FREE SOFTWARE DIRECTORY NEARS 5000 ENTRIES. The Free Software Foundation
announces contest in celebration.
----BOSTON, August 22, 2006
The Free Software Foundation announces details of a contest to celebrate
the milestone of reaching 5000 free software packages listed in the Free
Software Directory http://directory.fsf.org
The Free Software Directory, a project of the Free Software Foundation
(FSF), is the largest single catalog of completely free software, and
has over two million visitors a month. Directory entries are submitted
by the public, then checked by the FSF before inclusion.
To mark the milestone of reaching 5000 entries, the FSF is holding a
"D5000 contest" the winner of which will be rewarded for submitting the
five thousandth entry. From now, 2006-08-21, until 2006-09-21, each new,
valid and completed directory entry that is submitted will count as one
chit in the raffle for the prize. The winner will receive a thank you on
the front page of gnu.org and directory.fsf.org. Further details of the
competition are available at
http://www.fsf.org/news/directory-contest.html
According to Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software
Foundation, "the free software directory demonstrates that usable,
productive free software exists for an exhaustive range of personal,
artistic and business uses. With its increasing size and usage, the
directory has become a vital tool for a worldwide community of free
software users."
----30----
About the 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. Donations to
support their work can be made at http://fsf.org/join They are
headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.
Media contacts:
Peter Brown
Free Software Foundation
Tel. 617-542-5942 ext.13
peterb(a)fsf.org
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http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press
1. SELF project officially launched
2. Second draft of the GPLv3 presented
3. Bernhard Reiter spoke at University of Bayreuth (Germany)
4. Free Software at Campus Party in Valencia (Spain)
5. Experts Meeting on Internet Governance Forum
6. Microsoft fined another 1.5m EUR per day, 280.5m EUR total
7. FSFE servers moved
1. SELF project officially launched
The SELF project has been officially launched with a kick-off meeting in
Amsterdam followed by a one day conference at The Hague. SELF
stands for Scientific Education and Learning in Freedom and will set
up a platform for Free educational materials about Free Software and
Open Standards. The project is funded by the sixth framework programme
of the European Commission and includes partners from Bulgaria, Spain,
Sweden, Germany, India, Argentina and the Netherlands. FSFE is
participating with Georg Greve and Jonas Öberg in all areas of the
project and is responsible for the coordination of all legal issues.
More information is available at
http://www.selfproject.eu
Georg Greve has blogged about the kick off conference:
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/self_kick_off_conference_in_…
2. Second draft of the GPLv3 presented
After seven months of discussion and more than 1000 comments made
through the public consultation process, the Free Software Foundation
has published the second draft for the GNU General Public License
(GPL) Version 3 and the first draft for the GNU Lesser General Public
License (LGPL) Version 3 which is now designed as a set of permissive
exceptions to GPLv3.
Ciarán O'Riordan has prepared a list of changes between the first and
the second draft for GPLv3 as well as a list of changes between the
second draft for GPLv3 and the GPLv2. Both are available via FSFE's
GPLv3 project page:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/gplv3.en.html
3. Bernhard Reiter spoke at University of Bayreuth (Germany)
Bernhard Reiter was invited by the economics department of the
University of Bayreuth (Germany) to speak about software patents. After
two other speakers gave a general introduction into the topic, he
focused his presentation on the practical implications of software
patentability.
4. Free Software at Campus Party in Valencia (Spain)
The FSFE participated actively in the 10th edition of Campus Party in
Valencia. Stefano Maffulli gave three speeches, talking about FSFE,
the Fellowship program and the threat of DRM. The presentations will be
published shortly on the new Advocacy section of www.fsfe.org.
5. Experts Meeting on Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
One of the outcomes of the United Nations World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) was the establishment of an Internet
Governance Form (IGF). This forum plans to provide room for discussion
and potential consensus building on various forms of regulation
concerning the Internet. In preparation for this year's first IGF, in
Athens, Greece, FSFE's president Georg Greve participated in a two day
expert meeting to discuss possibilities and challenges that the IGF
creates.
6. Microsoft fined another 1.5m EUR per day, 280.5m EUR total
Due to Microsoft's continued refusal to make its interoperability
information available to competitors, the European Commission fined
Microsoft 1.5m EUR per day retroactively from 16th December 2005. FSFE
has been active in this case since the original investigation in 2001,
working to represent and protect the interests of the Samba Project,
which is by now more than 10 years behind in their implementation of
interoperable software due to Microsoft's protocol manipulation games.
More information available at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q3/000147.html
7. FSFE servers moved
On the 20th and 21st of July, the servers hosting most of the FSFE
infrastructure were moved to Örebro University in Sweden who graciously
has donated rack space and bandwidth for the servers. The FSFE would
like to express our thanks to Örebro University for providing these
facilities, as well as our deepest thanks to Göteborg University, who
previously provided the bandwidth and rack space.
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
Nominations are requested by 31 October 2006.
BOSTON, August 8, 2006 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU
Project announce the request for nominations for the 2006 Award for the
Advancement of Free Software. This annual award is presented to a person
who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of
free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of
software freedom (as defined in the Free Software Definition).
Last year's winner Andrew Tridgell was recognized for his work as
originator and developer of the Samba project, and for his
contributions to the Linux kernel. Tridgell joined a prestigious list
of previous winners including Theo de Raadt, Alan Cox, Miguel de
Icaza, Larry Lessig, Brian Paul, Guido van Rossum, and Larry Wall.
Any kind of activity could be eligible for the award -- writing
software, writing documentation, publishing software, journalism -- but
whatever the activity, we want to recognize long-term central
contributions to the development of the world of software freedom.
"Accord with the spirit" means, for example, that software, manuals, or
collections of them (online or on CD), must be entirely free. Work done
commercially is eligible, but we give this award to individuals, not to
companies, organizations, or teams.
Previous winners of this award are not eligible for nomination, but
renomination of other previous nominees is encouraged. From those who are
eligible, the award committee will try to choose the person who has made the
greatest contribution.
The 2005 award committee was composed of: Peter H. Salus (chair), Richard
Stallman, Alan Cox (winner 2003), Lawrence Lessig (winner 2002), Guido van
Rossum (winner 2001), Frederic Couchet, Jonas Oberg, Hong Feng, Bruce Perens,
Raju Mathur, Suresh Ramasubramanian, Enrique A. Chaparro, and Ian Murdock.
Please send your nominations to award-nominations(a)gnu.org, on or before Monday
31 October 2006. Please submit nominations in the following format:
- Put the name of the person you are nominating in the email message
subject line.
- Please include, in the body of your message, an explanation (40
lines or less) of the work the person has done and why you think
it is especially important to software freedom.
- Please state, in the body of your message, where to find the
materials (e.g., software, manuals, or writing) which your
nomination is based on.
Information about the previous awards can be found at
http://www.fsf.org/fs-award.
*** About The 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 http://www.fsf.org, is an important source
of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support their work can be made at
http://donate.fsf.org. Their headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.
--
John Sullivan
Program Administrator | Phone: (617)542-5942 x23
51 Franklin Street, 5th Fl. | Fax: (617)542-2652
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA | GPG: AE8600B6
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