[Fsfe-se] [FSFE PR][SV] FSFE Newsletter - October 2013

Free Software Foundation Europe press at fsfeurope.org
Fri Oct 4 18:12:39 CEST 2013


[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201310.sv.html ]


== Our movement turned 30! ==

On 27 September 1983 Richard Stallman announced the GNU project[1]. An
initiative that started with a programmer's frustration over a broken
printer driver[2] has changed our society. The idea of software that
everyone can use, study, share and improve[3] has proven powerful.

The GNU project has acted as the starting point of a movement that makes
sure we can control technology, and not technology controlling us.
Today, Free Software is everywhere: It powers the Internet, our mobile
phones, televisions, cars, routers, and electronic devices of all sorts.
Free Software has fundamentally changed the way people create software:
instead of preventing people to adapt the software to their own needs,
they invite people to participate in the development.

FSFE is grateful to Richard Stallman for sparking this epochal change,
and to everyone who has joined our movement to drive Free Software's
progress for three decades.


== Boost local activities: European Fellowship Coordinators Meeting ==

For example our local Fellowship groups. During last month our groups in
Aarhus hosted a talk[4] and the meetings in Frankfurt[5] are continuing.
In Munich we had a public booth during a street festival[6], during
Software Freedom Day our Fellows informed passers-by about Free Software
in Vienna[7] and in Offenburg[8], whereas in Helsinki[9] they helped
others installing Free Software. Our Düsseldorf Fellowship group was
very active the last weeks as well: They had a booth at the summer party
of the Pirate Party[10], and attended the summer party of the Green
Party[11], held a Software Freedom Day event[12], supported a
Cryptoparty in Kempen[13], held a regular meeting[14], as well as a talk
by Sam Tuke about Free Your Android[15].

From 27-29 September 22 Fellows of FSFE from 10 countries gathered in
Berlin for the first European Coordinators Meeting. During the weekend
the coordinators got to know each other, presented their work, talked
about possibilities to promote Free Software, shared good practices, and
provided valuable feedback about our campaigns. If you are interested to
see who is promoting Free Software in local Fellowship groups have a
look at Lucile's blog entry[16].


== Something completely different ==


- Technology should be a means to freedom and creativity. Yet
  governments around the world are turning computers and networks into
  tools of oppression. FSFE joined a coalition of more than 265
  organisations[17] which launched a list of 13 International Principles
  on the Application of Human Rights to Communication Surveillance.

- Ask Your Candidates: Our Austrian team published their questions and
  answers for the Nationalratswahl (federal election)[18], and the
  German published the answers to similar questions for the state
  election in Hessen[19].

- After FSFE already spoke up against it[20], KDE also rejected the
  Fairsearch initiative claims, and stated why Free Software is
  competitive[21].

- There is a new edition of the Free Software in education news for
  August[22], including what Open Education Resources can learn from
  Free Software.

- Together with Mirko Vogt from OpenWrt FSFE wrote a letter to the
  German Federal Network Agency[23] (German). We argued about the
  importance of having the freedom to use every router you want to have
  for your internet access.

- CERN, which is publishing a lot of hardware design documentation, has
  updated its Open Hardware License to version 1.2[24].

- To celebrate GNU's 30th anniversary, FSF suggested software freedom
  actions[25] for each day during September. Of course you can repeat
  that anytime you want.

- Public administration: the French Gendarmerie now maintains 37,000
  GNU/Linux desktops[26], and after the planned switch next summer it
  will be 72,000. Officials say they are able to lower the total cost of
  operation by 40% compared to the proprietary solution. But the savings
  are just one point, the other one is more vendor independence.

- From the planet aggregation[27]:

  - Hugo Roy asks for feedback on the user data manifesto[28].

  - Georg Greve argues that software freedom advocates had it right all
    along: You cannot trust proprietary cryptography, or proprietary
    software[29].

  - Mirko Böhm and Paul Adams organised a seminar about Free Software in
    economy and society at the German protestant student union[30]
    (German), where Karsten Gerloff also gave a talk as a guest speaker
    in front of students of medicine, natural sciences, or theology.

  - Lucile learnt to appreciate regular expressions[31], and highlighted
    some quotes by Bruce Schneier[32], including "We’re afraid of risk.
    It's a normal part of life, but we're increasingly unwilling to
    accept it at any level."

  - Thomas Løcke asks if we want to live in a world where shadow
    agencies run amok[33] and where our hard-earned taxes are being used
    to fund leashes for our necks and whips for our backs?

  - Our Munich Fellowship coordinator Christian Kalkhoff explains why he
    finally quit facebook[34] (German) after they changed their terms of
    services.

  - On a technical level: if you have to dual boot GNU/Linux and Windows
    8 on a machine with restricted boot[35] read the description from
    our Finnish Fellows[36].

  - If you used GnuCash or HomeBank before for your finances, Daniel
    Pocok suggests to have a look at PostBooks[37], and maybe support
    their crowdfunding campaign for missing features.

  - He also looked into calendar and contact data with Free Software[38]
    in the Smartphone era.

  - Paul Boddie wrote about the Neo900[39], successor of the famous N900
    mobile phone.

  - Guido Günther is monitoring a heating system[40] powered by Free
    Software, and

  - Henri Bergius was flying a quadrocopter with NoFlo[41].

  - After many years Matija's laptop broke. Read how he changed his
    distribution[42] after a decade and the good feeling to have working
    backups.

  - Finally he is discussing if copyright, patents and state-given
    monopolies in general are natural[43].



== Get active: Talk to some friends about how it started! ==

As you read on the first paragraph it is 30 years since Richard Stallman
announced to start with the GNU operating system[44]. Many people
mistakenly think of this 30th anniversary[45] only as a success in a
technical way but it is more: GNU and the philosophy behind it is a
social revolution as well.

More people should know about the importance and uniqueness of the
development GNU has started. So we ask you to talk with your friends,
acquaintances and colleagues about the history[46] and philosophy[47] of
GNU project and to reflect about which positive side effect of GNU's
invention you personally appreciate the most.

Please share your experiences with us, for example by writing a blog
post[48] about the talk with the people you spoke with or sharing your
experiences on our public mailing lists
<http://fsfe.org/contact/community.sv.html>.

Thanks to all the Fellows[49] and donors[50] who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE


-- 
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.sv.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.sv.rss>
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Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.sv.html>


  1. http://fsfe.org/freesoftware/basics/gnuproject.sv.html
  2. http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html
  3. http://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.sv.html
  4. https://wiki.fsfe.org/Referat19September2013
  5. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/09/fellowship-treffen-rheinmain-in-frankfurt-4-sep-2013/
  6. http://www.softmetz.de/2013/09/23/freie-software-beim-corso-leopold-2-0/
  7. https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2013/09/22/software-freedom-day-2013-in-vienna/
  8. https://blogs.fsfe.org/fast_edi/?p=393
  9. http://coss.fi/2013/09/17/lauantaina-vietetaan-kansainvalista-avointen-ohjelmien-paivaa/
 10. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=906
 11. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=925
 12. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=936
 13. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=916
 14. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=946
 15. https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=884
 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/10/01/first-european-coordinators-meeting-2/
 17. http://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20130923-01.sv.html
 18. http://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20130926-01.sv.html
 19. http://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20130918-01.sv.html
 20. http://fsfe.org/activities/policy/eu/20130729.EC.Fairsearch.letter.en.html
 21. http://dot.kde.org/sites/dot.kde.org/files/KDE-Fairsearch-claim-response_0.pdf
 22. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/09/free-software-in-education-news-august-2013/
 23. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=1124
 24. http://ohwr.org/cernohl
 25. https://www.gnu.org/gnu30/gnu-a-day
 26. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/french-gendarmerie-open-source-desktop-lowers-tco-40
 27. http://planet.fsfe.org
 28. https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2013/09/rfc-user-data-manifesto/
 29. https://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=634
 30. http://creative-destruction.me/2013/09/15/open-source-in-wirtschaft-und-gesellschaft-sommeruni-2013/
 31. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/09/23/check-your-regular-expressions/
 32. https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/09/04/schneier-on-risk/
 33. https://blogs.fsfe.org/thomaslocke/2013/09/06/leashes-for-our-necks-and-whips-for-our-backs/
 34. http://www.softmetz.de/2013/09/07/erlaubnis-zur-nutzung-deines-namens-profilbilds-deiner-inhalte-und-informationen/http://www.softmetz.de/2013/09/07/erlaubnis-zur-nutzung-deines-namens-profilbilds-deiner-inhalte-und-informationen/
 35. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/generalpurposecomputing/secure-boot-analysis.sv.html
 36. http://seravo.fi/2013/dual-booting-ubuntu-12-04-windows-8-machines-restricted-boot
 37. http://danielpocock.com/postbooks-packages-available
 38. http://danielpocock.com/mastering-calendar-and-contact-data-with-free-software-in-the-smartphone-era
 39. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=430
 40. http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Monitoring_the_temparature_values_of_a__kofen_Pellematic_using_munin.html
 41. http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/noflo-ardrone/
 42. http://matija.suklje.name/after-many-years-new-laptop-after-a-decade-a-new-distro-and-thankfully-working-backups
 43. http://matija.suklje.name/are-copyright-and-other-ip-rights-really-a-natural-right
 44. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html
 45. http://computerfloss.com/2013/09/happy-birthday-gnu/
 46. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html
 47. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html
 48. https://blogs.fsfe.org/about/
 49. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
 50. http://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.sv.html
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