Hello,
I stumbled across this odd article: "All OSS Developers Are Equal, But
Some OSS Developers Are More Equal Than Others!" [1] where the FSF is
criticized for being unfair to software developers and failed to close
the "ASP Loophole".
For the authors of this article, the Affero GPL does not fix the
problem, because "GPL developers won't use it". Well, if so, why
should they switch to any other licence that addresses the problem?
And the accusation of unfairness goes in the same direction. They
blame the FSF to aggressively sue software developers who don't
provide the source code in their distribution, but don't sue google
for benefiting from Free Software without showing their sources.
I don't really see what they want to tell me beside that the FSF is
just a bunch of "extremists" who "deny the value of intellectual
property rights."
I am contemplating to write them, but it's probably not worth it. What
do you think?
[1] http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/current.php?artType=view&artMonth=May&artYe…
Doesn't abiword also support ODF?
Sam
-----Original Message-----
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Sent: 22 May 2008 01:16
To: discussion(a)fsfeurope.org
Subject: Re: Even Microsoft officially gives up on ISO/DIS-29500
2008/5/21 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>:
> http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32228
> MS Office 2007 will not support DIS-29500 until 2009, if then.
> Make VERY SURE everyone knows that Microsoft Office officially doesn't
> support DIS-29500!
And 2007 will "support" ODF 1.1:
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=2008052109293…
Though I wonder what Microsoft values of "support" will entail.
(I'm glad there's two independent implementations of ODF - OOo and
KOffice - and not just one.)
- d.
_______________________________________________
Discussion mailing list
Discussion(a)fsfeurope.org
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
Issues around standardisation continued to make headlines during April.
However, other important areas of focus were also under discussion around
the world.
In Amsterdam, FSFE's Freedom Task Force hosted the first European Legal and
Licensing Workshop, leading to broad agreement between many European
stakeholders on methods of improving legal infrastructure for Free Software
in Europe. In Brazil, the 9th FISL conference provided a forum for various
discussion about the adoption and evolution of free technologies.
The Fellowship and FSFE volunteers were also active. The Fellows in Berlin
had a booth at a distribution release party and the Italian volunteers worked
on building the structure to ensure long-term sustainability for their team.
Please consider how you can contribute to our movement. You can visit
http://fsfeurope.org/contribute for suggestions of ways to get involved.
Shane, FSFE Zurich Office
1. FTF workshop leads to broad agreement on European licensing infrastructure
2. Lack of quality in standardisation a serious problem
3. Licensing as a strategic imperative, speech at FISL
4. Fellowship Group at Ubuntu Release Party in Berlin
5. Italian team: new mailing list and renewed blog
FORTHCOMING EVENTS:
6. Linuxwochen, Vienna, Austria (2008-05-15 to 2008-05-17)
7. Fellowship meeting in Vienna (2008-05-17)
8. LinuxTag 2008, Berlin, Germany (2008-05-28 to 2008-05-31)
9. 'Strategic implementation of Free Software in business' speech at eLiberatica (2008-05-30)
1. FTF workshop leads to broad agreement on European licensing infrastructure
The recent European Legal and Licensing Workshop hosted by FSFE's Freedom Task
Force lead to productive discussions and broad agreement on important focus
areas in Free Software licensing between commercial and non-commercial
stakeholders. The event took place in Amsterdam during early April and was
attended to capacity. Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, states that "this marks
an example of the growing maturity of Free Software in Europe. We have a great
deal to do to ensure strong infrastructure to support the community, but as
this workshop showed, the will and ability to create the infrastructure is
present in all stakeholders." Documentation from the workshop will be
released to the public shortly.
2. Lack of quality in standardisation a serious problem
"FSFE published its 'Six questions to national standardisation bodies'
before the September 2nd vote last year. [1] Considering the statements
about progress made on MS-OOXML, one would have hoped that at least one
of these questions enjoyed a satisfactory response," states FSFE's
German Deputy country coordinator Matthias Kirschner. He continues:
"Unfortunately that is not the case. Issues like the 'Converter Hoax' [2]
and the 'Questions on Open Formats' [3] are still equally valid. As the
'Deprecated before use' [4] and 'Interoperability woes with OOXML' [5]
documents demonstrate, MS-OOXML interoperability is severely limited in
comparison to Open Standards. In addition to these issues, there are the
legal concerns that were raised by various parties. [6]"
FSFE vice-president Jonas Öberg states: "Governments have to start
asking themselves what the ISO seal of approval really means. As
demonstrated by the MPEG standards, it never meant that something
qualifies as a meaningful 'Open Standard.'"
[1] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions
[2] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-converter-hoax
[3] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions-for-ms
[4] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-idiosyncrasies
[5] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-interoperability
[6] http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/stdlib/offdoc/mision
3. Licensing as a strategic imperative, speech at FISL
Shane Coughlan, FSFE's Freedom Task Force Coordinator, delivered a speech on
the strategic importance of Free Software licensing at this years FISL event
in Porte Alegre, Brazil. FISL has grown to be perhaps the largest Free
Software event in the world. This year it was attended by 7,000 people
and notable speakers included Jon 'Maddog' Hall, Theodore Ts'o from the
Linux Foundation and Mitchell Baker from Mozilla Corporation. Well known
European faces like Knut Yrvin from Trolltech and Bram Moolenaar, the creator
of VIM, were also present.
4. Fellowship Group at Ubuntu Release Party in Berlin
The Berlin Fellowship Group attended the "Hardy Heron" release event in
Berlin's cbase and featured a talk from Fellow Torsten Grote about Gobuntu --
which aims to be a complete free (as in free speech) GNU/Linux operating system
-- and the importance of Free Software in general. The group also had a booth
there which attracted many interested visitors who were very eager to learn
about Free Software. While Ubuntu is not entirely Free Software, it has
helped a lot to make Free Software accessible to many people. The Berlin
Fellowship wanted to build on this and foster discussion about our goal of
having 100% Free Software available to everyone.
If you would like to join in the fun, please note that the Berlin Fellowship
meets every second Thursday in the month at the Newthinking Store,
Tucholskystr. 48 in 10117 Berlin at 19:30 pm.
5. Italian team: new mailing list and renewed blog
The Italian team of the FSFE has just launched a new public discussion
mailing list about Free Software and FSFE activities in Italy. All
Italian fellows, volunteers and interested people are invited to join us
and come up with ideas, proposals and any kind of questions. You can
subscribe to the new fsfe-it@ list at:
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-it
Also, Gnuvox (http://www.gnuvox.info), the blog on Free Software and
Free Culture maintained by the Italian team, has just been renewed
thanks to the TIS Free Software Center in Bolzano. We have some
interesting plans for the future, and we invite all italian Fellows and
bloggers to follow Gnuvox , submit comments and new posts too: you can
contact the editorial team at: pr-it(at)fsfeurope.org
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
6. Linuxwochen, Vienna, Austria (2008-05-15 to 2008-05-17)
>From 15 to 17 May, an event of the Linuxwochen Austria will take place in the
building of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, Rudolf-Sallinger-Platz 1, 3rd
district, Vienna. A group of Fellows will be present with a booth where they
inform about FSFE, the Fellowship, and Free Software in general. Admission is
free for the whole event.
7. Fellowship meeting in Vienna (2008-05-17)
The twenty-second Austrian Fellowship meeting is integrated in the Linuxwochen
event in Vienna. Fellows and other interested people can meet at the FSFE
booth during the whole event to discuss, and at the end of the last day of
the event, we will join the Linuxwochen After-Show-Party.
8. LinuxTag 2008, Berlin, Germany (2008-05-28 to 2008-05-31)
As in the last years FSFE will be present with a booth at LinuxTag 2008. It
takes place at Berlin's Expo Center under the Funkturm. FSFE will inform
visitors about various aspects of Free Software, like the Freedom Task Force,
software patents, the SELF project, GPLv3, our work in the United Nations, or
the Fellowship of FSFE. Also it is planned to sell T-shirts from FSFE and
books about Free Software.
9. 'Strategic implementation of Free Software in business' speech at eLiberatica (2008-05-30)
Shane Coughlan, FTF coordinator, will deliver a speech entitled 'Strategic
implementation of Free Software in business' at the eLiberatica conference
in Romania on the 30th of May.
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
Copyright (C) FSFE. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire
article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Free software finally gets significant coverage on BBC TV's Click show
this week, but I think it's very much Linux rather than GNU/Linux and
free cost rather than freedom. They mentioned free security software
and even raised the possibility of trojans, but didn't mention how
free (as in freedom) software allows any random end-user to check or
have it checked.
Quite a missed opportunity! However, Click has a regular letters
section, so watch it (times below), email click(a)bbc.co.uk and see if
we can get the free software view across.
The letters section this week seemed to be flaming proprietary SaaS
social network site facebook for their pathetic default-permit
approach to security of user details. I really think there's a role
for something like noserub.com in free software social networking.
bbc.co.uk/click is shown on BBC News Channel Saturday 1130, Sunday
0430 and 1130, Monday 0030 and Sunday 0430 on BBC-1 (times BST)
bbcworld.com/click is shown Thursday 19:30 GMT, Repeated Friday 09:30
and 12:30 (Asia Pacific only), Saturdays 06:30, Mondays 15:30,
Tuesdays 01:30 (not Asia Pacific, Middle East or South Asia) & 07:30 GMT
Anyone else see this?
Regards,
--
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237
Hi,
I have a few questions:
1.) Is the only reason why completely free GNU/Linux distros like Gobuntu or
gnewsense don't work as well because of a lack of FOSS drivers?
2.) If so, are there laptops available in the world which one can buy that
have completely FOSS hardware (like the OpenMoko phone)?
3.) If such a laptop exists, would any old Joe like myself be able to run a
completely free OS? (Given that I am a GNU/Linux noob and know nothing about
programming, compiling, etc.)
4.) Is there a list somewhere of "certified FREE hardware" laptops /
desktops and where to buy them?
5.) Is the JISUS laptop (http://desktoplinux.com/news/NS3294112608.html)
such a machine?
Thank you ever so much for taking the time to answer my questions! I am
rather new to the issues at hand, have been searching around for a while for
answers but can't find any...
Video: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010186.html
TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html
(via Wade Olson, http://wadejolson.wordpress.com/)
" [...] I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago,
and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old
daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos
nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen.
That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if
Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was
doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What
you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said,
"Looking for the mouse."
Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a
mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's
targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still
for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way
change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply
in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that
I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching
/Gilligan's Island/, they just assume that media includes consuming,
producing and sharing.
It's also become my motto, when people ask me what we're doing--and when
I say "we" I mean the larger society trying to figure out how to deploy
this cognitive surplus, but I also mean we, especially, the people in
this room, the people who are working hammer and tongs at figuring out
the next good idea. From now on, that's what I'm going to tell them:
We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a
reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been
served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves,
"If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it
here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is
yes."
People are starting to realise what freedom is... What free,
collaborative (participatory) culture is.
Free software juggernauts are advancing full speed ahead... But there is
still a long and hard battle ahead of us.
Hooray!
Bogdan