GPL-Violations.org and FSFE's Freedom Task Force to work more closely together
Coordinators of the FSFE Freedom Task Force (FTF) and GPL-Violations.org
recently met in Berlin to discuss future cooperation. The two organisations
have agreed to deepen their partnership, building on their combined work
since the launch of the FTF in October 2006.
GPL-Violations.org will be pro-actively working on cases and seeking
resolutions where violations occur. The FTF will continue and expand
its educational and networking activities to ensure awareness of best
practice and help support people with their use of the licences.
"Since GPL-Violations.org was launched the software market in Europe has
changed significantly," states Harald Welte, founder of GPL-Violations.org.
"It is a clear, legal fact that distributing Free Software means people
must comply with the licences. GPL-Violations.org and the FTF are now
building the long-term legal infrastructure for support and compliance."
Key outcomes of the new arrangement between the FTF and GPL-Violations.org
include an agreement that GPL-Violations.org will assist the FTF in
getting a second full-time staff member. This will help the FTF to
deliver services such as answering common licensing questions, offering
training and consultancy, resolving licensing issues, helping projects
consolidate copyright and acting as a legal guardian for fiduciary
programme members.
"GPL-Violations.org has been critical in building understanding of
licensing in Europe, and it has also been critical in the development
of the FTF," say Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator. "I believe our new
agreement will help ensure sustainability for legal infrastructure to
support Free Software in Europe."
"The key thing now is to look to the future. The FTF facilitates a
European Legal Network with coverage of seventeen European countries
and over 100 members. I'd like to encourage European businesses and
projects with legal counsel, or individual lawyers, to join this
network. It provides an excellent forum for sharing knowledge about
legal aspects of Free Software licensing and making new contacts."
The Freedom Task Force can be found at http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf/
The Freedom Task Force can be emailed at ftf at fsfeurope.org
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:
You can reach the FSFE switchboard from:
Belgium: +32 2 747 03 57 ext 408
Germany: +49 700 373 38 76 73 ext 408
Sweden: +46 31 7802160 ext 408
Switzerland: +41 43 500 03 66 ext 408
UK: +44 29 200 08 17 7 ext 408
Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, FSFE extension: 408
Further information: http://fsfeurope.org
About gpl-violations.org
In the past 30 months, gpl-violations.org has helped uncover and
negotiate more than 100 GPL violations and has obtained numerous
out-of-court settlement agreements. The gpl-violations.org project is a
not-for-profit effort to bring commercial users and vendors of Free
Software into compliance with the license conditions as set forth by the
original authors. The project was founded and is managed by Mr. Harald
Welte, a Linux Kernel developer and Free Software enthusiast.
For more information on the project, its mission, milestones and goals,
please see http://gpl-violations.org/
Media contact:
gpl-violations.org
Harald Welte
Email: laforge(a)gpl-violations.org
Issues around standardisation continued to make headlines during April.
However, other important areas of focus were also under discussion around
the world.
In Amsterdam, FSFE's Freedom Task Force hosted the first European Legal and
Licensing Workshop, leading to broad agreement between many European
stakeholders on methods of improving legal infrastructure for Free Software
in Europe. In Brazil, the 9th FISL conference provided a forum for various
discussion about the adoption and evolution of free technologies.
The Fellowship and FSFE volunteers were also active. The Fellows in Berlin
had a booth at a distribution release party and the Italian volunteers worked
on building the structure to ensure long-term sustainability for their team.
Please consider how you can contribute to our movement. You can visit
http://fsfeurope.org/contribute for suggestions of ways to get involved.
Shane, FSFE Zurich Office
1. FTF workshop leads to broad agreement on European licensing infrastructure
2. Lack of quality in standardisation a serious problem
3. Licensing as a strategic imperative, speech at FISL
4. Fellowship Group at Ubuntu Release Party in Berlin
5. Italian team: new mailing list and renewed blog
FORTHCOMING EVENTS:
6. Linuxwochen, Vienna, Austria (2008-05-15 to 2008-05-17)
7. Fellowship meeting in Vienna (2008-05-17)
8. LinuxTag 2008, Berlin, Germany (2008-05-28 to 2008-05-31)
9. 'Strategic implementation of Free Software in business' speech at eLiberatica (2008-05-30)
1. FTF workshop leads to broad agreement on European licensing infrastructure
The recent European Legal and Licensing Workshop hosted by FSFE's Freedom Task
Force lead to productive discussions and broad agreement on important focus
areas in Free Software licensing between commercial and non-commercial
stakeholders. The event took place in Amsterdam during early April and was
attended to capacity. Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, states that "this marks
an example of the growing maturity of Free Software in Europe. We have a great
deal to do to ensure strong infrastructure to support the community, but as
this workshop showed, the will and ability to create the infrastructure is
present in all stakeholders." Documentation from the workshop will be
released to the public shortly.
2. Lack of quality in standardisation a serious problem
"FSFE published its 'Six questions to national standardisation bodies'
before the September 2nd vote last year. [1] Considering the statements
about progress made on MS-OOXML, one would have hoped that at least one
of these questions enjoyed a satisfactory response," states FSFE's
German Deputy country coordinator Matthias Kirschner. He continues:
"Unfortunately that is not the case. Issues like the 'Converter Hoax' [2]
and the 'Questions on Open Formats' [3] are still equally valid. As the
'Deprecated before use' [4] and 'Interoperability woes with OOXML' [5]
documents demonstrate, MS-OOXML interoperability is severely limited in
comparison to Open Standards. In addition to these issues, there are the
legal concerns that were raised by various parties. [6]"
FSFE vice-president Jonas Öberg states: "Governments have to start
asking themselves what the ISO seal of approval really means. As
demonstrated by the MPEG standards, it never meant that something
qualifies as a meaningful 'Open Standard.'"
[1] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions
[2] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-converter-hoax
[3] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions-for-ms
[4] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-idiosyncrasies
[5] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-interoperability
[6] http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/stdlib/offdoc/mision
3. Licensing as a strategic imperative, speech at FISL
Shane Coughlan, FSFE's Freedom Task Force Coordinator, delivered a speech on
the strategic importance of Free Software licensing at this years FISL event
in Porte Alegre, Brazil. FISL has grown to be perhaps the largest Free
Software event in the world. This year it was attended by 7,000 people
and notable speakers included Jon 'Maddog' Hall, Theodore Ts'o from the
Linux Foundation and Mitchell Baker from Mozilla Corporation. Well known
European faces like Knut Yrvin from Trolltech and Bram Moolenaar, the creator
of VIM, were also present.
4. Fellowship Group at Ubuntu Release Party in Berlin
The Berlin Fellowship Group attended the "Hardy Heron" release event in
Berlin's cbase and featured a talk from Fellow Torsten Grote about Gobuntu --
which aims to be a complete free (as in free speech) GNU/Linux operating system
-- and the importance of Free Software in general. The group also had a booth
there which attracted many interested visitors who were very eager to learn
about Free Software. While Ubuntu is not entirely Free Software, it has
helped a lot to make Free Software accessible to many people. The Berlin
Fellowship wanted to build on this and foster discussion about our goal of
having 100% Free Software available to everyone.
If you would like to join in the fun, please note that the Berlin Fellowship
meets every second Thursday in the month at the Newthinking Store,
Tucholskystr. 48 in 10117 Berlin at 19:30 pm.
5. Italian team: new mailing list and renewed blog
The Italian team of the FSFE has just launched a new public discussion
mailing list about Free Software and FSFE activities in Italy. All
Italian fellows, volunteers and interested people are invited to join us
and come up with ideas, proposals and any kind of questions. You can
subscribe to the new fsfe-it@ list at:
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-it
Also, Gnuvox (http://www.gnuvox.info), the blog on Free Software and
Free Culture maintained by the Italian team, has just been renewed
thanks to the TIS Free Software Center in Bolzano. We have some
interesting plans for the future, and we invite all italian Fellows and
bloggers to follow Gnuvox , submit comments and new posts too: you can
contact the editorial team at: pr-it(at)fsfeurope.org
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
6. Linuxwochen, Vienna, Austria (2008-05-15 to 2008-05-17)
>From 15 to 17 May, an event of the Linuxwochen Austria will take place in the
building of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, Rudolf-Sallinger-Platz 1, 3rd
district, Vienna. A group of Fellows will be present with a booth where they
inform about FSFE, the Fellowship, and Free Software in general. Admission is
free for the whole event.
7. Fellowship meeting in Vienna (2008-05-17)
The twenty-second Austrian Fellowship meeting is integrated in the Linuxwochen
event in Vienna. Fellows and other interested people can meet at the FSFE
booth during the whole event to discuss, and at the end of the last day of
the event, we will join the Linuxwochen After-Show-Party.
8. LinuxTag 2008, Berlin, Germany (2008-05-28 to 2008-05-31)
As in the last years FSFE will be present with a booth at LinuxTag 2008. It
takes place at Berlin's Expo Center under the Funkturm. FSFE will inform
visitors about various aspects of Free Software, like the Freedom Task Force,
software patents, the SELF project, GPLv3, our work in the United Nations, or
the Fellowship of FSFE. Also it is planned to sell T-shirts from FSFE and
books about Free Software.
9. 'Strategic implementation of Free Software in business' speech at eLiberatica (2008-05-30)
Shane Coughlan, FTF coordinator, will deliver a speech entitled 'Strategic
implementation of Free Software in business' at the eLiberatica conference
in Romania on the 30th of May.
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
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