part of the next term. If you want Free Software to catch on with these Parliamentary freshmen, then you can seek out the candidates in your region and get in contact with them. We prepared a short list of actions you can take and other tips in our wiki.

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!

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 mother tongue.

Your editors,

Erik Albers and Galia Mancheva

Vote for freedom and join our community: https://my.fsfe.org/support

Support FSFE

Vrije Software in München - FSFE bedankt cabaretière Christine Prayon

Gisteren ontving politiek cabaretière Christine Prayon Dieter Hildebrandt Prijs van de stad München, waaraan 10.000 euro is verbonden, voor het eisen van politieke of onmiskenbaar socio-kritische politieke satire. Prayon doneert het prijzengeld aan de Free Software Foundation Europe.

De jury stelt onder andere dat de prijsontvangster Prayon "[...] niet gewoon beschuldigt; ze ontmaskert en wij zijn haar getuigen". Prayon gebruikte legde in haar dankwoorden de vinger op een van de zere plekken man München: ze beschrijft het vroegere geniale progressieve proces waarmee München zichzelf onafhankelijk maakte van leveranciers van propriëtaire software en het hele stadsbestuur op een vrij systeem liet draaien. Prayon bekritiseerde toen de beslissing om terug te schakelen naar propriëtaire systemen.

De migratie van werkstations terug naar propriëtaire software zal München de komende zes jaren bijna 50 miljoen euro kosten. Daarbij zal nog 37 miljoen euro moeten worden geïnvesteerd in implementatieprojecten. De Free Software Foundation Europe bekritiseerde het migratie-project in het verleden: de migratie zal geen bestaande alledaagse organisationele IT-problemen van het stadsbestuur oplossen. Gelijktijdig zullen nieuwe afhankelijkheden van verkopers van propriëtaire software ontstaan en zullen licentiekosten betaald moeten worden aan deze verkopers zodat dit geld niet in het beste belang van de belastingbetalers kan worden besteed aan de verdere ontwikkeling van software en de samenwerking met andere overheden. De systemen worden minder transparant en zijn niet langer voor burgers te begrijpen. U kunt meer informatie over de migratieplannen van de stad München hier vinden.

München gaat dus in tegen de trend: Vrije Software wordt binnen andere overheden met enorm succes gebruikt. Sinds de Franse overheid in 2012 besloot om meer Vrije Software te gebruiken zijn er jaarlijks 0.6% tot 5.4% meer bedrijven opgericht die Vrije Software gebruiken en vinden er 6.6% tot 14% meer mensen een baan in de IT-sector. In Barcelona wordt 70% van het budget voor de ontwikkeling van nieuwe software gebruikt voor het creëren van Vrije Software en hebben 3000 bedrijven een contract gekregen, waarvan 60% midden- en kleinbedrijf, meestal uit de regio. Meer en meer steden werken in samenwerkingsprojecten aan gemeenschappelijke software-oplossingen en ontwikkelen ze samen waarbij ze kosten besparen en risico's delen.

De Free Software Foundation Europe heeft de campagne "Publiek Geld? Publieke Code!" gelanceerd om andere overheden te overtuigen over te stappen naar Vrije Software en ze te steunen in hun migratie. De publicatie van de expertbrochure "Publiek Geld Publieke Code: Publieke infrastructuur moderniseren met Vrije Software" maakt deel uit van de campagne. De brochure heeft als doel om vragen van beslissingnemers over de voordelen van het gebruik en de ontwikkeling van Vrije Software voor de overheid te beantwoorden.

U kunt meer informatie over de campagne en haar supporters vinden op onze campagnewebsite publiccode.eu. De brochure kunt u hier vinden.

De Free Software Foundation Europe zou graag van deze gelegenheid gebruik willen maken om Christine Prayon te bedanken voor haar toewijding aan Vrije Software en haar genereuze donatie.

Bijgewerkt 24.05.2019: Christine Prayon's dankwoord is nu ook beschikbaar als video-opname.

Support FSFE

Free Software in Munich - FSFE thanks cabaret artist Christine Prayon

Yesterday, political satirist Christine Prayon was awarded the 10,000 Euro Dieter Hildebrandt Prize of the City of Munich for demanding political or decidedly socio-critical political satire. Prayon is donating the prize money to the Free Software Foundation Europe.

The jury states, among other things, that the award recipient Prayon "[...] does not simply accuse - she unmasks, and we are her witnesses". Prayon herself used her thank-you speech to put the finger on one of Munich's sore spots: Prayon describes the former genius, progressive process of making Munich independent of the providers of proprietary software and letting the complete administration run on a free system. Prayon then criticised the switch back to proprietary systems.

The migration of workstations back to proprietary software will cost Munich almost 50 million Euros over the next six years. A further 37 million Euros will have to be invested in implementation projects. The Free Software Foundation Europe already criticised the migration-project in the past. The migration will not solve existing organisational IT problems in the day-to-day administrative business. At the same time new dependencies on manufacturers of proprietary software will arise and license fees will be paid to the proprietary manufacturers instead of using these funds in tax payers' best interest for the further development of the software and the cooperation with other administrations. The systems become less transparent and no longer comprehensible for citizens. Further information on the migration plans of the City of Munich can be found here.

Munich is thus turning against the trend: in other administrations, Free Software is being used with overwhelming success. Since the French government decided to start using more Free Software back in 2012, between 0.6% and 5.4% more companies using Free Software have been created in France every year; between 6.6% and 14% more people find employment in the IT sector every year. In Barcelona, 70% of the budget for the development of new software is used to create Free Software. Contracts have so far been awarded to 3,000 companies, 60% of them SMEs, mostly from the region. In collaborative projects, more and more cities are working on common software solutions and jointly develop them, saving costs and sharing risks.

The Free Software Foundation Europe has launched the campaign "Public Money? Public Code!" to convince other administrations to switch to Free Software and support them in their migration. As part of the campaign, we published the specialist publication "Public Money Public Code - Modernising Public Infrastructure with Free Software". The brochure aims to answer questions from decision-makers about the benefits of using and developing Free Software for the public administration.

More information about the campaign and its supporters can be found on our campaign website at publiccode.eu, and the brochure can be found here.

The Free Software Foundation Europe would like to take this opportunity to thank Christine Prayon for her commitment to Free Software and her generous donation.

Support FSFE

Public Money, Public Code: Munich one step back - others two steps forward.

More than two years ago, Munich abandoned their strategy of developing an independent IT infrastructure built with Free Software and the free operating system GNU/Linux and went back to depending on proprietary software. We followed this process closely and like to give an update today about what has happened since then in Munich and in Europe in general. Did we manage to gain more independence and control over our IT or did dependencies on monopolies increase over the past two years?

Retrospect

The LiMux project was started 13 years ago when the city of Munich needed to replace their no longer supported Windows NT4 workstations. In that period, 15.000 workstations were migrated to vendor-neutral Free Software solutions and Open-Standard-based file formats supported by local IT companies. This initiative not only was an example of a successful move to more independence, but also served as a role model of how to strengthen the local IT industry.

Picture by Marco Verch, CC-BY 2.0

But then things took a turn for the worse. In 2014, the SPD entered a coalition agreement with the CSU and Dieter Reiter (SPD) was elected new mayor of Munich. The new coalition started to question the LiMux strategy as soon as their term started, and asked Accenture, a Microsoft partner located in the same building as Microsoft, to analyse Munich's IT infrastructure. The report can be found here (German). It is worth noting that, despite their close connection with Microsoft, in their report, analysts identify primarily organisational issues at the root of the problems troubling LiMux's uptake, but no significant technical issues.

Nevertheless, the coalition filed a surprise motion with minimal lead time before the city council, with the goal to end LiMux once and for all.

Back then we, together with other independent parties, came to the conclusion that LiMux suffered from organisational problems, including lack of clear structures and responsibilities, something the Accenture report confirmed. These where independent from the software used on client machines, and switching operating systems alone would not solve them.

Where we are today

Munich is still in the transition back to proprietary software. This whole process will cost the citizens of Munich nearly 90 million Euros in the next six years. Meanwhile, looking at other cities in Germany and all over Europe, we see that many regions push for more independence. Free Software in public administrations is not a short‐term trend. The last few years have seen significant changes in the attitudes of public administrations towards IT procurement, increasingly favouring a strategic, long‐term‐oriented approach.

Free Software solutions are helping governments address different challenges, from democratic governance to natural disaster prevention. Some projects are not only deployed but also developed internationally. Popular projects, such as Consul, GNU Health, X-Road, and CKAN, highlight the potential of Free Software for cooperation across borders. In Germany, the Government decided to run their own, Free Software Cloud Solution, called Bundescloud. 300,000 people in ministries and other federal institutions will use this federal cloud. The Government of France decided to build a country wide messaging platform based on Free Software and many more exciting projects are happening all over Europe in an effort to increase IT independence of public administrations. But Munich, once a spearhead in this modernization effort, is now backpedalling on what the city achieved and, instead of institutionalizing it, they are giving up on the experience and knowledge they acquired with their new software.

To support these activities and in order to convince more administrations to migrate to Free Software, the Free Software Foundation Europe runs the well received "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign. The initiative asks legislators to establish the rule that publicly financed software developed for the public sector must be made publicly available under a Free Software license. If it is public money, it should be public code as well.

Our Brochure summarises the FSFE's long-term expertise with additional knowledge from leading experts in various ICT areas. It helps readers understand Free Software and its benefits for a modern digital public infrastructure. Please help us spread the word about the campaign and share our videos (available in many languages) and - if you haven't already - sign our open letter.

Support FSFE