[4]
Free software development as we know it is being threaten by the proposed review of the European Copyright Directive. After many delays, the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament will vote in June 2018 (20 and 21).
Especially, the Article 13 could harm Free Software and their communities. Free Software is often built by collaborative networks of programmers that rely on code hosting services. Free Software allows and encourages modifications and improvements made by everyone. For that, the software is shared with everybody under terms that allow using it, studying its source code, sharing it along, and customising it according to one's needs. This is often done on code sharing platforms.
With its copyright proposal, the EU has decided to update the rules applicable for online service providers, mainly targeting content sharing platforms. The new rules proposed by the EU will create legal uncertainty for developers using online tools when contributing to the Free Software projects through online code sharing platforms. Those proposed obligations on code sharing platforms will threaten their existence, and effective online co-development by:
- Imposing on code sharing platforms the use of costly filtering technologies — also refered to as censorship machines — to prevent any possible copyright infringement
- Imposing an illegal monitoring obligation to track their every user
To learn more read Censorship machines are coming: It’s time for the free software community to discover its political clout [5] written by Julia Reda, Member of the European Parliament.
Take action now to preserve the ability to collaboratively build software online by reading and signing the open letter "Save code share" [6].