= FSFE Newsletter - November 2011 =
[Read Online : http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201111.en.html ]
== WWW would have been better if it was patented ==
How long should copyright last? Should living beings or software be
patentable? The World Intellectual Property Organisation deals with this
sort of questions. Since 2004, we are involved in the WIPO to make sure
they do not harm Free Software. Our most important demand is that when
it comes to copyright and patents, the benefits should be weighed
against the costs.
The new Director General Francis Gurry's said that the World Wide Web
would have been better if it was patented. This shows us that the
current trend is in the opposite direction. Read more about this in
Karsten's article WIPO sliding back into the Dark Ages?[1], our WIPO
dossier[2], and support the Geneva Declaration[3].
1.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/10/24/wipo-sliding-back-into-the-dark-ag…
2. http://fsfe.org/projects/wipo/wipo.de.html
3. http://fsfe.org/projects/wipo/wiwo.de.html
== Daily business - step by step ==
Why do FSFE so frequently give interviews and talks, and travel to
promote FSFE issues? Our mission is to promote freedom in emerging
digital society. So as you can see on our events page[4]it is part of
our daily business to travel around, give talks, interviews, and
organise events. Paul Boddie improved our Fellowship event
calendar[5]which now integrates GriCal. This way you can subscribe to
the calendar. If you are already subscribed to the the event's RSS feed
<http://fsfe.org/events/events.de.rss>or the Ical feed[6]you can skip
the next paragraph.
4. http://fsfe.org/events/events.de.html
5. http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=54
6. webcal://fsfe.org/events/events.en.ics
So for example in October Karsten and Matija gave talks at LinuxCon
Europe in Prague, Sam gave a speech at the DIY Feminist Festival in
Manchester[7], our UK team had a booth at FLOSS UK Unconference 2011 in
Manchester, your editor gave a talk about "10 misunderstandings about
Free Software (or are they lies?)" at the technical university in
Berlin, our Austrian coordinator Peter Bubestinger gave a talk "Free
Software and Open Formats: virtual immortality and independence for
digital archives" at the National Library in Vienna, and our French
coordinator Hugo Roy organised a talk on "A Free Digital Society" by
Richard Stallman[8].
7. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=215
8.
http://www.libertesnumeriques.net/evenements/stallman-19octobre2011?lang=en
On the interview front: Karsten gave a radio interview about our work at
WIPO[9], Hugo an interview to the French GNU Linux Magazine Essentiel,
your editor to the German newspaper TAZ about Secure boot[10].
9.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/10/24/wipo-sliding-back-into-the-dark-ag…
10. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=845
== Something completely different ==
- Rikard Fröberg works at The Society for Free Culture and
Software[11], and contributes this year to the FSCONS[12]organisation
and thereby supporting our Free Software in Politics track[13]. In the
October Fellowship Interview[14]he considers the importance of having
an active and engaged community of users.
- Free Software from a human rights angle. Instead of just saying good-
bye after the end of his internship, Diego wrote us a nice article as
a gift:"Free Software social networks for social change"[15].
- A selection of interesting blog entries from our planet
aggregation[16]:Denmark - Portugal 4:5. The regular qualification for
the EURO2012 in Free Software are over. Which country has good Free
Software and Open Standard practices? Guido Arnold looked at this[17].
(Even though they were not able to win against Belgium, your editor is
happy that Germany qualified. It is difficult to compete against teams
with such good players as FOSDEM[18].)
- New government in Denmark, read what new opportunities Fellow Carsten
Agger sees[19].
- Converting letters into e-mails? Working on our PDFreaders
campaign[20], Sam received letters from public administrations and had
to forward them to our mailing list. So he took this opportunity to
write about Easy OCR on GNU/Linux with gImageReader"[21].
- The first 100 customers matter! Writes Georg Greve in his article
about an Open climate for entrepreneurs in Europe[22]. Read more about
Research and Development programmes, Silicon Valley, and software
patents.
- UnRAR in freedom: Thanks to The Unarchiver initiative, we are now able
to extract recent rar files completely with Free Software[23].
- When is a bug report useful?[24]Read the article, and file about to
this month newsletter.
- KDE became 15 Years in October. Paul Adams wondered how that does
look like[25].
11. https://ffkp.se/
12. http://fscons.org/
13. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=840
14. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=446
15.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/diegojavier/2011/10/10/free-software-social-networks-…
16. http://planet.fsfe.org
17.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2011/10/euro2012-in-free-software-regular-quali…
18. http://www.fosdem.org
19.
https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2011/10/01/denmark-new-government-new-opportun…
20. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.de.html
21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=227
22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=455
23. http://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2011/10/14/unrar-in-freedom/
24. http://blogs.fsfe.org/myriam/2011/10/when-is-a-bug-report-useful
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/padams/?p=251
-
== Get Active: Document Freedom Day - Let's get ready to rumble ==
Coordination for next years Document Freedom Day[26]is starting. Your
editor is responsible for next years international coordination, and
shamelessly asks you to join the team, subscribe to our mailinglist[27],
give input about the last year, help with campaign planing, taking care
of coordination events in a certain country, taking care with the
communication with partners, help with the organisation of events for
next year, help with setting up the new website, writting texts,
translate them, help with designing t-shirts and other promotion
materials, or if you do not have time, make a donation[28]to support us
in this activity.
26. http://documentfreedom.org
27. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/df-coordination
28. http://fsfe.org/donate/donate.en.html
Thanks to all the Fellows[29]and donors[30]who enable our work,
29. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
30. donate/thankgnus.de.html
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
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