Dear listeners, thank you very much for listening to The Software Freedom Podcast.
And without any further ado, hello and welcome to this episode of The Software Freedom Podcast.
This 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, Alexander Sander,
who I've done multiple episodes with already. Hello, Alex.
Hello, hello.
And my former colleague, Max Meal.
Hi, Max. It's so nice to have you back here.
Hi, Bonnie. Hi, Alex. Great to be here.
Max, how are you? How has life been treating you?
It's been treating me very well, but currently it's quite busy.
We are in per-FOSDEM preparation, a lot of talks and Devroom organization is going on.
So yeah, but I'm happy to be here.
Which Devroom will you be organizing at FOSDEM?
I will be co-organizing the Railways and Open Transport Devroom since I've been working
or still working for Deutsche Bahn. And it's great because we collect their international
collection of companies, of railway companies, but also standardization bodies.
People from the transportation community working on create a free software tools.
And yeah, we are bringing them all together there for the fourth time in the row.
Wow. Is there something that you are very much looking forward to at the Devroom?
Is there a talk that you would highlight?
I think all of them are great, depending on what you're interested in.
What I especially like is a talk or multiple presentation about the open source railway designer
always RD. That's the flagship project of the Open Rail Association, which we've co-founded
as Deutsche Bahn. And yeah, that's really nice to see what they're all bringing together there,
and the many people that are involved there. And how this is really
accelerating the momentum of bringing free software development to the railway sector.
Oh wow, okay. I'm very much looking forward. Last year I tried to get into the
Devroom, but I didn't manage because the queue was so long.
What am I supposed to do? It's like... Go there earlier. Go there earlier.
Legal Devroom. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I can reserve you a place if you want to.
Or VIPs in the first row.
All right, I will come back to this later.
Alex, you are probably also really busy with the preparation of the policy in legal Devroom,
or? Yeah, that's true. So at the moment we are collecting slides from our speakers and try to have
everything on one laptop so that we have good presentations and short times for headovers.
Okay. Well, I'm very much looking forward to both Devrooms and very curious to see how
Fostam will be this next weekend. They're upcoming. But today we will not be talking about Fostam,
but we will be talking about the radio equipment directive.
Max and Alex, can you briefly give me a background? How are you connected to the radio equipment
directive? And yeah, how did you come in contact with RED?
I was active in this radio freedom activity and that was very different because there
the opposite position was clear. I mean, there were internet service providers that didn't want to
give us the full control over the routers or that we cannot choose the routers ourselves and put
free software on it if we wanted to. So there the conflict lines were quite clear. The radio
equipment directive, as I said before, is not really clear because I would say for us as the
free software community, 99% of what's in it is, yeah, it's not relevant to us. And we never
really knew from the, at least from the start, was actually the intention of the one article
that we found was a problem and a huge danger to free software in general. So to be honest,
when I first looked and read through the radio equipment directive, and I remember that very well
because back then I was working as a working student for 10 hours a week for the FSFE. So my time
was limited and I printed this huge directive, I don't know, 70, 80 pages on the university printer
had to pay for that, of course. And I read through it and I had my marker like a good student
is doing it. And I remember that I only marked this one article and I was like, is that really it?
Like, am I hunting a ghost here? Or is it just too small and just the detail that will never
hit reality? And yeah, as it turned out, it was always a more like an abstract danger,
but it could become within, yeah, blink of an eye or basically a delegated act to real threat
of free software. So from then on, when I really understood that and when I was sure that this
what we are afraid of can become reality and that this is not a really abstract that can be
very concrete, then it was also motivating. But on the other hand, of course, also demotivating because
explaining that to many people, to the many organizations and individuals that we worked with,
that was not easy. That was not an easy task. But definitely something from which I learned a lot.
All right, thank you very much for taking us back to this moment. I now see you in my mind.
Alex, when did you start to work on the radio equipment directive?
Yeah, basically, I was hoping that I never worked on this. But since Max left,
I got the file and Max prepared a very good handover. We had a longer call on this as well.
And when I looked at this, I was again, hoping that I don't really have to work on this. But
unfortunately, yeah, every half or every year, the radio equipment directive popped up,
and then normally I had to call Max and ask him again for some background questions.
Since this is so overwhelming, and there's so much going on, and there are so many details.
So I often was struggling again and had to ask him, is it really like this?
I said, I couldn't imagine. And I saw that I missed some things. So that's why I called him again
and again, and this regard. Thanks a lot, Max, for all the hours you spent with me on the radio
equipment directive, just to explain me what's going on there. Yeah, you know, Alex, that's a lot
of fun digging into the history of all of this. So this equipment directive has been staying with us
now for over 10 years, basically, right? Yeah, more than 10 years now. Wow. When you read the radio
equipment directive, what was in it? And can you take us through this step by step? And yeah,
it started in 2014, right? At least then the directive was like formerly approved.
So the directive, the radio equipment directive, with a beautiful name 2014 slash 53 slash EU,
was more or less just a successor to an earlier directive. And that's, Alex will know better than I do,
that that's quite normal in the European policy area, that you have older directives and you
you modernize them, you harmonize more standards within. And so this wasn't replacing this directive
from 1999. And many contents were more or less the same or yeah, modernized to the to the
current technologies at the time. But this directive, like this new edition or this new version,
this update contained also some articles and some regulations more on security, on safety,
and also abuse prevention. And yeah, when I read through it, there was only one article really
striking out, like reading that through the classes of the free software. And that is article 33i.
And if you want to, I can, I can just cite it because it's not really long and but there is the
whole gist of it. And that is the basis of 10 years of activity for the FSFE. And the article 33i is
radio equipment, chance support, certain features in order to ensure that software can only be loaded
into the radio equipment, rather compliance of the combination of the radio equipment and software
has been demonstrated. And that's it. That was more or less the gist of it. The basic idea more or
less is that we can only or users can only put software on their radio devices. And that is
everything, right? That is everything that transmits and receives radio signals. So routers,
smartphones, laptops, smart kitchen devices. You name it. Toys with Wi-Fi, signal always Bluetooth
and so on. So that on all of these devices, we can only put software for which there is a proven
yeah validation. With this in mind, we can no longer let's take a router as an example. We can
no longer buy a router in the shelf in the supermarket or whatever from your favorite online shop.
And just put software on it, which the manufacturer and the render did not explicitly allow
because they proved that this combination of software and hardware is compliant with all this
regulation. All right. So this is also why I think notice this, right? Yeah, that's mostly
that's mostly their business model, right? They buy routers and they have create software on it
that is customized to their needs and the needs of their users. And they put their software on it,
they can run updates and so on. And they don't have to ask, I don't know, TP link or whatever
router manufacturer, if they can, if this manufacturer can allow their software or this update and so on.
And this has a lot of a lot of threats to free software in general. I mean, the run is for
Fryfunk and these other community services. But also, of course, for all people who value
free and open source software, like they want to install in firmware that for which they know
what's in it, basically, and they can control this technology with it. And again, we are not only
talking about routers. We are talking about all kinds of devices of modern devices. And also for
security, right? That there's another reason that people can install software which they trust more
and for which they, for instance, know that there are still current updates to it because many of
the firmware and installations that you get from a manufacturer, they get out of date and of life
and they render basically render the whole device useless. Like with phones. And apparently,
this now also happens in other areas. So it also has a bit of a sustainability effect, right?
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you just have to read normal tech news or even just normal news,
especially with smart home devices, how many are rendered useless because the manufacturers said
that they don't support it anymore or they switch off the update servers or even the connectivity,
the cloud services connected to it. And what can you do with it? And with free software and with
this access and the allowance to install own software on it, these devices can be used for a much
longer time. Absolutely, absolutely. This is a very good point. But why did the commission actually
want to do this? Like, what was the idea behind this article? Three, three eye?
To my knowledge, the main reason was as stupid as it sounds was radars. So radars, for instance,
at airports and these radars work are sometimes interfered by the five gigahertz Wi-Fi network.
So five gigahertz is a usual frequency band in which both these radars work and some Wi-Fi devices.
So for instance, with a router, this router needs to support a certain technology. It's called
DFS for dynamic frequency selection. So when the router detects that this band or this
area of the frequency band is used by something more important, for instance, a weather radar,
then it will immediately switch to another frequency in order to not disturb the weather radar.
And the regulators and some agencies, national agencies, they noticed that there were still
disturbances. So that not all of these routers supported this technology.
Previously, this situation was that device owners of these devices were responsible if they,
for instance, shut down this technology. And that could happen, for instance, that if I have,
as a user, the option in the software to make my router look like it wasn't in the EU,
where this regulation was or where this setting, this technology had to be activated.
So they could, for instance, and that was the thinking of the regulators and of the lawmakers.
These users can basically turn their device, like if it was in the US or in Vietnam or where else.
And by this also increased the signal strength of the Wi-Fi. And to turn off some technologies that
they thought were hindering a really good Wi-Fi connectivity. And now the lawmaker thought,
the current situation is that the users are responsible for it. But it seemingly doesn't really
have an effect. Or there still are cases where there is disturbance with this weather radar, for instance.
So what if we turn around the responsibilities and say that not the users are responsible for it,
but that the manufacturers of these devices and of all devices, not only of routers with
these five gigahertz capabilities, but that all radio device manufacturers basically have to
lock down their devices that they sell in order that only software can be loaded onto them,
that is forced or that cannot be overwritten in order to turn off these technologies or to
otherwise harm the radio spectrum in some other way. And that was the basic idea. So we make it
impossible from the start that something bad can happen with these devices. And also I think it's
important to note that there are also other solutions out there, other than this regulation,
right? So you also have market surveillance authorities who could step in and control the market.
So and that was or that could also be a solution, but it was never discussed as a solution,
but rather this regulation was discussed as a solution. And that's definitely not proportionate.
So we have already covered the timeline a bit and we have already figured out that it's over 10
years now when the radio equipment directive started to float around. Max and Alex both
of you, can you take us through those 10 years very briefly and very quickly so that
I and the listeners have an idea of what actually happened? Yeah, I try to
remind myself, remember that from going through my email archives, which wasn't an easy task,
one thing that stood out was that for a long time we've been quite unclear about the origins
of this radio equipment directive. And what's actually actually happening? Perhaps an interesting
detail is that at the same time in the US, there was also some concern about regulations by the FCC,
which is responsible there. So there some time went into actually understanding what cost,
what like is the European RED, our reaction to what happened in the US or was it the other way around
turned out that the European Union started with this regulation and then the FCC just followed.
But there was a lot of first ordering what's actually going on. And again, as I said, we then
realized that this will be a concrete danger if it was activated because perhaps important to know
is that this article isn't or wasn't activated in 2014 or 2015, like automatically, but in order to
to make this happen and to define which devices are actually targeted by this article and by the
by this regulation and the the imposement of this check of compliance between software and hardware,
there needs to be a delegated act. So like an act by the European Commission to more or less work
out which devices in which form are basically tackled by this article. And then we noticed
new, basically what needs to be done, namely to influence the delegated act that the European
Commission. And so what we did or what I did back then together with other people from the FSFE
to build another new coalition on this to find out what are the stakeholders that we need and
which are also harmed by the radio equipment directive. So we looked into of course three software
communities like the open WRT people, the fryphone people and so on, which were very helpful.
We looked into finding experts for telecommunication. For instance, Harad Veltar was a really good
stakeholder and a really good help to all our activities because he was very knowledgeable with
this. Also in the policy area and the policy area we reached out. So it was created already a few
months later that Felix Reda was a member of the parliament back then, was also blogging about it.
And he and his team, they were very helpful for us to also reach out to the commission.
And what we then formed is to create a funders or like the single point of entry for
all information around the radio equipment directive from the free software perspective.
So we set up a public page about this, summarizing everything, explaining it and at the same time
we opened a joint statement. So more or less like a public letter where we collected the
organizations, also companies, yeah, civil society actors and so on. If they weren't really happy
with what's going on and that this delegated act needs to be drafted in a way that doesn't harm
free software and the different interests that were collected there. So that was very important
to get this public awareness work starting and to have a good foundation for lobbying. What is?
This is a short break for our own cause. Thank you for listening to the software
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Please consider supporting us with a donation on the fsfe.org/donate at the show notes.
All right. This is now 2016, right? Yeah, roughly. That was a lot of public awareness back then,
yeah. And I found out that you also gave a talk at the cows communication congress.
Yeah, exactly. How was that then and how was this received?
Yeah, that was quite interesting. That was my first time being at the cows communication
congress and I handed in this talk and it got accepted and I thought I will be in a small room
with 10 people sitting at it. And 10 minutes before the talk, I searched my room where I was supposed
to give the talk and I found out that it was the main stage or one of the main stages.
And I'm happy that I only noticed that 10 minutes earlier another day because I would have never
slept. But that was cool. The room was quite full and it was a talk not only on the radio
equipment directive, but also on the router freedom activities and more coming from how we do
policy work at the FSFE and what we've learned. But the result was quite interesting because
many people after the talk came to me and said, well, let's talk about this. We need to know more
about it because I'm concerned and I'm affected and my organization, my local community services
affected. So we found a room and this room was packed, I don't know, with 30, 40 people sitting
in the circle and we were discussing how we get active. And at the time, we knew that there will
be an expert group with a European commission that was working on drafting this delegated act,
which was everything about. So we talked about it, we collected our positions, we again talked about
what the effects might be and how we can influence it and what a good solution may look like,
but also how we get at least one seat in the expert group by the European commission. So there
was a major part of it and also a long story actually, how we finally, as a community or as this
coalition that formed, how we actually got into this expert group. But yeah, that was really great.
That was a big moment in this movement and since we also set up a mailing list, so collected
the community and collected the people who were working on it, that kicked off at cows communication
conquest because a lot of people were joining afterwards. I can only imagine, especially since this
is the first congress for you, how overwhelming this must have been. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I gave many
talks before. That was definitely the largest one so far. And afterwards, you already mentioned
there was an expert group. What was this expert group doing? And yeah, as FSFE, we obviously,
we also applied to participate in this group as well because we wanted to be part of it and also
have access to the documents and to the discussions. So usually these expert groups are pre-filled with
people from national agencies and like the big business associations and so on. So we applied
there and also a few people from our network. But we got rejected. I think it was a few months
later because I think the official reason was we are not in European umbrella organization. So
the problem was that the FSFE didn't have any sub-members. So we had individual members but not
like sub-organizations like companies joining us as an umbrella organization. So unfortunately,
they couldn't accept us there. But yeah, fortunately, we got two people or three people and organizations
part of the expert group that met this criteria. That was the Humboldt Institute for Internet
Society, I think. And also the international amateur radio union who got to see there and also
an individual member that was more or less on our position. And so we knew what was going on
within this expert group. And as usual, there was a lot of administrative stuff and like more on
the meta level discussing about it and how we do this. And there wasn't really like a progress
to be seen. So for us, it was quite boring, a lot of documents, but yeah, never really on the
point of how do we actually define the different classes that are affected. Are we actually
going to do this? And I wasn't invited to use later, I think, 2019 as an ad hoc expert to
process because also the people from all this, our lines that we need to invite more people and
also different opinions on this. There, I could also present the results of a legal study
that the FSFE has been commissioning. And that was a legal study conducted by Till Jäger,
who some of you may know, a really renowned expert on free software licensing. Because we looked at
are these regulations from the radio equipment? Are these actually compatible with, how would you
say that? What I would have to do as a manufacturer in order to comply with free software licenses,
especially with a copy left free software licenses. And that was really good because there we could
also raise again a few more eyebrows and bring the topic of license compliance in combination
with the radio equipment on the park head. And that was good. Although the result of this,
I think it was the eighth meeting of the expert group was also not interesting. Like there was no
progress to be seen and just the decision that we did, they do another consultation and another
impact assessment and so on. So it was very slow. All right, so there like we are now five years later
and there has been an expert group founded in 2017. And hardly anything happened in this regard,
correct? Not from the outside, right. So it was just clear that this is a complex topic and
that the lawmakers or what the radio equipment directive has been thought is, is an easy task
could just put that here and define the different devices that there is a lot of collateral damage
that can be done. And I think this became apparent over the course of the years.
All right. Let's move on to 2020. In 2020, there was a consultation, correct?
Yes, the European Commission started the consultation, like that was more formalized with a
survey form that you had to fill out a few strange questions in it. And we also made another
call to participate in there. But interestingly, we've never seen the results. So the idea was
that this consultation is also input for the impact assessment that is to be done. And more
or less, that was the last sign that we've received from the European Commission, at least in the
public. So there was this consultation. No follow up. I've queried the responsibly people at the
European Commission. Yeah, I guess for one or two years asked, where are the results of the
consultation? Are they as negative towards activating the delegated act or coming up with the
delegated act as the feedback beforehand? And where's the impact assessment that you promised?
And there was that silence more or like, yeah, we are working on it. And I have to say there
that there was the last sign that I've received or the non sign that I've received until I actually
left the FSFE in 2022. And as Alex said, the topic only popped up once a year or so since then.
Thank you very much, Max, for taking us through this full timeline and it is rather packed with
events happening there. But what happened afterwards? Then you handed over to Alex and Alex has already
pointed out this has only happened like this topic only popped up once a year again. But in 2025,
there was then finally the final impact assessment that was published. Alex, can you take us through this
and what happened there? So it was never that nothing happened. So the expert group met and people
were discussing the radio equipment directive. Often we got questions. So what's the status since we
also still had the website or still have it where we talk about it. And people were asking, people
were asking not only us, but also to commission. And what I figured out is that, for example,
the expert group met on this article to discuss it. And the problem is these expert groups is that
if you are not part of the expert groups, you only get the minutes and the agenda. So basically,
first I got the agenda, then I called Max said, hey, they are discussing the article. Can we discuss
again what they might discuss? And then we have seen the minutes. We are going through the minutes.
And to be honest, it was still super unclear what they are doing. And it always felt like they are
ventilating the question. And there is absolutely no room for progress other than just killing
the whole thing. So my gut feeling is that the commission didn't want it to kill their own file.
So they came up with this article. It was their idea. And they shied away from just saying,
we don't come up with the delegated act. And we believe this article as it is. But nothing
will be enforced. Nothing will be changed. There's just an empty article, so to say. And that's
the thing they didn't want it. They were desperately seeking for a way out. Obviously, they didn't
found one. And what they then again did is to run another consultation. They were also inviting
other experts. And we are kind of like outsourcing the question. So they went to Kapgemini,
which is basically a consultation company, and asking them if they can help them to find a way out.
And to also come up with this impact assessment so that the commission don't have to write it,
but someone else. And together with this other consultations, other expert group meetings,
we finally then got from Kapgemini, the impact assessment. And also in between,
there had been a study or like a paper or something like this where they discussed options on
basically how to how to get out or how to regulate this article. And all of these solutions
always went down to, actually, you can't really decide on which devices you want to regulate.
So you will over regulate at any means. And the best idea is to just leave it as it is and
don't not come up with this delegated act. And that's also then again, what basically
the impact assessment set. And now if you go back to the consultation page, so they were running
like from April to May last year in 2025, they were running another feedback call for evidence
for the impact assessment where they discussed some of these options. And now the feedback was closed.
And one year later, basically a few days ago on the 20th of January this year, 2026,
if you go to this page, you can see the initiative has been abandoned. So they stopped it. So this
pretty much looks like they will not come up as a delegated act, which is great news. And also
victory of our 10 years activity here that Max started back in the days together with all of the
other stakeholders he just mentioned. And just like recently a few days ago. And so even when we
started to discuss this podcast episode, it was not clear to us that this will be the result. So
we just also figured out a few days ago. And so yeah, it looks like that there will never be a
delegated act. The article remains so to say empty. So the article is in place. It says, right,
so the devices are not allowed. But at the same time, they don't tell us which devices. So and by
that one could say the article remains empty. Nothing happens. Everything can continue as it is.
From what the commission website says, they also won't come up with a delegated act.
So however, we will continue to monitor this. You never know. But like the from the website,
the official processing of the commission is now that this is basically stopped. And in the
impact assessment that Kapgeemini wrote, they presented this. Basically what they wanted to come
up with in the impact assessment, that was also what they presented to the expert group.
And I think there was a few months ago. And we got the slides from this presentation. And I also
discussed this with Max again, how to read the slides. And from there was also clear that if they
write it in the impact assessment that they will suggest to not come up as the delegated act,
that was then ultimately also in the impact assessment where also the study by Tilliega was
quoted. So the FSFA and Tilliega is also quoted in the impact assessment as a reason for not
yeah, over regulating this or not regulating this in this discussed ways. And so one could say that
yeah, our activities, but also the study helped to come up with the impact assessment that told
the commission, please stop this. This is the best outcome you could have had or?
Yeah, I mean eight years earlier would have been also fine I think. So that would have saved
us a lot of resources, a lot of discussions, a lot of papers, a lot of studies. And so I do believe it
was clear to some extent very, very early that there is not really a solution to it and that the
delegated act should please not come up. But however, yeah, it now took 10 years. So I wouldn't
consider this as the very best outcome, but it's it's a good outcome for now. And it's also good
that we are not going to discuss this for another 10 years. Let's put it like this.
Are you both happy now that you don't have to touch this as regular as you have done in the past 10
years? So to be honest, in a set, I would still money to this. So since I'm not trusting the website
of the European Commission here, no, really. So I really do believe we made a major step and I really
do think there won't be any delegated act. However, we will still have a look at this. I do not expect
to see more studies, more consultations, more impact assessment and whatnot. So whatever happens,
I hope I won't have to read that much anymore. And also I do believe that there is now a stop
to everything towards this. But however, since the law still says the Commission can kind up
with a delegated act as long as the law remains in place, I think it's a good idea to monitor this,
even if chances are very, very low that the Commission will do another U-turn and come up as
a delegated act. So everything looks very promising at the moment. Sorry, let me please add to that.
I think the delegated act and like the article 3.3.1, that's from the desk, I would
recreated that. It's very unrealistic. But I think the general idea of turning around this
responsibility of compliance with radio regulations, that might persist. Because it's intriguing
for also for national regulators or for national agencies like the Buenos Aires-Arcanturian
Germany, for instance, that they don't have to monitor or they are not faced with non-compliant
devices and having to circle around in cities to find these interferences. So instead, just
regulate the manufacturers to basically shut off everything that might interfere with the
radio. So I think the idea will persist in a way and so it's very important that Alex and
the other policy colleagues and also the whole community keeps an eye on what's going on and
whether these ideas will pop up again in some other form and some other regulations and some other
acts, for instance. I'm pretty sure that will happen again. And also to add to this, it was back
in the days, it was a DG roll, right? So and the commission is huge. So it might absolutely be
possible that there's another DG that never heard of the radio equipment directive nor took part
in the discussions around it and comes up basically with this idea. And for this, I completely agree
with Max so that we have to still continue to explain to decision makers how all of this works
and what harm could happen if you over-regulate or if you do not look specifically for,
like for example, free software development in this case.
Is there a good solution that you to think that could happen to actually really target the
problem that has been raised by the radio direct equipment directive?
I mean, to be honest, if you run the airport, there should be some sort of airport security
around it, right? So we put so many efforts in to check every person who is going into the
airport and out of the airport. And I think the same should be true for like devices that
interfere with a normal traffic of an airport that's maybe comparable to these laser attacks we see
at the moment at the airport. So there need to be solutions to this to guarantee the safety and
security of these environments. And this could not be to regulate the device, but maybe you should
think about that about airport security and airport safety, not only by coming up with scanners,
but also with other devices that make sure that the airport can run smoothly,
or even like making sure that, for example, some sort of surveillance authorities are around there
and make sure to check that the regular signals are not interfered.
And I would also say that the protection of the European market ought to actually assess the
imports that we are doing of technological products. I think that's also a very challenge for
the European market and the EU in general. And I think a lot of things could be done there to
improve the handling of goods of products that are not complying with the different regulations
and the different policies that we're having on the European market. So I'm thinking about,
yeah, especially the imports from the Far East there for just a little money that is not even
carrying a CEO symbol, for instance. I think that is one task. And another thing would be also to
have more infrastructure resilience. We are talking about this a lot right now in the current
policy area. But I mean, yeah, if rather radars of an airport can just be disturbed by a five-kicker
hurts the router, something is wrong, right? Like if this is really tackling or endangering the
the very fundamentals of airport security, then we have to think about like at least of backups
or backup solutions here. And yeah, not everything can be just done with an regulation if you have
people who are willingly wanting to harm the safety of an airport. Yeah, there will not be hindered
by a radio equipment directive, I guess. But in general, I think there's also no perfect solution
to it. We will have situations where technology or tools can be misused or abused. If you think of
just a kitchen knife, you can obviously make bad things and harmful things with a kitchen knife.
And nobody would come up with an idea that a kitchen knife ward in the supermarket needs to have
technological features that prevent me from harming people. I mean, it's in the end, it's perhaps
we also have to accept that things can go wrong and we need to have some certain decree of resilience
in our societies and also our technologies. I think it's a good way to come to a close,
is there something you would like to add in a final sentence that is very outstanding to you now
or that you can think about when you talk about radio equipment directive. Alex, you want to go first?
I mean, this is also something which I'm continuously repeating. All of these activities we follow
are mid to very long term and 10 years is a really long time. And we have seen that a couple of
people in the office of E had worked on this. And I think it shows that we are capable to do this.
And this is thanks to our donors who allow us to do these kind of long term activities to follow up.
If you have new team members and that we have good handovers that we even are still in contact
even after people left. And I think that's for me a very nice learning. So that this happens,
that we can win even after 10 years. And also again, it shows the importance of having this
independence, the efforts that we have where we can pick our topics by ourselves and make sure
that we can work on those kind of topics even for 10 years and that we have the resources to do so.
In this regard, I really want to thank our donors who make this possible.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, I can only agree and I would have to say also thank you to the FSFE in general and for the
strategy that we have because this file really wasn't really, I would say sexy or very attractive
as a public awareness or as a fundraising thing from the start on, right? We noticed that it's not
really really concrete for many people not easy to explain, but that I and also today Alex and
all the others had the opportunity to continue the work on this because we thought and we were
convinced that this is an important thing. And bad things can happen if we don't do anything about
it. So that's great that the FSFE actually also following up on activities that are not the
catchiest one on the first side. All right, thank you very much you too. That's really kind
closing words. I have nothing more to add than to say thank you to the two of you and of course
say thank you to our donors and listeners. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much
for walking us through this radio equipment directive giving us some context here and yeah,
doing this episode with me. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Bonnie. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, thank you, Bonnie and also again, thank you, Max, for helping me so much during the last
years to be able to continue this. You're welcome, much appreciated.
Thank you. This was the Software Freedom Podcast. If you liked this episode, please
recommend it to your friends and rate it. Stay tuned for more inspiring conversations that
explore the importance of software freedom and its impact on our digital lives.
This podcast is presented to you by the free Software Foundation Europe. We are a charity
that works on promoting software freedom. If you like our work, please consider supporting us
with our donation. You find more information under fsfe.org/donate. Thank you so much. Thank
you so much for listening and bearing with us through this radio equipment directive. Bye bye.