(Please support us to reach more people in their native language. Join
our translator team http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/.)
= FSFE Newsletter - May 2011 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201105.fi.html ]
== Competition authorities: Free Software protects competition ==
882 software patents, likely related to GNU/Linux, in the hands of
people who could use them to pressure Free Software companies and
developers? Maybe in the hands of Microsoft, which has for years used
nebulous patent claims to extract licensing fees from companies that use
the Linux kernel in their products. This month the German and the US
competition authorities approved the sale of those patents to CPTN, a
consortium consisting of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and EMC. But, barring
nasty surprises in the still to be published detailed decision, we
neutralised the danger for Free Software.
Software patents are a very complex matter, and competition authorities
are not used dealing with them. So beginning from December 2010 we
explained to the German competition authorities why the patent sale was
highly problematic. In our first[1] , and second[2] submission we
explained the mechanics that some companies use to compete in the
software market, and how they preserve their monopolies.
1. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/letter-20101222.fi.html
2. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/letter-20110406.fi.html
In their press release the authorities have not only highlighted the
importance of Free Software for competition, and that actual patent
lawsuits are anticompetitive but also that threatening with patent
lawsuits, like the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) strategies from
some non-free software companies, can be anticompetitive.
So for the first time, competition authorities have acknowledged the
essential part of Free Software for competition, and that patent
lawsuits by dominant market participants can be anticompetitive. This
will also be important for future debates, when the behaviour of big
non-free software companies has to be evaluated from a competition law
perspective.
As the devil is in the details, we hope to hear about the exact wording
of the CPTN contracts to evaluate them[3] . Such work is very time
consuming, and we would not be able to keep track of those activities,
without the support of one time donations[4] and regular ones by our
Fellows[5] .
3. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/novell-cptn.fi.html
4. http://fsfe.org/donate/donate.fi.html
5. http://fsfe.org/join.fi.html
== Mission is possible ==
To date, 17 percent of the public institutions, we contacted[6] ,
already replied and removed the non-free PDF reader advertisements from
their websites. The current progress of the campaign can be seen on our
buglist[7] . Until now we have only received one negative reply.
However, as about 83 percent of the contacted institutions have not
responded yet, we want to remind them about the letter we have sent, and
ask for a reply. This works only with your help. To take part, follow
the actions from our follow-up guide[8] . In short this is:
6. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.fi.html
7. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/buglist.fi.html
8. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/follow-up.fi.html
- have a look at organisations in your country which appear as not
having answered yet,
- contact and remind them of FSFE's letter on inadmissibility of
advertising of proprietary software by public institutions, and
- ask them to remove the proprietary software advertising from their
websites.
If you discover non-free PDF reader advertisement, and is not on our
list, you are encouraged to contact them on your own. For public
institutions use a modified version of our letter[9] , for companies and
non-profits we are working on a template, after volunteers have
convinced organisations like Greenpeace Germany[10] to link to
pdfreaders.org instead.
9. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/letter.en.html
10. http://www.greenpeace.de/themen/energie/nachrichten/artikel/deutschlands_en…
== Something completely different ==
- Data stored per-user, and under the user's control. That is the aim of
the unhosted web. This project is covered by this month Fellowship
interview with Michiel de Jong[11] . If you want to discuss this in
person with Michiel, he will help as one of our booth volunteers for
one day during Berlin's Linuxtag[12] .
- Free Software for the public sector: We have provided input for the
European Commission on modernising the way in which public bodies buy
software[13] and related services.
- At the moment fellows are starting new Fellowship groups[14] in
Augsburg[15] (Germany) and Manchester[16] (UK). For the Manchester
group our British coordinator Sam Tuke created a good presentation
template about the Fellowship which is now linked from the meeting
howto[17] .
- Noteworthy articles from the Fellowship planet[18] include:
- Timo Jyrinki's article about his presentation of "tuning an old but
free phone"[19] with corresponding videos from FSCONS[20] ,
- Carlo Piana's article "Doors opened at Openoffice"[21] about
Oracle's announcement that they want to make OpenOffice.org a
community developed project,
- and Lena Simon's article about the old myths in a digital society[22]
(German) which also covers some issues we have to explain often.
11. http://losca.blogspot.com/2011/04/tuning-old-but-free-phone-video-now.fi.ht…
12. http://www.fscons.org
13. http://piana.eu/it/node/265
14. http://www.stud.uni-potsdam.de/~leena/2011/04/alte-mythen-in-der-digitalen-…
- Groklaw's well deserved pension. Groklaw is shutting down and like our
sister organisation[23] we would like to thank them for their good
work.
- Free Software licensing, Free Software business, software patents, and
other topics from a legal point of view are covered in Matija's Free
Software and law related links. Editions are available for
29.03.-17.04.[24] , 18.04.-24.04.[25] , and 25.04.-29.04.[26] .
15. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=299
16. http://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipEvents/Linuxtag%20berlin
17. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110418-01.fi.html
18. http://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/
19. http://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/Augsburg
20. http://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/Manchester
21. http://wiki.fsfe.org/MeetingHowTo#General
22. http://planet.fsfe.org
23. http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/farewell-groklaw-and-thanks
24. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/239
25. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/241
26. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/244
== Get Active - Internships at FSFE ==
We are looking for smart, motivated interns to join our team[27] . Apply
for an internship position[28] yourself, or distribute the information
about it. We offer:
27. http://fsfe.org/about/team.fi.html
28. http://fsfe.org/contribute/internship.fi.html
- a challenging and exciting time with a dynamic NPO working
internationally,
- a close-up view of organisational and community processes,
- a chance to take the initiative and put your ideas into practice, and
- the opportunity to meet and work with Free Software advocates across
Europe.
Beside the current interns Natalia Evdokimova[29] , and Nicolas Jean[30]
, past interns include our Italian coordinator Giacomo Poderi[31] ,
Fellowship representative Hugo Roy[32] , our president Karsten
Gerloff[33] , UK coordinator Sam Tuke[34] , Swedish team member Stian
Rødven Eide[35] , education team coordinator Thomas Jensch[36] , and
your editor[37] , who was FSFE's first intern. So as you can see, the
internship is a good start to get more involved in FSFE.
29. http://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
30. http://fsfe.org/about/jean/jean.fi.html
31. http://blogs.fsfe.org/poderi/
32. http://fsfe.org/about/roy/roy.fi.html
33. http://fsfe.org/about/gerloff/gerloff.fi.html
34. http://fsfe.org/about/tuke/tuke.fi.html
35. http://blogs.fsfe.org/julipan/
36. http://blogs.fsfe.org/riepernet/
37. http://fsfe.org/about/kirschner/kirschner.fi.html
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://www.fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.fi.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.fi.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/fi/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.fi.html>
(Please support us to reach more people in their native language. Join
our translator team http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/.)
= FSFE Newsletter - April 2011 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201104.fi.html ]
== A decade of Freedom: FSFE turned 10 ==
One room with a bed, a desk, and a sofa. That was the situation when
your editor started working as an intern for FSFE in Georg Greve's one
room appartment in Hamburg in 2004. FSFE started with its operations in
March 2001[1] as the first sister organisation of the FSF in the US. We
have come a long way[2] since then. First of all, our interns don't get
Georg's mandatory cooking lessons any more, instead they now have their
own desks and do not have to work from the sofa any more. Second, we now
have the Fellowship which leads to a growth of volunteers and
activities:
- In the UK, Sam Tuke is currently busy setting up a punchy team. They
are giving talks, organising events, and documenting the
developments[3] in the future role of Free Software in the British
public sector.
- Our Italian team is currently supporting ADUC to get rid of the
Windows Tax[4] . ADUC is an Italian association for users/consumers'
rights who recently filed a class action request against Microsoft
Italy's refusal of reimbursing unused OEM licences for its operating
system. Carlo Piana is helping ADUC's lawyers and Giacomo Poderi with
the Italian team will help to raise awareness on this issue[5] .
- In Switzerland you have a confusing landscape of different Free
Software organisations, which have problems with coordionation. It was
nearly impossible to find out what is going on in the next weeks, or
to find a date for an activity which does not interfer with another
group. That's why the Zurich Fellowship group has now set up an event
calendar on freie-termine.ch[6] to improve this situation.
- Our Swedish team was actively publishing videos from FSCONS[7] . Last
year in November, we hosted our own track at FSCONS around different
topics of decentralised (social) networks and free network services.
Now the videos of the talks[8] are finally online.
- This year there are at least 8 Federal State elections in Germany. The
German team already received replies from the parties in Sachsen-
Anhalt[9] , Rheinland-Pfalz[10] , and Baden-Würrtemberg[11] on
questions like general support of Free Software, problems of vendor
lock-in, Open Standards[12] , non-free PDF readers advertisements[13]
on public websites, the use of Free Software in education[14] , and
software patents[15] . The same will be done for the remaining
elections.
1. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110310-01.fi.html
2. http://fsfe.org/about/history/birthday10.fi.html
3. http://fsfe.org/uk/mapping-uk.fi.html
4. http://wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsTaxRefund
5. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110321-01.fi.html
6. http://freie-termine.ch
7. http://fscons.org/2010/news/fscons-2010-videos-finally
8.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2011/03/28/fscons-2010-divide-and-re-co…
9. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ayc/201103-germany-sachsen-anhalt.de.html
10. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ayc/201103-germany-rheinland-pfalz.de.html
11. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ayc/201103-germany-baden-wuerttemberg.de.html
12. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/os.fi.html
13. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.fi.html
14. http://fsfe.org/projects/education/education.fi.html
15. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/swpat.fi.html
== Worldwide celebration of Open Standards ==
Open Standards are a common language, publicly documented, that computer
programs can speak. They are central to interoperability and freedom of
choice in technology. Open Standards allow Free Software developers to
create programs that can interoperate with other solutions, so users can
migrate away from proprietary solutions.
Many of you followed our call to participate in this year's Document
Freedom Day: in Brazil, the Federal Data Processing Company - Serpro -
hold events in 10 cities. In the European Parliament, experts discussed
Open Standards as a means to guarantee access to cultural works in the
long term. Other groups participated in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil,
Croatia, Greece, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Panama, Portugal,
Spain and United Kingdom. Selected FSFE activities include:
- The City Munich was awarded with the European Document Freedom Day
prize for its LiMux project[16] .
- Tagesschau.de awarded[17] for the use of Open Standards: The prize was
awarded in Berlin and Hamburg by the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure (FFII) and us for offering the broadcast shows also in
the free video format "Ogg Theora". As you can see on the pictures[18]
(DE) the cake was amazing (also available in French[19] )
- "A bright Document Freedom Day for Britain?" about Open Standards in
Britain[20] .
16. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110330-02.fi.html
17. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110330-01.fi.html
18. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=765
19. http://blogs.fsfe.org/nicoulas/?p=87
20. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110330-04.fi.html
== Something completely different ==
- Redhat made $909 million with Free Software and Nokia is spreading
FUD?: After Mirko Böhm wrote an interesting analysis[21] on the
current Nokia move, your editor commented on Nokia's announcement[22]
about selling the proprietary Qt business to Digia. This also led to
interesting discussions on our public mailing lists about the meaning
of "commercial".
- Our freshly elected Fellowship representative Hugo Roy[23] wrote about
IPRED[24] (FR).
- Fellowship Interview with Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen[25] . Dan
describes the aims of these exciting gaming projects, and discusses
what Free Software could mean for gaming in future.
- New Legal News available for 19.02.-25.02.[26] , 26.02.-04.03.[27] ,
05.03.-13.03.[28] , 14.03.-20.03.[29] , 21.03.-28.03.[30]
- 2010 Free Software Awards[31] go to: Rob Savoye and the TOR project.
Savoye is a long-time free software hacker, who has worked on GNU and
other free software for over 20 years. TOR is enabling people around
the world to experience freedom of access and expression on the
Internet while keeping them in control of their privacy and anonymity.
- The FSF welcomed Debian's "Squeeze" release[32] . Debian GNU/Linux
also received a prize at the Cebit, where Karsten Gerloff held the
laudatio[33] .
21. http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/4394
22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=736
23. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110301-01.fi.html
24.
http://blog.hugoroy.eu/2011/03/28/ipred-remettre-en-question-la-politique-d…
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=267
26. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/232
27. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/233
28. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/236
29. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/237
30. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/238
31. http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-free-software-awards-announced
32.
http://www.fsf.org/news/debian-squeeze-makes-key-progress-toward-being-a-fu…
33. http://fsfe.org/events/2011/lnm-award-debian.fi.html
== Get Active - Translations for free PDF readers ==
During our pdfreaders campaign[34] we received the feedback that it is
difficult to use some free PDF readers, as the download pages, or the
actual software is not translated. Since then our intern Nicoulas Jean
is in contact with several free PDF reader developers. Take a look at
our list of PDF readers[35] and how to help them with translation, and
take action:
- Help translating your favorite PDF reader and ask others to do so.
- Find out how to help with translations of the missing readers and add
this information it to the website.
34. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.fi.html
35. http://wiki.fsfe.org/PDFreadersTranslations
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://www.fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.fi.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.fi.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/fi/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.fi.html>
(Please support us to reach more people in their native language. Join
our translator team http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/.)
= FSFE Newsletter - March 2011 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201103.fi.html ]
== Revolution failed: Facebook not available in Egypt ==
"On 27th January facebook was shut down in Egypt. For the moment this
stopped the protests. Media assumes that this is due to the influence of
Mubarak's granddaughter who is Mark Zuckerberg's girl-friend." Of course
this is not true. But with software which is controlled by one company,
something like this can happen. What if the owner of the social network
would have been an Egypt company? Would this company have been able to
resist state pressure?
For a long time dedicated people have been working on decentralised Free
Software solutions, to make sure there is no vulnerable single point of
control. We as citiziens should be in control of our tools, and as most of
those tools today are comprised of software we do need decentralised
software. That's why FSFE organised a related track at FSCONS[1] , and
our staff as well as dedicated volunteers like Torsten Grote gather
information[2] , give talks[3] or interviews[4] .
1. http://www.fscons.org/divide
2. http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing
3. http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing#Video
4. http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing#Audio
Karsten Gerloff gave a talk on "Power Software Freedom"[5] (there is a
good summary by Brian Gough[6] ) at FOSDEM this month, and one of the
event's keynotes "Why Political Liberty Depends on Software Freedom More
Than Ever"[7] by Eben Moglen targetted this topic as well, especially the
so-called "Freedom Box"[8] which started to receive good media coverage
in turn, and will hopefully push this topic even further.
5.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/02/05/fosdem-talk-on-power-software-free…
6.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/bjg/2011/02/decentralised-systems-and-the-tendency-to…
7. http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fosdem/2011/maintracks/political.xvid.avi
8. http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing#Freedom_Boxes
== Lawyered! - FSFE's legal workshop ==
More than 75 lawyers, for 2 days, in 1 room -- and all of this organised
by the FSFE. What is it about? We do this to ensure that the best possible
legal knowledge about Free Software is shared between everyone, no matter
whether individuals, businesses or initiatives.
As part of this, FSFE facilitates an annual event called European Legal
Network Conference[9] to allow legal experts to discuss the future of
Free Software law and governance. This has become the world's premier
event for debating, discussing and sharing knowledge around Free Software
legal affairs.
9. http://fsfe.org/projects/ftf/legal-conference.fi.html
This year it will be held at the NH Barbizon Palace, Amsterdam, between
the 7th and 8th of April, and will feature speakers like Carlo Piana from
FSFE, Mark Shuttleworth from Canonical, Eben Moglen from SFLC, and Harald
Welte from gpl-violations.org.
== Something completely different ==
- Leaked documents highlight Germany's Foreign Office move back to non-
free software: This move is intransparent, and the more we find out the
more questions we have. See
- Foreign Office: Will it switch off the Free Software beacon?[10]
- Leaked Documents: Change of strategy in the Foreign Office against
recommodations.[11]
- "One study after the other"[12] . Interview from the German Newspaper TAZ
with your editor
- Without Free Software in the Foreign Office[13] - Dradio interview with
Bernhard Reiter.
10. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110202-02.fi.html
11. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release-de/2011q1/000182.html
12.
http://www.taz.de/1/netz/netzoekonomie/artikel/1/eine-studie-nach-der-ander…
13.
http://ondemand-mp3.dradio.de/file/dradio/2011/02/28/drw_201102281034_netzp…
- "Love love love": The Beatles sing about it, we wanted to have some for
Free Software activists at Valentine's Day. As last year we run a
campaign animating people to show their love for Free Software[14] . See
Maëlle's blog post for this years summary[15] and mark February 14th for
2012.
- Fellowship Interview with Italy's PDFreaders heart[16] : While your
editor can inform more people about our our pdfreaders campaign[17] like
in a FOSDEM talk[18] this campaign would not be such successfull without
many dedicated volunteers. This month Fellowship interview is with
Massimo Babieri, IT manager at the Earth Science Department, of the
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, leader of the band The
Radiostars, and "Mr PDFreader" in Italy.
- What happens with your code "when you’re no longer coding. When your
uplink is permanently disconnected. When you’re dead." Armijn Hemmel
wrote an article why the Fiduciary Licence Agreement is an important
tool][19] .
- New editions of Matija Suklje's "Free Software and law related links"
are available for 29.1.-4.2.2011[20] , 5.2.-11.2.2011[21] , and
12.2.-18.2.2011[22] .
- At GoOpen 2011[23] the 22-23rd of March in Oslo, Norway, the Swedish
FSFE team is helping to organise a special FSCONS[24] track. The track
takes some inspiration from previous FSCONS conferences in Sweden and
introduces speakers on Free Software and Free Society.
14. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/valentine/2011/valentine-2011.fi.html
15. http://blogs.fsfe.org/maelle/?p=228
16. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=257
17. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.fi.html
18. http://blog.isabel-drost.de/index.php/archives/310/fosdem-saturday
19. http://blogs.fsfe.org/adridg/?p=1094
20. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/226
21. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/228
22. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/230
23. http://www.goopen.no/program/
24. http://www.fscons.org
== Get active - Activities for Document Freedom ==
Document Freedom Day (DFD)[25] is a global day for document liberation.
March 30th will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about
the importance of Free Document Formats and Open Standards[26] in general.
This is how you can help:
25. http://www.documentfreedom.org
26. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/os.fi.html
- Join and help a team![27]
- Blog about it, and link to our campaign!
- Donate money to DFD![28]
- Sponsor the campaign![29]
- Put a banner on your website with our Artwork"[30]
- Use !dfd group on Identi.ca and #dfd2011 tag on Identi.ca and Twitter
27. http://documentfreedom.org/2011/teams.en.html
28. http://documentfreedom.org/2011/support.en.html
29. http://documentfreedom.org/2011/sponsors.en.html
30. http://documentfreedom.org/2011/artwork.en.html
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://www.fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.fi.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.fi.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/fi/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.fi.html>
(Please support us to reach more people in their native language. Join
our translator team http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/.)
= FSFE Newsletter - February 2011 =
[Permanent URL: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201102.fi.html ]
== Drop a container to free web videos ==
Videos on the internet often prove to be literal nuisance to Free Software
users. Several websites required the non-free flash video plugin to view
videos. Perhaps also your friends were wondering why you are not able to
watch youtube videos within your web browser, and thought you are a freak
when you started downloading videos with youtube-dl[1] . With gnash[2]
and other programs which are able to play flash video directly the
situation improved. But flash is still a pain annoying both for Free
Software users and developers.
1. http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/
2. http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
Developing HTML5 turned out to be a chance to purge this problem. It
enables the user to play audio and video directly in your web browser. But
there was disagreement which video container format should be used: H.264,
WebM[3] or Ogg Theora[4] ? MPEG LA organisation requires developers who
implement H.264 to agree to a patent license which is incompatible with
Free Software. So we might have ended up depending on non-free software
again to watch web videos.
3. http://www.webmproject.org/
4. http://www.theora.org/
But now Google[5] announced to suspend support for patent-encumbered
codec H.264 and support free codecs only instead. Being the biggest
provider of web videos Google's decision is a huge step to dispose of non-
free video software. Our sister organisation FSF issued a press release on
this topic[6] and I (Matthias) was interviewed by Dradio Wissen[7] about
it (in German).
5. http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
6. http://www.fsf.org/news/supporting-webm
7. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=719
Now time has come to help adopt WebM as free video format: get in contact
with website operators and ask them to distribute videos in the WebM
format to get rid of H.264.
== New clothes for FSFE ==
For many people their first contact with FSFE is via website. After months
of work by FSFE's Web Team[8] a new website design has been launched
including a fresh look, improved infrastructure, and new features. Here is
a list of our new features:
8. http://fsfe.org/contribute/web/web.fi.html
- iCal feed[9] of FSFE events and activities
- Option to subscribe to FSFE newsletters[10] in multiple languages
- Tagging of news and events, allowing dynamic generation of information
feeds for specific topics (useful for country pages, and topic homepages
such as "EU News"); documentation added[11]
- Improved country teams contact page[12] , including more information and
links to team member profiles
- Improved people page[13] with avatars of team members
- New meta-data storage and display system for published articles[14] which
consistently presents important article information
9. webcal://fsfe.org/events/events.en.ics
10. http://fsfe.org/news/newsletter.fi.html
11. http://fsfe.org/contribute/web/tagging.fi.html
12. http://fsfe.org/contact/local.fi.html
13. http://fsfe.org/about/team.fi.html
14. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/eifv2.fi.html
== Something completely different ==
- We have written to German competition authorities in order to share our
concern about the sale of Novell's patents to a consortium called CPTN
made up of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC. Read the details in our
press release[15] and Karsten's blog article[16] .
- Fellowship Election for GA seat: In February Fellows may choose their
candidate for the Fellowship seat in FSFE's General Assembly. Check out
the candidates[17] and choose your candidate. If you are not a Fellow yet
join now[18] , and you can pick your choice, too.
- Fellowship interview: Political veteran Anne Østergaard discusses[19]
new ways to influence European legislation, the scale of Free Software
support in developing countries, and the importance of local culture in
community campaigning.
- There is a lot of good things to read[20] . Patents are definetely not
something you'll enjoy. If this warning doesn't keep you from reading
them, Matija wrote a blog article "Reading patents made easier?"[21] .
- Do you want some fries together with FSFE? Like every year we will have
a strong booth presence at FOSDEM[22] with several volunteers, project
coordinators, our president and vice-president. We are looking forward
to having discussions at our booth after Karsten's[23] and my
presentation[24] as well as while eating fries, or having a beer with
you.
- Links on Free Software and Law; FTF team member Matija started
publishing legal news on Free Software: Free Software & law related
links[25] ( part 2[26] ).
- You can do a lot of (nice ;) ) things with handcuffs: Richard wrote
about practical advantages[27] of not being handcuffed in your daily
life.
15. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110113-02.fi.html
16.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/01/12/why-were-concerned-about-the-sale-…
17. http://wiki.fsfe.org/election11
18. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
19. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=233
20. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=399
21. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/220
22. http://www.fosdem.org/2011/
23. http://www.fosdem.org/2011/schedule/event/powerfreedomsoftware
24. http://www.fosdem.org/2011/schedule/event/nonfreeadvertisement
25. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/214
26. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/218
27. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/practical.html
== Get active - Join the Web Team ==
FSFE's Web Team needs help! We need new ideas and suggestions as well as
developers, designers[28] , and translators[29] to improve fsfe.org even
further.
28. http://fsfe.org/contribute/designers/designers.fi.html
29. http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.fi.html
- Sign up to the Web Team's mailing-list[30] to read discussion about
current and future changes, and submit your own queries and comments
- Submit bugs with the website to the Web issue tracker[31] (you can
create a new account, and remember your usename will end in -guest)
- Ask questions in real time in the Web Team's IRC channel: #fsfe-web[32]
on freenode
30. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/web
31. https://trac.fsfe.org/fsfe-web
32. irc://irc.freenode.net/fsfe-web
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://www.fsfe.org>
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(Please support us to reach more people in their native language. Join
our translator team http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/.)
= FSFE Newsletter - January 2011 =
[Permanent URL: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201101.fi.html ]
== Robots, Football, and Education ==
Their mission is to bring Free Software into schools and universities.
Their new task is to gather information about [1]their stakeholders,
and [2]create targeted leaflets. And I am sure the favourite colour of
the coordinators [3]Thomas Jensch and [4]Guido Arnold is [5]Fellowship
green. That's [6]our education team.
Can robots help with that? We think they can. Our education team had
[7]a first meeting to get trained in giving programming workshops
using freedroidz robots. We want to teach pupils how to program, show
them that it's good to share and co-operate, and explain Free Software
to their teachers, parents, and politicians.
And what about football? Regular readers might remember that Guido
Arnold is running a parallel tournament to the football championship
in Europe 2012 where the discipline is Free Software usage in
government. So every time there is a football match, Guido starts a
Free Software match between them, while a huge part is of course the
government's education policy. Read [8]Guido's blog to find out why
Russia is a hot candidate for the European champion, but why we need
more information on Eastern European countries.
== Public institutions - hares or snails? ==
Already, 203 public institutions have removed advertisements for
proprietary PDF readers from their websites. Particularly outstanding
were the responses from Croatia, Russia and Slovenia. In Croatia all
except one reported institution deleted the advertisement. Half of
those contacted in Russia and Slovenia fulfilled FSFE's request.
Amongst the public institutions are ministries, parliaments, law
enforcement agencies, local governments, and other administrations.
With [9]our PDFreaders campaign we will continue to follow-up with the
[10]reported institutions and you can still encourage friends [11]to
sign the corresponding petition.
== Something completely different ==
- You think your old C64 was slow? Working on the United Nations
level will change your mind. Karsten Gerloff wrote an article
about FSFE's UN work: [12]"WIPO CDIP/6: Moving the glacier".
- Open Standards in Europe: The European Commission published the
new version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). We
at FSFE have been [13]working on this document for a long time.
Read [14]our press release and an [15]article by Karsten assessing
the new EIF.
- Current developments at Nokia, the transformative power of Free
Software, and the potential dangers posed by the use of Free
Software by large organisations. Those are the topics of the
[16]current Fellowship interview with Alexander Kahl, Fedora
packager, Lisp, JavaScript and Perl programmer, and active FSFE
volunteer.
- While Torsten Grote [17]gave a radio interview (German) about
risks of cloud computing and chances of distributed Free Software,
Björn Schiessle [18]writes about how he wants to install
distributed software at home.
== Get active: Help with Euro 2012 championship ==
Help us gathering information about government's Free Software usage.
This information helps us to evaluate the current situation and of
course it will decide who will be the European Free Software champion
in 2012. [19]Add the information on our website before March 25 and it
will influence the next matches, add information continuously and it
will help Free Software activists all over the world.
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
1. http://wiki.fsfe.org/Education#stakeholders
2. http://fsfe.org/about/printable/printable.fi.html
3. http://blogs.fsfe.org/riepernet/
4. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido
5. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/
6. http://fsfe.org/projects/education/education.fi.html
7. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2010/12/freedroidz-workshop-with-tarent/
8. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/category/euro2012/
9. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.fi.html
10. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/buglist.fi.html
11. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/petition.fi.html
12. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=434
13. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/eifv2.fi.html
14. http://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20101216-01.fi.html
15.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2010/12/17/assessing-the-new-european-interop…
16. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=198
17. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=698
18. http://blog.schiessle.org/2010/12/19/a-new-toy-arrived/
19. http://wiki.fsfe.org/Free_Software_usage_in_public_administration
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