= FSFE Newsletter - March 2016 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201603.pt.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]
--
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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.pt.html
17. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
18. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
19. https://fsfe.org/index.pt.html