1. FSFE in Dublin 2. FSFE at World Social Forum (WSF) 3. HP donates two servers 4. Continued tour through Italy 5. Activities against software patents
1. FSFE in Dublin
At the University of Dublin, Georg Greve gave a talk about the challenges of Free Software in a digital world and also introduced the work of the FSFE. As always, he also used the opportunity to intensify contacts with the local Free Software community and discussed possibilities for integrating people from Ireland more closely into the FSFE network.
2. FSFE at World Social Forum (WSF)
In cooperation with the Free Software Project Brasil [1], FSFEs president Georg Greve participated in a series of activities and events [2] around Free Software at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil -- among them the official release of the 2005 Free Software Forum. [3] The Free Software, free knowledge and free arts events at the WSF had strong support from the Brazilian Cultural Ministry. Gilberto Gil, minister of Culture, participated in some of them personally, along with other known figures, such as Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow. During the WSF, many activists also made their first contact with Free Software using one of the about 1000 machines in the estudio livre and other access points.
[1] http://www.softwarelivre.org/ [2] http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/3543 [3] http://fisl.softwarelivre.org
3. HP donates two servers
Hewlett-Packard Germany donated two Compaq N2400 servers (Dual CPU, Pentium III 1GHz with 1GB RAM each). The machines have replaced the quite outdated web- and mailserver machines and are running core services of the FSFE. The FSFE would like to thank HP for their support.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/help/hardware.en.html
4. Continued tour through Italy
After the successful public events in December, the Italian FSFE team has continued their tour through Italy and took part in the "week of digital freedom", which was organized by the Linux Club Italia in Rome. Alessandro Rubini talked about "Embedded Free Software", and Stefano Maffulli held a speech about "Free Software Foundation Europe: activities and plans for the future". T-shirts of FSFE are available at the Linux Club.
http://www.italy.fsfeurope.org/it/events/2004/tour/tour.it.html
5. Activities against software patents
The decision of the EU council to introduce software patents in Europe is still not finally approved, and the political resistance against that decision has become stronger than ever. The FSFE and its associate organisations, most of all the FFII, are still cooperating in their efforts to prevent that threat to innovation.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html