= FSFE Newsletter May 2019 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201905.ru.html ]
This newsletter edition gives special attention to the upcoming EU
Elections. We are telling the story of the Spanish Pica Pica Hacklab who
successfully used our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign to influence
the Parliament of Asturias. Pica Pica's story takes us to the upcoming
EU Elections that will bring in new MEPs into the European Parliament
and so we provide advice and tips on how you can get active in promoting
Free Software to them. As always, you will also read about the events
the FSFE is going to be part of this month, as well as a retrospective
of what has happened in the past month.
== EU Elections 2019 and Free Software ==
"The Parliament of Asturias commits itself to the international Public
Money? Public Code! [1] campaign" - this is a quote from the first
demand in a recent proposal brought in by the Parliament of Asturias [2]
towards its government and it marks the happy end of continuous lobbying
efforts from Oviedo's local hackerspace "Pica Pica Hacklab" [3].
Pica Pica Hacklab team in front of the Parliament of Asturias after the
Parliament's decision to support Public Money? Public Code! This was
already the second attempt of Pica Pica to lobby the Parliament of
Asturias and demand the use of Free Software within public
administrations. However, in contrast to their first attempt in 2015,
this time Pica Pica had "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign materials
[4] at hand and used them extensively, together with their self-
developed social hacking skills, to convince the politicians.
Pica Pica's success story is highly motivating for local activists and
so we interviewed Iyán Méndez Veiga [5], member of Pica Pica, to
highlight key elements of their activities, the usage of our campaign
material and their lobbying. Read how Pica Pica successfully emphasised
different benefits of Free Software depending on the agenda of the
political party they were talking to respectively, how they turned
emails into face-to-face meetings and how they finally landed even more
meetings with officials from different parties by simply walking through
the Parliament's building.
Pica Pica's story is not only motivating but it also clearly shows how
local engagement by a small single group can influence even the highest
political levels. Still, it is one story out of many, happening
continuously in many parts of Europe. Be it a group of people or
individuals: every talk, explanation or sometimes even the mere handing
out of a well-formulated and informative leaflet [6] can make the
difference and convince a decision-maker to care about Free Software.
That brings us to this year's EU Elections of the European Parliament
taking place next week throughout Europe, from May 23rd to 26th. Let us
follow the recent example of Pica Pica and make sure that as many
candidates as possible are aware of Free Software and its benefits, and
convince them to join us in empowering users to control technology.
This is even more important now, as forecasts predict that half of the
Members in the current European Parliament will not be back in the next
term. That means that there will be new members appearing on the scene
that do not yet know about Free Software.
Help let them know about the benefits of technologies that respect users
freedom. Help us establish new contacts with advocates for Free Software
in the next European Parliament's term. Seek out the candidates in your
region and get in contact with them. Use our "Public Money?Public Code!"
campaign [7] as a source for arguments. Find more general hints and tips
[8] in our wiki.
And then get out there and vote for the candidate that convinced you
most concerning the topics and values that matter to you!
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The European Parliament during a plenary session in Strasbourg. (
Picture by Diliff [9], CC BY-SA 3.0 [10] ) Vote for freedom and join
our community: https://my.fsfe.org/support [11]
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== Do not miss: upcoming events with the FSFE ==
- From May 17th to 19th the Maker Fair Berlin will take place and the
local FSFE group Berlin will be present with an information booth.
- On May 18th the FSFE's Policy Manager Alexander Sander will be present
at the Albanian Open Source conference OSCAL [12] to promote the
FSFE's "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign to the local community.
- On May 21st Erik Albers, FSFE's Communication and Programme Manager,
will talk at the Magdeburger Developer Days [13] about the
sustainability of software and how to preserve software resources for
future generations.
- From May 24th to 26th the FSFE will host its own web-a-thon [14] in
Frankfurt (Main) to have a fruitful collective work on improving the
FSFE's homepage together. You can find all details on the
corresponding wiki-page.
- On May 29th, the FSFE's legal intern Lucas Lasota will present FOSS
legal trends at the Libre Graphics Meetings [15] in Saarbrücken,
Germany.
- On June 8th, the FSFE's Project Manager Galia Mancheva will present
the Public Money? Public Code! campaign to the Bulgarian tech
community at TuxCon [16] in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
- On June 13th, the FSFE's President Matthias Kirschner will give a
keynote about Free Software in our society at OW2con [17] in Paris,
France.
- On June 25th, the FSFE's Policy and Project Managers Alexander Sander
and Galia Mancheva will talk about the Public Money?Public Code!
campaign and the updated Copyright Directive at Libertybits [18] in
Sofia, Bulgaria
== Save the Date: ==
This year we are running the FSFE community meeting on November 15th and
16th in cooperation with the SFSCon [19] in Bolzano, Italy. The FSFE
country team Italy will use this occasion to prepare and run a dedicated
FSFE track during the conference and the conference day will be followed
by a dedicated community day. The general Call for Participation of the
SFSCon is already up and running, while the one for the FSFE track in
particular will be published soon. If you are interested in the
publication of the call, follow our news [20] ( RSS feed
<https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss> )
== What have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- On 27 April, Max Mehl, the FSFE's Programme Manager, gave a keynote at
Grazer Linuxtage about Free Software and why security and openness are
not contradictory. If you are curious about what he said, you can
watch the keynote video [21].
- On April 27th, there was an FSFE's info-booth at the the local FLISoL
event in A Coruña, Spain and on 11 May, the FSFE was present with a
booth at T-Dose in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
- Alexander Sander, the FSFE's Policy Manager talked about the
importance of supporting the Public Money? Public Code! campaign on
May 3rd at the LWW2019 in Vienna, where the FSFE also hosted an
infobooth.
- FSFE booth at Linuxwochen Wien Carmen Bianca Bakker writes about
elitists and laypeople [22] and uses this distinction for a comparison
between the development of the Game of Thrones script with her own
development and history from Spacemacs to Emacs to VSCodium and more.
- Syncthing is a Free Software sync-solution on F-Droid. Andrea Scarpino
explains the customizations he has done to use it for simple but
automated phone backup with Syncthing [23]
- Matija Šuklje sums up different way and methods [24] he used to
archive and organise his bookmarks in the last years.
== Get Active ==
As already brought up in the beginning of the Newsletter, the European
Parliament's Elections are ahead and forecasts predict that many new
members will be part of the next term. If you want Free Software to
catch on with these Parliamentary freshmen, then you can seek out the
candidates in your region and get in contact with them. We prepared a
short list of actions you can take and other tips [25] in our wiki.
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org. We're looking forward
to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [26], supporters [27] and
donors [28] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[29], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editors,
Erik Albers and Galia Mancheva
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Vote for freedom and join our community: https://my.fsfe.org/support
[30]
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1: http://publiccode.eu/
2: http://www.picahack.org/181115%20-%20PNL%20Software%20Libre%20-%20RE35416.P…
3: http://picapica.mindhackers.org/
4: https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword#pmpc
5: https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190514-01.ru.html
6: https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.ru.html
7: https://publiccode.eu/
8: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/European_Elections_2019
9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#/media/File:European_Parl…
10: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
11: https://my.fsfe.org/support
12: https://oscal.openlabs.cc/speakers/alexander-sander/
13: https://md-devdays.de/Act?id=1000138
14: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/2019/0525-fsfe-web-a-thon
15: https://opensaar.de/2019/04/libre-graphis-meeting-in-saarbruecken/
16: http://tuxcon.mobi/
17: https://ow2con19.sched.com/event/NzsE
18: https://libertybits.org/eventalk_speaker_category/2019/
19: https://www.sfscon.it/
20: https://fsfe.org/news/index.ru.html
21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOv_5ZPcFZ8
22: https://www.carmenbianca.eu/en/post/2019-05-08-of-elitists-and-laypeople/
23: https://scarpino.dev/posts/automated-phone-backup-with-syncthing.html
24: https://matija.suklje.name/how-i-put-order-in-my-bookmarks-and-found-a-bett…
25: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/European_Elections_2019
26: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
27: https://my.fsfe.org/support
28: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
29: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
30: https://my.fsfe.org/support
