= FSFE Newsletter - May 2012 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201205.en.html ]
== 54 DFD events and FSFE handcuffed EU Commissioner ==
As you can read and see in this years report[1], Document Freedom Day
2012 was celebrated with 54 events in 23 countries and in 19 world
languages. It was the biggest DFD in history with over 26 talks, over 6
awards for Open Standards, lots of other events and the press coverage
counted almost one hundred articles. FSFE coordinated between all the
different events, awarded several organisation, and in Germany mailed
over 370 and called over 170 politicians about Open Standards[2].
Several of these politicians, from a range of political parties, did
activities for DFD[3]. FSFE also send out 100 information packages
including handcuffs[4]to suggested people including several politicians,
CEOs, and the Pope. EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes used our handcuffs in a
public speech, which resulted in a lot of additional press
coverage[5]including the front page of the Guardian Online. FSFE is
eager to hear more reports of what recipients of the package did with
the handcuffs.
1. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2012/news-20120403-01.html
2. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/def.en.html
3. http://documentfreedom.org/events/events.html
4. http://documentfreedom.org/handcuffs/index.html
5. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2012/news-20120420-01.html
== May 4th: Day against DRM. Is it their "good right" to restrict us? ==
Last week your editor gave an interview about Digital Restriction
Management (DRM)[6](German). It was about the questions of what DRM is,
why companies introduce DRM, why you have to treat your customer as an
enemy to make DRM work, and which other possibilities exist. When
discussing Free Software, DRM, Antifeatures and other topics you might
often hear from intelligent critical people that it is "the good right"
of producers to control their products. Why do so many people think so?
Would they also accept those restrictions in "the analogue world"? Is it
the good right of a publisher to prohibit that you can read a book out
loud, lend it friends, or sell it? Several times your editor abused
books: last week he used three of them to fix his broken sofa. Would it
be acceptable that the publisher or the author can forbid such use
cases? Do more people accept such restrictions with software and data,
and if so, why? Has the industry with the term "Digital Rights
Management" successfully implied that they have this right, and a lot of
people accept this?
6. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=929
The 4th of May is the Day against DRM[7]. While DRM has largely been
defeated in music, it is a growing problem in the area of ebooks. So it
is good news that due to pressure from their readers, Tor/Forge will
drop DRM from ebooks[8]. Discuss the topic with your friends or
colleagues, e.g. send them Richard Stallman's short story"The Right to
Read"[9], and tell us your experience on our public discussion lists
<http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>or send it directly to your
editor[10].
7. http://dayagainstdrm.org/
8. http://www.defectivebydesign.org/tor-to-drop-drm-on-ebooks
9. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
10. http://fsfe.org/about/kirschner/kirschner.en.html
== Free Software topic in the French Presidential elections ==
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that 15 percent[11]of the State's
IT budget is spent on Free Software programming, support, and
maintenance. In future this budget will increase by 30 percent per year.
He said this policy is "strategic for the development of the French IT
sector". His challenger François Hollande even said this policy has to
be intensified.
11.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/sarkozy-administration-open-source-spendin…
grows-30-percent-annually
Besides that, the French Free Software advocacy group April asked all of
the candidates in the French presidential elections[12]about their
positions on Free Software, software patents[13], DRM[14]and more.
12.
https://www.april.org/en/presidential-elections-2012-and-free-software-some-
answers-some-non-answers-some-dont-answer
13. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/swapt.en.html
14. http://drm.info
It is important to raise awareness for Free Software with your
politicians, and sending them questions is a good start. FSFE is
gathering all such effort in our"Ask Your Candidate" campaign[15]. FSFE
would like to thank April[16]for their good work in France, and
encourages other Free Software supporters in Europe to get in contact
with their politicians. If you have questions how to start such
activities in your country, region, or municipality, please get in
contact with us. By next month you will also have the political parties'
replies to the questions from FSFE for two federal state elections in
Germany.
15. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/askyourcandidtes.en.html
16. http://april.org
== Vendor lock-in costing Helsinki 3.4 million Euros per year? ==
A report on the City of Helsinki's pilot project for the use of
OpenOffice in the public administrations leaves the public with more
questions than answers. The city trialled the Free Software productivity
suite on the laptops of council members for ten months in 2011. The
suite enjoyed high approval rates among its users. When the pilot was
finished, the City produced a report stating that the costs of migrating
the entire administration to OpenOffice would be very high. Read more
about it in the press release[17]and if you are interested in details of
the City of Helsinki's OpenOffice pilot project, and in lessons that may
be drawn from this project, we have published an analysis of the
report[18].
17. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120412-02.en.html
18. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120412-02.en.html
== Something completely different ==
- "Replace 'ICT' with 'Sex'": 42 minutes before the deadline our
education team[19]submitted FSFE's position for a consultation on ICT
education[20]to the UK Department of Education. Besides other points
we highlighted the importance of "ICT education", instead of "ICT
training".
- Fellowship Interview: Operating Free Software based servers and
workstations in a pro-privacy web hosting and IT service company,
advocating Free Software since 2001, volunteering for the Freedroidz
project, and more: this months's interview is Bernd Wurst[21].
- The Czech municipality Grygov uses Free Software[22]for nearly
everything in their public administration.
- On the 31st of March, FSFE's UK Fellows have set up a link between the
Green Light (Manchester) and Chorlton's Big Green (Leicester)
festivals. There was a Free Software talk and booth at both events,
and a live link-up which brought environmentalists together via Free
Software.
- Our web team met in Manchester for a web sprint[23]. A variety of
international volunteers worked together to improve website features
and infrastructure. Interested in fixing bugs, or implementing new
functionality to improve our information about Free Software in web
work? Join our web team[24]!
- Computerworld UK published a a good article on software patents[25].
- A selection from the Fellowship blog aggregation[26]:
- Affiliate Userscripts to support FSFE: If you already spend money on
Amazon or libri, you can install a userscript[27]developed by Hannes
Hauswedell and 5% of the money you spend there goes to FSFE to the
struggle for Software Freedom! The userscripts are tested for
Chromium, Firefox, and Iceweasel[28].
- Distributed Free Software: Thomas Jensch wrote an article on how to
setup OwnCould on Hiawatha[29], and Sam Tuke also looked into setting
up a local web development server[30].
- Different experiences than Wikipedia: Hannes Hauswedell from the
PDFreaders[31]team is currently living in China, and wrote about his
technical experiences with the Chinese firewall[32].
- After his hard disk died Patrik Willard wrote about git and
rsync[33]and Isabel Drost also dedicated a blog article to git[34].
19. http://fsfe.org/projects/education/education.en.html
20. http://blogs.fsfe.org/riepernet/?p=149
21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=573
22.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/czech-municipality-uses-open-source-nearly-
everything
23. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120402-01.en.html
24. http://fsfe.org/contribute/web/web.en.html
25.
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/03/open-standards-
licensing-apples-key-evidence/index.htm
26. http://planet.fsfe.org
27. http://wiki.fsfe.org/SupportPrograms
28. http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/userscripts/
29. http://blogs.fsfe.org/riepernet/?p=155
30. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=359
31. http://pdfreaders.org
32.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2012/04/20/an-inside-view-on-the-great-chinese-fir…
/
33. http://blog.padowi.se/2012/04/22/2012w16/
34. http://blog.isabel-drost.de/index.php/archives/377/second-steps-with-git
== Get Active: FRAND is FRAUD - Participate in UK consultation ==
Busy times in the UK. Besides the consultation on education (see above)
the UK government is holding another one until the 4th of June about
what sort of patent licenses an Open Standard[35]should require. FSFE
and our sister organisation the FSF published a joint statement[36]on
the UK Open Standard consultation, explaining why FRAND conditions for
Open Standards discriminate against Free Software (regular readers might
realise this is an ongoing debate), and recommending the UK government
to abolish software patents to prevent damage to the UK's economy. We
also informed UK Free Software businesses, organisations, and Fellows
about the consultation, prepared draft answers to some of the questions
in the survey[37], held a Summit Meeting of Open Standard experts[38],
and also published a joint statement together with other Open Standard
groups[39].
35. http://fsfe.org/project/os/def.en.html
36. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120426-01.en.html
37. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/uk-standards-consultation.en.html
38. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120425-02.en.html
39. https://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120425-01.html
There is a website explaining how to participate in the
consultation[40]. Please do so to support the requirement for royalty-
free licenses for Open Standards.
40. http://consultation.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/openstandards/how-to-respond
Thanks to all the Fellows[41]and donors[42]who enable our work,
41. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
42. donate/thankgnus.en.html
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
= FSFE Newsletter - April 2012 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201204.en.html ]
== Let us end all Free Software "projects" quickly! ==
A "project" is always temporary, in the narrow sense of the term. Some
Free Software people use "project" to refer to long lasting initiatives
instead. Your editor also did this, until Bernhard Reiter convinced him
to use different terms for people, the result they create, and temporary
concerted actions. After several people in FSFE encouraged Bernhard to
write down his thoughts, he now published an article arguing[1]: By
adopting the more widespread use of the term project, Free Software
initiatives will be more successful. "Free Software is here to stay,
prepare your mind for this situation.", writes Bernhard.
1.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard/2012/03/lets-end-all-free-software-projects-…
== Corporate perk or monopolist bribery? ==
Staff in the European Parliament are facing a challenge to their ethics.
A company is offering all of them a gift which could compromise their
independence. The company in question is Microsoft, and the gift is a
bunch of proprietary programs. Through the Parliament's administration,
Microsoft is offering staff (though probably not MEPs) gratis licenses
to Microsoft Office, Project, and Visio. This happens under the so-
called "Home Use Program".
The staff is working on regulations that also effect Microsoft, who is
now making a gift to them. Staff is usually the one who does all the
legwork. They are the one who control access to our MEPs. FSFE asks the
MEPs to tell their staff, and the staff in their groups, not to accept
Microsoft's gift. On the contrary, they should push the administration
into making Free Software tools available that staffers can use to do
their work, and urge the Parliament itself to migrate to Free Software.
Karsten Gerloff wrote about this in his blog[2]and will closeley monitor
how the MEPs and their staff in the European Parliament will react. We
will keep you posted.
2.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/03/23/corporate-perk-or-monopolist-bribe…
== Help for FSFE from Greece ==
The election period for this year's Fellowship GA seat has ended on
February 29th. To summarise the detailed election results[3]: Our new
Fellowship representative is Nikos Roussos from Greece. He will meet
with other members of FSFE's general assembly[4]in Lisboa at the end of
April, to work on strategic questions for the coming years. Thanks to
Albert Dengg and Gert Seidl who also stood for the Fellowship GA seat,
and who want to continue their great work for FSFE in their area.
3. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120303-01.en.html
4. http://fsfe.org/about/members.en.html
== Something completely different ==
- Digital Restriction Management: In his article"Like candy from a baby:
PS Vita takes freedom from new generation"[5], Sam takes the Sony PS
Vita, as an example how owners of devices are restricted in what they
can do with their computers.
- Guido Günther joined the Debian Project while completing his degree
in physics at the University of Konstanz. He helped with development
of Debian for new processor architectures, and co-initiated Debian’s
Groupware Meetings. He also enjoys contributing to the GNOME project,
and advanced Free Software virtualisation technologies. Read more in
the last Fellowship interview[6].
- Ask Your Candidates:[7]in Germany, we asked the usual set of
questions[8]and published the analysis[9]. Compared with the positive
replies in the Berlin election[10], the Saarland election was a
disappointment. Our press release also resulted in discussions[11]if
it is "the good right" of companies to restrict the users.
- Fellow Anna Morris was interviewed by the BBC(Audio, starting at
17:13)[12]about a conference that she is organising in London for
women in Free Software. In just a few minutes she discusses what Free
Software is, what it is like being a woman in the Free Software
movement, and how she first got involved.
- FSFE's volunteers and staff have been quite busy with Document Freedom
Day[13]in the last weeks. We will send out the handcuffs[14]and write
a report what happend all over the world. In the preperation we have
published an article by FSFE co-founder Bernhard Reiter[15]. He
discusses what makes a good data format, and argues that Open
Standards are good, but that we need to push further still. His
central question to data formats is "Can we make it simpler?" The
article is in German, and we are looking for translations[16].
- FSF announced the Free Software Awards[17]. Big thanks from FSFE to
Free Software hacker Yukihiro Matsumoto and GNU Health[18].
- Iceland launched a project[19]to encourage migration of the public
administration to Free Software. Your editor is already looking
forward to a report about this at FSCONS[20]in Gothenburg.
- A selection from the Fellowship planet aggregation[21]:Free Software,
nothing for marketing? And which is the most powerful brand in Free
Software? Timo Jyrinki writes about brands, marketing and technical
details[22].
- Hugo Roy is organising an event at Sciences Po on 6th April[23](in
French). Beside others Lawrence Lessig, author of "Code and other laws
of Cyberspace" will talk about "The Character of Cyberlaw Battles".
- Birgit Hüsken explains how to knit the Fellowship plussy[24].
- Fellow Number 1, Mario Fux, wants to set up a local association[25]in
Randa, Switzerland to keep the local Free Software activities running.
- And Mirko Böhm writes about about managing trust in mixed commercial
and volunteer Free Software communities[26].
5. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=325
6. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=547
7. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/askyourcandidates.en.html
8. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/example-questions.en.html
9. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120322-01.en.html
10. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120322-01.en.html
11.
http://netzpolitik.org/2012/saarlandische-piraten-abhangigkeit-und-restrikt…
12. http://download.fsfe.org/audio/20120320-bbc5-interview-anna-morris.ogg
13. http://documentfreedom.org
14. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120321-01.en.html
15. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/minimalisticstandards.en.html
16. http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.en.html
17. https://www.fsf.org/news/2011-free-software-awards-announced
18. http://health.gnu.org/
19.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/all-icelands-public-administrations-moving…
20. http://fscons.org
21. http://planet.fsfe.org
22. http://losca.blogspot.de/2012/03/on-brands-marketing-and-technical.html
23. http://blog.hugoroy.eu/2012/03/28/cyberlawconf-avec-lawrence-lessig/
24. http://blogs.fsfe.org/birgit.huesken/?p=122
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=179
26.
http://www.agile-workers.com/web/2012/03/managing-trust-in-mixed-commercial…
-
== Get Active: Leaflets to free others mobile! ==
Our Free Your Android[27]campaign, got a lot of attention. Beside
preparing his exams, Torsten Grote gave interviews for the German
newspaper"Die Tageszeitung"[28], radio interviews[29], and held a first
installation party for FoeBud e.V.[30]. Also at our booth at Cebit[31],
Chemnitzer Linux-Tage[32], as well as Augsburger Linuxinfotage[33]a lot
of people showed interest in this campaign. We would like to get more
people involved in this campaign. We ask you to promote the campaign
with leaflets and posters in your local Free Software user group, your
hackerspace, company, university, school, or your favourite bar. Please
write an e-mail with a postal address to fellowship[34]
fsfeurope.org[35], and we send you some leaflets and posters to promote
it.
27. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/android/android.en.html
28. https://www.taz.de/Kampagne-fuer-offene-Mobilsysteme/!90036/
29.
http://on3.de/element/13543/freie-software-fuer-android-handys-weg-mit-den-…
30. http://foebud.de
31. http://blog.romal.de/2012/03/fsfe-cebit-stand-uberlebt.html
32. http://blogs.fsfe.org/birgit.huesken/?p=105
33.
http://blog.schiessle.org/2012/03/26/ruckblick-auf-den-augsburger-linux-inf…
34. mailto:fellowship@fsfeurope.org
35. mailto:fellowship@fsfeurope.org
Thanks to all the Fellows[36]and donors[37]who enable our work,
36. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
37. http://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
FSFE Newsletter - February 2012
Reclaim your smartphone!
Smartphones are small computers that we carry around all the time.
Unfortunately, most smartphones are not controlled by us, the users,
but by the manufacturers and the operators. Even Android phones are
being shipped with non-free software and proprietary add-ons that
usually do not work in the full interest of us. Software updates will
only keep to be available if the manufacturer still has a commercial
interest in your device. The applications available from the official
market are most of the time non-free. Nobody is allowed to study how
they work and what they really do on your phone. Sometimes they do
not work exactly as you want, but sometimes they might even contain
malicious features.
Running only Free Software on your device puts you in full control.
Even though you might not be able to directly exercise all of your
freedoms, you will benefit from a vibrant community that can do it
together.
FSFE [1]is collecting information about running an Android system as
free as possible. We try to coordinate the different efforts, but we
need your help with it. Join our mailing list, update the wiki and
thereby enable more people to use Free Software on their everyday
computers.
Lesson 1: Learn how to programme!
Our [2]education team has done [3]solid work in 2011, including our
[4]NL edu campaign. Free Software permits children to learn how
software works and thus to understand the concepts underlying a whole
category or type of software. They are then prepared to adapt to any
environment, which is a key skill nowadays. In addition, we believe
that the possibility to tinker does motivate children easily to learn
autonomously. Finally, Free Software allows them to understand
computers in a more depth.
Sam Tuke was [5]asked by the BBC to comment about suggestions that the
British Government may add basic programming skills to the national
curriculum, and whether this would have a political impact on society
in terms of how we interact with technology. The education team will
have a brief meeting at the upcoming FOSDEM, at the 4th and 5th of
February. You are welcome to join.
Already plans for 28th of March?
Open Standards make it easier for individuals, companies and the public
administration to switch to Free Software. The goal of the[6]Document
Freedom Day is to raise awareness for Open Standards so people have
more freedom. This year your editor is in charge of DFD and he will
bluntly promote it in this and upcoming newsletters. At the moment,
please save the date 28th of March, [7]send our country teams
nominations for the Document Freedom Award, help us to gather
information for our [8]Standards Quartet, find [9]street artists to
promote the idea of Open Standards, and [10]contact the DFD team if you
want to [11]become a supporting organisation.
Something completely different
* Time to vote: The [12]2012 Fellowship election is running until the
end of February. As Fellow you can decide between [13]Albert Dengg,
Gert Seidl, and Nikos Roussos. On 22nd February we plan to have a
chat meeting with the candidates.
* Slovak Copyright Act: [14]FSFE intern Martin Husovec [15]sent
letters to four members of Slovak Parliament that proposed a highly
awaited amendment, but later faced its dismissal due to preliminary
elections.
* Heiki Ojasild joined the Free Software Foundation Europe in 2011,
undertaking the task of translating fsfe.org into Estonian. He is
currently developing an XChat add-on, a website for free SVG and
JavaScript games, and asked [16]Estonian politicians questions
about Free Software. Read more in [17]this month's Fellowship
interview about copyright, Digital Restrictions Management,
kopimism, and activism.
* Richard Stallman's new article [18]"Measures Governments Can Use to
Promote Free Software" is out.
* Two new editions of the [19]legal news cover the US Supreme Court
decision on copyright extension, patent inflation, the[20]release
of the Mozilla Public License version 2.0 which is GNU
GPL-compatible, and more.
* During the January 18th protest against SOPA, we blacked out our
website joining other organisations to protect the Internet.
* Here a selection from the [21]Fellowship planet aggregation:
+ The new FSFE Fellowship blog theme — a name, a first
version. [22]Presenting: Pome 1.0.
+ Interested why Thomas Koch suggests you should [23]stop coding
for money?
+ You should demand Free Software in a business context became
it [24]makes sense and saves a lot of money, says Jelle
Hermsen.
+ [25]Fellow No1 tells us how much 57 persons in Rwanda can eat
while hacking on Free Software
+ What is the "web trap"? [26]Heiki Ojasild argued to treat
HTML, SVG and CSS as tools that should be as accessible to
everyone as software in general should be.
+ And a nice hardware hack: [27]Computer startup aid using a
LEGO train.
Get active: More love reports instead of bug reports!
Let us admit it, the Free Software community is often very critical. We
write bug reports, tell others how they can improve the software, ask
them for new features, and to not spare with criticism. Sometimes we
forget to say "thank you, for all your work". As in the last years, we
want to change this, at least for one day. So on Tuesday the 14th of
February we will celebrate the [28]"I love Free Software" - Day.
Get active, buy your favourite developer a drink or give them a hug
(ask for permission first), write an [29]e-mail/letter expressing your
feelings, create nice pictures, donate to a Free Software initiative,
use another [30]of our suggestions or be create yourself to show how
you appreciate people, working hard to enlarge or defend our freedom.
Beside that help us to promote the activity with [31]our banners, by
e-mail, (micro)blog or in your (distributed?) social networks.
New this year is a [32]whole day event in the Unperfekthaus in Essen
(Germany) and that all our Fellows automatically get an
login(a)ilovefs.org e-mail alias.
Thanks to all the [33]Fellows and [34]donors who enable our work,
[35]Matthias Kirschner - [36]FSFE
References
1. http://wiki.fsfe.org/Android
2. http://fsfe.org/projects/education/education.html
3. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2012/01/edu-team-2011-summary/
4. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/nledu/nledu.html
5. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=255
6. http://documentfreedom.org/
7. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120110-02.html
8. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=881
9. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120130-01.html
10. http://documentfreedom.org/contact.html
11. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2012/news-20120127-01.html
12. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120131-01.html
13. http://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipElection_2012
14. http://fsfe.org/contribute/internship.html
15. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120110-01.html
16.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2012/01/10/estonian-political-land…
17. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=521
18. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/government-free-software.html
19. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120126-01.html
20. http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/mpl-2.0-release
21. http://planet.fsfe.org/
22.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/marklindhout/2012/01/the-fsfe-blog-theme-%E2%80%94-a-…
23.
http://koch.ro/blog/index.php?/archives/154-Stop-coding-for-money.html
24.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/jelle/2012/01/09/demanding-free-software-in-a-busines…
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=167
26. http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2012/01/04/the-web-trap/
27.
http://fl0rian.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/computer-startup-aid-using-a-lego-t…
28. http://ilovefs.org/
29.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/thomaslocke/2012/01/18/why-i-love-free-and-open-sourc…
30. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/2012/ilovefs.html
31. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/2012/banners.html
32. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/2012/unperfekthaus.html
33. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
34. http://fsfe.org/home/alessandro/Documents/donate/thankgnus.html
35. http://fsfe.org/about/kirschner
36. http://www.fsfe.org/
37. http://fsfe.org/index.html
38. http://fsfe.org/news/news.rss
39. http://fsfe.org/events/events.rss
40. http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml
41. http://fsfe.org/contact/community.html
= FSFE Newsletter - January 2012 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201201.en.html ]
== Preventing 6000 mines against Free Software? ==
Competition authorities are investigating the sale of 6000 patents from
Nortel, a bankrupt telecommunications equipment manufacturer, to a
consortium of Apple, Microsoft and four other companies.
FSFE considers it a serious risk to competition in the mobile technology
space, and Free Software as a whole, if those companies acquire these
patents. Soon after the sale, we approached EU and US competition
authorities, and in September submitted a summary of our concerns[1].
1. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/nortel.en.html
== 80 billion EUR for RD: What will we get? ==
The European Commission has adopted a set of proposals for its next
framework program, called Horizon 2020. This program will provide 80
billion EUR for research and development projects from 2014 to 2020.
Prior to finalisation of the proposal, FSFE had provided input[2]to the
Commission in order to make the program accessible for Free Software
research and projects. FSFE will continue to engage with the European
institutions in order to support the development of Horizon 2020 in the
interest of Europe's citizens.
2. http://fsfe.org/projects/horizon2020/index.en.html
== Free Software makes German Parliament more secure ==
On the request of some members of parliament, the German Bundestag's IT-
department now supports GnuPG[3], so members of the parliament have the
option to set this up and receive encrypted and signed e-mails. The
president of the German City Council and Munich's main mayorUde wrote to
the EU-Commissioner Neelie Kroes[4]that she should support Open
Standards and Free Software.
Those are nice examples where politicians understand the advantages of
Free Software and also act upon this knowledge. We want more politicians
with this knowledge. One concrete activity is our"ask your candidates
campaign"[5], where we send out questions[6]to the political parties
before elections, and then evaluate the answers. This year we did so for
elections in Vienna/Austria, Switzerland, and 5 federal state elections
in Germany.
3. http://von-notz.de/2011/12/verschluesselung-mails-an-uns-ab-jetzt-auch-vers…
4. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=871
5. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/askyourcandidates.en.html
6. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/example-questions.xhtml
== Something completely different ==
- In the dispute between the companies AVM and Cybits the written
reasoning of the decision of the Regional Court of Berlin is now
available[7]. The court confirmed FSFE's view that users of GNU GPLed
software are allowed to modify and install it even if it is shipped as
a part of an embedded device's firmware.
- City officials in Helsinki, Finland, are overwhelmingly satisfied
after trying out the Free Software office suite[8]OpenOffice.org on
their laptops. 75% of 600 officials have been using OpenOffice.org
exclusively since February, as part of a pilot project where the city
installed the program on 22,500 workstations.
- In this month Fellowship interview[9]Chris talked with Paul Boddie,
who has been working with Python since 1995, and from 2006 to 2010 was
involved in organising the annual EuroPython conference, administering
various conference-related tools and developing the conference
website.
- An important decision of the Court of Justice of EU, AG's opinion in
awaited European interoperability ruling, two software patent cases
and much more is to be found in our legal news[10].
- We are preparing for Document Freedom Day 2012. The website was
updated[11], on the mailing list we are discussing new ideas[12], and
you are welcome to join.
- From the Fellowship planet aggregation[13]:
- So what might Digital Sustainability be? Read Georg Greve's
explanation about it[14].
- Want to see a quadrocopter and other pictures from the Chaos
Communication Camp? Take a look at Florian's blog article[15].
- What do nerds drink? Michael Stehmann answers this question in his
article about the "Chaosvillage" in Düsseldorf[16].
- Patrik from our Swedish team writes about awk filtering and
counting[17].
- Our translator Heiki Ojasild thinks about the question what to
translate and what not to translate?[18]
7. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20111201-02.en.html
8. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20111213-01.en.html
9. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=509
10. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20111220-01.en.html
11. http://documentfreedom.org
12. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/df-coordination
13. http://planet.fsfe.org
14. http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=462
15. https://fl0rian.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/summer-holidays/
16. http://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=375
17. http://blog.padowi.se/2011/12/05/awk-filtering-and-counting/
18. http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2011/12/09/to-translate-or-not-to-…
== Get active: Support us by becoming a Fellow of FSFE! ==
Not everybody understands Free Software, and not everybody likes that
FSFE works hard on promoting Free Software[19]to enlarge the freedom in
our society. If you understand that Free Software is important in order
to cope with the upcoming challenges for free society, please support us
financially by becoming a Fellow of FSFE[20].
Since December it is possible to donate your
contribution*yearly*or*monthly*by*credit card*,*direct debit*, and other
means. Every small donation helps us to continue to be an independent
and critical voice for Free Software advocacy for another year.
19. http://fsfe.org/donate/letter-2011.en.html
20. https://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
Thanks to all the Fellows and donors who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
= FSFE Newsletter - November 2011 =
[Read Online : http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201111.en.html ]
== WWW would have been better if it was patented ==
How long should copyright last? Should living beings or software be
patentable? The World Intellectual Property Organisation deals with this
sort of questions. Since 2004, we are involved in the WIPO to make sure
they do not harm Free Software. Our most important demand is that when
it comes to copyright and patents, the benefits should be weighed
against the costs.
The new Director General Francis Gurry's said that the World Wide Web
would have been better if it was patented. This shows us that the
current trend is in the opposite direction. Read more about this in
Karsten's article WIPO sliding back into the Dark Ages?[1], our WIPO
dossier[2], and support the Geneva Declaration[3].
1.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/10/24/wipo-sliding-back-into-the-dark-ag…
2. http://fsfe.org/projects/wipo/wipo.de.html
3. http://fsfe.org/projects/wipo/wiwo.de.html
== Daily business - step by step ==
Why do FSFE so frequently give interviews and talks, and travel to
promote FSFE issues? Our mission is to promote freedom in emerging
digital society. So as you can see on our events page[4]it is part of
our daily business to travel around, give talks, interviews, and
organise events. Paul Boddie improved our Fellowship event
calendar[5]which now integrates GriCal. This way you can subscribe to
the calendar. If you are already subscribed to the the event's RSS feed
<http://fsfe.org/events/events.de.rss>or the Ical feed[6]you can skip
the next paragraph.
4. http://fsfe.org/events/events.de.html
5. http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=54
6. webcal://fsfe.org/events/events.en.ics
So for example in October Karsten and Matija gave talks at LinuxCon
Europe in Prague, Sam gave a speech at the DIY Feminist Festival in
Manchester[7], our UK team had a booth at FLOSS UK Unconference 2011 in
Manchester, your editor gave a talk about "10 misunderstandings about
Free Software (or are they lies?)" at the technical university in
Berlin, our Austrian coordinator Peter Bubestinger gave a talk "Free
Software and Open Formats: virtual immortality and independence for
digital archives" at the National Library in Vienna, and our French
coordinator Hugo Roy organised a talk on "A Free Digital Society" by
Richard Stallman[8].
7. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=215
8.
http://www.libertesnumeriques.net/evenements/stallman-19octobre2011?lang=en
On the interview front: Karsten gave a radio interview about our work at
WIPO[9], Hugo an interview to the French GNU Linux Magazine Essentiel,
your editor to the German newspaper TAZ about Secure boot[10].
9.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/10/24/wipo-sliding-back-into-the-dark-ag…
10. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=845
== Something completely different ==
- Rikard Fröberg works at The Society for Free Culture and
Software[11], and contributes this year to the FSCONS[12]organisation
and thereby supporting our Free Software in Politics track[13]. In the
October Fellowship Interview[14]he considers the importance of having
an active and engaged community of users.
- Free Software from a human rights angle. Instead of just saying good-
bye after the end of his internship, Diego wrote us a nice article as
a gift:"Free Software social networks for social change"[15].
- A selection of interesting blog entries from our planet
aggregation[16]:Denmark - Portugal 4:5. The regular qualification for
the EURO2012 in Free Software are over. Which country has good Free
Software and Open Standard practices? Guido Arnold looked at this[17].
(Even though they were not able to win against Belgium, your editor is
happy that Germany qualified. It is difficult to compete against teams
with such good players as FOSDEM[18].)
- New government in Denmark, read what new opportunities Fellow Carsten
Agger sees[19].
- Converting letters into e-mails? Working on our PDFreaders
campaign[20], Sam received letters from public administrations and had
to forward them to our mailing list. So he took this opportunity to
write about Easy OCR on GNU/Linux with gImageReader"[21].
- The first 100 customers matter! Writes Georg Greve in his article
about an Open climate for entrepreneurs in Europe[22]. Read more about
Research and Development programmes, Silicon Valley, and software
patents.
- UnRAR in freedom: Thanks to The Unarchiver initiative, we are now able
to extract recent rar files completely with Free Software[23].
- When is a bug report useful?[24]Read the article, and file about to
this month newsletter.
- KDE became 15 Years in October. Paul Adams wondered how that does
look like[25].
11. https://ffkp.se/
12. http://fscons.org/
13. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=840
14. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=446
15.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/diegojavier/2011/10/10/free-software-social-networks-…
16. http://planet.fsfe.org
17.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2011/10/euro2012-in-free-software-regular-quali…
18. http://www.fosdem.org
19.
https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2011/10/01/denmark-new-government-new-opportun…
20. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.de.html
21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=227
22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=455
23. http://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2011/10/14/unrar-in-freedom/
24. http://blogs.fsfe.org/myriam/2011/10/when-is-a-bug-report-useful
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/padams/?p=251
-
== Get Active: Document Freedom Day - Let's get ready to rumble ==
Coordination for next years Document Freedom Day[26]is starting. Your
editor is responsible for next years international coordination, and
shamelessly asks you to join the team, subscribe to our mailinglist[27],
give input about the last year, help with campaign planing, taking care
of coordination events in a certain country, taking care with the
communication with partners, help with the organisation of events for
next year, help with setting up the new website, writting texts,
translate them, help with designing t-shirts and other promotion
materials, or if you do not have time, make a donation[28]to support us
in this activity.
26. http://documentfreedom.org
27. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/df-coordination
28. http://fsfe.org/donate/donate.en.html
Thanks to all the Fellows[29]and donors[30]who enable our work,
29. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
30. donate/thankgnus.de.html
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.de.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.de.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.de.html>
= FSFE Newsletter - September 2011 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201109.en.html ]
== New Intern surrounded by 800 geeks? ==
The first day in a new organisation always is quite intensive, many new
people, procedures, so much information. Our new intern Eszter Bako[1]it
was even more intense. She spent her first day with FSFE at the Desktop
Summit, surrounded by nearly 800 people talking about strange things
such as KDE, Gnome, Qt, GTK, Plasma, Git, QML, D-Bus, or about how to
build a toaster[2]. For beginners the Free Software community can give a
strange impression.
1. http://blogs.fsfe.org/eszter/
2. https://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/complexity-everyday-technolo…
Good thing that she wasn't on her own. Our experienced intern Natalia
Evdokimova, who organised our booth at the event, safely guided her
through the day. Beside that there were many other FSFE activists: Our
president Karsten gave a talk about"Free desktops for Europe's public
sector"[3]and founding member Bernhard talked about"Daily Melee: paid
people within Free Software initiatives - How they tick, how to keep
them and the art of behaving if you are one"[4]. Like you can see on our
blog aggregation[5]there were a lot of other Fellows present, including
our former president Georg Greve.
3. https://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/free-desktops-europes-public…
4. https://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/daily-melee-paid-people-with…
5. http://planet.fsfe.org
Beside Eszter joining and Natalia leaving as intern, there are more
changes within our team: Nicolas Jean's[6]internship has now ended. He
was one of the most active people in the web team, and we are happy that
he will remain in our volunteers team as FSFE's webmaster. Diego Naranjo
Barroso[7]and Alessandro Polvani[8]started their internships. Diego
already contacted the Spanish Institutions[9]for our PDFreaders
campaign, and Alessandro will do the follow-up in Italy.
6. http://blogs.fsfe.org/nicoulas
7. http://blogs.fsfe.org/diegojavier/
8. http://blogs.fsfe.org/alessandro.polvani/
9. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/buglist.en.html#ES
== Digits to remember: 22-10-11 and 11-11-11 ==
The Nordic Free Software Award is given to people, projects or
organisations in the Nordic countries that have made a prominent
contribution to the advancement of Free Software. Henrik Sandklef, our
vice-president, asks you[10]to submit nominations by email until October
22nd.
10. https://sandklef.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/nomination-period-open-for-nordic…
The award will be announced during the Free Society Conference and
Nordic Summit (FSCONS)[11]in Gothenburg, Sweden which will take place
from Friday November 11th through Sunday November 13th. The conference
is organised by FSFE's Swedish team, and your editor is responsible for
FSFE's"Free Software in Politics" track[12]there. We are looking forward
to see you there. (Fellows will get a discount of 10 EUR on the standard
rate).
11. http://fscons.org/
12. http://fscons.org/schedule/
== Something completely different ==
- The importance of promoting Free Software, spreading Free Software in
schools, and what role the computer sciences can play in relating the
messages of Free Software to other institutions and disciplines: Read
the latest Fellowship interview[13], in which our fellow Richard
Shipman shares his thoughts on these topics.
- On Saturday 13th August Free Software activists came to FSFE’s PDF
Readers Sprint in Manchester and found 59 previously unreported
adverts for proprietary PDF readers, all of them on UK Council
websites. Check out the report about the event done by Sam Tuke[14]and
Chris Woolfrey[15]from our UK team.
- Computer Aided Design (CAD) software is critically important to a
variety of industries and professions. It is also notorious for being
poorly catered for by Free Software applications. Sam wrote a brief
summary of the current situation.[16]
- Support Ogg Vorbis by helping our sister FSF to reach 5.000 signatures
for their petition[17], asking for This American Life in Ogg Vorbis.
Also concerning Ogg, FSFE's UK team had a booth at the
OggCamp2011[18].
- R-DIY Feminism Festival: FSFE will be represented at the DIY Feminism
Festival[19]in Manchester on September 3 and 4, holding events,
including talks on Free Software philosophy, Free Software and women,
and an Open Street Map workshop.
- Summer time was blogging time, so here some articles from the planet
aggregation[20]:
- With our new intern Diego J. Naranjo Barroso's help Matija prepared
the Free Software and law related links covering links about the the
patents war, Google acquiring Motorola Mobility, and other stories
in 1.8.-14.8.[21]and 15.8.-21.8.[22].
- Timo Jyrinki writes about Free Software on mobile phones[23]and the
MeeGo Summit Finland[24]including lots of pictures from the
event[25].
- Freedom Box: Read about the progress and technical details of the
Freedom Box[26], in Bdale Garbee's report from DebConf11 in Banja
Luka. If you are in the UK at the time, you can attend Sam's talk on
Freedom Boxes[27]in Manchester on 20 September 2011 at 19:00.
- Interested in processing images from the command line? Swedish Team
member Patrik Willard writes about how to do that[28]for the FSCONS
preperations.
- Chris Woolfrey, who is doing the Fellowship interviews[29]started
blogging. His latest article is about the question, if all the data
on your work computer count as company data"[30].
13. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=378
14. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=191
15. http://blogs.fsfe.org/chriswoolfrey/2011/08/15/pdf-readers-campaign-hits-th…
16. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=169
17. http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/tal-ogg-petition
18. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=194
19. http://diyfeminism.com/events-andworkshops/
20. http://planet.fsfe.org
21. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/254
22. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/255
23. http://losca.blogspot.com/2011/08/meego-ce-and-freesmartphoneorg.html
24. http://losca.blogspot.com/2011/04/meego-summit-fi-starts-tomorrow.html
25. http://losca.blogspot.com/2011/04/meego-summit-fi-days-1-2.html
26. http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/FreedomBox_in_Banja_Luka.html
27. http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.html
28. http://blog.padowi.se/2011/08/28/2011w34/
29. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/
30. http://blogs.fsfe.org/chriswoolfrey/2011/08/18/should-all-the-data-on-your-…
== Get Active: Software Freedom Day ==
September 17th is Software Freedom Day[31](SFD), a worldwide celebration
of Free Software. Its goal is educational, teaching people why Free
Software is the best choice when it comes to using Software. Organised
and coordinated by the Software Freedom International, SFD invites
everyone to participate and take action on a local level. Our Fellowship
group[32]in Vienna for example invits you to a Software Freedom Party.
The evening will be opened by a talk about legal aspects in Free
Software, held by FSFE's new legal coordinator Matija Šuklje. The
groups in Bonn[33], Hamburg[34], and Manchester[35]also have plans.
31. http://softwarefreedomday.org/
32. http://wiki.fsfe.org/CategoryFellowshipGroup
33. http://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/Bonn
34. http://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/Hamburg
35. http://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/Manchester
Contact existing groups to participate in events, or organise your own
SFD activity!
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
= FSFE Newsletter - August 2011 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201108.en.html ]
== Inside stories by a critical thinker ==
"If people do not understand why their computing is related to their
freedom, it’s because nobody explained them properly" (Bernhard
Reiter)
Bernhard Reiter is one of FSFE's founders and architect of the original
German team. He participated in setting up three important Free Software
organisations: FreeGIS.org, FFII, and FossGIS. Besides that, he is
founder and Executive Director of Intevation GmbH, a company with
exclusively Free Software products and services since 1999.
Interesting stories about setting up FSFE, challenges for Free Software,
and more are covered in this month's Fellowship interview[1].
1. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=341
== Become a Critical Thinker: Get Rid of "Intellectual Property" ==
A lot of people talk about "intellectual property". When using this
term, they usually mix different things like copyright, patents,
trademarks, also right to a name, utility patents, business models, or
even geographical indications. If you want to think critically and
clearly about challenges in the digital age, you should separate those
different issues.
If you really need a term to cover all that, you should use one which is
not that much biased. There are some suggestions in the articles
mentioned below, like the term "Limited Intellectual Monopolies".
But in 90% cases there is actually only one monopoly concerned.
Discussions will be much more productive if everybody knows what you are
talking about. So, if someone says "we need more protection of
"intellectual property", ask them what that means, perhaps it means they
want to have software patents. If someone says "we need to limit the
scope of "intellectual property", you should ask if they want to
restrain copyright, patents or even abolish trademarks.
You can read more about this in Richard Stallman's article"Did You Say
'Intellectual Property'? It's a Seductive Mirage"[2], Georg
Greve's"Fighting intellectual poverty (Who owns and controls the
information societies?)"[3], and your editor's interview with Dradio
Wissen[4](in German).
2. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html
3. http://fsfe.org/projects/wsis/issues.en.html
4. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=810
== Support FSFE in critical thinking ==
For FSFE it is important that all of you support us. This way our work
does not depend on single donors, and we can continue to think and
communicate critical to promote software freedom.
It is now possible to donate us monthly and yearly[5]by*credit card*and
in Germany also by*direct debit*. Beside that, in the Netherlands
donations to FSFE can now be deducted from income tax (before it was
only possible in Germany and Switzerland). If we get more than 20 new
donors, your editor promises that he will not write the word "critical"
in the next newsletter.
5. http://fsfe.org/donate/donate.en.html
== Something completely different ==
- Richard Stallman wrote an article"Resist the Temptations of the
Cloud!"[6]( German version[7]) in the German Magazine "Spiegel".
- PDFreaders.org[8]. It is boring to follow up bugs, but it does not
take a lot of time and has a good effect. In Italy volunteers again
managed to close 13 bugs last month. Your editor gave two talks in
Brazil about the PDFreaders campaign[9]to motivate people to fix bugs
in Latin America, and our UK coordinator Sam Tuke is organising a
PDFreaders bug hunt in Manchester. If you live around, join other Free
Software advocates on Saturday, August 13, between 15.00-17.30 at
MadLab hackerspace[10]to find and remove UK Government adverts for
non-Free PDF Readers. Cake and Pizza provided!
- New German Free Software Business Association: Lisog (124 members) and
LIVE Linux-Verband (103 members) now merged into the Open Source
Business Alliance (OSBA)[11](German).
- FSFE will take part at the Desktop Summit, a joint conference
organised by the GNOME and KDE communities in Berlin, Germany, 6 - 12
August 2011 at the Humboldt University. Our president Karsten Gerloff
will give a talk on"Free desktops for Europe's public sector"[12]and
Bernhard Reiter will talk about"Daily Melee: paid people within Free
Software initiatives - How they tick, how to keep them and the art of
behaving if you are one"[13]. (All events are available on our event
page[14]and in the Fellowship calendar[15].
- From the planet aggregation[16]:
- CERN launched its Open Hardware License 1.1 and Open Hardware
Repository. IBM promised to give its Lotus Symphony source code to the
Apache Foundation, and W3C wants to invalidate Apple's Widget software
patents. Read the legal news from 27.6.-3.7.[17] 4.7.-10.7.[18], and
11.7.-18.7.[19].
- Brian Gough has announced the GNU Hackers meeting[20]which will take
place on 25. August – 28. August in Paris. There are about 45 GNU
maintainers and contributors registered so far and speakers include
Jim Meyering, Stefano Zacchiroli, and Jim Blandy.
- Why are students developing Free Software for the public sector? Read
in Guido Arnold's weblog[21]how students get involved in Free
Software.
6. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,775218,00.html
7. http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,774766,00.html
8. http://pdfreaders.org
9. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html
10.
http://madlab.org.uk/content/stamp-out-the-ads-free-software-pdf-reader-spr…
11. http://www.linux-verband.de/news/detail/opensource/pressemitteilung/
12.
https://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/free-desktops-europes-public…
13.
https://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/daily-melee-paid-people-with…
14. http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.html
15. http://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipEvents
16. http://planet.fsfe.org
17. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/250
18. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/251
19. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/252
20.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/bjg/2011/07/gnu-hackers-meeting-in-paris-25-28-august…
21.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2011/07/students-developing-free-software-for-t…
== Get active: Read and distribute "crime story" ==
"When patents attack"[22]is a good story from investigative journalists
on software patents, which reads like a crime story. Your editor
recommends you to read it so you have good arguments in future. If you
like it, distribute the article among your colleagues and friends.
22. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/22/138576167/when-patents-attack
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>