= FSFE Newsletter – January 2015 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201501.pt.html ]
== A revolution ==
The Earth has once again completed a full, customarily counted
revolution. Here at FSFE we have been busy throughout 2014, working hard
to ensure that users remain in control of their devices and that Free
Software may once compete on a level playing field for public tenders.
More information, including the extent of our limited success and our
future prospects, on both these issues and our other frontiers may be
found in our annual report for 2014[1], penned by our President Karsten
Gerloff[2].
In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of our activities in
2014, Karsten finishes the report with a sneak peek of the challenges we
are going to face and overcome in revolution 2015. For instance, we
intend to build on the success of the Free Software Pact[3] to spread
awareness about Free Software among both the elected representatives of
the European citizenry and the unelected bureaucrats of the executive
branch.
We also intend to invest more in our local volunteers and Fellowship
groups. We are hopeful that not only will we reach a wider audience and
have a greater impact with increased local participation, but this will
also be much more fun for everyone involved.
== Fellowship elections ==
FSFE has a bit less than 1500 Fellows[4] or sustaining members. In
addition to receiving certain benefits[5] useful for digital activists,
all of them have a say in the governance of the FSFE. This right is
exercised by electing[6] representatives to the General Assembly, the
highest decision-making body of FSFE. Your temporary editor will have
served his term as a Fellowship Representative by this spring, and hence
a new Representative will be elected by the orderly Fellows from
February 20th to March 6th 2015, 12pm.
Your outgoing Representative would like to take this opportunity to
invite all our Fellows to partake in the elections. The General Assembly
is responsible for making all strategic decisions for FSFE, and all
Fellows, whether true idealists or business-minded pragmatists, have the
same right to affect our future growth and direction, so please do so.
== EU: the good and the bad ==
On December 17, 2014, the European Parliament adopted the EU budget for
2015. We are very happy to report that thanks to the efforts of MEPs
Julia Reda (Pirates) and Max Andersson (Greens), the Parliament has
allocated up to a million euros to audit Free Software used by the
European Parliament and Commission. We hope that the institutions
concerned will closely work with upstream developers to best benefit the
public. We also welcome further allocations[7] that aim to allow equal
participation in the digital society.
Unfortunately, we must still call upon EU institutions to make use of
Open Standards and Free Software, as a recent study prepared for the
Greens/EFA has found[8] that the EU Parliament falls woefully short of
its democratic obligations to ensure transparency and openness. Among
other shortcomings the parliamentarians lack access to a standards-
compliant e-mail solution.
== Something completely different ==
- From the planet aggregation: Paul Boddie writes about the ‘ unplanned
obsolescence[9] ’ of early Fairphone devices, justifiedly arguing that
Fairphone's decision to overlook or deprioritize hardware support for
Free Software was unwise considering the abundance of information
available on the lack of hardware support for Free Software.
- Otto Kekäläinen writes[10] about password management while recognizing
that people are not storage media. Otto's piece is an excellent read
when taken with a pinch of salt.
- Nico Rikken contemplates the right to make bad choices in his piece ‘
Optional rights[11] ’.
2015 will bring a new etiquette to our Fellowship Planet. A proposed
draft will be presented to the Fellows for consultation at the earliest
convenience.
== Get active: spread free software ==
The gift giving season has just ended. No doubt you have a friend or
relative unfortunate enough to have been given a computer bundled with
non-free software as a gift. Help them install a free GNU/Linux
distribution or Replicant[12].
Thanks to all the volunteers[13], Fellows[14] and corporate donors[15]
who enable our work,
Heiki Ojasild[16]
Fellowship Representative, FSFE
--
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/2014/news-20141218-02.pt.html
2. https://fsfe.org/about/gerloff/index.pt.html
3. http://freesoftwarepact.eu/
4. https://fsfe.org/fellowship/index.pt.html
5. https://fsfe.org/fellowship/about/fellowship.pt.html#youget
6. https://fsfe.org/about/legal/constitution.pt.html#id-fellowship-seats
7. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141219-01.pt.html
8. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141212-01.pt.html
9. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=802
10. http://seravo.fi/2014/password-hygiene-every-mans-responsibility
11. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/optional-rights/
12. http://www.replicant.us/
13. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
14. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
15. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
16. https://fsfe.org/about/ojasild/index.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – December 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201412.pt.html ]
== More demand from the EU institutions ==
The new European Commission is currently setting the direction of its
policy making for the coming five years. The FSFE is in frequent contact
with Commission staff, who currently see open doors for Free Software in
Brussels. We want to make sure to use this momentum to push for changes
on software procurement, standardisation, and device sovereignty. So our
president Karsten Gerloff participated in several meetings.
In November the European Parliament (EP) organised a conference to
inform members of the parliament about the IT services available to
them. It featured a panel discussion led by Adina Valean, the new EP
Vice President in charge of ICT, with a contribution from Giancarlo
Villela, the director of the EP’s IT department. After the panel
discussion, Karsten got the chance to contribute a few brief remarks
about the EU institution’s live streams, DebianParl, and vendor lock-
in[1].
In the beginning of December Karsten was again at the Parliament, this
time at a workshop on “Open Standards for ICT procurement”[2]. The real
value of those events, as so often, was in the people who are there. The
workshop provided an opportunity for the small community pushing Free
Software and Open Standards in procurement to meet and share updates. So
in the future we can push together with them for positive changes.
== There is no cloud just other people’s computers ==
Another event Karsten participated in was the presentation of the report
on “cloud” computing and interoperability by the Brussels-based lobby
organisation ECIS’s. Karsten documented the meeting in his blog post
“Some common-sense recommendations on cloudy computing”[3].
Just a few days later our new “there is no cloud just other people’s
computers”-stickers arrived in our office[4]. We received lots of
positive feedback about the stickers, and now added them to our promo
packs[5]. We are planning to have some more merchandise with this slogan
ready for our booth at FOSDEM from 31 January to 1 February 2015 in
Brussels.
== Progress with “email self-defence” leaflets ==
Beside the new stickers, you can now also order new leaflets, to promote
our sister organisation’s “email self-defence guide”. Originally we
produced this leaflet in German for the annual Berlin “freedom not fear”
demonstration in September. Afterwards volunteers all over Germany
ordered[6] and distributed them. For example, one cinema gave out a
leaflet for everybody who bought a ticket for the Snowden documentary
“Citizienfour”. Meanwhile we had to reorder the German version for a
third time and since the end of November we have been sending out the
English version to Free Software supporters throughout Europe.
In the next weeks our translators[7] and designers[8] will finalise a
Chinese, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, and a Spanish version. For 2015
we want to enable local Free Software supporters to distribute this and
other leaflets at libraries, universities, schools, cinemas, companies,
restaurants and cafes, shops and in other places.
== FSFE’s translators: they are just awesome ==
This brings us to a badly needed thank you note. During the last 12
months we published the newsletter monthly. Two of the editions were
written by our volunteer Heiki ”Repentinus” Ojasild, so your editor
could enjoy his vacation. Our newsletter was available in 6 languages on
average (lowest 4 languages highest 9 languages). We had newsletters in
Albanian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese,
Romanian, Serbian, and Spanish.
Your editor is proud to work in a team with such dedicated volunteers.
They translate the newsletter, the leaflets mentioned above, plus other
FSFE news. They enable more people around the world to read about Free
Software in their mother tongue, and are therefore a crucial part of the
FSFE. So your editor would like to deeply thank our growing translators
team[9] for this important work.
== Something completely different ==
- The year is almost over, and it is reporting season. Our president
published a sneak preview of things we achieved in 2014[10] covering
our work on: public procurement, the Free Software pact, compulsory
routers, improving information material, informing about “trusted
computing” and “Secure Boot”, organising Document Freedom Day,
answering legal questions, as well as our participation events such as
workshops, panel discussions, or organising booths.
- In the last newsletter we asked you to help the FixMyDocuments
campaign. With the support they received, they have now compiled a
list of over 15,000 editable documents from the European institutions
not available in the Open Document Format[11].
- WhatsApp adopted a secure end-to-end encryption method developed for
the Free Software app TextSecure. Torsten Grote takes a look at what
that means for Free Software[12].
- Local events: FSFE had a booth at T-Dose in the Netherlands[13]. Our
Dutch Fellows organised the booth together, Kevin Keijzer gave a talk
about “Discrimination of Free Software (users) in education”, Maurice
Verheesen spoke about “Digital Sovereignty For Europe”, and Felix
Stegerman talked about the opportunities and dangers of the “Internet
of Things”[14]. Beside that, our Berlin group organised a booth at the
FiFFkon[15] at the Technical University Berlin.
- Guido Arnold published a summary of what happened in education
throughout Europe during October[16].
- The French Fellow Alexandre Keledjian published F-Droid-Web, a simple
and lightweight web interface to F-Droid server[17]. It provides an
easy way to add a new software repository to your mobile using qr-
codes, and to browse the F-Droid catalogue by name, category, summary,
license type, and description.
- From the planet aggregation[18]:
- Mirko Böhm, FSFE Fellow and KDE community member, wrote about why
you should support FSFE’s work[19], which in his words is: to
protect, explain, and organise the freedoms to use, study, share,
and improve software.
- Daniel Pocock questions if Amnesty is giving spy victims a false
sense of security[20]. In his post he provides a letter template
to sent to Amnesty.
- “EOMA68” is an open electronic interface standard, designed to
support the development of small computing devices. Nico Rikken
wrote why EOMA68 will advance both Free Software and free
hardware[21].
- Mario Fux explains how you can contribute as a non-developer to
KDE[22].
- Beside that we had some technical HowTos on the planet, including:
Kevin Keijzer who reports from his experience trying to install
Ubuntu without proprietary software[23].
- Hannes Hauswedell who wrote about how to encrypt cron’s daily mail
on FreeBSD[24]. His HowTo pertains to FreeBSD in particular, but
he is “sure all you GNUsers out there will figure out the
necessary changes”.
- Mirko Böhm who describes how to configure a gaming mouse on
GNU/Linux in a way that you can work and play at the machine[25].
- And Max Mehl who is now running his own Git (a decentralised
version control system) instance which also includes a script to
delete all meta data from PDF files in a directory[26].
== Get active: Get a smartcard and support us ==
Next year, we will push harder than ever to weave software freedom into
the fabric of our society. To enable us to intensify our work with the
European Commission, to let more people know about Free Software, and to
continue our other work we still need €190,000 for 2015[27].
As an individual the best way to support the FSFE’s work financially is
to become a Fellow (a sustaining member of the FSFE)[28]. All Fellowship
contributions directly benefit our work towards a free society.
Fellows receive a state-of-the-art Fellowship smartcard which, together
with the free GnuPG encryption software and a card reader, can be used
to sign and encrypt e-mails, to securely log into a computer from a
potentially insecure machine using SSH, or to store the user’s hard disk
encryption keys. Since the encryption key is stored on the card itself,
it is almost impossible to steal.
Thanks to all the volunteers[29], Fellows[30] and corporate donors[31]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
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://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/11/19/free-software-for-the-european-pa…
2. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/12/04/workshop-on-open-standards-for-ict…
3. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/11/14/some-common-sense-recommendations…
4. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/new-stickers-and-leaflets-no-cloud-and-e-mail-sel…
5. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.html#promo-material
6. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.pt.html#promo-material
7. https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.pt.html
8. https://fsfe.org/contribute/designers/designers.pt.html
9. https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.pt.html
10. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/12/01/preview-what-fsfe-did-in-2014/
11. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/110097
12. http://blog.grobox.de/2014/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption-federation/
13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/11/11/t-dose-2/
14. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/11/09/my-t-dose-talk-the-internet-of-things…
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/majestyx/2014/11/12/fiffkon-2014-leak/
16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/11/free-software-in-education-news-octobe…
17. https://github.com/dervishe-/f-droid-web/wiki
18. http://planet.fsfe.org
19. http://creative-destruction.me/2014/12/04/fsfe-needs-your-support-for-2015/
20. http://danielpocock.com/amnesty-detekt-false-sense-of-security
21. http://nicorikken.eu/blog/why-eoma68-will-advance-both-free-software-and-fr…
22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=257
23. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/11/16/installing-ubuntu-with…
24. https://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2014/11/04/encrypting-crons-daily-mail/
25. http://creative-destruction.me/2014/11/13/configure-your-gaming-mouse-on-li…
26. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/sharing-is-caring-my-git-instance/
27. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141203-01.pt.html
28. https://fsfe.org/join/join.pt.html
29. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
30. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
31. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – November 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201411.pt.html ]
== Munich: facts harder than fiction ==
The city of Munich runs Free Software on more than 15.000 workplace
computers and has saved over 11.000.000€ in return[1]. During the
migration to Free Software, they consolidated their heterogeneous IT in
51 places with 1000 IT employees and 22 IT departments. Despite these
challenges most users are happy with the migration and say they do not
want to switch back[2] (in German). And all of this happened in the
front-yard of Microsoft's German headquarters.
If you do not like the success of Free Software in Munich, what could
you do? You could play on emotions and spread rumours that the Munich IT
people are not taking the demands of regular users nor the executive
into account. Of course, you have to stay vague, hoping to bring out a
few of those voices that are always unhappy - but this is an easy way of
discrediting the progress already made. This is what happened in the
last months in Munich with remarks by the new mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD,
Social Democrats) and his vice Josef Schmid (CSU, Christian Democrats).
Some commentators have speculated about a connection to the fact that
Microsoft is now moving its headquarter from Unterschleissheim to
Munich, and Reiter claiming that he helped with this deal[3] (in
German). As Microsoft was the biggest tax payer in Unterschleissheim[4]
(in German), Munich will financially benefit by this move.
But they seem to have underestimated the success of Free Software in
Munich. IT experts from their own political parties raised their voice
to correct them[5] and others have uncovered their misleading
statements[6]. Thus, the comments by the mayors represent only
individual opinions. Munich's political support for GNU/Linux is strong,
and the money the city saves and will continue to save by using
GNU/Linux, LibreOffice/OpenOffice, and the Desktop from KDE counts
profoundly. If Free Software can even survive a smear campaign by the
mayors it shows that it is there to stay. Dear Free Software community:
/be proud and spread the word!/ But do not rest, the next attack will be
more subtle.
== EU wide Open Standards policy ==
But the answer to the inquiry includes another crucial point: the
problem with document formats. The Munich IT managers noted that, at the
beginning of their migration, the German federal states and the federal
government highlighted the importance of Free Software and Open
Standards, but afterwards never consequently went this path.
In Germany, the lack of a clear Open Standard Policy is a major blocker
for public administrations to use Free Software. In recent years, other
European Countries such as Great Britain, France, Italy, and Sweden have
done more to promote Free Software and Open Standards.
On the European level, the former Munich mayor asked the European
Commission to implement two measures to enable participation with Free
Software in EU projects[7]: First to have all document templates which
are available in Microsoft Office formats, also in Open Document Text
(ODT) format. Second that all presenter notebooks in the EU institutions
also have a program installed which can handle Open Document
Presentation (ODP) files. This was in 2011 and the European bodies have
neglected implementing Open Standard policies for a long time.
== Open Standard compliance checks ==
When intuitions decide on Open Standards policies, this is just the
first step. It is important to check this decision and to remind them
about it. In 2010 as a Document Freedom Day activity our Fellows in
Cologne and Bonn checked the German federal administrations after a
decision that they have to be able to receive, edit, and send back
ODF[8]. The FSFE found out that only 2 of 87 departments are conforming
to federal open document regulations. This highlights the importance of
being persistent and monitoring the implementation of such policies.
Check out this month's “Get active” item with a specific suggestion how
you can help with that within a few minutes.
== Something completely different ==
- We are currently looking for interns again, especially in preparation
of Document Freedom Day[9] but we also have general internship
positions open from early January[10]. When Max Mehl saw the news item
he published a summary about his internship with FSFE[11].
- Together with the Italian consumer association ADUC, and the Italian
group ILS, we asked[12] regulators to take concrete steps to protect
Italians from being forced to pay for software they do not want or
need.
- Local activities: Our Vienna group had their most active and
successful Autumn ever. Franz documented how they participated in the
three big events Software Freedom Day, the biggest German speaking
animal rights conference, and the Game City fair 2013[13]. Christian
Kalkhoff from our Munich group gave a presentation about the groups
activities at the GNU Hackers Meeting 2014. The video is now
online[14]. If you want to help with the organisation of the
LibreOffice conference 2015, Carsten Agger is still looking for
assistance, as our Aarhus group will help at the event[15].
- Spoiler alert: The last edition of the education news also mentions
the focus of the upcoming Document Freedom Day 2015[16].
- Public administrations: The German town of Gummersbach announced that
this summer it has completed its switch to GNU/Linux PCs[17],
England's Healthwatch switches to Free Software CiviCRM[18], and a
Free Software solution developed for the government of South Tyrol
(Italy) to automatically test government websites and services is now
also being used to probe sites of the region's tourism sector[19].
- Our sister organisation invites Free Software enthusiasts to the libre
planet conference 2015[20] in the US. Furthermore the nomination for
the 17th annual Free Software Awards is open[21], and you can send
your nominations before Sunday 16 November.
- Matthew Garret wrote a blog post on why he joined FSF's board[22]. But
some of the comments he received are really offensive, and your editor
hopes that Matthew can just ignore them. Related to this, your editor
recommends you reading the article “On the sickness of our
community”[23] by Jonathan Corbet. As always, if you have comments
about it send them to our discussion lists[24].
- From the planet aggregation[25]:
- Computers are entering the fashion field from multiple directions.
Current FSFE intern Michele Marrali wrote about MeshCon 2014, a
conference that connects fashion designer and technology
experts[26].
- André Ockers reports that the Dutch public broadcaster NOS moves
away from open standards[27]
- Matija Šuklje made his first commit to KDE and writes about FSFE's
Fiduciary Licence Agreement[28]
- Daniel Pocock reports positive results from Outreach Program for
Women[29]
- Hugo Roy explains how he wrote a new defensive publication for
ownCloud's file syncing encryption[30].
== Get active: Fix my document - ODF in EU bodies ==
The EU institutions still have a lot to do to remove barriers for Free
Software users. Together with Open Forum Europe (OFE) your editor had a
meeting with the IT responsible of the Commission, the Council, and the
Parliament about that. We discussed our letter on video format[31] and
the campaign “FixMyDocuments.eu”. This campaign was started by OFE to
help EU institutions to implement their decision to support Open
Document Formats[32] FSFE's volunteers already translated the website in
more languages, but now it is time for all of you to act.
We would like you to /find EU institutions who offer non-free formats/
on their website, without also publishing those documents in ODT, and
then submit them[33].
Furthermore OFE encourages and will support anyone who wants to use the
platform to cover other administrations.
Thanks to all the volunteers[34], Fellows[35] and corporate donors[36]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
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/node/106341
2. http://www.computerwoche.de/a/wohin-steuert-linux-in-muenchen,3043464,2
3. http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-11/reiter-muenchen-spd/komplett…
4. http://www.merkur-online.de/lokales/muenchen-lk-nord/unterschleissheim-umzu…
5. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/munich-city-council-shields…
6. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141016-01.pt.html
7. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/prasident-des-deutschen-stadtetags-an-europaische…
8. https://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100803-01.pt.html
9. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141017-01.pt.html
10. https://fsfe.org/contribute/internship.pt.html
11. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/my-internship-at-fsfe/
12. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141017-02.pt.html
13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/10/23/three-autumn-events-2014/
14. http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2014/2014-08--kalkhoff--fsfe--ghm.webm
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/10/22/announcing-the-libreoffice-conferen…
16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/10/free-software-in-education-news-%E2%80…
17. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/105069
18. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/104519
19. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/tyrol-government-shares-tes…
20. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/registration-opens-for-libreplanet-2015
21. https://www.fsf.org/news/the-free-software-foundation-opens-nominations-for…
22. http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/33455.html
23. http://lwn.net/Articles/615192/
24. https://fsfe.org/contact/community.pt.html
25. http://planet.fsfe.org
26. https://blogs.fsfe.org/puster/2014/10/14/meshcon-2014/
27. https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/2014/10/28/dutch-public-broadcaster-moves-away-fr…
28. http://matija.suklje.name/my-very-first-commit-to-kde
29. http://danielpocock.com/positive-results-from-opw-2013
30. http://hroy.eu/posts/owncloud-encryption-defpub/
31. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140326-02.pt.html
32. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/informatics/oss_tech/pdf/2011-07-25_ares.pdf
33. http://fixmydocuments.eu/?page_id=9
34. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
35. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
36. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – October 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201410.pt.html ]
== Italian Court supports unbundling of software and hardware ==
When buying a laptop, it can be difficult to avoid paying for a
Microsoft Windows licence since many laptops come bundled with one. This
“Windows Tax” has artificially increased hardware prices for Free
Software users who do not want to use Microsoft's operating system. We
as Free Software users want to support the development of Free Software
instead of non-free software like Microsoft Windows.
Since 2008 we maintain a wiki page with advice for consumers who want to
avoid funding the development of non-free software[1], and for over a
decade we talked with politicians and consumer protection organisations
about this topic. Nonetheless, there is only slow progress on the
subject, and it will take years to change this situation in Europe. For
such long term goals, reaching intermediate goals is important. Last
month we had such a victory.
Italy's High Court ruled[2] that a laptop buyer was entitled to receive
a refund for the price of the Microsoft Windows licence he was forced to
purchase with his computer. The judges sharply criticised the practice
of selling PCs only together with a non-free operating system as “a
commercial policy of forced distribution”. The court considered this
practice as “monopolistic in tendency”. It also highlighted that the
practice of bundling means that end users are forced to use additional
non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues,
whether they want these programs or not.
Now the Italian authorities have to turn this ruling into a real win for
consumers, by ensuring that computer buyers can choose their device with
any operating system they want, or none. Afterwards we hope that we can
convince other countries in Europe to follow the example set by Italy,
or that we find a European-wide solution to the problem.
== European public administrations using Free Software ==
Often there is a tendency in the media and also from us to concentrate
on the bad news about Free Software usage in the public administration.
In this edition, we will concentrate on good examples from last month
instead. So there is good news concerning Free Software office suites:
Austria's Bundesrechenzentrum, the federal government-owned computing
centre, praises the wide range of application uses of Apache
OpenOffice[3]. They appreciate that the “solution can be adapted to the
data centre's needs, integrated in its specialist applications and also
allows documents to be created and submitted automatically and semi-
automatically. OpenOffice is the standard office suite at the computing
centre since 2008, installed on 12000 PCs across the organisation.”
Furthermore, the public administrations of the Italian cities Todi and
Terni are switching to LibreOffice[4]. They follow the example of the
Italian province of Perugia, using LibreOffice on all of its 1200 PCs
and the Perugia Local Health Authority, which installed the office suite
on 600 PCs.
The French public administration is using a Free Software office suite
on 500,000 desktops[5]. Although they said switching to Free Software
was hard, they were able to handle the problems. The project's success
is partly due to two contracts the ministries have with ICT service
providers. The contracts entail support for 260 Free Software
applications, and the support team ensures that patches made for the
ministries are contributed back to the software projects.
The Greens in Saxony/Germany urge the federal state government to do a
feasibility study on migrating to Free Software[6]. “The political
group, free software users themselves since December 2011, say that
lower IT costs and advantages in IT security should drive public
administrations” to use Free Software. They argue that the dependency on
proprietary software “gives large corporations access to and influence
on official internal workflows, as well as sensitive communication and
data of the state's citizens.”
== Something completely different ==
- Even without the Windows tax mentioned above, you still have to find
out if the computer you want to buy works with Free Software. To
improve the information which hardware is compatible, the FSF and
Debian now cooperate to expand and enhance the hardware database
h-node[7] to help users learn and share information about computers
that work with Free Software operating systems.
- On our English public mailinglist a discussion about good metaphors
for Free Software is currently taking place. Hugo Roy started the
thread[8] with some examples. Alessandro Rubini had some critical
remarks, arguing against the metaphors mentioned[9]. He argues that if
we need a metaphor to explain Free Software to people, we need to
remain in the field of information, of knowledge that can be spread at
no cost. In a recent post Guido Arnold reported good experiences with
using the recipe analogy with children[10].
- On this year's Software Freedom Day several local FSFE groups were
involved: Edgar Hoffmann organised an info booth in front of the
Offenburg town hall, and a mini-community-conference with talks and
our Free Software quiz in the evening[11] (in German, but with lots of
pictures). Dominic Hopf, our Hamburg coordinator, gave a talk at SFD
event in Kiel about F-Droid[12], while Torsten Grote introduced people
to F-Droid at the Berlin SFD event. Also present at this event were
Nermin Canik from Istanbul and your editor to talk with people about
software freedom. Moreover, Michael Stehmann gave a talk about Free
Software and privacy at the SFD event in Cologne[13] (in German).
- From 13 to 15 October the FSFE will have a booth at Linuxcon in
Düsseldorf. As many Free Software activists will already be around
before, our Düsseldorf Fellowship group invites all Free Software
supporters to brunch on 10 October 2014 starting from 11:00 am at
bistro "Schwesterherz"[14], Bilker Allee 66, 40219 Düsseldorf. Thus, a
very active time for our local group there, after participating at a
cryptoparty for the Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of
Information[15] (in German) and organising a booth at Zackk street
festival[16] (in German).
- Guido Arnold summarised the outcome of FSFE's work shop in Essen, in
which we discussed best practices for doing advocacy work on a local
level[17].
- The Free Software developer Matthew Garret is “solidly convinced that
Free Software that does nothing to respect or empower users is an
absolute waste of time”. In his blog[18] he argues that we need to
design software from the ground up in such a way that those freedoms
provide immediate and real benefits to our users. In his opinion,
anything else is a failure.
- From the planet aggregation[19]:
- Guido Arnold reports from the Teckids workshops at FrOSCon9. More
than 60 children from 9 to 13 participated in three different
workshops about robots, python games and Blender[20].
- Max Mehl explains how to use Openstreetmap as default in
Thunderbird’s contacts[21] and how to access ownCloud contacts'
birthdays via CalDAV calendar[22].
- Henri Bergius reports from the status of the NoFlo development
environment[23], a user interface for Flow-Based programming.
- There are some steps you can take in order to avoid having to deal
with Microsoft Office files. However, in some cases you will be
forced to deal with them. Kevin Keijzer documented how to make the
best out of Microsoft Office files as Free Software user[24].
- Our current intern Michele Marrali wrote a blog post on how
patents, copyright and trademarks can be used to promote freedom
in Hardware projects[25].
== Get active: Give feedback about the User Data Manifesto ==
Version 2 of the User Data Manifesto[26] has been released. The aim of
this manifesto is to define the fundamental rights for users on their
own data in the Internet age: to control access to their data (and
metadata), to know how and where the data is stored and to be free to
choose a platform. Some projects are already working towards supporting
the manifesto to give their users these rights! At the moment, version 2
is published as a draft on a wiki allowing public comments[27].
We ask all Free Software supporters to give feedback on the manifesto,
so it can be further improved upon, and we can decide whether we want to
support it as FSFE. Please give feedback yourself, discuss the manifesto
on our discussion lists[28], and ask other Free Software organisations
for feedback and if they would support it in this form, too.
Thanks to all the volunteers[29], Fellows[30] and corporate donors[31]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
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://wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsTaxRefund
2. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140912-01.pt.html
3. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/103311
4. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/104084
5. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/103567
6. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/103307
7. https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-and-debian-join-forces-to-help-free-software-u…
8. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2014-September/010265.html
9. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2014-September/010295.html
10. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2014-October/010296.html
11. https://blogs.fsfe.org/fast_edi/?p=476
12. http://blog.dmaphy.de/2014/09/software-liberty-is-like-security-in-it.html
13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1258
14. http://www.bistro-schwesterherz.de/
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1227
16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1247
17. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/09/how-to-advocate-for-free-software-in-l…
18. http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/32686.html
19. http://planet.fsfe.org
20. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/09/teckids-workshops-at-froscon9-robots-p…
21. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/setting-openstreetmap-as-default-in-thunderbird-co…
22. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/birthday-calendar-with-owncloud-via-caldav/
23. http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/flowhub-kickstarter-delivery/
24. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/09/12/ooxml/
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/puster/2014/09/08/freedom-and-openness-in-hardware/
26. https://userdatamanifesto.org/2.0/
27. http://udm.branchable.com/index.en.html
28. https://fsfe.org/contact/community.pt.html
29. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
30. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
31. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – September 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201409.pt.html ]
== An Introduction to Free Software and the liberation of cyberspace ==
The freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly,
freedom of association, and privacy are essential preconditions for a
Free Society. If it lacks one of those freedoms, it is difficult to
maintain the others. As a society, it is important to defend those
freedoms, especially in light of fundamental changes such as the one
introduced by the ubiquity of computers. Such changes can threaten old
freedoms and can create the need for new ones. So now software freedom
is crucial to distribute and balance power in society. The FSFE is
convinced that a free society needs the freedoms which only Free
Software can offer. That is, why we advocate Free Software.
In 2010, we wrote the article "Democracy requires Free Software"[1],
explaining the message above to politicians at the ceremony at which the
Theodor-Heuss medal was awarded to the FSFE. Thanks to FSFE's
translators team, the article is meanwhile available in 15 languages,
and is shared widely.
Since last month, the message of the importance of Free Software is also
featured in a short TEDx video "Introduction to Free Software and the
liberation of cyberspace"[2] by Richard Stallman. It is a good way to
make others aware of the significance of Free Software and why it
matters. We need more people to understand why Free Software matters for
a free society, as the following examples will show once again.
== Slovakia still forcing users to use non-free software ==
In 2012 -- thanks to our former intern Martin Husovec -- the FSFE got
engaged in a case against the Slovak Tax Authorities[3] together with
the European Information Society Institute (EISi). As current FSFE
intern Matej Gera writes in his blog[4] the problem of Slovak
authorities forcing people to use non-free software is still ongoing:
According to a new regulation in Slovakia, people who own agricultural
land and want to sell it must make an offer on web page of the Ministry
of Agriculture first. In order to submit an offer to the Ministry's web
page, you need to use additional software. The software in question is
proprietary and only available for Microsoft Windows, and it is the only
way -- there is no paper form. If you would try to sell the land
otherwise, you would break the law.
This practice is not only unacceptable for Free Software users, but also
unlawful itself in Slovakia. Since 2008, there is a binding regulation
which forbids public authorities to request users to use a specific
operating system. But the website of Ministry clearly does not comply
with this rule. Now, the Slovak non-profit organisation EISi sent a
letter to Ministry of Agriculture, calling to end this practice. If they
will not comply with the letter and will not provide an interoperable
solution until October, EISi will go to court to protect rights of
Slovak software users.
== Forced by Internet Service Provider to use certain hardware ==
It should go without saying that in our society, we should be able to
freely choose technical devices for use in our homes like we choose the
furniture or the books in our shelves. But besides authorities forcing
us to to use non-free software, the FSFE currently also has to counter
companies who want to force us to use certain computers in our home. In
this case even one of the most important computers: the router, which
should act as the gatekeeper between our private network and the public
internet.
In Germany, Internet service providers (ISPs) force their customers to
use certain types of hardware in order to connect to the internet. Users
of alternative devices, instead, are not able to connect to the internet
by those ISPs. Together with other members of the Free Software
community, our German team wrote several comments on this case and we
entered talks with government agencies, corporations, and other
organisations about compulsory routers.
As this topic was mainly covered in Germany and in German, our German
team member Max Mehl summarised this case[5] and made a timeline of the
most important events which lead to the current state[6]. We hope that
with this information we can support other Free Software activists
around the world, who might face similar problems.
== Something completely different ==
- FSFE has received television coverage twice in the last months. First,
our legal coordinator Matija Šuklje was interviewed for the RTV
Slovenia to point out the challenges for the newly appointed
Information Commissioner of Slovenia related to cloud computing.
Although they translated the FSFE into "Foundation for unrestricted
programming", it was the first time for the FSFE to appear on
Slovenian television. Thereafter, our Austrian coordinator Peter
Bubestinger was in Mexico City at an archiving seminar, where he
presented use cases for file-formats and long-term storage implemented
in Free Software. The whole seminar was translated live into Spanish
and broadcasted on Televison Educativa, a nation-wide education TV
channel. They also uploaded the videos to youtube. Peter's
interview[7] can be found at 3h50m.
- Guido Arnold published some education news[8] covering a hacking
contest to find security holes in Moodle, Free Software activists
visiting schools in Slovakia, and other education related news.
- GNU community members and collaborators have discovered details about
a five-country government surveillance program codenamed HACIENDA[9].
Those same hackers have already worked out a Free Software
countermeasure to thwart the program.
- Equipped with free GNU Radio software, a group of citizen scientists
has contacted, controlled, and is attempting to recapture a 1970s-era
satellite and bring it back into an orbit close to Earth. The story
behind this[10] demonstrates the importance of developing,
maintaining, and promoting Free Software.
- From the planet aggregation[11]:
- Hugo Roy takes a look at what is featured in the European Court of
Justice's "right to be forgotten"[12]. As he found it difficult to
read, he wrote an alternate version of the directive. In another
post he explains why he helped the Free Software search engine
developer Pablo Joubert to publish a defensive publication[13]
around search engines making use of distributed hash tables.
- Our former intern Lucile Falgueyrac writes about why TTIP[14] CETA
entails a few reasons for Free Software advocates to get
angry[15]. She argues that now, there is a good moment to send a
strong message to the European Commission, the governments and
states that policy laundering is not a legitimate way to
legislate, and never should be.
- Our current intern Bela Seeger wrote a blog post about Off-The-
Record (OTR) Messaging[16], clarifying the meaning and
technicalities of "off-the-record" (OTR) messaging and giving
insight into the possibilities of implementing it in various
devices. (You might have noticed in this edition, that current and
former interns of FSFE are quite active!)
- Our Fellows participated at many events. Nikos Roussos writes
about his personal highlights of the Fedora Contributor Conference
2014[17]. He also mentioned the keynote about the Novena laptop
project, which was summarised on LWN[18]. Mario Fux and Mirko Böhm
report from the KDE meeting in Randa, with around 50 Free Software
activists improving KDE. To get some impressions from the meeting,
Mirko posted a short video from the meeting in Switzerland[19].
- André Ockers, who is currently updating and translating almost all
FSFE materials into Dutch, started blogging[20]. He writes in
English, Dutch, German, and French.
- Kevin Keijzer, also from the Netherlands, gives a detailed
overview of Free Software he is using[21].
- Daniel Pocock gives an update on WebRTC, explaining what works,
what does not[22].
- Matija reports from his free music expirement[23], highlighting
his favourite artists who are using Creative Commons licenses for
their music.
== Get active: Spread the word on Software Freedom Day ==
On 20 September 2014, people around the world celebrate Free Software.
The organisers from Software Freedom International announced that the
registration for events is now open. They provide a start guide[24] with
tips and pointers for organising your own SFD team event. If you
organise an event, or just want to spread information about Free
Software on Software Freedom Day you can also:
- order printed information materials from us[25]
- send around the FSF's e-mail self defence guide[26] which is now
available in 11 languages. (At the "Freedom not Fear" demonstration
our Berlin Fellowship group handed out a hundreds of printed leaflet
of the German version, which you can also order from us.)
- share Richard Stallman's video[27], or the article mentioned above[28]
to explain your friends Free Software.
Thanks to all the volunteers[29], Fellows[30] and corporate donors[31]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
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/freesoftware/society/democracy.pt.html
2. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/20140407-geneva-tedx-talk-free-software-free-…
3. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/eura-slovakia/eura.pt.html
4. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gera/2014/08/18/interesting-new-development-in-slovak…
5. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/routers.pt.html
6. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/timeline.pt.html
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggCvJ0dzqx4
8. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/08/free-software-in-education-news-july/
9. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-hackers-discover-hacienda-governmen…
10. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-in-space-gnu-radio-and-th…
11. http://planet.fsfe.org
12. https://hroy.eu/posts/whats-in-C-131_12/
13. http://hroy.eu/posts/intro-defpubs/
14. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2014/08/11/ttip-policy-laundering-a-few-…
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2014/08/11/ttip-policy-laundering-a-few-…
16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/seeger/2014/08/04/off-the-record-otr-messaging/
17. http://www.roussos.cc/2014/08/13/fedora-flock-2014/
18. http://lwn.net/Articles/608426/
19. http://creative-destruction.me/2014/08/28/the-kde-randa-video/
20. https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/
21. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/08/06/a-quick-overview-of-th…
22. http://danielpocock.com/webrtc-what-works-what-doesnt
23. http://matija.suklje.name/the-jamendo-experiment-week-1
24. http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide
25. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.pt.html#promo-material
26. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/volunteers-translate-email-self-defense…
27. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/20140407-geneva-tedx-talk-free-software-free-…
28. https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/society/democracy.pt.html
29. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
30. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
31. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – August 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201408.pt.html ]
== Privilege and Power ==
In the olden days a common citizen of a republic going about their
everyday business was quite, shall we say, free. While tending to their
chores they would occasionally need a new tool or some advice, but the
old Latin proverb /scientia potentia est/ dictated the limits of their
freedom to be the limits of their knowledge: if they needed a new tool
and lacked the knowledge to make it, they became dependent on the
toolmaker only to obtain the tool.
In the brave new world it is different: not only do we depend on the
toolmaker when we wish to obtain a new tool, but oft we remain dependent
on them forever after. In the olden days a hammer could be used both to
put stakes in the ground (or vampires) and nail planks atop the
vampire's coffin. Today, the customer buying a general purpose tool has
to pay twice for it: once to put stakes in the vampire and then again to
nail planks atop its coffin.
This is great if you happen to be one of the few toolmakers: not only
are they one of the few privileged to be in control of their own
property, but they have also stripped the rest of us of our rights and
have the power to command our tools and hence have the power over us.
Unfortunately, the privilege blinds them to the situation's
revoltingness.
Times have not been kind and, in addition to the revolting consequences
of failed regulations and cold, unjust, profit-oriented business logic,
we have been treated with a revelation after a revelation of agencies
and offices founded to protect us, and subsequently given an impossible
mission, preying on us. These developments, while despicable, can at
least be rationally understood.
However, it cannot be rationally comprehended why our /democratically
elected representatives/ would seek to entrench these unfortunate
encroaches on our rights, on their own rights. Yet many of them do: the
European Commission is refusing to break Microsoft's stranglehold on the
EU[1] and, as an even more deeply unsettling development, the
Communications Committee of the UK parliament's House of Lords has
proposed to end anonymity on the Internet[2].
If the danger to privacy and freedom were not so grave, the latter's
technical ineptitude and arguments utterly unsuitable to the birthplace
of liberalism would be highly amusing. Yet the danger posed by people
who have been corrupted by power or greed is real and our resolve to
confront that danger with more decentralization, security, privacy, and
anonymity must become ever greater.
== We are all Targets ==
According to new revelations[3] from early July pretty much anyone in
the technological community is a target for surveillance. Among other
activities we have been, or will be picked out, for visiting the Tor
website[4], reading the Linux Journal[5], connecting to Mixminion
anonymous remailer service[6], and downloading Tails[7], a privacy-
sensitive GNU/Linux distribution. These sobering facts ought to be
remembered every hour, every day. In the end our greatest weapon is
developing and promoting projects that will one day land people
interested in them on that very same list.
== Something Completely Different ==
- FSFE will have a booth at FrOSCon[8], where our Vice President
Matthias Kirschner[9] will also give a talk[10] on the demise of the
general purpose computer.
- Our President Karsten Gerloff[11] writes about evaluating Free
Software for procurement[12].
- Hugo Roy[13], our Deputy Legal Coordinator writes about defensive
publications and his work for the Open Invention network[14] at his
blog.
- Matthias writes at his Fellowship blog about the invisible tasks[15]
that are being attended to by Reinhard Müller[16], our Financial
Officer.
- Guido Arnold, our Education Team Coordinator, has finished composing
his collection of Free Software in Education News for June[17].
- From the planet aggregation:[18] Kevin Keijzer writes about
receiving TV using a DVB-T USB dongle[19]. For our more
adventurous readers we suggest tuning the receiver to 1090 MHz and
obtaining an overview of the local civilian air air traffic as
reported by ADS-B transmitters on the aircraft.
- Sergey Matveev reports on the GoVPN daemon[20] he wrote in the Go
programming language.
-
== Get Active! ==
1. Use and spread the word about GnuPG[21], Off-the-Record
messaging[22], Tor[23], cryptsetup[24], HTTPS Everywhere[25], Privacy
Badger[26] and other privacy-enhancing Free Software.
2. If you can write code and understand a bit of computer science, find
a cool privacy-or-anonymity-enhancing concept in a scientific journal
and make it come alive.
We thank all our volunteers[27], Fellows[28], and donors[29] who make
our efforts possible,
Heiki Ojasild[30] – FSFE
--
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/2014/news-20140708-01.pt.html
2. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ldcomuni/37/3704…
3. http://www.wired.com/2014/07/nsa-targets-users-of-privacy-services/
4. https://www.torproject.org/
5. http://www.linuxjournal.com/
6. http://mixminion.net/
7. https://tails.boum.org/
8. https://www.froscon.de/en/home/
9. https://fsfe.org/about/kirschner/kirschner.pt.html
10. http://programm.froscon.de/2014/events/1321.html
11. https://fsfe.org/about/gerloff/gerloff.pt.html
12. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/07/03/evaluating-free-software-for-procu…
13. https://fsfe.org/about/roy/roy.pt.html
14. http://hroy.eu/posts/intro-defpubs/
15. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/an-invisible-part-of-the-free-software-foundation-…
16. https://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows/reinhard
17. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/07/free-software-in-education-news-june/
18. http://planet.fsfe.org/
19. http://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/07/17/watching-dvb-t-without-…
20. http://blogs.fsfe.org/stargrave/archives/122
21. https://www.gnupg.org/
22. https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/
23. https://www.torproject.org/
24. https://code.google.com/p/cryptsetup/
25. https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
26. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
27. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
28. https://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
29. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
30. https://fsfe.org/about/ojasild/ojasild.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – July 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201407.pt.html ]
== Privacy café: e-mail encryption as the main course! ==
Imagine you take some friends to a café, but instead of hot and cold
beverages, the menu features information on measures of ensuring digital
privacy. Like "https everywhere" as a starter, "GnuPG e-mail encryption"
for the main course, and "tosdr.org" (information about terms of
services) as dessert. Such cafés already exist in the Netherlands. At
the German speaking FSFE meeting in Essen, Felix Stegerman, our Deputy
Coordinator Netherlands, presented his plans to set up more privacy
cafés and why he thinks it is the right time and a good opportunity for
Free Software to do so in other places as well.
The reason is that most of the people that go to a privacy café are
already aware of issues around privacy and freedom. But it gives local
volunteers a good opportunity to talk about Free Software, and the
importance of using Free Software for privacy issues. For example, by
asking the participants "who controls the software?" Read Felix's blog
post for more details about the cafés and future plans[1].
== E-mail self-defence goes multilingual ==
Good information material about encryption and Free Software is crucial
for the privacy cafés just mentioned. Fortunately, our sister
organisation, the FSF, published the e-mail self-defence guide[2] and
volunteers translated the guide and the infographic in 6 other
languages: English, German, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Russian,
Turkish, and Japanese. This guide explains the installation of the
necessary programs for e-mail encryption under GNU/Linux, MacOS, and
Microsoft Windows as well as the key generation, the web of trust and
the usage of those programs. All you need is a computer with an Internet
connection, an email account, and about half an hour. For information
how you can help to spread information about e-mail self-defence, see
this edition's "get active" section.
== What to use instead of WhatsApp and Threema? ==
"How can I encrypt my e-mail" was one of the most common questions we
received in the last months. Thanks to the e-mail self-defence guide we
now have a good answer. Another questions about encryption and privacy
we were asked frequently was: "is there a secure and free WhatsApp
alternative?"
WhatsApp is a messaging program for mobiles that allows you to send
(text) messages free-of-charge. After WhatsApp's recent acquisition by
Facebook and in the face of the NSA revelations, many WhatsApp users are
looking for secure and trustworthy alternatives.
Because this effects so many people, we at the Free Software Foundation
Europe would like to be able to promote an alternative that respects
your freedom and privacy. Therefore we decided to do some research and
to hold a workshop on WhatsApp alternatives during our latest FSFE team
meeting in Essen. Hannes Hauswedell and Torsten Grote summarised the
results[3].
== Something completely different ==
- Local group activities: FSFE had professional outdoor booths at the
vegan summer festival in Vienna[4], as well as at Corso Leopold in
Munich[5]. At the Free Software meeting in Athens FSFE's our local
group discussed how to build your own home server. Nikos Roussos
documented how to setup a home server with Fedora and Beagle Bone
Black[6]. Our local group in Frankfurt focused on crypto topics[7],
and Hugo Roy, coordinator of local group in Paris, gave a talk at the
local Ubuntu party[8].
- "Free Software needs a strong community. If we fail to attract
everyone willing to work for Free Software, we’re shooting ourselves
in the foot." wrote Karsten Gerloff in his blog post "Four social
rules for a 'No Asshole Zone'"[9]. Our local group coordinators have a
similar discussion, and started with a code of conduct for FSFE's
discussions[10]. We are interested in your feedback on the pad.
- The Free Software community now has 33 supporters in the European
Parliament. All of them signed the Free Software pact for the European
elections[11], and we are sure there will be times in which we will
remind them of the promise they have given, and ask them to support
our cause.
- Our president Karsten Gerloff was delivering a keynote at the European
Christian Internet Conference[12]. Afterwards he was asked by a pastor
to comment on a draft strategy to move the churches in his region
towards Free Software, which Karsten did[13].
- From 7 to 8 June 2014 Fundația Ceata, an associated organisation of
FSFE, organised the second Coliberator conference in Bucharest. At the
first edition FSFE president Karsten Gerloff gave the keynote, and at
this edition it was the Richard Stallman, president of FSF. The first
batch of talks are already published on the conference's website[14].
- Guido Arnold provides the news from Free Software in education - May
2014[15].
- Public administration: Joinup reports that the complexity of
proprietary software licences is encouraging the uptake of Free
Software in the Greater London Authority[16], that the Extremadura
health care has switched to Free Software[17], and that the German
city of Leipzig already migrated 2792 of the city's 4300 workstations
to the Free Software office suites Apache OpenOffice and
LibreOffice[18]. They expect "that in the first five years the
anticipated savings will be swallowed by the exit costs associated
with the proprietary software used by the city."
- From the planet aggregation[19]:
- More female speakers at the conference and ATMs running GNU/Linux.
Torsten was giving a talk about Free Your Android at FISL in
Brazil[20].
- Under the slogan "your data at the intelligence services" the
German Humanistische Union organised a "blog parade", asking
organisations to participate with a blog post. Erik Albers wrote a
post "Protection against surveillance through encryption with Free
Software" (in German)[21].
- The Randa Meetings, a collection of sprints that make KDE software
better needs your help for this year's edition. Mario Fux asks
everyone to spread the word, help, donate and/or support them[22].
- Hugo Roy lists some "awesome tools" he uses but are little
known[23].
- Bdale Garbee wrote about TeleGPS, an easy-to-use tracking-only
board providing GPS location[24].
- Photography: Hannes started to publish a photo of the month[25],
edited with the Free Software Darktable, and Paul Boddie explains
how he was tuning digiKam’s picture previews[26].
- Björn Schießle describes how to integrate the todo list software
"ToDo.txt" into Claws Mail[27].
- Former FSFE employee Sam Tuke explains how to backup multiple
e-mail accounts automatically on GNU/Linux[28].
== Get active: Spread the e-mail self-defence guide! ==
The FSF's e-mail self-defence guide[29] and the corresponding
infographic[30] is good material to explain e-mail encryption to wider
audience. For some time now FSFE ships Free Software information
materials to activists[31]. Beside general information about Free
Software, Open Standards, Digital Restrictions Management, or F-Droid,
we would like to distribute the infographic in future.
Before we print a larger amount and ship it to our local groups[32] and
other activists around Europe, we would like you to test the
infographics with friends, family and colleagues. Try to find out if
they have problems understanding some parts and use our public
discussion lists[33], so that we--together with our sister organisation
--can modify them if necessary.
Thanks to all the volunteers[34], Fellows[35] and corporate donors[36]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
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://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/07/01/workshop-on-privacy-and-free-software/
2. https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/
3. http://freedom-blog.net/2014/06/what-to-use-instead-of-whatsapp-and-threema/
4. https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/06/11/booth-on-the-vegan-summer-f…
5. http://www.softmetz.de/2014/06/14/freie-software-offene-standards-und-freie…
6. http://www.roussos.cc/2014/06/23/fedora-beaglebone-black/
7. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/06/report-from-fellowship-meeting-in-fran…
8. https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2014/05/talk-about-the-fsfe-ubuntu-party-2014/
9. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/06/06/four-social-rules-for-a-no-asshol…
10. https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/CodeOfConduct
11. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140528-01.html
12. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/06/30/talking-to-the-church-about-free-…
13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/06/30/free-software-in-the-church-from-…
14. http://coliberator.ro/
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/06/free-software-in-education-news-may/
16. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/london-complex-proprietary-…
17. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/extremadura-health-care-has…
18. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/leipzig-switching-open-sour…
19. http://planet.fsfe.org
20. http://blog.grobox.de/2014/liberte-seu-android-at-fisl15/
21. https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/06/20/verschluesselung-mit-freier-software/
22. http://www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2014/index.php
23. http://hroy.eu/tips/awesome-tools/
24. http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/TeleGPS_v1.0.html
25. https://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2014/07/01/photo-of-the-month-2014-07/
26. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=784
27. http://blog.schiessle.org/2014/06/10/combine-claws-mail-with-todo-txt/
28. http://samtuke.com/2014/06/backup-multiple-email-accounts-automatically-on-…
29. https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/
30. https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/infographic.html
31. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.pt.html#promo-material
32. https://fsfe.org/about/localteams.pt.html
33. https://fsfe.org/contact/community.pt.html
34. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
35. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
36. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – June 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201406.pt.html ]
== Security is interdependent: We are all Gmail users now ==
You care about privacy and you are either paying an e-mail provider, or
even run your own mail server to keep autonomy, control, and privacy
over your email. You do this because you want to make sure that no big
company has copies of all of your personal email. Still, this does not
prevent other companies from getting their hands on your data. It is not
enough to merely take care of your own security, if you seek to increase
your security. You have to convince your peers to increase their
security, too: like Jacob Appelbaum says, security is interdependent[1].
FSF board member Benjamin Mako Hill wondered how much of his email has
ended up in the hands of companies such as Google. So he wrote a small
program to go through all his email since April 2004 (when Gmail was
introduced) and analyse it. Read what Benjamin found out[2], what
results FSFE's Karsten Gerloff[3] and Hugo Roy[4] got when they
reproduced it, and why not try those scripts out for yourself?
== Is it a torch light or a spy in your pocket? ==
A lot of programs that people install on their Android devices violate
their security. It is common that those programs ask users to accept
non-readable terms and conditions, once installed they might reveal
where the device (and therefore the user) currently is, and access
personal data like user's address books or text messages. A seemingly
innocent app such as a torch light can thus violate the user's privacy.
For owners of mobile devices it is important to have an app store that
exclusively provides Free Software. Since this means that the source
code can be checked by external parties other than the vendor, they can
check what an app really does, and highlight or directly remove anti-
features. The result is a repository providing software with licenses
that respect the user's rights instead of violating them.
In the last months we experienced that more and more people care about
the software on their mobile devices. Your editor summarised what is
currently happening with Free Your Android[5], including promotion in
Greece, updating and translation status of our F-Droid leaflets, an
interview with the F-Droid developer, and your editor participating in
an event about consumer protection in the mobile phone sphere in the
German Parliament.
== Another security nightmare: DRM ==
After a possible setback for DRM in Europe[6] it is important to raise
more awareness about this issue. We cannot stay quiet while some
companies use Digital Restriction Management to write their own
copyright laws, restrict us, and decrease our IT security. Many
organisations including EFF[7], April, and us participated in the Day
Against DRM[8], organised by FSF to highlight the dangers of DRM. The
FSFE used the occasion to contact the European Commission with an Open
Letter about DRM in HTML5[9]. We explained that DRM is directly contrary
to the interests of the vast majority of Internet users everywhere.
Just a few days later the Free Software community received the bad news
from Mozilla: DRM will be implemented in Firefox (the part is called
EME). The reactions ranged from the FSF condemning the partnership
between Mozilla and Adobe[10], Mozilla justifying its decision[11],
others supporting it[12], and Glyn Moody criticising them by comparing
Mozilla's mission with its current action[13]. As always we are
interested in your opinion. What do you think about Mozilla's decision
and its reasoning? What can the Free Software community do to
counterbalance this move? Let us know on our public discussion list[14].
== Something completely different ==
- FSFE's country team Netherlands wrote a short text "The Importance of
Free Software"[15] (also available in Dutch[16] ) about the relevance
of Free Software and its conclusions for policy makers. The text
highlights the crucial question for our society about "who controls
the software?". "Because if we don't control the software we use, it
controls us. And whoever controls the software therefore controls us."
The text then was used to convince candidates to sign the Free
Software Pact[17] - a project run by April[18] and supported by many
organisations, including the FSFE.
- Fellowship Groups: After two years as a Fellowship representative in
FSFE's GA, Nikos Roussos now started local FSFE meetings in
Athens[19]. Furthermore we had a first Fellowship meeting in
Wiesbaden[20]. In addition, new groups are establishing regular
meetings since a while now in Zurich and Cologne.
- Our sister organisation, the FSF, awarded the Respects Your Freedom
(RYF) certification to the Tehnoetic TET-N150 wireless USB
adapter[21]. The RYF certification mark is awarded to products that
meet the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the
product, and privacy. Visitors of FSFE's booth at FOSDEM might already
know those adapters, as Tiberiu C. Turbureanu sold them at our booth.
- From the planet aggregation[22]: Carsten Agger explains what the
result of the Danish referendum on the European patent court and
the unitary patent means for software patents[23].
- Leena Simon published an essay about the importance of
attributions and the flow of information named "Standing on the
Shoulders of Free Culture"[24].
- Your editor wrote about the Novena hardware computing platform for
hackers and Free Software drivers[25] and documented how to
generate a new wifi password the mobile friendly way[26].
- Henri Bergius spent three days at the GNOME Developer Experience
hackfest working on the NoFlo runtime for GNOME[27].
- Mario Fux wrote that Debian's KDE community needs help[28].
- Our new intern Bela Seeger[29] as well as long term Fellow Paul
Adams[30] report from Linuxtag in Berlin.
- While Konstantinos Boukouvalas wrote about LPI affiliates,
openLabs and OSCAL, as well as the Albanian Free Software
Community[31].
-
== Get active: Your experiences with programming resources for children ==
Beside publishing the monthly Free Software in education news[32] our
education team answers a lot of question by people who want to use more
Free Software in education.
As the edu-team was asked for good resources to teach kids to program,
Guido Arnold thought the answer (or more a summary of the answers) might
be interesting to others as well. So he published the summary[33]. To
improve our education website we ask you to give us feedback on those
resources. How do you like them, did you already have experience with
some of them, what was good, where did you have problems, and which
resources did we miss?
Thanks to all the volunteers[34], Fellows[35] and corporate donors[36]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
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://www.roussos.cc/2014/05/14/our-privacy-is-interdependent/
2. http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all…
3. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/05/27/were-all-gmail-users-now-pt-2
4. http://hroy.eu/posts/gmail-most-email/
5. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/consumer-protection-for-mobiles-is-it-a-torch-lig…
6. http://lwn.net/Articles/584167/
7. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/how-drm-harms-our-computer-security
8. http://www.defectivebydesign.org/thanks-for-a-great-international-day-again…
9. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140506-01.pt.html
10. https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-condemns-partnership-between-mozilla-and-adobe…
11. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mission-and-w3c-eme/
12. https://leomca.github.io/2014/05/15/Mozilla-and-DRM.html
13. http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2014/05/whither-mozilla/in…
14. https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/05/07/the-importance-of-free-software/
16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/05/07/het-belang-van-vrije-software/
17. http://freesoftwarepact.eu
18. http://www.april.org/
19. http://www.roussos.cc/2014/04/30/athens-free-software-monthly-meetups/
20. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/05/report-from-the-first-fellowship-meeti…
21. https://www.fsf.org/news/tehnoetic-wireless-usb-adapter-now-fsf-certified-t…
22. http://planet.fsfe.org
23. https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/05/26/elections-14-not-much-to-celebrate/
24. http://leena.de/standing-on-the-shoulders-of-free-culture/
25. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/support-hardware-computing-platform-for-hackers-a…
26. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/how-to-generate-a-new-wifi-password-the-mobile-fr…
27. http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/flowhub-gnome-dx/
28. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=231
29. https://blogs.fsfe.org/seeger/2014/05/23/linuxtag-2014/
30. https://blogs.fsfe.org/padams/?p=303
31. http://blogs.fsfe.org/boukouvalas/?p=556
32. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/05/free-software-in-education-news-april/
33. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/05/teach-programming-with-free-software/
34. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
35. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
36. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html
= FSFE Newsletter – May 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201405.pt.html ]
== Heartbleed and economic incentives ==
You probably heard about the bug in the Free Software OpenSSL nicknamed
"heartbleed". The FSFE already welcomed the industry initiative to fund
critical Free Software projects[1], and the topic was discussed in
several blog articles on the planet: Sam Tuke wrote about his
impression[2], Hugo Roy shared an XKCD comic explaining how heartbleed
works[3], and Martin Gollowitzer wrote about what the Heartbleed bug
revealed to him[4] about StartSSL certificate authority.
But your editor is convinced that the main problem is not OpenSSL. It is
not Free Software. It is about companies not taking responsibilities and
about missing economic incentives to ensure security. Security expert
Bruce Schneier wrote in 2006[5]:
"We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology,
but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: The
people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the
costs of failure."
In a nutshell, if your private data is exposed because your health
insurance, where it is stored, did not take care to secure it, you
suffer to a much higher degree than the health insurance does! You are
in no position to preasure the health insurance to change its level of
security, and they have no economic incentive to do so. In the article
Schneier further explains that the liability for attacks is diffuse and
that "the economic considerations of security are more important than
the technical considerations".
Following the argument, the important question we face is, how can we
give the right economic incentives to ensure that: security relevant
software has the proper funding; third parties are auditing code; more
people are trained in computer security; programmers have time for
maintenance and are not forced to just develop new features; we have a
diversity of software[6] for different special purposes and therefor
prevent software monocultures[7]; companies run secure software instead
of just giving people a good feeling by performing a security theatre or
by delegating responsibility to others (for example the government), so
they can be blamed if there is a problem, and that also the security
interest of private users is fulfilled and not just those of big
cooperations.
In the FSFE we thought about how to give good economic incentives for
Free Software development from the beginning, and now we have to think
more about economic incentives to increase security. It is a difficult
area, so we are looking forward to your comments on this topic and
invite you to discuss it on our public mailing lists[8].
== Internet Censorship and Open Standards ==
Local elections scheduled across the country for the following day, the
government blocking both YouTube and Twitter, and the usage numbers of
the Free Software anonymity software Tor doubling during the week. Is
there a better time for the FSFE's President to go to this country? At
the annual conference of the Turkish GNU/Linux Users Association in
Istanbul Karsten Gerloff talked about the relationship between
technology and power, and made it to the front page of a national
newspaper by mentioning who sold the software to block the internet.
Karsten wrote a summary of his talk and his journey in his blog[9].
The talk would not have happened without our Turkish volunteer Nermin
Canik, who encouraged us to attend the conference. Nermin has been
working steadily and reliably as a volunteer for a couple of years now.
Together with other volunteers she organised Document Freedom Day[10]
(DFD) events in Turkey. This year, although as mentioned above it was a
hard time for people in Turkey who care about freedom, they accomplished
7 events in Istanbul, Ankara, Çayırova, Denizli, and Adana.
Have a look at the Document Freedom Day 2014 Report[11] to find out what
happened in Turkey and around the world during that day. The report
includes lots of pictures ranging from children celebrating DFD at
school, the new leaflets, comic, and t-shirts, as well as the very
delicious looking cakes. Thanks to our Turkish translator[12] Tahir Emre
and our leaving intern Matti Lammi the report and the whole DFD website
are also available in Turkish and Finnish.
== Something completely different ==
- The German association Teckids e.V.[13] offers workshops for 10 to 16
year olds to build robots with different sensors (light, sound, or
ultrasonic) and program them to do cool things by using Free Software.
Your editor was delighted to see that in those workshops teenagers
teach other teenagers how to tinker with Free Software[14]. More news
about education are covered by Guido Arnold in the Free Software
education news[15].
- News from the public administration: The government of Galicia
recommends use of Open Document Format[16] and a school in
Villmergen/Switzerland is satisfied with Free Software[17] as they can
now invest more money in education.
- 143 of the politicians newly elected in France's municipal elections
have pledged their support for Free Software. They all signed the Free
Software Pact by the French Free Software organisation April[18]. The
FSFE congratulates them for the good job. Please notice that this
month's "Get Active" item, always at the end of the newsletter, is
also about the Free Software Pact and how you can help us.
- From the planet aggregation[19]:
- Ghostery is an browser extension supposed to help users against
tracking and surveillance on the web. But as Hugo Roy reports[20],
the problem is that Ghostery is not released as Free Software.
- Guido Günther reports from the 7th Debian groupware meeting[21] at
the Linuxhotel including why the participants, of whom all but one
are FSFE Fellows, took the decision to remove iceowl (calendar) or
what they did with icedove (e-mail).
- Our Fellow Number 1, wrote about KDE e.V., families at Free
Software meetings, especially at the meetings in Randa
Switzerland[22], and he made some proposals for future KDE
releases[23].
- Karl Beecher explains why Programmers Start Counting at Zero[24].
- Carsten Agger gave a talk about Open Data and Hacktivism at the
hackerspace in Aarhus[25]. He also participated at the first
International Festival for Technoshamanism. He explains what
Technoshamanism is[26], what it has to do with Free Software, and
reports from the first day[27].
- Hugo Roy takes a look at the GNU GPL in a javascript outliner:
"GNU GPL, JS and BS"[28] and he wrote about Innovation policy and
Internet liability in courts–beyond advertising[29] with the
conclusion that "we need to take back control of innovation and
technology policy to foster privacy and freedom; more than ever."
- Konstantinos Boukouvalas wrote about the OSCAL conference in
Albania[30] (3-4 May) which is supported by Albania's Ministry of
Youth and Social Welfare[31]. They keynote there was done by
FSFE's Erik Albers[32].
- On a technical side: Guido Arnold explains the advantages of using
caff for keysigning[33], which is part of the keysigning-party
package on Debian based systems.
- Kevin Keijzer's new bedroom is now equipped with a new Free
Software computer[34] and he documented how to install Debian
GNU/Linux on the Acer C720 Chromebook[35].
- Jens Leuchtenbörger explains how to do Certificate Pinning for
GNU/Linux and Android[36].
- When Daniel Pocock upgraded an Android device he "found out that
Android betrays the tethering data"[37], after he received a lot
of feedback he wrote a follow-up article because people justified
the way mobile networks try to discriminate against tethering[38]
after his first blog entry. Also read Paul Boddie's comment about
the second article[39].
- Furthermore Daniel wrote about problems with SMS logins[40], how
his AirBNB hosts wanted to scan his identity documents and
passports[41], and the best real-time communication (RTC / VoIP)
softphone on the GNU/Linux desktop[42].
== Get active: Make the Free Software Pact a success! ==
As we wrote in March[43], candidates pledging for Free Software is a
good way to take them at their word after an election. In Future we can
contact them whenever there will be EU legislation to be passed that
might endanger the existence or growth of Free Software.
After FSFE's volunteers did a lot of translations for the pact, April
now published all necessary information on the Free Software pact
website[44] so you can get active.
In Italy our new intern Michele Marrali already contacted 51 candidates.
He searched for the candidates, used Erik's template[45] (also available
in German[46] ) to contact them, and afterwards noted on our pad whom he
already contacted[47]. His goal is to contact every Italian candidate
and get them to sign the pact. So how many can you contact?
In case you do not have time to participate in this "hobby lobby
competition", consider to make a donation[48] so we can offer the most
active volunteers some rewards from our shop[49].
Thanks to all the volunteers[50], Fellows[51] and corporate donors[52]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE
--
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/2014/news-20140424-01.en.html
2. https://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=718
3. http://hroy.eu/notes/openssl-tragedy/
4. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gollo/2014/04/13/what-the-heartbleed-bug-revealed-to…
5. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/economics_and_i_1.html
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_TLS_implementations
7. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/dan_geer_on_hea.html
8. https://fsfe.org/contact/community.pt.html
9. https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/04/29/interesting-times-speaking-about-…
10. http://documentfreedom.org/events/events.html
11. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2014/news-20140424-01.html
12. http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.html
13. https://www.teckids.org/
14. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/teenagers-teach-how-to-program-robots-with-free-s…
15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/04/free-software-in-education-news-march/
16. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/galicia-recommends-use-open…
17. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/news/swiss-school-invests-open-source…
18. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/news/143-french-politicians-pledge-su…
19. http://planet.fsfe.org
20. http://hroy.eu/notes/avoid_ghostery-proprietary/
21. http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Bits_from_the_7th_Debian_groupware_meeting.html
22. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=205
23. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=224
24. http://computerfloss.com/2014/04/chapter-0-programmers-start-counting-zero-…
25. https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/04/10/speaking-about-open-data-and-hackti…
26. https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/04/18/participating-in-the-1st-internatio…
27. https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/04/25/opening-the-1st-international-festi…
28. http://hroy.eu/posts/gpl-js-bs/
29. http://hroy.eu/posts/innovation-policy/
30. https://blogs.fsfe.org/boukouvalas/?p=546
31. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/news/albania-youth-ministry-supports-…
32. http://oscal.openlabs.cc/speakers/
33. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/04/key-signing-with-caff/
34. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/03/29/my-new-bedroom-htpc-gi…
35. https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/04/20/acer-c720-chromebook-d…
36. https://blogs.fsfe.org/jens.lechtenboerger/2014/04/05/certificate-pinning-f…
37. http://danielpocock.com/android-betrays-tethering-data
38. http://danielpocock.com/tethering-and-petrol-charges
39. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=769
40. http://danielpocock.com/sms-logins-an-illusion-of-security
41. http://danielpocock.com/airbnb-hosts-scanning-copying-passports
42. http://danielpocock.com/best-rtc-voip-softphone-linux-desktop
43. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140304-01.pt.html
44. http://freesoftwarepact.eu/
45. https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/04/23/the-free-software-pact-for-the-europe…
46. https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/04/23/der-freie-software-pakt-eu
47. https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/freesoftwarepact-eu-candidates
48. https://fsfe.org/donate/donate.pt.html
49. https://fsfe.org/order/order.pt.html
50. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.pt.html
51. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
52. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.pt.html