FSFE, Samba: A triumph for freedom of choice and competition
"Microsoft can consider itself above the law no longer," says Georg
Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
"Through tactics that successfully derailed antitrust processes in
other parts of the world, including the United States, Microsoft has
managed to postpone this day for almost a decade. But thanks to the
perseverance and excellent work of the European Commission, these
tactics have now failed in Europe," Greve continues.
Carlo Piana, FSFE's legal counsel: "FSFE and the Samba Team welcome
the decision of the court. This is a milestone for competition. It
puts an end to the notion that deliberate obfuscation of standards and
designed lock-in is an acceptable business model and forces Microsoft
back into competing on the grounds of software technology."
"The Samba Team would like to thank the European Commission for its
outstanding job over the past years. Millions of users around the
world will reap the rewards of their work," comments Jeremy Allison,
co-author of the Samba project. "This is a very important day for the
Samba Team: we hope to finally compete on a level playing field,
without being denied access to interoperability information. Samba
would then be able to offer consumers real choice, with the benefits
of software freedom."
Volker Lendecke of the Samba Team: "Now that the court has decided, we
will be watching closely what the exact licensing terms for the
interoperability information are. It will be very important to make
sure that the information is usable in Free Software, otherwise the
great success the Commission has achieved here is severely
harmed. Samba is one of the most important players in the workgroup
server market, the market in which the comission wanted to restore
competition."
"This is a very good day for Europe, but it is only a step along the
way. The recurrent theme for Microsoft's behaviour over the past years
is an apparent perception of interoperability as a threat to
overcome," summarises FSFE counsel Carlo Piana. "The most recent
example was provided by MS-OOXML, which Doug Mahugh of Microsoft
described as a commercially motivated response to the threat provided
by the ODF ISO standard and the interoperability and choice it offers.
Tactical, not technical considerations were the driving force behind
Microsoft's global efforts to manipulate national standardisation
bodies into blind acceptance of MS-OOXML."
FSFE president Greve concludes: "Today's decision has set a very
important precedent for the future. Secret manipulation of open
formats and protocols has clearly been marked as unacceptable
conduct. We now encourage the European Commission take up the recent
antitrust complaint brought forward by ECIS. In a joint effort with
the Samba Team and OpenOffice.org, the FSFE gladly offers its
expertise to the European Commission for that investigation."
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation
in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the
furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study,
modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these
issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving
people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE.
Contact:
Web page: http://fsfeurope.org
Email: press(a)fsfeurope.org
You can reach the FSFE switchboard from:
Belgium: +32 2 747 03 57
Germany: +49 700 373 38 76 73
Sweden: +46 31 7802160
Switzerland: +41 43 500 03 66
UK: +44 29 200 08 17 7
About Samba:
Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that has, since 1992,
provided file and print services to all manner of SMB/CIFS clients,
including the numerous versions of Microsoft Windows operating
systems. Samba is freely available under the GNU General Public
License.
Contact:
Web page: http://www.samba.org
1. FSFE engages with irregularities in the ISO voting process
2. FTF informal legal network now covers sixteen European countries
3. Two days of Free Software in Chile
4. The Fellowship site now supports multiple languages
5. First distributed Fellowship meeting
6. FSFE German Team at FrOSCon
7. Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area holding monthly talks
8. Building the Fellowship in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe
9. FSFE supports demonstration "liberty instead of fear", September 22nd
10. Speeches about SELF, Open Standards and Free Software in Argentina
11. Free Software and Free Documentation licence consultations
1. FSFE engages with irregularities in the ISO voting process
FSFE has been deeply involved in the ISO voting process on Microsoft's
Office OpenXML proposal, and has uncovered serious irregularities in
various national standardisation body's handling of the matter. These
irregularities have included committee stacking, conflicts of interest,
concerns raised by parties being ignored, and lack of due consideration
to legal issues like Microsoft's vague 'Open Specification Promise.'
FSFE president Georg Greve was interviewed by ZDnet regarding the
international voting process. In Switzerland, FSFE and the Swiss
Internet User Group (SIUG) lodged formal objections to the process
with the national standardisation body, which were later published
by Groklaw:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39288959,00.htmhttp://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007081708383138
2. FTF informal legal network now covers sixteen European countries
FSFE's Freedom Task Force now has connections with lawyers in Austria,
Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Germany,
Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the UK. The network also
includes legal researchers in Ireland, Serbia and Sweden and legal
contacts in Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, the USA and Australia. As
always, the FTF offers licence consultancy and education, fiduciary
services and licence enforcement for individuals, projects and
businesses. Please help us to continue spreading the word about this
Free Software infrastructure project:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf
email: ftf(a)fsfeurope.org
3. Two days of Free Software in Chile
On invitation of the Chilean educational ministry and in coordination
with our sister organisation FSFLA and GNU Chile, FSFE president Georg
Greve spoke at the Universidad Mayor and an event of the educational
ministry in Santiago, as well as the library of the national congress
in Valparaiso. Georg Greve also discussed strategic and practical Free
Software issues with the vice-minister of education and economic impact
of Free Software with the minister of economics.
4. The Fellowship site now supports multiple languages
Thanks to the contributions of Fellow Alejandro Serrano and Ivan Čukić,
with support from other fellowship hackers, fsfe.org now supports
adding content in other languages besides English. For the moment
Italian, Spanish and German are supported, but more will come. Most
of the work has gone into modifying the standard UI provided by eZ
Publish and put all the files in a svn repository. Expect more
changes and additions in functions during the next weeks.
http://www.fsfe.org
5. First distributed Fellowship meeting
While the monthly Fellowship meetings in Vienna have become a jour
fixe in the calendar of many Austrian Fellows, the August meeting was
special: for the first time, a Fellowship meeting took place in two
locations at the same time. The net.culture.labs in Vienna and Dornbirn
hosted this event, both connected via videoconferencing over a
broadband internet line sponsored by Telekom Austria.
http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/meetings/austria/20070814
6. FSFE German Team at FrOSCon
Thanks to the organisational skills of Michael Kesper, members of the
FSFE German Team attended FrOSCon (St. Augustin/Germany) on the 25th
and 26th of August. Myriam Schweingruber delivered a talk about
"Women in IT - View points and possible explanations", and Michael
Kesper discussed interaction with other projects. FSFE maintained a
booth at the entrance to the fair where ad hoc talks were held and
FSFE and Fellowship merchandise was available.
http://www.froscon.de/
7. Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area holding monthly talks
The Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area have monthly public meetings with
talks on the last Wednesday of each month in Duesseldorf. In August,
Fellow Dr. jur. Michael Stehmann spoke about the new Par.202c in the
German criminal code which bans possessing, using, publishing and
distributing so-called "hacker tools". As Michael stated, this
regulations are very poorly formulated, practically useless in their
attention, and might be used as a pressure instrument against innocent
people. 202c tries to define pure ownership of broadly defined network
analysis tools as the preparation for crime.
email: rheinland(a)lists.fsfe.org
8. Building the Fellowship in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe
As you know FSFE tries to keep in contact with its Fellows and attract
additional ones. One aspect of this work sees Joachim Jakobs meeting
with LUGs and other local FS-related groups in between Kaiserslautern
and Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe. Last Friday he met with the
LUG Landau. Landau is just a small town but nevertheless about a dozen
people attended. If you are interested in helping JJ organise a local
Fellowship in this area please contact him directly.
email: jj(a)fsfe.org
9. FSFE supports demonstration "liberty instead of fear", September 22nd
"Civil rights groups are calling on citizens to join in a protest march
against excessive surveillance by businesses and governments. On 22
September 2007 concerned citizens will take to the streets with the
slogan "Liberty instead of fear - Stop the surveillance mania!". Groups
will initially meet at Pariser Platz (Brandenburger Tor), Berlin, at
2.30 pm. The German Chapter of FSFE decided to join this demonstration
and asks everybody for participation.
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/125/116/lang,en/
10. Speeches about SELF, Open Standards and Free Software in Argentina
Before the SELF board meeting in Cordoba, Argentina, to prepare for the
launch of the first version of the SELF platform, FSFE's Georg Greve
and Jonas Oberg spoke at the Septimas Jornadas Regionales de Software
Libre, giving talks about SELF, Open Standards, the problems of
MS-OOXML and the political importance of Free Software:
http://selfproject.eu
11. Free Software and Free Documentation licence consultations
The public consultations continue for the GNU Free Documentation
License, the GNU Affero General Public License, and the new GNU
Simpler Free Documentation License. We advise you to take a look
as soon as possible if you might have a comment about these free
documentation licences or the "Affero" version of the GPL which
additionally deals with software used over public networks:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.htmlhttp://gplv3.fsf.org/agplv3-dd2-guide.html
Meanwhile, FSFE has been providing ongoing advice about GPLv3 since
it's mid-summer launch. The lack of controversial news is welcomed as
a sign that broad compromised was indeed reached and no obvious
mistakes were made.
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
Copyright (C) FSFE. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire
article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Advanced international educational platform goes live
Free courses and a professional environment for teachers
A milestone for education on Free Software and Open Standards has been
reached. On September 5th 2007 the beta version of the SELF Platform [1]
goes live. The official launch [2] is taking place during a conference on Free
Software in Education in the Netherlands, accompanied by satellite launch
events in Sweden, Bulgaria, Argentina, Mexico and India with workshops
and conferences.
The SELF Platform has been developed by a global team of non-profit
organisations, universities and volunteers engaged in the SELF Project,
an initiative for the collaborative sharing and creation of free
educational and training materials on Free Software and Open Standards.
Users, primarily learners and teachers, are enabled to assemble
selections of learning contents and create custom-made learning material
for lessons in their language. The Platform is launched in beta stage to
involve the growing community in optimising the tool.
Hundreds of documents on Free Software, such as OpenOffice.org, The
Gimp, or GNU/Linux, and documents on Open Standards have been screened
by a team of experts in regards to quality, free license and validity.
The result is a basic collection of high-quality learning materials that
have been, or will be atomised and entered into the SELF Platform.
Inspired by Wikipedia, the multilingual SELF Platform is not only a
self-sustaining source of knowledge and a tool to evaluate, adapt,
create and translate free learning materials on Free Software, but also
creates a much needed room for interaction between the Free Software and
the education communities in a broader sense.
The SELF Project is carried by a consortium of non-profit organisations
and universities in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The initial setup of
the Platform has been financially supported by the European Union.
[1] http://selfplatform.eu
[2] http://selfproject.eu/launch
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation
in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the
furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study,
modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these
issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving
people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE.
http://fsfeurope.org