[ http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/six_questions_to_national_st… ]
Six questions to national standardisation bodies
Tuesday 26 June 2007
It seems that many people have been confused by Microsoft's attempt
at trying to portray MS-OOXML as an Open Standard, which includes
methods such as paying bloggers to manipulate Wikipedia or trying
to confuse people about competition on the basis of a common
standard, which is generally good for competition, vs competition
of multiple standards, which is generally bad for competition.
Since this confusion exists in many national standardisation
bodies, it is not surprising to also find it on the net and in
various online sources. If they are not outright manipulated, that
is. So it comes as no surprise that journalists have a hard time to
see through the smoke, and not everyone does as good a job as the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ).
We therefore decided that it was time to help people working with
the national standardisation bodies and journalists inform others
about the issues in a way that would not require more than 5-10
minutes on the receiving end. The result has just gone online: Six
questions to national standardisation bodies by the Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE), also available in a PDF for pretty
printing. These six questions, namely
1. Application independence?
2. Supporting pre-existing Open Standards?
3. Backward compatibility for all vendors?
4. Proprietary extensions?
5. Dual standards?
6. Legally safe?
raise issues that every national standardisation body should have
satisfactory answers for, otherwise it must vote No in the ISO/IEC
process and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML
into ISO/IEC 26300:2006, the Open Document Format (ODF).
In order to counter the misinformation that is currently floating
around on the net it is important to spread the word far and make
sure that these six questions are submitted to every single
national standardisation body and used as widely as possible to
inform people in politics and media.
In case you want to link the page, you can use this button
http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml_small.png
to link to the page, which exists in two versions:
* 250x98 pixel version, code:
<a href="http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions"
border="0"><img
src="http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml_small.png" /></a>
* 500x195 pixels version, code:
<a href="http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions"
border="0"><img src="http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml.png"
/></a>
Please help us spread the word.
Hello again
I need some help from you. I'm quite good in translating but I got problems
with writing press notes or relations. I wanted to popularise newly created
mailing list on the polish websites which write about free software and
similar things. I have no idea how to write this and make people subscribe
and get interested. If you could help me writing some draft of such note I
will then translate it to Polish, write sth from me and send to them.
Thanks in advance for help.
--
Greets
Paweł Madej
Fight for freedom http://fsfeurope.org
Join the FSFE Fellowship http://fsfe.org
GnuPG KeyID: 0x0FF785FF
Fingerprint: 4698 3A4F 06FD C771 A0CF F2F3 A36A 3114 0FF7 85FF
Hello,
I wanted to ask if there available in svg or 300dpi logos of the fsf europe
and fellowship? I wanted to use them on my ID card to promote foundation and
the fellowship.
Is there some layout of the ID card which I need to use or am I free to design
it?
--
Greets
Paweł Madej
Fight for freedom http://fsfeurope.org
Join the FSFE Fellowship http://fsfe.org
GnuPG KeyID: 0x0FF785FF
Fingerprint: 4698 3A4F 06FD C771 A0CF F2F3 A36A 3114 0FF7 85FF
I'm currently looking for ways to make sure supporters of FSFE or free
software are aware of the Fellowship. The two main ways that FSFE
communicates with supporters are our websites and our mailing lists.
So I'm working with the web teams to put "Fellowship" buttons on the
websites, and I've suggested adding this to the end of the Mailman footer
for the mail.fsfeurope.org lists:
"FSFE is supported by the Fellowship: http://fsfe.org"
Some people internally pointed out that some people may see this as
obnoxious advertising, so I'm checking here.
Would people object to the mail.fsfeurope.org mailman footers included that
line? And if this suggestion isn't ok, is there an alternative?
P.S. If there are other ways that FSFE should be promoting the Fellowship,
I'd be interested to here them to - just change the Subject: when replying.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org
1. FSFE and Digicomp announce Free Software Licensing course
2. Meeting Libre 2007 in Miraflores, Spain
3. FSFE at eLiberatica 2007 in Romania
4. Richard Stallman in Sweden
5. ConfSL, LUGConf and Fellowship meeting in Cosenza, Italy
6. Linuxtag in Berlin
7. Linuxwochen tour through Austria
8. Donations now tax-deductable in Switzerland
1. FSFE and Digicomp announce Free Software Licensing course
The Swiss training academy Digicomp is now offering Free Software
licensing courses delivered by FSFE's Freedom Task Force Coordinator
Shane Coughlan. The courses are intended for project managers,
developers and technicians who wish to become more knowledgeable
regarding code distribution options and give practical examples of
integrating Free Software into business models. These courses will take
place for the first time on the 25th and 26th of June, with additional
courses being offered on the 10th and 11th of September and the 10th and
11th of December 2007. More information can be found here:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ftf/trainingcourse
2. Meeting Libre 2007 in Miraflores, Spain
FSFE's associate organisation in Spain, the Free Knowledge Foundation,
has organised the LibreMeeting 2007, the first International Free
Knowledge Meeting of Madrid. Georg Greve presented the FSFE while
Ciarán O'Riordan spoke about the GPLv3.
3. FSFE at eLiberatica 2007 in Romania
Brasov, Romania right in the heart of Transylvania was the place that
the Romanian Free Software community chose for its 2007 eLiberatica
conference to share knowledge and build awareness for Free Software in
Romania. FSFE president Georg Greve gave one of the keynotes on Open
Standards and freedom of competition and also participated in the
panel on the future of knowledge regulation.
4. Richard Stallman in Sweden
On the 16th of May 2007, Richard Stallman held a speech in Gothenburg
(Sweden). The speech, Free Software and Beyond: Human Rights in the Use
of Software and Other Published Works, can be downloaded (audio) here:
http://www.fsfe.org/en/content/download/32738/202513/file/rms-speech-gbg-sw….
On the 17th of May 2007, Richard Stallman held a speech in Linköping
(Sweden). The speech, Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer
Networks, can be downloaded here:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/upplysning/film/20070517_RMS/RMS_2007-05-17_Digif…
5. ConfSL, LUGConf and Fellowship meeting in Cosenza, Italy
The Italian Free Software community met in Cosenza for three events at
the same time: the ConfSL2007, the LUGConf and a Fellowship meeting.
In total, everyone enjoyed three days of talks, workshops and plain good
fun. Stefano Maffulli and Shane Coughlan were there representing FSFE
and during the LUGConf Fellow Marco De Rossi presented the recently
formed Milan Advocacy group.
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/maffulli/rants/(tag)/cosenza
6. Linuxtag in Berlin
Like the years before, FSFE was present with a booth at Linuxtag in
Berlin, where people from FSFE and volunteers informed about Free
Software and answered lots of questions.
7. Linuxwochen tour through Austria
"Linuxwochen" is the name of a series of events in Austria that take
place every year around May. This year, FSFE was present in Eisenstadt,
Graz, and Vienna.
8. Donations now tax-deductable in Switzerland
FSFE is glad to announce that donations are now tax-deductable in
Switzerland after it has been recognised as charitable public interest
organisation by the authorities in the Kanton of Zürich, where FSFE's
Swiss offices are located. Your donation is essential to make our work
possible, for more information please take a look at
http://fsfeurope.org/help/donate-2007-ch
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
A well-informed friend sent me the below announcement. I haven't had time
to dig myself yet to give a summary, but maybe others are interested.
> Subject: NEWSFLASH: EPO Scenarios Online Forum open now!
>
>
> Thank you for your interest and contributions to the EPO Scenarios
> for the Future project to date. We hope that you have by now had
> the opportunity to study your copy of the Scenarios Compendium,
> perhaps also some of the interviews we have undertaken as part of
> the project - if not, your copy is in the post. Should you want to
> download the compendium, please go to http://www.epo.org/focus/
> patent-system/scenarios-for-the-future.html
>
> We have now set up an online discussion forum in order to continue
> the discussions that were started at the launch of the project,
> which took place at the European Patent Forum in Munich this April.
> The forum has just been launched and is available at:
>
> http://scenarios-forum.epo.org/
>
> We hope that your interest in the Scenarios work will continue and
> that the diverse debates generated will continue to flourish and
> expand. We would therefore like to invite you to join this online
> forum and take part in the discussions.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org
Patrick Ohnewein wrote:
> I would like to suggest some little modifications to the entries about Free
> Software in South Tyrol and there are some to add, too.
>
Also, this link might be helpful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2kM6bTh_XY
It's an italian-language TV news story (english subtitles) describing
all these projects and how they evolved
Graham
> Your version:
>
> Italy, South Tyrol public transport: "free software since 1993"
> Italy, South Tyrol: "use of OpenOffice.org" and "and also GNU/Linux"
> Italy, all Italian-speaking schools: "they all use project FUSS"
>
> I suggest this version (I add only the URLs to new links):
>
> Italy, South Tyrol public transport: "free software since 1993"
> Italy, South Tyrol: "use of Free Software and Open Data Formats (installed
> OpenOffice.org in 2005)" and "also use of GNU/Linux on database servers and
> on all servers of the municipalities"
> Italy, all Italian-speaking schools in South Tyrol: "migration through the
> FUSS project"
> Italy, South Tyrol e-Learning platform: "Copernicus uses
> ILIAS":http://www.copernicus.bz.it
> Italy, South Tyrol develop and use a Free Software
> framework: "FROG":http://dev.cocos.bz/projects/frog/
>
> Here a short explaination of my updates:
>
> First line: OK.
> Second line: Changed text. Should now be more descriptive about what was done.
> Third line: Added the precisation, that the schools are the italian schools in
> South Tyrol, otherwise the reader would think, it are all italian schools in
> Italy. FUSS is the project, which migrated the schools. There is a
> distribution created by the FUSS project team, but that's not it's main
> object. Today they are discussing to install Ubuntu. FUSS has to be seen as
> the migration project.
> Fourth line: Added line about the province e-Learning platform. They use the
> Free Software platform ILIAS.
> Fifth line: The public administration started a framework for internal
> applications. The framework is under the LGPL.
>
> Thank you and happy hacking!
> Patrick
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discussion mailing list
> Discussion(a)fsfeurope.org
> https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
Back in February, I asked here for links about free software use in public
administration. I've finally put the list online:
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/free_softwar…
That list also includes links that I've found in various places.
I don't intend to maintain the list long term, but I will collect more links
over the next few weeks and will publish a second version of the list then.
Hopefully this will be useful as a starting point for someone else who wants
to do a more thorough job.
Thanks to Torsten Werner, Alex Hudson, Patrick Ohnewein, Stefano Maffulli,
Bjoern Schiessle, and Laurent Guerby for their input last February.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org
