Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss

Values that we in the Free Software community may take for granted, values such as user autonomy and transparency, as of January 2020 these values are now officially recognized as fundamental for sustainable software design through the Blauer Engel eco-label award criteria. When users decide how software is used, when software development is open for all to see and participate in, communities are empowered. They are empowered to drive down the energy consumption of their programs, with no loss in functionality. Or users may install only what they need, no more and no less, and opt out of advertising and data-mining, thus reducing the number of unnecessary processes running in the background and consuming resources. Additionally, developers may continue to support otherwise unsupported hardware, giving users up-to-date and secure devices, preventing waste landing in landfills. All of the above promote higher energy and resource efficiency, which means lower energy consumed, less CO2 produced, and a longer operating life for devices. Free Software *is* sustainable software! In this talk I will focus on the energy and resource consumption of software, and I will walk the audience through the 3 steps for obtaining Blauer Engel certification: (1) *Measure*, (2) *Analyze*, (3) *Certify*. I will end the talk with an open call for community engagement, both specifically in applying for Blauer Engel certification and more generally in supporting a resource-efficient, Free Software future.

KDE has a vision: "**A world in which everyone has control over their digital life and enjoys freedom and privacy**." From this vision, every word laden with meaning [1], there is a straight line to the new KDE Eco project [2]. The **world** and its limited resources, the looming threat of the climate crisis ... KDE Eco aims to change the world we live in by making software sustainable and accessible for **everyone**, wherever they are. Free Software and the four freedoms [3] put users and their communities at the heart of our digital society, giving users autonomy over their software and devices. Having users **control** their software, and not service providers or hardware vendors or even an application's developers, is crucial to **freedom** and **privacy** in our digital lives. Overlooked is that these same qualities make for resource-efficient software [4]! Values that we in the Free Software community may take for granted, values such as user autonomy and transparency – as of January 2020 these values are now officially recognized as fundamental for a sustainable software design through the Blauer Engel eco-label award criteria [5]. When users decide how software is used, when software development is open for all to see and participate in, communities are empowered. They are empowered to drive down the energy consumption of their programs, with no loss in functionality [6] – in contrast to the software bloat all too common in software design. Or users may install only what they need, no more and no less, and opt out of advertising and data-mining, thus reducing the number of unnecessary processes running in the background and consuming resources. Additionally, developers may continue to support otherwise unsupported hardware, giving users up-to-date and secure devices [7], preventing waste landing in landfills. All of the above promotes higher energy and resource efficiency, which means lower energy consumed, less CO2 produced, and a longer operating life for devices! Free Software entails user freedom. And this freedom means software, and the hardware it runs on, will be more sustainable. For you. For me. For all of us. For the world. In this talk I will focus primarily on the energy and resource consumption of software, and I will walk the audience through the 3 steps for obtaining Blauer Engel certification: (1) *Measure*, (2) *Analyze*, (3) *Certify*. This 3-step workflow will be described in detail, with concrete examples from KDE software. I will end the talk with an open call for community engagement, both specifically in applying for Blauer Engel certification and more generally in supporting a resource-efficient, Free Software future. [1] https://community.kde.org/KDE/Vision [2] https://eco.kde.org [3] http://fsfe.org/freesoftware/freesoftware.en.html [4] https://eco.kde.org/blog/2022-01-25-resource-efficient-software-and-blauer-engel-eco-certification/ [5] https://produktinfo.blauer-engel.de/uploads/criteriafile/en/DE-UZ%20215-202001-en-Criteria-2020-02-13.pdf [6] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/publikationen/entwicklung-anwendung-von-bewertungsgrundlagen-fuer [7] https://media.fsfe.org/w/kGvs3JNADvvQfkC1dR9FGr The BE4FOSS project was funded by the Federal Environment Agency and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV).

The Blauer Engel 4 FOSS (BE4FOSS) project from KDE e.V. seeks to collect, summarize, and spread information related to eco-certification and resource efficiency as it relates to FOSS development. In this talk I will focus primarily on the energy consumption of software, which is also the focus of the Free & Open Source Software Energy Efficiency Project, or FEEP for short. I will walk the audience through the 3 steps for obtaining *Blauer Engel* certification: (1) *Measure*, (2) *Analyze*, (3) *Certify*.

How independent is software from hardware? Unlike the tangible material of hardware, software is intangible, non-material. Or so it may seem. Often overlooked is the fact that the resource consumption of hardware is determined by the software running on it! *How much energy is used?* Look at the software: the same machine doing the same task with different software can have drastically different energy demands. *How long is the operating life of a piece of hardware?* Again, software is critical. Software bloat requiring more and more powerful hardware results in new devices being manufactured and sold, while perfectly functioning devices are discarded. So when thinking about sustainability, we at KDE Eco think software – especially Free Software – is a good place to start. Free Software means users and their communities have the freedom to control the software they use, not the other way around. These freedoms provide real choice: choice in what to install, or uninstall; options to modify software to run more, or less, efficiently; opting to continue support for older, but functioning, devices; and so on. Each of these choices has a cost and/or benefit. For instance, the more (unnecessary) processes a piece of software runs in the background, the more resources the hardware will need. Multiply such costs by hundreds of millions, or even billions, of computer users worldwide, and it quickly adds up. In short, software efficiency means resource efficiency. Recently, the interdependency between software engineering and sustainability issues was officially recognized by the German Environment Agency (*Umweltbundesamt*, or UBA). As of 2020, UBA released the award criteria for desktop software to obtain eco-certification with the *Blauer Engel* label. Categories for certification include energy efficiency, extending the potential operating life of hardware, and user autonomy ... all of which fit seamlessly with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The Blauer Engel 4 FOSS (BE4FOSS) project from KDE e.V. seeks to collect, summarize, and spread information related to eco-certification and resource efficiency as it relates to FOSS development. In this talk I will focus primarily on the energy consumption of software, which is also the focus of the Free & Open Source Software Energy Efficiency Project, or FEEP for short. I will walk the audience through the 3 steps for obtaining *Blauer Engel* certification: (1) *Measure*, (2) *Analyze*, (3) *Certify*. This 3-step workflow will be described in detail, with concrete examples from KDE software. I will end the talk with an open call for community engagement, both specifically in applying for Blauer Engel certification and more generally in supporting a resource-efficient, Free Software future.

In 2020 the German government released the award criteria for obtaining eco-certification with the Blauer Engel label for desktop software. Categories for certification include energy efficiency, extending the potential operating life of hardware, and user autonomy … all of which fit seamlessly with Free & Open Source Software (FOSS). The Blauer Engel 4 FOSS (BE4FOSS) project from KDE e.V. seeks to collect, summarize, and spread information related to eco-certification and resource efficiency as it relates to FOSS development.

Free software means users and their communities have the freedom to control the software they use. These freedoms provide real choice: choice in what to install, or uninstall; options to modify software to run more, or less, efficiently; opting to continue support for older, but functioning, devices; and so on. Each of these choices has a cost and/or benefit. For instance, the more (unnecessary) processes a piece of software runs in the background, the more resources the hardware will need. Multiply such costs by hundreds of millions, or even billions, of computer users worldwide, and it quickly adds up.

In short, software efficiency means resource efficiency.

In this talk I will focus primarily on the energy consumption of software, which is also the focus of the Free & Open Source Software Energy Efficiency Project, or FEEP for short. I will walk the audience through the 3 steps for obtaining Blauer Engel certification: (1) Measure, (2) Analyze, (3) Certify. This 3-step workflow will be described in detail, with concrete examples from the KDE software KMail, Okular, and Krita, the first of which is currently under evaluation for certification. I will end the talk with an open call for community engagement, both specifically in applying for Blauer Engel certification and more generally in supporting a resource-efficient, free software future.

THIS PROJECT IS FINANCIALLY SUPPORTED BY: BMU (Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Germany).