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Let's get started. Welcome to the software freedom podcast. The podcast is brought to you by
the Free Software Foundation Europe. We are a charity that empowers users to control technology.
I'm Bonnie Mehring and today I'm here with my colleague Johanna Näder.
Johanna's is the FSFE's German team coordinator and he's also the person responsible for
the public money public code initiative and today we will talk about open washing.
Johanna's does sounds a lot like green washing but first of all thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for making the time. I'm really looking forward to our chat.
Thanks for having me for you always a pleasure. So open washing, it sounds a lot like green
washing but what is it? Yes indeed so I think this is one of the first thing that people think of
when hearing the term open washing and not knowing about it so it's similar to sound similar to
green washing so somehow it must be a misleading market behavior mislabeling your product or
something like this to fulfill certain criteria but so if you want to have a look at what it exactly
means in the field of Free Software. Yeah it's a bit different already and in the last spring so
in 2024 as the FSFE we conducted a community survey so we reached out to our community to get a
better overview of examples of opinions and strategies of open washers and this led to our
definition that we came up with and this definition is open washing means distributing
propriety software while creating the misleading impression that it is Free Software.
So we have two criteria that must be fulfilled the one thing is the product distributed must be
proprietary so the software is not or not completely Free Software and second criteria and
criterion is that there must be some sort of misleading communication around this so the
manufacturer somehow suggests in his communication that it is Free Software although that is not so
it's a form of mislabeling and typically it's used to have some sort of market advantage for
proprietary software products. Yeah that's so much about the definition I think maybe we should
take one step back because I already said something about proprietary software and Free Software
and a lot of our listeners will know what this means of course but I think it's especially important
for this topic because it's a lot about terms it's a lot about definitions and a lot about confusing
these definitions and terms so it's important for us to be very clear about against what free
software is and what it is not so to just make clear how open washers work so if we talk about free
software we mean software that yeah gives the users gives all users for basic freedoms for rights
which are the rights to use to study to share and to change or to improve the software
and these are granted by licenses they are lists of licenses and yeah if one of those
freedoms is not granted to the users then it is not Free Software so all of those four freedoms
must be there yeah I think this is exactly the point where open washers try to confuse terms
yeah all right I do have some questions here yeah sure let me shoot them so thank you
first of all for the distinction between Free Software and proprietary software my question now is
you already mentioned that it could be a Free Software that is not fully free or that it could be
like in part free would this then also count as a washing or is the second criteria the one about
the communication around it does this also is the case if a Free Software product has some parts
that are for example an extra function or something like that that would not be available would that be
count as open washing I know what you mean yes this depends again so if we have those types of software
that some people call open core or sometimes we have a community edition and there's an enterprise
edition so the community edition is Free Software and the enterprise edition comes with additional
add-ons which are proprietary this can be open washing not necessarily but washing can happen here
if the public gets the impression that everything is Free Software so if you have a community
edition and enterprise edition for example and the manufacturer gives the impression that
everything is open source of Free Software but you need the enterprise edition in order to have
those add-ons that you really need for your purpose and those are proprietary but you're not well
informed about this and you cannot obtain the code even if you receive the yeah the software you
don't get the code and you don't get the full freedoms that you need so in this case it would be
open washing if this misleading communication is around that does it make this this part clearer
already it does it does now I'm very curious about other strategies that are around open
washing I can imagine that different companies or that different projects have different strategies
and that there are a lot of strategies that exist in this kind of marketing space you know what I
mean so can you elaborate a bit on them yes we it's also something that we asked the community
in this community survey and yeah people that answered our survey and contributed there came up
with several examples and also yeah informed us about strategies or by that we could collect those
strategies and one thing that definitely happens a lot is bus wording or misleading names so companies
have a lot the word open in their communication or free but mostly it's the word open that they have
in their communication around the product that it's that is proprietary or even they have misleading
names so a very prominent example here is open AI the company that property you are know of course
that's behind chatty pt which is of course not open but it's already the name of the company so
people who don't know about we software will have the feeling that wow this is very open so this
kind of bus wording of misleading names is meant to confuse things so whenever you come about something
that's only open then you can it's it's not you cannot be sure that it's open washing but you
should maybe have a closer look if the code is really there if you really get the far freedoms so
this would be one thing one other thing is misleading licensing or hidden license changes it's
something that we've seen a lot during the last years that some manufacturers had a software that
was released under Free Software license but then at some point they added something to the license
and to the Free Software license and then it wasn't the Free Software license anymore because there
additional condition like can only be used for private purposes and not for business purposes
or something like that and the public wasn't really informed about this there was a license change
and it wasn't really Free Software anymore so this is I think pretty pretty popular of course
there are also companies that start from the beginning with a license that it's not a Free Software
license but really sounds like one so and they also say it's Free Software it's open source
and then you take a look at the well known software so Free Software license lists that are
you can you can take a look at the Free Software Foundation or at the Debian project or at the
open source initiative they have those lists of Free Software of acknowledged Free Software licenses
and if this software license isn't there then it's probably not Free Software and it's not a free
software license yes one other thing one other strategy might be having Free Software client software
but depends on proprietary server so far instance if you have telegram it's a Free Software client
but it depends on proprietary server and you can't really use it without the server one other
strategy there there even more but maybe this is worth mentioning is manufacturers who try to
secretly redefine open source they continue to do the open source bus wording and say we are
very open source here's the source code the source code is available that source available
and of course this is not not enough because if you have the source code it's not sufficient to make a
software Free Software if you don't have the other rights if you can modify it if you can distribute it
so source available source available software isn't the same as open source software and
or Free Software and if companies try to give this impression they try to confuse the terms
and this as I said a lot what's happening here so confusing the terms making people unsure
giving people the wrong impression that it is Free Software and in the end it is not
okay so that sounds like there are a lot of strategy around open washing to be honest like
there's a lot of different approaches how to do this but is there also a clear cut where you say
okay this is not open washing and this is not a Free Software project anymore because it was
realized and this was communicated very clearly can you also state some things that you would say
they are not open washing yes absolutely so you already mentioned it so if a proprietary software
product is clearly labeled as proprietary so if they don't do this open bus wording around if they
don't claim it to be Free Software or open source then it's also not open washing also if someone's
forking a Free Software and releasing fork as proprietary but being very honest about this saying
this is proprietary then it's not open washing and also if a company is taking the code made by
others of a software product and selling it without giving back to the original producer this is not
really open washing it doesn't have anything to do with it so I think we should be very precise
in our communication around open washing while those examples may be problematic for us free
software and we criticize them and we are not very happy that this kind of stuff happens let's
still not call them open washing to remain very clear in our analysis let's always check those
two criteria in the beginning it must be proprietary and there must be misleading communication
suggesting that it is Free Software or open source software all right maybe there are also some
borderline cases so is it already open washing to call a proprietary product open blabla open
something so open AI or is it already open washing to call a software open or source available
without mentioning open source of Free Software I would say yes in my personal opinion it is
because it confuses the public about what is really Free Software and this is what open washing
is all about all right thank you very much Johannes for this introduction to open washing my last
question in disregard of the introduction is the survey you have mentioned the survey in our
few times and I would like to know is it available for the public is there can others look into it
and how was the survey conducted and what stuck out for you the most in this in those answers what
was was there something that really surprised you so first yes it's available we don't link it
on our website because so we I usually have a QR code in my in my parks when I talk about this
and we I think we can also add the link in the in the show notes so everyone who's listening here
if you have something that you want to contribute there you can of course still do that so it's
open and we receive your answers what struck me the most is that there it was so pretty much everyone
who answered there agreed about what is open washing and so it seems to be pretty pretty clear
in the end at least in the in the community at least in that part of the community that took part
in our survey it seems to be pretty clear and everyone came up with with examples also and everyone
was also very clear in the in stating that it is a huge problem for Free Software and it's a
huge problem for the idea of public money public code so that if we if public administrations
spend money on software then it should be also Free Software because it misleads the public about
taxpayer funded software and somehow it also cements the vendor lock in and its hampers
tax guarantees so everyone in this survey was very very much agreeing on this point that is
that it is a big problem for public money public code for Free Software and for
the idea of tax sovereignty through Free Software I'm very happy to add that link and I find
it's very fascinating that this is something that everybody is aware of even if there has not been
quite a clear communication around this before because I think you started this like in the last
year and I find this really fascinating that it has been a topic of people before we started
the communication around this you know what I mean it has been definitely so we are not the first
ones that are talking about it and being honest of watching is not new and so it has been around
since yeah basically since people started to sell Free Software or sell services around free
software so it's really something that has been around for decades now and as a topic also it has
been discussed for many years sometimes under other labels but open washing is pretty much the term
that's being used today still I think it's growing I have a feeling and also many people from
those from the survey had the feeling that it's growing issue because there's more interest now
in Free Software especially from the public sector so we see debates about digital sovereignty
or tech sovereignty across Europe and several member states also on the European level and many
experts also we as the FSFE say that Free Software is a prerequisite for tech sovereignty
yeah suddenly there's more public interest in Free Software to get closer to this idea of
tech sovereignty and in this situation apparently also there's more money in the game so states and
administrations start to spend more money for Free Software or also we want them to even
spend more money for Free Software in the future and if there's more money then they're certainly
parties around that want to get their piece of the cake and yeah there are different strategies to
get there one is to really produce Free Software but if you don't want to do that for several reasons
then you might come to the idea that it's good idea to do open washing but of course it is not so
all right um Johannes you already mentioned quite a lot of the problems around
open washing and especially also in regard to public administration but can you drive into them
again for me and elaborate a bit more on them yeah sure so I already mentioned public money public
code so that's our initiative our initiative we started some years ago to to make it clear that
wherever administration spent money on on software public money on software then it should be
Free Software it should be open source software so public code and yeah open washing
misleads the public about taxpayer finance funded software and the idea of this public money
public code is that the state public administrations are nowadays pretty much in a vendor lock-ins
so they are dependent from vendors with a lot of market influence that use their product being
proprietary to lock the administrations in and make it very very hard for them to to change
to move to another software to another product and now the whole idea or a big part of the idea
of public money public code is to use Free Software to break this vendor lock-in and to help
administrations to break out of it to break out of this vendor lock-in and yeah we in the future
hopefully at some point we'll have some thing like mandatory Free Software first policies
or public money public code legislation that makes it mandatory for administrations
if they procure software then it must be Free Software and then if companies in those tenders
in those procurement process try to place their proprietary products secretly calling it open
source calling it Free Software then this is really a problem because in the end we again have
proprietary software we again have the vendor lock-in and for the administrations nothing really
changes and this of course is a yeah it's a big problem also for the debate around tech sovereignty
about digital sovereignty because what what is meant by this is in the end public administrations
have the chance to control to modify to change their and to to to change it also to to being
control of their digital infrastructure which is only possible with Free Software not with proprietary
products even if they are made in Europe which is which is now a big discussion by European
as an answer for as an answer to the dependencies that we have on software companies from the US
from China from other countries so but by European is not the solution because in the end it will
lead us again lead our administrations again into dependencies from from proprietary products from
companies who sell proprietary products so Free Software is what we need there and open washing
again it confuses a lot here we must somehow do something against it
and how can we counter open washing is there other strategies or yeah how can we step up and
promote or advocate more for a Free Software because this is what we do we want to have Free Software
yeah of course let's maybe distinguish there what can public administrations do and what can we
all do so public administrations and of course we want and we as the Free Software Foundation
Europe want to help public administrations on on this way they should try of course to reduce
the risk of open washing when awarding contracts and for this they need expertise
they need reliable structures and institutions that know about this problem that somehow come up
with knowledge and strategies how to reduce the risk of open washing and very important for
procurement we think is a tendering criteria so procurement criteria that try to keep open
brushes out of the game in the end always a good checkpoint good checkbox for public administrations
is do we with this and that product maintain the ability to change at some later point or do we
run into a new lock-in and also important is the willingness to learn so it's good to learn how
we can avoid traps how we can avoid pitfalls and like open washing in this process and of course
it's important also for public administrations because they are also in in some cases developing
software to avoid their own open washing so also by this it's good to have license criteria which
licenses to use they can use tools like our reuse tool which helps them to yeah also to
to label and licensing of their software products it's good for them to do open development to code
in the open to do that maybe on on the open code platform so the code sharing platform for public
administrations in Germany or in other countries the respective open code platforms they should try
to be compliant and get their products maybe included in Linux distributions they should aim at
multi-stakeholder participation to make it less likely that there happens something like open
washing or they run into vendor lock-ins and also yeah to build up expertise to not run into
open washing situations so that's on the part of the public administrations what can we all do of
course we all can if we if we are programming if we are coding we can try to and we should and
definitely should try to avoid own open washing also I think is what we're working on is that we
all should try to develop a deeper understanding of open washing of the strategies of red flags
yeah that might be a hint to open washing and if we understand it better ourselves then it's
important that we start to raise awareness for the topic by talking about it in the public so give
talks about it talk to public administrations to decision makers to politicians to raise awareness
and also we should monitor open washing so be very yeah yeah keep our eyes open to see what happens
if it happens somewhere if we see it happen it's good to ask to educate to convince so go there
talk to the people ask them why did they change your license why do you call it open if it's not
in some cases this might really help so there's an interesting maybe you can also add this in the
in the show notes there's a person who's running a repository and collecting open washing cases
there the then brown also trying to he's also trying to contact people behind those open washing
cases to convince them to stop this behavior and to go back to releasing it Free Software or at least
saying clearly that it's proprietary so in some cases this also works this also helps
but in many cases of course it will not and then it's really important that we so we as the
FSFE also we as the Free Software community that we identify and that we criticize
open washing cases that we speak up if this happens let's not remain silent I think this is very
important to to not let it happen and to yeah to yeah have a public debate about this because it's
really a problem if it happens and yeah keep us from reaching our goals in terms of having more
Free Software in public administration of having public money public code and also it's a problem
for ourselves if we cannot be sure that software that we ourselves want to use is free or not because
it's really somehow confusing I would love to link this repo I think this sounds very interesting
I find it very fascinating that Dan Brown is actually reaching out to the projects there
do you have any experience in how it is when you reach out some of the projects or do we be
do this as Free Software Foundation Europe and reach out to projects that are going in the
direction of open washing and what is the reaction that you experience the most there yes actually
we do that and we we have done it in the past for example yeah in a case that happened in Germany
two years ago when data port data port is a public IT provider provider when data port offered
digitally sovereign workspace for public administration so workspace a suit of tools for public
administrations the so-called DE-Phoenix suite and it was of course funded with taxpayers money of
course I promised two digital sovereignty to German public administrations and it was actually
also based on Free Software components like Nextcloud, Jitsi and Colabora and they even called it
open source but of course we found out yeah if you look for the code the code of the whole product
wasn't released there were links to some yeah to some repos of the original components but you
couldn't install the whole thing on your server or deploy it yourself and it was also not handed
to eligible parties so we received the lock-in to the to the product but we never received the code
when asking for it so data port is owned by several German federal states and apparently they
wanted to make sure that they were the only ones to be able to deploy the software suite
as the software suite to make the most money out of it and yeah so we asked them about the code
we asked several times we didn't get it we criticized this internally towards them and they were
apparently seeing that there is a problem but yeah saying that at some point at some later point
it will be released and please have a look at those original repos that we are linking on our
website but it wasn't the whole code so we at some point started to criticize this publicly and
others also did and we followed up regularly as I said we tried to be in this watchdog role around
this case and what happened at the same time is that the German center for digital sovereignty
and so centers released a similar product product to DE-Phoenix and this was Free Software so at some
point during the last two years data port must have realized that with this kind of critical
publicity from our site and from others and also with the site of Free Software competition from
centers their open washing strategy doesn't work so today they don't have DE-Phoenix they don't have
this open washing suite on their portfolio anymore of course we would have preferred if they had
decided to release the full code under Free Software license but still one case less of open
washing for us this is a success so if we talk to organizations to companies to also to public
administrations about this topic about potential on open washing we are glad if they pick up our
arguments and if they try to to go in the direction of Free Software and public money public code
rather than open washing if this doesn't work if it's not the case yeah they can be sure that at
some point we will speak up about this and I think it's also important that yeah that we as a
community that we do that you mentioned speaking up but I guess there's no central institute that
others can contact and say oh there's an open washing case so what happens if somebody of our
listeners would now encounter a product a Free Software product for example that would go in a
direction of open washing or that would go in a direction of open core what could they do I mean
there's also no legal option for them so do you have any advice yeah so as you said it's a
it's a bad practice it's harmful towards Free Software and our communities but in most cases it's
not a legal so the legal options are really limited you cannot just go there and say I'm going to
sue you because you're doing open washing in most cases it's not possible and as you also said there
is no such thing as a reporting center for open washing so as a consequence the whole debate around
open washing is always a debate around public opinions around political views decision-making
and also around best practices so what you all can do what we all can do is to have a deep
understanding of the problem it's reasons the strategies the consequences and that to raise
awareness to talk to people about open washing also like like I already said to can't give it
to try to talk to potential or obvious open washes but it's very good if you find cases and you're
not sure about how to deal with that and you really think it's important and also important for
yeah it might help our public money public code you can always contact us and tell us about this
so as I said this the survey in the in the show notes you can use this or you can also just write
an email to contact at FSFE:.org and this will really help us we will in many cases not go there
and convince them or not will be able to convince them that they stop this behavior stop this
open washing behavior but we can use those examples for the debate we can use it for raising awareness
around the topic and we give sometimes counsel to public administration to public administrations
who want to go in the direction of public money public code so we can also tell them about those
examples to help them better understand the situations and also to help them better understand
where our potential players that go more in the direction of open washing thank you
do I think I find this a very helpful advice let me maybe add one thing which you always can do to
support our case against open washing become a supporter of the FSFE: so that's really easy just
go to FSFE:.org slash donate also I think you will find the link in the in the show notes and yeah
start supporting us with a regular donation every month this really helps us because our work is
funded by donations mainly and yeah really depend on your donations so this would be really something
where you can also contribute and if you want to become active it's also something that you can do
check out our website there are described many ways how you can become active with the FSFE:
but again donations are the easiest thing it's really easy just yeah maybe consider to help us
that way which will also really help Free Software and public money public code thank you so much
for being here thank you so much for your time thank you so much for elaborating on open washing
and yet taking us on this journey there and letting us dive into this topic thank you so much
Bonnie that's really pleasure to talk with you thanks all right dear listeners thank you so
much for being with us thank you so much for listening to us this was the software freedom podcast
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hi i'm Daragh from the FSFE island next you will hear Bonnie and I talking about how and why I got
involved the Free Software Foundation Europe and Free Software as a whole my first contact with
the FSFE: was actually the software freedom podcast so thank you for that it's um I'd gotten
into Linux for a while i'd been using open source because uh I was opening my computer every day
and it felt like I had to personally fist fight Microsoft every morning and I was going insane
so I started looking more into kind of the ethos around open source and I find the software freedom
podcast and I really loved it I thought it was really interesting stuff with really great content
really insightful talks so then I applied for an internship at the FSFE: because I noticed there was
an opening and I happened to get it after a very entertaining interview I will say it was
pretty funny at the time because uh I accidentally joined the wrong room and then there was some
chasing around so do you know those scenes and cartoons with scooby-doo when they're all coming out
of doorways and then someone's coming out of another doorway I was doing this for about 15 minutes
uh I think at some point I might have ended up fun like a team skull with someone else somehow i
don't even know what FSFE: doesn't use teams it was uh an entertaining disaster zone for 15 minutes
but finally it went well enough I don't know and then i've got an internship so then I worked
with the FSFE: as an intern and i've stayed on as a volunteer fixing some things around the place
and uh I think that's about that that's a really really funny story I don't know
yeah okay so you knew the FSFE: before but why what made you stay like what was the reason for
you to say oh yeah I do this internship and then after this internship you stick around I stay
around at the FSFE: and work with the FSFE: because I think the FSFE: does really incredible work with
the governments of Europe in particular the European Union there's a lot of Free Software projects
and they do their best writing great code and doing really great community work but to properly
support them there needs to be organizations talking to government and talking to large organizations
to make sure those people get the support they need and I think the FSFE: is one of the premier
organizations on the planet are doing that right now so I'm happy to be a part of that really excellent
work thank you and what would you say to a person that you wouldn't meet and that wants to join the
FSFE: by they should join the FSFE: so support or volunteer I would say that people should work with
and support the FSFE: because if you want to get up every morning and use tech devices and not
feel like the entire time like you're fighting with someone who wants to steal all of your information
sell it to someone and also make you buy like new shoes or something you should work with the
FSFEe because otherwise that's what it feels like every day thank you