Under the slogan “Why is software created using taxpayers’ money not released as Free Software?” the Public Code initiative (https://publiccode.eu/) claims a reasoning that is irrefutable.

From now we encourage the maximum of individuals and organizations, as we have done at the Association gvSIG, become adhered to the Public Code open letter.

These initiatives are very necessary to make the decision-makers aware of the importance of our administrations working with free software, because as of today, there is still a long way to go in spite of what has been advanced, and from the politics the technology (and the licensing conditions that determine the access to it) is usually seen as something outside of their scope of decision. This raising awareness, however, seems to be achieved already in other movements similar to open data ones.

Today, no one can doubt the growing trend in favour of open data generated by public administrations; by reasons of conviction, legislative or merely imitation, open data portals are multiplying day by day. It’s a dynamic that seems unstoppable, and its importance lies there. This international tendency to open data generated by public administrations is mainly due to a citizen movement that demands greater participation, transparency, democratization, collaboration and derived from all this, a greater economic efficiency.

The logic encourages these claims to be applied also to the technology, and that public administrations do not have the need to look the other way when the question that is at the beginning of this post is asked, that taxpayers’ money used to develop software is published as open source software. It leads us to its adoption and use by our Public Administrations.