Open Letter - Public Money, Public Code

Publicly funded software has to be Free and Open Source Software. While there are plenty of good reasons for this, many politicians don’t know about them yet.
Free Software gives everybody the right to use, study, share and improve software. This right helps support other fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, press and privacy.
This is where you can help! Sign the open letter to give our message more weight. 39361 people and 240 organisations have already signed. We will hand over the letter and signatures to your representatives and make sure that they understand that: Public Money? Public Code!
Digital services offered and used by our public administrations are the critical infrastructure of 21st century democratic nations. In order to establish trustworthy systems, public bodies must ensure they have full control over the software and the computer systems at the core of our state digital infrastructure. However, right now, this is rarely the case due to restrictive software licences that:
We need software that fosters the sharing of good ideas and solutions. Like this we will be able to improve IT services for people all over Europe. We need software that guarantees freedom of choice, access, and competition. We need software that helps public administrations regain full control of their critical digital infrastructure, allowing them to become and remain independent from a handful of companies. That is why we call our representatives to support Free and Open Source Software in public administrations, because:
Public bodies are financed through taxes. They must make sure they spend funds in the most efficient way possible. If it is public money, it should be public code as well!
That is why we, the undersigned, call our representatives to:
“Implement legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for public sector must be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence.”
Please do not put anything here:
The following organisations support our open letter. If your organisation is also interested in joining the call for Public Code, please contact us.
Below are the signatures of the signees who agreed to have their names made public. Be the next one! Sign Now!
See all public signatures.
Read this page in another language:
The code of this website is Free Software. You're welcome to contribute! | Translation status page
A campaign by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) – Imprint | Privacy | Transparency – Copyright © 2026
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 Licence.