From press at fsfe.org Wed Jul 21 07:26:26 2021 From: press at fsfe.org (press at fsfe.org) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 07:26:26 +0000 Subject: FSFE: 20 years of empowering people to control technology Message-ID: <21faed9f-6a56-1111-d21c-451e83bf6284@fsfe.org> Press kit graphics for reuse: * https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/big/757e1cb6599c1e9f76b202fa52033a73.jpg * https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/big/53aeebdafa0a0c83324dcafc1e4bef1c.png = FSFE: 20 years of empowering people to control technology = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210721-01.fi.html ] Marking twenty years of the FSFE, we highlight the importance of software freedom in Europe and important accomplishments since 2001. We shed light on our community with a birthday page where you can find community interviews and videos. People are invited to celebrate with us and share their own stories. Long before the first smartphone was introduced, it was evident to the FSFE's founders that it is the people who should be in control of technology and not vice versa. In 2001, Free Software experts around Europe therefore created [1] the Free Software Foundation Europe. 20 years later, we successfully concentrate our daily work on three main pillars [2] to help software freedom thrive in Europe: public awareness, policy advocacy, and legal support. == Some highlights of the last 20 years == In 2021, the FSFE looks back on a successful history with major successes in the public, legal, and policy fields. For example in 2005, when our intense campaigning [3] and collaboration with other organisations persuaded the European Parliament to vote [4] against Software Patents. Or two years later, when the European Court of Justice aligned with the FSFE, requiring Microsoft to publish interoperability information [5]. During that time, we saw that it was needed to help Free Software developers by clarifying the legal aspects of their work, such as the enforcement in case of license violations. This led to the FSFE starting to work with Free Software legal advocates and practitioners for legal initiatives in 2006. Meanwhile, the FSFE maintains the world's largest professional network on legal issues related to Free Software [6]. The FSFE's legal experts on this network help with concrete licensing consultancy. To this end in 2017 we also created the highly successful REUSE [7] initiative to provide a set of recommendations that make licensing Free Software projects easier for developers. REUSE has been adopted by well known projects such as the German Corona Warn App and the KDE. Since its founding, the FSFE has been committed to running public campaigns and helping people to understand the benefits of Free Software. As early as 2012, we helped users to overcome software restrictions in their phones with the launch of our 'Free Your Android' campaign [8]. Two years earlier we introduced "I Love Free Software Day" [9] which is celebrated around the globe every year on 14 February. In 2017, we launched the extraordinarily successful 'Public Money? Public Code!' campaign [10], convincing several public administrations to change their IT strategy. The accompanying open letter [11] has been signed by over 200 civil society organisations, 31.000 individuals, and several public administrations like the city of Barcelona and the Swedish JobTech Development center. == FSFE20 campaign: handing over the mic to our community == Of course, all these accomplishments can only give a glimpse of the impact of the FSFE and our activities in the last 20 years. They do not tell how all these successes are the result of our large community that we can rely on. To at least shed light on some of them we created the FSFE20 campaign [12] this year, where we hand over the mic to our community. We have contacted people who paved the way of the FSFE since its beginning, such as long term contributors and past staffers. In a series of interviews we discuss the progress of the FSFE as well as technological topics. Every person who is involved in the FSFE has unique memories, expertise, and hopes for the future. They are all part of the story of 20 Years FSFE. So far we interviewed Georg Greve [13], founder president of the FSFE; Reinhard Müller [14], long-term volunteer and former Financial Officer of the FSFE; Fernanda Weiden [15], former Vice President of FSFE and founding member of FSF Latin America; and Torsten Grote [16], Free Software developer and long time volunteer in the FSFE. And this is just the beginning. We will conduct several more interviews to shed light on 20 Years FSFE. In addition, this autumn we want to publish another dedicated birthday page whose content is entirely made from our community contributions. You will find more on this and the interviews on our birthday page [17]! Besides these interviews, you will also find a birthday video from science-fiction author Cory Doctorow and one by our current president Matthias Kirschner alongside information on how people can join the celebrations. === A message from our President Matthias Kirschner === Although technology is ever-changing, our values have been consistent throughout the last twenty years. The core of our work is, in a nutshell: educating people on the nature of Free Software, highlighting its political implications, and simplifying its legal preconditions. Matthias Kirschner, President of the FSFE since 2015, explains this in his own words in a short video on our birthday page: https://fsfe.org/activities/20years/20years.fi.html 1: https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/press-release/2001q2/000003.html 2: https://fsfe.org/about/ourwork.fi.html 3: https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/press-release/2004q2/000057.html 4: https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/press-release/2005q3/000109.html 5: https://fsfe.org/activities/ms-vs-eu/ms-vs-eu.fi.html 6: https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/ln.fi.html 7: https://reuse.software/ 8: https://fsfe.org/activities/android/index.fi.html 9: https://fsfe.org/activities/ilovefs/index.fi.html 10: https://publiccode.eu/ 11: https://publiccode.eu/openletter/ 12: https://fsfe.org/activities/20years/20years.fi.html 13: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210204-01.fi.html 14: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210305-01.fi.html 15: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210420-01.fi.html 16: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210625-01.fi.html 17: https://fsfe.org/activities/20years/20years.fi.html == About the Free Software Foundation Europe == Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives; and it is important that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software. These rights help support other fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, press and privacy. The FSFE helps individuals and organisations understand how Free Software contributes to freedom, transparency and self-determination. We enhance users' rights by abolishing barriers to Free Software adoption, encourage people to use and develop Free Software, and provide resources to enable everyone to further promote Free Software in Europe. https://fsfe.org From press at fsfe.org Mon Aug 30 07:08:04 2021 From: press at fsfe.org (press at fsfe.org) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2021 07:08:04 +0000 Subject: Public bodies fail: Volunteers have to sacrifice free time to make CovPass app available to all Message-ID: = Public bodies fail: Volunteers have to sacrifice free time to make CovPass app available to all = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210830-01.fi.html ] After the successful liberation of the German Corona tracing app from Google services last year, volunteers once more have to step in to take over the government's task in order to make the CovPass app available to everyone. With the CovPass app, the EU digital COVID certificate for Corona vaccination can be used on smartphones. Until today, it was only available on Apple, Huawai and Google app stores due to proprietary dependencies. The support team of the CovPass app also argued that the app cannot be published in other app stores due to security reasons and to prevent misuse. This argumentation is not only misleading and wrong, as we have already seen with other Corona apps, but prevents the use of many Corona apps for people who value privacy and software freedom on their devices. A group of volunteers worked heavily in the past weeks to make this app available to everyone and released it today on F-Droid, a Free Software app store. [1] To do so, the volunteers also removed proprietary Google libraries which are not necessary for the app to function. This additional work could have been prevented if the CovPass developers (who are paid with public funds) would not include such unnecessary proprietary libraries from the beginning. Furthermore, the company developing CovPass was unsupportive towards external developers, which increased the difficulty for the volunteers to contribute improvements. Because of this, improvements which would have required little effort by the original developers turned out to be a difficult task for volunteers. A positive example is the COVID Certificate, the official app for storing and presenting Swiss COVID certificates. It was developed by the Federal Office of Information Technology, Systems and Telecommunication (FOITT) on behalf of the Federal Office of Public Health, and the developers made sure to include the app in the Free Software app store F-Droid themselves. Felix C. Stegerman, software developer and part of the volunteers group that worked on the CovPass app: "I want to make sure that everyone can use publicly financed apps so we can tackle the pandemic. It is sad that the processes of some of those publicly financed apps scare off external contributions instead of working together on improvements. More administrations should follow the example of the developers of the Swiss COVID Certificate app." Matthias Kirschner, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe expresses: "One more time volunteers are taking over governments' and administrations' tasks to make Corona apps available to everyone. The FSFE thanks @jugendhacker, @mythsunwind, @rugk, @tzugen, Felix C. Stegerman and Marcus Hoffmann for their crucial work in tackling the pandemic. But it should not be on volunteers to do this job: we urge the government to quickly adapt its practices and make sure everyone can use such apps without any restrictions from the start. Furthermore, if ensured that solutions are published as Free Software, they can be adjusted and reused by other institutions around the world." Since the beginning of the Corona crisis, the FSFE has demanded that all apps released to tackle the crisis must be Free Software. Only Free Software offers enough transparency to validate complete data protection and compliant use; allowing trust to be established. Also, global problems need global solutions, and it is only Free Software that enables global code development in a legally safe and cooperative environment. Any proprietary solution will inevitably lead to countless isolated solutions and thereby waste energy and time. Besides global cooperation, Free Software licences allow sharing of code in any jurisdiction and for every device. Discuss this [2] 1: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.rki.covpass.app/ 2: https://community.fsfe.org/t/720 == About the Free Software Foundation Europe == Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives; and it is important that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software. These rights help support other fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, press and privacy. The FSFE helps individuals and organisations understand how Free Software contributes to freedom, transparency and self-determination. We enhance users' rights by abolishing barriers to Free Software adoption, encourage people to use and develop Free Software, and provide resources to enable everyone to further promote Free Software in Europe. https://fsfe.org From press at fsfe.org Tue Sep 28 07:04:48 2021 From: press at fsfe.org (press at fsfe.org) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2021 07:04:48 +0000 Subject: Youth Hacking 4 Freedom: Coding Competition for teenagers about to start Message-ID: = Youth Hacking 4 Freedom: Coding Competition for teenagers about to start = [ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210928-01.fi.html ] The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charity that empowers users to control technology. To inspire the younger generation to software freedom, the FSFE is organising the coding competition ‘Youth Hacking 4 Freedom' (YH4F), where teenagers from all around Europe have the chance to compete in a fair and fun way. The winners receive a cash prize and a trip to Brussels with other young hackers. - Participants must be 14-18 years old and should register at yh4f.org [1] - The opening event will be hosted on 10 October 2021. - Registration will be open until *31 October 2021*. - Six winners will be awarded cash prizes (2 x 4.096€, 2 x 2.048€, 2 x 1.024€) and a trip to Brussels. - The competition will take place online. The Award Ceremony will be in Brussels. Graphic by Lisa Schmidt [2], CC-BY-SA 4.0 [3] The YH4F competition includes an online opening day to welcome everyone on board, in a kick-off event on Sunday 10 October, 5pm CEST. The FSFE will present the competition and answer questions. Please find more information on how to join at yh4f.org [4]. === Coding === On Monday 1 November 2021, a five-month coding phase starts and the participants focus on coding until March 2022. Participants may bring all their imagination to the competition; they may code any type of software they want, as long as it is Free Software. The software project can be a stand-alone program written from scratch, or you can modify or combine existing programs. Everything is welcome! The participants will have the chance to briefly follow each other’s work and exchange ideas. === Evaluation === After the participants submit their programs, an evaluation phase is carried out by Free Software experts. Our jury members [5] excel in software development; among them are Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, and Claudia Müller-Birn, Professor for Human- Centered Computing at the Freie Universität Berlin. === Awards === The winners will be invited to receive their awards during a trip to Brussels in June 2022. The 2-day trip includes the Award Ceremony and social activities where the winners will have the chance to get to know each other better. Graphic by Lisa Schmidt [6], CC-BY-SA 4.0 [7] We are dedicated to offering an inclusive environment in the YH4F, and we would like to encourage people of all genders to join! We will make sure that everyone will enjoy the process and will leave this competition with added knowledge and a smile. The YH4F is made possible thanks to the kind support of Reinhard Wiesemann, Linuxhotel, and Vielrespektzentrum. At the website yh4f.org [8] you can find all related information, such as the process, the eligibility criteria, and FAQs [9]. You can also use the illustrations in our dedicated media package [10] when sharing the news of the competition. Discuss this [11] 1: http://yh4f.org/ 2: https://mullana.de/ 3: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 4: http://yh4f.org/ 5: https://fsfe.org/activities/yh4f/jury.fi.html 6: https://mullana.de/ 7: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 8: http://yh4f.org/ 9: https://fsfe.org/activities/yh4f/faq.fi.html 10: https://fsfe.org/activities/yh4f/media.fi.html 11: https://community.fsfe.org/t/744 == About the Free Software Foundation Europe == Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives; and it is important that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software. These rights help support other fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, press and privacy. The FSFE helps individuals and organisations understand how Free Software contributes to freedom, transparency and self-determination. We enhance users' rights by abolishing barriers to Free Software adoption, encourage people to use and develop Free Software, and provide resources to enable everyone to further promote Free Software in Europe. https://fsfe.org