Legal and Policy Issues

Why Device Neutrality is important for Free Software?

D.legal
Lucas Lasota
<p>The number of devices on which users cannot run Free Software is exponentially increasing. The consequence is an increased loss of control over users’ technology. In order to remediate this situation, the FSFE has been working with the concept of Device Neutrality, understood as a policy principle that ensures users equal access and non-discriminatory use of their devices. The FSFE has advocated for four main principles: stricter consent rules for pre-installed apps, no vendor lock-in, full interoperability, and real-time data portability. The talk will explain the concepts and the challenges ahead.</p>
While digital devices are a ubiquitous reality in all aspects of life, control over the hardware and software running on them is increasingly being limited by internet platforms, digital services providers, hardware manufacturers, and vendors. Several policy and legal concepts have been developed by the academic sector in cooperation with regulatory bodies and courts to tackle this issue in the EU. The whole debate boiled down to principles that have been included in the EU's major overhaul of internet law: the Digital Markets Act. Device neutrality is a policy term that translates as non-discrimination of services and apps by providers, manufacturers, and vendors. The objective of device neutrality is to enable consumers to bypass gatekeepers and enable a fair and non-discriminatory use of Free Software. The talk will explain the four main demands the FSFE has been leveraging in the public debates and legislative processes: * Strict end-user consent for pre-installed apps; * No vendor lock-in; * Interoperability of services based on Open Standards * Real-time data portability

Additional information

Type devroom

More sessions

2/5/22
Legal and Policy Issues
Masafumi Ohta
D.legal
<p>I have started to teach OSS licences and compliances at a Japanese university since last year. it was difficult to teach OSS licences and compliances because I should have shown many of use cases so that the students could learn what the licences and compliance are and more, they even didn't know how to deal with ordinal software licenses. So, I had to talk many of the background knowledges to the students as an 'introduction' so that students could understand the OSS licences with ...
2/5/22
Legal and Policy Issues
Vittorio Bertola
D.legal
<p>Last year we introduced the reasons and the plans for the new Digital Markets Act of the European Union, regulating online markets to further more competition with the dominant gatekeepers. In 2021, the act was discussed and finally voted by the European Parliament, which expanded many of its provisions and strengthened the new rules. In 2022, the act will be negotiated again with member States and then, possibly, finally approved by the Parliament. In this update we will explain in details ...
2/5/22
Legal and Policy Issues
Christopher Klooz
D.legal
<p>Differentiating between architectural flaws and bugs in socio-technical systems: Open Source is no legal term or a political institution in dominant sovereign state systems, making it vague and interpretable in different contexts. However, it is a fundamental institution in security provisions in today's socio-technical societies. But it remains impossible to harmonize the transnational Open Source system with sovereign systems: both cannot be clearly mapped to each other. Yet, international ...
2/5/22
Legal and Policy Issues
Italo Vignoli
D.legal
<p>During the pandemic we have experienced a sudden growth of remote activities, with people working and studying from home. Most proprietary solutions were not suited for the task, as they were not compliant with GDPR, as they were profiling users beyond the provided service, and in many cases could not guarantee that end user data were maintained within Europe acconrding to EU legislations. Unfortunately, EU governments ignored the situation and signed contracts with big techs for remote work ...
2/5/22
Legal and Policy Issues
D.legal
<p>The organizers of the Legal and Policy DevRoom for FOSDEM 2022 discuss together the issues they've seen over the last year in FOSS, and consider what we can learn from the presentations on the track this year, and look forward together about the future of FOSS policy.</p>