Add FOSDEM Junior post

content/blog/2025/01/2025-01-31_fosdem-junior-petition/index.en.md

++++
+title = "Join our call to make FOSDEM Junior free"
+authors = ["nik"]
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["Ankündigung"]
+zielgruppe = ["Hacker und Maker", "Eltern"]
+aspekt = ["Digitale Mündigkeit"]
+
+[extra.depiction]
+image = "postcard.png"
+alt = "Postcard showing the theses explained in the post"
+credits = "Dominik George, CC-BY-SA"
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+
+Europe's biggest Free Software development conference,
+[FOSDEM](https://fosdem.org/), will be held in Bruxelles.
+Join our call to help make its junior programme free,
+open, and self-determined for everyone!
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+## FOSDEM Junior
+
+The [FOSDEM Junior](https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/junior/) track is
+FOSDEM's programme for children between 7 and 17 years. Established in 2024,
+it offers a variety of workshops, mostly held by adult tutors for the young
+people who attend.
+
+Organised as part of the ["Code Club"](https://codeclub.org/) series, it is
+officially an offer by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The FOSDEM Junior track
+thus shares the Code of Conduct, as well as some technical platforms, with
+the foundation.
+
+## Privacy concerns over Code Club platforms
+
+One major issue we see with how FOSDEM Junior is organised is that the platforms
+offered by the Raspberry Pi Foundation are governed by privacy policies that
+directly contradict many of the values we pursue when working with young people
+(and even with people in general). Opening the Code Club website that hosts
+the Code of Conduct alone requires consent to **72 "necessary" tracking cookies** of
+several providers, among which are Microsoft, Google, Solarwinds, Stripe, and
+Cloudflare.
+
+In their privacy policy, Raspberry Pi Foundation reserves the right to collect
+an enormous amount of personal information, including such things as physical
+addresses, birthdays, gender information, and even "CCTV images".
+The latter might arguably only aaply to physical visits to their offices, but the
+provacy policy, as it stands, states that every website visitor might be affected
+by such data processing.
+
+For "operational reasons", all data may be shared with Google Workspace, Amazon Web
+Services machines, and Salesforce. The Raspberry Pi Foundation claims that all these systems
+are operated within the UK, which left the European Union, thus posing even mroe dfficulties
+on GDPR-compliant data processing when children from within the EU are affected.
+
+## Closed platforms and GAFAM dependencies in workshops
+
+While most of the workshops offered in FOSDEM Junior are based on free and open source
+toosl and platforms, some stand out for requiring the use of closed platforms. For example,
+the MIT App Inventor workshop requires to have a Google account, and, while the workshop
+description claims that an "Android phone or tablet" is required, it turns out that using
+and Android-based phone will probably not suffice, as MIT App Inventor relies on
+Google Play Services.
+
+## Limited self-determination in FOSDEM Junior
+
+As a result of the above issues, FOSDEM Junior requires all participants to be accompanied
+by a parent or other adult guardian. With the privacy-unfriendly policies of the Raspberry
+Pi Foundation in place, children and adolescents essentially cannot decide to agree or
+disagree.
+
+While getting parental consent is not an issue in itself, the requirement to agree to (or have
+a guardian consent to) the extensive data collection, locks out children who are not willing
+to consent. What we regularly see at Teckids events is that many parents tend to put a high
+importance on fostering their children's coding activities, hence being very likely to agree
+to policies that the children themselves, after proper information and discussion, would
+probably not agree to. Children themselves, on the other hand, tend to agree to policies they
+would not normally agree to if put under the social pressure to do so.
+
+Therefore, we believe that programmes for children should carefully design their data processing,
+allowing children to fully understand policies and consequences, and making agreeing as
+easy as possible without compromising their self-determination.
+
+Requiring a Google phone or access to other commercial platforms normalises the use of comemrcial
+software. Children who would normally resist social pressure of their peer groups to join
+commercial platforms, like WhatsApp or other corporate social media, are more likely to give
+up such resistance in the future after experiencing that persons of authority have normalised
+their use.
+
+Commercial platforms, like Google Play, are prone to much stricter access restrictions due to
+their commercial chracter and their data processing principles. Hence, young people are
+often required to either depend on a parent to use such platforms, or use them illegally.
+
+At Teckids, we believe that programmes targeted at children and organised by free software
+activists should make normalisation of free, open, accessible platforms a priority.
+
+## Join our call to FOSDEM Junior
+
+At FOSDEM 2025, we present our "Charta of Comprehesibility" programme for the first time
+by reaching out to FOSDEM Junior and the FOSDEM team. Our goal is to convince FOSDEM
+Junior to revise their policies, making the freedom and self-determination of all
+participants a priority. In essence, we will be calling for the following principles:
+
+* Technology and tools should be free, open, and transparent.
+* Platforms should be privacy-friendly and accessible without age restrictions.
+* Participation should be free and self-determined for all groups and ages.
+* Children should have the last say concerning their data and privacy.
+* Commercial offerings and advertising should be avoided where at all possible.
+
+Just as we did in 2018 and 2019, we once again offer our experience and expertise
+in working with young people in the free software world to support FOSDEM Junior,
+allowing for a workshop programme that respects the children's free and self-determined
+participation to the maximum extent.
+
+![Postcard containing above claims](psotcard.png)
+
+**If you want to join our call, visit us at our stand in building F.**