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Modernising Public Infrastructure with Free Software
Free Software Foundation Europe
What i s Free Software?
The principles of Free Software are simple but its licencing and synonyms add complexity. We explain the basics.
The term Free Software was created in 1986 by Richard M. Stallman. Free Software refers to freedom, not price. It guarantees its users the essential four freedoms. The absence of at least one of these freedoms means an application is proprietary, so non-Free Software.
The Four Freedoms
| Free Software can be used for any purpose and is free of restrictions such as licence expiry or geographic limitations. | Use | Study | Free Software and its code can be studied by anyone, without non-disclosure agreements or similar restrictions. |
| Free Software can be shared and copied at virtually no cost. | Share | Improve | Free Software can be modified by anyone, and these improvements can be shared publicly. |
Licences
The four freedoms are given by a software’s licence. The Free Software Foundation[1] and the Open Source Initiative[2] maintain lists of reviewed and approved licences. An application can usually not be considered Free Software, if its licence does not appear in these lists.
There are a multitude of licences with different focal points. The actual selection is a strategic question but you are advised to pick one of the most widely used licences.
Synonyms
Over the course of time, people came up with additional labels for Free Software[3]. Often the motivation for these terms is to highlight different aspects and to avoid confusion.
| Free Software The original term, created in 1986 |
Open Source | Set up as a marketing campaign for Free Software in 1998 |
| Libre Software | Initiated to avoid the ambiguity of the English word free, borrowed from French and Spanish | |
| FOSS / FLOSS | Abbreviations for Free (Libre) and Open Source Software |
The level of freedom a particular software offers is always determined by the licence, not the label. In other words, don’t get confused by different terms for the same features.
Contents
- 6
- How to digitise public administration without losing control?
- 10
- Is the public sector allowed to release i ts own public code?
- 18
- How does digital sustainability work in practice?
- 22
- Why does openness improve IT security?
- 29
- How do we modernise public procurement?
| Editorial by Matthias Kirschner, President of the FSFE |
3 |
| What is Free Software? | 4 |
| Using Free Software to Democratise Smart Cities Interview with Francesca Bria, CTIO Barcelona City Council |
6 |
| The Costs of Vendor Lock-In | 8 |
| Hidden Champions | 9 |
| The Impact of Free Software on Competition by Prof. Dr. Simon Schlauri, expert on competition law |
10 |
| Myths about Free Software | 12 |
| Making Business and Economic Sense of Free Software by Cedric Thomas, CEO OW2 |
14 |
| Infographic: Modernise your IT | 16 |
| Lessons from Open Sourcing in Switzerland by Dr. Matthias Stürmer, Research Center for Digital Sustainability |
18 |
| Different Options of Releasing Free Software by Dr. Matthias Stürmer, Research Center for Digital Sustainability |
20 |
| Blackbox Election Software Interview with Constanze Kurz, spokesperson CCC |
21 |
| An Open Approach to IT Security by Lori Roussey and Fernanda G. Weiden, cybersecurity experts |
22 |
| International Cooperation through Free Software | 24 |
| EU Projects and Policies Supporting the Use of Free Software | 26 |
| Reprogramming Procurement Law | 28 |
| How to Procure Free Software by Basanta E. P. Thapa, Competence Center for Public IT, Fraunhofer Institute |
29 |
| First Steps to Support Free Software | 30 |
Using Free Software to Democratise Smart Cities
Free Software has become a core element of Barcelona’s smart city and digitalisation agenda. In this interview, Francesca Bria, Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer (CTIO) for the Barcelona City Council, explains how Free Software is supporting innovation.
In your work, you often refer to digital sovereignty and ethical digital standards. Could you briefly explain what digital sovereignty is, and what role Free Software has in relation to it?
I have been appointed as CTIO of Barcelona to rethink the digital and technology agenda of the city, in particular the smart city agenda. My mission is to democratise data and technology, and to rethink their governance in a way that serves the people.
Does it make a difference if a platform like Decidim is Free Software or not?[4] Free Software makes all the difference. First of all, government is investing public money and that’s why citizens should control the software and the platform should remain in the public domain. As one of the city’s biggest Free Software projects, we are learning a lot from Decidim Barcelona. We even had to change procurement standards to make sure that government legislation allows a platform that is managed and governed by a community. “… there is a lot of collaboration going on, without Free Software this would not be possible.” For us, privacy awareness, data sovereignty, distributed technology, and Free Software are key components of a city’s digital infrastructure. Due to another Free Software project, called Decode, we are adding a module to Decidim, which gives citizens control over their data. We ensure that the data is secure and anonymous, and that people can decide what data they want to keep private, and what data they want to donate to the city and on what terms.
What is the key advantage of Free Software in this respect?
The greatest possibility lies in the ability to see and inspect the code, learn from it, and reuse it. This is very important, because you can minimise the costs and concentrate on investing in human resources and capabilities instead of licensing.
Another key reason is technological sovereignty, which means getting away from vendor lock-in and dependency on big corporate players, being able to change providers, work with local entrepreneurs who respect users’ rights and freedoms, and retain control of our data. With proprietary software, everything was out sourced to external providers and experts, who work with specific technologies. We don’t want to keep losing this kind of inside knowledge.
Free Software allows us to work with communities, use the talent of Free Software developers and collaborate with other cities on joint projects. In the long run, you can be more autonomous, you can be more independent, and you can be more transparent. Moreover, publishing source code is a way to give taxpayers’ money back to society.
Last but not least, it is an ethical and political decision. Barcelona has a specific data sovereignty guide and digital ethics standards – regulations, which state that the digital information and infrastructure we use should be a public good, owned by citizens. Francesca Bria – Bria holds a PhD in Innovation Economics from Imperial College, London and an MSc on Digital Economy from Birbeck, University of London. She is a senior researcher and advisor for the European Commission on Future Internet and innovation policy. In five years, how do you think the situation will look?
Barcelona is constantly developing software applications and tools. When we start from scratch, we give preference to the use of Free and Open Source Software. Also, Barcelona’s Digital Transformation Plan has committed to investing 70% of its annual budget into Free and Open Source Software development.
“Now we have 3,000 companies that work with us … citizen over 60% are small and medium-sized companies.” We are gradually running a migration plan with a pilot project on migrating workstations to a completely free operating system, but this is not just about workstations, the whole informational infrastructure is moving towards open standards, open stack, and interoperability. Also, it is important for such decisions to not depend on one person or on the political orientation of one government. I think the right way to do such a major transition is to create empowerment for the workers, invest in training, and build knowledge-sharing processes inside the organisations.
Sentilo[5] is run by a consortium, and it has been reused in Dubai, in the US, in Italy, and in other parts of Europe. Decidim is used by many cities nowadays and we have ambitions to extend it. We also have other software projects like the digital ID, which we share locally with smaller town halls in Catalonia.
We are also doing interviews and research, to see which projects other cities have developed and published as Free Software. For instance, Helsinki has developed a very good app for transport sharing and they also have another app like ours. We are cooperating with Amsterdam and Torino, so there is a lot of collaboration going on. With out Free Software this would not be possible.
You mentioned you invest 70% of the new development budget into Free Software development. What effect does this have on the local economy?
It creates local Free Software and opens a tech ecosystem that can strengthen the collaborative innovation economy. Public procurement can create new markets and leverage local industry.
Modernise your IT
To talk about Free Softeare is to talk about freedom. More precisely, the freedom to freely use, study, share and improve software. And there are even more reasons to support Free Software licenses.
- Innovation – A Free Software license encourage innovation for your software.
- Competition – Free Software prevents monopolies amd enhance competetion.
- Autonomy – Free Software helps to develop and maintain tailored software that suits your needs, not just the vendors's bussines model.
- No Lock-in – Free Software licences reinforce independence from vendors and provide more choice in service providers.
- ↑ More information on different terms and licence categories: https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/basics/comparison
- ↑ https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
- ↑ https://opensource.org/licenses/category
- ↑ Decidim is a participatory democracy framework software that allows citizens to debate, attend meetings and create proposals with the goal of improving life in the city. The platform’s source code is publicly available, enabling other cities to use and adapt it to their own requirements. It is based on a similar Free Software project by the Madrid City Council, called Consul.
- ↑ Sentilo is a sensor and actuator platform aimed at municipalities or organisations that process large amounts of information received from the terrain. It processes information generated by various devices, like sensors for noise and air contamination or traffic congestion. It is used and supported by an active and diverse community of cities and companies.
