From 99152a9cc690f4c34218d8a0c2a90a401e437650 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: erdgeist Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2017 08:59:52 +0000 Subject: committing page revision 1 --- updates/2017/public-money-public-code.en.md | 55 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 55 insertions(+) create mode 100644 updates/2017/public-money-public-code.en.md (limited to 'updates/2017') diff --git a/updates/2017/public-money-public-code.en.md b/updates/2017/public-money-public-code.en.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..1dc3e802 --- /dev/null +++ b/updates/2017/public-money-public-code.en.md @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +title: Open Letter: Public Money? Public Code! +date: 2017-09-12 21:25:00 +updated: 2017-09-13 08:59:52 +author: 46halbe +tags: update, pressemitteilung +previewimage: /images/pmpc.jpg + +More than thirty organisations ask to improve public procurement of software. The Chaos Computer Club is asking everyone to sign the open letter. + + + +Digital services offered and used by public administrations are the +critical infrastructure of 21st-century democratic nations. To establish +trustworthy systems, government agencies must ensure they have full +control over systems at the core of our digital infrastructure. This is +rarely the case today due to restrictive software licences. + +Today, 31 organisations are publishing an open letter \[1\] in which +they call for lawmakers to advance legislation requiring publicly +financed software developed for the public sector be made available +under a Free and Open Source Software licence. The initial signatories +include CCC, EDRi, Free Software Foundation Europe, KDE, Open Knowledge +Foundation Germany, openSUSE, Open Source Business Alliance, Open Source +Initiative, The Document Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland, as well as +several others. + +We ask individuals and other organisation to [sign the open +letter](https://publiccode.eu/#action). The open letter will be sent to +candidates for the German Parliament election and, during the coming +months, until the 2019 EU parliament elections, to other representatives +of the EU and EU member states. + +Public institutions spend millions of Euros each year on the development +of new software tailored to their needs. The procurement choices of the +public sector play a significant role in determining which companies are +allowed to compete and what software is supported with tax +payers’ money. Public administrations on all levels frequently have +problems sharing code with each other, even if they funded its complete +development. Furthermore, without the option for independent third +parties to run audits or other security checks on the code, sensible +citizen data is at risk. + +That is why the signatories call on representatives all around Europe to +modernise their digital infrastructure to allow other public +administrations, companies, or individuals to freely use, study, share +and improve applications developed with public money. Thereby providing +safeguards for the public administration against being locked in to +services from specific companies that use restrictive licences to hinder +competition, and ensuring that the source code is accessible so that +back doors and security holes can be fixed without depending on only one +service provider. + +**Links**: + +\[1\] [Open Letter](https://publiccode.eu/openletter/) -- cgit v1.2.3