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Explaining Free Software - good examples
by Matthias Kirschner 28 Aug '06

28 Aug '06

Hi all, I am looking for a good way to explain Free Software to *non-programmers* during a moderated show. It should be short (about 6 minutes), not to technically (I do not want to scare them off), and illustrative. To start I thought about using the recipe analogy because I have good experiences with this example which others also share. But now there should be an example for the audience, which shows the advantage of the freedom to modify the software to your own needs. There should be some pictures so not only someone is visible who is just talking or explaining without really showing something. First I thought of a /translation example/: Think about the case your mother want to use a program, but she is not able to read English. And than show someone who is translating a program into another language (there is the possibility to show things on a screen). But I do not know if that is something people are really concerned with. So someone had the idea to adept a /Mozilla Firefox extension/ (Firefox, because it is available on different platforms and a lot of people already know it and perhaps use it). For example, adapt a library search to a local library. But I do not know how difficult it is to do something like this and I am unsure if the audience will understand it. It should be easy to modify it. It does not matter if the result is funny, or useful. A friend argued OpenOffice.org, FireFox and embedded devices (which also was an idea) are bad examples for showing practical work on the source code and it would be better to use a language and application that does not need a /building step/, like a python application. Another friend said he thinks you cannot explain Free Software to a non-programmer by showing someone modifying software, because the audience does not know what a program is, so there is no point in showing them a program and pretend to tell them that 'it is easy to modify it'. After thinking about this I am playing with the idea to just use the recipe example and show someone cooking. But I am not sure if it is good not showing software at all. Now, what do you think? Do you have good approaches which might help me? Or have experiences that a certain approach did not work with a non-programmer audience? I am looking forward to your replies. With best wishes, Matze -- Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)

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Croatia: Open Source Software Policy
by mjr＠phonecoop.coop 23 Aug '06

23 Aug '06

Koen Vervloesem wrote in http://business.newsforge.com/business/06/08/11/1855229.shtml?tid=110&tid=1… > Last month the Croatian government adopted an open source software > policy and issued guidelines for developing and using open source > software in the government institutions. The Croatian government is > concerned that proprietary software leads to too much dependence on > the software suppliers. [...] Is FSFE in touch with Croatian supporters? Is the gov.hr definition of 'open source' anything like the free software definition? Thanks for any comments, -- MJ Ray - see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html North End, Lynn, Norfolk, England Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ IRC/Jabber/SIP: on request

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For Wikipedia, help list "Free Software companies"
by Ciaran O'Riordan 23 Aug '06

23 Aug '06

If anyone would like to help build a list of notable Free Software orientated companies, consider contributing here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_software_companies In Wikipedia, "Categories" are lists of articles that contain a certain tag. To add articles to the "Free_software_companies" Category, add this tag: [[Category:Free software companies]] to the bottom of an article on a company that fits the definition. That article also has a discussion page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Free_software_companies ...which can be used to discuss which articles are appropriate and which are not. Changing the name of the category is another thing that could be discussed. Note that the aim is to make it easier to navigate Wikipedia's free software related information - this isn't related to GNU Business Network. Another part of Wikipedia that might be useful, or is a good place to start as a contributor, is the Free Software portal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Free_software -- Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3 http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org

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RE: Losing the message in the medium (was: Re: Free Software and why we avoid it)
by Ottavio Caruso 15 Aug '06

15 Aug '06

I wrote: > > Mr Stallman, who is probably more "OSI hater" than "MS hater"). Consider that a joke. What I meant is that pi**ing the OSI off, by comparing them to the 'New Labour', would have _probably_ pleased RMS. I presume you don't live in the UK, so you might or might not realize that over here being compared to Tony Blair's entities is not necessarily appreciated. Ottavio Caruso -- No individual replies, please! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Free Software and why we avoid it
by Ottavio Caruso 15 Aug '06

15 Aug '06

Uk magazine PcPro n.143 recently published an article about "Free Software", the one that usually gives on your nerves if you are a frequent user of this mailing list. My letter to the magazine is also a poor man's summary of the article: > Dear Sirs, > > your recent article "Free Software and why we avoid > it", PcPro 143, annoys me a bit. > > It's not about whether I agree with it or not; its > about the way you present information. > > Firstly, you confuse your readers by putting 'Free > Software' (Linux, the Gimp, Firefox, Apache), > 'freeware' (Ad-Aware, AVG, WinZip Zone Alarm) and > even the infamous Nigerian 419 scam on the same > plate. > Why not involve the paedophiles and Al-Qaeda, while > you're there? > > Then you define Richard Stallman as "Linux > co-creator", "Microsoft-hating" and "near > Communist". > I'll leave that to anyone with access to a search > engine to determine if it's true or not (by the way, > what does 'near Communist' mean? Coming from a > country where the Communist Party had 30% of the > votes, you are either Communist or not). > > Further on it is stated that the OSI (Open Source > Initiative) was merely an 'image makeover' > (disputable but legitimate opinion) and you even > compare it to Tony Blair's New Labour. Now, only > readers from outside the UK would not realize how > offensive this statement could be (incidentally, in > doing that, you could have regained the sympathy of > Mr Stallman, who is probably more "OSI hater" > than "MS hater"). > > In short, given the technical calibre of your > magazine, I think this is an example of > disinformation. > > Regards > > Ottavio Caruso Ottavio Caruso -- No individual replies, please! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Summary of the coming swpat battle
by Ciaran O'Riordan 14 Aug '06

14 Aug '06

I've made an attempt to summarise what's currently happening about software patents: http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/weblog/the_future_of_the_patents_battle_a… The main points are that the next time will be a battle about the judiciary instead of the rules of patentability, and what difficulties that causes. If I've left out something that is important enough to appear in such a short summary, please let me know. -- Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3 http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org

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FSFE Newsletter
by Free Software Foundation Europe 10 Aug '06

10 Aug '06

1. SELF project officially launched 2. Second draft of the GPLv3 presented 3. Bernhard Reiter spoke at University of Bayreuth (Germany) 4. Free Software at Campus Party in Valencia (Spain) 5. Experts Meeting on Internet Governance Forum 6. Microsoft fined another 1.5m EUR per day, 280.5m EUR total 7. FSFE servers moved 1. SELF project officially launched The SELF project has been officially launched with a kick-off meeting in Amsterdam followed by a one day conference at The Hague. SELF stands for Scientific Education and Learning in Freedom and will set up a platform for Free educational materials about Free Software and Open Standards. The project is funded by the sixth framework programme of the European Commission and includes partners from Bulgaria, Spain, Sweden, Germany, India, Argentina and the Netherlands. FSFE is participating with Georg Greve and Jonas Öberg in all areas of the project and is responsible for the coordination of all legal issues. More information is available at http://www.selfproject.eu Georg Greve has blogged about the kick off conference: http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/self_kick_off_conference_in_… 2. Second draft of the GPLv3 presented After seven months of discussion and more than 1000 comments made through the public consultation process, the Free Software Foundation has published the second draft for the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 3 and the first draft for the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Version 3 which is now designed as a set of permissive exceptions to GPLv3. Ciarán O'Riordan has prepared a list of changes between the first and the second draft for GPLv3 as well as a list of changes between the second draft for GPLv3 and the GPLv2. Both are available via FSFE's GPLv3 project page: http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/gplv3.en.html 3. Bernhard Reiter spoke at University of Bayreuth (Germany) Bernhard Reiter was invited by the economics department of the University of Bayreuth (Germany) to speak about software patents. After two other speakers gave a general introduction into the topic, he focused his presentation on the practical implications of software patentability. 4. Free Software at Campus Party in Valencia (Spain) The FSFE participated actively in the 10th edition of Campus Party in Valencia. Stefano Maffulli gave three speeches, talking about FSFE, the Fellowship program and the threat of DRM. The presentations will be published shortly on the new Advocacy section of www.fsfe.org. 5. Experts Meeting on Internet Governance Forum (IGF) One of the outcomes of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was the establishment of an Internet Governance Form (IGF). This forum plans to provide room for discussion and potential consensus building on various forms of regulation concerning the Internet. In preparation for this year's first IGF, in Athens, Greece, FSFE's president Georg Greve participated in a two day expert meeting to discuss possibilities and challenges that the IGF creates. 6. Microsoft fined another 1.5m EUR per day, 280.5m EUR total Due to Microsoft's continued refusal to make its interoperability information available to competitors, the European Commission fined Microsoft 1.5m EUR per day retroactively from 16th December 2005. FSFE has been active in this case since the original investigation in 2001, working to represent and protect the interests of the Samba Project, which is by now more than 10 years behind in their implementation of interoperable software due to Microsoft's protocol manipulation games. More information available at http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q3/000147.html 7. FSFE servers moved On the 20th and 21st of July, the servers hosting most of the FSFE infrastructure were moved to Örebro University in Sweden who graciously has donated rack space and bandwidth for the servers. The FSFE would like to express our thanks to Örebro University for providing these facilities, as well as our deepest thanks to Göteborg University, who previously provided the bandwidth and rack space. You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html

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German Copyright Laws
by Yaakov Nemoy 03 Aug '06

03 Aug '06

Hi all, I'm looking for some simple legal advice before I have to speak to a laywer about this. I'm unfortunately not very familiar with the German Copyright Laws, so this will be a bit difficult for me. I'm working on a small project (for now) for an internship that, under the terms of my contract, falls under the company's copyright. Convincing them to make an open source (GPL v2) release will be no problem, but I have a question about ensuring the future of my project. As the project will be open source, how can I make a copy under German law? If my firm decides to close up the source later, do I have the rights to make a fork of the last open version? More importantly, who has the copyrights to the forked version? I am looking for some joint copyright anyways, and if I am lucky, this will be a non issue, but I'm looking for a backup plan just in case I can't make a deal with them. Thanks in advance, Danke im Voraus, Yaakov Nemoy

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Second revision of GPLv3 draft
by Alex Hudson 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Is available now: http://gplv3.fsf.org/ Annoyingly, I can't find a diff from the first draft - anyone? Cheers, Alex.

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Little poem on the pragmatism of "opensource" and Linus' defense of DRM
by Rui Miguel Silva Seabra 29 Jul '06

29 Jul '06

I take improvements ;) First they took our freedom in Tivos, and I did not speak out-- because I would not buy a Tivo; Then they took our freedom in XBox, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a gamer; Then they came for the MacIntels, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Apple Fanboy; Then they came for the Appliances, and I did not speak out-- because they either work better or I use "Open Source"; Then they came for the PCs-- and there was no one left to speak out for us "Linux" users. First published in here: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192501&cid=15805033 Rui

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