* resent - Mail-Followup-To header was screwed up in the previous one.
Hi all,
LinuxTag [1], one of the most important events around Free Software and
business in Europe, will take place from 3rd to 6th of May, 2006 in
Wiesbaden (Germany).
Like in the previous years, the FSF Europe will be present with a booth
at LinuxTag 2006. To man the booths, we are looking for volunteers
and/or Fellowship members interested in Free Software and support of the
FSF Europe.
The main work will be to answer questions and to involve visitors in
interesting discussions related to many aspects of Free Software. We
will sell T-Shirts and something like that in our merchandising zone,
too. And we are planning to present the Crypto card currently used
within the Fellowship, as well as the Fellowship itself.
Please give me a short note, if you are interested to help us. A short
statement about the time frame in which you would prefer to help us
would be a good idea, too.
Thanks,
Volker
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.linuxtag.org
--
Volker Dormeyer <volker(a)ixolution.de>
Join the Fellowship and protect your Freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
Hi all,
LinuxTag [1], one of the most important events around Free Software and
business in Europe, will take place from 3rd to 6th of May, 2006 in
Wiesbaden (Germany).
Like in the previous years, the FSF Europe will be present with a booth
at LinuxTag 2006. To man the booths, we are looking for volunteers
and/or Fellowship members interested in Free Software and support of the
FSF Europe.
The main work will be to answer questions and to involve visitors in
interesting discussions related to many aspects of Free Software. We
will sell T-Shirts and something like that in our merchandising zone,
too. And we are planning to present the Crypto card currently used
within the Fellowship, as well as the Fellowship itself.
Please give me a short note, if you are interested to help us. A short
statement about the time frame in which you would prefer to help us
would be a good idea, too.
Thanks,
Volker
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.linuxtag.org
--
Volker Dormeyer <volker(a)ixolution.de>
Join the Fellowship and protect your Freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
GPLv3 - Further Step Towards An Orwellian Society?:
Remarks On Software Licensing.
No-one should use a right against an other one, if he
hadn't a harm caused by this violation, even if the
other one violated his right.
The reason is, that rights - and laws denying or
granting them - are no values by them-self, but derived
from the interest to live in peace and without harm.
If there is no harm, you should not start a legal
strive. Respectively: if there are big harms and some
minor - to say mince - one, you should address the big
harm, not the mince, not to lose your creditability.
Certainly we all get harm from undisclosed software, it
dangers us, threatens us, takes our dignity. But what
is harmful here at the first stake, that are not small
companies using free software without declaring it
properly, but the big one, forcing us to accept human
right violation disguised as licenses.
We have the right to know, what we are doing with our
computers, because we are held to be responsible for
it.
So we should address the big one with complaints and not
the smallest, weakest and less harmful violators.
On the other side a severe cultural setback is to be
feared, referring to the law enforcement in
GPL-Violation-Cases.
In general if something is declared to be free, thats
it. You take the newspaper from the grocery if its
offered as free, without reading the impressum or some
licensing there. You will give away or even sell your
free newspaper careless, because you got it for free.
There is already a contradiction between free and
licensed: The licensed isn't free at all and never will
be. All licensing starts with the non-free and needs
it. As it needs it, it lives from it and will strive to
reassure this - non-free - existing conditions of their
own. The good Bertolt Brecht inside another
freedom-project once tried to solve this contradiction
in his play "The Good Men From Sezuan". However, once
living in the GDR I experienced the outcome (which was
not so one-sided bad as depicted now, sure) and don't
need it again.
So if you are going to license, I suggest not to label
it as free. Its an allure to make mistakes.
Respectively - and quite naturally - some companies
didn't care much about copying conditions and other
license stuff, because it has been declared to be
free. There was certainly some surprise about the first
legal cases. I uphold that this surprise did not foster
the idea of free software and did not won assistance for
it - on the contrary.
That German Courts now seem to follow GPL-claims,
proves nothing. They are obeying since 1945 and until
then US-troops beneath their civil-habited helpers feel
at home in Germany. If you heard otherwise, its just to
win an election. Won cases as against Sitcom are no
victory of freedom at all.
Beside the conditions in Germany: If we look backward
in history: Who did the biggest crimes always and
always again? Just that corpus, who sermons to save our
life and to protect our freedom. Will that corpus, who
organized Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, who caused the
death of ten-thousands Iraqis, defend open source and
free programming? We should not ask the butcher to
protect the lamb.
So, if its written: "The Linux kernel is in legal mud
waters. There are many files in it that violate the
GPL," (Alfred M. Szmidt, Wed Feb 1) what, if our brave
lawyers of Munich, who got the preliminary injunction
against Sitcom, will get one against all European
Linux-Distributors? AFAIK, a preliminary injunction
don't need much, its given at the risk of the suer
quite easily - followed by tremendous consequences for
the firms concerned. So not just GPLv3, already GPLv2
may turn out not as a defense but a major menace of
free software and all ideas alike.
With all your gifted folks around, you will find better
ways then the law enforcement procedures. Do not feed
the mill of the mighty and their lobbyists. Why not
rather reward these companies, which comply? Why not
establish a network - if not already done - of
assistance around free software? Also there is the
instrument of black- and white-listing.
Not do be mistaken, dear members of the FSF and authors
of the GPL: The above mentioned is not about your
intentions, its just an essay to contribute to the
defense of the giant gift, that Richard Stallman and the
developers around FSF made to all of us. Thanks BTW for
all these (free?) licensed software and Emacs at
special.
All the best
Andreas Roehler
http://www.sleipnir.netfirms.com
I think this is a bad week. driconf was rejected from Savannah
hosting because Savannah does not now even allow GPL'd manuals,
as GPL is not an FDL-compatible licence.
See http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?func=detailitem&item_id=5214
There seems a change of policy, despite the redacted blog post.
Savannah *allowed* non-free-software non-program licences, but
didn't *require* them before. The original blog post can be seen
at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/02/msg00210.html
Of course, with no easy way to decide when documentation source is
not otherwise source, the new policy makes Savannah decisions random.
On the one hand, this list gets good news suggesting that at
least the ambiguities in the FDL will be fixed. On the other,
Savannah inflames the dispute over FDL 1.2. What happens next?
Bluely,
--
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/irc.oftc.net/slef Jabber/SIP ask
Hi Francesco,
let me give you my personal view on the issue:
On Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:19:48PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
> I share many of MJ Ray's concerns about the design of the GPLv3
> development process.
>
> I fear the process will not take into account all the issues that will
> be brought to the FSF's attention. The process leaders could neglect
> (even in good faith) the issues that they feel as unimportant or minor,
> while concentrating on some others only.
yes, it is true , the last call will be made by Richard.
However I do not consider this a disadvantage
as Richard is known to accept any substantial argument
based on the argument alone.
He is a lot better in this than any scientist I know.
So if somebody wants an issue in - give Richard a good argument.
> How can you assure every group's voice will be heard?
> How can you assure the Discussion Committees will represent the various
> categories of interested parties adequately?
> IIUC, Committees will be formed by invitation in top-down fashion: how
> can a group of interested people become one such committee?
The process document at http://gplv3.fsf.org/process-definition
describes two possibilities to become part of a committee:
You get an invitation from the FSF or
you get invited later by one of the committees.
Given that the committees are there to channel the comments
so that the FSF and Richards are able to work, the design is reasonable.
Basically I imagine those committees to be the ears and eyes of Richard.
This means they better should fit him and his working style.
With such wide open ears, documenting everything reasonable they hear,
it will be hard for a group to not be heard.
They would need to throw away their ticket number.
> IMHO, the FSF should make this process more democratic and open.
>
> P.S.: please Cc: me on replies, as I am not subscribed to the list;
> thanks.
I think this process is a huge improvement over how it was done in
the past any by other groups that draft licenses. Note that the GPL writing
was never a democratic process. If we were to follow the majority
it is likely that we would not have Free Software, GNU/Linux nor the GNU GPL.
Having the main part of the process written down in a rather short document,
the ability to give trackable comments, and the time frame of a year
make this process quite open.
Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement
and I expect the FSF to be open for your comments!
What we can do in Europe is to convince our governments
and companies to donate more money and time into thinking about
Free Software and enabling the European Free Software people to
carry the discussion to as many places in Europe we can.
Best Regards,
Bernhard
1. Gareth Bowker joins General Assembly of FSFE
2. Free Knowledge Foundation associates with FSFE
3. UN Consultations on Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
4. UN WIPO: Provisional Committee on a Development Agenda (PCDA)
5. FSFE's office moves to Düsseldorf
6. Second Fellowship meeting in Berlin
7. Microsoft antitrust case: 2 million EUR per day
8. FSFE at FOSDEM
9. FSFE organises SWPAT roundtable in Brussels
10. Fellowship: Get a 3 month LWN subscription and win a notebook!
1. Gareth Bowker joins General Assembly of FSFE
After Gareth Bowker has been working in the FSFE Team for a long time,
the Free Software Foundation Europe is glad to announce that he has
joined the general assembly. With this step, Gareth has committed
himself to the work of FSFE in the long term and agreed to accept legal
and political responsibility for FSFE's work.
His dedication strengthens FSFE's role within the United Kingdom and
is warmly welcomed by everyone in the Team.
2. Free Knowledge Foundation associates with FSFE
The Free Knowledge Foundation, a Spanish non-profit organisation, has
become the first FSFE associate organisation in Spain. Both FKF and
FSFE are looking forward to a close cooperation and many fruitful
projects. Together with FKF, the next step will be to build up the
Spanish Team for FSFE.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q1/000128.html
3. UN Consultations on Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
As one of the outcomes of the UN World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS), UN secretary-general Kofi Annan asked to organise
consultations on the establishment of an Internet Governance
Forum. The reason for these consultations was to determine the scope
and mandate of the IGF. Statements were rather diverse, and ranged
from "domain name issues only" to "all aspects of the internet,
including spam, cybercrime, privacy and online identities" in scope
and "pure discussion forum" to "global public-policy setting body" in
mandate. FSFE's president Georg Greve participated in the meeting to
help maintain the interests of Free Software, the FSFE statement and
more information are available in his blog:
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/(tag)/IGF
4. UN WIPO: Provisional Committee on a Development Agenda (PCDA)
Last year's series of Inter-Governmental Inter-Sessional Meetings
(IIM) on a potential reform of the United Nations World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO) ended in a deadlock, largely due to a
blockade by the United States. As a result, the last general assembly
decided to hold two week-long PCDA meetings, the first of which took
place last month in Geneva. FSFE was represented by its president Georg
Greve and former intern and now Team member Karsten Gerloff, who worked
hard to help push for reform in WIPO. The first FSFE statement is
available online at
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/wipo/statement-20060223.en.html
The second statement can be found in Georg Greve's blog, Karsten
Gerloff also has some more information:
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/(tag)/WIPOhttp://www.fsfe.org/fellows/gerloff/blog/(tag)/WIPO
5. FSFE's office moves to Düsseldorf
After its initial founding in 2001, Free Software Foundation Europe
has maintained a small distribution and administrative office in the
Villa-Vogelsang in Essen. The office was kindly provided by Reinhard
Wiesemann of the Villa-Vogelsang, FSFE's visionary patron, who also
allowed Martin Gerwinski to spend part of his time paid by the
Linuxhotel to also work on FSFE office tasks. The rest of the time was
volunteered by Martin Gerwinski. Both Martin and Reinhard deserve and
have our sincere thanks and appreciation for their important
contribution.
As FSFE has been growing rapidly over the past year, the office work
is now too much to be handled on this basis, which is why FSFE is glad
to introduce Rainer Kersten. He has entered FSFE's paid staff to take
care of the necessary administrative work and is working with FSFE's
head of office Werner Koch to establish the new office in Düsseldorf.
6. Second Fellowship meeting in Berlin
For the second time, Fellows in Berlin met to discuss and coordinate
their activities. FSFE is happy to see Fellows taking initiative, and
is working with them to constantly improve the infrastructure that
can be used freely by the Fellows. Currently, the possibility of
creating ad hoc mailing lists is being worked on, and a Wiki is planned.
7. Microsoft antitrust case: 2 million EUR per day
Last month was also the moment when the European Commission finally
decided to stop allowing Microsoft to ignore its antitrust obligations
and faced them with the obligation of paying 2 million EUR for each
day they remain in non-compliance with the ruling. Microsoft is still
trying to play for more time, so FSFE has spoken up in support of the
commission.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q1/000129.html
8. FSFE at FOSDEM
As every year, Free Software Foundation Europe participated in one of
Europe's classic: FOSDEM in Brussels. Georg Greve, Ciaran O'Riordan,
Henrik Sandklef, Pablo Machón and Reinhard Müller presented various
aspects of FSFE's work in a series of short talks. Volker Dormeyer,
FSFE booth coordinator and long-term Team member, did an outstanding
job in coordinating the booth. A team of 16 people from the FSFE and
associates, especially the Free Knowledge Foundation and Wilhelmtux,
gathered for this event and helped turn it into a great success.
9. FSFE organises SWPAT roundtable in Brussels
Originally masquerading themselves as 'computer implemented
inventions', software patents are now lurking under the plans for a
'Community patent' for which the European Commission is seeking
input. FSFE took this as an opportunity to organise a round table with
Francisco Mingorance, BSA, Pieter Hintjens, FFII and Ciaran O'Riordan
of the Free Software Foundation Europe. German journalist Stefan
Krempl moderated the discussion to which journalists across Europe
were invited.
10. Fellowship: Get a 3 month LWN subscription and win a notebook!
The Fellowship of FSFE is an essential part and building block of
FSFE's work. It makes possible much of what you can see above, and
helps make visible the number of people who care about these issues.
FSFE greatly appreciates the help and support of all Fellows, and is
glad to see this community for digital freedom grow.
For all that support, FSFE would like to give something that goes beyond
our work and words. Thanks to Jonathan Corbet, there is a new "thank
GNU" for all new or renewing Fellows: a gratis 3 month subscription to
LWN, which every Fellow will receive by email upon confirmation of
his/her renewal or subscription.
http://www.lwn.net
Also, all Fellows that are fully activated by 1 April 2006 have the
opportunity to win one of two HP notebooks, kindly provided by HP.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q1/000131.html
If you wish to support FSFE's work, sign up now:
http://www.fsfe.org/join/
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Ecommerce] The Politics and Ideology of intellectual
property and the knowledge commons, Brussels, March 20-21
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 13:33:02 +0100
From: James Love <james.love(a)cptech.org>
To: ecommerce <ecommerce(a)lists.essential.org>
The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) is hosting a 2 day
workshop in Brussels on March 20-21.
http://www.tacd.org/docs/?id=286)
The subject is:
THE POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE
KNOWLEDGE COMMONS
The event is open to the public. Pre-registration is required,
but free. For more information about event, contact Ben Wallis
(bwallis(a)consint.org), in the TACD Secretariat.
The program agenda and the list of speakers and panel chairs
follows:
Date: March 20-21, 2006
Venue: Hotel Renaissance, Rue du Parnasse 19, Brussels
DRAFT AGENDA, version 3.3
DAY ONE - March 20
8:30 - 9:00 Registration
9:00 to 9:30 Introduction
9:30 - 11:00 Panel 1: IP and the Knowledge Commons - Rhetoric
and Ideology
11 - 11:15 Break
11:15 - 12:15 PM - Panel 2: : IP and the Knowledge Commons -
Political Parties
12:15 to 2 pm Lunch
2 - 3:30 - Panel 3: IP and the Knowledge Commons - Lobbying and
Advocacy I (TRANSATLANTIC)
3:30 - 3:45 Break
4 to 6 pm - Panel 4: : IP and the Knowledge Commons - Lobbying
and Advocacy II (INTERNATIONAL)
DAY TWO - March 21
9.00 - 10:30 - Panel 5 - : IP and the Knowledge Commons - The
politics of new technologies
10:30 11:00 Break
11:00 to 12:30 - Panel 6 -- IP and the Knowledge Commons -
Politics of Access to Knowledge
2:00 to 3.30 Panel 7 - IP and the Knowledge Commons - new
political paradigms
4:00 to 6 pm Panel 8 - Concluding comments and reflections
Speakers and Panel Chairs:
Benjamin Coriat, University of Paris
Bruce Lehman, Akin Gump, Strauss Hauer & Feld
Cornelia Kutterer, BEUC
David Hammerstein, Member of the European Parliament
David Lawsky, Reuters
Declan McCullagh, CNET
Ed Mierzwinski, PIRG
Emma Bonino, Member of the European Parliament (TBC)
Eva Lichtenberger, Member of the European Parliament
Felix Cohen, Consumentenbon
Florian Müller, No Software Patents
Hugh Hansen, Fordham University
James Love, The Knowledge Ecology Project
Jim Murrary, BEUC (TBC)
Joelle Roge, WIPO
John Howkins, Adelphi Charter (TBC)
Jonathan Berger, South Africa AIDS Law Project
Jonathan Zuck, Association for Competitive Technology
Kenneth Cukier, The Economist
Luc Soete, United Nations University
Manon Ress, CPTech
Marc Cooper, CFA
Marco Pierani
Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation of America
Michelle Childs, CPTech-UK
Michiel Van der Velde Consumentenbon
Mohamed Ben Ahmed, University of La Manouba, Tunisia
Nicoletta Dentico, DNDi
Peter Drahos, Australian National University
Philippe Aigrain, TRANSVERSALES
Rufus Pollock, FFII (TBC)
Sangeeta Shashikant, Third World Network (TWN)
Sisule Musungu, South Centre
Susan Sell, George Washington University
Tilman Luder, EC (TBC)
Tom Faunce, Australian National University
Tony Taubman; WIPO
---------------------------------
James Love, CPTech / www.cptech.org /
mailto:james.love@cptech.org /
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / mobile +1.202.361.3040
"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks." Bill Walton
_______________________________________________
Ecommerce mailing list
Ecommerce(a)lists.essential.org
http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/ecommerce
sftp would be fine, or ftp. I will be travelling until Thursday, so I
won't have the bandwidth to send them to you before then. I will drop you
an email then and we can sort out how to do the transfer.
Also, the video is split into 29 files (I did this to avoid hitting a
large-file bug in my camera or gphoto2). It would be good if these could be
joined into one file, but I don't know much about that.
Here's the output of 'file MVI_6046.AVI' (so that you might know what sort
of video it is):
RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 320 x 240, ~15 fps, video: Motion JPEG, audio: uncompressed PCM (mono, 11024 Hz)
Thanks.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday March 16th
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | \\ FOSS Means Business //
http://www.fsfe.org________|http://foss-means-business.org
On Saturday morning (Day one of FOSDEM), RMS made a quick GPLv3
presentation. I recorded it with my digital camera, and, following the
hopes mentioned in my blog, I've now made it available as a transcript:
http://www.ifso.ie/documents/rms-gplv3-2006-02-25.html
I hate making transcripts but I think GPLv3 materials are worth making
because we need people to understand and be able to discuss these issues, so
it's very important that the information flows far and easy - quickly.
I also hope they are useful starting points for people who might make their
own presentations about GPLv3.
I can't make the video available right now because the filesize is huge
(despite the quality being low). I have not gone over the transcript a
second time to check for mistakes. I will do this Sunday or Monday. I
might soon transcribe some of the Q&A, but it's not done yet.
Hope that helps, and thanks to the people who sent emails saying that the
last transcript was useful.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday March 16th
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | \\ FOSS Means Business //
http://www.fsfe.org________|http://foss-means-business.org
Can people here mobilise some action in each of the member states?
Benjamin Henrion writes:
> Please try to make a similar letter and send it to your governement:
>
> http://wiki.ffii.org/Ipred2GovLtrsEn
>
> We have one working day to put pressure on governements.
>
> If patents is removed from the list, it is a HUGE achievement, so we
> don't have to lobby against it in the near future.
I will contact fsfe-ie and fsfe-uk.
The main reason that people use for doing nothing is "I don't know who to
send it to". Unfortunately, this rarely has an easy answer - but sending it
to no one is the most certain way to fail. So please encourage people to do
something. Take some guesses and send it to a "minister for technology"
and/or a "minister for internal market" and/or a "minister for competition".
If I receive any better advice, I'll send it here, but please don't wait for
it because it might not come.
thanks.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| NI, March 16th: http://foss-means-business.orghttp://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship
___________________________| & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org