From mk at fsfe.org Thu Jan 8 23:46:40 2009 From: mk at fsfe.org (Matthias Kirschner) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 00:46:40 +0100 Subject: FSFE - 2009 New Year's Resolution Message-ID: <20090108234640.GA31244@mbwg.de> Hi all, perhaps you have not seen FSFE's New Year's Resolution [1] yet. Here are some things that you can do to help spread this message: - Add the button on your website. E.g. with the following html snippet: 2009 New Year's Resolution - Add a signature in your e-mail or blog. E.g. - "Support Free Software in 2009 (http://fsfeurope.org/2009)" - "2009 - Time to get active (http://fsfeurope.org/2009) - Print out the pdf version [2] and distribute it in your company/university/Free Software user group. - Submit the news to community sites or vote for them. I know it was already submitted to Slashdot [3] and FSdaily [4]. Thanks, Matthias 1. http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/2009/nyr.en.html 2. http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/2009/nyr-2009.pdf 3. http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=2929789 4. http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/FSFE_announces_New_Years_Resolution_Fellowship_campaign -- Deputy German Coordinator, Fellowship Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) [] (http://fsfeurope.org) Join the Fellowship of FSFE! [][][] (http://fsfe.org/join) Your donation powers our work! || (http://fsfeurope.org/donate) From lists at tdobson.net Tue Jan 13 00:53:59 2009 From: lists at tdobson.net (Tim Dobson) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:53:59 +0000 Subject: DFEY-NW :: January 18th :: Digital Freedom in Education and Youth - North West UK Message-ID: <496BE627.3070102@tdobson.net> (Please forward this to anybody or any lists you think might be interested) DFEY-NW (Digital Freedom in Education & Youth - North West) is a group focusing on young people and issues of freedom in the digital world, based in the Northwest of England at the moment. === In Brief === WHERE: Meet near the strange phonemast-like sculpture thing outside Manchester OXFORD ROAD Station. VENUE: BBC Headquarters, Oxford Road, Manchester WHEN: Sunday 18th January, 12pm -> ~4pm YOU *MUST* SIGN UP: http://dfey-nw.eventwax.com/dfey-january-meeting CONTACT: Email - team at dfey dot freedomdreams dot net -- MAILING LIST: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dfey-nw-discuss WEBSITE: http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk -- Notes from the last meeting: http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk/wiki/Meetings/October/Notes === Meeting === Again, we have switched venues! This time however, hopefully we have a permanent place with good facilities. As I understand, via the BBC we will have not shortage of quiet space, power, wifi and a projector! Due to because it's not fun to have to walk around a strange city on your own, even if it is just a few steps, I suggest we meet at Manchester Oxford Road train station at about 12pm (look for geeks, laptops, t-shirts, signs saying "DFEY", stickers etc.) Once everyone has arrived, we will then move on to BBC building just down the road. We aim to have finished by about 4pm and to have left the building by 4:30. === Sign Up === The BBC has insisted I give the a list of all participants by early Friday Morning, please do your best either sign up below, or email us so we can let them know. http://dfey-nw.eventwax.com/dfey-january-meeting If you think a contact number might be helpful on the day, email us and we will sort one out :) === Contact === Please join our *low traffic* mailing list for updates: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dfey-nw-discuss or use the forum interface: http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk/wiki/Forum We also are on IRC for questions and socialising at: #dfey on irc.freenode.net There is also a web interface if you haven't mastered IRC yet: http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk/wiki/Chat === About DFEY-NW === DFEY-NW (Digital Freedom in Education and Youth) is a group formed in response from a growing need in the Northwest of England for a group to encourage and promote young people's involvement with the free software community by creating a social space to make it more comfortable for young people to get involved with GLUGs and FSUGs. -- www.tdobson.net ---- If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us still has one object. If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now has two ideas. - George Bernard Shaw From stian at fsfeurope.org Tue Jan 20 13:24:13 2009 From: stian at fsfeurope.org (Stian =?ISO-8859-1?Q?R=F8dven?= Eide) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:24:13 +0100 Subject: The Enrico Zini Interview Vote Message-ID: <1232457853.12868.112.camel@sentralia> Please vote now for the newest instalment of your favourite interview series: http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/FSFE_Fellowship_Interview_with_Enrico_Zini http://digg.com/linux_unix/FSFE_Fellowship_Interview_with_Enrico_Zini http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=3117403 Feel free to also inform your respective fsfe/fsfeurope country mailing lists. The interview itself is available here: http://fellowship.fsfe.org/interviews/fellowship_interview_with_enrico_zini all the best, /Stian -- Stian Rødven Eide stian at fsfeurope.org Free Software Foundation Europe http://fsfeurope.org Join the Fellowship http://fsfe.org From mk at fsfe.org Thu Jan 22 19:25:01 2009 From: mk at fsfe.org (Matthias Kirschner) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:25:01 +0100 Subject: Web browser interoperability: FSFE welcomes EC's decision and offers support Message-ID: <20090122192501.GA16537@mbwg.de> Perhaps you have not seen it yet. We published a press release about EC's decision: "Web browser interoperability: FSFE welcomes EC's decision and offers support" [1] (also already available in Ελληνικά and Italiano): On the 16th of January the European Commission DG Competition reported that it had issued a statement of objections regarding Microsoft's tying of Internet Explorer (IE) to the Windows Operating System product family. This action builds on a complaint originally submitted by Opera, a European company involved in web browser development. Free Software Foundation Europe welcomes the European Commission's decision and offers its support in the coming anti-trust investigation. As stated previously in a letter to the European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, anti-competitive behaviour is unacceptable, whether it occurs as 'tying' products with dominant market segments, or in circumventing standards and fair access. "Web browsers are becoming a critical platform for home and business computing," says Shane Coughlan, legal coordinator at FSFE. "The market previously failed to prevent unfair distortion of the desktop environment and we cannot allow such practices to be repeated." "It is important that no business in Europe is allowed to institute any policy of embracing, extending and extinguishing competition either through manipulation of interoperability information or through abuse of a dominant position by unfair tying and bundling of products," says Georg Greve, FSFE President. "Microsoft is a company that has previously been convicted of market distortion in the Work Group Server market, and we would welcome if the Commission also took up the antitrust complaint initially lodged in early 2006 by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) regarding market abuse in other areas." For FSFE's previous statement on this issue please see: [2] For FSFE's letter to the European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes please see: [3] I have seen it on some German media (sent that to fsfe-de at fsfeurope.org) and also submitted it to fsdaily. If you like it, please vote for it on [4]. Best wishes, Matthias 1. http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/2009/news-20090120-02.en.html 2. http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/2007/news-20071221-01 3. http://fsfeurope.org/documents/20071219-opera-antitrust.pdf 4. http://www.fsdaily.com/Business/Web_browser_interoperability_FSFE_welcomes_ECs_decision_and_offers_support -- Deputy German Coordinator, Fellowship Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) [] (http://fsfeurope.org) Join the Fellowship of FSFE! [][][] (http://fsfe.org/join) Your donation powers our work! || (http://fsfeurope.org/donate) From greve at fsfeurope.org Fri Jan 23 18:58:16 2009 From: greve at fsfeurope.org (Georg C. F. Greve) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:58:16 +0100 Subject: On the EUPL References: <77A4B81ADE28D0479EAE63270853C085016AAC5D@GBMK-EXCH3.eu.uis.unisys.com> Message-ID: <87ljt1u9x3.fsf@katana.lair> Dear Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz, Of course I have heard about you and your personal involvement in the European Public License. So please forgive me if my comments upon an earlier draft of the EUPL have offended you. I hope you understood that my comment was the result of direct solicitation. From a quick glance at EUPL version 1.1 it now seems that the license has been greatly improved since that first draft I saw. Congratulations! Although FSFE's legal department would require a bit more time for thorough analysis, the license now looks like a Free Software Copyleft license that is expressedly compatible to the old version of the GNU General Public License (GPL). For future improvement it would be good if compatibility to the current version of the GNU GPL were also added. Otherwise version 1.1 seems to have solved the issue that existed with paragraph 13 of version 1.0, and while license proliferation [1] is always a concern, the Compatibility clause in paragraph 5 seems to have addressed it sufficiently through explicit compatibility and the ability to relicense. So from a first look it seems to me that the EUPL is now fit for its intended use as a license catering to the specific political needs of European public administration and it will help to foster growth of the European Free Software ecosystem. I'm sure you'll understand that this is a tentative analysis, pending a more thorough one by the legal departments of our sister organisation and FSFE itself, but maybe this quick response is already helpful. My commendation on the work that has been done on the EUPL, With best regards, Georg Greve [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation -- Georg C. F. Greve Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org) President +41 43 500 03 66 ext 400 Still seeking a New Year's Resolution? Visit http://fsfeurope.org/2009 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 306 bytes Desc: not available URL: From xdrudis at tinet.cat Sat Jan 24 00:49:42 2009 From: xdrudis at tinet.cat (Xavi Drudis Ferran) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:49:42 +0100 Subject: On the EUPL In-Reply-To: <87ljt1u9x3.fsf@katana.lair> References: <77A4B81ADE28D0479EAE63270853C085016AAC5D@GBMK-EXCH3.eu.uis.unisys.com> <87ljt1u9x3.fsf@katana.lair> Message-ID: <20090124004942.GF29034@localhost> On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 07:58:16PM +0100, Georg C. F. Greve wrote: > > From a quick glance at EUPL version 1.1 it now seems that the license > has been greatly improved since that first draft I saw. Congratulations! > > Although FSFE's legal department would require a bit more time for > thorough analysis, the license now looks like a Free Software Copyleft > license that is expressedly compatible to the old version of the GNU > General Public License (GPL). For future improvement it would be good if > compatibility to the current version of the GNU GPL were also added. > Indeed, from a quick read it looks much better than I remeber version 1.0. I'm not sure about the last two clauses with choice of law and jurisdiction, but the rest seems fine. At first I was also confused by attaching law and jurisdiction to the Licensor, because I thought there could be many licensors, but it was my mistake. Licensor is defined as the person passing the work, not the original authors or contributors, so there's reasonably only one for each possible dispute or litigation. It's a bit unnatural to me, though, the fact that, if I understand it right, when I publish a program under EUPL 1.1 from Catalonia, and then a user in Bavaria downloads my program from a Welsh website and breaches the license, it is possibly me who should sue, since I'm the copyright holder, but I should sue the Bavarian user in Welsh courts, since the Licensor at stake would be the website owner offering my program. Is that so ? -- xdrudis at tinet.cat Signa per fer Collserola parc natural com cal http://www.collserola.org/salvemelparcnatural/ From greve at fsfeurope.org Sat Jan 24 11:48:24 2009 From: greve at fsfeurope.org (Georg C. F. Greve) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:48:24 +0100 Subject: On the EUPL In-Reply-To: <20090124004942.GF29034@localhost> (Xavi Drudis Ferran's message of "Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:49:42 +0100") References: <77A4B81ADE28D0479EAE63270853C085016AAC5D@GBMK-EXCH3.eu.uis.unisys.com> <87ljt1u9x3.fsf@katana.lair> <20090124004942.GF29034@localhost> Message-ID: <877i4kudpz.fsf@katana.lair> On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:49:42 +0100 Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote: xdf> [...] Is that so ? Your question is an interesting one and needs someone with more legal knowledge than myself to look at it, so I've forwarded it to the FTF, our legal department. [1] Regards, Georg [1] http://fsfeurope.org/ftf -- Georg C. F. Greve Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org) President +41 43 500 03 66 ext 400 Still seeking a New Year's Resolution? Visit http://fsfeurope.org/2009 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 306 bytes Desc: not available URL: