= 2286 public websites advertise non-free software =
[permanent URL : http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20101018-01.html]
During Free Software Foundation Europe's pdfreaders.org[1] campaign,
Free Software activists from 41 countries have reported 2286 public
sector institutions which advertise non-free PDF readers on their
websites. FSFE will now contact these institutions, trying to get as
many advertisements for non-free PDF readers as possible removed before
the end of the year. Progress will be documented on the list of reported
institutions[2].
"Public bodies are right to try and make things easy for citizens by
explaining how to open the files on their sites. But by advertising
non-free software, they're doing citizens a disservice", says Karsten
Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. "Democratic
governments are supposed to give us freedom, not to drive us into
dependence on a single software vendor."
Most versions of the PDF file format are Open Standards[3], but the
advertised readers are proprietary. These advertisements help to build a
brand for the one particular non-free software company. The public
sector becomes a marketing channel for that company and its products,
making it harder for Free Software PDF readers[4] to gain market share.
"We're frankly astonished at the amount of responses we got", says
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE's Fellowship coordinator. "The number of
reports we've received show that the problem is endemic across all
levels of the public sector." In just four weeks, hundreds of activists
from 41 countries submitted 2286 reports[5] about advertisement for
non-free software to FSFE. Beside that, already 37 organisations, 45
businesses and 1418 individuals have signed FSFE's petition asking
public bodies to remove advertisements for non-free software from their
websites. "This shows how many people across Europe care about software
freedom and are willing to get active to help the public sector solve
its advertising problem", continues Kirschner.
FSFE encourages public institutions to remove advertisements for
non-free software from their websites, or at least change their websites
so that they no longer discriminate against Free Software[6]. In
February 2009 Fellows of FSFE[7] started pdfreaders.org[8], a website
listing Free Software PDF readers for all major operating systems. The
website also provides recommendations based on a range of practical
criteria, such as integration with the operating system and ease of
installation.
== 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/
1. http://www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html
2. http://www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/buglist.en.html
3. http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/os.en.html
4. http://www.pdfreaders.org/
5. http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100913-01.en.html
6. http://www.fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.en.html
7. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/
8. http://pdfreaders.org/
== Open Standards in Europe: FSFE puts facts against BSA's fictions ==
[Permanent URL: http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20101016-01.en.html]
18 October 2010, 12:30, Berlin, Germany
On Friday FSFE sent a letter to the European Commission to support
Open Standards and interoperability. In the drawn-out battle to retain
at least a weak recommendation for Open Standards in the revised
European Interoperability Framework, FSFE has countered a leaked
letter by the lobby group Business Software Alliance with its own
thorough analysis of the relation between standards and patents.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is pressuring the European
Commission to remove the last vestiges of support for Open Standards
from the latest version of the EU's interoperability recommendations,
the European Interoperability Framework.
"We trust that the European Commission won't be swayed by such a blunt
attempt to capture the European Software market for a single interest
group", says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software
Foundation Europe. "The BSA's letter to the Commission doesn't even
represent a consensus among the group's own members".
Open Standards, which can be implemented in Free Software, are key to
interoperability in Europe. FSFE on Thursday obtained a copy of a
letter sent to the Commission by the BSA, analysed the BSA's claims,
and made both the analysis and the BSA's letter available on its
website.
The leaked Business Software Alliance letter to the European Commission:
http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/bsa-letter-ec.pdf
Letter of analysis sent by FSFE to the Commission in response:
http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/bsa-eif-letter-fsfe-response.pdf
Our analysis of the BSA's letter on-line:
http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/bsa-letter-analysis.html
Open Standards:
http://fsfe.org/projects/os/def.en.html
== Contacts ==
Free Software Foundation Europe
E-Mail: press at fsfeurope.org
Karsten Gerloff, President
+49-176-96904298
http://www.fsfe.org/contact/
== 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 issue
of the FSFE.
http://fsfe.org
Hardware we all want: FSF announces criteria for hardware endorsement
program "Respects Your Freedom"
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Hardware/Endorsement_criteria
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Thursday, October 14, 2010 -- The Free
Software Foundation (FSF) announced today that it has published an initial
set of criteria for endorsing computers and other devices. The FSF seeks
both to obtain feedback on the criteria, and raise interest in the program
among hardware manufacturers. Ultimately, the FSF plans to promote an
endorsement mark to be carried on products that meet the criteria:
respects your freedom.
"The desire to own a computer or device and have full control over it, to
know that you are not being spied on or tracked, to run any software you
wish without asking permission, and to share with friends without worrying
about Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) -- these are the desires of
millions of people who care about the future of technology and our
society. Unfortunately, hardware manufacturers have until now relied on
close cooperation with proprietary software companies that demanded
control over their users. As citizens and their customers, we need to
promote our desires for a new class of hardware -- hardware that anyone
can support because it respects your freedom," said Peter Brown, executive
director of the FSF.
The FSF's criteria seek to cover all aspects of user interaction with and
control of a device: they say the hardware must run free software on every
layer that is user upgradeable, allow the user to modify that software,
support free data formats, be fully usable with free tools, and more.
FSF license compliance engineer Brett Smith said, "Every software
component needed to produce endorsable hardware is now available. We have
several GNU/Linux distributions that only include free software, and are
completely functional on the right hardware. We have the LinuxLibre kernel
that does not include nonfree microcode. And we have cutting edge mobile
platforms like Android and MeeGo that are based on free software. In the
past we've spoken to manufacturers who were interested in making free
software-friendly hardware, but they worried about connecting with
customers. With our endorsement mark and the strong criteria that back it,
we plan to bridge that gap and demonstrate to manufacturers that they
stand to gain plenty by making hardware that respects people's freedom
instead of curtailing it."
The initial set of guidelines are available on the LibrePlanet wiki, at
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Hardware/Endorsement_criteria. The FSF
welcomes contributions on the wiki discussion page, including suggestions
for improvements to the criteria, and ideas and art submissions for an
endorsement mark.
Hardware manufacturers interested in endorsement should contact
licensing(a)fsf.org.
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, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and
gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations
to support the FSF's work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Its
headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.
About Free Software and Open Source
The free software movement's goal is freedom for computer users. Some,
especially corporations, advocate a different viewpoint, known as "open
source," which cites only practical goals such as making software powerful
and reliable, focuses on development models, and avoids discussion of
ethics and freedom. These two viewpoints are different at the deepest
level. For more explanation, see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.
Media Contacts
Brett Smith
License Compliance Engineer
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942 x18
brett(a)fsf.org
###
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(Please support us to reach more people in their native language. Join
our translator team http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/.)
= FSFE Newsletter - October 2010 =
[Permanent URL: http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.en.html]
In this edition we discuss the misleading term "fair, reasonable and
non-discriminatory terms" (FRAND), we explain what we are doing about
centralised computer systems and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and
update you on our current campaign to end non-free software commercials by
public institutions.
FSFE celebrated Software Freedom Day with a variety of local events and
activities. We organised talks and booths in Berlin, Bonn, Hamburg,
Cologne, Offenburg (Germany), Zurich (Switzerland), and The Hague
(Netherlands). [25]With our activities we reached new audiences, and
explained to them why Free Software will become as important as freedom of
the press and freedom of assembly.
== Why FRAND excludes Free Software ==
[26]We asked European Free Software businesses to participate in a survey
of business attitudes towards the acceptability of including patents in
industry standards. A major theme in the survey was whether patents that
cover standards should be licensed royalty-free (as W3C recommends), or
whether they should instead be licensed under so-called "fair, reasonable
and non-discriminatory terms" (FRAND).
FRAND is a misnomer as the terms are often unfair, unreasonable, and
highly discriminatory, particularly for Free Software. In reality FRAND is
only fair and reasonable to a small circle of the most powerful software
companies.
Paying royalties of 0.000001 Cent per copy to implement a standard might
look fair at the first sight, but such a fee would make it impossible to
distribute a program as Free Software. Free Software safeguards the right
to share with others. Therefore, when Free Software companies sell their
software they cannot know how many people will eventually end up using it.
It becomes impossible to estimate the total amount of royalties owed to
patent owners; Free Software businesses will be unable to compete with
their proprietary competitors and Free Software as a whole would be
undermined.
We encouraged Free Software companies to respond to this survey, so that
their views were heard and the interests of Free Software were represented
in the study's results. Unfortunately the implicit assumptions of the
survey were biased towards large corporations with dedicated
'standardisation employees' dedicated to providing detailed information.
We received feedback that it was very difficult and sometimes impossible
for small and medium sized companies to fill out the questionnaire. We
will highlight this fact as well as our general criticism in the
forthcoming process, [27]as we have done in the past.
== Cloudy Internet Governance Forum ==
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a global policy discussion forum of
the United Nations, established as an outcome of the UN World Summit on
the Information Society (WSIS). We are constantly following the IGF to
ensure that policy discussions will not endanger digital freedom in
general and Free Software in particular. Karsten attended the Forum in
Vilnius, Lithuania and presented his talk [28]"Data in the cloud: Where do
Open Standards fit in".
He drew attention to potential solutions to the threats of cloud
computing, including the possibility of users operating their own easy to
administer, always connected servers, which could offer preconfigured web,
mail, jabber, and microblogging services. He also discussed Yacy, GNU
Social, Angel Applications and other Free Software programs which present
decentralised alternatives to dominant proprietary services.
We are currently working on ways to encourage wider use of applications
which use distributed models, so that control of the software is also
distributed amongst users. As a result we have integrated [29]Yacy, the
distributed search engine into our website and are now testing its
results. YaCy's lead developer Michael Christen will be speaking at our
track of talks [30]'Divide and Reconquer: regaining control of our
communications' at FSCONS, which focuses on issues of centralisation of
key Internet services.
== Non-free software commercials presented by public institutions ==
Each day public institutions advertise non-free software on their
websites. They link to non-free software PDF readers and thereby recommend
that their visitors use non-free software. [31]Non-free software harms our
society, and it is particularly inappropriate for public institutions to
unnecessarily endorse it. Some public institutions go as far as stating
that it is only possible to view their PDF files with the proprietary
reader that they recommend, which is simply false. Many [32]Free Software
PDF readers exist and provide users with a clear choice over which reader
they wish to use.
To raise awareness of this behaviour we started a new PDF readers
campaign, and began collecting reports of infringing institutions, and
petition signatures agreeing that this practice should be changed.
Adverts for gratis non-free PDF readers readers are nonetheless adverts
for non-free software, and because of this we do not include them on
pdfreaders.org. Public websites should not list them either as promoting
one proprietary reader over another reader gives an unfair advantage, and
supports the existence of software monopolies.
Since 13 September, volunteers from all over the world helped us with the
campaign. At the time of writing they submitted over 1369 occurences of
advertisement for 39 countries. 762 individuals, 20 organisations and 21
businesses signed the "Petition For The Removal Of Proprietary Software
Advertising On Public Websites". Amazingly the campaign website is
available in 10, the petition page in 11, and pdfreaders.org in 18
languages.
== Get active ==
This month we ask you to support our PDFreaders campaign:
- Find and [33]report advertisements for non-free software on websites
belonging to public institutions.
- Sign our [34]Petition For The Removal Of Proprietary Software
Advertising On Public Websites.
- [35]Translate the websites about this campaign into your language.
- Find out if it is [36]illegal for the public institutions to give
unfair advertising to particular companies in your country and inform
us about it.
- Find out and inform us how much money it would cost in your country to
get an online advertisement on websites comparable to the public
institutions which contain the advertisement.
- Inform others about the campaign and what they can do to help.
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner
1. http://www.fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss
2. http://www.fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss
3. http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.en.html#content
4. http://www.fsfe.org/index.en.html
5. http://www.fsfe.org/about/about.en.html
6. http://www.fsfe.org/projects/work.en.html
7. http://www.fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html
8. http://www.fsfe.org/donate/donate.en.html
9. http://www.fsfe.org/order/order.en.html
10. http://www.fsfe.org/press/press.en.html
11. http://www.fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html
12. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/
13. http://wiki.fsfe.org/
14. http://planet.fsfe.org/
15. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
18. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/about
19. http://www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders
20. http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.de.html
21. http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.es.html
22. http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.fr.html
23. http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.it.html
24. http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.pt.html
25. http://www.fsfe.org/events/SFD-2010.en.html
26. http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100907-01.en.html
27. http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/ps.en.html
28. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=391
29. http://www.yacy.net/
30. http://www.fsfe.org/events/fscons-2010.en.html
31. http://www.fsfe.org/freesoftware/society/democracy.en.html
32. http://www.pdfreaders.org/
33. http://www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html
34. http://www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/petition.en.html
35. http://www.fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.en.html
36. http://blogs.fsfe.org/maelle/?p=60
37. http://www.fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201010.en.html#top
38. http://www.fsfe.org/index.en.html
39. http://www.fsfe.org/source/news/nl/nl-201010.en.xhtml
40. http://www.fsfe.org/contribute/translators/index.en.html
41. http://www.fsfe.org/about/fsfnetwork.en.html
42. http://www.fsf.org/
43. http://www.fsf.org.in/
44. http://www.fsfla.org/
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://www.fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>