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
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
Cloud services have become the default tools many people use to get their work done. But this can mean giving up privacy and control. Some open source alternatives are now offering tools to put people back in charge. Frank Karlitschek is a German open source developer and founder of Nextcloud, a platform for storage, collaboration … 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
This post has been co-authored with Jorge Morales and Josh Wood from the OpenShift Developer Advocacy Team. Jorge is passionate about Developer experience, Java programming, and, most importantly, improving the integration of Red Hat’s Middleware into the OpenShift platform. Josh is committed to constructing the future of utility computing with open source technologies like Kubernetes. … Read more
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
Digital public goods in the age of the data revolution History plays tricks on us. Just as we think we’ve got things figured, everything changes. My favourite example is Malthus’s ‘principle of population’ which explained why most people were mired in poverty despite improving technology. As Malthus explained, population growth was exponential and so would eventually outstrip productivity growth and … Read more
In the past year, ICT companies in the Basque Country in Spain that specialise in free and open source software report a revenue growth of 8 percent – much higher than the autonomous region’s average – according to a member survey by ESLE, the region’s trade group for these ICT service providers. “This year’s growth … Read more
Since its inception in 1998, open source has become the de-facto standard for software development and proven itself as a viable business model. While making source code freely available for redistribution and modification may seem counterintuitive, the success of companies like Red Hat and Canonical are proof that an open source model can turn a … Read more
