Communicating a free internet of the future

Since July 2024, we have been publishing interviews in our series, “Building a Free Internet of the Future”, speaking to people who have received grants from the European Next Generation Internet Zero (NGI0) programme, as well as talking to those working in the consortium that runs it. With funding from the European Commission, NGI0 supports open source, open data, open hardware and open standards projects – both financially and in a myriad of practical ways, including mentoring, testing, security tests, accessibility, dissemination and so on.The underlying idea for the Building a Free Internet of the Future series was for us to play a role in promoting both the NGI0 cascade funding programme and the emerging projects that benefit from its support. Since 2019, NGI0 has distributed more than 1,500 grants, with some projects receiving funding multiple times for different technical developments. There are other concomitant spaces where voices from NGI0 express themselves on various platforms, such as the NGI0 podcast or through regional representatives from nine countries and their social media accounts. The series, which I would describe as a veritable grove in this programme bush, has 20 interviews to date. Through it, we chose to create a space where multiple voices could discuss and reveal various approaches, highlighting the diverse concerns that make up the jumble that is NGI0 for those outside the project. We have also tried to be consistent with our idea of explaining what is being done in NGI0 and to enable other groups grasp what is going on in the projects that have received the grants. This includes those outside Europe – a reminder that NGI0 applications are open to individuals and organisations both in Europe and outside of it.In this article, I would like to share some reflections from these discussions and meetings.Encouraging dialogue within the European FLOSS tech landscape and beyondNGI0 is a European project, but it is open to participants from outside Europe. But Europe is beset by inequality: genre, gender, ethnicity, age, geography, ableism, religion, etc. Admittedly, there are variations in the severity of these inequalities between countries; also admittedly, there are initiatives at various levels and on various scales to mitigate these inequalities. Free and open source technology and the social groups that produce labour are no exception to this architecture. So, rather than begin our discussion with questions such as: “How can we democratise FLOSS services and/or FLOSS research and development?”, we should ask ourselves: "What sort of working conditions would serve the needs of actual communities and societies?" Another important question is: where do discussions about the future of FLOSS take place, and who can join them? For over two decades in Brussels, every year between late January and early February, thousands of people from the tech world have the privilege of converging on the Belgian capital and meeting at various events: FOSSDEM, EU Open Source Policy Summit, and EU Open Source Week, among others.From the vice-president of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy (the EU's digital minister) to freelance developers, SMEs, larger companies and NGOs, this is a pivotal moment for meetings and announcements concerning free and open source technologies and political programmes. Over the years, I have met people there, including interviewees for our series, Building a Free Internet of the Future.Obviously the FLOSS technology scene and people exist outside Brussels, and in greater diversities and gatherings elsewhere. The Global Gathering in Estoril, Portugal, is one such event, and I, along with others, shared some feedback on it with NGI0 included. You may also consider events in Turkey, Cyprus, Slovenia, Greece, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Croatia and other regional representatives.But the annual grand rush of European open source is a “big club”, and if you ain't in it, then maybe you might like to engage in discussion in our series – and I sincerely invite you to do so.Communication is one of the layers in technology stacks and is enabled by tools that allow us to interact with each other. But taking it further, where can we work together? We can start by discussing what would benefit communities and society at large, and then consciously demonstrate what has been built in this sense. It is from this perspective, among others, that I reflect here and now on the Building a Free Internet of the Future series. And it is from this perspective I would like to invite people to come aboard for discussions with me. Seeding the ground for the futureNGI0 is contributing to a world that is a little less centralised and more open, with technological means that hold the promise of empowerment and emancipation.However, there is still a huge amount of work to be done on issues such as diversity, accessibility (see the Diversity and Inclusion Guide by Maja Kraljic, APC.), and inclusion, which must be continued and, above all, geared toward the post-NGI0 future. This means addressing questions and issues regarding the means of production and maintenance of technology, and other backend operations that are not very visible. A column published with questions and answers is one way to do this. Esther Payne, a community manager and privacy advocate at Librecast, told us in 2024: “The code we create and the tools we use can help or harm humanity. We write our political values into our code”. It is Esther again, this time elsewhere, who puts it so well: “We didn't realise that rather than a market garden, we have wandered into a different bounded realm,” in Digital Poppets – How the Modern Fae Hold Power Over You. She describes the current “realm” of trade and labour, often unpaid, in the age of globalised digital technology, where the rules are set by Big Tech and we do not really appreciate the price we pay at every moment, both for having a (false) sense of ease and for providing Big Tech with the fruits of our labour for free and without our real consent.“Digital poppets can be used to deny us healthcare. Digital poppets can be used to target us, so that we persuade other people on behalf of the Fae to undermine our democracies.”– Esther PayneFor free software to exist, it is necessary to ensure that the individuals and groups who contribute to it through various activities (maintenance, use, communication, promotion, legal assistance, security, dismantling − a task very often entrusted to highly invisible people − etc.) are also part of a system that allows them to pay for their basic daily needs. And that diversity with inclusion is also effective for these individuals and groups. To continue the metaphor, we must take care of our vegetable gardens, our bushes, our fields of flowers, our forests where we cultivate our rights, our hopes, our promises and our technologies; where the means to take care of ourselves flourish and blossom. We deserve infrastructures-done-differently that are re-humanised infrastructures. In the need for transparency, explanation, communication to others and material to understand what is at stake, we must make an effort to communicate using various forms (documentation, archiving, storytelling, reports, case studies, interviews, etc.). Let me tell you a little story about communication and dissemination. In 1936, an Irish teenager, Brendan Behan, wrote a lament entitled The Laughing Boy for his mother, who adored the independence leader Michael Collins. This song has “travelled”, which often happens with content, and then it was translated − as it can happen sometimes with content. Across seas and mountains, across decades and cultures, this lament became To Gelasto Paidi (Το Γελαστό Παιδί), a powerful anthem of resistance to the dictatorship that ruled Greece in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was translated into the Greek by the poet Vassilis Rotas and revolutionary student activists sang it until the end of the colonels' regime in 1974.My point here is that Building a Free Internet of the Future is not just a series of promotions and dissemination of the EU NGI0 programme. It is one of the spaces where important passionate expressions of demands, rights to be asserted, knowledge, and experiences can be said and written, which can then be shared, debated, translated, reused and adapted.In the FLOSS tech scene, the people and organisations, grantees of NGI0, are a group of workers who produce value. Such an ensemble needs a means of communication to express itself and make itself heard and understood.“I think it all boils down to one thing: giving control back to people.”− Pouhiou in PeerTube, a network of independent, self-managed and interconnectable platformsXavier Coadic is a consultant for the NGI0 consortium, and a free/libre open source software activist with 15 years of experience in free open source cultures and communities (software, data hardware, wetware, policy makers and political groups, research and development).