FSFE Newsletter - September 2015

press at fsfeurope.org press at fsfeurope.org
Mon Sep 7 14:36:26 CEST 2015


 = FSFE Newsletter - September 2015 =

[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201509.ro.html ]

 == FSFE supports users' control over their online data ==

Nowadays we use online services for everything and increasingly provide
our data to them. However we also lose the control of our own data more
than ever. Together with other organisations FSFE supports the
publication of the User Data Manifesto 2.0[1] which promotes users'
basic rights to control their data while using online services.
According to the manifesto, users must control the access to their data,
they have to know if their data is stored by the online services, and
they have to be able to freely choose a platform without being forced to
vendor lock-in. The manifesto is a good starting point for the debate
about users' rights online, and FSFE looks forward to other
organisations joining the effort to stand for online services that
respect users' fundamental rights.

 == Compulsory routers: Another one bites the dust ==

The router, although often a device covered with dust in some corner at
home, is an important part of your local network and phone. A lot of
users in Germany do not own this device, although it stands in their
home and they pay for its power. At least that is still the case. On
August 12th, the German Federal Ministry of the Economy (BMWi) passed a
reworked draft bill[2] that would free users from compulsory router
lock-in. The draft ensures that internet users in Germany can use
whatever routers they want to connect to the internet.

The bill now has to be adopted by the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) and
the Federal Assembly (Bundesrat). So far the comments concerned only a
small formal ambiguity, but we have to make sure this law passes without
any negative changes and that it is afterwards implemented. We have a
detailed update[3] which also describes how you can help us in Germany
at the moment! Besides that we summarised the issue[4] and we are
constantly updating our timeline[5] so in case this topic comes up in
your country, you can reuse our arguments.

 == New German Coordinators and dissolving the German association ==

In his blog post your editor outlined[6] the process of streamlining the
FSFE by dissolving the last remaining country chapter, known as the FSFE
Chapter Germany e.V. This step was decided last year in November with
the goal to remove some bureaucratic burdens associated with maintaining
a legal entity. However as you can read in the article, dissolving an
organisation is not as easy as it may sound; but we hope to complete
this process in April of next year.

FSFE is happy to announce that Max Mehl and Björn Schießle became the
new coordinators of the German team last month, and from now on will
hopefully not spend many hours per year dealing with bureaucracy. Both
have been a part of FSFE for a long time now and have been helping us to
achieve our goal to empower people to control technology[7]. Just
recently, Björn wrote an article on the German blog Netzpolitik.org
about the User Data Manifesto[8] (see above in English), and Max just
published an update on compulsory routers as mentioned above, along with
an article on Netzpolitik.org about it[9].

 == Something completely different ==

- Paul Boddie started with the Fellowship interviews again: he talked
  with Neil McGovern[10] who is a Fellow of the FSFE from the United
  Kingdom and the current Debian Project Leader.

- Hugo Roy, FSFE's deputy legal coordinator wrote an article[11] (in
  French) about a copyright case between Skype and a French software
  company which decompiled parts of Skype in order to, allegedly, build
  a system interoperable with it. Interestingly enough, the court found
  that company's disclosure of the source code was illegal, but that
  using the code to build a new interoperable program was legal.

- FSFE has a new role in the Bacula project[12]. Over the coming months,
  the FSFE will wind down its previous role as a fiduciary for Bacula,
  effectively transferring its copyright to Kern. However, the FSFE will
  continue to work with Kern and contributors to ensure that Bacula will
  remain as Free Software, as per our original agreement.

- Next month FSFE will have a booth at the "Rotlintstraßenfest" in
  Frankfurt on 19 September and a booth at the "Kieler Open Source and
  Linuxtage" from 18-19 September.

- From the planet aggregation[13]:

    - Nikos Roussos was guided by Open Street Map during his vacations
      and afterwards he spent time to improve the Open Street Map[14]
      with the data he gathered during his trip so everybody will
      benefit from it again.

    - Daniel Pocock published the second part[15] of his how-to about
      "recording live events like a pro".

    - Paul Boddie commented on the new Fairphone[16] and wrote about his
      passion[17] for microcomputer systems from the 1980s and his
      experience with PCB design.

    - Mario Fux unveils the secret ingredient for the success of the
      "Randa Meetings"[18] -- the KDE meetings in the Swiss Alps --
      which took place for the sixth time this year.

    - On a more technical side Peter Bubestinger, FSFE's Austrian
      coordinator and technician at the National Video-Archive, wrote
      about rescuing videotapes[19].

    - Kevin Keitzer wrote about some SSH magic in "Connecting to a
      server’s web interface over SSH"[20], and about how to track
      airplanes and do other interesting things with "software-defined
      radio on GNU/Linux"[21].


 == Get active: translate and improve translations of our mission statement ==

"Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our
lives. It is important that this technology empowers rather than
restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights..." That is how
FSFE's recently updated mission statement starts[22]. We hope that it
will help us to get more people to understand what we are doing. We
already have translations into Albanian, Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek,
Italian, Portuguese, and Turkish.

Please help us to get more translations[23], and to check the exisiting
translations for easy readability for everybody.

Thanks to all the volunteers[24], Fellows[25] and corporate donors[26]
who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE[27]

-- 
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://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150829-01.html
  2. http://www.bmwi.de/BMWi/Redaktion/PDF/Gesetz/gesetzentwurf-der-bundesregierung-zur-auswahl-und-zum-anschluss-von-telekommunikationsendgeraeten,property=pdf,bereich=bmwi2012,sprache=de,rwb=true.pdf
  3. https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150902-01.html
  4. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/routers.html
  5. https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/timeline.html
  6. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/dissolving-our-association/
  7. http://fsfe.org/about/mission.html
  8. https://netzpolitik.org/2015/user-data-manifesto-2-0/
  9. https://netzpolitik.org/2015/der-lange-weg-des-routerzwangs-zur-endgeraetefreiheit/
 10. http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=683
 11. http://www.lemondedudroit.fr/le-monde-du-droit-le-quotidien-des-juristes-daffaires/publications/dossiers/207324-decompilation-dun-logiciel-etat-des-lieux.html
 12. http://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150817-01.en.html
 13. http://planet.fsfe.org
 14. http://www.roussos.cc/2015/08/07/post-vacations-map-editing/
 15. http://danielpocock.com/recording-live-events-like-a-pro-part-two-video
 16. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1000
 17. https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1070
 18. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=336
 19. http://blogs.fsfe.org/pb/?p=158
 20. http://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2015/08/27/web-interface-over-ssh/
 21. http://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2015/08/31/sdr-on-linux/
 22. https://fsfe.org/about/mission.html
 23. http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators.html
 24. https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.ro.html
 25. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
 26. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.ro.html
 27. https://fsfe.org/index.ro.html


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