Free and open source software advocates in Albania are going to ask candidates in the June parliamentary elections about their plans for free software. The campaign will be kicked off by Open Labs later this month. The free software advocacy group will aggregate questions and answers on their campaign website.
In addition to asking candidates and political parties about their policies for free software, Open Labs plans to start monitoring actions once the elections are over.
“At Open Labs we have been focusing on grassroots community building around free/libre open source software for many years. Now, we are strong enough to ask politicians for more openess and accountability”, says Redon Skikuli, one of the founders of Open Labs.
Albania will hold parliamentary elections on 18 June 2017.
Free software groups have been organising similar campaigns across Europe, with the first being organised by April.org in France in 2007. A European-wide campaign for the European Parliament elections in 2014 was launched by April (France) as well, together with Assoli (Italy), Hispalinux (Spain), LAKA (Latvia) and the international free software groups Edri, FSF and FSFE.
Open Labs, which started in 2012 has over 20 active members and runs a popular hackerspace in Tirana. The group is the main organiser of the annual OSCAL conference, which was first organised in 2014. This year, OSCAL will take place in Tirana, on 13 and 14 May. The European Commission’s Open Source Observatory (OSOR) will participate.
More information:
Open Labs
France’s April.org election campaign history
Free Software Pact