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Copyrighted statues in Helsinki?
by Vitaly Repin 06 Sep '15

06 Sep '15

Hello, I have strange problem with Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Monument_… I have made a photo shot of the statue installed in the public place in Helsinki, Finland and uploaded it to Wikipedia. But I was told that this statue is copyrighted (?) and there was a link to the list of more copyrighted objects: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Helsingin_patsaista_ja_muistomerkeis… Is it a mistake or are the pieces of arts installed in Helsinki really copyrighted and it's not legal to make their photos and share them? Sounds really weird for me. I really want to read more about the case in Swedish or English. Thanks in advance! -- WBR & WBW, Vitaly

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LibreOffice hackfest in Aarhus (Denmark)
by Carsten Agger 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

In connection with this year's LibreOffice conference (see http://conference.libreoffice.org) in Aarhus, we'll be organizing what AFAIK is the first LibreOffice hackfest in Denmark in the local hackerspace: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Aarhus2015 Do put your name on if you're planning to participate! Apologies if this is off-topic, but I think the conference & the hackfest might be interesting to many LibreOffice and other free software users/programmers out there. Best Carsten

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Sharing free code in 2015 (and 2016, 2017, ...)
by Christian Kalkhoff 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

Hi, I'm currently in the early stages of starting a new Free Software initiative for knowledge workers. One thing that bothers me is where to host the development infrastructure. I would like to avoid self hosting at the moment for time reasons. Until a while ago there was Gitorious, which seemed to fulfill my requirements for a Free Software hosting site since it was built on Free Software. Since its acquisition through Gitlab, that just provides an open core model, I think of it no better than of Github. Github did a fine job in providing reliable hosting but its non-free from its base up. GNU and nonGNU could be an option yet I think that the TOS are too harsh in demanding the software not being linked against non-free libraries or (only) run on non-free operating systems, which AFAIK would e.g. forbid to integrate Software hosted there with proprietary software like MS Outlook or builds for Android/Linux or Sailfish OS (not to speak of iOS). I want to create 100% Free Software but not force its users to rely 100% on Free Software to run it (I would wish for that, but I also like freedom of choice for end users that are not yet ready to switch). The software will of course be full featured without any proprietary software, integration would just enhance the experience of the users already using non-free software. Only since i started to think about these issues e.g. bull.codes (and probably billions of other services I've never heard of) went into distinction. So where should I preferrable host a Free Software project in 2015 (and a forseeable future)? Christian -- Christian Kalkhoff - Softwarebefreier - software liberator Fellow of FSFE - Support FSFE! http://fsfe.org/support/?softmetz CAcert assurer http://softmetz.de/

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Italian universities started to sell students' privacy to big corps through email accounts
by Valentino Santori 24 Aug '15

24 Aug '15

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi fellows, I would like to report a very bad situation for student's privacy in the public education system, here in Italy. Many universities, and as far as I know even high schools, are migrating from self-hosted mail servers to propietary, big-corp's owned email accounts. This without any chance to refuse the creation of this account, because this is created during the subscription to the faculty, and without any privacy agreement. I can report my personal experience and others I know: Università Politecnica delle Marche (located in Ancona) used to adopt a self-hosted Squirrelmail soultion, now It's migrating to Microsoft Hotmail; Università degli studi di Ferrara is using Gmail; Università degli studi di Parma is using Gmail; Università degli studi di Bologna is using Microsoft Hotmail. In Italy laws are very strict in terms on privacy and I think that since we are talking about a public service this issue It's even more serious. What's your opinion about? Can we move somehow? Valentino Santori -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJV2DQBAAoJELUulFofRUnO1k4QAMsvOc2TD2Ex7RkC+lKUEMRx QToeFLfQV+2t58zgOpWWRXI50hCz+HgmsYbfSS/DD9PWZhQ6ml/pJDGNKj4B5cTU /uVsMW2X8a7LcKxccssAhjGHNf8pWmN3BQZiBoZXJXvX11OR7NYDZS43kQTX0456 eOBKcWXLtzwZxL8GIIO72unnVBOj/+oEyj/WzLAxVLVFiGg9Gikk7tdhkokZY7PY JcmPSSpBb5nu52JJoHuI2/C/ADRKCURkq1nBFOaOGlZvcGaltaAj+jDuucr69LPF qVlny2KwsePuZzk62FWxoaWvjXftJ6SrJ7SsSgul2kmrstQZbc3WhoFf0rHDfBnl XDYBJ5f2H43rcqHgSawvPrh12Ooh3NZFfCs5m1L+zjjhwR+W0EwdmGb8uBLkeWKE WAZahByDd/WJ3REXskfde73+MwtzrHyj4EKWjbZcnOqXPwWOx2p0GHWKTfcuDLUI o+rtIyPnWfKP37Wc6Za59Aqb9IQHJG4np3qLSJ/FP0ZnbdvY9dvqIb3WnHpG8Pwf gYJ2XWpCq+jw8Mx2HgRcdrWxebrZHDx0nSkTRjRmtC6EyLSr3b2lk38vQLAAmkG9 Dx+vBJz5z+hmSw17Prf8wiY93+ulmDZnpv/C69OZhCy4EXONpNmxfYYSyJghvbx1 yh101tVeLGhJ3ix4z6VF =Ts2g -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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From Oracle's Chief Security Officer: one of the finest marketing posts for free software I've seen in 2015
by David Gerard 24 Aug '15

24 Aug '15

This is an ... amazing piece. This Oracle executive (read: someone who is high up enough that their words won't be edited) seriously thought this made Oracle look competent and trustworthy: https://blogs.oracle.com/maryanndavidson/entry/those_who_can_t_do It's one of the finest marketing posts for Postgres, and for free software in general, that I can recall this year. It really makes the point, and I suggest circulating it widely. (My day job is in the midst of an Oracle->Postgres migration. It's going *really well*. If you're stuck somewhere that's on Oracle, show them this post, explain the serious security and competence concerns it raises, and get moving to Postgres. One of the nicest things about it: we give every app its own cluster of two PG boxes, because you have the freedom to just do that instead of running a centralised monster box with an expensive license. It turns out that just everything not having to play nice with others makes stuff stupendously easier to manage. And that's entirely before the benefits of approachable developers and viewable code.) - d.

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Two are more expensive more than one?
by Matthias Kirschner 21 Aug '15

21 Aug '15

You probably saw this article already http://www.zdnet.com/article/huge-savings-prompt-italian-city-to-dump-openo… First of all I think it makes no sense to talk about ownership when you talk about services. You can say total cost of operations. But that is different than when you own something. My second question (I hope some Italian speakers can clarify): Do they really compare the costs for running Microsoft Office and Apache OpenOffice in parallel with just running Microsoft Office?? Regards, Matthias -- Matthias Kirschner - Vice President FSFE Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany - t +49-30-27595290 Weblog (blogs.fsfe.org/mk) - Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) Receive monthly Free Software news (fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html) Your donation enables our work (fsfe.org/donate)

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Fwd: Adober Reader 8 and the European Commission [didier.roche@lsce.ipsl.fr]
by Paul Hänsch 21 Aug '15

21 Aug '15

Came in via pdfreaders.

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The argument against copyleft, or for BSD
by Nico Rikken 21 Jul '15

21 Jul '15

Dear discussion readers, Today I stumbled on an argument for the use of the BSD-license, as hosted on the FreeBSD website, originating from 2013. [1] [1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/article.html Apart from accusing the GPL of intentionally keeping software "at the research and development stages", the argument is made to avoid helping competitors and to avoid license issues when developing. I'd rather like to turn both these arguments around in that you get an inherent benefit from having competitors contribute to the equal playing field of free software as its value increases in relation to the non-free alternatives. Regarding the licenses it seems that for any large software project license considerations are real and hardly unavoidable. As has been stated by the FSF many times over, there are cases where the GPL might not be the right license, and even copyleft might be undesirable. [2] The only indirect approval of the BSD license I have found was in that software licenses should adhere to current licensing practices in related projects. [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html Do you consider that there are still valid arguments to be made for the use of the BSD license in software projects other than license compatibility with existing projects? I'm keen to hear from you. Kind regards, Nico Rikken

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Good example: Chromium blob found by Debian (via LWN)
by Bernhard Reiter 20 Jul '15

20 Jul '15

We all know that the review that is actually happening is really important for raising the quality of software. Free Software always enables third party peer review, which makes it an important precondition for good security. Here is an example where the peer review of Debian found an issue that - most likely - slipped the Google devs. Chromium suddenly starts downloading a binary blob http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/648392/d7e8ee05cd5977e5/ You'll get the relevant links from the above article and its comments. Best, Bernhard -- FSFE -- Founding Member of the GA blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard Support our work for Free Software: https://fsfe.org/support/?ber

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None
by Tom Blecher 14 Jul '15

14 Jul '15

Hallo, just reading this: >https://fsfe.org/activities/policy/eu/20150605-Comments-On-Reda-Report.de.h… >Works created with public funds to be made available to the public Point 5 of the report requires that any work produced by public bodies (legislative, administrative and judicial) is made available to the public for use and modification. >In FSFE's view, non-rival or intangible assets (such as documents, data and software) created with public funds should be made available for use to the public. We suggest and I ask if somebody wants to help me for instance commenting on that. So even if ones (mine) picture of the legislation system of the EU is not that detailed, one understands tha

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