Welcome to FSFE's exceptionally full November newsletter. In Europe FSFE has
been involved in speeches, meetings, training courses and public betas of new
technology. On the global level we have been participated in the recent
Internet Governance Forum meeting in Brazil.
As always FSFE's work has been complemented by the contributions of the Fellows.
The Fellows in Nijmegen, Dusseldorf and Berlin are due particular credit this
month after participating in discussions on various topics. In Berlin the
increased use of Free Software on mobile devices was discussed, while Free
Software and business was the topic of choice in Dusseldorf and Nijmegen.
If you are interested in starting Fellowship meetings in your area please
contact the Fellowship at http://fsfe.org/en/contact_us
- Shane, FSFE Zurich Office
1. United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
2. STACS meeting in London
3. Trophees du Libre 2007 in Soissons
4. Training Courses in Stockholm and Nijmegen
5. FTF events in Linz, Lausanne, Nijmegen and Dusseldorf
6. Foundation activities in Sweden
7. Berlin Fellowship discusses Free Software mobile phones
8. FSFE revisiting software patent information
9. SELF public beta and bug fixing
10. Interview with Werner Koch
Forthcoming events:
11. Free Software Conference Scandinavia, Gothenburg, Sweden
12. FSFE informes on privacy and freedom in Schwetzingen
1. United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
The second Internet Governance Forum was hosted by the Brazilian
government in Rio de Janeiro and showed a strong emphasis of Open
Standards as one of the key issues, also thanks to the constant work
that FSFE has been doing over the years and the good collaboration with
many groups in the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS). FSFE's
president Georg Greve had a busy time participating in the pre-IGF
Standards Edge conference by the Bolin Group and several workshops on
the issue, including the general assembly Security Session. Open
Standards are likely to play a greate role in the future UN work.
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/igf/
2. STACS meeting in London
On the 2nd of November, the FSFE organised a capacity building session
for CSOs as part of the STACS project
(FP6-2005-Science-and-Society-19-044597), in order to increase CSO
awareness of Free Software and to demonstrate its use. The session took
place at The Hub in London and was attended by a nice mixture of
participating CSOs, both from the greater London area, from the rest of
the UK and from several other European countries. The session ended with
a wish from all participants to hold several more similar sessions for
other CSOs in other places around Europe.
3. Trophees du Libre 2007 in Soissons
The Trophees du Libre, organised by CETRIL, is the world's largest Free
Software award with several categories. The 29 November saw the 4th
edition of the Trophees du Libre, held at the Chateau de Villeneuve
Saint-Germain with participants coming from as far as Taiwan, Israel or
Montreal. Having participated in the jury last year, FSFE president
Georg Greve was invited to preside over the jury of this edition and to
moderate the award ceremony while FSFE intern Irina Dzhambazova was
using the opportunity to get to know more projects and supporting the
event as best she could.
http://www.tropheesdulibre.org/?lang=en
4. Training Courses in Stockholm and Nijmegen
On the 8th of November, the FTF in collaboration with Internet Academy in
Stockholm, Sweden delivered a course on the strategic implementation of
Free Software in business. On the 26th of November the FTF and ATComputing
in Nijmegen, The Netherlands delivered the same course. The FTF now offers
course in Switzerland, Sweden and The Netherlands and expects to expand into
more countries soon. For more information about FTF courses please visit:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf
5. FTF events in Linz, Lausanne, Nijmegen and Dusseldorf
It has been a busy month for the FTF. Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator,
delivered a keynote entitled 'Free Software, licensing and business
processes' on the 3rd of November at elce2007 in Linz, Austria. He also
spoke at the Business and Law schools of Lausanne University, Switzerland,
on the 21st and 22nd of November, attended a Fellowship meeting in Nijmegen,
The Netherlands on the 26th, and delivered a speech for the Dusseldorf
Fellows about Free Software licensing and business processes on the 28th.
For more information about FTF events please visit FSFE's events page:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/events/events.html
6. Foundation activities in Sweden
The Swedish team of the FSFE has been busy during the month, holding
several presentations about SELF and Free Software in Sweden. The first
presentation was held at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm
on the 7th of November, followed up by the University College of Borås
in Borås on the 9th, Umeå University in Umeå on the 12th, Mid Sweden
University in Sundsvall on the 19th, Karlstad University in Karlstad on
the 20th and Linköping University in Linköping on the 21st.
All events were quite well attended, with a mixture of students, teachers
and other members of the faculty. In the presentations, emphasis was
placed also on how SELF actually contributes, not only to further education
on Free Software, but also to encourage the Free Software philosophy of
sharing and cooperation in other areas.
7. Berlin Fellowship discusses Free Software mobile phones
On 13. November there was a local Fellowship meeting in Berlin. Fellow
Robert Schuster gave a presentation about the relevance of OpenMoko for
the Free Software community. There was an interesting discussion about
what that means for the freedom of private persons as well as the
possibilities these freedoms give SMEs who can offer special services
for their costumers. It was decided that the Berlin Fellowship group
will meet every second Thursday in the month at the Newthinking store.
Afterwards the meeting was moved into a pub to get know to each other.
More information:
- The slides (in German):
http://fsfe.org/en/content/download/33600/207464/file/OpenMoko-Vortrag-fell…
- Pictures of the event:
http://store.newthinking.de/blog/archive/2007/11/13/erster-fsfe-fellowship-…
- Mailing list for meetings in Berlin: berlin(a)lists.fsfe.org.
8. FSFE revisiting software patent information
We have begun to revisit the published information on out webpages.
There is increasing discussion of software patents within the institutions,
so we are revising the information published on out website. Some updates
are already online, and in the coming weeks, we will continue to provide
more documentation about the current status as well as summaries of what was
learned and what has already happened.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat
9. SELF public beta and bug fixing
After the launch of the public beta version of the SELF platform, the
development team has been working extensively on fixing bugs and
implementing the missing functionality of the platform. However, more
work is still needed in this area, and if you want to help, we encourage
you to try out the platform at http://www.selfplatform.eu/ and report
whatever bugs you come across.
10. Interview with Werner Koch
For our German readers there is something of a treat this month. Gulli
has an interview with Werner Koch, creator of GnuPG and one of the co-founders
of FSFE. Werner talks about his perspectives on security and Free Software.
http://www.gulli.com/news/der-autor-von-gnupg-im-gespr-2007-11-23/
Forthcoming events:
11. Free Software Conference Scandinavia, Gothenburg, Sweden
The FSFE is organising the Free Software Conference Scandinavia (FSCONS),
taking place in Gothenburg, Sweden on the 7th and 8th of December 2007. It is
the first in its kind event in the region, inspired by the growing momentum
around Free Software.
http://www.fscons.org/
12. FSFE informes on privacy and freedom in Schwetzingen
The data retention directive has been put into German law and will be valid
from January 2008. And there are other threads as the German "hacker act",
the "on-line searching" or the electronic health card. For this reason FSFE
is organising an event to inform the public about the coming risk for privacy
and freedom.
https://privatsphaere.org
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.
On Friday Feb 1st 2008, there'll be a business-orientated free software
event in Belfast. The event has an "all island" theme, so we're looking
into providing free Dublin-Belfast busses and starting a little later than
usual to allow for people who have to travel in the morning.
Event site: http://www.openisland.net/
Like for the Belfast event of March 2006, Bruce Perens has kindly agreed to
come and keynote. Other speakers on the day will focus on case studies of
free software migrations in-progress or completed.
The focus of this event is business and adoption but FSFE and IFSO will be
involved to ensure that sustainability and legal issues are also discussed.
Suggestions welcome, as would be help in publicising this event.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ Support Free Software and GNU/Linux
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ Join FSFE's Fellowship:
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ http://www.fsfe.org