FSFE Main Channel

The Fediverse is a large, decentralised social network that continues to grow. Since its beginnings in 2008, text-based platforms such as StatusNet, Friendica and Mastodon have dominated. In this session, we’re going to take a look at what’s out there in the network that’s beyond just text. Starting with well-known video and image-sharing services such as Peertube and Pixelfed, we will explore other projects and the opportunities they offer creative podcasters, streamers and 3d artists.

If you are not familiar with the Fediverse, please watch my presentation from last year, “about:Fediverse“, which will introduce you to this social network alternative.

As societies grow in complexity, interoperability becomes fundamental. From water sewage systems, to transport and telecommunications, interoperability has served to increase human interaction.

However, the history of interoperability is marked by a contradiction: while companies benefit from depending the incentives, they become adversarial when their services become object of interoperability regulations.

An example is how the EU is regulating interoperability under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA is a EU law aimed in increasing fair competition, imposing broad interoperability rules on “gatekeepers”, understood as very large companies dominating digital markets.

This talk presents the work of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) to make sure the DMA is implemented and enforced in a developer-friendly way. We’ll look at what the DMA means for developers building alternative app stores, emulators, browsers, and other tools empowering user choice and freedom.

Unfortunately, gatekeepers are already making it unnecessarily difficult for Free Software developers to request and obtain the interoperability the DMA guarantees, often through legal, technical, or bureaucratic hurdles. We want to change that, and have been following the developers journey to request interoperability, making sure their issues are highlighted to the European Commission.

We’ll introduce the DMA Interoperability Survey, a project to collect real experiences from developers who request access under the DMA. Free Software plays a key role in reclaiming user control over technology, but to compete fairly, it needs real interoperability.

In this talk, I will present the latest development regarding router freedom in Italy. In particular, I will highlight FSFE’s latest contribution to the consultation opened by Italy’s telecommunications regulator, AGCOM, regarding freedom of terminal equipment in fiber networks.

Italy is one of the European Countries granting router freedom to users. However, exceptions to this freedom in fiber networks proposed by telecom operators and confirmed by AGCOM in 2019 undermine users’ freedom to choose their terminal equipment.

This talk will also shed light on the Next Generation Internet project as a funding initiative for shaping the future of the internet with Free Software. The audience will learn about the funding opportunities and how Router Freedom has been dealt with by regulators in other countries as well.

This talk is very close to my heart, quite literally. Many people rely on technology to keep them alive, and that technology runs software. When your life depends on code you can’t see and control, software freedom becomes something very personal.

In this session, I’ll share the story of how I came to care deeply about Free Software, not just as a developer, but as a person directly affected by the limitations of non-free medical systems. What happens when the software behind critical devices can’t be audited, fixed, or even questioned? What does “user control” mean when the user is also the patient and when the consequences of a software bug can be felt in your own body?

We’ll explore the landscape of medical technology: How decisions made by manufacturers and regulators impact real people, how non-free systems can lead to harm or helplessness, and how Free Software principles are at the core of not just transparency, but dignity and autonomy.

This isn’t a technical deep dive, nor a policy lecture. It’s a personal story, a perspective from the inside (sometimes very literally), and a reflection on what it means to live with, and sometimes fight against , the software that runs our most essential systems. Free Software might just belong in places most people never think to look.

Refund4Freedom is the campaign by FSFE and the Italian Linux Society to defend the right to purchase computers without imposed software and to obtain a refund for unwanted pre-installed operating systems.

What does it mean to make ethical choices in software development today?

With:

Moderated by the journalist Luca Tremolada

Il famoso inventore Zangemann vive in una grande villa sopra la città. Sia adulti che bambini amano le sue invenzioni e vogliono averle disperatamente. Ma poi succede qualcosa: Zangemann vuole vedere ancora una volta da vicino le sue invenzioni e va quindi a fare una passeggiata in città quando, con un grande tonfo, un bambino lo colpisce sugli stinchi con il suo skateboard. Che male! Infuriato, l'inventore prende una drastica decisione... Ma Ada, ragazza sveglia, capisce cosa sta succedendo. Insieme ai suoi amici mette a punto un piano.

Questo film d'animazione racconta la storia del famoso inventore Zangemann e di Ada, una ragazza curiosa ed intraprendente. Ada inizia a sperimentare con hardware e software e, nel mentre, realizza quanto sia fondamentale controllare la tecnologia, per lei e per gli altri.

Una risorsa educativa aperta per ispirare i bambini a sperimentare e creare con la tecnologia.

Copyright (c) 2024 Free Software Foundation Europe e.V.

https://2025.nook-luebeck.de/talks/free-software-platform-regulation/

Platform regulation is a hot topic. Not only the EU but several countries are regulating big tech’s enormous economic power.

The DMA in the EU is an example of such regulation, aimed at devices manufacturers, app stores, search engines, browsers and cloud services. The law impacts Free Software due to a series of obligations related to interoperability, side loading and installing of apps. Big tech is very reactive to this law. For instance, Apple started three litigations against the Commission due to the enforcement of the DMA.

This talk will explain why regulating big tech is key for Free Software, and what steps were taken by the FSFE to protect Free Software in such challenging processes.

Die Nights of Open Knowledge (Nook) in Lübeck ist eine offene Vortragsveranstaltung, die einem weiten Publikum Einblicke in die verschiedene Bereiche der Informatik, aber auch technikfremde Themen bietet. Die NooK wird vom Chaotikum e.V. aus Lübeck und der Studierendenschaft der Uni Lübeck veranstaltet.

https://nook-luebeck.de/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY NC ND 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

In this talk in German, Alexander Sander ,FSFE Senior Policy Consultant, together with Michael Schuster discusses the current state of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) implementation and its impact on the Free Software landscape. They focus on the role of stewards and how to deal with various Free Software stakeholders, based on a questionnaire they have used in their work. The talk also highlightes ways in which the questionnaire results can be incorporated into the CRA's implementation process.

Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/de/

By Alexander Sander and Michael Schuster

Der Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) wird derzeit implementiert und noch immer herrschen einige Unklarheiten in Hinblick auf seine Auswirkungen auf die Freie Software Landschaft. Insbesondere die Rolle der Stewards ist teilweise unklar. Der Vortrag wird den aktuellen Stand der Debatte beleuchten als auch Wege und Lösungen aufzeigen, wie mit den verschiedeneren Freie-Software-Akteuren umgegangen werden sollte.

Zur Zeit ist unklar, inwiefern die verschiedenen Freie-Software-Anbieter vom Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) betroffen sind. Um Klarheit herzustellen Bedarf es Informationen, wer welche Rolle einnehmen wird und welche Aufgabe und Prozesse durchzuführen sind. Insbesondere die Rolle der Verwalter quelloffener Software (Open-Source Stewards) und Tätigkeiten bei Freier Software außerhalb des kommerziellen Interesses sind dabei von besonderer Bedeutung.

Um sich den Fragen zu näheren haben wir eine Fragebogen an relevante Stakeholder ausgespielt, deren Ergebnisse wir vortragen wollen. Zudem wollen wir Wege aufzeigen, wie die Ergebnisse in den Implementierungsprozess des CRA einfließen können.

Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0