FSFE Newsletter – April 2014

press at fsfeurope.org press at fsfeurope.org
Fri Apr 4 10:17:49 CEST 2014


 = FSFE Newsletter – April 2014 =

[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201404.it.html ]

 == Document Freedom Day: Open Standards explained for grandpa ==

Although more entrepreneurs and politicians understand the importance of
Open Standards, people do not see the connection with their daily life.
That is why on 26 March we again organised Document Freedom Day[1]
(DFD). This year we had a lot of new materials: new leaflets in
different languages explain Open Standards[2], and a nice comic shows
why you should use Open Standards[3] so you do not have problems with
your files when you are old.

There were at least 51 events in 22 countries[4] organised by a lot of
independent groups. FSFE's volunteers in the UK presented an award to
The OpenStreetMap Foundation in Birmingham[5], while FSFE's Werner Koch
participated in an event on Open Standards in Cryptography in the
Parliament[6]. Our local group in Linz organised an information booth in
the city centre[7], and in the evening they gave a talk about Open
Standards at the university. At the booth in Vienna our volunteers had
some problems with an artist of a monument[8], but still handed out a
huge amount of leaflets and also informed four friendly police officers
about Free Software and Open Standards. Our DFD team[9] is still
gathering information of what happened during the DFD week, and will
publish a full report during April.

 == EU institution acknowledges captivity to Microsoft ==

In a recent letter to MEP Amelia Andersdotter[10] (PDF), the EC
acknowledges that it is in a state of "effective captivity" to
Microsoft. As FSFE has pointed out repeatedly that this is a persistent
problem for the Commission, the Council and the Parliament. On Document
Freedom Day the FSFE and Open Forum Europe sent an open letter to the
European Parliament and the European Commission highlighting its vendor
lock-in with Microsoft[11].

 == Using Free Software in the Netherland's education sector ==

The Free Software in education news for February[12] are out, including
an update from the NLEdu campaign[13]: Kevin reports that the commercial
director of SchoolMaster, the largest Dutch ELO/student administration
software supplier, confirmed that they will roll out a platform-
independent HTML5 version in April, replacing the Silverlight version.
This would make the NLEdu campaign a success as it will allow Free
Software users to access the course materials with any standard
compliant browser. Kevin Keijzer published detailed information about
this matter[14].

 == Something completely different ==

- For the European Parliament elections from 22 May to 25, FSFE supports
  the Free Software Pact by April, and the WePromise.Eu by EDRi[15]. Our
  volunteers worked on translations, and help to promote the
  campaign[16].

- Karsten Gerloff participated in the first meeting of the Asian Legal
  Network in Hong Kong[17]. Most of the people there were
  representatives from technology companies in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong,
  and Korea. This is a series of round tables organised jointly by FSFE,
  Open Invention Network and Linux Foundation. Inspired by the Legal
  Network which FSFE has been facilitating since 2006[18], it has the
  same goal: enabling legal experts to share knowledge about Free
  Software.

- FSFE welcomes its new Fellowship representative Stefan "Penny"
  Harmuth[19] in the the General Assembly[20].

- PDFreaders: Heiki reports why we had to remove SumatraPDF from
  pdfreaders.org[21], as it includes non-free code.

- Local FSFE Fellowship meetings: Guido Arnold reports from the meeting
  in Frankfurt[22] including the schedule of the next events in
  Wiesbaden, Bad Homburg, and of course Frankfurt. Thanks to Simon
  Wächter our group in Zürich resumed their monthly Fellowship meetings
  after some time of inactivity[23].

- After several years, our education team coordinator Guido Arnold
  finally visited the Chemnitzer Linuxtage[24]. As in previous years the
  FSFE had a booth there, distributing our new Free Software leaflet for
  beginners[25] which was written by our Vienna Fellowship group for a
  vegan festival and which is now available printed in English, German,
  French, and to be printed in Finnish. Beside that your editor gave a
  talk about the threat to the general purpose computer.

- We welcome OSB Alliance's publication of a guide how to procure Free
  Software in the public administration for the German public
  administration[26].

- During LibrePlanet 2014 The Free Software Awards went to the GNOME
  Foundation's Outreach Program for Women and Matthew Garrett[27], for
  his work to keep "Secure Boot"[28] Free Software compatible. Dan
  Fritzmartin documented how he made a video for LibrePlanet using all
  Free Software[29].

- Free Your Android[30]: Paul Kocialkowski of Replicant found a backdoor
  in the Samsung Galaxy[31]. Basically, these devices have a proprietary
  userspace program which accepts requests from the proprietary baseband
  firmware to modify the filesystem. By replacing that userspace program
  with a free one, this particular back-door can be closed by Replicant
  -- of course the proprietary modem firmware will still have sufficient
  control over the device to do many evil things.

- South Tyrol will increase its use of Free Software, announced their
  Governor Arno Kompatscher[32]. The European Parliament wants its IT
  department to rehabilitate its GNU/Linux desktop pilot. On Tuesday,
  the EP's committee on budgetary control accepted a request by MEPs
  Bart Staes and Amelia Andersdotter to restart the GNU/Linux desktop
  pilot[33], which had been shelved in 2012.

- From the planet aggregation[34]:

    - Setup a call for papers, select a few talks, publish a schedule,
      book a venue, sell a few tickets - have fun: Essentially all it
      takes to organise a conference, isn't it? In theory maybe - in
      practice - not so much. Fellow Isabel Drost-Fromm is sharing her
      experience on event organisation so others can learn from it[35],
      e.g. how increasing the ticket price relates to your amount of
      sleep.

    - Hugo Roy considers himself to be a turing complete user[36]. He
      points to a recommendable essay by Olia Lialina[37]. Related to
      this, if you have not seen revealing errors by Benjamin Mako
      Hill[38], it is worth it.

    - Henrik Sandklef wrote about what education is[39], and he searches
      for a strategy for teaching programming to newbies[40].

    - Nikos Roussos wrote that making things distributed is hard[41],
      and why centralisation happens. But although it takes effort and
      determination, he argues that we all together can build an
      Internet that is distributed.

    - He also documented how to build and run Popcorn Time from
      source[42].

    - Jens Lechtenbörger describes how he pins certificates in GNU
      Emacs[43].

    - Timo Jyrinki from our Finnish team wrote about the problems to
      switch to Qt 5.2.1 in Ubuntu involving roughly 130 source
      packages[44].

    - Franz Grazer wrote an article asking the question: Do we need
      DRM?[45] arguing that Free Software should not get involved with
      DRM since it is all about locking things down.

    - Matija documented How to write your Pelican-powered blog using
      ownCloud and WebDAV[46] and reports from his first results of
      testing DE razor blades for shaving with oil[47].


 == Get active: The right not to pay for non-free software ==

The revelations from Edward Snowden concerning massive surveillance of
communications demonstrates the need for each person to be able to
control their computers and phones. Yet computer and telephone
manufacturers and retailers typically impose on users programs that
jeopardise their privacy.

Each person should therefore have the opportunity to refuse to pay for
non-free software, and be allowed to choose the programs that run on
their telephone and computer, in our case a Free Software operating
system and other Free Software.

We joined other organisations throughout the world[48] in requesting an
unfettered choice of the operating system on telephones, laptops and
other computing devices.

This month we ask you to sign the international petition[49], and help
us promoting it[50]!

Thanks to all the volunteers[51], Fellows[52] and corporate donors[53]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE

-- 
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>

  1. http://documentfreedom.org
  2. http://documentfreedom.org/promotion.html
  3. https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/comic-and-quotes-why-you-should-use-open-standards/
  4. http://documentfreedom.org/events/events.html
  5. http://documentfreedom.org/news/2014/news-20140324-01.html
  6. http://www.greenmediabox.eu/archive/2014/03/26/greensefa-4th-document-freedom-day/
  7. https://blogs.fsfe.org/jzarl/2014/03/29/celebrating-document-freedom-day-in-linz/
  8. https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/03/28/document-freedom-day-in-vienna-2014/
  9. http://documentfreedom.org/contact.html
 10. https://ameliaandersdotter.eu/sites/default/files/andersdotter_annex.pdf
 11. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140326-02.it.html
 12. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/03/free-software-in-education-news-collection-february/
 13. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/nledu/
 14. http://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/03/04/nledu-progressions-and-some-regressions/
 15. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140304-01.it.html
 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2014/03/the-free-software-pact-for-the-european-elections/
 17. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140314-01.it.html
 18. https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/network.it.html
 19. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140303-01.it.html
 20. https://fsfe.org/about/team.it.html#id-general-assembly
 21. https://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2014/03/05/pdfreaders-org-removal-of-sumatrapdf-due-to-use-of-non-free-code/
 22. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/03/report-of-latest-fellowship-meeting-in-frankfurt/
 23. http://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipEvents/Zurich%202014-03-06
 24. https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/03/dieses-jahr-geht-es-endlich-nach-chemnitz/
 25. https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.it.html#free-software
 26. http://www.osb-alliance.de/themen-aktuelles/detailansicht/artikel/cebit-kostenloser-praxisratgeber-der-open-source-business-alliance-fuer-beschaffer-der-oeffentliche/
 27. https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-award-winners-announced
 28. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/generalpurposecomputing/secure-boot-analysis.html
 29. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/how-i-made-a-video-for-libreplanet-using-all-free-software
 30. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/android/android.it.html
 31. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/replicant-developers-find-and-close-samsung-galaxy-backdoor
 32. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/south-tyrol-increase-use-free-software
 33. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/european-parliament-covets-restart-linux-pilot
 34. http://planet.fsfe.org
 35. http://blog.drost-fromm.de/posts/how-hard-can-it-be-organising-a-conference.html
 36. http://hroy.eu/posts/im-a-turing-complete-user/
 37. http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/
 38. http://revealingerrors.com/
 39. http://sandklef.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/education-nevermid-what-was-it-anyway-pt-i/
 40. http://sandklef.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/wanted-a-strategy-for-teaching-programming-to-newbies/
 41. http://www.roussos.cc/2014/03/12/making-things-distributed-is-hard/
 42. http://www.roussos.cc/2014/03/21/building-running-popcorn-time/
 43. https://blogs.fsfe.org/jens.lechtenboerger/2014/03/23/certificate-pinning-for-gnu-emacs/
 44. http://losca.blogspot.de/2014/03/qt-521-in-ubuntu.html
 45. https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/03/08/do-we-need-drm/
 46. http://matija.suklje.name/how-to-write-your-pelican-powered-blog-using-owncloud-and-webdav
 47. http://matija.suklje.name/the-first-results-of-testing-de-razor-blades-for-shaving-with-oil
 48. http://no.more.racketware.info/petition/support
 49. http://no.more.racketware.info/petition/click/en
 50. http://no.more.racketware.info/petition/index
 51. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.it.html
 52. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
 53. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.it.html


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