fsfe-ie-request(a)fsfeurope.org wrote:
>
> The report itself should be on entemp.ie in a few hours and would be worth a
> skim or at least a grep for patents.
>
> Ciaran O'Riordan <ciaran(a)member.fsf.org> writes:
>> The innovation taskforce is something that's active, Irish and worrying, but
>> I haven't gotten to dig into it yet:
>> http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Ireland#Current_issues
>
It is more or less as expected of the present lot; a series of pious
platitudes. Nothing that I saw searching 'patent' would change my
opinion of the whole doc.....
At the last meeting, I put myself down for the Action Item of finding
out what current projects and campaigns were underway at organisations
like FSFE, FFII, and FSF. The following is a summary of what I found on
their websites.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FSFE:
'How to get involved?' page: join fellowship, help maintain web site,
help translate web site, staff tradeshow booths, do an internship with
FSFE, make a financial donation.
'Events' page, current/future: Workshop in Egypt; Free Software
exhibition in Germany; Free Society conference in Sweden.
'Projects' page: PDFreaders.org (promote use of Free programs for
reading PDF files), Open Standards (promote interoperability and free
access to the public record through use of open standards), European
Commission Framework Programme (central EU mechanism for funding
research projects; FSFE is supporting projects related to Free
Software), 'Science, Technology and Civil Society' (provide assistance
on Free Software aspects of promoting civil involvement in research),
Freedom Task Force (help ensure compliance with Free Software
licensing), Internet Governance Forum (FSFE follows the IGF to promote
Free Software principles), DRM (campaign against DRM), IPRED2 (unclear
what current status of this is), World Intellectual Property
Organisation (FSFE is an Observer at WIPO, lobbying for freedom-friendly
policy), software patents (this rumbles on).
FFII:
>From action.ffii.org: software patents (in particular EPLA, a proposed
European Patent court system), IPRED2 (although other places have
suggested this is stalled indefinitely, and Google News finds nothing
for 'IPRED2').
FSF campaigns:
Lobbying against Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement --- proposed treaty
which Europe might be party to. Might have side-effects interfering
with Free Software (e.g., software to play media files).
'Defective By Design': campaigning against DRM.
OpenDocument: public documents should be in an open standard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of these, nothing leaps out as demanding immediate and urgent attention,
but a few things are on the go:
The threat of formalising swpats has not gone away, so I will try to
find out (maybe Ciaran would know in fact) what the current status of
this EPLA proposal is, and whether there's somewhere we can place our
position on the record.
Open Standards could be another one --- we could go through the websites
of the government depts and find which ones are offering documents only
in Microsoft Word format (etc), and which are in Open Standards. (We'd
have to decide how to classify PDF; personally I would say that since
there exist free-software readers, it's OK, but I know there are other
opinions.) Then write to them all, saying 'well done' or 'please fix'
as appropriate. Has some local relevance, is fairly well
parallelisable, and would yield some interesting data as well. Might
even be a press release in it once it's done. I think this idea has
been raised in the past.
The FSFE has a monthly newsletter. Maybe we should submit meeting
reports, even if they're fairly short, formulaic, and content-free:
'Several Fellows met in Dublin at the IFSO meeting, to discuss matters
of interest regarding Free Software in Ireland. Please see their web
page if you're interested in joining them.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll report back again when I've had a chance to dig into the EPLA
patent situation.
Ben.
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) Newsletter - September 2009
The Software Freedom Day is one of the main events in the Free Software
community in September, and it is an event we never miss: this year FSFE
celebrated in Leipzig, Vienna and Hamburg with the help of our Fellows.
Thanks to them, the campaign "Ask your candidate about Free Software!" for
the German elections became a great success.
FSFE's president commented on the possible settlement in the Microsoft
"browser case"; we started using Identi.ca as a micro-blogging platform
and we also took on board two new interns. Read on to get to know them!
Giacomo Poderi
1. FSFE to EC: Don't waste an opportunity with a hasty deal
2. The Fellowship interviews: Andreas Tolf Tolfsen
3. The Second Fellowship Jabber meeting, 22 September
4. Celebrating the Software Freedom Day, 19 September
5. FSFE uses Free Software micro-blogging on Identi.ca
6. Welcome to Hugo Roy and Lena Simon: new Berlin interns
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
7. Free Software hits German election campaigns
IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST
8. European Union versus Microsoft: A victory for Free Software
UPCOMING EVENTS
9. Commercial packages: a new way to support FSFE
1. FSFE to EC: Don't waste an opportunity with a hasty deal
Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's president, commented on recent news that European
Commissioner for Antitrust Neelie Kroes, is working to close all the major
cases on her desk before the end of her mandate in November. Two of these
cases concern Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviour in the browser
market, and the company's practice of preventing others from
interoperating with many of its desktop applications. Karsten's article
highlights why Microsoft's offer for a settlement is too weak, lists what
Free Software needs from any settlement, and asks Commissioner Kroes not
to waste the opportunity to establish real competition in the European IT
market with a hasty deal.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=263
2. The Fellowship interviews: Andreas Tolf Tolfsen
Andreas Tolf Tolfsen is the Fellow interviewed by Stian Rødven Eide this
September. Andreas is a web technologist, developer and aspiring
musicologist. He works at Opera Software, and regularly fights for
digital freedoms. In the interview, Andreas tells us a lot about HTML5,
Electronic Frontier Norway and music.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/andreas-tolf-tolfsen/
3. The Second Fellowship Jabber meeting, 22 September
On the 22 September, from 19:00 until 20:30 we held a new jabber meeting,
to repeat the positive experience of the one organised during the
Fellowship election. Many Fellows showed up in our virtual room:
conference.jabber.fsfe.org, and asked questions to Matthias Kirschner,
Fellowship coordinator, and Torsten Grote, Fellowship representative at
the GA. The main topics of the meeting were the role of the FSFE's GA
and the procedure to take part in it. Free Software in Education was
also discussed as an interesting topic for the next Fellowship Jabber
meeting. More information about the next meeting will be published soon!
4. Celebrating the Software Freedom Day, 19 September
For five years, the Software Freedom Day (SFD) has been the perfect
chance for 'hacktivists' to gather together in different place around
the world to celebrate Free Software and its principles. More than 500
teams worldwide registered for the event and celebrated on Saturday 19
September SFD 2009. FSFE's local Fellowship groups participated in the
events in Vienna and Leipzig, and we manned a booth at the SFD in
Hamburg.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=354http://blogs.fsfe.org/gollo/2009/09/23/software-freedom-party-in-vienna/http://softwarefreedomday.org/
5. FSFE uses Free Software micro-blogging on Identi.ca
Many key people in our organisation have started using the Free Software
micro-blogging service Identi.ca to share status updates and interesting
links. On Identi.ca it exists now a group "fsfe" which is possible to
subscribe to if you would like to stay informed on our activities.
We also started adopting some common tags such as #fellowship,
#pdfreaders and #dfd which we encourage you to use. Read Matthias
Kirschner's blog post to know more about it:
http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=327http://identi.ca/group/fsfe
6. Welcome to Hugo Roy and Lena Simon: new Berlin interns
Starting from the 1 September, FSFE took on board two new, young and
motivated interns: Hugo Roy and Lena Simon. Hugo is from France and will
work with us until May 2010, focusing on policy and legal aspects. Lena
is from Germany, and will stay with us for one month to help in the
setting of the new Berlin office. She also provided valuable help during
the campain "Ask your candidate about Free Software!". We are happy to
have them with us and we are sure they will add value to our work.
Welcome Hugo and Lena!
http://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/http://blogs.fsfe.org/lsimon/
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
7. Free Software hits German election campaigns
Ahead of the German elections 2009, FSFE's German chapter with the help
of many Fellows and volunteers brought the issue of Free Software in the
political debate. The campaign "Ask your candidate about Free Software!"
questioned politicians of different parties about their visions on Free
Software principles, Open Standards and their diffusion. Matthias
Kirschner said: "We want politicians to get in contact with these
topics, and to motivate people from the Free Software community to start
a dialogue with their politicians."
During the political campaign, the questions prepared by the Fellows and
other volunteers were forwarded to representatives of various political
parties. We collected their answers in the Fellowship wiki, ordered and
summarised them. With the help and coordination of Matthias and Lena the
project collected 26 answers (to 35 forwarded questions), and a lot of
media coverage during and after the German elections. FSFE's associate
organisation ANSOL ran a similar campaign in Portugal, where national
elections took place at the same time. We exchanged links and looked to
each other for inspiration.
http://www.fsfe.org/projects/btw09/btw09.html
Relevant Links:
http://www.fsfe.org/news/2009/news-20090921-01.htmlhttp://www.fsfe.org/news/2009/news-20090908-01.htmlhttp://wiki.fsfe.org/Bundestagswahl2009http://ansol.org/politica/legislativas2009
IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST
8. European Union versus Microsoft: A victory for Free Software
In September 2007, the European Union versus Microsoft antitrust case
was finally closed. The European Court of First Instance found Microsoft
guilty of deliberate obstruction of interoperability and upheld the
obligation for Microsoft to share its protocol information. This
information has now been published and is being used by the developers
of Samba and many other projects. FSFE and the Samba team participated in
the case as an interested third party. Our work was crucial in bringing
about such a decisive victory. Today, the judgement in the case serves
as a landmark for the fight against monopolies in the software market.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q4/000187.html
UPCOMING EVENTS
9. Commercial packages: a new way to support FSFE
In order to make it easier for companies who care about Free
Software to support our work, we have assembled a set of
commercial service offerings services related to Free Software.
They include services such as a Free Software Hotline,
personalized workshops, bi-monthly update calls, annual
networking dinners and more. More information about these packages will
be published soon on our website. Keep an eye on:
http://fsfe.org/news/
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html
You can join the Fellowship or find how to support us on
http://fellowship.fsfe.org/joinhttp://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.html
You can order our merchandise at
http://fsfe.org/order/order.html
Copyright 2009, Free Software Foundation Europe <pr(a)fsfeurope.org>.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in
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