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Creative team wanted for an image film project
by Cellini Bedi 29 Jul '16

29 Jul '16

Hello everyone :) Just to give a small background first, I am the intern of the FSFE. Erik and I were discussing on how I should create a team for an image film project of the first ever summit / 15th year celebration of the FSFE that is going to take place on September 2,3,4. I have a tiny background of creating videos/editing them and a small portfolio of my works, but will need to create a small A-Team for this video project. Of course when creating a project like this, we need creative minds to brainstorm on the script, the idea, the theme and also technical stuffs on who has a good camera, mic etc etc. So if you know anyone interested in volunteering for a fun project like this please let me know! They could email me back and also probably apply for the scholarship program https://fsfe.org/community/events/2016/summit/attendance.en.html#scholarship Thanks for your time! Hope someone can reply if they know someone who could be interested in this :) Cheers, Cellini -- Imagine no European is any longer forced to use non-free Software! Save the date: September 2 - 4, 2016 - BCC Berlin, Germany Spread the word: https://fsfe.org/summit16#spread

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some help regarding the copyright laws in De
by Gheorghe Zugravu 29 Jul '16

29 Jul '16

Hello, I got into an unpleasant situation in Germany with the bad famed law firm Waldorf-Frommer on the issue of copyright infringement - got a warning letter and bill to pay. I could see from reading online stories that is very ”popular” thing in Germany. Did someone had this problem already? Can you share your story here or send me a private message how you solve/deal with it? I am trying to figure out a strategy/tactic how to deal with this. In my case is the IP address of some relatives, and I dont want to cause any problems to them. thank you in advance! regards, /gheorghe

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EOMA68 crowdfunding campaign (and those x86 concerns)
by Paul Boddie 27 Jul '16

27 Jul '16

Hello, I've mentioned this fairly recently in discussion threads on the security/surveillance concerns with x86-based platforms [1, 2], but I thought I should pass on the news that the EOMA68 initiative has opened a crowdfunding campaign for its products: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop The Free Software relevance here is that the hardware to be delivered supports a completely Free Software environment, with no proprietary drivers or firmware required. More discussion of that can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/freesoftware/comments/4qhm1y/earthfriendly_eoma68_… And Joshua Gay, of the FSF, participates in a discussion about the RYF (Respects Your Freedom) certification of one of the products in the campaign in the following message: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2016-06/msg00212.html Meanwhile, the hardware is "open source hardware" at the circuit board level, and the physical design of the laptop being offered as part of the campaign is also freely available for people to print themselves if they really want to. One of the goals is to make sustainable hardware that is not unnecessarily resource-intensive to produce, hence the unconventional use of plywood panels in the case designs. What I find personally interesting is the modular aspect of the concept. There are lots of single-board computers but they are often either not particularly expandable or their accessories are infuriatingly specific (which may seem unproblematic if you are one of the many people using a Raspberry Pi, but the fun may lessen somewhat when they bring out a new version which is different in some way, rendering some accessories incompatible). In principle, this initiative could help people to concentrate more on developing other aspects of open computing devices. On the topic of the perceived problems with x86 platforms and the intersection of that topic with this campaign, there's a blog post by Think Penguin who have been sponsoring this effort: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/crowd-funding-kick-backdoor-free-eco- consious-libre-computing The computer cards offered employ an ARM-based CPU, and it appears possible that other architectures will be offered at some point in the future. For example, a MIPS-based card was prototyped and it has been indicated that it isn't too far behind the ARM-based card in terms of readiness, but I don't intend to second-guess those involved in any of this. I'm hoping that other cards will be offered during the campaign, but they may end up waiting until afterwards for all I really know. Although I intend to support this effort, I am not endorsing it as such. This message is meant to inform people about the recent concrete progress of a project that has been many years in the making and has had its ups and downs, occasionally in a rather public manner [3]. There are other projects offering laptops and other "end-user-friendly" computing devices [4, 5, 6], and it is up to everyone to decide which one balances their own interests with what is being offered in a way that they find personally acceptable. For instance, some people might find the Librem laptop [5] an acceptable platform for running Free Software despite its reliance on an Intel CPU with the notorious "Management Engine", and they may be reassured by Purism's efforts to petition Intel to release the "Firmware Support Package" under a free licence [7]. Others may not expect Intel to cooperate, leaving the Librem susceptible to the concerns raised previously. Some people wanting x86-based hardware might find something like the APU1 [8] acceptable because it employs an AMD CPU that supports Coreboot, even if the hardware is not "open source hardware" (nor is the Librem, for that matter). I hope that, if nothing else, this has given people a few things to look at a bit more closely. I encourage people to ask questions about the campaign mentioned in this message if they are wondering about any aspect of it; there's a link at the bottom of the campaign page below the growing list of questions and answers. If nothing else, it will help people figure out where the next opportunity lies in open and free hardware for Free Software. Paul P.S. I would have blogged about this, but blogs.fsfe.org is not responding. But I guess the topic is worthy of discussion, anyway. ;-) [1] http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/010913.html [2] http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-June/011102.html [3] http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=933 [4] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena [5] https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-15 [6] https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/a64-olinuxino-oshw-linux-laptop- idea-becomes-more-real/ [7] https://puri.sm/posts/bios-freedom-status/ [8] http://www.pcengines.ch/apu1d4.htm

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FOSSA - Now we need feedback by the real experts
by Matthias Kirschner 26 Jul '16

26 Jul '16

The goal of the "Free and Open Source Security Audit" (FOSSA) pilot project is to increase security of Free Software used by the European institutions. The FSFE has been following the project since the early beginning in 2014. I am concerned that if the project stays on its current course the European Institutions will spent a large part of the 1 Million Euro budget without positive impact on the security of Free Software; and the result will be a set of consultancy reports nobody will ever read. But if we work together and communicate our concerns to the responsible people in the Parliament and the Commission, there might still be a valuable outcome. Here the blog post with more background information about it: http://k7r.eu/fossa-now-we-need-feedback-by-the-real-experts/ As written in the post: As you are the real experts, now we need your feedback. What do you think about the deliverables themselves and what about our comments so far? I am especially interested if you benefit from the recommendations <https://wiki.fsfe.org/Policy/FossaRecommendations>. Best Regards, Matthias -- Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290 Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/donate) Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) - Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)

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Commenting the FOSSA documents
by Luyin 25 Jul '16

25 Jul '16

Hello, I heard this is the address to turn to if I want to help to improve the FOSSA documents. So here I am ;) what should I do? Where should I concentrate my efforts first? Best regards, Alex -- I encrypt Mails using PGP. Find more information here: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/

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Recruitment European Commission - Programme Assistant in the Cybersecurity & Digital Privacy Unit of DG Connect
by Matthias Kirschner 22 Jul '16

22 Jul '16

Dear all, the European Commission asked us to also forward this job application amoungst our community. Would be nice if someone who also has good knowledge about Free Software gets the job. Best Regards, Matthias -- Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290 Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/donate) Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) - Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)

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33 (!) different items available now on FSFE's merchandise order page
by Reinhard Müller 19 Jul '16

19 Jul '16

Dear all, you might already have noticed that our new "There is NO CLOUD" T-shirts can now be ordered online at https://fsfe.org/order/. A brand new batch of black ones in all sizes is expected to arrive soon, and we'll also have girlie shirts with the same design then. On the other hand, we have recently collected, sorted and taken stock of some leftovers of the merchandise we had in previous years, and we've now also put a number of these items online. For most of the older items, only a few number is available, and many are already sold out in some of the sizes. So please make sure to choose and order your vitange style FSFE merchandise soon, or you'll be too late! :-) Thanks, -- Reinhard Müller * Financial Officer * Free Software Foundation Europe *

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Re: Introducing our new blog team
by Daniel Pocock 13 Jul '16

13 Jul '16

On 17/05/16 09:06, Jonas Oberg wrote: > Dear Fellow, > > over the next months, we'll be rolling out an idea of fellow-run > services. As you know, the FSFE has been offering several services to > its volunteers over the years: a blog platform, an XMPP service, email > forwards, our wiki, and so on. > > One of our volunteers, Florian Snow, has volunteered to coordinate a > team of volunteers who will look at the possibility of taking over > maintenance of our blog platform and run this as a service for other > volunteers. > > By forming small volunteer teams around specific services, we hope > this will provide first the necessary autonomy to the individual teams > to run the service as they would want it run, and second, a useful > learning experience for the volunteers who take up the role of > maintaining a service. > Can you comment on what this means from a technical perspective? Does autonomy mean that volunteers will be able to pick any arbitrary version of an application and start running it on FSFE hardware? Or will volunteers run it on their own hardware and if so, how will things like authentication credentials be shared? In Debian we also have services that are maintained by individual developers, they fall into two categories: a) *.debian.net - these services run on a Developers' own servers, debian.net DNS is the only thing managed centrally, Debian provides no guarantees about the availability of such services b) *.debian.org - services running on Debian (DSA) managed hardware. Any applications used on such machines have to be packaged and backported to the stable release (e.g. jessie-backports). These have a higher level of availability and security updates. People who want to ensure a service is available 24x7 can generally help by ensuring all the software and dependencies are properly packaged and backported or helping raise funds for a developer to do that work. While it seems tedious at first, this is how we achieve security and availability. For example, when the developer of a package or backport is on vacation or retires, it is relatively easy for a security team member who never saw the package before to get involved and release an official patch for it. I often come across people who insist that they have to run the latest version of something from Git, usually with a hodge-podge of dependencies downloaded directly from different web sites. These types of arrangements are often very unique and very hard to support when the person is on holiday or decides to stop supporting it. Regards, Daniel

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The FSFE summit
by Carsten Agger 12 Jul '16

12 Jul '16

Hi all, I'm pleased to see the announcement of the coming FSFE summit https://fsfe.org/community/events/2016/summit/frontpage.en.html it's an exciting schedule and I hope I'll be able to attend. However, and I really don't intend to start any prolonged "editor wars" or otherwise engage in lengthy hairsplitting, but a part of me is also unhappy to see the term "open source" featuring so prominently in an event sponsored by the FSFE. I do believe RMS is right in his reasons to reject the term, one of them being that it is kind of a "business-friendly" way of avoiding the issue of freedom. We should not endorse the avoidance of the issue of freedom, are my thoughts. This should, in my conception, be a defining difference between an event like this, organized by the FSFE, and a conference such as FOSDEM, whose aim is more general. Best, Carsten

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European Interoperability Framework - EU asks for public opinion
by Polina Malaja 24 Jun '16

24 Jun '16

Dear all, European Interoperability Framework (EIF) - a set of recommendations for better e-Government services in the EU - has been under FSFE radar for quite a long time, as its first version published in 2004 was very plausible for Free Software and included a very strong definition of Open Standards. Currently, the EIF is undergoing its third revision: and the European Commission is asking for public's opinion until *29 June*[^1]. I wrote a blogpost about the topic: http://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2016/06/08/eif-v-3-makes-you-miss-noughties/ In a nutshell, there are some worrisome developments in the current draft revision, in particular in regards to harmful patent licensing practices that are discriminatory towards Free Software. And I ask everyone to spend some time and answer to the ongoing consultation in order to address this problem and make sure that the European Commission will not exclude Free Software from their digital initiatives. All relevant information can be found in my blogpost. FSFE is currently preparing our own answers to the ongoing public consultation and in case you have any feedback or other concerns in regard to the draft revision[^2] that you think we should address in our answers, please let me know directly! Thank you for your help! All the best, Polina [^1]: http://ec.europa.eu/isa/consultations/impact-assessment-for-the-revision-of… [^2]: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/files/57b2ecd5-effa-4594-9ef2-47e7ecc67047 -- Polina Malaja - Free Software Foundation Europe Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, t +49-30-27595290 Receive monthly Free Software news (fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html) Your donation enables our work (fsfe.org/donate)

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