I invite everyone to sign/endorse this letter:
It will be sent to the Italian government, but if it decides to support free software, it can be a great help for us too, because we (in Albania) can use it as an example.
It can be signed until April 1st.
This is quite interesting, but I would propose to work on doing something similar after the Public Money Public Code campaign that we are intensively working n for the u[coming local elections in Albania Public Money Public Code 2023 - Open Labs Hackerspace. I’ve added the link to the wiki page as a reference for the future.
R.S
Nice idea (and good job).
But I’d like to point out some differences.
To my understanding, there are EU rules (and Italian laws) that require from the public administration to give priority to free and open source software, when they need to use some IT solutions. For example, if they need an office tool, they should give priority to LibreOffice over MSOffice, unless there is some absolutely needed feature that is not available on the free software and is available only on the proprietary one. The problem is that the administration is not following these guidelines (it is always possible to bypass the laws). The same goes for the schools as well, which spend the money that are granted by the government to purchase proprietary IT solutions.
The letter above goes one step further and asks the Italian government to encourage and support the usage of free software in education, in schools, because free software is more suitable for cultivating the spirit of innovation in the young generation (since it permits the inspection, study, modification, experimentation, improvement, etc.) This is regarded as vital for educating a new generation that is a producer of technology, not just a consumer of technology.
On the other hand, the focus of PMPC is on the software that is developed by the government (or by the public administration). It is only just and fair that such software is released as a free software, so that it can be (potentially) reused by other municipalities or governments.
I completely agree with PMPC, but my opinion is that in Albania, purchasing or using existing software is much more common than developing your own software. For example, besides AKSHI and the Municipality of Tirana (maybe), I don’t think that any other institution or municipality develops IT solutions for its own needs. So, the campaign for choosing free software over proprietary one is more important than the one for developing software with a free license. Let me know if you don’t agree.
You are right @dashohoxha - this goes one step ahead and has a broader focus. Noted. I’ve added this as a link to the PMPC campaign as a reference, but given that we are intensively working on the upcoming elections, I assume we will be able to review this once the campaign is done: Public Money Public Code 2023 - Open Labs Hackerspace.
R.S