1. FSFE engages with irregularities in the ISO voting process 2. FTF informal legal network now covers sixteen European countries 3. Two days of Free Software in Chile 4. The Fellowship site now supports multiple languages 5. First distributed Fellowship meeting 6. FSFE German Team at FrOSCon 7. Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area holding monthly talks 8. Building the Fellowship in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe 9. FSFE supports demonstration "liberty instead of fear", September 22nd 10. Speeches about SELF, Open Standards and Free Software in Argentina 11. Free Software and Free Documentation licence consultations
1. FSFE engages with irregularities in the ISO voting process
FSFE has been deeply involved in the ISO voting process on Microsoft's Office OpenXML proposal, and has uncovered serious irregularities in various national standardisation body's handling of the matter. These irregularities have included committee stacking, conflicts of interest, concerns raised by parties being ignored, and lack of due consideration to legal issues like Microsoft's vague 'Open Specification Promise.' FSFE president Georg Greve was interviewed by ZDnet regarding the international voting process. In Switzerland, FSFE and the Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG) lodged formal objections to the process with the national standardisation body, which were later published by Groklaw:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39288959,00.htm http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007081708383138
2. FTF informal legal network now covers sixteen European countries
FSFE's Freedom Task Force now has connections with lawyers in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the UK. The network also includes legal researchers in Ireland, Serbia and Sweden and legal contacts in Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, the USA and Australia. As always, the FTF offers licence consultancy and education, fiduciary services and licence enforcement for individuals, projects and businesses. Please help us to continue spreading the word about this Free Software infrastructure project:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf email: ftf@fsfeurope.org
3. Two days of Free Software in Chile
On invitation of the Chilean educational ministry and in coordination with our sister organisation FSFLA and GNU Chile, FSFE president Georg Greve spoke at the Universidad Mayor and an event of the educational ministry in Santiago, as well as the library of the national congress in Valparaiso. Georg Greve also discussed strategic and practical Free Software issues with the vice-minister of education and economic impact of Free Software with the minister of economics.
4. The Fellowship site now supports multiple languages
Thanks to the contributions of Fellow Alejandro Serrano and Ivan Čukić, with support from other fellowship hackers, fsfe.org now supports adding content in other languages besides English. For the moment Italian, Spanish and German are supported, but more will come. Most of the work has gone into modifying the standard UI provided by eZ Publish and put all the files in a svn repository. Expect more changes and additions in functions during the next weeks.
5. First distributed Fellowship meeting
While the monthly Fellowship meetings in Vienna have become a jour fixe in the calendar of many Austrian Fellows, the August meeting was special: for the first time, a Fellowship meeting took place in two locations at the same time. The net.culture.labs in Vienna and Dornbirn hosted this event, both connected via videoconferencing over a broadband internet line sponsored by Telekom Austria.
http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/meetings/austria/20070814
6. FSFE German Team at FrOSCon
Thanks to the organisational skills of Michael Kesper, members of the FSFE German Team attended FrOSCon (St. Augustin/Germany) on the 25th and 26th of August. Myriam Schweingruber delivered a talk about "Women in IT - View points and possible explanations", and Michael Kesper discussed interaction with other projects. FSFE maintained a booth at the entrance to the fair where ad hoc talks were held and FSFE and Fellowship merchandise was available.
7. Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area holding monthly talks
The Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area have monthly public meetings with talks on the last Wednesday of each month in Duesseldorf. In August, Fellow Dr. jur. Michael Stehmann spoke about the new Par.202c in the German criminal code which bans possessing, using, publishing and distributing so-called "hacker tools". As Michael stated, this regulations are very poorly formulated, practically useless in their attention, and might be used as a pressure instrument against innocent people. 202c tries to define pure ownership of broadly defined network analysis tools as the preparation for crime.
email: rheinland@lists.fsfe.org
8. Building the Fellowship in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe
As you know FSFE tries to keep in contact with its Fellows and attract additional ones. One aspect of this work sees Joachim Jakobs meeting with LUGs and other local FS-related groups in between Kaiserslautern and Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe. Last Friday he met with the LUG Landau. Landau is just a small town but nevertheless about a dozen people attended. If you are interested in helping JJ organise a local Fellowship in this area please contact him directly.
email: jj@fsfe.org
9. FSFE supports demonstration "liberty instead of fear", September 22nd
"Civil rights groups are calling on citizens to join in a protest march against excessive surveillance by businesses and governments. On 22 September 2007 concerned citizens will take to the streets with the slogan "Liberty instead of fear - Stop the surveillance mania!". Groups will initially meet at Pariser Platz (Brandenburger Tor), Berlin, at 2.30 pm. The German Chapter of FSFE decided to join this demonstration and asks everybody for participation.
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/125/116/lang,en/
10. Speeches about SELF, Open Standards and Free Software in Argentina
Before the SELF board meeting in Cordoba, Argentina, to prepare for the launch of the first version of the SELF platform, FSFE's Georg Greve and Jonas Oberg spoke at the Septimas Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre, giving talks about SELF, Open Standards, the problems of MS-OOXML and the political importance of Free Software:
11. Free Software and Free Documentation licence consultations
The public consultations continue for the GNU Free Documentation License, the GNU Affero General Public License, and the new GNU Simpler Free Documentation License. We advise you to take a look as soon as possible if you might have a comment about these free documentation licences or the "Affero" version of the GPL which additionally deals with software used over public networks:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html http://gplv3.fsf.org/agplv3-dd2-guide.html
Meanwhile, FSFE has been providing ongoing advice about GPLv3 since it's mid-summer launch. The lack of controversial news is welcomed as a sign that broad compromised was indeed reached and no obvious mistakes were made.
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
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