"Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!"
Fellowship programme of FSFE launched to defend freedom in the digital
age.
"We stand up to protect our freedom to shape and participate in a
digital society that respects liberty and privacy." With this slogan,
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) started its fellowship
program at the FOSDEM fair for Free Software last weekend in Brussels.
The resistance against software patents has shown that it is possible
to change things, but it has also shown that we need to do more. While
we were and still are defending ourselves against software patents,
other issues -- old and new -- could not be addressed as they should
have been.
"Global players aiming to spread their monopolies and business-models
are excerting influence on many levels through technology, legislation
and money.", Stefano Maffulli, Italian representative of FSFE says and
concludes: "If our freedom is to be preserved, we need more shoulders
to support the work and more people to raise their voice."
Fellowship comes at EUR 120,- (EUR 60,-) per year. All Fellows receive
a login on the Fellowship portal, a site to meet, communicate and
cooperate. Fellows can write blogs, share experience in forums and
remain informed about the latest news. Through this approach, it is
possible to bridge initiatives and people to stand united and
raise our collective voice. In addition, all fellows receive an email
alias @fsfe.org, a visible sign of their connection to the Free Software
Foundation Europe.
As a practical feature to strengthen their privacy and security, all
Fellows receive a unique, personalised OpenPGP compliant SmartCard
programmed and handled by Werner Koch, author of GnuPG and Head of
Office of the FSFE. With this SmartCard, all Fellows can communicate
securely and privately through digital signatures and encryption.
In addition, this protects your logins and data on disk, among other
things.
"This card is a a state-of-the-art hardware token for many different
applications, such as encrypting your email. Through this card, we put
the power of protecting data and privacy into the hands of all our
Fellows. We seek to make this power available to all, raising
awareness for privacy and security issues", Werner Koch explains.
"In the past years, we have worked to the peak of our abilities and
beyond. We have seen that we can make progress, but also we had to
realise that the battle has only just begun. Defending our collective
freedom is something we need to do together. Consider this your call to
arms," says Georg Greve.
Please join the Fellowship at http://www.fsfe.org/
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. 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. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
When you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, D-67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)
For Immediate Release:
http://www.fsf.org/news/new-executive-director.html
FSF announces new Executive Director
Boston, MA, USA - Monday, February 14, 2005 - The Free Software
Foundation (FSF) today announced the appointment of Peter T. Brown as
its new Executive Director.
The appointment follows the departure of Bradley M. Kuhn, who is
taking up the post of Chief Technology Officer at the newly created
Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). Regarding his departure, Kuhn
noted his desire to live in the New York City area and his interest in
pursuing a technical role again.
Brown, who has worked at the FSF since 2001 and is currently the
manager of the GPL Compliance Lab, and previously a Director of the
alternative press magazine, New Internationalist, said, "I am very
excited by this opportunity to work closely with FSF President,
Richard Stallman, though I am sad to see Bradley leave the
organization following such a successful tenure. The FSF faces an
exciting year ahead as well as tough challenges. The additional legal
resources being offered by the Software Freedom Law Center will give
us an opportunity to expand on our GPL compliance efforts. We expect
to work closely with the law center and the free software community as
we work towards GPL version 3. We're also moving, in two senses, as we
have just launched our new home page at www.fsf.org, and we'll be
moving to new office premises in May, so expect an updated GPL version
2 with that new address."
Asked about the challenges ahead, Brown said, "Everyday it becomes
more apparent that the growing success of Free Software threatens
established proprietary software and media interests. These interests
will continue to see our freedoms as threats, and we fully expect, and
are preparing for, further challenges to our community."
----
About Free Software Foundation: The Free Software Foundation, founded
in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use,
study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF
promotes the development and use of Free (as in freedom) Software -
particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants - and
Free Documentation for Free Software. The FSF also helps to spread
awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of
software. Their web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important
source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in
Boston, MA, USA.
_______________________________________________
FSF And GNU Press mailing list <info-press(a)gnu.org>
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press
FSFE: "Microsoft seeking to bypass decisions of European Court"
"My local shop has a rule that they don't serve women. This is not
discriminatory because the same rule applies to both males and
females equally." Software giant Microsoft seems to behave similar
to the shop owner after a decision of European Court.
Spring last year, EU Commissioner Mario Monti imposed a penalty of
nearly 500 million Euro on Microsoft, as well as some additional
conditions. One of those conditions are the publication of so called
software interfaces.
Software interfaces determine how computers communicate with each other
to exchange information. This information is important for several Free
Software projects. One of these is SAMBA, which connects the UNIX and
GNU/Linux world with Microsoft's operating system and works against the
monopoly that Microsoft has established on the operating system market.
Without access to the software interface information, SAMBA will have a
hard time keeping up.
Microsoft appealed against this decision in front of European Court of
Justice and asked to suspend the decision until the proceeding has come
to a final decision in possibly four years. European Court refused this
suspension December last year. Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
supported the European Commission throughout this procedure. Officially
Microsoft says it wants to cooperate with the Commission and to comply
with the conditions.
Microsoft has published an agreement which allows Free Software projects
like SAMBA to use the software interface information, but bans it from
publishing the software as Free Software.
"That is not even complying with the wording of European Court's
decision - not to mention its spirit!" Stefano Maffulli, Italian
Chancellor of FSFE says. Microsoft requests a "Per User Royalty" from
Free Software projects: "Obviously, while paying royalties is not
impossible in principle as una-tantum, with Free Software nobody knows
exactly how many copies use a certain program are circulating, as Free
Software is allowed to be copied as often as necessary, freely.",
Maffulli says.
FSFE Lawyer Carlo Piana adds: "It seems that Microsoft has misunderstood
the actual meaning of the decision. I cannot enter into details, but it
has offered a license as though it would have to license its software,
while all which is demanded is to release certain information as to the
'language spoken' by its applications."
This is the same kind of information that any software company is
entitled to acquire and use by reverse engineering, to produce an
independent product or buy buying a license to standards like POSIX.
Piana adds: "Moreover, the license offered only applies to the European
Economic Area (but it is governed by the laws -- and put under the
jurisdiction -- of the USA.) Not to say about the agreement requested
for evaluating the licensed software, which is incredibly burdensome and
only allows inspection for total 48 hours. According to Microsoft
testimony, the inspected documentation would pile up 'tens of thousand
pages', you can do the math! It took more than four hours to me just to
study the contracts... And those who have inspected the information
loose the possibility to work on the development of similar products for
one year. We cannot even start a discussion on this basis."
"We have communicated our concerns to the Commission and we are full of
confidence that Brussels will bear them in mind: for European consumers
it is a must that SAMBA and any other Free Software developer is allowed
to publish Free Software on the basis of the given interface
information. Secondly nothing else than a single payment is acceptable
to us. And thirdly we have to take care that Microsoft does not try to
protect its monopoly with software patents on these interface
informations. It is really difficult to follow all the dodges they do",
Maffulli says, "but FSFE will be awake to avoid Microsoft making paper
tigers out of decisions of the European Court!"
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. 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. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
When you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, D-67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)
1. FSFE in Dublin
2. FSFE at World Social Forum (WSF)
3. HP donates two servers
4. Continued tour through Italy
5. Activities against software patents
1. FSFE in Dublin
At the University of Dublin, Georg Greve gave a talk about the
challenges of Free Software in a digital world and also introduced
the work of the FSFE.
As always, he also used the opportunity to intensify contacts with
the local Free Software community and discussed possibilities for
integrating people from Ireland more closely into the FSFE network.
2. FSFE at World Social Forum (WSF)
In cooperation with the Free Software Project Brasil [1], FSFEs
president Georg Greve participated in a series of activities and
events [2] around Free Software at the World Social Forum (WSF) in
Porto Alegre, Brazil -- among them the official release of the 2005
Free Software Forum. [3]
The Free Software, free knowledge and free arts events at the WSF had
strong support from the Brazilian Cultural Ministry. Gilberto Gil,
minister of Culture, participated in some of them personally, along
with other known figures, such as Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow.
During the WSF, many activists also made their first contact with Free
Software using one of the about 1000 machines in the estudio livre and
other access points.
[1] http://www.softwarelivre.org/
[2] http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/3543
[3] http://fisl.softwarelivre.org
3. HP donates two servers
Hewlett-Packard Germany donated two Compaq N2400 servers (Dual CPU,
Pentium III 1GHz with 1GB RAM each). The machines have replaced the
quite outdated web- and mailserver machines and are running core
services of the FSFE. The FSFE would like to thank HP for their
support.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/help/hardware.en.html
4. Continued tour through Italy
After the successful public events in December, the Italian FSFE team
has continued their tour through Italy and took part in the "week of
digital freedom", which was organized by the Linux Club Italia in Rome.
Alessandro Rubini talked about "Embedded Free Software", and Stefano
Maffulli held a speech about "Free Software Foundation Europe:
activities and plans for the future". T-shirts of FSFE are available
at the Linux Club.
http://www.italy.fsfeurope.org/it/events/2004/tour/tour.it.html
5. Activities against software patents
The decision of the EU council to introduce software patents in Europe
is still not finally approved, and the political resistance against
that decision has become stronger than ever. The FSFE and its
associate organisations, most of all the FFII, are still cooperating
in their efforts to prevent that threat to innovation.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
"Basel II is a round of deliberations by central bankers from around the
world, under the auspices of the International Bank of Settlements in
Basel, Switzerland, aimed at producing uniformity in the way banks and
banking regulators approach risk management across national borders."
[0] Mr Nout Wellink is the Chairman of the Board of Directors and
President of the International Bank Settlements.
Dear Mr. Wellink,
in our open letter [1] to the head of the Allianz insurance group,
Mr. Diekmann, we explained how software patents [2] are likely to
become a massive cost and risk factor for all money and information
technology intensive businesses like insurance companies. The same holds
true for banks.
Software patents establish monopolies on abstract ideas which are
available to anyone, including those who do no software development but
do have legal departments. Like all larger software projects, all parts
of Basel II consist of a multitude of ideas, each of which may become
subject to a monopoly by anyone. If you for instance check the database
of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you will already discover
180 patents [3] on software ideas concerning "credit risk" -- the
central issue of Basel II.
There is no compulsory licensing for any of these, the particular
patent holder gets to determine the terms on which they will grant or
deny use of the monopoly on each individual idea.
But the implementations of Basel II will naturally also depend upon a
multitude of standard components, such as file services, databases,
transfer protocols and more. Each of these is similarly subject to
software patents. Since the number of methods to secure computer
systems is limited, this may mean that Basel II will have to implement
its features on a known insecure basis.
Once Basel II becomes widely used, a dramatic increase in software
patent infringement lawsuits for this area is likely to occur on a
global basis. Any bank or any of its customers for Basel II based
software may become target of such legal action -- the risk is
incalculable and can bring about multi-billion Euro lawsuits.
Most banks are still unaware of this threat -- they have not realized
that software patents will affect them to such an extent. When
we were recently talking to a German bank, they were shocked when they
realized what software patents will mean to their business.
Software patents will dramatically reduce the innovation rate and
competitiveness of European economy in general, and to you they mean
introducing an incalculable risk that can generate huge damages.
That is why we ask you to protect your interests and take initiatives
against software patents -- directly and by supporting our work. Also,
should you have further questions, please do not hesitate to get in
touch.
Best regards,
Georg Greve
Free Software Foundation Europe, President
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_II
[1] http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/letter-20041004.en.html
[2] http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.html
[3]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2F…
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. 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. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
When you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, D-67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)