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FSFE Newsletter – June 2015
by press＠fsfeurope.org 09 Jun '15

09 Jun '15

= FSFE Newsletter – June 2015 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201506.ru.html ] == For whom the bell tolls? == On the first Wednesday of May, a coalition of digital liberties organizations, including FSFE, and a multitude of individual activists held the International Day Against DRM[1] 2015 to raise awareness about digital restrictions management, a pervasive and deeply entrenched mechanism designed to plunder the citizenry of the concept of ownership. Along with numerous other defenders of consumer rights and digital liberties we published a statement asking legislators to guarantee the traditional right to tinker[2] with our property. This was necessitated by both the prior steady erosion of the rights to repair and modify our belongings and the renewed push by various manufacturing companies, like John Deere[3], one of the largest manufacturers of agricultural equipment, to deny their customers the right to modify their own property in whatever way the customers wish, using bad laws like the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forbid consumers to circumvent or remove certain defects from their purchases. == FSFE is looking for a systems architect == Due to sustained growth we have experienced in the last few years, our infrastructure has developed into a state where it is no longer able to fulfil our needs. Therefore, we are looking for a systems architect[4] to help us document our existing infrastructure dependencies, develop this into a maintainable architecture, and help our system administrators migrate our services to the new architecture. If you have a good grasp of Free Software, creating technical documentation, virtualization, MTAs, database servers, and web services and you wish to help us ensure scalability and continued availability of both Fellowship services and our internal tools, then you are welcome to apply by contacting our Executive Director, Jonas Öberg[5]. This is your chance to gain a deeper understanding of the technical challenges faced by our volunteers and staff, and help us overcome these hurdles! == Something completely different == - Guido Arnold, FSFE's edu-team coordinator, held a keynote at DORS/CLUC in Zagreb about Free Software adoption in education throughout Europe and wrote a short post about it[6]. - Our President Karsten Gerloff has written a blog post explaining why Facebook's new option to encrypt e-mail notifications using the OpenPGP standard is useless[7]. The bottom line is that on Facebook you are the product and the new “feature” will neither guard your data from overreaching law enforcement nor advertisers willing to pay. - Our associate[8] Fundaţia Ceata[9] is organizing a conference called Coliberator '15[10] from June 6th to 7th in Bucharest, Romania. The conference has featured our president Karsten Gerloff and the founder of the Free Software movement, Richard M. Stallman, as keynote speakers during previous editions. - From the planet aggregation: - Our Fellow Kevin Keijzer writes about liberating a Thinkpad T60p[11] for another Fellow, André, who reviews the experience[12]. - Daniel Pocock is showing people how to use Blender for video editing[13]. - Max Mehl, a former intern, is writing about his current volunteering experience in Africa[14]. Max offers a rather strange, but eye-opening perspective on the way Tanzanians perceive technology. == Get active: call on legislators to oppose TTIP, CETA == This newsletter started with DRM; it will also end with DRM: unscrupulous actors are attempting to use secretly negotiated trade agreements TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) to make it extremely difficult for future governments to get rid of current bans on circumventing digital restrictions mechanisms. Instead, they would force governments to impose ever-harsher penalties on anyone who dares to tinker with their property. We at FSFE would rather avoid that future. Hence, we are asking you to contact your elected representatives both in the European parliament and various legislative bodies throughout Europe and let them know that you wish European laws to remain the province of European legislators. Ask them to oppose secretly negotiated[15] treaties; ask them to demand transparency and openness; and, most importantly, do it now and tell your legislators about the things you like to do with your possessions. It would also be nice if you could tell them what you would be unable to do if those secretive trade agreements were ratified, but you cannot: we do not know the current state of the negotiations. This is quite annoying, but despair not: most of our elected representatives are also in the dark, and they are unlikely to enjoy it. This offers us a unique opportunity to tune them against the deals before they are finalized and presented for ratification: let us get our representatives to oppose these deals while they can make a decision based on democratic principles and need not yet decide whether the economic perks outweigh the proposed harm to a free society. Thanks to all the volunteers[16], Fellows[17] and corporate donors[18] who enable our work, Heiki Lõhmus[19], FSFE[20] -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm 2. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150506-01.ru.html 3. http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2021/John_Deere_Class2… 4. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150527-01.ru.html 5. https://fsfe.org/about/oberg/index.ru.html 6. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2015/06/free-software-in-education-keynote-at-d… 7. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/06/01/facebook-offers-to-send-you-encryp… 8. https://fsfe.org/associates/associates.ru.html 9. https://ceata.org/ 10. http://coliberator.ro/2015/ 11. http://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2015/05/08/flashing-coreboot-on-a-… 12. https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/2015/05/29/how-i-got-a-thinkpad-t60p-coreboot-gnu… 13. http://danielpocock.com/quick-start-blender-video-editing 14. http://blog.mehl.mx/2015/technology-and-free-software-in-tz/ 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2014/08/11/ttip-policy-laundering-a-few-… 16. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 17. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 18. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html 19. https://fsfe.org/about/repentinus/index.ru.html 20. https://fsfe.org/index.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter - May 2015
by press＠fsfeurope.org 04 May '15

04 May '15

= FSFE Newsletter - May 2015 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201505.ru.html ] == A secret Free Software action plan by the European Commission == The European Commission has published a new version of its strategy for the internal use of Free Software. The FSFE provided input to the Commission during the update phase and while the strategy is broadly similar to the previous version, there are some improvements[1]. Unlike previous versions, this time the strategy is accompanied by an action plan aimed at putting it into practice. However, the action plan is not public, so it is not possible to assess the Commission's progress towards its own goals. We would welcome it, if the Commission would soon publish its action plan. == Interpretation of law restricting Free Software in Switzerland == FSFE's goal is that software which is developed with tax money has to be released as Free Software. By doing so the public administration would strengthen and stimulate a fair IT market. In Switzerland, there is currently uncertainty regarding the development and release of Free Software by public contractors. The trigger for this was the development and release of the software “OpenJusticia” by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. The federal council now wants to examine whether the publication of Free Software by the federal administration can be allowed explicitly. The FSFE demands a clarification[2], so that publicly-financed software can be legally and unambiguously released as Free Software. == Worldwide 63 events about Open Standards == This year again volunteers around the world, accompanied by international organisations as well as politicians and public services joined our demand for document freedom. The global Document Freedom Day had 63 local events in 31 countries on 4 continents. Read our 2015 report[3] to learn about political activities, new cartoons and illustrations, and have a look at pictures from the events including tasty DFD cakes. == Something completely different == - We published a statement on the changed relations between the FSFE and Kern Sibbald[4]. If you are a developer who has contributed to Bacula, we recommend that you look at what Fiduciary Licence Agreements or copyright assignments you have agreed to, and make sure that you fully understand how this termination affect you. If you are not sure, you are welcome to email us and we will do our best to assist you. Please take a look at our FAQ on this issue first[5]. - On 6 May 2015 the FSF is organising the International Day Against DRM. You can still print out some DRM leaflets[6], distribute them during the day, and talk with your friends and colleagues about the harm of digital restriction measures. Previously the FSF highlighted the problems with the new Apple products[7] concerning proprietary software and Digital Restrictions Management technologies distributed with its products and services. - The German Greens want[8] the Government to increase the support for Free Software. FSFE has helped them with a enquiry in parliament about the move to non-free software in the German Foreign Office. You can help us to evaluate the Governments answers[9] (in German). - Guido Arnold gave a talk about FSFE's education team at the Chemnitzer Linuxtage. The video “Advantages and barriers of Free Software in education” is now online[10] (you can for example use youtube-dl to download it). - From the planet aggregation[11]: - Paul Boddie wrote a detailed blog post why Open Hardware and Free Software is not just for the geeks[12]. - Franz Gratzer published an open letter to everymothercounts.org about their Apple advertisement[13]. - Mirko Böhm summarised his experiences about parsing Emacs OrgMode files, the EU patent debate, and his vacation[14]. - Riccardo (ruphy) Iaconelli announced, that he is back blogging[15], after he has done research at CERN and launched WikiFM. - And your editor explained how to share multiple links on Android[16]. == Get active: Check the remaining advertisement for non-free software == We currently wrap-up the PDFreaders campaign, and we need your help to measure our success. Started in 2009 FSFE’s goal with the campaign was to get rid of advertisement for proprietary PDF readers. We focused on the websites of public administrations, and many people helped us gather contact details for over 2000 public websites which advertised non-free software. Many people helped us to contact the public administrations, governments were made aware of it and published guidelines. Until now we know that 772 of the 2110 bugs were fixed, which is a 36% success rate. But for most countries we did not check the status for several months now. That is why we need your help to make one final round. We are looking for volunteers who can help us by checking websites in their native language, following the step-by-step guide at the end of your editor's blog post[17]. Thanks to all the volunteers[18], Fellows[19] and corporate donors[20] who enable our work, Matthias Kirschner - FSFE[21] -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150401-01.ru.html 2. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150306-01.ru.html 3. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2015/news-20150408-01.html 4. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150414-01.ru.html 5. https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/faq-bacula.ru.html 6. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.ru.html#drm-leaflet 7. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/watch-your-freedom-because-apples-not 8. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/german-greens-want-increase… 9. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150401-02.ru.html 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyDi6pkc6l8 11. http://planet.fsfe.org 12. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=908 13. http://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2015/03/28/open-letter-to-everymotherco… 14. http://creative-destruction.me/2015/04/04/parsing-emacs-orgmode-files-eu-pa… 15. http://blogs.fsfe.org/ruphy/2015/04/back-on-the-web/ 16. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/sharing-multiple-links-on-android/ 17. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/final-pdfreaders-advertisement-squashing/ 18. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 19. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 20. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html 21. https://fsfe.org/index.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter - April 2015
by press＠fsfeurope.org 04 Apr '15

04 Apr '15

= FSFE Newsletter - April 2015 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201504.ru.html ] == Jonas Öberg visiting Boston without a pink backpack == Our new Executive Director Jonas Öberg[1] gave a talk at Libreplanet, and visited Boston to meet FSF board members and staff. In his blog posts[2] he wrote about his meetings with Matthew Garret, Benjamin Mako Hill, Bradley Kuhn, Henry Poole from FSF's board, FSF's staff as well as FSF's Executive Director John Sullivan discussing how to improve cooperation and the two main challenges he sees for FSFE: - analysing Free Software from legal, technical, and social dimensions and ensuring that any challenges to Free Software within those areas are met, - assuring that in a world of free and open everything, Free Software is what ties everything together: you can not have open data, open ecology, open government or open educational resources without Free Software. Furthermore he looks back to his first visit, at that time in his capacity as GNU webmaster, in December 1999 with a pink backpack. == FSFE supporting the Christoph Hellwig GNU GPL enforcement lawsuit == FSFE welcomes the action which Christoph Hellwig and the Software Freedom Conservancy are taking[3] to bring VMware into compliance with the GNU General Public License. Free Software is a public resource, and it is governed by legal rules and social norms. Anyone who draws on this resource without respecting those rules and norms damages the community at large. The great majority of such problems are successfully resolved through dialogue and goodwill. It is only when dialogue fails that legal steps become necessary in order to protect this resource which we all share. While FSFE regrets that this lawsuit has arisen, we believe that safeguarding Free Software against those who try to appropriate for themselves what belongs to us all is of the utmost importance. == Joint statement on the use of Open Standards in the European Commission == Open Standards are formats and protocols which everybody can use free of charge and restriction and for which no specific software from a particular vendor is required. It is important that every EU citizen and company should have the right to communicate and interact with its administration using Open Standards exclusively, and not be forced to install and use software from any specific vendor. At Document Freedom Day (DFD), the international day to celebrate and raise awareness of Open Standards, April (the French Free Software organisation), European Digital Rights (EDRi), Open Forum Europe (OFE), the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA), and FSFE published a joint statement. Besides generally highlighting the topic, the statement focuses on the improper use of standards in the context of applying for EU programmes[4]. (A full report about the 60 DFD events in 31 countries will be published at the beginning of April.) == Something completely different == - Just how transparent does the European Parliament have to be? In its own rules of procedure, the Parliament has set itself the high standard of conducting its affairs in “utmost transparency”. Our president Karsten Gerloff reports[5] from an interesting discussion “Ensuring utmost transparency – Free Software and Open Standards under the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament”, and what that means in practice. - The German Ministry of Economics published a first draft law to ban compulsory routers (German)[6]. Except missing enforcement measures FSFE welcomes the draft. We update the timeline[7] and our overview pages[8] so people outside German could reuse our experiences to fight compulsory routers in other countries, too. - At a panel discussion, organised by the European Patent Office, about patents, standards, and Free Software your editor experienced an unexpected but positive turn[9]. - The New Yorker notes the 30th anniversary of the GNU Manifesto and published a longer article about Richard Stallman and the start of GNU and copyleft[10]. - This year the Free Software Award[11] went to Sébastien Jodogne for his work on Free software Medical imaging with his project Orthanc and to Reglue, which gives GNU/Linux computers to underprivileged children and their families in Austin, Texas. - FSFE welcomes Nicolas Dietrich in its General Assembly. He was elected by our sustaining members, and thereby holds one of the two Fellowship GA seats[12]. - From the planet aggregation[13]: - Peter Bubestinger explains how he saved the songs of a friend's iPod with Free Software[14]. - In his new job, former FSFE intern Nicolas Jean published EvQueue, a job scheduler and queuing engine, as Free Software[15]. - Paul Boddie wrote about the BBC Micro Bit[16], a computing device, which the BBC plan to give to each child in the UK starting secondary school. - Franz Gratzer highlighted some English interviews held during FOSDEM[17], and wrote about the booth presence of freie.it, which was founded by some members of FSFE’s Viennese Fellowship group, as a web platform to help people who are interested in using Free Software but who do not want to administrate their own computers. - Fellow Karl Beecher explained why his company Endocode supports FSFE as silver donor[18], and - Mirko Böhm, also part of Endocode, wrote about his activites[19], including meeting with Jonas Öberg, FSFE’s new Executive Director. - Nico Rikken wrote about his discussions with the Fairphone producers[20] - Mario Fux wondered if Konqi -- the KDE mascot -- is male or female[21]. - And Daniel Pocock explains how you can become your own OpenID provider[22]. == Get active: Spread the message with Free Software merchandise == During the last weeks, many people ordered our “There is no cloud, just other people's computers” stickers[23]. Now Rich Folsom wrote a Chromium Browser add-in[24], which converts “the cloud” to “other people's computers”. Since so many people like the slogan, we now also have the corresponding “There is no cloud, just other people's computers”[25] bags in our webshop. Furthermore we have a new Open Standard t-shirt with robots in fitted light blue or a non-fitted khaki, the “I love Free Software” t-shirt in light blue, or a fitted “Hacking for Freedom” t-shirt in grey, as well as the metallic “GNU/Linux inside” stickers and a golden GNU pin. If you want to spread the Free Software message at work, conferences, or when you are shopping, you can order the equipment on our merchandise page[26]. Thanks to all the volunteers[27], Fellows[28] and corporate donors[29] who enable our work, Matthias Kirschner - FSFE[30] -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150302-02.ru.html 2. http://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=14 3. http://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html 4. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150325-01.ru.html 5. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/03/26/909/ 6. http://www.bmwi.de/BMWi/Redaktion/PDF/P-R/referentenentwurf-gesetz-zur-ausw… 7. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/timeline.ru.html 8. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/routers.ru.html 9. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/unexpected-turn-at-panel-discussion-on-software-p… 10. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-gnu-manifesto-turns-thirty 11. https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-award-winners 12. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150316-01.ru.html 13. http://planet.fsfe.org 14. http://blogs.fsfe.org/pb/?p=147 15. http://blogs.fsfe.org/nicoulas/?p=175 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=878 17. http://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2015/03/01/fosdem-2015-some-interviews/ 18. http://computerfloss.com/2015/03/endocode-proud-to-sponsor-free-software-fo… 19. http://creative-destruction.me/2015/03/11/fancy-dinners-cgroups-and-namespa… 20. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/fairphone-back-to-the-drawing-board/ 21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=283 22. http://danielpocock.com/the-easiest-way-to-run-your-own-openid 23. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.ru.html#promo-material 24. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-to-other-peoples-co/kkpbkgb… 25. https://fsfe.org/order/order.ru.html 26. https://fsfe.org/order/order.ru.html 27. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 28. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 29. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html 30. https://fsfe.org/index.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter - March 2015
by press＠fsfeurope.org 04 Mar '15

04 Mar '15

= FSFE Newsletter - March 2015 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201503.ru.html ] == FSFE's reply to EU consultation on patents and standard == We believe that proprietary standards and software patents are barriers to Free Software adoption. To get rid of those barriers we have to help the public administration to understand this, too. That is why last month we responded to a consultation on the interaction of standards and patents by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. In our response[1], we focused mainly on how software patents negatively affect competition and innovation in the software market. We also highlighted that so-called “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) licensing terms are in practice a grave discrimination against Free Software. In many segments of the software market, these programs are the most significant competition to non-free offerings. So the FSFE recommends that standards organisations instead implement the successful patent licensing policies of the W3C and other bodies, and make the restriction-free licensing of standard-essential patents mandatory. If you want to help us to promote Open Standards, please participate in this year's Document Freedom Day (see this month's get active item at the end of the newsletter). == Free Software as integral part of Open Educational Resources == The more we see classic educational environments equipped with computers, the more important becomes an education system that teaches every student to be in control of their technology. For the FSFE, the basis for this is Free Software. Together with other partners in the “Bündnis Freie Bildung” (Free Education Alliance) we published a position paper about the creation and usage of Open Educational Resources (OER)[2]. The paper has a specific focus on the creation and usage of OER inside the German educational system. It should be mandatory to publish educational resources including software that has been paid with public money under free licences. Furthermore, the position paper demands that educational institutions should consider the compatibility with Free Software already during the development or extension of their IT infrastructures. By this it envisions to have “all educational resources usable without any legal or technical barriers”. If you want to know more about what happened in the education field connected with Free Software, read the January Education team report[3]. == What happened on the “I love Free Software” day? == On 14 February 2015 people all over the world showed Free Software contributors their appreciation. It was the fifth year we asked people to participate in the “I Love Free Software” day. This year's report shows a variety of love declarations that happened this day[4], including blog posts, pictures, comics, poems, and an #ilovefs Android library. We want to thank everybody who motivated Free Software contributors at this year's “I love Free Software” day, and ask everybody to mark 14 February in their calendars to motivate the people who enable us to control our technology. == Something completely different == - Hannes Hauswedell from the German team wrote an update about the situation with secure texting. The last months Hannes and others wanted to improve the situation with Textsecure, which unfortunately did not work out until now. So Hannes changed his mind and is now recommending kontalk[5]. - Fellow Cory Doctorow wrote an article in the Guardian imagining how it would look like “If dishwashers were iPhones”[6]. - Christian Kalkhoff reported from FSFE's Munich group meeting in January[7]. To find upcoming local meetings close to you, please have a look at our event page[8]. - The Fellowship election for one of the seats in FSFE's General Assembly is running until 6 March 2015. All sustaining members should have received the voting instructions to decide between Nicolas Dietrich, Max Mehl, and Felix Stegerman[9]. So if you have not yet voted, do it now! - From the planet aggregation[10]: - After there have been plenty of reports of Lenovo shipping products with a form of adware known as Superfish, Paul Boddie asks what Lenovo's reasoning was[11], and from whom they want their money in future. - Max Mehl has been asked by a friend why he is “investing so much time in the FSFE instead of putting more energy in other organisations with more focus on privacy issues.” In his blog post[12], he answers that question. - Mirko Böhm summarised his last weeks[13] including what he worked on with his students, about amendments to Julia Reda's report, software patents, and Qt programming. - Daniel Pocock wrote about the 3rd birthday of Lumicall[14]. - Christian Kallhoff reports from his experience to fix a bug in Free Software[15]. - Nico Rikken wrote about understanding software and why it is not magic[16], and about the freedom Ubuntu phone offers[17]. == Get active: Be a part of Document Freedom Day 2015! == Every year since 2008, people who care about a free information society celebrate Document Freedom Day[18] to raise awareness of Open Standards. This year again people around the world come together on 25 March to talk about access to communications, run local public activities, and generally spread the word about Open Standards in a dozen different ways. We are offering promotion materials in many languages, and artwork you can remix, share and improve to publicise your own event. If you are running a local event, we may be able to offer funding of your local activities or your local print runs - thanks to DFD's sponsors. To get inspired, take a look at what other groups from Mexico to Japan did last year[19]. Participate in DFD 2015![20] Thanks to all the volunteers[21], Fellows[22] and corporate donors[23] who enable our work, Matthias Kirschner - FSFE[24] -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150218-01.ru.html 2. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150210-01.ru.html 3. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2015/02/free-software-in-education-news-january/ 4. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150303-01.ru.html 5. http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2015/02/23/secure-texting-part-ii/ 6. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/if-dishwashers-were-iphon… 7. https://blogs.fsfe.org/softmetz/?p=53 8. https://fsfe.org/events/events.ru.html 9. https://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipElection_2015 10. http://planet.fsfe.org 11. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=852 12. http://blog.mehl.mx/2015/in-the-end-freedom-is-what-matters/ 13. http://creative-destruction.me/2015/02/26/student-papers-reda-report-amendm… 14. http://danielpocock.com/lumicall-third-birthday 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/softmetz/?p=60 16. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/software-isnt-magic/ 17. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/ubuntu-calling-for-freedom/ 18. http://documentfreedom.org 19. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2014/news-20140424-01.html 20. http://documentfreedom.org/getinvolved.html 21. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 22. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 23. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html 24. https://fsfe.org/index.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter – February 2015
by press＠fsfeurope.org 04 Feb '15

04 Feb '15

= FSFE Newsletter – February 2015 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201502.ru.html ] == I ♥ Free Software == Come February 14 and our website will be turning pink and heart-laden to celebrate the creators of Free Software. We have taken the opportunity on every Valentine's Day since 2010 to celebrate not only our loved ones, but also the dedicated people working very hard to ensure that we have the option to use Free Software. You can read more about how we celebrated[1] the I ♥ Free Software Day in 2014 to get a feel for the spirit of the occasion, and you are very welcome to join our celebrations this year! == Fellowship elections == The Fellowship elections[2] are almost here! Three candidates ( Nicolas Dietrich[3], Max Mehl[4], and Felix Stegerman[5] ) are vying for the seat currently held by Repentinus[6]. Repentinus wishes them all very well in trying to replace him, and hopes that so shall you, our dear readers. May the best candidate win! Voting will take place from February 20 to March 6, and all orderly Fellows whose membership is active on February 19, 2015, 12am (UTC+1) are allowed to vote. So there is still plenty of time to renew your Fellowship[7] and to become able to make a difference. == Transitions == Whoever becomes the new Fellowship Representative will be joining a Core Team[8] very different to that joined by Repentinus almost two years ago. First, we expect to take on Jonas Öberg[9] as Executive Director around the same time the new Fellowship Representative will be joining the Core Team and the General Assembly. Furthermore, later in the year when the General Assembly will be holding its annual meeting, we will be electing a new President. It is expected that the GA will confirm our current Vice President Matthias Kirschner[10] as the new President. These changes have been internally known for quite some time, but were publicly announced[11] by our President Karsten Gerloff[12] only on January 26. == Something completely different == - Our staffers, volunteers, and Fellows are often present at various Free Software gatherings. If you have always wondered what goes on at these conferences, then you would do well to read the report from Chaos Communication Congress[13], penned by our Fellowship Coordinator Erik Albers[14]. - From the planet aggregation: Paul Boddie writes[15] about the inadequate coverage topics like interoperability and platform choice have received in the past from consumer magazines. He notes how the advent of multiple mobile ecosystems is forcing consumer magazines to acknowledge the problem, and invites a major consumer magazine to join the push for interoperable Free Software. - Guido Arnold, our Education team coordinator, has posted his monthly collection of “ Free Software in Education News”[16] for December. - Kevin Keijzer makes the case for[17] Free Software in education as a human rights issue. - Nico Rikken argues[18] that engineering students should be taught to use Free Software. - Max Mehl writes about setting up your own URL shortener[19]. - Felix Stegerman gives an overview of FSFE activities in Netherlands throughout 2014[20]. - == Get active: hug a developer == For February we would like all of you to join us in celebrating developers of Free Software. Come 14th, please send developers, translators, and artists e-mail, postcards, and cake, hug them (with permission, of course), or use any other polite and creative option to let them know just how much you appreciate them and the work they have put into Free Software you use every day. Thanks to all the volunteers[21], Fellows[22] and corporate donors[23] who enable our work, Heiki Ojasild[24] Fellowship Representative, FSFE -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140221-01.ru.html 2. https://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipElection_2015 3. https://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows/nidi/Election2015 4. http://blog.mehl.mx/2015/fellowship-elections/ 5. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2015/01/26/my-candidacy-in-fsfes-fellowship-elec… 6. https://fsfe.org/about/ojasild/ojasild.ru.html 7. https://fsfe.org/fellowship/ams/join.php?ams=join 8. https://fsfe.org/about/team.ru.html 9. https://fsfe.org/about/oberg/oberg.ru.html 10. https://fsfe.org/about/kirschner/kirschner.ru.html 11. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/01/26/new-horizons/ 12. https://fsfe.org/about/gerloff/gerloff.ru.html 13. http://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2015/01/21/fsfes-assembly-at-chaos-communication-… 14. https://fsfe.org/about/albers/albers.ru.html 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=835 16. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2015/01/free-software-in-education-news-decembe… 17. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2015/01/11/free-software-educatio… 18. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/why-engineering-students-need-to-be-taught-free-s… 19. http://blog.mehl.mx/2015/yourls-url-shortener-for-turpial/ 20. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2015/01/26/fsfe-netherlands-in-2014/ 21. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 22. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 23. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html 24. https://fsfe.org/about/ojasild/index.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter – January 2015
by press＠fsfeurope.org 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

= FSFE Newsletter – January 2015 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201501.ru.html ] == A revolution == The Earth has once again completed a full, customarily counted revolution. Here at FSFE we have been busy throughout 2014, working hard to ensure that users remain in control of their devices and that Free Software may once compete on a level playing field for public tenders. More information, including the extent of our limited success and our future prospects, on both these issues and our other frontiers may be found in our annual report for 2014[1], penned by our President Karsten Gerloff[2]. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of our activities in 2014, Karsten finishes the report with a sneak peek of the challenges we are going to face and overcome in revolution 2015. For instance, we intend to build on the success of the Free Software Pact[3] to spread awareness about Free Software among both the elected representatives of the European citizenry and the unelected bureaucrats of the executive branch. We also intend to invest more in our local volunteers and Fellowship groups. We are hopeful that not only will we reach a wider audience and have a greater impact with increased local participation, but this will also be much more fun for everyone involved. == Fellowship elections == FSFE has a bit less than 1500 Fellows[4] or sustaining members. In addition to receiving certain benefits[5] useful for digital activists, all of them have a say in the governance of the FSFE. This right is exercised by electing[6] representatives to the General Assembly, the highest decision-making body of FSFE. Your temporary editor will have served his term as a Fellowship Representative by this spring, and hence a new Representative will be elected by the orderly Fellows from February 20th to March 6th 2015, 12pm. Your outgoing Representative would like to take this opportunity to invite all our Fellows to partake in the elections. The General Assembly is responsible for making all strategic decisions for FSFE, and all Fellows, whether true idealists or business-minded pragmatists, have the same right to affect our future growth and direction, so please do so. == EU: the good and the bad == On December 17, 2014, the European Parliament adopted the EU budget for 2015. We are very happy to report that thanks to the efforts of MEPs Julia Reda (Pirates) and Max Andersson (Greens), the Parliament has allocated up to a million euros to audit Free Software used by the European Parliament and Commission. We hope that the institutions concerned will closely work with upstream developers to best benefit the public. We also welcome further allocations[7] that aim to allow equal participation in the digital society. Unfortunately, we must still call upon EU institutions to make use of Open Standards and Free Software, as a recent study prepared for the Greens/EFA has found[8] that the EU Parliament falls woefully short of its democratic obligations to ensure transparency and openness. Among other shortcomings the parliamentarians lack access to a standards- compliant e-mail solution. == Something completely different == - From the planet aggregation: Paul Boddie writes about the ‘ unplanned obsolescence[9] ’ of early Fairphone devices, justifiedly arguing that Fairphone's decision to overlook or deprioritize hardware support for Free Software was unwise considering the abundance of information available on the lack of hardware support for Free Software. - Otto Kekäläinen writes[10] about password management while recognizing that people are not storage media. Otto's piece is an excellent read when taken with a pinch of salt. - Nico Rikken contemplates the right to make bad choices in his piece ‘ Optional rights[11] ’. 2015 will bring a new etiquette to our Fellowship Planet. A proposed draft will be presented to the Fellows for consultation at the earliest convenience. == Get active: spread free software == The gift giving season has just ended. No doubt you have a friend or relative unfortunate enough to have been given a computer bundled with non-free software as a gift. Help them install a free GNU/Linux distribution or Replicant[12]. Thanks to all the volunteers[13], Fellows[14] and corporate donors[15] who enable our work, Heiki Ojasild[16] Fellowship Representative, FSFE -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141218-02.ru.html 2. https://fsfe.org/about/gerloff/index.ru.html 3. http://freesoftwarepact.eu/ 4. https://fsfe.org/fellowship/index.ru.html 5. https://fsfe.org/fellowship/about/fellowship.ru.html#youget 6. https://fsfe.org/about/legal/constitution.ru.html#id-fellowship-seats 7. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141219-01.ru.html 8. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141212-01.ru.html 9. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=802 10. http://seravo.fi/2014/password-hygiene-every-mans-responsibility 11. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/optional-rights/ 12. http://www.replicant.us/ 13. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 14. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 15. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html 16. https://fsfe.org/about/ojasild/index.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter – December 2014
by press＠fsfeurope.org 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

= FSFE Newsletter – December 2014 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201412.ru.html ] == More demand from the EU institutions == The new European Commission is currently setting the direction of its policy making for the coming five years. The FSFE is in frequent contact with Commission staff, who currently see open doors for Free Software in Brussels. We want to make sure to use this momentum to push for changes on software procurement, standardisation, and device sovereignty. So our president Karsten Gerloff participated in several meetings. In November the European Parliament (EP) organised a conference to inform members of the parliament about the IT services available to them. It featured a panel discussion led by Adina Valean, the new EP Vice President in charge of ICT, with a contribution from Giancarlo Villela, the director of the EP’s IT department. After the panel discussion, Karsten got the chance to contribute a few brief remarks about the EU institution’s live streams, DebianParl, and vendor lock- in[1]. In the beginning of December Karsten was again at the Parliament, this time at a workshop on “Open Standards for ICT procurement”[2]. The real value of those events, as so often, was in the people who are there. The workshop provided an opportunity for the small community pushing Free Software and Open Standards in procurement to meet and share updates. So in the future we can push together with them for positive changes. == There is no cloud just other people’s computers == Another event Karsten participated in was the presentation of the report on “cloud” computing and interoperability by the Brussels-based lobby organisation ECIS’s. Karsten documented the meeting in his blog post “Some common-sense recommendations on cloudy computing”[3]. Just a few days later our new “there is no cloud just other people’s computers”-stickers arrived in our office[4]. We received lots of positive feedback about the stickers, and now added them to our promo packs[5]. We are planning to have some more merchandise with this slogan ready for our booth at FOSDEM from 31 January to 1 February 2015 in Brussels. == Progress with “email self-defence” leaflets == Beside the new stickers, you can now also order new leaflets, to promote our sister organisation’s “email self-defence guide”. Originally we produced this leaflet in German for the annual Berlin “freedom not fear” demonstration in September. Afterwards volunteers all over Germany ordered[6] and distributed them. For example, one cinema gave out a leaflet for everybody who bought a ticket for the Snowden documentary “Citizienfour”. Meanwhile we had to reorder the German version for a third time and since the end of November we have been sending out the English version to Free Software supporters throughout Europe. In the next weeks our translators[7] and designers[8] will finalise a Chinese, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, and a Spanish version. For 2015 we want to enable local Free Software supporters to distribute this and other leaflets at libraries, universities, schools, cinemas, companies, restaurants and cafes, shops and in other places. == FSFE’s translators: they are just awesome == This brings us to a badly needed thank you note. During the last 12 months we published the newsletter monthly. Two of the editions were written by our volunteer Heiki ”Repentinus” Ojasild, so your editor could enjoy his vacation. Our newsletter was available in 6 languages on average (lowest 4 languages highest 9 languages). We had newsletters in Albanian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, and Spanish. Your editor is proud to work in a team with such dedicated volunteers. They translate the newsletter, the leaflets mentioned above, plus other FSFE news. They enable more people around the world to read about Free Software in their mother tongue, and are therefore a crucial part of the FSFE. So your editor would like to deeply thank our growing translators team[9] for this important work. == Something completely different == - The year is almost over, and it is reporting season. Our president published a sneak preview of things we achieved in 2014[10] covering our work on: public procurement, the Free Software pact, compulsory routers, improving information material, informing about “trusted computing” and “Secure Boot”, organising Document Freedom Day, answering legal questions, as well as our participation events such as workshops, panel discussions, or organising booths. - In the last newsletter we asked you to help the FixMyDocuments campaign. With the support they received, they have now compiled a list of over 15,000 editable documents from the European institutions not available in the Open Document Format[11]. - WhatsApp adopted a secure end-to-end encryption method developed for the Free Software app TextSecure. Torsten Grote takes a look at what that means for Free Software[12]. - Local events: FSFE had a booth at T-Dose in the Netherlands[13]. Our Dutch Fellows organised the booth together, Kevin Keijzer gave a talk about “Discrimination of Free Software (users) in education”, Maurice Verheesen spoke about “Digital Sovereignty For Europe”, and Felix Stegerman talked about the opportunities and dangers of the “Internet of Things”[14]. Beside that, our Berlin group organised a booth at the FiFFkon[15] at the Technical University Berlin. - Guido Arnold published a summary of what happened in education throughout Europe during October[16]. - The French Fellow Alexandre Keledjian published F-Droid-Web, a simple and lightweight web interface to F-Droid server[17]. It provides an easy way to add a new software repository to your mobile using qr- codes, and to browse the F-Droid catalogue by name, category, summary, license type, and description. - From the planet aggregation[18]: - Mirko Böhm, FSFE Fellow and KDE community member, wrote about why you should support FSFE’s work[19], which in his words is: to protect, explain, and organise the freedoms to use, study, share, and improve software. - Daniel Pocock questions if Amnesty is giving spy victims a false sense of security[20]. In his post he provides a letter template to sent to Amnesty. - “EOMA68” is an open electronic interface standard, designed to support the development of small computing devices. Nico Rikken wrote why EOMA68 will advance both Free Software and free hardware[21]. - Mario Fux explains how you can contribute as a non-developer to KDE[22]. - Beside that we had some technical HowTos on the planet, including: Kevin Keijzer who reports from his experience trying to install Ubuntu without proprietary software[23]. - Hannes Hauswedell who wrote about how to encrypt cron’s daily mail on FreeBSD[24]. His HowTo pertains to FreeBSD in particular, but he is “sure all you GNUsers out there will figure out the necessary changes”. - Mirko Böhm who describes how to configure a gaming mouse on GNU/Linux in a way that you can work and play at the machine[25]. - And Max Mehl who is now running his own Git (a decentralised version control system) instance which also includes a script to delete all meta data from PDF files in a directory[26]. == Get active: Get a smartcard and support us == Next year, we will push harder than ever to weave software freedom into the fabric of our society. To enable us to intensify our work with the European Commission, to let more people know about Free Software, and to continue our other work we still need €190,000 for 2015[27]. As an individual the best way to support the FSFE’s work financially is to become a Fellow (a sustaining member of the FSFE)[28]. All Fellowship contributions directly benefit our work towards a free society. Fellows receive a state-of-the-art Fellowship smartcard which, together with the free GnuPG encryption software and a card reader, can be used to sign and encrypt e-mails, to securely log into a computer from a potentially insecure machine using SSH, or to store the user’s hard disk encryption keys. Since the encryption key is stored on the card itself, it is almost impossible to steal. Thanks to all the volunteers[29], Fellows[30] and corporate donors[31] who enable our work, Matthias Kirschner - FSFE -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/11/19/free-software-for-the-european-pa… 2. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/12/04/workshop-on-open-standards-for-ict… 3. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/11/14/some-common-sense-recommendations… 4. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/new-stickers-and-leaflets-no-cloud-and-e-mail-sel… 5. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.html#promo-material 6. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.ru.html#promo-material 7. https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.ru.html 8. https://fsfe.org/contribute/designers/designers.ru.html 9. https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.ru.html 10. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/12/01/preview-what-fsfe-did-in-2014/ 11. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/110097 12. http://blog.grobox.de/2014/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption-federation/ 13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/11/11/t-dose-2/ 14. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/11/09/my-t-dose-talk-the-internet-of-things… 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/majestyx/2014/11/12/fiffkon-2014-leak/ 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/11/free-software-in-education-news-octobe… 17. https://github.com/dervishe-/f-droid-web/wiki 18. http://planet.fsfe.org 19. http://creative-destruction.me/2014/12/04/fsfe-needs-your-support-for-2015/ 20. http://danielpocock.com/amnesty-detekt-false-sense-of-security 21. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/why-eoma68-will-advance-both-free-software-and-fr… 22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=257 23. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/11/16/installing-ubuntu-with… 24. https://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2014/11/04/encrypting-crons-daily-mail/ 25. http://creative-destruction.me/2014/11/13/configure-your-gaming-mouse-on-li… 26. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/sharing-is-caring-my-git-instance/ 27. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141203-01.ru.html 28. https://fsfe.org/join/join.ru.html 29. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 30. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 31. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter – November 2014
by press＠fsfeurope.org 11 Nov '14

11 Nov '14

= FSFE Newsletter – November 2014 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201411.ru.html ] == Munich: facts harder than fiction == The city of Munich runs Free Software on more than 15.000 workplace computers and has saved over 11.000.000€ in return[1]. During the migration to Free Software, they consolidated their heterogeneous IT in 51 places with 1000 IT employees and 22 IT departments. Despite these challenges most users are happy with the migration and say they do not want to switch back[2] (in German). And all of this happened in the front-yard of Microsoft's German headquarters. If you do not like the success of Free Software in Munich, what could you do? You could play on emotions and spread rumours that the Munich IT people are not taking the demands of regular users nor the executive into account. Of course, you have to stay vague, hoping to bring out a few of those voices that are always unhappy - but this is an easy way of discrediting the progress already made. This is what happened in the last months in Munich with remarks by the new mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD, Social Democrats) and his vice Josef Schmid (CSU, Christian Democrats). Some commentators have speculated about a connection to the fact that Microsoft is now moving its headquarter from Unterschleissheim to Munich, and Reiter claiming that he helped with this deal[3] (in German). As Microsoft was the biggest tax payer in Unterschleissheim[4] (in German), Munich will financially benefit by this move. But they seem to have underestimated the success of Free Software in Munich. IT experts from their own political parties raised their voice to correct them[5] and others have uncovered their misleading statements[6]. Thus, the comments by the mayors represent only individual opinions. Munich's political support for GNU/Linux is strong, and the money the city saves and will continue to save by using GNU/Linux, LibreOffice/OpenOffice, and the Desktop from KDE counts profoundly. If Free Software can even survive a smear campaign by the mayors it shows that it is there to stay. Dear Free Software community: /be proud and spread the word!/ But do not rest, the next attack will be more subtle. == EU wide Open Standards policy == But the answer to the inquiry includes another crucial point: the problem with document formats. The Munich IT managers noted that, at the beginning of their migration, the German federal states and the federal government highlighted the importance of Free Software and Open Standards, but afterwards never consequently went this path. In Germany, the lack of a clear Open Standard Policy is a major blocker for public administrations to use Free Software. In recent years, other European Countries such as Great Britain, France, Italy, and Sweden have done more to promote Free Software and Open Standards. On the European level, the former Munich mayor asked the European Commission to implement two measures to enable participation with Free Software in EU projects[7]: First to have all document templates which are available in Microsoft Office formats, also in Open Document Text (ODT) format. Second that all presenter notebooks in the EU institutions also have a program installed which can handle Open Document Presentation (ODP) files. This was in 2011 and the European bodies have neglected implementing Open Standard policies for a long time. == Open Standard compliance checks == When intuitions decide on Open Standards policies, this is just the first step. It is important to check this decision and to remind them about it. In 2010 as a Document Freedom Day activity our Fellows in Cologne and Bonn checked the German federal administrations after a decision that they have to be able to receive, edit, and send back ODF[8]. The FSFE found out that only 2 of 87 departments are conforming to federal open document regulations. This highlights the importance of being persistent and monitoring the implementation of such policies. Check out this month's “Get active” item with a specific suggestion how you can help with that within a few minutes. == Something completely different == - We are currently looking for interns again, especially in preparation of Document Freedom Day[9] but we also have general internship positions open from early January[10]. When Max Mehl saw the news item he published a summary about his internship with FSFE[11]. - Together with the Italian consumer association ADUC, and the Italian group ILS, we asked[12] regulators to take concrete steps to protect Italians from being forced to pay for software they do not want or need. - Local activities: Our Vienna group had their most active and successful Autumn ever. Franz documented how they participated in the three big events Software Freedom Day, the biggest German speaking animal rights conference, and the Game City fair 2013[13]. Christian Kalkhoff from our Munich group gave a presentation about the groups activities at the GNU Hackers Meeting 2014. The video is now online[14]. If you want to help with the organisation of the LibreOffice conference 2015, Carsten Agger is still looking for assistance, as our Aarhus group will help at the event[15]. - Spoiler alert: The last edition of the education news also mentions the focus of the upcoming Document Freedom Day 2015[16]. - Public administrations: The German town of Gummersbach announced that this summer it has completed its switch to GNU/Linux PCs[17], England's Healthwatch switches to Free Software CiviCRM[18], and a Free Software solution developed for the government of South Tyrol (Italy) to automatically test government websites and services is now also being used to probe sites of the region's tourism sector[19]. - Our sister organisation invites Free Software enthusiasts to the libre planet conference 2015[20] in the US. Furthermore the nomination for the 17th annual Free Software Awards is open[21], and you can send your nominations before Sunday 16 November. - Matthew Garret wrote a blog post on why he joined FSF's board[22]. But some of the comments he received are really offensive, and your editor hopes that Matthew can just ignore them. Related to this, your editor recommends you reading the article “On the sickness of our community”[23] by Jonathan Corbet. As always, if you have comments about it send them to our discussion lists[24]. - From the planet aggregation[25]: - Computers are entering the fashion field from multiple directions. Current FSFE intern Michele Marrali wrote about MeshCon 2014, a conference that connects fashion designer and technology experts[26]. - André Ockers reports that the Dutch public broadcaster NOS moves away from open standards[27] - Matija Šuklje made his first commit to KDE and writes about FSFE's Fiduciary Licence Agreement[28] - Daniel Pocock reports positive results from Outreach Program for Women[29] - Hugo Roy explains how he wrote a new defensive publication for ownCloud's file syncing encryption[30]. == Get active: Fix my document - ODF in EU bodies == The EU institutions still have a lot to do to remove barriers for Free Software users. Together with Open Forum Europe (OFE) your editor had a meeting with the IT responsible of the Commission, the Council, and the Parliament about that. We discussed our letter on video format[31] and the campaign “FixMyDocuments.eu”. This campaign was started by OFE to help EU institutions to implement their decision to support Open Document Formats[32] FSFE's volunteers already translated the website in more languages, but now it is time for all of you to act. We would like you to /find EU institutions who offer non-free formats/ on their website, without also publishing those documents in ODT, and then submit them[33]. Furthermore OFE encourages and will support anyone who wants to use the platform to cover other administrations. Thanks to all the volunteers[34], Fellows[35] and corporate donors[36] who enable our work, Matthias Kirschner - FSFE -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/106341 2. http://www.computerwoche.de/a/wohin-steuert-linux-in-muenchen,3043464,2 3. http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-11/reiter-muenchen-spd/komplett… 4. http://www.merkur-online.de/lokales/muenchen-lk-nord/unterschleissheim-umzu… 5. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/munich-city-council-shields… 6. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141016-01.ru.html 7. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/prasident-des-deutschen-stadtetags-an-europaische… 8. https://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100803-01.ru.html 9. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141017-01.ru.html 10. https://fsfe.org/contribute/internship.ru.html 11. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/my-internship-at-fsfe/ 12. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141017-02.ru.html 13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/10/23/three-autumn-events-2014/ 14. http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2014/2014-08--kalkhoff--fsfe--ghm.webm 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/10/22/announcing-the-libreoffice-conferen… 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/10/free-software-in-education-news-%E2%80… 17. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/105069 18. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/104519 19. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/tyrol-government-shares-tes… 20. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/registration-opens-for-libreplanet-2015 21. https://www.fsf.org/news/the-free-software-foundation-opens-nominations-for… 22. http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/33455.html 23. http://lwn.net/Articles/615192/ 24. https://fsfe.org/contact/community.ru.html 25. http://planet.fsfe.org 26. https://blogs.fsfe.org/puster/2014/10/14/meshcon-2014/ 27. https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/2014/10/28/dutch-public-broadcaster-moves-away-fr… 28. http://matija.suklje.name/my-very-first-commit-to-kde 29. http://danielpocock.com/positive-results-from-opw-2013 30. http://hroy.eu/posts/owncloud-encryption-defpub/ 31. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140326-02.ru.html 32. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/informatics/oss_tech/pdf/2011-07-25_ares.pdf 33. http://fixmydocuments.eu/?page_id=9 34. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 35. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 36. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter – October 2014
by press＠fsfeurope.org 06 Oct '14

06 Oct '14

= FSFE Newsletter – October 2014 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201410.ru.html ] == Italian Court supports unbundling of software and hardware == When buying a laptop, it can be difficult to avoid paying for a Microsoft Windows licence since many laptops come bundled with one. This “Windows Tax” has artificially increased hardware prices for Free Software users who do not want to use Microsoft's operating system. We as Free Software users want to support the development of Free Software instead of non-free software like Microsoft Windows. Since 2008 we maintain a wiki page with advice for consumers who want to avoid funding the development of non-free software[1], and for over a decade we talked with politicians and consumer protection organisations about this topic. Nonetheless, there is only slow progress on the subject, and it will take years to change this situation in Europe. For such long term goals, reaching intermediate goals is important. Last month we had such a victory. Italy's High Court ruled[2] that a laptop buyer was entitled to receive a refund for the price of the Microsoft Windows licence he was forced to purchase with his computer. The judges sharply criticised the practice of selling PCs only together with a non-free operating system as “a commercial policy of forced distribution”. The court considered this practice as “monopolistic in tendency”. It also highlighted that the practice of bundling means that end users are forced to use additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they want these programs or not. Now the Italian authorities have to turn this ruling into a real win for consumers, by ensuring that computer buyers can choose their device with any operating system they want, or none. Afterwards we hope that we can convince other countries in Europe to follow the example set by Italy, or that we find a European-wide solution to the problem. == European public administrations using Free Software == Often there is a tendency in the media and also from us to concentrate on the bad news about Free Software usage in the public administration. In this edition, we will concentrate on good examples from last month instead. So there is good news concerning Free Software office suites: Austria's Bundesrechenzentrum, the federal government-owned computing centre, praises the wide range of application uses of Apache OpenOffice[3]. They appreciate that the “solution can be adapted to the data centre's needs, integrated in its specialist applications and also allows documents to be created and submitted automatically and semi- automatically. OpenOffice is the standard office suite at the computing centre since 2008, installed on 12000 PCs across the organisation.” Furthermore, the public administrations of the Italian cities Todi and Terni are switching to LibreOffice[4]. They follow the example of the Italian province of Perugia, using LibreOffice on all of its 1200 PCs and the Perugia Local Health Authority, which installed the office suite on 600 PCs. The French public administration is using a Free Software office suite on 500,000 desktops[5]. Although they said switching to Free Software was hard, they were able to handle the problems. The project's success is partly due to two contracts the ministries have with ICT service providers. The contracts entail support for 260 Free Software applications, and the support team ensures that patches made for the ministries are contributed back to the software projects. The Greens in Saxony/Germany urge the federal state government to do a feasibility study on migrating to Free Software[6]. “The political group, free software users themselves since December 2011, say that lower IT costs and advantages in IT security should drive public administrations” to use Free Software. They argue that the dependency on proprietary software “gives large corporations access to and influence on official internal workflows, as well as sensitive communication and data of the state's citizens.” == Something completely different == - Even without the Windows tax mentioned above, you still have to find out if the computer you want to buy works with Free Software. To improve the information which hardware is compatible, the FSF and Debian now cooperate to expand and enhance the hardware database h-node[7] to help users learn and share information about computers that work with Free Software operating systems. - On our English public mailinglist a discussion about good metaphors for Free Software is currently taking place. Hugo Roy started the thread[8] with some examples. Alessandro Rubini had some critical remarks, arguing against the metaphors mentioned[9]. He argues that if we need a metaphor to explain Free Software to people, we need to remain in the field of information, of knowledge that can be spread at no cost. In a recent post Guido Arnold reported good experiences with using the recipe analogy with children[10]. - On this year's Software Freedom Day several local FSFE groups were involved: Edgar Hoffmann organised an info booth in front of the Offenburg town hall, and a mini-community-conference with talks and our Free Software quiz in the evening[11] (in German, but with lots of pictures). Dominic Hopf, our Hamburg coordinator, gave a talk at SFD event in Kiel about F-Droid[12], while Torsten Grote introduced people to F-Droid at the Berlin SFD event. Also present at this event were Nermin Canik from Istanbul and your editor to talk with people about software freedom. Moreover, Michael Stehmann gave a talk about Free Software and privacy at the SFD event in Cologne[13] (in German). - From 13 to 15 October the FSFE will have a booth at Linuxcon in Düsseldorf. As many Free Software activists will already be around before, our Düsseldorf Fellowship group invites all Free Software supporters to brunch on 10 October 2014 starting from 11:00 am at bistro "Schwesterherz"[14], Bilker Allee 66, 40219 Düsseldorf. Thus, a very active time for our local group there, after participating at a cryptoparty for the Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information[15] (in German) and organising a booth at Zackk street festival[16] (in German). - Guido Arnold summarised the outcome of FSFE's work shop in Essen, in which we discussed best practices for doing advocacy work on a local level[17]. - The Free Software developer Matthew Garret is “solidly convinced that Free Software that does nothing to respect or empower users is an absolute waste of time”. In his blog[18] he argues that we need to design software from the ground up in such a way that those freedoms provide immediate and real benefits to our users. In his opinion, anything else is a failure. - From the planet aggregation[19]: - Guido Arnold reports from the Teckids workshops at FrOSCon9. More than 60 children from 9 to 13 participated in three different workshops about robots, python games and Blender[20]. - Max Mehl explains how to use Openstreetmap as default in Thunderbird’s contacts[21] and how to access ownCloud contacts' birthdays via CalDAV calendar[22]. - Henri Bergius reports from the status of the NoFlo development environment[23], a user interface for Flow-Based programming. - There are some steps you can take in order to avoid having to deal with Microsoft Office files. However, in some cases you will be forced to deal with them. Kevin Keijzer documented how to make the best out of Microsoft Office files as Free Software user[24]. - Our current intern Michele Marrali wrote a blog post on how patents, copyright and trademarks can be used to promote freedom in Hardware projects[25]. == Get active: Give feedback about the User Data Manifesto == Version 2 of the User Data Manifesto[26] has been released. The aim of this manifesto is to define the fundamental rights for users on their own data in the Internet age: to control access to their data (and metadata), to know how and where the data is stored and to be free to choose a platform. Some projects are already working towards supporting the manifesto to give their users these rights! At the moment, version 2 is published as a draft on a wiki allowing public comments[27]. We ask all Free Software supporters to give feedback on the manifesto, so it can be further improved upon, and we can decide whether we want to support it as FSFE. Please give feedback yourself, discuss the manifesto on our discussion lists[28], and ask other Free Software organisations for feedback and if they would support it in this form, too. Thanks to all the volunteers[29], Fellows[30] and corporate donors[31] who enable our work, Matthias Kirschner - FSFE -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsTaxRefund 2. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140912-01.ru.html 3. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/103311 4. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/104084 5. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/103567 6. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/103307 7. https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-and-debian-join-forces-to-help-free-software-u… 8. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2014-September/010265.html 9. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2014-September/010295.html 10. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2014-October/010296.html 11. https://blogs.fsfe.org/fast_edi/?p=476 12. http://blog.dmaphy.de/2014/09/software-liberty-is-like-security-in-it.html 13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1258 14. http://www.bistro-schwesterherz.de/ 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1227 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1247 17. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/09/how-to-advocate-for-free-software-in-l… 18. http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/32686.html 19. http://planet.fsfe.org 20. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/09/teckids-workshops-at-froscon9-robots-p… 21. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/setting-openstreetmap-as-default-in-thunderbird-co… 22. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/birthday-calendar-with-owncloud-via-caldav/ 23. http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/flowhub-kickstarter-delivery/ 24. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/09/12/ooxml/ 25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/puster/2014/09/08/freedom-and-openness-in-hardware/ 26. https://userdatamanifesto.org/2.0/ 27. http://udm.branchable.com/index.en.html 28. https://fsfe.org/contact/community.ru.html 29. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 30. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 31. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html

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FSFE Newsletter – September 2014
by press＠fsfeurope.org 04 Sep '14

04 Sep '14

= FSFE Newsletter – September 2014 = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201409.ru.html ] == An Introduction to Free Software and the liberation of cyberspace == The freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and privacy are essential preconditions for a Free Society. If it lacks one of those freedoms, it is difficult to maintain the others. As a society, it is important to defend those freedoms, especially in light of fundamental changes such as the one introduced by the ubiquity of computers. Such changes can threaten old freedoms and can create the need for new ones. So now software freedom is crucial to distribute and balance power in society. The FSFE is convinced that a free society needs the freedoms which only Free Software can offer. That is, why we advocate Free Software. In 2010, we wrote the article "Democracy requires Free Software"[1], explaining the message above to politicians at the ceremony at which the Theodor-Heuss medal was awarded to the FSFE. Thanks to FSFE's translators team, the article is meanwhile available in 15 languages, and is shared widely. Since last month, the message of the importance of Free Software is also featured in a short TEDx video "Introduction to Free Software and the liberation of cyberspace"[2] by Richard Stallman. It is a good way to make others aware of the significance of Free Software and why it matters. We need more people to understand why Free Software matters for a free society, as the following examples will show once again. == Slovakia still forcing users to use non-free software == In 2012 -- thanks to our former intern Martin Husovec -- the FSFE got engaged in a case against the Slovak Tax Authorities[3] together with the European Information Society Institute (EISi). As current FSFE intern Matej Gera writes in his blog[4] the problem of Slovak authorities forcing people to use non-free software is still ongoing: According to a new regulation in Slovakia, people who own agricultural land and want to sell it must make an offer on web page of the Ministry of Agriculture first. In order to submit an offer to the Ministry's web page, you need to use additional software. The software in question is proprietary and only available for Microsoft Windows, and it is the only way -- there is no paper form. If you would try to sell the land otherwise, you would break the law. This practice is not only unacceptable for Free Software users, but also unlawful itself in Slovakia. Since 2008, there is a binding regulation which forbids public authorities to request users to use a specific operating system. But the website of Ministry clearly does not comply with this rule. Now, the Slovak non-profit organisation EISi sent a letter to Ministry of Agriculture, calling to end this practice. If they will not comply with the letter and will not provide an interoperable solution until October, EISi will go to court to protect rights of Slovak software users. == Forced by Internet Service Provider to use certain hardware == It should go without saying that in our society, we should be able to freely choose technical devices for use in our homes like we choose the furniture or the books in our shelves. But besides authorities forcing us to to use non-free software, the FSFE currently also has to counter companies who want to force us to use certain computers in our home. In this case even one of the most important computers: the router, which should act as the gatekeeper between our private network and the public internet. In Germany, Internet service providers (ISPs) force their customers to use certain types of hardware in order to connect to the internet. Users of alternative devices, instead, are not able to connect to the internet by those ISPs. Together with other members of the Free Software community, our German team wrote several comments on this case and we entered talks with government agencies, corporations, and other organisations about compulsory routers. As this topic was mainly covered in Germany and in German, our German team member Max Mehl summarised this case[5] and made a timeline of the most important events which lead to the current state[6]. We hope that with this information we can support other Free Software activists around the world, who might face similar problems. == Something completely different == - FSFE has received television coverage twice in the last months. First, our legal coordinator Matija Šuklje was interviewed for the RTV Slovenia to point out the challenges for the newly appointed Information Commissioner of Slovenia related to cloud computing. Although they translated the FSFE into "Foundation for unrestricted programming", it was the first time for the FSFE to appear on Slovenian television. Thereafter, our Austrian coordinator Peter Bubestinger was in Mexico City at an archiving seminar, where he presented use cases for file-formats and long-term storage implemented in Free Software. The whole seminar was translated live into Spanish and broadcasted on Televison Educativa, a nation-wide education TV channel. They also uploaded the videos to youtube. Peter's interview[7] can be found at 3h50m. - Guido Arnold published some education news[8] covering a hacking contest to find security holes in Moodle, Free Software activists visiting schools in Slovakia, and other education related news. - GNU community members and collaborators have discovered details about a five-country government surveillance program codenamed HACIENDA[9]. Those same hackers have already worked out a Free Software countermeasure to thwart the program. - Equipped with free GNU Radio software, a group of citizen scientists has contacted, controlled, and is attempting to recapture a 1970s-era satellite and bring it back into an orbit close to Earth. The story behind this[10] demonstrates the importance of developing, maintaining, and promoting Free Software. - From the planet aggregation[11]: - Hugo Roy takes a look at what is featured in the European Court of Justice's "right to be forgotten"[12]. As he found it difficult to read, he wrote an alternate version of the directive. In another post he explains why he helped the Free Software search engine developer Pablo Joubert to publish a defensive publication[13] around search engines making use of distributed hash tables. - Our former intern Lucile Falgueyrac writes about why TTIP[14] CETA entails a few reasons for Free Software advocates to get angry[15]. She argues that now, there is a good moment to send a strong message to the European Commission, the governments and states that policy laundering is not a legitimate way to legislate, and never should be. - Our current intern Bela Seeger wrote a blog post about Off-The- Record (OTR) Messaging[16], clarifying the meaning and technicalities of "off-the-record" (OTR) messaging and giving insight into the possibilities of implementing it in various devices. (You might have noticed in this edition, that current and former interns of FSFE are quite active!) - Our Fellows participated at many events. Nikos Roussos writes about his personal highlights of the Fedora Contributor Conference 2014[17]. He also mentioned the keynote about the Novena laptop project, which was summarised on LWN[18]. Mario Fux and Mirko Böhm report from the KDE meeting in Randa, with around 50 Free Software activists improving KDE. To get some impressions from the meeting, Mirko posted a short video from the meeting in Switzerland[19]. - André Ockers, who is currently updating and translating almost all FSFE materials into Dutch, started blogging[20]. He writes in English, Dutch, German, and French. - Kevin Keijzer, also from the Netherlands, gives a detailed overview of Free Software he is using[21]. - Daniel Pocock gives an update on WebRTC, explaining what works, what does not[22]. - Matija reports from his free music expirement[23], highlighting his favourite artists who are using Creative Commons licenses for their music. == Get active: Spread the word on Software Freedom Day == On 20 September 2014, people around the world celebrate Free Software. The organisers from Software Freedom International announced that the registration for events is now open. They provide a start guide[24] with tips and pointers for organising your own SFD team event. If you organise an event, or just want to spread information about Free Software on Software Freedom Day you can also: - order printed information materials from us[25] - send around the FSF's e-mail self defence guide[26] which is now available in 11 languages. (At the "Freedom not Fear" demonstration our Berlin Fellowship group handed out a hundreds of printed leaflet of the German version, which you can also order from us.) - share Richard Stallman's video[27], or the article mentioned above[28] to explain your friends Free Software. Thanks to all the volunteers[29], Fellows[30] and corporate donors[31] who enable our work, Matthias Kirschner - FSFE -- Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org> FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss> Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml> Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html> 1. https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/society/democracy.ru.html 2. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/20140407-geneva-tedx-talk-free-software-free-… 3. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/eura-slovakia/eura.ru.html 4. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gera/2014/08/18/interesting-new-development-in-slovak… 5. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/routers.ru.html 6. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/timeline.ru.html 7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggCvJ0dzqx4 8. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/08/free-software-in-education-news-july/ 9. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-hackers-discover-hacienda-governmen… 10. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-in-space-gnu-radio-and-th… 11. http://planet.fsfe.org 12. https://hroy.eu/posts/whats-in-C-131_12/ 13. http://hroy.eu/posts/intro-defpubs/ 14. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2014/08/11/ttip-policy-laundering-a-few-… 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2014/08/11/ttip-policy-laundering-a-few-… 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/seeger/2014/08/04/off-the-record-otr-messaging/ 17. http://www.roussos.cc/2014/08/13/fedora-flock-2014/ 18. http://lwn.net/Articles/608426/ 19. http://creative-destruction.me/2014/08/28/the-kde-randa-video/ 20. https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/ 21. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/08/06/a-quick-overview-of-th… 22. http://danielpocock.com/webrtc-what-works-what-doesnt 23. http://matija.suklje.name/the-jamendo-experiment-week-1 24. http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide 25. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.ru.html#promo-material 26. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/volunteers-translate-email-self-defense… 27. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/20140407-geneva-tedx-talk-free-software-free-… 28. https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/society/democracy.ru.html 29. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ru.html 30. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join 31. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html

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