= State neglected web standards, company now faces EUR 5600 in fines =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120509-01.en.html ]
In Slovakia, a law introduced to reduce red tape has led to injustice.
The state has mandated electronic means as a only way of fulfilling
certain statutory obligations. However the dedicated web solution
excludes some citizens from use as it is not interoperable and runs only
on the software from one vendor. In absence of any non-electronic
option, this means that state, in fact, prescribed the use of a certain
product from a certain vendor. Who did not own the copy, had to buy one.
Slovak textile importer deemed that state should not force him to use a
certain software for his business and fulfilled its legal obligation by
paper. Now the company faces EUR 5600 in fines.
The Slovak tax administration has already imposed 12 fines on EURA
Slovakia, s.r.o., which submitted its monthly tax returns on paper,
because the use of electronic forms was impossible as the state's web
application worked only on Microsoft's Windows operating system together
with Microsoft Internet Explorer. All other competing operating systems
such as Apple, GNU/Linux, BSDs failed to run the state's application.
The Slovak tax administration has, therefore, precluded citizens who use
competing products from fulfilling its obligations towards the
state./"This situation is absurd. If another public body decides to use
an Apple-only solution for its public services, should then everybody
buy Apple's products just to fulfill this legal obligation? How many
different products should citizens and companies have to buy just to
comply with all the different laws?"/asks Martin Husovec, member of the
FSFE Legal, who now assists the Slovak company in appealing the fines
before the court.
Ironically, instead of reducing the red tape, this negligence only added
further complications for the companies. Moreover, the "EURA case"
raises a question of why the state should promote any one vendor's
operating system. It only hurts the competition, increases costs for the
small companies and leads to social injustice such as in this case. If
the state requires the electronic form as a only way of respecting the
law, it has to offer the multi-platform solution, which is available to
everybody. It is the task of the state to be here for everybody and not
only for selected citizens.
More information about the EURA case on the following link:
http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120509-02.en.html
== About the Free Software Foundation Europe ==
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in
the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the
furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study,
modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues,
securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people
Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues
of the FSFE.
http://fsfe.org/
= FSFE Newsletter - May 2012 =
[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201205.en.html ]
== 54 DFD events and FSFE handcuffed EU Commissioner ==
As you can read and see in this years report[1], Document Freedom Day
2012 was celebrated with 54 events in 23 countries and in 19 world
languages. It was the biggest DFD in history with over 26 talks, over 6
awards for Open Standards, lots of other events and the press coverage
counted almost one hundred articles. FSFE coordinated between all the
different events, awarded several organisation, and in Germany mailed
over 370 and called over 170 politicians about Open Standards[2].
Several of these politicians, from a range of political parties, did
activities for DFD[3]. FSFE also send out 100 information packages
including handcuffs[4]to suggested people including several politicians,
CEOs, and the Pope. EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes used our handcuffs in a
public speech, which resulted in a lot of additional press
coverage[5]including the front page of the Guardian Online. FSFE is
eager to hear more reports of what recipients of the package did with
the handcuffs.
1. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2012/news-20120403-01.html
2. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/def.en.html
3. http://documentfreedom.org/events/events.html
4. http://documentfreedom.org/handcuffs/index.html
5. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2012/news-20120420-01.html
== May 4th: Day against DRM. Is it their "good right" to restrict us? ==
Last week your editor gave an interview about Digital Restriction
Management (DRM)[6](German). It was about the questions of what DRM is,
why companies introduce DRM, why you have to treat your customer as an
enemy to make DRM work, and which other possibilities exist. When
discussing Free Software, DRM, Antifeatures and other topics you might
often hear from intelligent critical people that it is "the good right"
of producers to control their products. Why do so many people think so?
Would they also accept those restrictions in "the analogue world"? Is it
the good right of a publisher to prohibit that you can read a book out
loud, lend it friends, or sell it? Several times your editor abused
books: last week he used three of them to fix his broken sofa. Would it
be acceptable that the publisher or the author can forbid such use
cases? Do more people accept such restrictions with software and data,
and if so, why? Has the industry with the term "Digital Rights
Management" successfully implied that they have this right, and a lot of
people accept this?
6. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=929
The 4th of May is the Day against DRM[7]. While DRM has largely been
defeated in music, it is a growing problem in the area of ebooks. So it
is good news that due to pressure from their readers, Tor/Forge will
drop DRM from ebooks[8]. Discuss the topic with your friends or
colleagues, e.g. send them Richard Stallman's short story"The Right to
Read"[9], and tell us your experience on our public discussion lists
<http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>or send it directly to your
editor[10].
7. http://dayagainstdrm.org/
8. http://www.defectivebydesign.org/tor-to-drop-drm-on-ebooks
9. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
10. http://fsfe.org/about/kirschner/kirschner.en.html
== Free Software topic in the French Presidential elections ==
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that 15 percent[11]of the State's
IT budget is spent on Free Software programming, support, and
maintenance. In future this budget will increase by 30 percent per year.
He said this policy is "strategic for the development of the French IT
sector". His challenger François Hollande even said this policy has to
be intensified.
11.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/sarkozy-administration-open-source-spendin…
grows-30-percent-annually
Besides that, the French Free Software advocacy group April asked all of
the candidates in the French presidential elections[12]about their
positions on Free Software, software patents[13], DRM[14]and more.
12.
https://www.april.org/en/presidential-elections-2012-and-free-software-some-
answers-some-non-answers-some-dont-answer
13. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/swapt.en.html
14. http://drm.info
It is important to raise awareness for Free Software with your
politicians, and sending them questions is a good start. FSFE is
gathering all such effort in our"Ask Your Candidate" campaign[15]. FSFE
would like to thank April[16]for their good work in France, and
encourages other Free Software supporters in Europe to get in contact
with their politicians. If you have questions how to start such
activities in your country, region, or municipality, please get in
contact with us. By next month you will also have the political parties'
replies to the questions from FSFE for two federal state elections in
Germany.
15. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/askyourcandidtes.en.html
16. http://april.org
== Vendor lock-in costing Helsinki 3.4 million Euros per year? ==
A report on the City of Helsinki's pilot project for the use of
OpenOffice in the public administrations leaves the public with more
questions than answers. The city trialled the Free Software productivity
suite on the laptops of council members for ten months in 2011. The
suite enjoyed high approval rates among its users. When the pilot was
finished, the City produced a report stating that the costs of migrating
the entire administration to OpenOffice would be very high. Read more
about it in the press release[17]and if you are interested in details of
the City of Helsinki's OpenOffice pilot project, and in lessons that may
be drawn from this project, we have published an analysis of the
report[18].
17. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120412-02.en.html
18. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120412-02.en.html
== Something completely different ==
- "Replace 'ICT' with 'Sex'": 42 minutes before the deadline our
education team[19]submitted FSFE's position for a consultation on ICT
education[20]to the UK Department of Education. Besides other points
we highlighted the importance of "ICT education", instead of "ICT
training".
- Fellowship Interview: Operating Free Software based servers and
workstations in a pro-privacy web hosting and IT service company,
advocating Free Software since 2001, volunteering for the Freedroidz
project, and more: this months's interview is Bernd Wurst[21].
- The Czech municipality Grygov uses Free Software[22]for nearly
everything in their public administration.
- On the 31st of March, FSFE's UK Fellows have set up a link between the
Green Light (Manchester) and Chorlton's Big Green (Leicester)
festivals. There was a Free Software talk and booth at both events,
and a live link-up which brought environmentalists together via Free
Software.
- Our web team met in Manchester for a web sprint[23]. A variety of
international volunteers worked together to improve website features
and infrastructure. Interested in fixing bugs, or implementing new
functionality to improve our information about Free Software in web
work? Join our web team[24]!
- Computerworld UK published a a good article on software patents[25].
- A selection from the Fellowship blog aggregation[26]:
- Affiliate Userscripts to support FSFE: If you already spend money on
Amazon or libri, you can install a userscript[27]developed by Hannes
Hauswedell and 5% of the money you spend there goes to FSFE to the
struggle for Software Freedom! The userscripts are tested for
Chromium, Firefox, and Iceweasel[28].
- Distributed Free Software: Thomas Jensch wrote an article on how to
setup OwnCould on Hiawatha[29], and Sam Tuke also looked into setting
up a local web development server[30].
- Different experiences than Wikipedia: Hannes Hauswedell from the
PDFreaders[31]team is currently living in China, and wrote about his
technical experiences with the Chinese firewall[32].
- After his hard disk died Patrik Willard wrote about git and
rsync[33]and Isabel Drost also dedicated a blog article to git[34].
19. http://fsfe.org/projects/education/education.en.html
20. http://blogs.fsfe.org/riepernet/?p=149
21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=573
22.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/czech-municipality-uses-open-source-nearly-
everything
23. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120402-01.en.html
24. http://fsfe.org/contribute/web/web.en.html
25.
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/03/open-standards-
licensing-apples-key-evidence/index.htm
26. http://planet.fsfe.org
27. http://wiki.fsfe.org/SupportPrograms
28. http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/userscripts/
29. http://blogs.fsfe.org/riepernet/?p=155
30. http://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=359
31. http://pdfreaders.org
32.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2012/04/20/an-inside-view-on-the-great-chinese-fir…
/
33. http://blog.padowi.se/2012/04/22/2012w16/
34. http://blog.isabel-drost.de/index.php/archives/377/second-steps-with-git
== Get Active: FRAND is FRAUD - Participate in UK consultation ==
Busy times in the UK. Besides the consultation on education (see above)
the UK government is holding another one until the 4th of June about
what sort of patent licenses an Open Standard[35]should require. FSFE
and our sister organisation the FSF published a joint statement[36]on
the UK Open Standard consultation, explaining why FRAND conditions for
Open Standards discriminate against Free Software (regular readers might
realise this is an ongoing debate), and recommending the UK government
to abolish software patents to prevent damage to the UK's economy. We
also informed UK Free Software businesses, organisations, and Fellows
about the consultation, prepared draft answers to some of the questions
in the survey[37], held a Summit Meeting of Open Standard experts[38],
and also published a joint statement together with other Open Standard
groups[39].
35. http://fsfe.org/project/os/def.en.html
36. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120426-01.en.html
37. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/uk-standards-consultation.en.html
38. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120425-02.en.html
39. https://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120425-01.html
There is a website explaining how to participate in the
consultation[40]. Please do so to support the requirement for royalty-
free licenses for Open Standards.
40. http://consultation.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/openstandards/how-to-respond
Thanks to all the Fellows[41]and donors[42]who enable our work,
41. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
42. donate/thankgnus.en.html
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
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