This year’s pre-FOSDEM EU policy meeting on 31 January 2020 was a water-shed moment for OpenForum Europe. It’s an annual affair, but this year, we almost tripled the number of attendees who gathered to exchange ideas on the role of Open Source in accelerating Europe’s digital transformation. Representatives ranged from individual developers, SMEs and policy … Read more
Tzoumerka is made of stone. Not just the towering peaks of this mountainous area, formed by nature and geography over millennia, but almost everything made by human hands — the walls, town squares, bridges and buildings — has been crafted from the local stone. It creates quite an impression: permanence, timelessness and a resistance to … Read more
About The Prize The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest annually awards a $10,000 cash grant to one individual who has created or led an effort to create an open source software product of significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change. The Pizzigati Prize honors the brief life … Read more
Next year marks the 10th anniversary of Open Data Day! Open Data Day is the annual event where we gather to reach out to new people and build new solutions to issues in our communities using open data. The next edition will take place on Saturday 7th March 2020. Over the last decade, this event … Read more
The Lisbon Council and Sitra have published a new policy brief, A Roadmap for a Fair Data Economy. The policy brief outlines a vision for how Europe can put individuals in control of their own data and how the continent can become home to exciting new business models in finance, health, mobility, energy and other … Read more
As the importance of personal data in society continues to expand, it becomes increasingly urgent to ensure that people are able to know and control their personal data, but also to acquire personal knowledge and claim the benefits. The MyData Greece 2019 community meeting aims to foster and accelerate such change towards a human-centric approach … Read more
Social media platforms regularly engage in “content moderation”—the depublication, downranking, and sometimes outright censorship of information and/or user accounts from social media and other digital platforms, usually based on an alleged violation of a platform’s “community standards” policy. In recent years, this practice has become a matter of intense public interest. Not coincidentally, thanks to … Read more
Today, on 30 April 2019, two years after the new net neutrality rules came into force, the EU Commission published its Report to evaluate their implementation in Europe. Unfortunately, the Report does not give the in-depth analysis of the situation that one could have hoped for. It ignores the fact that the respect for net … Read more
The European Parliament adopted the controversial Copyright Directive by 348 votes in favour, 274 votes against and 36 abstentions. Today’s vote marks the end of years of debate in the European Union. Heated discussions about the introduction of upload filters ended up in protests of tens of thousands people in the streets all across Europe. … Read more
As the European Parliament elections approach, EDRi member Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) intensifies the efforts for the “Public Money? Public Code!” campaign. In January 2019, FSFE published a new brochure to serve as guidelines for decision-makers, explaining the fundamental benefits of public code. Free Software for a Free Society Free and Open Source Software … Read more
