Current text of the program and suggestions

CEEP 2024 Free Software
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The free software part of the current program is as follows:

Pirates support the promotion of software that can be used, analyzed, disseminated and modified by anyone. Free/Libre Open Source Software is essential for users’ control of their own technical systems and provides a significant contribution to strengthening the autonomy and privacy of all users.

Free Software, Formats, and Protocols in Public Administration

Citizens’ data must be processed, managed and secured with Free Software tools wherever possible. Proprietary software may only be used as long as Free Software cannot effectively be used or created for that specific purpose.

Free Software reduces administrative costs, promotes local technical support and increases the ability to identify malicious code. We will drive the migration of the public sector to Free Software so that there is no longer a dependency on specific suppliers.

Citizens and businesses must not be forced to use proprietary software when dealing with public administration. Online communication with government must be based on free and vendor-neutral protocols and formats.

Admittedly shorter than some other parts, but certainly quite a good way to start. I feel that perhaps this time we want to go a little further into the specifics. I’ll be posting some suggestions and ideas here as time goes on - anyone else, feel free to chip in as well.

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Here’s my revised version of the base text:

Here’s a view of the differences:

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image1675×352 109 KB

I’ll probably add some more things before submitting this section. Anyone else, feel free to discuss / add your own points.

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Before the next meeting (TBA on the mailing list), this may be a good read. I may also borrow some sections from it, as well as other GNU writeups, for this bit of the program.
Some of them are covered in other parts of the program though.

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When I was telling about the need for much more cooperation among EU members at the last meeting and mentioning something like national OSPOs (Open Source Programme Offices) that could be instrumental to developing common FOSS software needed and other cooperation, I mentioned that some French-originating initiative is coming to realization that could be helpful here for hosting such OSPO as part of it. It is called EU Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC) and I managed to gather some more info about it.

Some historical info for understanding the origin

And this lead to Policy Programme: Path to the Digital Decade where EDICs are defined and there is more info in European Digital Infrastructure Consortium User Guide. As I understood some representitive from our Slovenian government these EDICs are now being set up across EU and they are in the phase of gathering info of interest and expertise that could help those offices.

So I think this is a great place to use for such cooperation needs and to bring in FOSS ideas/practices in.

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Oh and another comment which I do not remember if I mentioned at the last meeting…

I think it would be good to emphasize a bit more strongly that insisting on actually using only free and open formats/protocols/standards are the necessary prerequisite for FOSS to even have an equal chance to be considered in various public tenders and such, so in other words to even have a level playing field.

As these days I often see this in public tenders they do not consider such things and public administrations so often work closed in into the cage of proprietary formats, and exchange such closed format documents among themselves, and even put documents onto web pages which are not in free and open formats.

I think all work, exchange and publishing of any document in public administrations/sector should be exclusively done in open formats if FOSS is to have an equal chance at practically being considered and used.

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I think it would be good to emphasize a bit more strongly that insisting on actually using only free and open formats/protocols/standards are the necessary prerequisite for FOSS to even have an equal chance to be considered in various public tenders and such, so in other words to even have a level playing field.

That is a very good idea. Perhaps the

It must always be based on free and vendor-neutral protocols and formats.

section at the end could be replaced with something like:

It must never be based on proprietary forms of communication designed to only work with specific, usually non-free software. Instead, it must use open, interoperable, vendor-neutral protocols and formats.

We probably don’t want to add examples directly into the program, but a good one would be citizen ID apps not only being proprietary, but also nonfunctional on devices with custom ROMs like GrapheneOS.

Which also leads me to another blurb I feel we should add:

Government-provided software such as mobile ID cards must, as long as it is technologically possible, be functional on free and open source operating systems, even those not installed by default or officially supported by device vendors. Artificial restrictions on these should not be imposed.

So, the current text suggestion would look like this:

Pirates support the promotion of software that can be used, analyzed, disseminated and modified by anyone. Free/Libre, Open Source Software is essential for users’ control of their own technical systems and provides a significant contribution to strengthening the autonomy and privacy of all users.

Free Software, Formats, and Protocols in Public Administration

Citizens’ data must be processed, managed and secured with Free Software tools wherever possible. Proprietary software may only be used as long as Free Software cannot effectively be used for that specific purpose, and the option of creating such a piece of software is not viable.

Free Software reduces administrative costs, promotes local technical support and significantly strengthens security - for example, by allowing anyone to easily check for malicious, vulnerable or backdoored code embedded within software. We will drive the migration of the public sector to Free Software so that there is no longer a dependency on specific suppliers.

Citizens and businesses must never be forced to use proprietary software when dealing with public administration or any other communication with their government. It must never be based on proprietary forms of communication designed to only work with specific, usually non-free software. Instead, it must use open, interoperable, vendor-neutral protocols and formats.

Government-provided software such as mobile ID cards must, as long as it is technologically possible, be functional on free and open source operating systems, even those not installed by default or officially supported by device vendors. Artificial restrictions on these should not be imposed.

I’ll look through some other things we could add before tonight’s meeting. I’ve still been quite swamped with work lately, I wish I could’ve done it sooner, but better (slightly) late than never, eh?

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Yes, that seems like a really good initiative. Still, I’d avoid mentioning it in particular as it’s impossible to know how it will turn out, but here’s what I’ve come up with:

We plan to implement initiatives that will encourage member states’ governments to set up their own Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs). This will greatly enhance the ability to create and collaborate on free software that can be (re)used across the Union.

Feel free to rewrite this in a better manner.

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Final text before the meeting, then, with the major changes highlighted:

Pirates support the promotion of software that can be used, analyzed, disseminated and modified by anyone. Free/Libre, Open Source Software is essential for users’ control of their own technical systems and provides a significant contribution to strengthening the autonomy and privacy of all users.

Free Software, Formats, and Protocols in Public Administration

Citizens’ data must be processed, managed and secured with Free Software tools wherever possible. Proprietary software may only be used as long as Free Software cannot effectively be used for that specific purpose, and the option of creating such a piece of software is not viable.

Free Software reduces administrative costs, promotes local technical support and significantly strengthens security - for example, by allowing anyone to easily check for malicious, vulnerable or backdoored code embedded within software. We will drive the migration of the public sector to Free Software so that there is no longer a dependency on specific suppliers. We also plan to implement initiatives that will encourage member states’ governments to set up their own Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs). This will greatly enhance the ability to create and collaborate on free software that can be (re)used across the Union.

Citizens and businesses must never be forced to use proprietary software when dealing with public administration or any other communication with their government. It must never be based on proprietary forms of communication designed to only work with specific, usually non-free software. Instead, it must use open, interoperable, vendor-neutral protocols and formats.

Government-provided software such as mobile ID cards must, as long as it is technologically possible, be functional on free and open source operating systems, even those not installed by default or officially supported by device vendors. Artificial restrictions on these should not be imposed.

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I’ve put the final version of the draft here. Feel free to post any notes or thoughts here if you wish, we can still modify things before the conference starts.