"Public Money? Public Code!": more languages, more supporters, more awareness

on: 2018-07-26

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The "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign has received an updated set of translations, including the website, open letter and video. The Free Software Foundation Europe has also conducted interviews to ask public administrations about the benefits of public code, which are now available on our website.

Why is software, created using taxpayers' money, not released as Free Software? We've started raising this question with our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign, and since then we've received a lot of international attention and support.

One key element for reaching out to as many people as possible is to have translations into their native language. That's why, as of today, our campain website is translated in 18 languages, spoken in Europe and beyond. The corresponding and popular campaign video is dubbed into 6 different languages (English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Russian) and offers subtitles in a total of 16 languages. If you haven't done yet, be sure to check whether your language is already supported!

Meanwhile, an important part of the campaign is the corresponding open letter. Almost 18.000 individuals and 150 organisations signed this letter, in which we demand that code, paid by the people, should be available to the people. Among the subscribers are very prominent Free Software and Internet user right's organisations, as well as a first public administration, the City Council of Barcelona. To understand the motivation behind the Council's decision, we conducted an interview with, Francesca Bria, CTO of Barcelona, who explains how using Free Software helps to build a more democratic, inclusive and sustainable digital society.

In another interesting interview, in relation to the PMPC campaign, we recently asked Elena Muñoz Salinero, who leads the Technology Transfer Centre of the Spanish Government, about best practices for the re-use of software solutions by publishing code under Free Software licenses between public administrations.

We will keep running our call for signatures until the European Elections 2019, which is less than a year away. So, now is the time to take action and let your political representatives know about the benefits of public code. If you have not yet done so, please help us by signing our open letter. After having signed it, do ask your friends, colleagues, or the buddies on your favourite social media channel to sign it too.

Public Money? - Public Code!