Dear Fellows and supporters,
this is a big thank you to all of you who engaged in the freesoftwarepact.eu
campaign and who invested their time to contact candidates to convince them to
sign the Free Software Pact. You have been done great work!
this is also a thank you to all that might not have been able to participate
themselves but that have spread the message throughout their channels.
We made a press-release today and put a news entry on our homepage:
https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140528-01.de.html
162 candidates out of 16 countries have signed the pact. Unfortunately, just
one fifth of them have been voted in the end, but that are 32 politicians.
These politicians and their signatures are very important for FSFE, because in
our future work we can always remind them or even trust in their support when
it is necessary.
That is also why I do not declare the campaign to be finished: Although the
election period is over, new and old members of the parliament still can sign
the Free Software Pact and show their support for a European Union in that
users have full control over their computers.
Thanks again,
Erik
--
Erik Albers | https://fsfe.org/about/albers
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) - Campaigns & Community
Free as in Freedom!
I am quite late with this, so you just have until tomorrow May 18 to
support this project. Jake Appelbaum brought me in contact with Bunnie,
and after receiving some more information I just published the following
blog entry:
https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/support-hardware-computing-platform-for-hackers-a…
Short version: The Novena project is still looking for community members
to support the project. They are 35 devices short of hitting a goal of
getting SDR boards to all the backers. They will already pay for the
development of Free Software drivers. From their description:
"We hope to raise enough funds to sustainably manufacture Novena, so
that the Free Software community can reliably source an open hardware
platform. This will ensure that we will have Free Software for every
part of the Novena, so we'll not only be an open hardware device,
we'll be powered entirely by Free Software. Every contribution helps
to ensure that users and developers remain Free as in Freedom."
So if you want to support open hardware and Free Software all in one, do
so until tomorrow, May 18.
Best Regards,
Matthias
--
Matthias Kirschner - Vice President FSFE
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, t +49-30-27595290
Weblog (blogs.fsfe.org/mk) - Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner)
Receive monthly Free Software news (fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html)
Your donation enables our work (fsfe.org/donate)
I am interested in your feedback about the Heartbleed part of the May
Newsletter <https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201405.en.html>:
== Heartbleed and economic incentives ==
You probably heard about the bug in the Free Software OpenSSL nicknamed
"heartbleed". The FSFE already welcomed the industry initiative to fund
critical Free Software projects[1], and the topic was discussed in
several blog articles on the planet: Sam Tuke wrote about his
impression[2], Hugo Roy shared an XKCD comic explaining how heartbleed
works[3], and Martin Gollowitzer wrote about what the Heartbleed bug
revealed to him[4] about StartSSL certificate authority.
But your editor is convinced that the main problem is not OpenSSL. It is
not Free Software. It is about companies not taking responsibilities and
about missing economic incentives to ensure security. Security expert
Bruce Schneier wrote in 2006[5]:
"We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology,
but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: The
people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the
costs of failure."
In a nutshell, if your private data is exposed because your health
insurance, where it is stored, did not take care to secure it, you
suffer to a much higher degree than the health insurance does! You are
in no position to preasure the health insurance to change its level of
security, and they have no economic incentive to do so. In the article
Schneier further explains that the liability for attacks is diffuse and
that "the economic considerations of security are more important than
the technical considerations".
Following the argument, the important question we face is, how can we
give the right economic incentives to ensure that: security relevant
software has the proper funding; third parties are auditing code; more
people are trained in computer security; programmers have time for
maintenance and are not forced to just develop new features; we have a
diversity of software[6] for different special purposes and therefor
prevent software monocultures[7]; companies run secure software instead
of just giving people a good feeling by performing a security theatre or
by delegating responsibility to others (for example the government), so
they can be blamed if there is a problem, and that also the security
interest of private users is fulfilled and not just those of big
cooperations.
In the FSFE we thought about how to give good economic incentives for
Free Software development from the beginning, and now we have to think
more about economic incentives to increase security. It is a difficult
area, so we are looking forward to your comments on this topic and
invite you to discuss it on our public mailing lists[8].
1. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140424-01.en.html
2. https://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=718
3. http://hroy.eu/notes/openssl-tragedy/
4. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gollo/2014/04/13/what-the-heartbleed-bug-revealed-to…
5. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/economics_and_i_1.html
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_TLS_implementations
7. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/dan_geer_on_hea.html
8. https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html
Best Regards,
Matthias
--
Matthias Kirschner - Vice President FSFE
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, t +49-30-27595290
Weblog (blogs.fsfe.org/mk) - Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner)
Receive monthly Free Software news (fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html)
Your donation enables our work (fsfe.org/donate)
Hey,
some of you may know me. I am developing AdAway, OpenKeychain, Offline
Calendar and some other Android apps.
In the past I forked some abandoned Android apps which I consider
important for a free Android world, including EBookDroid (now called
Document Viewer) and ICal Import/Export. The successors of these apps
were made closed source, so I forked them, fixed obvious bugs and made
them compile.
Due to my main Android projects, especially OpenKeychain, I am having a
hard time maintaining these. So I am searching for developers taking
care of these abandoned babies :) and making them better!
Document Viewer: https://github.com/dschuermann/document-viewer
There are some important bug reports and the UI needs some love :)
Status: Released on GPLay and F-Droid
Ical Import/Export: https://github.com/dschuermann/ical-import-export
Overcomplicated internal code, it's functionality could be coded much
easier. Main issue why I didn't released it yet are timezone problems!
I think having such an app is extremely important to get a fully working
non-cloud-dependent Android. Offline Calendar can create and delete
calendars but there is currently no import/export available. This app
could fill this gap!
I can help taking over development and answer questions!
Hoping for progress
Dominik
_______________________________________________
Android mailing list
Android(a)lists.fsfe.org
https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/android
Yesterday I was informed that now the office of the Green Party in
Germany asked all their candidates for the European Election to sign the
Free Software Pact <http://freesoftwarepact.eu/>.
I therefor updated: https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/freesoftwarepact-eu-candidates
Please help us to contact more candidates. From the newsletter:
Get active: Make the Free Software Pact a success!
As we wrote in March [1] candidates pledging for Free Software is a
good way to take them at their word after an election. In Future we
can contact them whenever there will be EU legislation to be passed
that might endanger the existence or growth of Free Software.
After FSFE's volunteers did a lot of translations for the pact, April
now published all necessary information on the Free Software pact
website so you can get active.
In Italy our new intern Michele Marrali already contacted 51
candidates. He searched for the candidates, used ">Erik's template [2]
available in German [3] to contact them, and afterwards noted on ">our
pad whom he already contacted [4]. His goal is to contact every
Italian candidate and get them to sign the pact. So how many can you
contact?
In case you do not have time to participate in this "hobby lobby
competition", consider to make a donation [5] so we can offer the most
active volunteers some rewards from our shop [6].
Best Regards,
Matthias
1. http://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140304-01.html
2. https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/04/23/the-free-software-pact-for-the-europe…
3. https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/04/23/der-freie-software-pakt-eu
4. https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/freesoftwarepact-eu-candidates
5. http://fsfe.org/donate
6. http://fsfe.org/order/order.html
--
Matthias Kirschner - Vice President FSFE
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, t +49-30-27595290
Weblog (blogs.fsfe.org/mk) - Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner)
Receive monthly Free Software news (fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html)
Your donation enables our work (fsfe.org/donate)