= FSFE Newsletter - April 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201604.el.html ]
== EU Radio Directive threatens software freedom ==
We published our position on the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU
(adopted in May 2014) that demands from device manufacturers to check
each device software's compliance. At first sight, this may sound
reasonable but it has highly negative implications on user rights and
Free Software, fair competition, innovation, environment, and
volunteering – mostly without large benefits for security. The directive
needs to be implemented in member states before 13 June 2016. We have
formulated several proposals to EU institutions and EU member states
with concrete steps to solve these issues.[1]
== US government demands publicly financed software to be published as Free Software ==
As one of our main goals for 2016 is to push for the demand of all
publicly funded software to be published as Free Software in the EU, we
are positive to see some concrete steps in this direction happening
across the Atlantic. In particular, in the beginning of March, the US
Government published a draft of Source Code Policy[2] for the public to
comment upon until 11 April. The policy requires every public agency to
publish their custom-build software as Free Software for other public
agencies as well as for the general public to use, study, share and
improve the software.[3]
We would like the EU to follow this example and come up with similar
policies on the European level. If you have any feedback or comments in
regard to the US Source Code Policy, please send them to our English
discussion list[4] or directly to Matthias Kirschner. We would like to
make sure to consider your feedback before talking with European
politicians about this topic.
== From the community ==
Björn Schiessle blogged about the new feature of the ownCloud 9.0 the
Federation App[5] that allows users to exchange their Federated Cloud
ID-s and share data between their "clouds" more easily.
-
Sergey Matveev summarised the GoVPN Free Software daemon: why it was
born, which tasks it is aimed to solve, and its technical overview[6] in
his blogpost.
-
Guido Arnold wrote about the Fellowship meeting in Frankfurt which also
included a talk about Free Software licenses by Michael Stehmann[7].
-
Guido Günther posted a follow-up to calendar synchronisation with
Calypso, syncEvolution and the N900 running Maemo[8].
-
== What else have we done? ==
Founding member of FSFE, Werner Koch received this year's Free Software
award for the Advancement of Free Software for his GnuPG project[9]. The
Award for the Advancement of Free Software is given annually to an
individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and
development of Free Software.
-
Our president Matthias Kirschner and the German coordinator Max Mehl
gave talks at Chemnitzer Linuxtage[10]. The event was a success with
most of our merchandise and promotional material disappearing quickly
from the booth handled by Reinhard Müller, Katja Müller, Max Mehl and
Fabian Keil.
-
Our volunteers in Berlin participated in the FSF campaign against
digital restrictions proposed by W3C in the web HTML standard[11].
Digital restrictions in Web standards would make it easier and more
politically acceptable to impose restrictions on users.
-
FSFE was present with a booth at CIJ Logan Symposium[12], a conference
dedicated to gather leading journalists, hacktivists, legal and security
experts to discuss freedom of press and digital rights. The list of the
speakers at the CIJ event included Edward Snowden, who also gave a
keynote at Libreplanet[13], a Free Software conference organised by FSF.
-
== Take Action ==
To all awesome translators out there! Help us to expand our outreach by
updating the 'Spread the Word' page[14] for ordering our promotional
material into your language. Currently, the page exists in English,
German, Dutch and Albanian but it would be great to include any other
languages into this list too.
== Good Free Software news ==
Indian Patent Office said no to software patents[15] in its updated
guidelines that clearly state that any patent claim that lies only in
software will not be permitted under Indian patent law. Poland's new
eGovernment strategy recommends that publicly financed software for a
new system of public registers should be considered to be published
under a Free Software licence[16]. Sweden has updated the list of 'Open
IT standards' that can be made mandatory when procuring software and
related services[17]. To make it to the list IT standards must be
developed openly and publicly, must not constrain reuse of the standard,
and standard-essential patents should be made freely available.
Thanks to all the volunteers[18] , Fellows[19] and corporate donors[20]
who enable our work,
your editors Polina Malaja and Jonas Öberg, FSFE[21]
--
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1. https://fsfe.org/activities/radiodirective/
2. https://sourcecode.cio.gov/SourceCodePolicy.pdf
3. https://k7r.eu/us-government-commits-to-publish-publicly-financed-software-…
4. https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
5. http://blog.schiessle.org/2016/03/14/federated-sharing-whats-new-in-ownclou…
6. http://blogs.fsfe.org/stargrave/archives/158
7. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2016/03/fsfe-meeting-in-frankfurt-with-talk-abo…
8. http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Contatacs__CardDAV__Calypso_and_the_N900.html
9. http://www.fsf.org/news/library-freedom-project-and-werner-koch-are-2015-fr…
10. https://k7r.eu/chemnitzer-linuxtage-misunderstandings-compulsory-routers-an…
11. http://www.fsf.org/news/anti-drm-activists-go-to-w3c-meeting-to-protest-dig…
12. https://logancij.com/
13. http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/recapping-day-zero-of-libreplanet-2016
14. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.en.html
15. http://sflc.in/press-release-indian-patent-office-says-no-to-software-paten…
16. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/polish-egovernment-strategy…
17. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/sweden-updates-list-mandato…
18. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.el.html
19. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
20. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.el.html
21. https://fsfe.org/index.el.html