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3273 discussions

guardian: "When using open source makes you an enemy of the state"
by Kristian Rink 25 Feb '10

25 Feb '10

Folks: ... thoroughly disgusting, shouldn't FSF(E) comment on that? [... As if all that wasn't enough, here's another brick to add to the teetering tower of news, courtesy of Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh. Guadamuz has done some digging and discovered that an influential lobby group is asking the US government to basically consider open source as the equivalent of piracy - or even worse. [...] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/opensource-intellectu… And we're still talking "just" open source, not even software libre here... K. -- Kristian Rink * http://pictorial.zimmer428.net # kawazu(a)jabber.org "What was once thought can never be unthought." (Duerrenmatt - 'Die Physiker')

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bounces?
by Alfred M. Szmidt 24 Feb '10

24 Feb '10

I got a warning that messages from discussion(a)fsfeurope.org are disabled to my account, not sure why. Does anyone know what is going on? From: discussion-request(a)fsfeurope.org To: ams(a)gnu.org Subject: confirm 36bc7d617c7cc483300e6723019d829964942b7b Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:00:01 +0100 Your membership in the mailing list Discussion has been disabled due to excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was dated 16-Feb-2010. You will not get any more messages from this list until you re-enable your membership. You will receive 2 more reminders like this before your membership in the list is deleted.

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Please help me respond to a German user about the GPL
by Jeff Epler 22 Feb '10

22 Feb '10

In a web forum about emc2 (often called just emc), a GPLv2only-licensed program, a developer has posted some comments about the GPL that are very surprising from my US-centric viewpoint of the GPL). The developer, Thomas G., is writing a new GUI for emc2; the source code for the GUI includes some files adapted from the emc2 source distribution, and the compilation process uses header files and libraries from the emc2 binary distribution. My understanding is that there is no difficulty in releasing the new GUI under the terms of the GPLv2, but Thomas seems to have some reservations that I do not understand: > as we do not have the Gpl- Licence in Europe (mean we have it but it > is intended different) i still do not know what licence to provide > with the source... In Europe everything that is published has a > copyright. Even the emc- example Nc-Code, Hal-Examples etc... So > normally i am not allowed to make a copy of emc in Europe... If there > is a "real" copyright depends on the code itself. For Example: if i > take a "small" Part of external code (lets say 100 lines of code) into > a big project (about 80.000 lines of code) and the external code is a > code that itself has parts that were taken from other published > code-fragments, the external code cannot have a copyright... But you > can feel free to copy / modify the source as you want... http://www.linuxcnc.org/component/option,com_kunena/Itemid,20/func,view/cat… Please help me understand and respond to his concerns, particularly from the standpoint of European or German copyright. I believe Thomas's first language is German, so if there's someone willing to communicate with Thomas personally in German that might also help here. If you contact me, I can put you in touch with him. Thanks, Jeff

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Spread the message for Valentine's day
by Hugo Roy 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

Hello, The Press-release is now out [1]. Please help spreading our message by voting on http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/Show_that_you_Free_Software and don't forget to use #ilovefs on identi.ca and twitter. [1] http://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100212-01.en.html Best, Hugo -- Hugo Roy [] roy(a)fsfeurope.org [][][] Assistant to the President (Berlin) || http://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo Mob: +49-176-35308766 Free Software Foundation Europe works to create general understanding and support for software freedom in politics, law and society-at-large. For more information, see www.fsfe.org

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Public Service Announcement: The Motorola Milestone is a Millstone
by Andreas Trawoeger 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

Hi to everybody! If anybody is thinking about buying a Motorola Milestone Android phone: Don't do it. The Motorola Droid is an open phone, but the Milestone is totally locked up and can be best described as being a portable Tivo. More information about the Milestone encryption techniques can be found at http://and-developers.com/motorola_milestone We would like to push the topic at the Mobile World Congress next week and if somebody wants to help (we really would need the help of a native speaker) please take a look at http://and-developers.com/motorola_milestone:custom_recovery:mwc_2010_miles… cu andreas

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Re: Discussion Digest, Vol 86, Issue 2
by Hugo Roy 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

Le mercredi 10 février 2010 12:00:01, discussion-request(a)fsfeurope.org a écrit : > > as we do not have the Gpl- Licence in Europe (mean we have it but > > it is intended different) i still do not know what licence to > > provide with the source... In Europe everything that is published > > has a copyright. > I don't really get the difference between GPL in Europe and GPL in the US. It doesn't work exactly the same way in court because we have different laws, but there is no "different intention" and we do have the GPL licence in Europe of course (validated already in several cases in Europe). The fact that we have a copyright system that do not need any kind of registration does not change the fact that the GPL is a contract. If he's doing a derivative work of a GUI licensed under GPLv2, there isn't much chance that he'll be able to licence his program with anything else than GPLv2 anyway. -- Hugo Roy [] roy(a)fsfeurope.org [][][] Assistant to the President (Berlin) || http://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo Mob: +49-176-35308766 Free Software Foundation Europe works to create general understanding and support for software freedom in politics, law and society-at-large. For more information, see www.fsfe.org

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FSFE Newsletter - January 2010
by Free Software Foundation Europe 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

FSFE Newsletter - January 2010 In January, FSFE was awarded the Theodor Heuss Medal as a "trendsetting organisation". This recognition for the hard work of the past years was a good start into the new year. FSFE participated in a WIPO meeting on patents and standards, moved forward with the restructuring of the website, identified two Fellowship candidates for the Fellowship seat in FSFE's General Assembly, and much more. Read further January Newsletter Giacomo Poderi 1. Fellowship elections, introducing the candidates: Julia Klein and Björn Schießle 2. Ongoing website restructuring 3. Standards and patents at WIPO, Geneva, Switzerland, 25-29 Jan 4. Fellowship Jabber meeting: "What does it mean to be a candidate for the GA seat?", 06 Jan 5. December Fellowship grants IN THE SPOTLIGHT 6. FSFE honoured with Theodor Heuss Medal - "trendsetting organisation" IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST 7. First draft of GPLv3 presented UPCOMING EVENTS 8. Election for Fellowship GA seat 9. FOSDEM, Brussels, Belgium, 06-07 Feb 1. The Fellowship elections, introducing the candidates: Julia Klein and Björn Schießle Julia Klein and Björn Schießle are the two candidates who will run for the election of the second available seat as Fellowship representative at FSFE's GA. Both have been Fellows for a few years now. Julia often participates in Fellowship events and helps in setting up FSFE's booths in Germany. Björn is active in the German translation team, takes part in the Baden-Würtemberg Fellowship events and has a been part of FSFE's German team for several years. More information on the voting period are available at http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100129-01.html http://wiki.fsfe.org/election10 2. Ongoing website restructuring Last month we announced the beginning of the major restructuring of FSFE's website. The work is not finished yet, but as it is possible to notice by browsing fsfe.org, our webmasters team did an excellent job in only a few weeks. The visible changes are only the top of the iceberg. Many hours of work were spent on the improvement of the underlying structure of the website. You can help the webmasters team by joining them or simply by pointing out problems concerning the website. web(a)fsfeurope.org http://www.fsfe.org/contribute/web/web.html 3. Standards and patents at WIPO, Geneva, Switzerland, 25-29 Jan Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's president, and Hugo Roy, FSFE's intern, participated in the meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents. From FSFE's perspective, the two most important points on the agenda were the relation between standards and patents, and limitations to patentability. In this regard, FSFE made a statement which highlights the relevance of transparent processes when discussing patent regulations and gives support to the idea of creating a working program for the discussion of limitations and exceptions of patentability, and their effectiveness in addressing development concerns. FSFE's statement is available at: http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=291 4. Fellowship Jabber meeting: "What does it mean to be a candidate for the GA seat?", 06 Jan On 06 January, the Fellows met on our jabber server to hear about Torsten Grote's experience as representative for the Fellowship at FSFE's General Assembly (GA). Torsten clarified doubts that other Fellows had concerning this role, and encouraged them to run as candidates for the other available seat. The election will take place during February. http://wiki.fsfe.org/Jabber 5. December Fellowship grants As it happened for the application period of November, we received many interesting grant applications and deciding amongst these wasn't easy at all. However, the grants for December have been awarded to Alex Bihlmaier and Christoph Fritz, both from Germany, and Stelios Stavroulakis from Greece. They impressed us with their enthusiasm for Free Software projects and the many valuable contributions they have made so far. We welcome them to the Fellowship! http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join http://fellowship.fsfe.org/grant.en.html IN THE SPOTLIGHT 6. FSFE honoured with Theodor Heuss Medal - "trendsetting organisation" FSFE will receive this year's Theodor Heuss Medal for its extraordinary work for equitable participation in the information society. Since 2001 FSFE has promoted the freedom to use, investigate, modify and redistribute software in all parts of society and politics. Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's president, and Matthias Kirschner, German team coordinator, emphasised on the valuable efforts done by Georg Greve, Bernhard Reiter and Werner Koch, who founded FSFE, and by all volunteers who supported us during these years. It was them who made this success possible! The non-partisan Theodor Heuss Foundation seeks "to bring attention to something that needs to be done in our democracy". Regarding FSFE's medal, the Foundation states: "FSFE, as a forward thinking organisation, contributes to the development and establishment of rules for good global governance." The award ceremony will take place on May 8 in Stuttgart, Germany. http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100126-01.html Relevant Links: http://www.theodor-heuss-stiftung.de http://fsfe.org/projects/work.html http://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.html IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST 7. First draft of GPLv3 presented In January 2006 at MIT in Boston, USA, the first draft of the GPLv3 was presented and discussed. Georg Greve and other FSFE representatives participated at the first international conference on the GPLv3. An event that marked an important milestone towards the new version of the world's most successful Free Software license. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q1/000127.html UPCOMING EVENTS 8. Election for Fellowship GA seat During the whole month of February, the election for the second Fellowship seat in FSFE's GA will take place. All Fellows will be asked to vote for the candidates and to decide who, between Julia and Björn, will join Torsten in representing the Fellowship in FSFE's highest decision making body. http://wiki.fsfe.org/election10 9. FOSDEM, Brussels, Belgium, 06-07 Feb As usual, FSFE will participate at FOSDEM with a lively and well-staffed booth. This European event organized by the community, for the community is the place where Free Software developers meet, and an event that you should not miss. Drop by the FSFE booth near the entrance and say hello! FOSDEM takes place at ULB Campus Solbosh, 50 Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. Admission gratis. http://fosdem.org/2010/ You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html You can join the Fellowship or find how to support us on http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join http://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.html You can order our merchandise at http://fsfe.org/order/order.html Copyright 2010, Free Software Foundation Europe <pr(a)fsfeurope.org>. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

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We got the Theodor Heuss Medal
by Matthias Kirschner 26 Jan '10

26 Jan '10

Hi all, today the Theodor Heuss Stiftung announced that FSFE will be honoured with this years Theodor Heuss medal. This would not have been possible without your ongoing support, your input in discussions, and the great work from all of you for Free Software. Looking forward to interesting discussions about Free Software! Matthias == FSFE honoured with Theodor Heuss Medal - "trendsetting organisation" == [Permanent URL: http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100126-01.en.html ] 26th January 2010, 09:00 am CET, Berlin, Germany The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) receives this year's Theodor Heuss Medal for its extraordinary work for equitable participation in the information society. Since 2001 FSFE has been committed to the freedom to use, investigate, modify and redistribute software in all parts of society and politics. Theodor Heuss Foundation states: "FSFE as a forward thinking organisation contributes to the development and establishment of rules for good global governance." "Free Software is an indispensable component of a free society in the digital age. It ensures equal access to the information society for everyone, " says Karsten Gerloff, President of FSFE, commenting on the award. "A small group of people who were ahead of their time founded Free Software Foundation Europe in November 2000. They have worked for that success tirelessly and with great personal commitment," Gerloff emphasises. "Special credit is due to the initiator of FSFE, Georg Greve and co-founder Bernhard Reiter. Georg Greve took on substantial personal risk to get the organisation off the ground, and until 2009 presided over its growth. For many years, Bernhard Reiter built up the German team to become one of the strongest groups for Free Software in Europe." "We founded the Free Software Foundation Europe to serve as an independent organisation, fighting for the freedom of society in the digital age. Our work is both about freedom from surveillance and monitoring as well as about freedom for personal initiative in all its forms," Georg Greve explains. "From the very beginning, the organisation has taken a long-term view, distributing its work for sustainable change across many shoulders." "From the start, we designed the organisation to work independently of any specific person," adds Bernhard Reiter. "We wanted FSFE to accompany the changes in society for the coming decades. Today FSFE is supported and protected by many dedicated people." Matthias Kirschner, Germany Coordinator of FSFE, comments: "The Medal goes to all those who have been contributing to FSFE's success over the years with their considerable initiative and personal commitment. But there is still much more to do in a world where software is everywhere. Our work is reaching more and more people, from the United Nations to our towns and villages. For this, we need broad support. Contributors are always welcome! == About the Theodor Heuss Stiftung == The Theodor Heuss Stiftung is above party lines and carries the name of Germany's first president (term in office 1949 - 59). After his death the foundation was founded by Hildegard Hamm-Brücher, his son Ernst Ludwig Heuss, and some friends, to remind of the political achievements of Theodor Heuss as an example for social commitment, moral courage and the dedication to foster democracy. The foundation seeks "to bring attention to something, which has to be done and shaped in our democracy, without being finished" (Carl Friedrich v. Weizsäcker, 1965). The Theodor Heuss price is given annually to persons of high standing and organisations, which are pathbreaking in this respect. -- German Coordinator, Fellowship Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) [] (http://fsfe.org) Join the Fellowship of FSFE! [][][] (http://fsfe.org/join) Your donation powers our work! || (http://fsfe.org/donate)

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[frank@openDesktop.org: Free BIOS and no Binary Blobs on Open-PC]
by Matthias-Christian Ott 18 Jan '10

18 Jan '10

Hi, I asked the Open-PC Team whether their Computer is entirely free and got the following reply I wanted to share with you, because there are some people who spread the rumor that the Open-PC is entirely free. Regards, Matthias-Christian ----- Forwarded message from Frank Karlitschek <frank(a)openDesktop.org> ----- Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:40:16 -0800 From: Frank Karlitschek <frank(a)openDesktop.org> To: ott(a)mirix.org Subject: Free BIOS and no Binary Blobs on Open-PC X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1077) Hi, we use completely free software and drivers. But for the hardware we rely on components from company like Asus. I don´t know if the BIOS trey us is open? Cheers Frank --------- Hello, I\'m interested in your Open-PC and also want recommend it to friends. However, I would like to know if the Open-PC is based entirely on Free Software, i.e. does it require any proprietary software (e.g. Firmware or Kernel modules) or does it have a proprietary BIOS. I would really like to have a free Computer which uses coreboot or similar software and uses entirely free drivers. Kind Regards, Mat -- Frank Karlitschek frank(a)openDesktop.org ----- End forwarded message -----

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publicprivateproperty.org
by marc 18 Jan '10

18 Jan '10

hi i wanted to let you know about this initiative: http://publicprivateproperty.org "The objectives are: * Providing a bunch of PPP declarations with optional clausules for attaching them to all kind of private owned physical goods. * etc ...." Looking for some opinions and posible clausules-cases-suggestions brought-based on FS-FC experiences. zanx in advance.

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