Ask Your Candidates: Italian parties offer progress towards the use of Free Software in public entities

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) publishes the results of the Ask Your Candidates campaign that FSFE Italy did run for the Italian election. Multiple questions have been sent to the major political parties that run for office in the national elections on March 4. We received positive statements by "Movimento 5 Stelle", "Liberi e Uguali", "Partito Democratico" and "Potere al Popolo". Unfortunately, there have been no answers by "+Europa", "Forza Italia", "Fratelli d'Italia" and "Lega Nord".

Since many years, at the FSFE, we run Ask Your candidates campaigns to send a set of questions to political parties and collect information about their standing towards Free Software and to make it easier for voters to compare their positions. Main objective of the campaign is to know the degree of attention and support of candidates and parties towards Free Software and those topics that are important for our work for Free Software like Open Standard formats, digital freedoms and net neutrality.

FSFE Italy in particular wishes to inform interested voters and citizens about the parties' positions and candidates on the use of Free Software in public administrations, a subject already present in the Italian jurisprudence by Article 68 and Article 69 of the Code of the Digital Administration (CAD). Unfortunately, the implementation of these articles is still in continuous evolution due to the nature of the software and of the current political will.

Today, we publish the full answers that we received. In summary, the campaign had a positive response by "Movimento 5 Stelle" and the "Liberi e Uguali, Partito Democratico and Potere al Popolo". Unfortunately, we did not receive any answers by +Europa, Forza Italia, Fratelli d'Italia, Lega Nord. In the following, you find our analysis of the responds given, sorted chronologically in the order we received the answers:

Results and analysis

Federico D'Incà and Anna Laura Orrico, both candidates for Movimento 5 Stelle, declare Free Software to be a benefit for the public administration because it helps in "independence from suppliers, security and the accessibility to all its information assets". The same benefits, so they say, are within the adoption of Open Standards. Both candidates are in favor of introducing Free Software and Open Standards in schools and universities, and they consider the Digital Administration Code to be an exhaustive rule but whose implementation is necessary to monitor. Finally, both candidates are clearly in favour of net neutrality which is also part of the official program of Movimento 5 Stelle, that considers net neutrality to be a "necessary and indispensable prerequisite for freedom of expression".

Luca Casarini, candidate for Liberi e Uguali, not only supports Free Software but also supports a top-down model with an "enforced migration by law from proprietary software to Free Software and Open Source in the public administration". Casarini also understands the adoption of Free Software in school and university courses as "a real strategic and educational choice towards an emancipation from the use and dependency of proprietary programs". The candidate of Liberi e Uguali strongly supports the Digital Administration Code and is committed to monitor its renewal to avoid being further weakened in favor of compromises not in line with the original spirit of the law. Such as "the weakening of the art.68 in particular, but also the repeal of Article 50-bis" during the last CAD reform. Liberi e Uguali are totally in favor of net neutrality, to support "information pluralism", citizen rights and liberties.

Paolo Coppola, candidate for the Partito Democratico, highlights the use of Free Software in public administrations as well as the Code of the Digital Administration as a pivotal tool that is already in place to promote and support its use. Coppola also points out that, with regards to software commissioned by public administrations, Partito Democratico's position "is the one expressed by Article 69 of the CAD: it must be available as open source code and free of charge". For the introduction of Free Software and open formats in school and university courses, article 68 of the CAD is still valid, which says that in public tenders Free Software has to be favored over proprietary software. Coppola considers CAD to be a good legislative framework, and as a next step proposes the publication of guidelines that aim at ensuring compliance. Coppola confirms the importance of net neutrality and says that "network and digital platforms must be neutral".

Potere al popolo state to be very much in line with some principles that are related to Free Software and wish for "the use and introduction of any vision based on copyleft licenses will contribute to the protection of workers by decentralizing the authority of multinationals". So they declare themself certainly in favor of the adoption of open formats and Free Software within the public administration. Potere al popolo even quotes Richard Stallman in arguing that "if the school teaches the use of Free Software, they can graduate citizens ready to live in a free digital society". However, unlike the other interviewed parties, Potere al popolo finds the Articles 68 and 69 of the CAD to be insufficient and they wish for more intransigent rules that fully exclude the use of proprietary software. Finally, the party shows full adherence towards net neutrality, including criticism of the European BEREC entity considered "insufficient in defining the rules for the network."

Conclusion

This has been the first time FSFE Italy had run such an Ask Your Candidates campaign. Fortunately, all parties and candidates that have answered our questions - Movimento 5 Stelle, Liberi e Uguali, Partito Democratico and Potere al Popolo - are in favor of the adoption and the extended use of Free Software and open formats in the public administration as well as in public education. Such a big consensus across these parties, that in current polls together have more than 50% of the votes, opens up a lot of possibilities for progress towards the use of Free Software on state level in Italy and the FSFE's demand of Public Money? Public Code!. The latter can be realized by enforcing already existing legal laws, that are in particular "Article 68" and "Article 69" of the Code of the Digital Administration. Again, with an exception of Potere al popolo, all parties claim to be in favor of enforcing these articles. If it would be for Potere al popolo, they would set even stricter rules. Finally, all parties in this sample support the existence and enforcement of net neutrality.

"It is great to see that many political parties nowadays understand the importance and the benefits deriving from Free Software" says Natale Vinto, FSFE country coordinator Italy and "in case they run successful for government, the FSFE is happy to help with the necessary implementation processes." On the other hand, Vinto points out, that "the lack of responses from the other parties can be understood as a desinterest in digital topics which is anachronistic in today's information society."

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FSFE Newsletter February 2018Barcelona is the first city council to join the FSFE's "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign

"Funds that come from the citizens have to be invested in systems that can be reused and open to a local ecosystem" says Francesca Bria, Commissioner of Digital Technology and Innovation of Barcelona. She is the driving force behind the City's Digital Transformation Plan, which - among other things - aims to establish the use of Free Software and open data in the city's administration.

Step by step, all key applications shall be replaced with Free Software solutions until the city finally replaces its currently running Windows-system with a suitable GNU/Linux-system. Therewith, Barcelona is heading to achieve and guarantee "complete technological sovereignty" for the municipality. By spring of 2019, when its municipal term of office ends, the City Council has planned to spend 70 percent of its software budget on open-source software.

With this in mind, Barcelona has been the first city council to sign the Open Letter of our "Public Money Public? Code!" campaign. The FSFE is very pleased to see one of European's biggest metropolitan areas moving to Free Software, and we wish Barcelona much success!

I love Free Software Day

Every year, our community celebrates "I Love Free Software Day" on February 14. Our report from this year's celebration is coming soon but we like to say thank you for hundreds of love declarations via social media channels, pictures of people celebrating their favourite Free Software projects like Developers Italia, beautiful artworks like the one from Grise Bouille as well as multiple blog posts informing about the benefits of Free Software. We even found people opening issues on project's development platforms, just to say "Thank You!" on "I love Free Software Day".

Thank you for celebrating with us and stay tuned for the detailed report coming soon.

People celebrating #IloveFS 2018

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What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE The day before FOSDEM, the FSFE once again partnered up with OpenForum Europe for the third edition of European Free Software Policy Meeting to discuss the most important current policy issues on European level regarding Free Software. The FSFE country team Italy is running an "Ask your candidates" campaign and sent a set of questions about the use and promotion of Free Software to the participating parties of the Italian national elections, happening on March 4. The "besondere elektronische Anwaltspostfach (beA)" is publicly financed software aiming to establish a secure communication between lawyers in Germany from January 2018. Its usage, however, is currently being withheld for multiple security issues. The FSFE published an open letter to demand the full publication of beA under a Free Software license. At the 34th Chaos Communication Congress the FSFE, together with EDRi, set up a cluster called “Rights & Freedoms” with its own freedom related track. Erik Albers wrote a report about it on his blog. Daniel Pocock, the FSFE community representative, writes about Everything you didn't know about FSFE in a picture in which he analyses overlapping relationships between staffers, Council, community and the General Assembly. Vanitasvitae reports about his trip to XSF-summit, FOSDEM and the importance of XMPP libraries Daniel Pocock distributed an email to the FSFE community in that he reflected the GA membership process, the FSFE's identity process and his personal travels. Sebastian Schauenburg shares his insides on sharing local OsmAnd and Geo URL's Polina Malaja, the FSFE's policy analyst, writes about our response to the PSI Directive public consultation that in short asks to include source code into the list of re-usable public sector information. Do not miss it! Upcoming events with the FSFE

We are happy to see a first local FSFE meet-up happening in Madrid, Spain, on February 22 and on March 3. We wish all participants to spend their time at the meet-up in a positive and fruitful manner. If you are from the area, do not miss it.

By the way: If you miss a local FSFE group in your area but you like to start one, get in contact with our community coordinator Erik Albers who is happy to help you with the first steps.

Get Active

Have you found an interesting Free Software story online that you would like to share? Maybe you have a question that you like to discuss with other Free Software activists? Or you like to announce your upcoming Free Software event or report about a recent one? Then post it on one of our public mailing lists and share it with the community! We currently have active public mailing lists in English, German, Spanish, and Greek.

If you live in Italy, contact your local candidates during their current election-campaigns, point them towards our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign and ask them the questions that we have also sent to the participating parties or similar ones.

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 editor, Erik Albers

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FSFE Italy asks political parties about their positions on Free Software

In light of the upcoming elections in Italy on March 4th, the FSFE country team Italy sent out multiple questions to the participating parties to challenge them on their position about Free Software in public administration and education. We will publish and analyse their answers once we receive them.

At the Free Software Foundation Europe, we believe that we can and should make Free Software and Open Standards an issue in all elections, be they on a European, national, regional, or local level. That is why the FSFE uses the time in the runup to elections to ask politicians about their stance on Free Software and Open Standards in our Ask Your Candidates framework.

Recently, the FSFE country team Italy sent multiple questions to the participating parties in the Italian general election, happening on March 4th. The questions are about the parties' positions on the use of Free Software and Open Standards within public administrations and their willingness to replace proprietary formats. More questions are about the use of Free Software in public education and about their stand on Art. 68 and 69 of the "Codice Amministrazione Digitale" as well as on net neutrality. We will publish and analyse their answers once we receive them.

"With this campaign we like to remind Italian politicians about the importance of Free Software and the execution of Article 68 and 69 of the Codice Amministrazione Digitale that public administrations are obliged to comply with." says Natale Vinto, FSFE's coordinator Italy. "On the other hand we like to give Italian voters a chance for this election to easily know about the participating parties positions on Free Software."

Background: Art 68 and 69 of the "Codice Amministrazione Digitale" require public administrations in Italy to prefer internally made solutions and Free Software solutions over proprietary ones. Also, they have the duty to share the source code and documentation of self-developed software with public money. Unfortunately, these requirements still lack implementation a lot of times.

These are the questions that have been sent to the participating parties:

What is your position on the use of Free and Open Source Software within the public administration? Are you in favour of making the use of open standards obligatory for public administrations? Are you in favour of introducing the expansion and development of Free and Open Source Software into the school and university curricula? What is your stand in respect to the Digital Administration Code (in particular Art. 68 and 69: "Reuse of open solutions and standards") and in case of agreement, would you still modify anything in it? What is your position or that of your party on net-neutrality?

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European Free Software Policy Meeting 2018: more joint activities important for Free Software in Europe

Following the well-established tradition of gathering active Free Software groups before FOSDEM kicks off, the FSFE once again partnered up with OpenForum Europe for the third edition of European Free Software Policy Meeting in Brussels, the heart of European decision-making.

This time the purpose of the meeting was to shed light on topics important for Free Software in public policy all over Europe, not only within the European Union; and to exchange experience for any policy action within different regions in case similar concerns for Free Software pop up. Practice shows that they often do, and this is why it is important to be informed about similar actions in other parts of Europe, in order to be able to address corresponding concerns in a timely and effective manner.

17 different groups were represented at the European Free Software Policy Meeting 2018: from national Free Software groups to public sector representatives, and international organisations. Our participants deemed to be a diverse group, yet similar in the challenges we face on both national and European level.

Common challenges for Free Software in Europe and beyond

EU Copyright reform: Article 13 of the current copyright directive proposal can seriously hamper collaborative software development, and especially Free Software, imposing the use of mandatory upload filters, and illegal monitoring of their users. As a result of this proposal code repositories can be arbitrarily removed online. The directive proposal is currently being discussed by co-legislators in the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, which both are struggling to reach an agreement on controversial Article 13. Action within the Member States to "#savecodeshare" is needed more than ever, in order to make sure that decision-makers understand the repercussions of Article 13 for Free Software.

Software patents: while the EU legislation to impose patents on software was rejected back in 2005, patentability of software insinuates itself into policy discussions through other means. In particular, the Unitary Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) may in practice impose the patentability of software in the EU. By now 15 Member States have ratified the UPCA, without such Member States as post-Brexit UK and Germany whose support is necessary in order for the Unitary Patent Court system to start to function. A petition against UPCA ratification was run in the UK, however, there is a need for remaining Member States to be aware of the practical ramifications of UPCA for innovation and especially software business in Europe.

Open Standards: standardisation policies are still being infiltrated by closed standards disguised as "open", and tricky patent licensing practices that are only called "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) in the name of greater innovation. In fact, these practices only dilute the discourse. It is time the term "open standards" is used in accordance with the Free Software definition defined through 4 freedoms, and appropriate Free Software licences as approved by Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative. Otherwise, we will continue facing misconceptions about (un)equal treatment of Free Software in public procurement, where Free Software can be de facto excluded as a result of policies prescribing business models.

Public Money, Public Code: "All publicly funded newly-established software should be made publicly available under Free Software licence". This is the demand that the FSFE together with ca 116 other organisations and Free Software projects, as well as more than 16 000 individuals are asking from politicians. The campaign is aimed at gathering evidence about public expenditure on software and other IT services in public sector, to provide information that is easily understandable for decision-makers, and to equip Free Software activists all over the world with tools to ask their politicians during national elections to make sure that software paid with taxpayers money is made freely available to the public.

Ways to move forward

The meeting once again proved that there is a need to continuously exchange ideas, update each other on concerns and victories for Free Software, and experience we gather while pursuing our mutual goals to maintain the ecosystem for Free Software to flourish. More collaboration and staying informed is necessary in order to establish the "smart network" of Free Software activists all over Europe and beyond, where more joint activities can take place. We will continue to build on that resource to share information, and update each other on activities crucial for Free Software, and to establish meaningful collaborations to address common challenges for Free Software.

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Join the I Love Free Software Day 2018

The Free Software Foundation Europe calls on everyone to say "thank you" to all contributors to Free Software on 14 February. Last year the annual I Love Free Software Day has been committed with offline activism to tell people outside of our filter bubble about the importance of Free Software. This Wednesday, we will go back to our roots and focus on why this day has been invented in the first place: to celebrate the Free Software community.

Sticker for people loving Free Software (order)

Free Software is built upon collaboration and the desire for constant improvement. But over all these bug reports and milestones we sometimes forget to express our gratefulness to all the people making our daily lives so much easier and freer: developers, translators, designers, testers, or documentation writers, for large software suites or small helper tools.

Show your love for Free Software

You don't have to be a techie to benefit from the often invisible work of these people. Take a moment to think about which software made you enjoy your work and private life. Done? Then tell the world! Our campaign website, the last year's report, or the updated gallery of Free Software lovers may give you some inspiration.

Spread the word in the offline world with your friends and colleagues and be part of the #ilovefs crowd in online networks and blogs. Let's enjoy a lovely day packed with thankfulness and creativity!

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