Our everyday lives depend on public infrastructure. Roads, bridges, water supplies, schools, hospitals, etc. enable modern civilization. Most European countries have a long and successful history of funding public infrastructure with public money.

Governments are spending vast amounts of money on software, but they hardly contribute any public digital infrastructure. All their software and source code is locked away from the public by proprietary licenses. Even worse, government institutions often don’t have access to the source code of their own critical applications. This can change.

Digital transformation heavily relies on a vast base of public digital infrastructure built and maintained by the free and open source community. It’s time for governments to join us and start contributing. Their mobile Apps should certainly respect users demand for freedom and privacy respecting software.

Free Software Foundation Europe started an amazing campaign for making this shift happen: “Public Money? Public Code!”. We’re happy to announce that we have signed their open letter and hope you’re considering to spread the word and sign too.

All the details about this campaign are available on: publiccode.eu