= FSFE Newsletter - August 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201608.fi.html ]
== "Free and Open Source Security Audit" in the EU needs feedback from Free Software communities ==
The goal of the "Free and Open Source Security Audit" (FOSSA) pilot
project is to increase the security of Free Software used by European
institutions. The FSFE has been following the project since early 2014.
Recently, the European Commission published the first round of
deliverables based on their interviews with stakeholders[1]. While the
FSFE is in full support of this European initiative, the implementation
of the project leaves us concerned. FOSSA's first analysis lacks an
understanding of Free Software; it includes several factual errors; and
it was based on poorly conducted general interviews. FSFE President
Matthias Kirschner[2] and FSFE Fellowship Representative Mirko Böehm[3],
who were both interviewed for the project, have summarised the most
evident shortcomings in the recent FOSSA publications. However, looking
from another perspective: FOSSA is still in its first stages and with
the help of more Free Software experts, we can get FOSSA going in the
right direction. The FSFE will continue to closely follow FOSSA's
upcoming implementations. In case you have any comments or feedback
concerning the initiative, please do not hesitate to share your thoughts
with us on our discussion list[4] or directly to the attention of
Matthias Kirschner. This way, we will make sure that all relevant
concerns will be communicated to the EU.
== Italy plans to stop its explicit support for Free Software in e-Government ==
The government of Italy is planning to revise the provision in the
Digital Administration Law that requires public administrations to
prioritise reusable, Free Software-based software solutions[5]. The
changes also concern the publication and maintenance of a list of open
ICT standards that are used by public administrations. Following this
proposal would mean the government will no longer require the national
agency for the Digitisation of the Public Sector (AGID) to issue binding
opinions on interoperability, or to prioritise Free Software. Members of
the Italian Parliament have raised their concerns in regard to the
proposed changes. FSFE's General Counsel Carlo Piana has previously
advised Italian authorities on the guidelines of implementation of
Digital Administration Law[6], and contested the government's plans in
his letter to Tech Economy[7] (in Italian).
== From the community ==
- Daniel Pocock explains security problems with SMS and phone
verification, and asks how many mobile phone accounts will be hijacked
this summer[8].
- Hannes Hauswedell explains how you can retroactively replace git
subtree with git submodule[9].
- Polina Malaja sums up the creation of the European Cyber Security
Organisation (ECSO) and explains why many security concerns can be
significantly decreased by using Free Software as much as
possible[10].
- Daniel Pocock explains how you can help with monitoring packages in
Debian and Ubuntu.[11]
- Wolfgang Romey writes about the sustainability of technical devices
and their need for Free Software[12] (German).
== What else have we done? ==
- Early this summer, the FSFE co-signed a letter in support of strong
net neutrality together with 72 other organisations. The European
Commission, however, seems to endorse the weak net neutrality demands
proposed by the coalition of 17 biggest EU Internet Service Providers
(ISP) in the so-called '5G manifesto'. Our policy analyst Polina
Malaja blogged about the worrisome direction of watering down strong
net neutrality in the name of 'innovation'[13].
- Matthias gave a talk at the Technical University of Berlin about the
importance of Free Software and presented some of the highlights of
FSFE's work.
- FSFE's Italian team was present with a booth at Wikimania 2016 in
Esino Larino, Italy.
== Take action! ==
>From August 1st, a new German law will allow users to freely choose
their router device. The FSFE wants to ensure everybody knows about
their new rights and is asking users to report cases in which internet
service providers (ISP) try to avoid the new regulation[14]. The new
regulation was designed to eliminate previous ambiguity around the
practice of "compulsory routers" imposed on the users by ISPs. However,
it is necessary to ensure that the new law is implemented.
If you are a client of a German internet provider, we ask you to
exercise your new right and start using an alternative device, ideally
one that runs Free Software. Please provide us feedback whether you had
any issues about running a new router and help us to collect it in our
wiki page[15]. In case you don't have an alternative device at hand, the
FSFE can also provide some testing devices. Please refer to our wiki
page for more information on this.
== Good Free Software news ==
The European Commission will reward existing IT solutions that have been
developed and shared by public administrations, and that can be further
reused across Europe due to the use of Free Software licenses[16].
Adullact, the French organisation for public administrations using free
software, set up Comptoir-du-Libre.org, a website that aims to help
public administrations’ IT decision-makers to switch to Free
Software[17]. The city council of the Spanish city of Ciudad Real voted
in favor of a resolution to switch all 400 workstations of the city's
administration to Free Software[18] (Spanish). The Open Knowledge
Foundation Germany, in cooperation with the German Federal Ministry of
Education and Research, started the Prototype fund[19], which supports
Free Software projects with a grant of up to €30.000, available for
anyone with primary residence in Germany.
Thanks to all the volunteers[20], Fellows[21] and corporate donors[22]
who enable our work,
your editors Polina Malaja and Erik Albers, FSFE[23]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eu-fossa/og_page/project-deliveries
2. https://k7r.eu/fossa-now-we-need-feedback-by-the-real-experts/
3. https://creative-destruction.me/2016/07/11/eu-fossa-needs-your-help-a-free-…
4. https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
5. http://www.funzionepubblica.gov.it/articolo/riforma-della-pa/10-02-2016/cod…
6. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140116-01.en.html
7. http://www.techeconomy.it/2016/07/07/bulgaria-open-italia-qualche-passo-die…
8. https://danielpocock.com/how-many-mobile-phone-accounts-will-be-hijacked-th…
9. http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2016/07/27/retroactively-replacing-git-subtree-wit…
10. https://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2016/07/11/ec-free-software-to-enhance-cybers…
11. https://danielpocock.com/help-monitoring-packages-in-debian-and-ubuntu
12. https://blogs.fsfe.org/wromey/2016/07/16/anschlussfrage-warum-sind-nachhalt…
13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2016/07/15/on-carrots-and-sticks-5g-manifesto/
14. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160725-01.en.html
15. https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/CompulsoryRouters/Implementation/Germany
16. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/new-european-contest-promote-it-reuse
17. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/new-site-promote-proven-ope…
18. http://www.miciudadreal.es/2016/05/25/el-pleno-acuerda-caminar-hacia-el-sof…
19. https://prototypefund.de/en/
20. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html
21. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
22. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html
23. https://fsfe.org
= FSFE Newsletter - June 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201606.fi.html ]
== FSFE co-signed letter on net neutrality ==
FSFE together with 72 organisations signed a letter to the EU telecom
regulators in support of strong net neutrality rules[1] in the on-going
negotiations for the guidelines on the implementation of the recently
adopted EU Regulation 2015/2120. The Regulation creates a basis for
strong net neutrality, and FSFE together with other organisations from
all over the world asks the Body of European Regulators of Electronic
Communication (BEREC) and the 28 national telecom regulators to uphold
these rules and to establish strong net neutrality guidelines around
Europe.
== From Free Software misunderstandings to software at CERN - FSFE busy at events ==
The past month was full of events and talks, with FSFE staff and team
members being present on several occasions. Talks and presentations make
a large part of our work to reach out and communicate our message to
people from different backgrounds.
FSFE's president Matthias Kirschner gave a short talk during Re:publica
TEN[2] about how to counter Free Software misunderstandings. He also
participated as a speaker at the Croatian Linux Users' Conference DORS /
CLUC[3] in Zagreb, Croatia, where he gave a keynote about "The long way
to empower people to control technology".
During the foss-north conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, FSFE's vice
president Alessandro Rubini gave a talk on "Time in Software and
Hardware - how time is handled in the Linux kernel and in the White
Rabbit network at CERN", and FSFE's executive director, Jonas Öberg,
presented a talk about the "State of Free Software in Europe (and
elsewhere)".
German Coordinator Max Mehl gave a talk about Radio 'Lockdown' Directive
during the Wireless Battle of the Mesh v9, in Porto, Portugal, and your
co-editor Polina Malaja gave an overview on the same topic during the
Wireless Community Weekend 2016in Berlin, Germany.
Last but not least, FSFE's Austrian coordinator Peter Bubestinger gave a
talk about Free Software in schools[4] at the Open Source Conference
Albania OSCAL.
== From the community ==
Torsten Grote gives an overview of recent security innovations in
instant messaging in his blogpost about "Briar - Next Step of The Crypto
Messenger Evolution"[5]. Briar is aiming at becoming a peer-to-peer
messenger which is entirely Free Software: it utilises end-to-end
encryption with forward secrecy and does not require its users to
disclose their metadata (i.e. the content of their address-books and how
frequently they talk to their contacts). These criteria will help in
offering a secure and privacy-friendly messenger that is available for
everyone to use freely.
-
Elena Grandi described her experience with OpenPandora[6], a handheld
game console and a mobile personal computer. On this occasion, Elena
also anticipated the pros and cons of the successor device Pyra.
-
Diderik van Wingerden blogged about his perception of future innovations
and the role of Free Software in it by compiling a list of sources that
helped him in "Shaping a vision of the future"[7].
-
Our executive director Jonas Öberg wrote about the Videorooter project
and its automated testing of algorithms[8]. The code is now connected to
Github repositories and automated tests of algorithms are run every time
someone improves the code.
-
Björn Schießle read the coalition contract of the new government in
Baden-Württemberg, a state of Germany, and analysed how they promise to
promote Free Software[9] (German).
-
Christian Widerström made an overview of the upcoming activities and
events that the Austrian FSFE team will be participating in[10]
(German).
-
The project "Sustainable use of older laptops with Linux and Free
Software", mainly run by Fellow Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann, has been given
the RWE Sustainability Award[11]. The project helps people to migrate to
Free Software and to make use of their old hardware with a proper
GNU/Linux installation (German).
-
== What else have we done? ==
How to successfully campaign for Free Software in a way that is
appealing both for the general public and politicians? FSFE teamed up
with the Peng! Collective[12] and learned from the latter's experience
in campaigning during a weekend-long workshop. FSFE's Fellowship
Representative Mirko Boehm summarised the outcome of the workshop in his
blogpost[13].
-
FSFE's Austrian team did a great job by being present with booths at
Linuxwochen Wien and Grazer Linuxtage (German)[14] and the local group
in Berlin was present at the OpenTechSummit in Berlin, Germany.
-
Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann gave an interview about the importance of Free
Software in Open Educational Resources[15] (German).
-
Getting active for Free Software and doing this by working for the FSFE
is increasingly attractive and we receive a lot of applications for our
internship program each month. However, most of the applications we get
do not make the cut. In his blogpost, our executive director Jonas Öberg
gave a few hints about how to succeed with your internship
application[16] and make it to the FSFE team as an intern.
-
== Take Action ==
Become a volunteer to maintain our blog platform! If you are interested
in devops or system administration, we now offer an opportunity to
polish your skills and learn new tricks by hosting a blog platform for
thousands of our volunteers!
FSFE's blog platform is a service we provide to our volunteers to give
them a place to write about their explorations of Free Software and
their work in the FSFE. For a while, the service has been in dire
straits and in need of an upgrade[17]. Thanks to our wonderful
volunteers who already stepped up and proposed their help in maintaining
the platform, the service will be kept alive.
If you are interested in joining our blog platform team, get in touch
with our blog team at blog-hackers (at) lists.fsfe.org.
== Good Free Software news ==
The Hungarian government published a decree promoting the use of Free
Software and Open Standards in public administrations[18]. The country's
Ministry of Interior is bound to start a central licence registry for
software used by the public sector and report yearly on the progress
made in use of Free Software and Open Standards. Meanwhile, France
revised its interoperability guidelines which from now on recommend ODF
as a standard communication format between public administrations and
citizens[19]. Sweden's Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan) is
determined to adhere to its Free Software strategy and to sustain the
Free Software solutions it uses[20], according to the planned updates of
the strategy to be published in June. As stated by the Social Insurance
Agency, Free Software maximises value of IT by allowing its efficient
use.
Thanks to all the volunteers[21] , Fellows[22] and corporate donors[23]
who enable our work,
your editors Polina Malaja and Erik Albers, FSFE[24]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. https://akvorrat.at/sites/default/files/20160502_nn_berec_civilsocietylette…
2. https://re-publica.de/16/session/freie-software-missverstandnisse-gekonnt-a…
3. http://2016.dorscluc.org/activity/29/#activity
4. http://blogs.fsfe.org/pb/?p=165
5. https://blog.grobox.de/2016/briar-next-step-of-the-crypto-messenger-evoluti…
6. http://social.gl-como.it/display/3e3ce0df12572dd2557bdda693148259
7. http://think-innovation.com/blog/shaping-a-vision-of-the-future/
8. http://blog.jonasoberg.net/automated-testing-of-algorithms/
9. http://blog.schiessle.org/2016/05/10/freie-software-im-koalitionsvertrag-ba…
10. https://blog.widerstroem.com/weblog/4/veranstaltungen-oesterreich-2016-part…
11. https://blogs.fsfe.org/wromey/2016/05/06/projekt-nachhaltige-nutzung-auch-a…
12. https://www.pen.gg/
13. https://creative-destruction.me/2016/05/04/how-to-campaign-for-the-cause-of…
14. https://blog.widerstroem.com/weblog/2/linuxwochen-wien-grazer-linuxtage
15. http://open-educational-resources.de/podlove/file/502/s/download/c/select-s…
16. http://blog.jonasoberg.net/are-you-the-fsfes-next-intern/
17. http://blog.jonasoberg.net/blogs-and-other-infrastructures/
18. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/hungary-increase-use-open-s…
19. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/france%E2%80%99s-rgi-v2-rec…
20. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/sweden%E2%80%99s-insurer-op…
21. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.fi.html
22. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
23. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.fi.html
24. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
= FSFE Newsletter - May 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201605.fi.html ]
== EU jeopardises its goals in standardisation with FRAND licensing ==
As a part of the Digital Single Market strategy, the European Commission
has published the communication on ICT standardisation priorities[1] as
one of the key factors in the digital economy. FSFE welcomes the overall
approach taken in the communication in favour of more open standards and
a greater inclusion of Free Software communities into standardisation
processes.
However, the document lacks proper understanding of licensing conditions
of standard-essential patents in order to include Free Software into
standard setting processes. In particular, FSFE expresses its concerns
in regard to the promotion of so-called "fair, reasonable, and non-
discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms[2] that in practice are
incompatible with Free Software. This way, the document jeopardises
every effort set by the European Commission to integrate Free Software
communities into standardisation.
== European Commission vs Google Android ==
On April 20, the European Commission outlined its charges in regard to
Google's business practices relating to the Android operating system[3].
According to the Commission, Google is abusing its dominant market
position by pre-installing and setting Google Search, Google Play Store
and Google Chrome as the default on most Android devices sold in Europe.
These practices close off ways for competitive search engines to access
the market.
FSFE has previously raised its concerns in regard to the claim against
the free-of-charge distribution of Android[4] that had been raised to
the European Commission by a coalition of certain online service
providers who claimed that this practice is harmful to competition. We
argued against that claim as it undermines the whole essence of Free
Software licensing, and are pleased to see that the Commission
disregarded that claim in its antitrust case against Google.
== From the community ==
Guido Arnold, our education team coordinator, summarised legal aspects
and possible activities to take, when public schools make MS Office
mandatory.[5]
-
Vitaly Repin published the course by Richard Stallman "On the Road to
the Free Digital Society" in Moodle Backup and IMS Common Cartridge
formats[6], and invites everyone to give feedback and promote the course
through their channels.
-
Since Let’s Encrypt has left beta testing, Michal Nazarewicz uses and
promotes this new certificate authority which provides free TLS
certificates[7]: "If you're running your own server there's no excuse
not to use TLS".
-
Björn Schießle blogs about a self hostable application for saving web
pages, "Wallabag", and about its maintenance on a shared web hosting
service[8].
-
Marcus Moeller explains how to set up a Freedombox on a Beagle Bone
Black in order to self-host a blog on freely designed hardware and
without the need to use proprietary software[9].
-
== What else have we done? ==
We ran the eighth annual election for a Fellowship representative who is
to represent our community and the FSFE's Fellowship in FSFE's general
assembly[10]. Although we only had one candidate, we would like to thank
and congratulate Mirko Boehm to run for the office and being
elected[11].
-
We now have over 30 organisations and companies who joined us in
proposing measures to EU institutions and EU member states to avoid
negative implications on users' rights and Free Software imposed by the
EU Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU, aka 'Radio Lockdown
Directive'[12]. The joint statement is open to new signatures against
negative implications that the 'Radio Lockdown Directive' poses on
software freedom, users' rights, fair competition, innovation,
environment, and volunteering.
-
FSFE also joined a coalition of organisations that fight the negative
implementations of the 'Radio Lockdown Directive' in France. Together,
we signed an open letter to the French government and French
Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (ART)[13] to ensure that the
implementation of the 'Radio Lockdown Directive' in France will not harm
Free Software.
-
On our way to become more transparent and inclusive, we published our
transparency commitment[14] in line with the guidelines from
Transparency International Germany.
-
A lot of our initial structure and founding documents have not been
updated ever since the FSFE grew from being a small circle of volunteers
into an organisation with hired staff, with a Fellowship program and a
community of thousands of people. We now begun to revise our "Self
Conception"[15], to better reflect our grown decision-making process.
Jonas Öberg, FSFE's executive director, shared his thoughts on and
insights about potential future steps to FSFE's structure and
membership[16] on his blog.
-
On the backend of our work, we have introduced a ticket system built on
OTRS[17]. Although at first sight not many people seem to be directly
affected by this, our whole communication will profit over time from
higher control of our workflow. Also, it shall be opened to be used by
volunteers as well.
-
>From 13 - 15 April, FSFE's annual legal licensing workshop LLW took
place in Barcelona, Spain. The event is dedicated to gather legal
practitioners from all over the world to dicuss the most challenging
issues in and around Free Software licensing. This year it had a record
number of participants, showing the increasing interest and importance
of Free Software in software licensing.
-
== Take Action ==
>From 2 - 4 September, 2016, the first summit of FSFE will take place, an
event dedicated to our community. To make it a unique and appealing
experience for everyone, we sent out a Call for Participation[18] last
week to all our Fellows and on our mailing lists. Take your chance and
be part of FSFE's main event in 2016 by becoming a speaker or a
volunteer, by hosting a workshop or another event.
== Good Free Software news ==
Spain's Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations published its
web-based solution for archiving electronic files under a Free Software
license[19]. France is also not lagging behind and recently published
the source code of the fiscal calculator used by the French fiscal
administration to calculate the income taxes of individuals in
France[20]. This was an outcome of the legal case in Paris'
administrative court that concluded that a source code of a software
written by and for public authorities can be considered as a public
information that can be freely accessed.
Thanks to all the volunteers[21] , Fellows[22] and corporate donors[23]
who enable our work,
your editors Polina Malaja and Erik Albers, FSFE[24]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/communication-ict-standa…
2. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160428-02
3. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-16-1506_en.htm?locale=en
4. https://fsfe.org/activities/policy/eu/20130729.EC.Fairsearch.letter.en.html
5. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2016/04/public-schools-making-ms-office-mandat…
6. https://blogs.fsfe.org/vitaly_repin/2016/04/14/course-on-the-road-to-the-fr…
7. http://mina86.com/p/tls-is-a-yes/
8. http://blog.schiessle.org/2016/04/16/installing-wallabag-2-on-a-shared-web-…
9. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mmoeller/2016/04/20/setting-up-a-freedombox-on-bbb-t…
10. https://fsfe.org/about/team.en.html#general-assembly
11. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160502-01
12. https://fsfe.org/activities/radiodirective/statement
13. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160406
14. https://fsfe.org/about/transparency-commitment
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=60
16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=50
17. http://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=65
18. https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/Summit2016/CallForParticipation
19. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/spain-publishes-file-archiv…
20. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/france-unveils-source-code-…
21. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.fi.html
22. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
23. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.fi.html
24. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
= FSFE Newsletter - April 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201604.fi.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]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
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.fi.html
19. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
20. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.fi.html
21. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
= FSFE Newsletter - March 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201603.fi.html ]
== "I love Free Software" Day 2016 ==
For the 6th time in a row we asked everyone to express their gratitude
and appreciation towards Free Software contributors on Valentine's Day.
Check out our #ilovefs 2016 report and see who got acknowledged this
year through countless blog posts, pictures, artwork, memes, personal
notes and many more[1]. Don't forget to mark next year's 14 February as
"I love Free Software" Day to continue this nice tradition of
acknowledging the people and hard work of everyone behind Free Software.
We thank all participants who found time to say "thank you" and for
making #ilovefs 2016 such a success!
== "No cloud" went viral ==
Just before "I love Free Software" Day, thanks to a spontaneous Reddit
post we received over 200 orders of our promotional material[2] in the
time span of 48 hours. In comparison, in 2015 we had around 370 orders
in total. After 24 hours we had more orders than usual in 6 months. The
majority of orders requested "no cloud" material but beside that people
also ordered our leaflet with basic information about Free Software, the
GnuPG leaflet, and our F-Droid leaflet.
== European Free Software Policy Meeting 2016 ==
In the end of Janury we organised, together with Open Forum Europe, a
pre-FOSDEM policy meeting in Brussels with the active Free Software
policy groups around Europe[3]. The purpose of the meeting was to learn
about each other's activities and exchange views, with an emphasis on
public policy related actions. In total, 19 organisations participated
in the meeting. In addition, Member of the European Parliament Julia
Reda, and a representative of the IT department of the European
Commission, Pierre Damas, attended the meeting to present the work of EU
institutions in the field of Free Software.
== From the community ==
February was dedicated to the sweet love declarations to Free Software
in the light of #ilovefs day. Check out our #ilovefs 2016 report above
for more detailed information about different blogposts, and get
inspired for the next year's celebrations by following Florian Snow's
idea for DIY #ilovefs banners[4].
-
Paul Boddie combined retrocomputing with Python programming and wrote
how to make Python programs faster with Shedskin[5].
-
Marcus Moeller gave tips about getting started with the federated social
network GNU social[6].
-
Björn Schießle contemplated about the future of GitHub and the next
generation of code hosting platforms[7].
-
== What else have we done? ==
After the adoption of the European Parliament's own-initiative report
"Towards a Digital Single Market" which included several positive
references to increase the use of Free Software in public sector, it
turned out that the meaning of "free" got lost in translation. In
particular the Italian version of the report referred to Free Software
as "gratis" as in free beer, instead of "libre" as in freedom. We asked
the staff of the member of the European Parliament Julia Reda to help us
and draw attention of the authors of the report to this mistake. The
mistake got fixed and the Italian version of the report now rightfully
refers to software freedom, and not the price[8].
-
We've simplified a lot of our internal processes: no longer it is
necessary for someone helping us with our web pages or in other teams to
register a guest account in our systems. Instead they will now register
in the same system as our Fellows. It may not sound like much, but it's
a revolution in simplification which we're very happy with! Read about
how you too can contribute to our work[9]
-
We published a report of our work in 2015[10]. From teaching people to
use encryption for their e-mail, to changing the direction of policy on
a European level, FSFE worked hard in 2015 to empower users to control
technology. We saw a lot of improvements in how we work, and we ended
the year positively with a lot to look forward to in 2016. We want to
thank everyone for helping us making the world a better place!
-
As hinted at in the previous newsletter, we've teamed up with KDE, Qt,
VideoLAN and others who are organising QtCon 2016 in Berlin 2-4
September 2016. We'll use the opportunity to host an FSFE summit during
QtCon, with more information forthcoming.
-
== Take Action ==
We still have plenty of "no cloud" stickers and other informational
material in stock! Help us to spread the word about software freedom in
your local community by ordering our leaflets, stickers, postcards and
posters[11].
== Good Free Software news ==
The French government is reviewing its existing Free Software support
contract, signed in 2011, and asks Free Software communities and the
public to help them draft their next multi-year framework contract for
Free Software services and support.[12] Meanwhile, the French Parliament
has approved a first draft law for a Digital Republic, which encourages
the use of Free Software by public administrations, and considers source
code of software developed by or for public administrations to be public
information[13]. Schools in the capital of Estonia, Tallinn, are
gradually moving to Free Software after the city administration decided
to switch to Free Software[14] in January 2015. By September 2015 more
than 4000 workstations and laptops across the 50 schools in Tallinn are
running on Free Software. In Germany, Federal Pension Insurance, which
is the largest in the country, is increasing the use of Free Software by
publishing a call for tender seeking assistance for its Free Software-
based services[15].
Thanks to all the volunteers[16] , Fellows[17] and corporate donors[18]
who enable our work,
your editors Polina Malaja and Jonas Öberg FSFE[19]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160222-01.en.html
2. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/the-reddit-effect-more-orders-in-24-hours-than-usu…
3. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160205-01.en.html
4. https://blogs.fsfe.org/floriansnow/2016/02/13/make-your-own-personal-banner…
5. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1233
6. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mmoeller/2016/02/03/getting-started-with-gnu-social/
7. http://blog.schiessle.org/2016/02/12/the-next-generation-of-code-hosting-pl…
8. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/now-italian-european-parliaments-dsm-report-speaks…
9. https://fsfe.org/contribute/
10. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160224-01.en.html
11. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.en.html
12. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/france-involves-public-draf…
13. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/france-assembly-encourages-…
14. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/tallinn-schools-piloting-op…
15. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/open-source-largest-german-…
16. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.fi.html
17. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
18. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.fi.html
19. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
= FSFE Newsletter - February 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201602.fi.html ]
== FSFE turns 15 ==
In 2016, the Free Software Foundation Europe is looking forward towards
an exciting year. This is the year when we are celebrating our 15th
birthday and that will give us the chance to look back, to see and show
how your support brought us here. However, we are also looking forward
to mastering the challenges ahead.
Since 2001, a lot has evolved for the good, including the changes that
we could not think of once a small team of volunteers from different
countries decided to come together in the Villa Vogelsang in Essen,
Germany, and to found the Free Software Foundation Europe[1]. Since
then, this initial team of activists grew together as friends, FSFE
received the Theodor Heuss Medal for our work for freedom in the
information society[2], we became an influential voice on national and
European level, we have our third president in office and we became a
European wide organisation with a permanent staff team. All of this
would not have been possible without the help of you, our Fellows. Your
advice, your support, your financial contribution, your local
activities, your viral marketing, your campaign projects and all the
time you dedicated to us are priceless and what made us strong. We are
overwhelmed and happy that in 2016, the Free Software Foundation Europe
is carried upon thousands of shoulders. This is why we dedicate this
year to you, our Fellows, our community.
We will come up with some activities and stories for you as a thank you
during the year and in memory of our 15 years of existence. Let's start
this with celebrating the I love Free Software day on February 14 as
colourfully as possible. Join us in spreading love towards Free Software
and their developers[3]. And don't miss to already save the date from
September 2nd to 4th[4] as a core event in 2016. This is the weekend we
will organise our first FSFE summit - for and by you. More information
will follow.
== Document Freedom Day is given into the hands of the Digital Freedom Foundation ==
Half as old as the FSFE is our Document Freedom Day campaign, celebrated
for the first time in 2008 to oppose the adoption of Microsoft's OOXML
standard[5] - and then turned itself into an annual day to celebrate
Open Standards. During the years we had hundreds events all over the
globe, we have seen impressive artwork, inspiring comics and videos and
we have seen political parties, companies and non-profit organisations
using Document Freedom Day to let the world know about the power and
freedom of interoperability.
In 2016, however, the FSFE hands over Document Freedom Day campaign to
the Digital Freedom Foundation[6], the organisation that is best known
for organising the Software Freedom Day. This way, the FSFE sees the
potential to further broaden Document Freedom Day as the international
day of Open Standards and to further decentralise the campaign's
concept. This year, Document Freedom Day will be on March 30, 2016.
== MEPs vote for more Free Software in public sector ==
On 19 January, the European Parliament adopted in Plenary its own-
initiative report "Towards a Digital Single Market" prepared by the co-
rapporteurs Kaja Kallas (ALDE) from the Industry, Research and Energy
Committee (ITRE) and Evelyne Gebhardt (S D) from Internal Market and
Consumers Protection Committee (IMCO). The FSFE's policy team has
amended the draft report and is pleased to see that the final version
adopted in the Plenary includes several positive statements concerning
Free Software.
In particular, the report urges the European Commission and the Council
of the EU to increase the share of Free Software and its reuse in public
administrations as a solution to increase interoperability. The report
also promotes the security advantages of Free Software, and calls the EU
to commit to the increased use of Free Software in educational
establishments and public administrations. We hope that the European
Commission will follow the example of the Parliament and will implement
the recommendations to increase the use of Free Software in public
sector.
== Out of the community ==
Daniel Pocock blogs about the freedom to leave your phone offline or at
home[7], and argues why you should start with buying a watch.
-
Hook writes about his positive experience with switching to Let's
Encrypt certificates for his server[8] and comes up with some links for
more information to do it yourself.
-
Many of us feel sad these days about the loss of Ian Murdock. His
contributions to the world of Free Software and the Debian system are
without end. Daniel Pocock gathered some background, feelings and other
people's tributes to Ian Murdock on his blog[9].
-
Marcus Möller reports and gives a summary about Freedomvote[10] - a
successful 'ask you candidates' campaign that the FSFE Switzerland was
running for this years elections.
-
Erik Albers made his first experiences with FirefoxOS and asks Mozilla
to put freedom into FirefoxOS market place[11].
-
The FSFE group Berlin made a Free Software installation party and
liberated 23 PC's with Debian[12] that will be given to refugee
organisations and schools.
-
== What else have we done? ==
FSFE provided the European Commission input on setting priorities in ICT
standards and answered to the public consultation on the adoption of a
Priority ICT Standards Plan[13]. In order for the EU to achieve a true
digital single market that is interoperable and pro-competitive, there
is a need for standards that are open, minimalistic and implementable
with Free Software. Other points that have been risen are that a
reference implementation is published under a Free Software licence,
that all software developed with public funds is to be released as Free
Software, and that harmful licensing practices such as FRAND should be
avoided in the fields of software, internet and the web.
-
Together with April and several other organisations, FSFE signed a joint
disagreement against the partnership agreement signed between France's
ministry of education and Microsoft[14] about IT solutions in school.
The partnership revolves around teachers' training for mastering
Microsoft environment, the provision of a cloud ecosystem and an
e-learning platform which in total amounts to complete control of IT in
French schools under the supervision of Microsoft. With this agreement
the ministry is forcing schools and pupils to a particular proprietary
vendor.
-
FSFE had an assembly at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress[15] in
Hamburg, Germany, including 12 self-organized sessions and the
GNU/Burger[16].
-
Just before Christmas and the completion of the EU Data Protection
package, all members of the European Parliament received our e-mail
self-defense leaflet in their mailboxes. This way we wanted to remind
policymakers how important encryption is to everyone's right to
privacy[17].
-
== Take Action ==
In 2016 we have 15 years of FSFE and 5 years of I love Free Software
Day: Join us in celebrating Free Software by expressing your
appreciation towards Free Software developers on February 14[18]!
#ILoveFS
-
As every year, we will have a booth at FOSDEM and a lot of members of
our community will give talks or come to listen to talks. It is one of
the best chances throughout the year to meet many people from the FSFE.
-
== Good Free Software news ==
An amendment to the France's upcoming law for the Digital Republic that
obliges public administrations to publish the source code of its custom-
built software solutions[19] was adopted by France's parliament.
Meanwhile another French city, Grenoble, commits to Free Software[20]
that is said to help to increase citzen participation, to cut costs, and
facilitate the sharing of knowledge. Speaking of licences, family of
Free Software licenses has expanded by three new licences written by the
government of the Canadian province of Quebec[21]. This should encourage
the province’s public administrations to share their ICT solutions.
Thanks to all the volunteers[22] , Fellows[23] and corporate donors[24]
who enable our work,
your editors Polina Malaja and Erik Albers FSFE[25]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2001q2/000002.html
2. https://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100510-01.en.html
3. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/
4. https://wiki.fsfe.org/FSFE%20summit
5. https://fsfe.org/news/2008/news-20080220-01
6. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2016/news-20160122-01.html
7. http://danielpocock.com/do-you-own-your-phone-or-it-owns-you
8. http://matija.suklje.name/i-am-using-lets-encrypt-on-my-server-now
9. http://danielpocock.com/ian-murdock-police-brutality
10. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mmoeller/2015/12/15/freedomvote-a-summary/
11. http://blog.3rik.cc/2016/01/put-freedom-into-firefox-os-marketplace/
12. https://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipEvents/Berlin/2016-01-16-Free-Software-Inst…
13. https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160118-01.en.html
14. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20151203-01.en.html
15. https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/wiki/Assembly:Free_Software_Foundation_…
16. http://blog.3rik.cc/2015/12/fsfe-assembly-during-chaos-communication-congre…
17. http://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/?p=69
18. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/
19. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/france-parliament-source-co…
20. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/grenoble-commits-free-softw…
21. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/open-source-initiative-appr…
22. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.fi.html
23. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
24. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.fi.html
25. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
= FSFE Newsletter - December 2015 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201512.fi.html ]
== From the FSFE ==
== MEPs in support of our amendments ==
The European Parliamentary committees for Internal Market and Consumer
Protection (IMCO) as well as Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) issued
their joint own-initiative report based on the Commission's Digital
Single Market Strategy. FSFE's policy team analysed their report and
proposed changes to include standards that are open, minimalistic, and
implementable with Free Software, to integrate users' control over their
data and to make sure that the single open science cloud is implemented
with Free Software.
The report received more than 1000 amendments from Members of the
European Parliament (MEPs), several of whom supported our points and
proposed amendments. This shows increased awareness in the Parliament
towards the importance of Free Software in "cloud computing", big data
and standardisation, as well as in public sector. Shadow rapporteur
Cornelia Ernst even highlighted the need to address Free Software during
her talk in the joint meeting of IMCO/ITRE on 10 November. This month,
on December 14, the Parliament will vote for the final version of the
report.
Although the report is non-binding and the Commission is not obliged to
follow the Parliament's recommendations, the fact that our amendments
were supported by several MEPs is an important step. Especially in the
Parliament that is usually less receptive when it comes to the issues
concerning digital rights and Free Software.
== Germany passed law against compulsory routers ==
After three years of intensive lobbying by the FSFE[1] and other
organisations, the German Parliament as well as the second chamber, the
Federal Council, passed a law against compulsory routers but for free
choice of the user. This is an important step towards consumer
protection and fair competition of manufacturers. Free choice also
empowers users to take care of critical features like security or
privacy on their own preferred device. The law will become effective in
the mid of 2016 and should set an example across Europe. We will support
similar legislation wherever needed.
== Sony Rootkit makes headlines 10 years later ==
In the end of October FSFE reminded of the dangers posed by technical
restrictions on technology to promote everyone's right to tinker. As a
result, the topic got picked up by the press and the FSFE info page was
linked with at least a dozen articles from several big name news
sources. Our ex-intern Asa Ritz summarised[2] in his blogpost the media
coverage we received.
== What else have we done? ==
- FSFE president Matthias Kirschner gave a talk about the computer as a
universal machine[3] at Codemotion Berlin, and ran a workshop about
restrictions on technical restrictions at the "Open IT Summit"[4] in
Berlin. In a podcast, Matthias argued against a "non-military clause"
in Free Software licenses[5].
- FSFE community coordinator Erik Albers and FSFE legal team coordinator
Matija Šuklje participated at Copycamp Warsaw[6] to host a booth and
Matija to gave a talk about "Implications of the EU Copyright Reform
on Free Software".
- FSFE was present at FSCONS[7] in Goteborg, Sweden. Christian Kalkhoff
wrote about his FSCONS experience[8] in a blogpost.
- FSFE had its booths also at Open Source Summit in Paris[9], at
Linuxday in Dornbirn[10], Austria, at T-Dose in Eindhoven,
Netherlands, and at OpenRheinRuhr Oberhausen[11], Germany.
== Take Action ==
- If you like to meet us in person, you will meet members, staff and
community of the FSFE at our booth at FOSDEM[12]. And if you go to
this year's Chaos Communication Congress, #32C3[13], then do not miss
to pass by the FSFE assembly[14], participate in one of our sessions
or simply take a break in our "Free Software lounge".
- The FSFE Education team is redesigning its educational leaflet. If you
like to join or share ideas, feel free to participate on the wiki
page[15].
- The local group FSFE Zurich started a Free Software photo book to show
people that use Free Software. If you like, you can be part of it.[16]
- In our Free Your Android campaign we highlight the importance of
Replicant as a 100% free Android-based operating system. We are happy
to see that business grows, that start to sell phones with Replicant
pre-installed[17] and we hope there are more companies who follow this
example.
- If you like what we have done in 2015 and you like us to continue the
good work in 2016 or even grow stronger, then consider to support us
with a donation[18] or to become a sustainable member[19]. Funding is
crucial to our existence.
== Out of the community ==
- A new team got established: North Rhine-Westphalia is the biggest
state of Germany with currently three local FSFE groups. This month,
they had an inaugural meeting of a state-wide action group, the Team
NRW[20]. Besides coordination, the primary tasks shall be the
education of teachers[21].
- At the local meeting of FSFE Düsseldorf, Andreas Schreiber talked
about the open source strategy of Germany’s Aerospace Centre DLR[22]
and this event was picked up by the European Open Source
Observatory[23]
- After offering pre-flashed Libreboot Laptops at freie.computer[24] the
local group FSFE Zurich now decided to start doing Flashdays[25]
- Daniel Pocock reports about team building around SIP and XMPP
communication in Debian and Fedora[26], and Daniel has also written a
quick start to use Blender for video editing[27]
- Marcus Möller customised Fedora 23 in a Freed version[28], which
includes linux-libre kernel and Icecat webbrowser. All proprietary
firmware has been removed.
== Good Free Software News ==
At the *EU* level: the European Parliament calls upon the Commission for
the systematic replacement of proprietary software by verifiable Free
Software in all the EU institutions[29]. In *Italy*, the Italian
Ministry of Defence is replacing Microsoft Office with LibreOffice[30]
on 150,000 PCs in what is Europe’s second largest LibreOffice
implementation. Meanwhile, the second most important industrial city in
Southern Italy, Bari, is about to complete its transition to
LibreOffice[31] and the ODF. At the same time in *Switzerland*, the
council of Bern ordered the IT department to end its dependence on
proprietary software[32], and replace proprietary software by Free
Software solutions. The same example was followed in *Denmark* where the
city of Aarhus is requiring the use of open IT standards for all of its
future IT projects[33] in order to rid itself of IT vendor lock-in.
Lastly, recent study in *France* confirmed that country's administration
is still a large enabler of Free Software in France[34]. According to
the study, the Free Software market is growing on a linear trend and
will grow by 9% annually until 2020.
This was the final newsletter in 2015. Thank you very much for your
attention. You will receive the next newsletter in the beginning of
February 2016.
BTW: We are still experimenting with new ways and formats for our
newsletter. Please feel free to give us your feedback at
fellowship(a)fsfeurope.org.
Happy Christmas and a Happy GNU-year!
Your editors Polina Malaja and Erik Albers FSFE[35]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/timeline.html
2. http://blogs.fsfe.org/asawritz/2015/11/04/sony-rootkit-still-making-headlin…
3. http://berlin2015.codemotionworld.com/talk-detail/?detail=1958
4. http://www.gruene-fraktion-berlin.de/offener-it-gipfel
5. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/podcast-on-non-military-use-clause-in-gnu-gpl/
6. http://copycamp.pl/en/
7. https://fscons.org/2015/
8. https://blogs.fsfe.org/softmetz/?p=63
9. http://www.opensourcesummit.paris/
10. http://www.linuxday.at/
11. http://openrheinruhr.de/
12. https://fosdem.org/2016/
13. https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/wiki/Main_Page
14. https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/wiki/Assembly:Free_Software_Foundation_…
15. https://wiki.fsfe.org/Reasons_for_schools_to_use_Free_Software
16. http://freie.software
17. https://tehnoetic.com/tehnoetic-s2-phone-replicant
18. https://fsfe.org/donate/donate
19. https://fsfe.org/join
20. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1629
21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/wromey/2015/11/22/grundungssitzung-des-nrw-teams-der-…
22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1592
23. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/147875
24. https://freie.computer/
25. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mmoeller/2015/11/27/flashdays-are-coming/
26. http://danielpocock.com/building-teams-around-sip-and-xmpp-in-debian-and-fe…
27. http://danielpocock.com/quick-start-blender-video-editing
28. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mmoeller/2015/11/04/freed-ora-23-workstation-availab…
29. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20151110-01.en.html
30. http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500256578/Free-software-gains-ground-in…
31. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/146281
32. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/bern-council-demands-transi…
33. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/denmark%E2%80%99s-aarhus-in…
34. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/147785
35. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
= FSFE Newsletter - November 2015 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201511.fi.html ]
== FSFE to EU: Think global, go Free Software! ==
In the end of October, FSFE provided its recommendations[1] to the
European Commission’s Digital Single Market Strategy, a roadmap for
European policy in digital age aimed at bringing down regulatory
barriers between 28 different national markets. In particular, the
Commission has set goals to digitalise European industries, to develop
standards for “the cloud”, “the Internet of Things”, and big data, and
to further enhance digital education.
FSFE believes that Free Software will help the EU to meet the goals set
by the Commission. However, several barriers to unleash the full
potential of Free Software still exist: in particular unharmonised
exceptions to copyright protection, software patents, unrecognised
rights of users to modify their property, and the danger of standard-
essential patents in the standardisation. We ask EU legislators to
follow our recommendations and abolish the obstacles in the way of Free
Software.
== What the cloud is going on? ==
As a part of the Commission’s Digital Single Market, the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has been requested to
identify a detailed map of the standards required to support EU policy
in “the cloud”. Your co-editor blogged[2] about their confusing position
on Free Software in the ETSI’s Cloud Standards Coordination initiative.
== FSFE’s legislative push against compulsory routers inches forward in Bundestag ==
FSFE hired our German coordinator Max Mehl as a working student to stay
on top of the compulsory routers issue. So far the FSFE, together with 9
other civil and economic organisations, sent a joint letter[3] to
members of the German Bundestag to support the bill against compulsory
routers. Forcing consumers to use a specific router provided by an ISP
undermines free and fair competition of manufacturers. In addition they
are harmful to users’ security, privacy, and independence to use their
own preferred, secure, device.
The Bundestag will consult about the bill in November, and despite the
unanimous opinion of experts, consumer protectors, and politicians who
support the bill, some members of the Federal Council aligned against
it, and adopted technically inconsistent arguments of internet providers
and network carriers.
== Remember Sony rootkit? FSFE does ==
FSFE commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Sony rootkit fiasco on 31
October by posting a reminder[4] of how dangerous digital restrictions
are for user’s security, the freedom to tinker, and general purpose
computing. Before public outrage and lawsuits demanded retribution from
Sony, the rootkit had already infiltrated users’ computers, spied on
their listening habits, blocked third party software, slowed down
computer performance, created holes in user’s computer security, and
sent data back to Sony. This month FSFE reached out[5] to dozens of tech
and security journalists to team up and remind the public to protect
their digital freedoms and to be wary of digital restrictions, the same
kinds of restrictions that gave Sony access to millions of computers and
hundreds of thousands of networks.
== Get Active ==
Since last week was the 10th anniversary of when the Sony rootkit was
unveiled, spend a few minutes this month to share what happened back in
2005 with friends, family, or colleagues who have never heard of the
Sony rootkit. Sony rootkit provides a prime example of how companies
build in harmful restrictions into software to limit what consumers can
do with their own property.
== FSF’s 30th birthday finds cake, birthday wishes, and Swiss press coverage ==
In contrast to the Sony rootkit anniversary, there was also a positive
anniversary this month. On 3 October 2015 the Free Software Foundation
of Europe celebrated the Free Software Foundation’s 30th birthday[6]
with some delicious cake and many wonderful birthday wishes. Shortly
thereafter, FSFE President Matthias Kirschner spoke extensively[7] with
the largest Swiss newspaper about FSFE and the role of Free Software in
politics and the economy. Matthias’s interview complemented an
additional article[8] about Richard Stallman and Free Software activism.
== Zurich fellows offer Free Software computer ==
Fellows in Zurich started “Free Computer for Free People”[9], an
initiative to offer laptops that run completely on Free Software only.
This includes alternative firmware and free BIOS that are most often
proprietary on the majority of laptops and preclude users from
installing Free Software not authorised by the manufacturer. By reusing
used hardware, the Zurich Fellows also like to foster a sustainable use
of hardware.
== FreeRTC Mission Statement for Skype replacement ==
FSFE’s project to develop FreeRTC, that is, Real Time Communications, is
taking suggestions for how to improve their Mission Statement. The goal
is to make it as easy as possible to call other people and receive calls
from other people using solely Free Software, open standards, a free
choice of service providers and a credible standard of privacy. Sign up
to the mailing list[10] to follow the discussion and post your opinion.
== FSFE Executive Director Jonas Öberg reflects on his 1999 meeting with Richard Stallman ==
FSFE co-founder and Executive Director, Jonas Öberg reminisced[11] about
how he got involved in Free Software, including the details of his
influential trip to Boston as a 22-year-old in 1999. His story features
trips to Technology Square in Boston, attending the Free Software
Awards, and a commitment to Richard Stallman to “always be true to the
community.”
== Interview with Apache Software Foundation member, developer, and mother, Isabel Drost-Fromm ==
On 13 October, Paul Boddie commemorated Ada Lovelace Day (international
day of women in science and technology) by interviewing[12] local Berlin
resident and Free Software contributor, Isabel Drost-Fromm. Their
conversation covered technical topics (naturally), as well as advice on
managing expectations and building confidence for the transition to the
next generation of hackers, makers, and tinkerers.
Thanks to all the volunteers[13], Fellows[14], and corporate donors[15]
who enable our work.
Polina Malaja and Asa Ritz - FSFE[16]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. http://fsfe.org/activities/policy/eu/digital-single-market-comments.en.html
2. http://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2015/10/15/what-the-cloud-is-going-on-in-etsi/
3. http://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20151028-01.html
4. http://fsfe.org/activities/drm/sony-rootkit-fiasco.en.html
5. http://blogs.fsfe.org/asawritz/2015/11/04/sony-rootkit-still-making-headlin…
6. https://wiki.fsfe.org/FSF30Birthday
7. http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/digital/computer/Politisch-denkende-Menschen-ve…
8. http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/digital/computer/Politisch-denkende-Menschen-ve…
9. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mmoeller/2015/10/07/libre-laptops/
10. https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc
11. https://opensource.com/life/15/10/my-open-source-story-jonas-oberg
12. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=715
13. http://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html
14. https://fsfe.org/fellowship/ams/join.php?ams=join
15. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html
16. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html
= FSFE Newsletter - October 2015 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201510.fi.html ]
== FSFE elections and other news from Bucharest ==
At this year's General Assembly in Bucharest, the FSFE elected a new
leadership team for the next two years[1]. Reinhard Müller will continue
his role as Financial Officer while your editor will assume the role as
President, with Alessandro Rubini filling in as Vice-President.
Alessandro is an electronic engineer working on device drivers and
embedded systems. He was one of the first members of the FSFE and
recently joined again to support us in our work. The FSFE's former
President, Karsten Gerloff welcomed the change and wrote about his
future steps[2].
The city of Bucharest was already warming up to Free Software several
weeks before the FSFE's arrival, as Romanian public administrations were
invited by Rogentos Linux User Group to test out two GNU/Linux-
distributions[3]. This is a first step towards more awareness for
software freedom in the country's public administration. After the
General Assembly, we discussed this news and further collaboration with
Free Software contributors from Romania, especially with our friends
from Fundația Ceata, the Romanian foundation for Free Software and Free
Culture. We found out that they are looking for skilled designers to
contribute their ideas for a new logo for the foundation. So any graphic
artists out there who are willing to flex their muscles for a good cause
can find more information on their call for submissions page[4].
== FSFE’s evaluation of the EU Parliament copyright report ==
In July, the European Parliament adopted its recommendations for
copyright reform initially drafted by MEP Julia Reda, and the FSFE
released[5] its assessment of the final report that was approved in the
Parliament after considerable amount of amendments. While some
improvements exist in the Parliament's final report over current
legislation, there are enough problems that it should be reconsidered,
especially in regards to Free Software. In particular, the report fails
to adequately address Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) that can
still hinder the use of works that fall under copyright exceptions, and
it does not provide a possibility for software developers to contribute
their works directly to the public domain.
In the next step, the Commission will publish their proposal on
copyright reform sometime before the end of 2015. We ask the Commission
to take the copyright reform even further and ensure that no exception
to copyright should be ever limited by technological restrictions, to
provide for a fully harmonised set of exceptions, and to publish all
works that are publicly funded under a Free Software licence.
== Tidying up PDFreaders ==
While wrapping up our PDFreaders campaign[6] it is worthy to highlight a
few success stories in particular. Our German Coordinator, Max Mehl,
blogged[7] about the success of the campaign in German government. In
fact, the campaign was so successful, the German "Migration Guide" now
includes a titbit about us, saying "If PDF documents are provided
publicly authorities shall no longer only recommend Adobe Acrobat Reader
for displaying them, but for example use the HTML templates provided by
the FSFE on their websites for downloading alternative PDF readers", as
well as recommending officials to expand to Free Software as viable
alternatives.
The FSFE helped to bring out the best in Free Software PDF readers for
the private sector as well. Our very own Polina Malaja was able to catch
up[8] with our former PDFreaders campaign coordinator, Hannes
Hauswedell, about his conversation with Google back in 2011 about
releasing Pdfium software as Free Software. Finally in 2014, Hannes's
request came to fruition. Now, we are not saying our campaign caused the
Pdfium release, but we would like to think our campaign played a part in
it.
== Something completely different ==
- FSFE Switzerland, in cooperation with the Swiss Open Systems User
Group, sent out hundreds of letters to different political candidates
asking them to participate in their online questionnaire,
Freedomvote[9], as a way to collect candidates' opinions of various
digital issues that are sometimes overlooked like e-voting, open data,
Free Software, and data security. The results were posted online for
citizens to make more informed decisions about who they will vote for
on election day on 18 October.
- Paul Boddie interviews FSFE Fellow Nico Rikken[10] from the
Netherlands. Nico's background is in electrical engineering, and he
provides insight into open hardware and education policy amongst other
things.
- On 1 September the Parisian High Court reaffirmed that software
patents are illegal in Europe under the European Patent
Convention.[11] However, this success comes only as a silver lining,
considering that the plaintiff in this case was actually granted a
patent from the European Patent Office.
- According to Felix Greve's PhD thesis, the German constitution
requires vendor-neutral ICT standards to ensure interoperability in
public administration and elsewhere[12]. The current lack of
interoperability rules are a major barrier to the country’s uptake of
Free Software.
- FSF certified Taurinus X200 laptop[13] to respect users' freedom. It
also removes Intel's Management Engine (ME) which is a secret and
proprietary software that allows remote access to the computer over a
network, changing and upgrading the BIOS configuration, or wiping the
disk. ME has full access to the computer with a wide functionality and
could be a very useful security measure, but only if the owner of the
device has the ability to control it.
- Public Administration: The UK government publishes an authoritative
ODF guide[14] about integration of ODF with enterprise software in
public procurement, the Italian military is switching to LibreOffice
and ODF[15] making it Europe’s second largest LibreOffice
implementation, at the Debian Conference "DebConf15" the city of
Munich showed that they are a major contributor to Free Software by
sharing software solutions and best practices[16], and Open Forum
Europe's Karel De Vriendt provided insight[17] into the thinking
behind European Commission's call for tender concerning Microsoft
products that will further increase the vendor lock-in in public IT
sector.
- From the planet aggregation[18]:
- Daniel Pocock argues that the only way to avoid scandals like the
one with VW[19] in the future is to ensure everyone's freedom to
see and modify the source code in the equipment that controls our
lives.
- Dominic Hopf (now an official intergalactic diplomat) and new
Fellow Pascal Wittmann, organised a booth at a Software Freedom
Day (SFD) event in Kiel[20] and gave a presentation about F-Droid.
- On a wet day in Frankfurt, the FSFE booth made a splash among
visitors at the annual Rotlintstraßenfest who were eager to learn
more about software freedom. Guido Arnold provides more details on
this popular outdoor event.[21]
- Meanwhile FSFE Fellow Michael Stehmann summarised his SFD
experience in Cologne (in German)[22].
- Our Executive Director Jonas Öberg gave a rundown on the logistics
behind running a successful event[23].
- Carsten Agger was busy organising the LibreOffice Hackfest in
Aarhus[24].
- Tobias Platen criticises[25] just how allegedly "free" Purism
Librem computers actually are.
- André Ockers explains how concerned citizens in the Netherlands
convinced a Dutch government agency to use an Open Document
format[26], and
- Paul Boddie asks "Random Questions" about the Fairphone's source
code availability"[27].
== Get Active: Nominate people and projects for the Free Software Award ==
Often users do not realise that they are using Free Software. Sometimes
we need to explicitly state that fact. For instance the new upgrade of
WordPress[28] includes a tab with a reference to the GNU General Public
License and the four freedoms of Free Software, explicitly informing the
Wordpress community about the importance of freedom underlying their
software.
However, very often a lot of amazing Free Software developers and
projects out there do not get the recognition they deserve. Right now
the FSF is accepting nominations for the 18th annual Free Software
Awards[29] for people and projects who have improved the world using
Free Software. There are two awards, one for people who have advanced
the movement, and another for a project that has fulfilled a crucial
societal need through the use of Free Software. Please submit your
nominations until 1 November.
Thanks to all the volunteers[30], Fellows[31] and corporate donors[32]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner[33] - FSFE[34]
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150922-01.fi.html
2. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/09/18/please-welcome-fsfes-new-president/
3. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145574
4. https://ceata.org/comunicate/international-challenge-logo-for-ceata.html
5. https://fsfe.org/activities/policy/eu/20150918-Assessment-Of-The-Report-On-…
6. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html
7. http://blog.mehl.mx/2015/german-government-wants-authorities-to-advertise-p…
8. http://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2015/09/10/free-pdf-reader-for-the-web-browser/
9. https://freedomvote.ch/
10. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=672
11. https://www.april.org/en/paris-high-court-reaffirms-ban-software-patents
12. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145984
13. http://www.fsf.org/news/now-fsf-cerified-to-respect-your-freedom-taurinus-x…
14. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145658
15. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145784
16. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145626
17. http://www.openforumeurope.org/windows-dressing/
18. http://planet.fsfe.org
19. http://danielpocock.com/the-only-way-to-ensure-the-vw-scandal-never-happens…
20. http://blog.dmaphy.de/2015/09/how-to-travel-intergalactic-way-free.html
21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2015/09/fsfe-info-booth-at-rotlintstrasenfest-i…
22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1554
23. http://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=20
24. http://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2015/09/28/organizing-this-years-libreoffice-co…
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/tobias_platen/2015/09/22/why-i-wont-buy-the-libre/
26. https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/2015/09/26/why-we-convinced-a-dutch-government-ag…
27. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1129
28. http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/wordpress-brings-the-freedom-to-the-front
29. http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/who-is-improving-the-world-through-free-…
30. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.fi.html
31. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
32. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.fi.html
33. https://fsfe.org/about/kirschner
34. https://fsfe.org/index.fi.html