At the end of last week, the White House published a draft for a Source
Code Policy <https://sourcecode.cio.gov/SourceCodePolicy.pdf>. The
policy requires every public agency to publish their custom-build
software as Free Software for other public agencies as well as the
general public to use, study, share and improve the software. As we want
to push for similar policies in the EU, I would be very interested in
your feedback.
The Source Code Policy is intended for efficient use of US taxpayers'
money and reuse of existing custom-made software across the public
sector. It is said to reduce vendor lock-in of the public sector, and
decrease duplicate costs for the same code which in return will increase
transparency of public agencies. The custom-build software will also be
published to the general public either as public domain, or as Free
Software so others can improve and reuse the software.
The policy in general does not require that already existing
custom—developed software be retroactively made available as Free
Software if it was developed by third party developers (though it is
strongly encouraged to the extent permissible under existing contracts).
However, it is encouraged to be retroactively applicable for the
existing custom-build software developed by agency employees in the
course of their official duties.
As a result, the draft predicts that the policy will contribute to
economic growth and innovation, as the public will be able to use and
improve the software which was funded with public money.
Until 11 April 2016 the public can comment the draft
<https://sourcecode.cio.gov/>. So please sent us any comments asap.
--
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/donate)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) - Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)
Hello everybody,
Here's a quick update on the upgrade/migration of FSFE's Wiki [1] and
the little group of "Caretakers" who wanted to focus on reorganizing and
improving the content of it.
Technical questions, reporting bugs, etc should still be reported to web
<at> fsfeurope.org
The group of CareTakers, which you may join any time btw, collects plans
and ideas on their dedicated name space in the wiki [2]. You may join
our discussions on our QuickML [3] either to point something out or to
offer help.
While we are working on pages, we agreed to chitchat about it on the
Fellowship XMPP MUC [4].
Greetings,
Guido
PS: I'll send a similar note to fsfe-de@ mailinglist. Feel free to
spread the word into mailing lists in other languages, too!
[1] https://wiki.fsfe.org/FSFE%20Fellowship%20Wiki
[2] https://wiki.fsfe.org/WikiAdmin/WikiCaretakers
[3] WikiCareTakers<at>q.fsfe.org
More info on QuickML: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/quickml
[4] fellowship(a)conference.jabber.fsfe.org
More info on FSFE MUC: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/XMPP
--
Sent with my mobile and K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevety.
http://freeyourandroid.org
Dear all,
Maybe you heard of the Radio Equipment Directive already. It's a
directive passed by the European Parliament forcing radio device
manufacturers (routers, mobile phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS...) from
around 2017 on to check every software able to run on the respective
devices to be compliant with applicable radio laws (e.g. frequency or
strenght).
Seeming to be reasonable at first sight, this directive will cause huge
damage to Free Software, innovation, security, fair competition,
volunteering and more. We have been in contact with many actors around
this issue since a few months already; now we published our official
information page about the EU Radio Directive, trying to summarise all
necessary background info, bad consequences, and recommendations how to
improve the situation:
https://fsfe.org/activities/radiodirective/
Please share your thoughts on this issue, and please also speak with
friends and colleagues about it. Feel free to help us gathering more
information and share it on this list or with me directly. Thanks!
Best regards,
Max
P.S.: In the USA, the FCC wants to push a quite similar law. Let us try
to at least protect Europe from such damage, and let's hope the US
activists will be successful as well.
--
Max Mehl - Coordinator German FSFE Team - www.fsfe.org
More contact possibilities: http://fsfe.org/about/mehl
Private blog: blog.mehl.mx | Private homepage: mehl.mx
Your donation enables our work: http://fsfe.org/donate
Hi!
Since we had some breakage in FSFE group wiki page links recently, I thought
I'd make myself popular and propose another change ;-)
As you can see in the new wiki, local groups[1] are currently in simple list.
IMO, this representation is far from optimal.
My proposal is to add the country code (or maybe the country/region name) to
the wiki name:
LocalGroups/AT/Vienna
LocalGroups/DE/Stuttgart
This would, for example, allow us to have portal pages which list all groups
in a given country.
So, what do you say?
Cheers,
Johannes
[1] https://wiki.fsfe.org/LocalGroup
Hello everybody,
During our first virtual European Coordinators Meeting, we realized that
we should establish a team to take care of the wiki. There is a lot of
great information on there, but some of it is hard to find, some of it
is outdated, and some material is not so good at all. So we want to set
up a group, the wiki caretakers, to go through the wiki, find the
necessary tasks and then take care of them.
If you would like to support us in this effort, just send me an email so
we can coordinate. I set up a pad with some suggestions [1]; please
have a look. Please do not perform all of these changes yet; some of
them need some more discussion. Feel free to leave any comments on the
pad if you disagree with a point I made.
If the pad should not be enough for organizing the team at any point, we
can set up a Quick ML mailing list. Just let me know.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you. :-)
Happy hacking!
Florian
[1] https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/wiki_caretakers
--
www: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows/floriansnow █▉
e-mail: floriansnow(a)fsfe.org █▉█▉█▉
xmpp: floriansnow(a)jabber.fsfe.org ▉▉
WMUK is looking into what the actual permission means legally so the
recipes can be put on Wikisource :-D
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Symonds <richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk>
Date: 29 February 2016 at 15:19
Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Free as in beer
To: UK Wikimedia mailing list <wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
So...
BrewDog, a Scotland-based "hipster brewery" - for want of a better
phrase - have just "open-sourced" their entire recipe collection.
You can read more at https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/diy-dog.
It's not entirely clear what "licence" they're using but they say:
"copy them, tear them to pieces, bastardise them, adapt them, but most
of all, enjoy them. They are well travelled but with plenty of miles
still left on the clock. Just remember to share your brews, and share
your results. Sharing is caring."
I guess "free as in beer" has a slightly different meaning now!
Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513.
Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street,
London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a
global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the
Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal
control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Dear Free Software lovers,
Last year on "I love Free Software" day we rocked the internet and
showed the world how important Free Software is for us. Countless people
in social networks and blogs praised various projects or aspects of Free
Software. Our sister organisation initiated the cryptovalentine
activity, and the EFF used this day to declare the importance of Free
Software for digital security. We had comics, poems, pictures... well,
look at the 2015 summary yourself [1]!
This year on February 14th we want to surpass it again: thank more
contributors, bring Free Software in the broad media, reach more people.
But we need your participation to achieve this, and there are lots of
ways to support the campaign.
On the website [2] we have collected some ideas. For us, the best
contribution for this special day are videos and pictures (see gallery
[3]). For example, you at a special location declaiming a poem for Free
Software, filming your FSFE group at a candlelight dinner, creating a
comic or meme or lovely graphic... videos and images are worth thousand
words and we can reach incredibly more people using them.
However, if that's not your kind of thing, feel free to do something
different. Maybe the website gives you some ideas or you can look at the
more detailled wiki page [4] where you also can find information on how
to create a whole different campaign part.
Let's make this an unforgettable day for everyone in the Free Software
community! We are looking forward to see your ideas on February 14th or
earlier. Just drop me a line if you want to share your feedback or have
any question.
Best regards,
Max
P.S.: Please share this mail with your FSFE groups and with friends who
love Free Software as well
[1] https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150303-01.html
[2] http://ilovefs.org
[3] https://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/whylovefs/gallery.html
[4] https://wiki.fsfe.org/ILoveFS-2016
--
Max Mehl - Coordinator German FSFE Team - www.fsfe.org
More contact possibilities: http://fsfe.org/about/mehl
Private blog: blog.mehl.mx | Private homepage: mehl.mx
Your donation enables our work: http://fsfe.org/donate
Dear all,
On September 2-4 this year, the FSFE will run its first summit. This summit
shall be for and by you, our community. To achieve this goal and to make it a
good experience for everyone, we like to involve you in our planning from the
very first beginning.
In April, there will be an official call for sessions for the summit. To
already get this call into the right direction, however, we like to run a
survey ahead. Please excuse my brevity and see this survey as an experiment
that is editable by everyone as you find it in our wiki : )
https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/summit16/201602-survey
You can answer one or more questions, with long or short text. You are invited
to add additional points.
If you have any questions, please discuss them in this thread so others can
also benefit from answers.
Thank you for your participation,
Erik
--
No one shall ever be forced to use non-free software
Erik Albers | FSFE | https://fsfe.org/about/albers
OpenPGP Key-ID: 0x8639DC81 on keys.gnupg.net
I saw the talk about the Italian version on GNU Social and I went to
look at the Greek version, where I spotted the same mistake
> 45. προτρέπει, στο πλαίσιο της στρατηγικής για την ενιαία ψηφιακή
> αγορά, να ενισχυθούν οι προσπάθειες για τον έλεγχο της εφαρμογής
> [δωρεάν] και ανοιχτού λογισμικού στα εκπαιδευτικά ιδρύματα [...]
[δωρεάν] is a translation of the 'gratis' sense of 'free'. 'Libre' is
[ελεύθερο].
I don't have any contacts in the EU, for better or for worse, so I hope
someone in this list does.
--
GnuPG Fingerprint: 3E2F 5E37 0BD1 7EBF 46FB 13E2 489A 2D30 A07D 0AFC
* Consider using e-mail encryption:
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