Hi all,
i'm supporting Pirate Party (in Italy) for EU Election, i'm a strong free software advocate, and in the common european pirate party program
(the same program in 9 EU states), there's a clear commitment on Free Software and the use/production of Free Software by Public Administration (100% in line with the campaign public code, public money).
I would love to see FSFE to support that point of the program of PP publicly, calling for all free software communities across europe to support that trough their own communities.
https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=programme:ceep2019#free_software
Is that something that has been considered?
Fabio
Hi Fabio,
~ Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) - lists [2019-05-12 19:44 +0200]:
i'm supporting Pirate Party (in Italy) for EU Election, i'm a strong free software advocate, and in the common european pirate party program
(the same program in 9 EU states), there's a clear commitment on Free Software and the use/production of Free Software by Public Administration (100% in line with the campaign public code, public money).
That reads good, thanks for the pointer! It is motivating to see that more and more parties and decision-makers are picking up our goals and arguments for Public Money, Public Code and Free Software in general.
I would love to see FSFE to support that point of the program of PP publicly, calling for all free software communities across europe to support that trough their own communities.
https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=programme:ceep2019#free_software
Is that something that has been considered?
One of the FSFE's principles is to be non-partisan. That is easier said than done, because at the same time we don't want to generally leave positive (or negative) developments of political parties and actors uncommented.
However, asking our community to support a specific party because of a positive position towards Free Software will most probably cross the line. Therefore, I am afraid that we cannot follow your suggestion. But since we sensitise people about Free Software and the importance of publicly funded software to be public code, it is likely that they will also consider parties' positions on this topic during an election.
Best, Max
PS: For similar requests, we recommend contacting us directly using contact@fsfe.org. That makes it easy to distribute your request directly to the people who know most about a specific topic.
Personally i was not very impressed by the German pirate party. In any case there are more policies to consider and not only free software in choosing whom to vote for.
Hi Karun,
~ Karun [2019-05-13 23:50 +0200]:
Personally i was not very impressed by the German pirate party. In any case there are more policies to consider and not only free software in choosing whom to vote for.
I agree to your last point, and that's what I also meant in the last paragraph of my prior email. The same goes for FSFE activities like Ask Your Candidates [^1] or the "Digital-O-Mat" we've participated in [^2].
Best, Max
[^1]: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/
[^2]: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170829-01.html
On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 02:19:07PM +0200, Max Mehl wrote:
One of the FSFE's principles is to be non-partisan. That is easier said than done, because at the same time we don't want to generally leave positive (or negative) developments of political parties and actors uncommented.
However, asking our community to support a specific party because of a positive position towards Free Software will most probably cross the line. Therefore, I am afraid that we cannot follow your suggestion. But since we sensitise people about Free Software and the importance of publicly funded software to be public code, it is likely that they will also consider parties' positions on this topic during an election.
If people volunteered to review all the European party manifestos, we could publish an analysis of how good the various policy proposals are for software freedom and user empowerment as a guide for people who would like to factor this into their vote.
Cheers,