SFP#51: Policy and EU: Policy and EU: The challenges for public code in public administration!
SFP#51 Policy and EU: The challenges for public code in public administration!
Back to the episode SFP#51
WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:17.920 Hello and welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast. 00:17.920 --> 00:22.860 Thank you so much for listening to this podcast and without you and your support, this 00:22.860 --> 00:24.680 podcast would not be possible. 00:24.680 --> 00:29.680 Thank you so much for being there and donating to the FSFE or also for sharing the Software 00:29.680 --> 00:30.680 Freedom Podcast. 00:30.680 --> 00:33.720 Thank you, our dear dear listener. 00:33.720 --> 00:37.520 This podcast is brought to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:37.520 --> 00:43.240 We are a charity that empowers users to control technology and I'm Bonnie Mehring. 00:43.240 --> 00:46.720 Today, we are here with two guests. 00:46.720 --> 00:53.760 Our first guest is Petteri Kivimäki, the CTO of the Nordic Institute for Interoperability 00:53.760 --> 00:55.760 Solutions, also called NIIS. 00:56.240 --> 01:00.320 Hello Petteri, I'm very, very happy that you made it to the Software Freedom Podcast. 01:00.320 --> 01:02.120 Thank you so much for the time. 01:02.120 --> 01:08.360 Hello, thank you very much for the invitation and I'm very glad to be here today. 01:08.360 --> 01:12.000 Also on my side, I'm very happy. 01:12.000 --> 01:17.400 We also have a second guest today and that's my colleague Johannes Näder from the Free 01:17.400 --> 01:18.400 Software Foundation Europe. 01:18.400 --> 01:23.360 Hello Johannes, thank you so much for making time as well and thank you so much for joining 01:23.360 --> 01:26.200 us here today in our talk. 01:26.200 --> 01:27.520 Hi, Bonnie, hi Petteri. 01:27.520 --> 01:30.080 Yeah, it's good to be back. 01:30.080 --> 01:36.160 So in this podcast, we will be talking about public code and public administrations, but 01:36.160 --> 01:41.160 before we get to the core, Petteri, can you give us some background and let our listeners 01:41.160 --> 01:44.760 know how you first came in contact with Free Software? 01:44.760 --> 01:46.960 Yeah, certainly. 01:46.960 --> 01:56.200 I think that the very first contact with Free Software was probably almost, well, 20 years 01:56.200 --> 02:06.200 ago, when I started to do programming, so I started with PHP and then Java and of course 02:06.200 --> 02:13.760 many libraries that I was using, they were Free Software, even if back then I didn't 02:13.760 --> 02:15.880 pay much thought to it. 02:15.880 --> 02:23.080 But then later, when I worked at the National Library of Finland, I got more involved with 02:23.080 --> 02:31.920 open source and how open source is used in different kind of projects on a national level. 02:31.920 --> 02:38.640 And then, of course, later with X-Road, it has played even more important role in my 02:38.640 --> 02:45.120 work and also when it comes to my hobbies that I do at my spare time. 02:45.120 --> 02:50.000 Oh, so you have like a deep rooted connection with Free Software there? 02:50.000 --> 02:56.080 Is it usual that in Finland Free Software is around in libraries and that it's like available? 02:56.080 --> 03:00.880 Yeah, nowadays it's quite common. 03:00.880 --> 03:08.200 So the National Library of Finland, they are hosting some national services for other 03:08.200 --> 03:15.200 libraries and for citizens that are based on open source, then they also do some hosting 03:15.200 --> 03:19.240 services and they are using open source software for that. 03:19.240 --> 03:25.240 They also have many, many developers working directly for them and they are well, kind 03:25.240 --> 03:31.560 of a development house and they also contribute to open source projects. 03:31.560 --> 03:39.160 So one could say that it plays very important role in that sector or some people may be 03:39.160 --> 03:48.240 it's surprising but yeah, I've been working in the library sector before so yeah, for 03:48.240 --> 03:56.600 me, it's kind of natural because libraries also work with open data, open access so why 03:56.600 --> 03:59.000 not open source as well. 03:59.000 --> 04:02.000 Johannes, what's your take on it? 04:02.000 --> 04:06.880 Yeah, for me, it's pretty much the same and I would say this is a, yeah, of course, a personal 04:06.880 --> 04:12.720 thing and personal IT use and also then the society component of it. 04:12.720 --> 04:18.120 For personal or the person, my personal view and my personal experience, it became 04:18.120 --> 04:23.960 important so soon after I bought my first computer back when I was a teenager so long 04:23.960 --> 04:30.440 time ago and of course it came with a proprietary operating system and proprietary software preinstalled 04:30.440 --> 04:32.120 and I never had a choice there. 04:32.120 --> 04:37.600 So this idea of having a choice when you start using Free Software, this already was 04:37.600 --> 04:42.440 something, yeah, something new and intriguing and important for me back at the time and 04:42.440 --> 04:48.840 then also seeing that I actually would be in the position to have control over what 04:48.840 --> 04:53.840 my computer does to my data to the things I do with the computer, how I can control 04:53.840 --> 04:59.880 what the computer does, how I can change the way the computer does things, the software 04:59.880 --> 05:08.280 does things, this really became more and more important to me so this idea of controlling 05:08.280 --> 05:11.640 ever more important part of my life, the digital life. 05:11.640 --> 05:17.040 Yeah, the society component is pretty much the same in a large scale so if we as a society 05:17.040 --> 05:22.200 want to be able to control the infrastructure, the digital infrastructure that we rely on 05:22.200 --> 05:30.080 that is very, very important for every aspect of society, also for our democracy, also 05:30.080 --> 05:37.320 for politics and for how our administrations work, then I think Free Software is the 05:37.320 --> 05:45.160 way to go and the only way to go because only with Free Software we can be free of dependencies 05:45.160 --> 05:55.320 from just one vendor who can have the control over this state infrastructure, this public 05:55.320 --> 06:03.280 administration infrastructure and I think it's important to now regain this digital sovereignty 06:03.280 --> 06:08.440 through Free Software and I think this works only with Free Software, there's no other 06:08.440 --> 06:09.440 way than using it. 06:09.440 --> 06:13.720 I find this very, thank you both for sharing yourselves and I find it very interesting 06:13.720 --> 06:19.760 that both of you focus on digital sovereignty, has this always been our, has this just in 06:19.760 --> 06:25.160 the recent debates changed also your perspective on Free Software because sometimes we interact 06:25.160 --> 06:32.040 with society and this also changes our perspective so I'm wondering did this interaction also 06:32.040 --> 06:38.520 give something back to you and help or enhanced you a few on Free Software there? 06:38.520 --> 06:45.240 Well, at least I can say that my view, it has changed a little bit over the years, I 06:45.240 --> 06:52.040 mean digital sovereignty, yes, it has always been an important aspect but the importance 06:52.040 --> 07:00.600 it has grown during the recent years, well in general if you look around what's happening 07:00.600 --> 07:08.280 happening in the world around us, I think it's very important for both individuals, organizations 07:08.280 --> 07:13.960 and also entire administrations to have digital sovereignty. 07:13.960 --> 07:17.480 Absolutely, absolutely, Johannes, you want to add? 07:17.480 --> 07:24.520 Yeah, looking back, so maybe 20 years ago I didn't have those words but it was the idea 07:24.520 --> 07:29.880 of digital sovereignty of course, back at the time and I think during the last years, 07:29.880 --> 07:38.600 especially the last maybe two or three or maybe six years, this became stronger and I'm having 07:38.600 --> 07:46.680 the feeling that also, yeah, throughout our society, across our society, there's a new 07:46.680 --> 07:52.280 sensitivity for this topic and many people who didn't know or you could have talked to them 07:52.280 --> 07:56.520 about digital sovereignty, they wouldn't have understood what this is about and for sure, 07:56.600 --> 07:59.800 that wouldn't have said this is something really really important for our society and I think 07:59.800 --> 08:08.680 this is slowly changing now, yes, and this is good. Absolutely, I'm hooked, I'm hooked on a story 08:08.680 --> 08:16.280 there, so we all see that digital sovereignty for society has become more important over the years, 08:16.280 --> 08:23.800 right? And we are working on this obviously with public money, public code, Johannes, you will say 08:23.880 --> 08:30.200 something about that in a few minutes, but before we get started with the whole discussion, 08:30.200 --> 08:36.440 if you are from NIIS, a nonprofit that was working for several countries and regions to develop 08:36.440 --> 08:42.840 digital infrastructure for public administration, you obviously also see digital sovereignty as an 08:42.840 --> 08:49.800 important topic. Can you tell us a bit more on how NIIS is working on this topic and how you as an 08:49.800 --> 08:59.000 organization want to ensure digital sovereignty for Europe? Yeah, absolutely, so NIIS is a non-profit 08:59.000 --> 09:06.440 association which mission is to develop digital government solutions to its members and currently 09:06.440 --> 09:14.440 we have eight members all in all European, well, seven of them European and then we have a 09:14.520 --> 09:23.080 date back from from Canada and yeah, we develop digital government solutions that are 09:23.080 --> 09:32.440 published as open source based on our members needs and requirements, so basically the idea is 09:32.440 --> 09:42.760 is joint development, the members they all contribute to the development by paying annual members 09:43.720 --> 09:51.480 and then NIIS uses that money to develop different digital government solutions based on the 09:51.480 --> 10:00.040 requirements coming from our members, so basically instead of developing these solutions individually 10:00.040 --> 10:08.840 and managing all the aspects related to the development individually, NIIS is handling the development 10:08.840 --> 10:15.480 for all our members and of course it makes it a lot more efficient when it's when it's done like 10:15.480 --> 10:22.200 that because if everyone needs to handle all the different aspects separately, then they end up 10:22.200 --> 10:28.680 doing the same thing multiple times and it creates a lot of overhead, so we kind of try to 10:28.680 --> 10:37.320 minimize the overhead which means that we can spend more resources on the actual development and 10:37.320 --> 10:45.160 besides concrete software development, we also facilitate the collaboration between our member 10:45.160 --> 10:52.040 organizations, so even it's the kind of the development aspect, it's the biggest thing that we do 10:52.680 --> 10:59.080 but we do many other things as well, including facilitating collaboration between our members. 10:59.960 --> 11:06.360 How did this all start? So it's basically all the Nordic, not all the Nordic countries, but who else 11:06.360 --> 11:14.440 was part of NIIS and how did you all come together because they have different point of use and they 11:14.440 --> 11:18.440 obviously also have different interests sometimes, how does this work? 11:20.840 --> 11:29.480 Yeah, so NIIS was originally established in 2017 by the governments of Estonia and Finland 11:30.120 --> 11:40.360 and the story behind NIIS, it actually already started in 2013, back then the Estonian and Finnish prime 11:40.360 --> 11:48.280 ministers met and the Estonian prime minister handed over the source code of extra data exchange 11:48.280 --> 11:56.920 layer to the Finnish prime minister and then in 2014 Finland kicked off a very big digitization 11:57.720 --> 12:05.720 and one of the goals of the project was to use X-Road to implement a national data exchange 12:05.720 --> 12:13.800 layering in Finland and originally the aim was that Finland implements X-Roads 12:13.800 --> 12:21.480 starts using it no additional development required, however things didn't go exactly like that and 12:21.480 --> 12:30.440 eventually Finland needed to start develop X-Road and back then Estonia was also developing 12:30.440 --> 12:37.720 X-Road at the same time but from the beginning it was clear that Finland and Estonia they wanted 12:37.720 --> 12:45.160 to develop the same piece of software together and not to have Estonian work and Finnish work 12:45.640 --> 12:54.840 and initially the joint development was done by coordinating the daily development activities 12:54.840 --> 13:01.480 by the public authorities of both countries who were responsible for running them but pretty soon 13:02.120 --> 13:11.480 it came here that it wasn't the best possible way of doing things which is why the idea of the 13:11.480 --> 13:23.480 joint organization was born and yeah then things evolved and yeah in 2017 NIIS was established 13:23.480 --> 13:32.440 and the following year the X-Road development activities were hand-dropper to NIIS from Estonia 13:32.440 --> 13:40.920 and Finland so but even it everything kind of started around X-Road from the beginning the idea 13:40.920 --> 13:50.680 of NIIS was wider joint organization for digital collaboration not just for for X-Road development 13:51.400 --> 13:58.840 but but we started with that in practice and then during the following years we got new members 13:59.560 --> 14:07.560 some of them are countries and some of them are states of federal countries or also autonomous regions 14:07.640 --> 14:12.680 but the current members are Estonia, Finland, Iceland, 14:12.680 --> 14:20.200 Ukraine, Schleswig-Holstein, Québec, the Faroe Islands, the Government of Åland. So all in all 14:20.200 --> 14:29.480 we have today eight members and we are not a closed organization so we are also actively looking 14:29.480 --> 14:36.360 for or new member organizations to join especially from Europe and you don't need to be a 14:36.360 --> 14:45.000 Nordic country as I just here as well right yeah yeah that's not a requirement but yeah it 14:46.120 --> 14:53.560 originally yes NIIS was originated by by the Nordic countries but but today yeah you don't 14:53.560 --> 14:59.240 need to be a Nordic country in order to be a member just so that we get the word out there yeah 14:59.240 --> 15:05.640 that that was a very good clarification also as in Germany only the most Nordic states joints 15:06.120 --> 15:18.840 X-Road so far but maybe that can also spread basically right below Denmark so almost Nordic almost 15:21.000 --> 15:29.320 okay you already mentioned X-Road what is X-Road can you give us a very very brief overview and yeah 15:29.400 --> 15:37.160 just let us let our listeners gain on the secret here yeah so X-Road is an open source solution for 15:37.160 --> 15:43.960 secure data exchange between organizations if it's an open source solution licensed under the MIT 15:43.960 --> 15:51.480 license it's one of the most deployed digital public infrastructure components around the world 15:51.960 --> 15:58.600 and it's also digital public could verify it by the digital public could alliance originally 15:58.600 --> 16:06.760 it was developed in Estonia already over 25 years ago but today there are at least 30 countries 16:06.760 --> 16:15.640 around the world using it the most typical way to use it is as a national data exchange solution 16:15.640 --> 16:23.160 for example that's how it used in Estonia and and in Finland but it can also be used for for 16:23.240 --> 16:31.640 other kind of use cases so that's a very short recap of what X-Road is and what it does thank you 16:31.640 --> 16:40.280 very much for the introduction Johannes before we dive into the challenges that are ahead of all 16:40.280 --> 16:48.360 for all of us can you say can you briefly tell us also in that more general kind of you how 16:48.360 --> 16:55.320 is "Public Money? Public Code!" currently doing what's the status there and where are we on a European 16:55.320 --> 17:01.720 level yeah sure but let me first say I think so it's it's really great to talk about X-Road and 17:01.720 --> 17:07.560 needs today and I think it's in many ways a good example for how "Public Money? Public Code!" is 17:07.560 --> 17:13.400 meant to work and it can work really really well especially with the aspect of corporation across 17:13.400 --> 17:19.720 borders the corporation across states and this is yeah I think really great example for 17:20.600 --> 17:25.800 "Public Money? Public Code!" in practice yeah talking about "Public Money? Public Code!" this initiative 17:25.800 --> 17:31.960 started or we as Free Software Foundation Europe started it around I think eight years ago or maybe 17:31.960 --> 17:37.640 already nine years ago with a very simple demand software paid by the paid for by the public should 17:37.800 --> 17:44.040 be available to the public as Free Software so if it's public money then it should be public code 17:44.040 --> 17:50.760 and this is still our call message so what's the situation today the good news first across Europe 17:50.760 --> 17:56.360 we see more awareness than a few years ago we talked about this there's a change in dual geopolitical 17:56.360 --> 18:02.200 situation it's one of the reasons for that digital sovereignty interoperability and also reducing 18:02.200 --> 18:08.440 vandalogue in are now widely discussed I think also lots of decision makers understand why this 18:08.440 --> 18:14.280 is important for our societies and there are also more and more practical initiatives to turn 18:14.280 --> 18:22.280 this into action we currently see a strong movement away from proprietary software especially from 18:22.280 --> 18:28.520 the United States for example in France where currently lots of tools are replaced and also windows 18:28.520 --> 18:33.320 as being replaced by Linux for example in Switzerland there are no recent plays that demand the release 18:33.320 --> 18:39.320 of newly newly developed software to be released as Free Software in Denmark and dependency on US 18:39.320 --> 18:44.440 software companies proprietary US software companies has become a national security threat in the 18:44.440 --> 18:51.640 course of the debate around US the United States trying to take over Greenland especially in Denmark 18:51.640 --> 18:56.120 regular people on the street suddenly start talking about digital sovereignty and why this is 18:56.120 --> 19:02.600 important it's not just an expert debate any any longer and in Germany one more example and I 19:02.600 --> 19:09.080 could tell you many more of many more examples but in Germany Free Software has become is becoming a 19:09.080 --> 19:15.640 strategic component of the so-called Germany Stack but and now comes the but at the same time free 19:15.640 --> 19:21.160 software has not yet become the default improvement and legislation there's still a long way to go 19:21.160 --> 19:26.680 to often Free Software is treated as an exception or as a nice add-on instead of the normal way 19:27.320 --> 19:33.400 to build public digital infrastructure and recently we have seen a shift in the debate around 19:33.400 --> 19:38.360 digital sovereignty and I think this is remarkable as it's also dangerous for the whole 19:38.360 --> 19:42.600 yeah debate around "Public Money? Public Code!" and Free Software and public administrations 19:43.320 --> 19:50.040 because European industry lobby suggests trying to suggest that states can become digital sovereign 19:50.040 --> 19:54.520 by just switching to European vendors no matter if the software products are proprietary 19:55.240 --> 20:00.920 and I would say this neglects the risk of replacing all dependencies by new ones this time only from 20:00.920 --> 20:07.000 European vendors what if they go bankrupt those European proprietary software vendors what if they 20:07.000 --> 20:12.920 decide to relocate outside Europe what if they are taken over by Chinese or by United States 20:12.920 --> 20:17.880 corporations where does that leave Europe and where does that leave our digital sovereignty 20:18.840 --> 20:22.600 yeah the debate around digital sovereignty definitely helps "Public Money? Public Code!" and 20:22.600 --> 20:27.640 it helps you software for public administrations but we must emphasize that digital sovereignty can 20:27.640 --> 20:35.000 only be reached through Free Software and not by just replacing foreign yeah software products by 20:35.000 --> 20:41.960 European ones and what we need is Free Software first rules so "Public Money? Public Code!" rules 20:41.960 --> 20:47.880 in place we need "Public Money? Public Code!" legislation across Europe reflecting that Free Software 20:47.880 --> 20:52.280 is a cornerstone of our digital infrastructure and the prerequisite for digital sovereignty 20:52.920 --> 20:57.560 and also we need implementation of those rules so once we have it it must be implemented 20:58.200 --> 21:02.920 we as Free Software foundation Europe we push for that we push for Free Software becoming the 21:03.640 --> 21:10.520 standard and the default and public administration and we also try to be watch docs around public 21:10.520 --> 21:15.320 money public code when we see development in the wrong direction you already mentioned quite a 21:15.320 --> 21:23.160 lot of the challenges that are ahead of us or that we are currently facing in regard to public code 21:23.160 --> 21:30.680 and public administrations Patrick can you also from your perspective are those challenges 21:30.680 --> 21:39.800 very similar or are they different what do you think about that yeah I I can definitely recognize 21:39.960 --> 21:46.680 the challenges that that Johannes mentioned so so yeah it's it's pretty easy to agree with them 21:47.640 --> 21:55.960 if I think about what we are doing at me is maybe our challenges they are a little bit different 21:55.960 --> 22:05.160 so so right now or not only right now but but in general one of our goals is to find new 22:05.240 --> 22:13.160 user countries new use cases for for extra than in general these products so that we we could 22:13.160 --> 22:20.760 find new new members for these because of course new organizations and new countries are 22:20.760 --> 22:29.960 dividing the development costs the less it costs for everyone so everyone benefits but in 22:29.960 --> 22:41.480 Europe it's often quite challenging to sell or or market an existing open source solution that 22:41.480 --> 22:49.480 is already widely used like like X-Road so even if it it already has a proven crack record it's 22:49.480 --> 22:57.080 being actively maintained and developed and so on but still many countries are a little bit 22:57.160 --> 23:07.720 hesitant in adopting solutions developed by others so instead of using some existing open source software 23:07.720 --> 23:16.600 quite often they seem to prefer developing their own solutions which is of course it's not the 23:16.600 --> 23:23.160 most efficient way of doing things because in instead of developing something new that you 23:23.160 --> 23:30.600 probably also have to maintain by yourself you would you could use something that already exists 23:30.600 --> 23:37.640 is being developed is being managed it has a community and and so on so one of our biggest 23:37.640 --> 23:45.480 challenges is that kind of an approach to open source so because I found this really interesting 23:45.480 --> 23:51.000 and it points out that what we need also is a culture change in how we think about our 23:51.640 --> 23:57.160 digital infrastructures and about procurement and about how to how to get solutions and this 23:58.280 --> 24:05.800 so right now probably many decision makers many public administrations think of Free Software 24:06.520 --> 24:12.680 as you start doing things from the scratch this can be an option but this is not really how things 24:12.680 --> 24:18.520 should work if there's something a really good product like X-Road out so Free Software is much 24:18.520 --> 24:25.960 more about cooperation about doing things together about contributing back and then yeah everyone 24:25.960 --> 24:32.200 profits from what is being done and this is also part of this culture change that has to reach our 24:33.240 --> 24:40.360 public administrations yeah exactly that's that's very important because still today 24:41.240 --> 24:47.160 sometimes you you can see cases where an organization says that yeah we are we 24:48.120 --> 24:54.120 every time everything that we develop we publish it as open source and it means that they 24:54.120 --> 25:00.760 publish the code in GitHub using some open source license but then that's it there's no 25:00.760 --> 25:08.520 community there's no way to contribute back and there's no visibility to the back lock road map 25:08.840 --> 25:14.840 or anything like that so basically yes the code is licensed under the open source license but 25:14.840 --> 25:19.560 still if you think about the whole development model it's not really open source 25:21.320 --> 25:27.160 absolutely right so if also if we talk about procurement and this is where a lot of work has to 25:27.160 --> 25:35.000 be done to get to a sustainable digital infrastructure based on Free Software there are ways of 25:35.000 --> 25:40.280 going in that direction that you mentioned so you can you can use procurement criteria that 25:40.280 --> 25:45.320 helps you finding the best solutions that are already out there instead of reinventing the 25:45.320 --> 25:51.720 wheel and starting from scratch again and again or ending up with some with some solution that 25:51.720 --> 25:59.400 doesn't have a community around it or maybe is developed by yeah by just a single vendor and you 25:59.480 --> 26:04.840 also end up in new dependencies I like this approach or this thought about the cultural change 26:05.720 --> 26:12.200 and I find this very intriguing on the one hand I think a lot of administrations or public 26:12.200 --> 26:18.360 administrations see this need they are like we need a community we can't do everything on our own 26:18.360 --> 26:24.120 that's why we can't use Free Software on the other hand all of them argue oh this software this 26:24.120 --> 26:31.560 is not it's not tailored for my needs and I need a tailored software so I find this very interesting 26:31.560 --> 26:41.640 because public administrations are quite a curious living being sometimes even so they are not 26:41.640 --> 26:49.400 a person in itself but they have a certain culture and a certain attitude they bring along 26:50.360 --> 26:55.240 but how do you push for wider adoption of Free Software and public administration 26:56.120 --> 27:02.920 and a general approach and also to get more countries to collaborate with each other not 27:03.960 --> 27:08.840 specifically only talking about needs now but also in a general point of view how do we get 27:10.520 --> 27:17.240 this collaboration this community starting here and public administrations using Free Software 27:17.720 --> 27:26.760 yeah very broad question yeah that's yeah very very broad question and yeah very very challenging one 27:27.320 --> 27:35.240 but yeah I guess there is no simple solution to that or or single solution to that but at least one 27:35.240 --> 27:43.160 aspect is that maybe we should try to communicate the benefits of three software better and what's 27:43.160 --> 27:50.600 the difference compared to commercial software what what do the organizations and countries gain 27:50.600 --> 27:59.320 by switching from switching to the Free Software because eventually everyone wants to have 27:59.880 --> 28:10.440 better services and spend less money so yeah we should try to demonstrate how that can be achieved 28:11.160 --> 28:17.160 yeah but at the same time it's I think it's also important to communicate that even if we talk 28:17.160 --> 28:24.920 about Free Software of course it's it's not completely free because someone still needs to run it 28:24.920 --> 28:33.320 set it up operate it and so on so of course it costs sometimes it may cost less while other times 28:33.320 --> 28:39.560 it the price might be the same but still you get the freedom you get the digital 28:39.560 --> 28:48.280 sovereignty so even if the price would be the same you still get more more value to it and I think 28:48.280 --> 28:58.200 these are things that probably not not all parties see it and it it might help the cause to 28:58.200 --> 29:05.640 communicate more about this point of view yeah absolutely and this is I think what we do at the 29:05.720 --> 29:11.320 Free Software Foundation Europe so pushing for "Public Money? Public Code!" we work on the political 29:11.320 --> 29:17.560 and on the public framework to push for wider adoption so as I said we want to have Free Software 29:17.560 --> 29:22.680 and public administration so of course we we have good arguments we try to carry them out we try 29:22.680 --> 29:29.000 to convince decision makers and politicians to get to to come up with with Free Software first 29:29.640 --> 29:35.960 approaches in policies for example on the European level there's a procurement reform going on 29:35.960 --> 29:41.480 and for the first time there will be something like strategic procurement procurement in future 29:41.480 --> 29:49.080 after this reform will allow to have strategic criteria not only the lowest bit or the lowest 29:49.080 --> 29:55.640 price as criterion and we argue that yeah the digital sovereignty through Free Software should be 29:55.720 --> 30:01.560 one criterion that should be possible and that should definitely be in there and should enable 30:01.560 --> 30:07.640 procurement offices in future to opt for Free Software solutions even if there's a same price or if 30:07.640 --> 30:15.880 there are more expensive than proprietary solutions yeah so we tried then also if we have a regulation 30:15.880 --> 30:21.000 like this in place and laws like this in place we try to push for implementation yeah and of course 30:21.000 --> 30:26.680 it really really helps us to have best practices at hand so it's really convincing for our 30:26.680 --> 30:33.640 politicians if we can tell of examples like X-Road and show them how "Public Money? Public Code!" how 30:33.640 --> 30:39.080 Free Software and public administrations works and how it can work at scale so not not just side 30:39.080 --> 30:45.800 projects but and I think X-Road really shows that how it can work at scale in practice across 30:45.800 --> 30:51.480 several countries with a lot of yeah really good success yeah at the same time what we need is 30:51.480 --> 30:58.120 long-term secure funding so at the at the moment this is not the case there's no there is not 30:58.120 --> 31:04.520 not enough money for Free Software if you look at the budgets across Europe it has to be a standard 31:04.520 --> 31:10.760 that we finance our digital infrastructure and the digital sovereignty of our digital infrastructure 31:11.320 --> 31:19.480 Free Software with enough money in the long run so to get a stable foundation it's absolutely what we 31:19.480 --> 31:26.840 need and yeah at the same time if we look at what we have been spending or if what we are still 31:26.840 --> 31:33.960 spending today on proprietary licenses these are billions every year and I think it should absolutely 31:33.960 --> 31:39.400 be possible to cut that and move some and move even larger parts of that money to 31:39.960 --> 31:44.520 yeah sustaining Free Software for public administration what the harness was just referring to was that 31:46.120 --> 31:53.880 it was published in Germany how much is spent by the federal administration so not all 31:53.880 --> 31:59.240 administration because Germany is Germany's federal country so we have Schleswig-Holstein 31:59.240 --> 32:04.360 as Bundesland obviously but we also have like very small money supealities who all maintain 32:04.440 --> 32:11.720 their own infrastructure but the federal administration they just published how much they spent on 32:11.720 --> 32:19.400 Microsoft licenses and in general on software licenses as well which was a lot of money you 32:19.400 --> 32:25.800 haven't seen you have the number I think something something around 500 million just for 32:26.600 --> 32:33.240 Microsoft licenses yeah not reflecting the debates around digital sovereignty 32:33.960 --> 32:37.960 and this is definitely something that has to change but it's not only the case in Germany of course 32:37.960 --> 32:44.680 we see the same across Europe so a lot of money is being spent on proprietary software on not only 32:44.680 --> 32:52.440 Microsoft products also other proprietary vendors database or for example and there's a lot of money 32:52.440 --> 32:59.080 in that market if we really take digital sovereignty seriously if we really take it seriously that we as 32:59.080 --> 33:04.920 Europe must take control of our own digital infrastructure then we should try to put this money 33:05.880 --> 33:12.520 into Free Software into "Public Money? Public Code!" I like that I take this as a closing word because 33:12.520 --> 33:20.840 it's a very nice thing very positive how can our listeners help here how can they support how can 33:20.840 --> 33:26.920 they support X-Road how can they support knees how yeah how can they jump in the Terry 33:28.280 --> 33:34.600 well this applies to X-Road knees and and all the all the open source projects out there so the 33:34.600 --> 33:43.080 best way to support any open source project is to contribute what else and I want to highlight that 33:43.080 --> 33:50.120 contributing doesn't necessarily mean code contribution so in order to contribute you don't 33:50.120 --> 33:56.440 necessarily have to be a developer there are also a lot of other things that you can do for X-Road or 33:56.440 --> 34:06.120 other open source projects related to documentation or example that doesn't require coding skills so 34:06.200 --> 34:14.200 if you want to get involved with X-Road or any other open source projects then join the community 34:14.200 --> 34:21.320 familiarize with yourself with the project and then look for things that you're 34:21.320 --> 34:28.200 interested in and then contact the project and tell them that you would be willing to 34:28.200 --> 34:34.360 contribute and it doesn't have to be code and I'm pretty sure that all the all the project 34:34.840 --> 34:39.560 maintainers they are were very happy to receive this kind of request at least at 34:39.560 --> 34:45.800 knees we are very happy when when someone wants to join the community and especially when they 34:45.800 --> 34:52.440 want to contribute perfect thank you so much oh can I just add one thing there actually three 34:52.440 --> 34:57.720 things that I would like our our listeners to do yeah so and also thank you thank you very much 34:57.720 --> 35:02.840 Peter yeah I think what you said is absolutely important and this this kind of contributions are 35:02.840 --> 35:10.680 really really helpful from from my perspective I would I would really appreciate if our listeners if 35:10.680 --> 35:17.560 all of you could be very very aware of the debates of around digital sovereignty and try to 35:17.560 --> 35:24.120 notice when this debate is going into that buy-European direction and jump in and speak in and tell 35:24.120 --> 35:28.760 the ones that say okay it's enough that we buy European products no matter if they're proprietary 35:28.840 --> 35:34.680 tell them no it has to be Free Software only that software makes us digital sovereign digitally 35:34.680 --> 35:40.520 sovereign in the end so jump in because I think this is this is important at the moment the other 35:40.520 --> 35:47.240 two things are really simple so you could go to public code dot you that's our campaign work website 35:47.240 --> 35:51.960 of "Public Money? Public Code!" so public code dot you I think it's also in the show notes and sign 35:51.960 --> 35:58.200 our open letter that we have there so help us to get over 40,000 signatories which we are close 35:58.360 --> 36:05.080 to at the moment and the last thing is we as Free Software Foundation Europe we really rely on donations 36:05.080 --> 36:11.480 we really rely on the help of our supporters so please go to fsfe.org slash donate and become a 36:11.480 --> 36:17.480 supporter of the Free Software Foundation Europe so support our work it's what we rely on this is our 36:17.480 --> 36:22.680 backbone backbone of our work and only if we have enough supporters we can continue continue doing 36:22.760 --> 36:27.720 this kind of work so please help us with that becoming support now you're taking away my closing 36:28.600 --> 36:38.360 now I have to think of anyone no but it's absolutely true we are a charity that depend on your support so 36:39.480 --> 36:46.200 if you like our work and if you want us to continue pushing for "Public Money? Public Code!" 36:47.000 --> 36:54.040 the meaning Free Software in public administrations please support us we do this on a European level 36:54.040 --> 37:01.720 as Johannes has already mentioned be advocate for Free Software long term funding and we can only do this 37:02.280 --> 37:08.920 if we have enough support by our dear dear listeners and all the others if you cannot support us 37:09.000 --> 37:16.920 financially you can of course join extra in the community make yourself familiar with the project first 37:16.920 --> 37:25.800 don't just drop LLM generated documentation or code request at least review them before 37:27.240 --> 37:32.280 there are loads of ways to get active and yeah thank you so much for your support there 37:32.280 --> 37:38.040 and to the two of you thank you so much for being here thank you so much for taking the time 37:38.040 --> 37:44.520 walking me through all of this quite a lot we have touched up on today very happy that we had to 37:44.520 --> 37:49.960 talk about public code and public administrations and a lot of new insights for me thank you so much 37:50.760 --> 37:56.600 thank you Bonnie thank you Peter thank you for having me it was a very interesting conversation 37:56.600 --> 38:01.880 thank you it was a pleasure to have both of you here thank you so much bye bye 38:02.120 --> 38:10.520 this was the software freedom podcast if you like this episode please recommend it to your friends 38:10.520 --> 38:16.760 and rate it they tuned for more inspiring conversations that explored the importance of software 38:16.760 --> 38:22.840 freedom and its impact on our digital lives this podcast is presented to you by the Free Software 38:22.840 --> 38:28.840 Foundation Europe we are a charity that works on promoting software freedom if you like our work 38:28.840 --> 38:35.960 please consider supporting us for the nation you find more information under fsfe.org/donate 38:35.960 --> 38:46.120 thank you so much bye bye