freedom

Why freeing Windows 7 opens doors

Since its launch on January 24th, we’ve had an overwhelming amount of support in our call to “upcycle” Windows 7. Truthfully, the signature count flew far faster than we ever expected it to, even despite our conservative (if aptly numbered) goal of 7,777 signatures. We have seen the campaign called quixotic and even “completely delusional,” … Read more

Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest

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

13th Symposium and Summer School On Service-Oriented Computing

SummerSoC is a well-established summer school and symposium focusing on service-oriented computing. The area of service-oriented computing is interpreted quite broadly, i.e. areas of interest for SummerSoC include  cloud computing, microservice architecture, service orchestrations,  service meshes, blockchains, Internet of Things, theoretical foundations of these subjects, and applications in/of all these areas, especially applications dealing with big/smart … Read more

Content Moderation is Broken. Let Us Count the Ways.

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

Copyright Directive – EU safeguards Free Software at the last minute

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

The CEF teams visits Greece to discuss eIDAS and the CEF building blocks

This week the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital team visited Athens to deliver an information session on the eIDAS regulation and showed how – in conjunction with the CEF building blocks – public administrations can build user centric digital public services for citizens and businesses. The CEF team was met by Nectarios Koziris, Dean of … Read more

Publicly funded software has to result in public code

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

Dare to rethink your city. Be part of a Smarter Europe.

The European cities Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona have been named among the top 10 Smart Cities worldwide. They are transforming their urban environments through technology by using data to connect, digitalise and make their cities future proof. The European Union can help you transform your city too! The European Commission, through the CEF Digital programme, … Read more

Cities agree on minimal interoperability mechanisms

Over a hundred European cities have agreed on ‘Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms’ defining the communication between software programmes and building blocks to allow co-creation and sharing of services. The MIMs, advocated by the Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) initiative, are “simple steps towards using new technology”, OACS chairman Martin Brynskov said on Thursday. “The MIM … Read more

Greece robotics competition targets open source software and hardware

Universities and teachers across Greece are encouraging the country’s young schoolchildren to experiment with open source software and hardware. The Panhellenic Open Robotics Competition also encourages school students and their teachers to work together, and aims to create open educational resources. The competition was launched late last year. At the end of December, the organisers … Read more