Hi all,
just came accross this article about IBMs "OpenClient" on Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/12/ibm-open-source-tech-enter-cz_dl_0212ibm.h…
this once more proves how right we are to talk about Free Software!
Regards, Myriam
--
Protect your freedom, join the Fellowship of FSFE!
http://www.fsfe.org
Please don't send me proprietary file formats,
use ISO standard ODF instead (ISO/IEC 26300)
Hello. Argh. I've written too much again, i'll try to underline some
sections with "!>" so you can skip the rest:
!>I've read that a software license has been published by the EU
!>to cover software made by or for public administration that is
!>freed by EU governments.
!>
!>It's at:
!>http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6523
!>
!>I haven't found it at
!>http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html
!>
!>An I've read the license, the preamble and the explanation on
!>the compatibility clause (without reading the reports it cites).
!>
!>The license is all right with me, until I get to an strange
!>twist:
!>
!> The European Commission may put into force translations and/or binding new
!> versions of this Licence, so far this is required and reasonable. New versions of the
!> Licence will be published with a unique version number. The new version of the
!> Licence becomes binding for You as soon as You become aware of its publication.
!>
I've seen similar clauses in some propietary licenses (for demos or betas at least).
I'm not an expert on software copyright or licenses, but
I've never seen a free software license that can expire, and
as I see it, this clause means that the moment that the European
Commission changes its mind, I can lose my right to use , modify
or redistribute the software. I think the CEC has several means
to make sure that I (or anyone) is made aware of the change
of license (for instace with a certified letter, a visit by some
officer, or simply widespread propaganda, but in any case easily
done previous to a lawsuit).
!> That wouldn't be free software
I certainly have no trust in any license than can be so easily
revoked (and I suspect it wouldn't be DFSG either, but I haven't
checked and I have bad memory). Any investment in work or learning
with software that I don't know if it will be free tomorrow is
nearly wasted. I'm not sure it would be even legal to take
away the granted rights, but I've seen it in other licenses, so
it might well be.
I'm relieved to find that confirmed in the free software definition at
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html :
In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as
long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the
power to revoke the license, without your doing anything to give
cause, the software is not free.
I could understand people who publish their software under GPL version
X only and those who trust FSF enough to publish under GPL version X
or later. But it's always version X or later as the user chooses, not as the
publisher or FSF chooses at a later moment in time, just by making
people aware of the change.
I also don't know whether this clause was already in EUPL v 0.2 or is new.
I hadn't checked v 0.2. Today's news just happen to reach me in a moment
I could spare some minutes to read the license.
I hope I'm missing something here and... well I don't know, maybe there's
some binding compromise somewhere that the EU cannot change the EUPL
to grant less than some minimum freedoms, come what may, or so, but I
don't see it. I know governments can change law and therefore can
take away freedoms even without changing the licenses in their software,
but well, that would at least require some legislative maneuvring and
some votes somewhere (just don't get me started on democracy and the EU).
Of course the same concern I have may be shared by any public administration
that the EUPL aims to serve. Will my local council use software by a
neighbour local council if the permission to use it may be revoked at
any time by the European Comission ? Will any business help my local
council adapt software under EUPL if their legal ability to conclude the
project is dependent on a change of political tides in Brussels ?
Is that sound policy ?
Just thought I'd ask in case someone here is aware and can clarify
my confusion.
1. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project
2. Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement
3. Windows Vista released - FSFE recommends switching to GNU/Linux
4. Get Active: Join the Revolution!
1. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project
OpenSwarm is the second project to make use of the fiduciary services
of the FSFE Freedom Task Force. OpenSwarm is planned to be a holistic
set of model-driven software development tools focused on the easy
creation of powerful and business logic enriched applications in the
field of Web- and data-centric solutions. By signing the Fiduicary
License Agreement (FLA) with FSFE, the project allows FSFE to become
its legal guardian.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000165.html
2. Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement
Ciarán O'Riordan has compiled a transcript of a lecture given by
Richard Stallman in Zagreb. This speech is certainly a good source of
information about various Free Software related topics.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html
3. Windows Vista released - FSFE recommends switching to GNU/Linux
FSFE has taken the opportunity of Windows Vista's launch to remind about
the dangers and threats arising from the use of proprietary software. As
many users will have to convert to a new operating system anyway, FSFE
recommends to take the chance to get rid of the chains of proprietary
software and switch to a Free Software solution.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000166.html
4. Get Active: Join the Revolution!
The internship position in FSFE's office in Zürich is becoming vacant in
March, and FSFE is looking for somebody to continue the series of
interested and motivated interns. An internship with FSFE is an
interesting, challenging and exciting experience, and there are few
other opportunities to work with a highly dynamical NGO on an
international level.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/contribute/internship.en.html
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
Hi all,
Does the FSF Europe website still exist?
I can't seem to reach it. HTTP to http://www.fsfeurope.org times out,
alertra.com confirms it's unreachable.
PING fails as well.
$ ping -c 5 www.fsfeurope.org
PING berzelius.fsfeurope.org (130.243.109.205) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- berzelius.fsfeurope.org ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 4001ms
$ ping -c 5 fsfeurope.org
PING fsfeurope.org (130.243.109.205) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- fsfeurope.org ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 4019ms
Any idea what's wrong? Or when someone is going to fix it?
Or has the FSF given up on having a European website?
Andy
Dear all,
as you might know, the FSFE is involved in a project called SELF
(Science, Education and Learning in Freedom), a projected funded by the
European Commission for a period of two years, from summer 2006 to
summer 2008.
The SELF project will develop a platform for the collaborative sharing
and creation of free educational materials on Free Software and Open
Standards. It will also try to fill this platform with some initial
materials on Free Software and Open Standards.
The first half year of the SELF project has been spent primarily on
analysis of the available free materials on Free Software and Open
Standards, as well as a preliminary analysis of the areas where there
are none or little free educational materials.
With the developers at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in
Mumbai now starting the work on the technical implementation of the
platform, the project will gradually shift into a more active mode of
operation.
For this reason, I have just created a mailing list where we can
coordinate the FSFE work in this project. If this project sounds
interesting, please have a look at the SELF project web site;
http://www.selfproject.eu/
And subscribe to the FSFE mailing list:
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/self
You can also subscribe to the SELF general mailing list if you wish:
http://mail.selfproject.eu/mailman/listinfo/discussion
What we're soon going to start working on is the atomisation of the
existing materials (basically turning the materials into SCORM format
for later import into the SELF platform). Each partner is responsible
for about nine materials, and the FSFE has been given the following
materials to convert:
- AGNULA Tutorials
- GNU Emacs Manual
- GNU Emacs FAQ
- GNU Octave Manual
- The Gimp Documentation
- GNU/Linux Command-Line Tools Summary
- Bash Guide for Beginners
- Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
- Network Administration
Needless so say, all of these are rather technical in detail, and we
have already identified a gap in the available materials covering the
general issues of Free Software and Open Standards. But we're sure there
are other gaps that needs to be filled as well, which is why we should
also work to organise a workshop to talk about what kinds of educational
materials are needed for Free Software and Open Standards, though I'm
not sure exactly when this should be done right now.
But please, if this sounds interesting to you, please join the mailing
list, and contribute to the work!
--
Jonas Öberg
Free Software Foundation Europe ( Join the Fellowship )
Tel. +46-31-780 21 61 Mob. +46-733 423 962 ( http://fsfe.org )
I've discussed the Nokia 770 with a few high profile members of the
FSFE community. The reaction was generally positive. Sure, it may
have Flash and Opera, but it's essentially a free platform, was the
common feeling. I call this assertion into question: Maemo relies
heavily on non-free components and Nokia has constructed technical and
psychological barriers which prevent a free platform from emerging. I
contend that Nokia, despite their contributions to the FLOSS
communities, represents a greater threat to freedom than many
proprietary hardware vendors. Read the note here:
http://walfield.org/blog/2007/01/29/maemo.html
Neal
Hi guys. Today was a pretty exciting day for the FSFE Freedom Task
Force office. We just announced the release of the Fiduciary Licence
Agreement (FLA) under both the GFDL and CC by-sa.
The FLA is a copyright assignment that provides a really simple route to
making sure projects can maintain copyright coherency.
The FLA can be used to either assign copyright to the FSFE Fiduciary
Programme or to another party. It's designed to work in multiple legal
jurisdictions and to provide the closest thing we can get to a one-stop
copyright assignment.
The link to the webpage is: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/fla/
Please tell projects you are involved with and let your friends know.
The official press release is below. If you have any questions you can
just email me :)
=======
FSFE releases solution to increase legal strength of Free Software projects
FSFE releasing the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL) and the
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike (CC by-sa) licence.
The Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) is a copyright assignment
carefully crafted for the specific needs of Free Software projects to
bundle their copyright in a single organisation or person. This will
enable projects to ensure their legal maintainability, including
important issues such as preserving the ability to relicense and
certainty to have sufficient rights to enforce licences in court.
The FLA is a truly international copyright assignment working in both
copyright traditions that was written by Dr. Axel Metzger (ifrOSS) and
Georg Greve (FSFE) in consultation with renowned international legal
and technical experts. The latest revision was compiled by Georg Greve
and FSFE's FTF coordinator Shane M Coughlan based on feedback provided
by Dr. Lucie Guibault of the Institute for Information Law in the
Netherlands.
"The FLA has been carefully formulated to meet the legal requirements
of every country and it ensures that assignment or licence granted
has the same scope irrespective of the country in which it is signed,"
says Dr. Lucie Guibault. "This marks a clear step forward in
copyright assignment and offers real benefit to the Free Software
community."
There are two ways the FLA would be used: A project can apply to be
accepted into FSFE's Fiduciary Program, examples for this are
Bacula.org and OpenSwarm. This has the advantage that the work of
handling the legal issues and taking care of licence compliance will
be done by FSFE's Freedom Task Force and its large team of technical
and legal experts. This allows the project to focus on project
management and technical work.
The other usage would be to use the FLA and adapt it to assign the
rights to another organisation set up by the project team itself. This
organisation would then have to take care of the paperwork and licence
compliance work itself, but it would still benefit from the solidity
of the FLA for the gathering of rights and FSFE's Freedom Task Force
will be glad to provide insight and experience to such organisations.
"For us the most important issue is not whether projects assign their
copyright to FSFE or any other organisation. We just want to do our
part so projects do not neglect these issues," explains Georg Greve,
president of the FSFE. "Legal maintainability is a key issue for Free
Software adoption. We started the Freedom Task Force to help ensure
legal maintainability in practice as well as spread knowledge about
these issues. Our idea for a healthy Free Software eco-system is to
have a healthy and heterogenous infrastructure of organisations that
will cooperate with each other to support Free Software in this way."
Shane Coughan, coordinator of the Freedom Task Force adds: "Deciding
which approach is best for a project depends on many different
factors and always boils down to individual circumstances. Ideally,
organisations handling these issues should be non-profit and have
a clear primary focus on Free Software."
"When building such an organisation, it is also important that people
pay attention to the possibility of having to withstand organisational
attacks from the outside as well as legal battles in court. Not all
Free Software projects will want to adopt such hardened structures,
which might contradict their technical and project management
principles and structures," Mr Coughlan continues. "In that case, the
FLA allows FSFE to help safeguard the project in the legal sphere,
while maintaining the project's absolute independence in management
and project decisions."
Whichever way projects prefer, the Free Software Foundation Europe and
its Freedom Task Force will be happy to help projects adopt the
Fiduciary Licence Agreement.
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation
in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the
furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study,
modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these
issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving
people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE.
--
Shane Coughlan
FTF Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
Office: +41435000366 ext 408 / Mobile: +41792633406
coughlan(a)fsfeurope.org
Support Free Software > http://fsfe.org