1. FSFE's General Assembly and the first Benelux fellowship meeting 2. GPLv3 and LGPLv3 have been released 3. Free Software personal consultancy for businesses 4. Six questions to national standardisation bodies 5. Georg Greve in India 6. FTF useful tips translated to Asian languages 7. Free Software in Austrian Schools 8. Get your friends to support the Fellowship and FSFE
1. FSFE's General Assembly and the first Benelux fellowship meeting
The first Benelux meeting of the Fellowship took place on Thursday the 28th of June in Brussels and provided an excellent opportunity for the local fellows to get to know each other. Two days later the General Assembly of FSFE met at FSFE's Brussels office for a productive discussion about the foundation's past work and future direction. Georg Greve was re-elected as president and Jonas Oberg as vice-president of FSFE, with Reinhard Muller elected as the Head of Office. The executive summary for the last two years of FSFE's work can be found on-line here
http://fsfeurope.org/documents/reports/es-2007
2. GPLv3 and LGPLv3 have been released
The final text of both the GNU GPL version 3 and the GNU LGPL version 3 licences were released on the 29th of June 2007. The GPLv3 is the result of eighteen months of drafting, a process which included four published drafts and thousands of comments from interested parties.
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html
3. Free Software personal consultancy for businesses
FSFE has always helped the community through providing pro bono advice, and through this we have discovered that businesses often require additional personal assistance. For this reason, FSFE is offering businesses a chance to get individual consultancy regarding Free Software issues at its Zurich, Switzerland office. Shane Coughlan, FTF coordinator, will be available for reserved sessions starting from July 13th. The sessions cost 150 Euro per hour, with a special discounted rate of 100 Euro for companies that have fellowship members among their employees. The FTF can also organise and hold in-house training sessions and workshop on Free Software licensing. By making use of this service, companies will also help to sustain FSFE's continuing community work.
4. Six questions to national standardisation bodies
Microsoft very actively seeking ISO approval as an Open Standard for their proprietary MS-OOXML format. Should ISO approve this format as a standard, Free Software may find itself locked out of the office application and collaboration market and the barriers to Free Software adoption will increase.
FSFE president Georg Greve spoke about the necessity and value of interoperability at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Calcutta. In order to help people understand the issue, FSFE also published six questions that every national standardisation body should have good answers to if it wants to approve Microsoft's application. Read more and help us spread the word at
http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions
5. Georg Greve in India
In cooperation with FSFE's sister organisation, the Free Software Foundation India (FSF India), FSFE president Georg Greve visited the Indian subcontinend and gave speeches in Mumbai, Calcutta and Trivandrum at institutions like the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) or the Technopark in Trivandrum, the first of its kind in India. You can read more about the trip and some truly exciting things about Free Software accessibility for the visually impaired at
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/last_night_in_india http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/back_from_india
6. FTF useful tips translated to Asian languages
FSFE's Freedom Task Force is proud to announce that the useful tips for users and vendors of GNU GPL version 2 software are now available in Korean and Traditional Chinese. These documents are intended to help users and vendors think about licence compliance and to guide people to authoritative sources of information on the Internet. By making these documents available in more languages the FTF aims to continue building productive infrastructure for Free Software in Europe and beyond.
Useful tips for users:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ftf/useful-tips-for-users_ko.pdf http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ftf/useful-tips-for-users_zh_tw.pdf
Useful tips for vendors:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ftf/useful-tips-for-vendors_ko.pdf http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ftf/useful-tips-for-vendors_zh_tw.pdf
7. Free Software in Austrian Schools
During the monthly meetings of the Fellowship in Austria, a constant topic was the importance of Free Software in education to give the next generation the freedom to become an active part of society. Some committed Fellows carried this message into schools and as a result of the initiative of two teachers, the "BG Rechte Kremszeile" in Krems decided to switch the whole school to exclusively Free Software with the start of the next school year.
The Free Software Foundation Europe congratulates the school on their decision and encourages others to follow the example. Our thanks go to the Fellows involved in this initiative.
8. Get your friends to support the Fellowship and FSFE
FSFE's Fellowship is a community of people united by their interest in Free Software and freedom in all aspects of the digital age and FSFE is dedicated to supporting all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Please tell your friends and collegues about the Fellowship and FSFE. Their help and support would be invaluable in helping us to accomplish our goals across Europe.
Join the fellowship
https://fsfe.org/en/fsfeuser/register
Donate to FSFE
http://fsfeurope.org/help/donate-2002.en.html
Volunteer time and energy
http://fsfeurope.org/help/help.en.html
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html