= FSFE Newsletter – November 2014 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201411.ru.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
--
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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.ru.html
7. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/prasident-des-deutschen-stadtetags-an-europaische…
8. https://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100803-01.ru.html
9. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141017-01.ru.html
10. https://fsfe.org/contribute/internship.ru.html
11. http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/my-internship-at-fsfe/
12. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20141017-02.ru.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.ru.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.ru.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.ru.html
35. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
36. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ru.html