FSFE Newsletter - April 2011

press at fsfeurope.org press at fsfeurope.org
Mon Apr 4 11:43:55 CEST 2011


= FSFE Newsletter - April 2011 =

[Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201104.en.html ]


== A decade of Freedom: FSFE turned 10 ==

One room with a bed, a desk, and a sofa. That was the situation when
your editor started working as an intern for FSFE in Georg Greve's one
room appartment in Hamburg in 2004. FSFE started with its operations in
March 2001[1] as the first sister organisation of the FSF in the US. We
have come a long way[2] since then. First of all, our interns don't get
Georg's mandatory cooking lessons any more, instead they now have their
own desks and do not have to work from the sofa any more. Second, we now
have the Fellowship which leads to a growth of volunteers and
activities:

- In the UK, Sam Tuke is currently busy setting up a punchy team. They
  are giving talks, organising events, and documenting the
  developments[3] in the future role of Free Software in the British
  public sector.

- Our Italian team is currently supporting ADUC to get rid of the
  Windows Tax[4] . ADUC is an Italian association for users/consumers'
  rights who recently filed a class action request against Microsoft
  Italy's refusal of reimbursing unused OEM licences for its operating
  system. Carlo Piana is helping ADUC's lawyers and Giacomo Poderi with
  the Italian team will help to raise awareness on this issue[5] .

- In Switzerland you have a confusing landscape of different Free
  Software organisations, which have problems with coordionation. It was
  nearly impossible to find out what is going on in the next weeks, or
  to find a date for an activity which does not interfer with another
  group. That's why the Zurich Fellowship group has now set up an event
  calendar on freie-termine.ch[6] to improve this situation.

- Our Swedish team was actively publishing videos from FSCONS[7] . Last
  year in November, we hosted our own track at FSCONS around different
  topics of decentralised (social) networks and free network services.
  Now the videos of the talks[8] are finally online.

- This year there are at least 8 Federal State elections in Germany. The
  German team already received replies from the parties in Sachsen-
  Anhalt[9] , Rheinland-Pfalz[10] , and Baden-Würrtemberg[11] on
  questions like general support of Free Software, problems of vendor
  lock-in, Open Standards[12] , non-free PDF readers advertisements[13]
  on public websites, the use of Free Software in education[14] , and
  software patents[15] . The same will be done for the remaining
  elections.

1. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110310-01.en.html
2. http://fsfe.org/about/history/birthday10.en.html
3. http://fsfe.org/uk/mapping-uk.en.html
4. http://wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsTaxRefund
5. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110321-01.en.html
6. http://freie-termine.ch
7. http://fscons.org/2010/news/fscons-2010-videos-finally
8.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2011/03/28/fscons-2010-divide-and-re-conquer-talks-now-online/
9. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ayc/201103-germany-sachsen-anhalt.de.html
10. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ayc/201103-germany-rheinland-pfalz.de.html
11. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/ayc/201103-germany-baden-wuerttemberg.de.html
12. http://fsfe.org/projects/os/os.en.html
13. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html
14. http://fsfe.org/projects/education/education.en.html
15. http://fsfe.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.html


== Worldwide celebration of Open Standards ==

Open Standards are a common language, publicly documented, that computer
programs can speak. They are central to interoperability and freedom of
choice in technology. Open Standards allow Free Software developers to
create programs that can interoperate with other solutions, so users can
migrate away from proprietary solutions.

Many of you followed our call to participate in this year's Document
Freedom Day: in Brazil, the Federal Data Processing Company - Serpro -
hold events in 10 cities. In the European Parliament, experts discussed
Open Standards as a means to guarantee access to cultural works in the
long term. Other groups participated in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil,
Croatia, Greece, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Panama, Portugal,
Spain and United Kingdom. Selected FSFE activities include:

- The City Munich was awarded with the European Document Freedom Day
  prize for its LiMux project[16] .

- Tagesschau.de awarded[17] for the use of Open Standards: The prize was
  awarded in Berlin and Hamburg by the Foundation for a Free Information
  Infrastructure (FFII) and us for offering the broadcast shows also in
  the free video format "Ogg Theora". As you can see on the pictures[18]
  (DE) the cake was amazing (also available in French[19] )

- "A bright Document Freedom Day for Britain?" about Open Standards in
  Britain[20] .

16. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110330-02.en.html
17. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110330-01.en.html
18. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=765
19. http://blogs.fsfe.org/nicoulas/?p=87
20. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110330-04.en.html


== Something completely different ==

- Redhat made $909 million with Free Software and Nokia is spreading
  FUD?: After Mirko Böhm wrote an interesting analysis[21] on the
  current Nokia move, your editor commented on Nokia's announcement[22]
  about selling the proprietary Qt business to Digia. This also led to
  interesting discussions on our public mailing lists about the meaning
  of "commercial".

- Our freshly elected Fellowship representative Hugo Roy[23] wrote about
  IPRED[24] (FR).

- Fellowship Interview with Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen[25] . Dan
  describes the aims of these exciting gaming projects, and discusses
  what Free Software could mean for gaming in future.

- New Legal News available for 19.02.-25.02.[26] , 26.02.-04.03.[27] ,
  05.03.-13.03.[28] , 14.03.-20.03.[29] , 21.03.-28.03.[30]

- 2010 Free Software Awards[31] go to: Rob Savoye and the TOR project.
  Savoye is a long-time free software hacker, who has worked on GNU and
  other free software for over 20 years. TOR is enabling people around
  the world to experience freedom of access and expression on the
  Internet while keeping them in control of their privacy and anonymity.

- The FSF welcomed Debian's "Squeeze" release[32] . Debian GNU/Linux
  also received a prize at the Cebit, where Karsten Gerloff held the
  laudatio[33].

21. http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/4394
22. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=736
23. http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110301-01.en.html
24.
http://blog.hugoroy.eu/2011/03/28/ipred-remettre-en-question-la-politique-de-lue-en-matiere-de-droit-dauteur-et-de-brevets-sur-internet/
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=267
26. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/232
27. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/233
28. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/236
29. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/237
30. http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/238
31. http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-free-software-awards-announced
32.
http://www.fsf.org/news/debian-squeeze-makes-key-progress-toward-being-a-fully-free-distribution
33. http://fsfe.org/events/2011/lnm-award-debian.en.html


== Get Active - Translations for free PDF readers ==

During our pdfreaders campaign[34] we received the feedback that it is
difficult to use some free PDF readers, as the download pages, or the
actual software is not translated. Since then our intern Nicoulas Jean
is in contact with several free PDF reader developers. Take a look at
our list of PDF readers[35] and how to help them with translation, and
take action:

- Help translating your favorite PDF reader and ask others to do so.

- Find out how to help with translations of the missing readers and add
  this information it to the website.

34. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html
35. http://wiki.fsfe.org/PDFreadersTranslations


Regards,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE


-- 
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>



More information about the Newsletter-en mailing list