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
Impossible obligations create legal uncertainty March 5, 2019 — Communia Association Share this article: Since last year we have tracked the development of Article 13 of the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market by publishing a series of flowcharts that illustrates its internal logic (or absence thereof). Now that there is a … Read more
Matrix is an open platform for secure, decentralized, realtime communication. Matthew Hodgson, the Matrix project leader, came to FOSDEM to describe Matrix and report on its progress. Attendees learned that it was within days of having a 1.0 release and found out how it got there. He also shed some light on what happened when … Read more
The discussion of the Huawei security concerns showcases a general trust issue when it comes to critical infrastructure. A first step to solve this problem is to publish the code under a Free and Open Source Software licence and take measures to facilitate its independently-verifiable distribution. The ongoing debate about banning Huawei hardware for the … 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
Municipalities in Finland should now find it easier to discover reusable, open source ICT solutions. A list of available solutions is available on the Avoinkoodi (“Open Code”) portal, managed by COSS, the country’s open source resource centre. To promote sharing and reuse of open source solutions, the centre is working with Kuntaliitto, the Association of … 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
The scope of this project is to teach young people digital skills with the use of open technologies. We have set up two open labs and have created open educational material (available at elearn.ellak.gr) to provide free courses to mixed classes of refugees and Greek youth. Code+Create has been designed and implemented in partnership between … Read more
