= FSFE Newsletter July 2018 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201807.ru.html ]
== Save Code Share ==
On July 5, The European Parliament rejected the mandate to fast-track
the controversial legislation intended to reform online copyright. 318
MEPs voted against the draft law amended by the Legal Affairs (JURI)
committee, compared to 278 in favor. The legislation now opens up for a
new round of amendments, before being sent for a second vote in
September.
This rejection by a majority of MEPs can be seen as the success of
creative and massive protest by citizens and civil rights organisations.
The FSFE, together with Open Forum Europe, explained [1] how the
proposed EU Copyright review can substantially threaten Free Software
development by forcing online code sharing repositories to use filters
that monitor and preemptively take down any content that could
potentially infringe copyright, including entire code repositories.
Instead of that, we ask the European Union to Save Code Share [2].
More than 13.000 individuals have already signed our open letter [3]
asking to preserve the ability to share and build software online, and
lots of Free Software supporters raised their voice. It was a success to
see that, in the JURI report Free Software code sharing platforms were
listed as an exempted service. While JURI proposed to spare Free
Software code sharing platforms from the new filtering obligations, the
changes committee tried to introduce for the remaining online
environment remain dangerous for the rest of the Internet ecosystem.
In September, MEPs will once again vote in plenary to either 1) confirm
the mandate as proposed by the committee, 2) amend it, or 3) reject it
entirely. That includes the possibility that an exemption for Free
Software code hosting platforms will not be in future versions of the
draft law.
Hence, together with OFE, we at FSFE will continue to raise our voice
and to explain the lawmakers about harmful implications of the current
copyright reform for Free Software.
== The FSFE's Community Meeting 2018 ==
This year, we had the pleasure to align with hackstub [4], the
organisation behind the Libre Software Meeting 2018 (also known as
RMLL), to organise a policy track for FSFE and to run our annual
community meeting [5] at the same conference.
This turned out to be a very good chance for cooperation, and all
participants benefited from a well-equipped and well-organised
convention. We received a lot of positive feedback and look forward to
catch up on the many good ideas and activities proposed in our sessions.
Herewith a big thank you to hackstub and to everyone who participated!
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- It is summertime in Europe and there is less activity, because people
have vacations. Our community planet [7] is more silent these days and
there are just a few events and conferences happening throughout
Europe. Nevertheless, the FSFE's CARE team [8] met with an extended
round of community members for a full day, to get training on the
proper implementation of our code of conduct [9].
- Francesca Bria, CTO of Barcelona, is reshaping the modern city's
infrastucture and technologies to put citizen's needs first. We have
conducted an interview with her about how to use Free Software to
build a more democratic, inclusive and sustainable digital society
[10].
- Free Software is about sharing knowledge and sources and that's what
Hook did this month by blogging a review of some Vahdam’s Masala Chai
teas [11].
- OW2 published a video [12] with Max Mehl, who gave a keynote about
"Public Money? Public Code!" and the modernisation of public digital
infrastructure at OW2con'18.
== Get Active ==
Current EU copyright reform is on summer break but will be re-opened in
September. The initially proposed Article 13 of the EU Copyright
Directive targets every online service that allows its users to upload
and share content with each other, including code hosting platforms.
Help us to prevent such an implementation and to Save Code Share [13] by
signing our open letter and ask others to do so as well.
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org [14]. We're looking
forward to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [15], supporters [16] and
donors [17] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[18], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
The FSFE wishes everyone nice summertime and will be back with the
Newsletter in September.
Your editor,
Erik Albers
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--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171005-01
2: https://savecodeshare.eu/
3: https://savecodeshare.eu/#sign-letter
4: https://hackstub.netlib.re/landpage/
5: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/LSMandCommunityMeeting2018
6: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-06
7: http://planet.fsfe.org/
8: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct#CARE
9: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
10: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180705-01
11: http://matija.suklje.name/review-of-some-vahdams-masala-chai-teas
12: https://www.youtube.com/embed/kQGw25xG_5c
13: https://savecodeshare.eu/
14: https://fsfe.org/mailto:newsletterATfsfeDOTorg
15: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
16: https://fsfe.org/join
17: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
18: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
19: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-06
= FSFE Newsletter June 2018 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201806.ru.html ]
== Join us at the FSFE's community meeting during LSM2018 ==
>From July 7 to 9, the FSFE will run its annual community meeting in
conjunction with the Libre Software Meeting [1] in Strasbourg, France.
On the weekend of July 7 + 8, we are very excited to run a track, set up
with speakers of our community and friends to cover several burning
topics regarding Free Software. Our track covers business topics like
marketing for Free Software and funding Free Software projects as well
as policy topics from tinkering in Brussels to success factors for Free
Software implementations in public services as well as contemporary
important issues regarding diversity in Free Software, software freedom
in the cloud, and many more. You can find an overview of our topics on
the dedicated wiki page [2].
On July 9, we invite our community to join us for a full day agenda [3]
to bond and prepare for the next months. The meeting will include "Open
Space" methods, an "Ask us anything" session as well as room for
reflections on our current activities and well-being.
Throughout the event, we will run FSFE assembly, similar to the one
during CCC, CCCamp and SHA camp. This assembly can serve as a place for
our community to simply come together and get to know each other or to
start and work on common projects.
== Introducing the FSFE's CARE team ==
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and its community aim to
offer a friendly and peaceful environment for every participant at FSFE
events, online and offline. To this end, the General Assembly 2017 [4]
adopted an overall Code of Conduct [5] for the FSFE. To ensure its
availability and enforcement, we created a central CARE team. If you
have experienced or became aware of behaviour contrary to the principles
guaranteed in this Code of Conduct, please bring such incidents to the
attention of your respective local or our central CARE team as soon as
possible.
The central CARE team [6] may be reached via e-mail at care(a)fsfe.org but
you can also contact members individually. This is possible with
encrypted email and in six languages. Rest assured that your messages
will always be handled confidentially.
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- Following more than a decade long tradition, the FSFE once again led
its annual Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop [8] (LLW) in
2018: a meeting point for world-leading legal experts to debate issues
and best practices surrounding Free Software licences.
- The Technology Transfer Centre (CTT) is an initiative run by the
Spanish government whose goal is to facilitate sharing and reuse of
software and services among public administrations. To shed light on
this best practice, we have conducted an interview with Elena Muñoz
Salinero [9], head of the CTT, to ask her about the legal, political,
and technological background of the CTT.
- The mission of Software Heritage is to collect, preserve, and make
readily available the source code of all software ever written, to
help preserve the knowledge embedded in software source code, and make
it widely available. Since June 7, the Software Heritage archive is
open to the public [10].
- Diderik von Wingerden started a list of public bodies [11] in Europe
and in particular in the Netherlands, that publish their self-
developed software as Free Software.
- vanitasvitae blogged a first evaluation [12] of his research about how
the size of OpenPGP encrypted messages grow.
- Daniel Pocock proposes to offer an annual award [13] for non-technical
non-profit organizations, who demonstrate exemplary use of free
software in their own organization.
- The FSFE simplifies membership procedures [14] for contributors by
removing the Fellowship seats. In future, access to membership of the
FSFE shall be facilitated through the normal membership procedures for
active FSFE contributors.
- On Friday morning, one of our servers had a fatal hardware crash. This
affected parts of our mail infrastructure and mailing lists. By now,
all services are back to normal. At the same time, we modernised large
parts of the mail infrastructure [15], for instance anti-spam
measures. This also involves a change in our SMTP setting for people
using this service: From now on, we will no longer accept mails
delivered to port 25 from mail clients. Please make sure to use port
587 if you would like to send emails, and make sure the settings in
your email clients match our recommendations [16].
- The FSFE, represented by Matthias Kirschner, Max Mehl, and Erik
Albers, gave talks about technical sovereignty, digital sustainability
and "Public Money? Public Code!" in Darmstadt [17], Berlin, Paris
[18], and Madrid [19].
- The FSFE community ran booths at FOSS Backstage and Maker Fair in
Berlin, Germany and at OpenExpo in Madrid, Spain.
== FSFE is hiring ==
We are looking for a programme manager for our policy work. Our main
policy topics cover Free Software and Open Standards issues on the EU
and member state level. We work together with the European Commission
and Parliament, as well as with politicians and civil servants in EU
countries. This work is either done directly by staff or together with
volunteers, as well as other Free Software and digital rights
associations around Europe.
The person will work 35 hours per week with our team in the FSFE's
Berlin office. There will be coordination with remote staff and
volunteers, as well as regular travels to Brussels and other countries.
If you are interested, read more details in our job announcement [20].
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org [21]. We're looking
forward to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [22], supporters [23] and
donors [24] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[25], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editor,
Erik Albers
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Join our community of freedom fighters. [26]
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--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/LSMandCommunityMeeting2018
2: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/LSMandCommunityMeeting2018#Join_our_track_at_t…
3: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/LSMandCommunityMeeting2018#Join_community_meet…
4: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171107-01
5: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
6: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct#CARE
7: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-06
8: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180530-02
9: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180601-01
10: https://www.softwareheritage.org/2018/06/07/opening-the-door/
11: http://think-innovation.com/blog/do-european-governments-publish-open-sourc…
12: https://blogs.fsfe.org/vanitasvitae/2018/06/11/summer-of-code-evaluation-an…
13: https://danielpocock.com/pmpc-for-fsfe-itself
14: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180526-01
15: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180613-01
16: http://wiki.fsfe.org/TechDocs/SMTP
17: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/2018/FSFERM-talk-kirschner-in-DA
18: https://www.ow2con.org/view/2018/
19: https://openexpoeurope.com/session/public-money-public-code/
20: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180529-01
21: https://fsfe.org/mailto:newsletterATfsfeDOTorg
22: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
23: https://fsfe.org/join
24: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
25: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
26: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-06
= FSFE Newsletter May 2018 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201805.ru.html ]
== LLW2018: The FSFE brings together top legal experts to debate about legal and licensing issues around Free Software ==
Following a more than a decade long tradition, the FSFE once again led
its annual Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop [1] (LLW) in
Barcelona, Spain, as a meeting point for world-leading legal experts to
debate over issues and best practices surrounding Free Software
licences. This year we decided to bring the event back to its roots and
to emphasise the "Workshop" part in its original title. Our 3-day
conference attracted around 120 legal experts and came with an
unprecedented amount of parallel tracks and interactive sessions
designed to dive into the most contentious topics in the legal world of
Free Software.
Some of the topics covered during the conference included an update on
how to build a successful legal defense strategy [2] against a copyright
troll, recommendations on how to tackle challenges of compliance in
container images [3], as well as an overview of what decades of Free
Software licensing can teach us in data sharing [4]. A more detailed
report of this important event is to come during the next weeks.
== The FSFE community as a case study ==
Since more than 15 years, the FSFE is an enduring non-profit
organisation with a distributed network of people, who contribute their
time and effort into our common mission [5] to empower users to control
technology. That is why Giacomo Poderi chose the FSFE community [6] as
one of his cases for his research in the “Infrastructuring SuStainable
Playbour“ (ISSP) project [7]. This project investigates the
sustainability of collaborative spaces, as commons, and it focuses on
participants’ continuous contribution to the maintenance and development
of such ‘places’.
If you are contributing or contributed in the past to the FSFE's mission
and you feel fine with being interviewed, please get in touch with
Giacomo Poderi. No automated data gathering is involved in this research
and no sensitive data are expected to be collected. Furthermore,
anonymity of participants will be preserved in any dissemination
activity related to this research.
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- While you better not start using Facebook in the first place,
currently many people decide to move away from Facebook. Sebastian
Schauenburg writes about his own experience of "Disconnecting from
Facebook" [9].
- Evaggelos Balaskas blogs about USBGuard [10] and other measurements to
protect your system from the harmful attach of an unknown USB device.
- Daniel Pocock runs a crowdfunding campaign to help run a ham radio
station at OSCAL 2018 [11] and blogs about initial problems with
GoFundMe [12] beforehand.
- Erik Albers was on a panel about "The Sustainable Side of Technology"
[13], organized by GreenBuzz in Betahaus in Berlin, Germany.
- Matthias Kirschner gave a talk at the Internet policy forum of the
social-democratic party in Germany in Berlin, Germany.
- The FSFE has been present with a booth at the OpenTechSummit and at
Netzfest in Berlin (Germany) and Corso Leopold in Munich (Germany)
== Get Active ==
We have been running a call for participation [14] for the FSFE track
during the Libre Software Meeting 2018 and the FSFE's community meeting
from July 7 to 9 in Strasbourg, France. Thanks to numerous submissions
we still need to set the last details of the agenda, but you can already
get a first glance of our track as well as the most important
information about accommodation and organisation on our wiki-page [15].
If you like to join the Libre Software Meeting and our community meeting
be quick to organise your trip and book a suitable hotel. We expect many
people to attend the event, while Strasbourg attracts a lot of visitors
during the summer weekends in general.
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org [16]. We're looking
forward to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [17], supporters [18] and
donors [19] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[20], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editor,
Erik Albers
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--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/legal-conference.en.html
2: https://lwn.net/Articles/752485/
3: https://lwn.net/Articles/752982/
4: https://lwn.net/Articles/753648/
5: https://fsfe.org/about/mission
6: http://blogs.fsfe.org/poderi/?p=38
7: http://poderi.eu/research/issp/
8: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-05
9: https://www.schauenburg.nl/posts/2018/04/12-disconnecting-from-facebook/
10: https://balaskas.gr/blog/2018/05/13/usbguard/
11: https://danielpocock.com/powering-a-ham-radio-demo-oscal-2018
12: https://danielpocock.com/gofundme-beware-bait-and-switch
13: https://greenbuzzberlin.de/event/sustainable-side-technology/
14: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180414-01
15: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/LSMandCommunityMeeting2018
16: https://fsfe.org/mailto:newsletterATfsfeDOTorg
17: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
18: https://fsfe.org/join
19: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
20: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
21: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-05
= FSFE Newsletter March 2018 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201803.ru.html ]
== Italy at the forefront of European legislation for public code ==
With the FSFE's Public Money? Public Code! [1] campaign not only do we
demand that code paid for by the people should be available to the
people. We also highlight good examples of public code so other decision
makers can learn from it. One very good example is Article 68 [2] and
Article 69 [3] of the "Codice Amministrazione Digitale", an Italian law
requiring public administrations inside Italy to prefer internally made
solutions and Free Software solutions over proprietary ones. In
addition, these administrations have the duty to share the source code
and documentation of any software developed with public money. These
laws put Italy at the forefront of European legislation in favour of
public code.
Unfortunately, so far the law lacks proper implementation. In that
light, the FSFE's country team in Italy ran an Ask Your Candidates
campaign [4] in which they asked the political parties about their stand
on Free Software [5] and the implementation of the aforementioned
Articles 68 and 69 after the national elections on March 4.
FSFE Italy received very positive replies and many parties took a
favourable stand towards Free Software [6]. Such a big consensus across
these parties gives hope to open up a lot of possibilities for progress
towards the use of Free Software at the state level in Italy and a
better implementation of Articles 68 and 69 of the "Codice
Amministrazione Digitale". As a match to this, the team "Developers
Italia", who are in charge of further implementation of the Articles 68
and 69, sent out their love for Free Software [7] on I love Free
Software day.
== Read our detailed IloveFS report ==
As promised in the last newsletter, we now have a detailed report about
our IloveFS campaign in 2018 [8]. In the report, you will not only read
about some highlights that happened for this year's IloveFS. Thanks to
our current intern Jan, we also have an analysis and visualisation of
439 'I Love Free Software' messsages containing the /#IloveFS/ hashtag.
The scraper Jan used for his analysis is written in GNU R and published
as Free Software [9].
While every year we are happy to see so many people celebrating I love
Free Software day, we also encourage you to express your Free Software
love every day :)
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- Paul Boddie reflects on the hobbyism and volunteerism attitude [11] in
many Free Software projects and what this means for the valuation of
the actual work that is done, examining Python language development as
an example.
- Isabel Drost Fromm argues against people acting as mediators [12] as
the only interface between their employer and a Free Software project.
- Carmen Bianca Bakker reflects on the recently updated FreeBSD Code of
Conduct [13], examines the included dangers of positive
discrimination, and states how a non-biased, welcoming Code of Conduct
can indeed help dogs and cats to live happily ever after.
- Daniel Pocock reflects on the newly-introduced SwissID [14], and its
potential dangers to privacy and democratic referendums.
- Erik Albers asked our community on multiple channels to let the FSFE
know about upcoming Free Software events in 2018 that are of interest
to the FSFE community. Thanks to our current intern Vincent they all
ended up in the FSFE's wiki calendar [15] so our teams and community
can use them to organise their attendance.
- Björn Schießle, the FSFE's country coordinator Germany, gave a talk
about software freedom in the cloud [16] at "Chemnitzer Linuxtage" in
Chemnitz, Germany.
- Erik Albers was giving a talk about Public Money? Public Code! [17] at
the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain.
- The new born local FSFE group in Madrid had its first meeting on
February 22 [18] and March 3 [19].
- The FSFE has been present with a booth at "Chemnitzer Linuxtage" in
Chemnitz (Germany), at T3chfest in Madrid (Spain), and at the Internet
Freedom Festival in Valencia (Spain).
== Get Active ==
If you have not done so yet, let us know your favorite Free Software
event that you think is or should be in interest for the FSFE community
to set up a booth at or participate in with a talk or workshop. The
simplest way to do so is by sending a mail to contact(a)fsfe.org [20] with
the subject "Free Software event 2018". Please state what the event is
about, how many participants are expected, and the main language used.
Before informing us, please check if we do not already have it in our
list [21].
If you are visiting any other events regularly or soon, be it a big
conference or a local meet-up, equip yourself with some FSFE promotion
material that you can order at no charge [22].
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org [23]. We're looking
forward to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [24], supporters [25] and
donors [26] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[27], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editors,
Erik Albers and Max Mehl
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--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://publiccode.eu
2: http://www.agid.gov.it/cad/art-68-analisi-comparativa-soluzioni
3: http://www.agid.gov.it/cad/art-69-riuso-soluzioni-standard-aperti
4: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/askyourcandidates/askyourcandidates
5: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180219-01
6: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180302-01.html
7: https://twitter.com/developersITA/status/964060999899860992
8: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180308-01
9: https://git.fsfe.org/janwey/ilfs-data
10: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-03
11: https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1978
12: http://blog.isabel-drost-fromm.de/posts/proxies-considered-harmful.html
13: https://www.carmenbianca.eu/en/post/2018-03-09-how-we-conduct-ourselves/
14: https://danielpocock.com/swisspost-swissid-another-nail-in-the-coffin-sover…
15: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events
16: https://www.schiessle.org/articles/2017/11/14/software-freedom-in-the-cloud/
17: https://platform.internetfreedomfestival.org/en/IFF2018/public/schedule/cus…
18: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/2018/0222-encuentro-local-madrid
19: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/2018/0303-encuentro-grupo-local-madrid
20: https://fsfe.org/mailto:contactATfsfeDOTorg
21: http://blog.3rik.cc/2018/03/free-software-events-in-europe-in-2018/
22: https://fsfe.org/promo
23: https://fsfe.org/mailto:newsletterATfsfeDOTorg
24: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
25: https://fsfe.org/join
26: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
27: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
28: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-03
= FSFE Newsletter February 2018 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201802.ru.html ]
== Barcelona is the first city council to join the FSFE's "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign ==
"Funds that come from the citizens have to be invested in systems that
can be reused and open to a local ecosystem" says Francesca Bria,
Commissioner of Digital Technology and Innovation of Barcelona. She is
the driving force behind the City's Digital Transformation Plan, which -
among other things - aims to establish the use of Free Software and open
data in the city's administration.
Step by step, all key applications shall be replaced with Free Software
solutions until the city finally replaces its currently running Windows-
system with a suitable GNU/Linux-system. Therewith, Barcelona is heading
to achieve and guarantee "complete technological sovereignty" [1] for
the municipality. By spring of 2019, when its municipal term of office
ends, the City Council has planned to spend 70 percent of its software
budget on open-source software.
With this in mind, Barcelona has been the first city council to sign the
Open Letter [2] of our "Public Money Public? Code!" campaign. The FSFE
is very pleased to see one of European's biggest metropolitan areas
moving to Free Software, and we wish Barcelona much success!
== I love Free Software Day ==
Every year, our community celebrates "I Love Free Software Day" on
February 14. Our report from this year's celebration is coming soon but
we like to say thank you for hundreds of love declarations via social
media channels, pictures of people celebrating their favourite Free
Software projects like Developers Italia [3], beautiful artworks like
the one from Grise Bouille [4] as well as multiple blog posts informing
about the benefits of Free Software. We even found people opening issues
on project's development platforms [5], just to say "Thank You!" on "I
love Free Software Day".
Thank you for celebrating with us and stay tuned for the detailed report
coming soon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join our community of freedom fighters. [6]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- The day before FOSDEM, the FSFE once again partnered up with OpenForum
Europe for the third edition of European Free Software Policy Meeting
[7] to discuss the most important current policy issues on European
level regarding Free Software.
- The FSFE country team Italy is running an "Ask your candidates"
campaign [8] and sent a set of questions about the use and promotion
of Free Software to the participating parties of the Italian national
elections, happening on March 4.
- The "besondere elektronische Anwaltspostfach (beA)" is publicly
financed software aiming to establish a secure communication between
lawyers in Germany from January 2018. Its usage, however, is currently
being withheld for multiple security issues. The FSFE published an
open letter [9] to demand the full publication of beA under a Free
Software license.
- At the 34th Chaos Communication Congress the FSFE, together with EDRi,
set up a cluster called “Rights & Freedoms” with its own freedom
related track. Erik Albers wrote a report about it on his blog [10].
- Daniel Pocock, the FSFE community representative, writes about
Everything you didn't know about FSFE in a picture [11] in which he
analyses overlapping relationships between staffers, Council,
community and the General Assembly.
- Vanitasvitae reports [12] about his trip to XSF-summit, FOSDEM and the
importance of XMPP libraries
- Daniel Pocock distributed an email to the FSFE community [13] in that
he reflected the GA membership process, the FSFE's identity process
and his personal travels.
- Sebastian Schauenburg shares his insides on sharing local OsmAnd and
Geo URL's [14]
- Polina Malaja, the FSFE's policy analyst, writes about our response to
the PSI Directive public consultation [15] that in short asks to
include source code into the list of re-usable public sector
information.
== Do not miss it! Upcoming events with the FSFE ==
We are happy to see a first local FSFE meet-up happening in Madrid,
Spain, on February 22 [16] and on March 3 [17]. We wish all participants
to spend their time at the meet-up in a positive and fruitful manner. If
you are from the area, do not miss it.
By the way: If you miss a local FSFE group in your area but you like to
start one, get in contact with our community coordinator Erik Albers
[18] who is happy to help you with the first steps.
== Get Active ==
Have you found an interesting Free Software story online that you would
like to share? Maybe you have a question that you like to discuss with
other Free Software activists? Or you like to announce your upcoming
Free Software event or report about a recent one? Then post it on one of
our public mailing lists and share it with the community! We currently
have active public mailing lists in English [19], German [20], Spanish
[21], and Greek [22].
If you live in Italy, contact your local candidates during their current
election-campaigns, point them towards our "Public Money? Public Code!"
campaign and ask them the questions that we have also sent to the
participating parties [23] or similar ones.
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org. We're looking forward
to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [24], supporters [25] and
donors [26] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[27], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editor,
Erik Albers
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Join our community of freedom fighters. [28]
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--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/digital/en/digital-transformation/technolog…
2: https://publiccode.eu/#action
3: https://twitter.com/developersITA/status/964060999899860992
4: https://grisebouille.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/tad_024_ilovefs.jpg
5: https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/issues/866
6: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-02
7: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180215-01
8: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180219-01
9: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/publiccode/bea
10: http://blog.3rik.cc/2018/02/fsfe-assembly-at-34c3-wir-taten-was/
11: https://danielpocock.com/everything-you-didnt-know-about-fsfe-in-a-picture
12: https://blogs.fsfe.org/vanitasvitae/
13: https://danielpocock.com/our-future-relationship-with-fsfe-2018
14: https://www.schauenburg.nl/posts/2018/01/26-local-osmand-and-geo-urls/
15: https://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2017/12/13/fsfe-asks-to-include-software-into…
16: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/2018/0222-encuentro-local-madrid#head-03d1f2ac…
17: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/2018/0303-encuentro-grupo-local-madrid#head-37…
18: https://fsfe.org/about/albers/albers
19: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
20: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-de
21: https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/spain
22: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/admin/fsfe-el
23: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180219-01
24: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
25: https://fsfe.org/join
26: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
27: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
28: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2018-02
= FSFE Newsletter - December 2017 / January 2018 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201712.ru.html ]
== 2017: A year full of Free Software ==
The Free Software Foundation Europe looks back on a very exciting year.
While on one hand we managed to take our regular campaigns like I love
Free Software [1] and Ask Your Candidates [2] to a new level with
extraordinary activities, we also started three new major activities
this year that will keep running in 2018 and beyond. These are Public
Money Public Code [3], Save Code Share [4] and the Reuse Initiative [5].
In the legal field we held the 10th Legal and Licensing Workshop [6] and
updated the Fiduciary Licence Agreement [7] to version 2.0. In the
technical field, we set up new tools for our community [8] and
(co-)developed new tools for our campaigns [9]. All of them are Free
Software, of course.
2017 was also a very good year for our outreach. Our community attended
75 events in 11 countries with talks, workshops and booths. In our
Berlin office we have welcomed six interns from six different European
countries, and our message keeps spreading with new merchandise items
[10] and promotional material [11].
As a result of our joint efforts, we have seen growth in many sectors:
in funds, in media attention, and in our community, with the latter
being the most important point. The Free Software Foundation Europe
could not pursue its mission without the people that make up our
community and spread our message. This is a big thank you to all of you:
the countless volunteers, supporters and donors who were part of or who
made the work of FSFE possible in 2017. Your contributions are priceless
and we are doing our best to keep the good work going in 2018!
If you are interested in more details about our activities in 2017, read
our yearly report [12]. If you like what we are doing, join the FSFE as
a supporter [13] and help us to continue our work for Free Software!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Help us grow and make a difference in 2018 [14]
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- Part of a new copyright proposal currently discussed by the European
Union is Article 13, which imposes the installation of arbitrary
upload filters on every code hosting and sharing provider. Together
with over 80 organisations, the FSFE called the EU member states to
reject the harmful Article 13 [15] and to Save Code Share [16].
- The Dutch government released the source code and documentation of
"Basisregistratie Personen", a 100 million Euro IT system that
registers information about inhabitants within the Netherlands. The
FSFE applauds the Dutch government's move [17] towards releasing
publicly financed code as Free Software.
- Max Mehl, project manager of the FSFE, explains the current status of
the FSFE's work on proposed European Radio Lockdown [18]. While the
FSFE was not accepted as member of committee, which assists the
European Commission with drafting the delegated acts, we keep raising
our demand to save users' rights and Free Software, backed by more
than 50 civil society organisations.
- The FSFE submitted its response to the public consultation on the
Directive on the re-use of public sector information [19]. In our
response we argue that source code needs to be added to the list of
'documents' that governments and other public bodies need to make
available for re-use in an open and machine readable format. When it
comes to publicly financed software, it should be released to the
public under Free Software licences [20].
- Thanks to April, the French Free Software association, we now have a
French translation of our "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign video
[21].
- Erik Albers wrote a report of the FSFE's community meeting and the
common spirit with some pictures (http://blog.3rik.cc/2017/12/report-
about-the-fsfe-community-meeting-2017/)
- Earlier this year, after a public consultation, we took the decision
to change the name of our supporter program, the Fellowship of the
FSFE, and talk about our supporters by their true name: Supporters. At
the same time as we're completing this change, we're also
decommissioning our old Fellowship SmartCard in favor of a brand new
FSFE supporter patch [22].
- Matthias Kirschner, President of the FSFE, argues in a blogpost [23]
as a reply to Scott Peterson from Red Hat, that the terms "Open Source
Software" and "Free Software" are referring to the same kind of
software but only differ in their emphasis. And that it is challenging
to impossible and maybe even unnecessary to find a "neutral" term.
- Jonas Öberg, Executive Director of the FSFE, introduces the FSFE's
forms API in a blogpost [24], a way to send emails and manage sign-ups
on web pages used in the FSFE community.
- Daniel Pocock, community representative of the FSFE, shared a picture
of the fixme.ch hackerspace [25] in Lausanne which promotes the FSFE.
- Michael Kappes blogs about a group of supporters from the Berlin local
FSFE group who went to the FIfF-Konferenz in Jena to set up a booth
for the FSFE [26].
- Björn Schiessle, German team co-coordinator, blogs about how to
achieve practical software freedom in the cloud [27].
- We welcome our new associate [28]: Open Labs [29], Albania
- FSFE has a new t-shirt celebrating the 100 freedoms of Free Software
[30]. Also, we have a lot of other nice shirts and merchandise in our
online shop [31] - for Christmas or for any other reason.
- Thanks to our growing community and the big demand by people around
the world to spread the word about the FSFE and Free Software, we are
looking for an office assistant as a part-time job [32] to help us
with packing and posting.
- In 2018, again, we are looking for students who can join our team in
Berlin [33] for three months or more as a mandatory part of their
studies or before graduation.
== Do not miss it! Upcoming events with the FSFE ==
As in recent years, the FSFE will be present with an FSFE assembly at
the Chaos Communication Congress [34], one of the biggest technology
related events in Europe. The assembly will be equipped with current
merchandise and promotional material, run a Free Software track, invite
people to play a Free Software game or to join us in several Free
Software song sing-along sessions. After all, the assembly shall be a
place for our community to get together and connect with each other. If
you are attending Chaos Communication Congress too, use this opportunity
to meet and get to know the people behind FSFE, including volunteers and
staffers.
As usual, find all the other future events with or by the FSFE listed on
our events page [35].
== Get Active ==
Use the vacation time to read our yearly report [36] and share it among
your friends. Let people know about the importance of Free Software and
why they should care about it. Tell them that people around the world
form communities with the aim to bring technological freedom,
transparency, knowledge and emancipation to everyone. Spread the word
[37] about the four freedoms and if possible, help others to exercise
their freedoms too.
Join our cause [38].
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org. We're looking forward
to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [39], supporters [40] and
donors [41] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[42], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editor,
Erik Albers
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Help us grow and make a difference in 2018 [43]
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--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170315-01
2: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170829-01
3: http://publiccode.eu/
4: http://savecodeshare.eu/
5: http://reuse.software/
6: https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/legal-conference
7: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171013-01
8: https://wiki.fsfe.org/TechDocs
9: https://github.com/freedomvote/freedomvote
10: https://fsfe.org/order/
11: https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword
12: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171207-01
13: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-12
14: https://fsfe.org/httpsfsfeorgjoinnl201712
15: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171130-01
16: http://savecodeshare.eu/
17: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171206-01
18: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171212-01
19: http://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2017/12/13/fsfe-asks-to-include-software-into-…
20: http://publiccode.eu/
21: https://www.april.org/version-audio-francaise-de-la-video-argent-public-cod…
22: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171116-01
23: https://k7r.eu/2-percent-discussion-free-software-or-open-source-software/
24: http://blog.jonasoberg.net/introducing-forms/
25: https://danielpocock.com/hacking-with-posters-and-stickers
26: http://blogs.fsfe.org/majestyx/2017/11/03/fsfe-berlin-goes-fiff-konferenz-2…
27: https://www.schiessle.org/articles/2017/11/14/software-freedom-in-the-cloud/
28: https://fsfe.org/associates/associates
29: https://openlabs.cc/en/
30: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171211-01
31: https://fsfe.org/order/
32: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171207-02
33: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171114-01
34: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2017/wiki/index.php/Assembly:Free_Software_F…
35: https://fsfe.org/events/events
36: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171207-01
37: https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword
38: http://fsfe.org/join
39: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
40: http://fsfe.org/join
41: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
42: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
43: https://fsfe.org/httpsfsfeorgjoinnl201712
= FSFE Newsletter - November 2017 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201711.ru.html ]
== The FSFE presents modernised Fiduciary Licensing Agreement 2.0 ==
The FSFE's Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) was initially introduced in
2002, to address the challenge of managing rights and content within a
Free Software project over long periods of time. The FLA is a well-
balanced contributor agreement, which gives the trustee, responsible for
managing the rights within a Free Software project, power and
responsibility to make sure the contributed software always remains free
and open. This way the project, together with all the respective
contributors, is protected against any possible misuse of power by a new
copyright holder.
However, the last review of the initial FLA was back in 2007 and we are
happy to present an improved and modernised version - FLA-2.0 [1]. The
biggest improvements are that the FLA-2.0 now also covers patents and
enables more practical licensing options directed towards third parties
– including referencing an external licensing policy. In addition, the
new wording is much improved both in its compatibility with more
jurisdictions as well as being easier for everybody to understand and
apply.
For FLA-2.0, the FSFE joined forces with ContributorAgreements.org and
integrated the FLA-2.0 into its Copyright Licensing Agreement (CLA)
chooser/generator, in order to make the use of the FLA easier both for
projects and for developers. As a side-effect, all CLA on
ContributorAgreements.org have been updated as well, following some of
the improvements from the FLA.
== General Assembly 2017: new members, new roles and new directions ==
The members of the Free Software Foundation Europe held their General
Assembly on October 15 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The annual meeting is
held to discuss strategies for the upcoming year and to set the overall
direction of the organisation. Amongst other things, the General
Assembly prepared a route to some reforms of the organisational
structure and adopted an overall Code of Conduct for the FSFE. Patrick
Ohnewein was elected as the new Financial Officer, and six new members
joined the association. You can read more details in the official
minutes [2] and a summary about the accepted proposals in the
corresponding news-item [3].
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Help us grow and make a difference in 2017 [4]
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- The Free Software Foundation Europe released its next version of REUSE
practices [5] to make computers understand software copyrights and
licenses. The REUSE page now also comes with an explanatory video [6]
as well as a set of developer tools [7] and examples which show the
REUSE practices in action.
- The FSFE's Vice President Heiki Lõhmus explains the background about
decisions for future changes to FSFE membership [8] and the removal of
the Fellowship Representatives during the General Assembly 2017.
- As in previous editions of the Chaos Communication Camp, the FSFE will
set up an assembly during 34C3 for all friends of Free Software and is
running a call for participation [9] until November 19.
- At the beginning of October, 32 European Ministers signed the Tallinn
Declaration on eGovernment. The FSFE's policy analyst Polina Malaja
writes about [10] FSFE's input and the good process involved in this
declaration.
- The FSFE's Executive Director Jonas Öberg blogs about the steps he
took to make cURL REUSE compliant [11].
- André Ockers analyses the Dutch coalition agreement [12] on the matter
of software and misses any support of Free Software within.
- Tarin Gamberini evaluates [13] that in the last semester, eight
Italian Regions have reduced advertisement of proprietary PDF readers
on their website, and that one region has increased its support for
Free Software PDF readers.
- Hannes Hauswedell explains how to use FSFE's Gitea [14] and/or Github
to host comments in statically generated blogs [15] and in a privacy-
friendly way.
- The FSFE was present at the Open Source Summit 2017 in Prague, Czech
Republic. The FSFE's president Matthias Kirschner gave a talk about
"Limux: The Loss of a Lighthouse", and Polina Malaja about "DSM, EIF,
RED: Acronyms on the EU Level and Why They Matter for Software
Freedom".
- Jonas Öberg was at the Open Source Strategy Forum in New York to
present updates to FSFEs' REUSE practices.
- The FSFE's country coordinator Germany Björn Schiessle gave a talk
about how to avoid digital dependencies [16] at the Fellbacher
Weltwochen.
- The FSFE's country coordinator Italy, Natale Vinto, gave a talk about
Public Money? Public Code! at Linux Day Milano to celebrate Linux Day,
a national manifestation to discuss about Linux and free software.
== Do not miss it! Upcoming events with the FSFE ==
Always find the FSFE's future events listed on our events page [17].
== Contribute to our newsletter ==
If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to
us. As always, the address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org. We're looking forward
to hearing from you!
Thanks to our community, all the volunteers [18], supporters [19] and
donors [20] who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators
[21], who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.
Your editor,
Erik Albers
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Help us grow and make a difference in 2017 [22]
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--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171013-01
2: https://fsfe.org/about/legal/minutes/minutes-2017-10-15.en.pdf
3: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171107-01
4: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-11
5: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171108-01
6: http://reuse.software/
7: https://reuse.software/dev/
8: http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2017/11/06/background-for-future-c…
9: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171024-01
10: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20171109-01
11: http://blog.jonasoberg.net/a-reuse-compliant-curl/
12: https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/2017/10/28/dutch-coalition-agreement-wheres-the-t…
13: https://www.taringamberini.com/en/blog/fsfe/adoption-of-free-software-pdf-r…
14: http://git.fsfe.org/
15: https://hannes.hauswedell.net/post/2017/10/21/blog-comments/
16: http://ichbinbaff.de/multibaff/ww17/events/digitale-abhaengigkeit-vermeiden…
17: https://fsfe.org/events/events
18: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
19: http://fsfe.org/join
20: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
21: https://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/translators
22: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-11
= FSFE Newsletter - June 2017 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201706.ru.html ]
== New European Interoperability Framework urges public administrations to use and contribute to Free Software ==
After a round of public consultation last year, the 'new' European
Interoperability Framework [1] (EIF) was finally published in March
2017. In alignment with our answers [2] to the public consultation, and
with the general responses [3] from citizens and businesses that
demanded more Free Software within public e-services, the revised EIF
includes a recommendation to public administrations across Europe to
ensure a level playing field for Free Software and demonstrate active
and fair consideration of using Free Software when offering e-services.
In addition, the new EIF urges public administrations to not only use
Free Software but "whenever possible contribute to the pertinent
developer communities". This is a significant improvement in comparison
to the previous EIF v.2, and explicit acknowledgement of Free Software
being essential for ensuring better interoperablity. The down side is
that similar to the communication on "ICT Standardisation Priorities for
the Digital Single Market" [4], the new EIF unfortunately does not
sufficiently address the obstacles that so-called "fair, reasonable, and
non-discriminatory" (FRAND) licensing terms create for Free Software. By
basing its licensing policy of Open Standards on FRAND, the EIF
unfortunately does not allow Free Software projects to participate in
offering their services to public administrations.
For more background on this topic read our article "Why is FRAND bad for
Free Software?" [5]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Help us grow and make a difference in 2017
https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-06 [6]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- Jonas Öberg, the FSFE's executive director, explains an upcoming
project [7] by the FSFE to facilitate automation in the software
toolchain by helping to automatically identify the license in use.
- Daniel Pocock, our newly elected FSFE Fellowship Representative, is
organising a meetup to build a food computer in Zurich. In his blog,
Daniel explains [8] what it is about and the project's connection to
Free Software.
- Heiki Löhmus, Vice President of the FSFE, gave a workshop [9] about
using Free Software for STEM education at DORS/CLUC in Zagreb,
Croatia.
- Polina Malaja, the FSFE's Legal Coordinator and Policy Analyst,
participated in a panel discussion about "Towards an Internet of
People: A progressive new deal for technology" at Diem25 [10] in
Berlin.
- Matthias Kirschner, President of the FSFE, participated in a panel
discussion [11] about how data, code, and algorithms are influencing
our lives and the economy at the German Church Day in Magdeburg,
Germany. There is also a video recording available [12].
- Erik Albers, the FSFE's Community and Communication Coordinator, gave
the opening talk at the Open Tech Summit 2017 about "The Digital-o-Mat
or how to set Free Software as a topic for democratic elections". The
FSFE was also present with a booth.
- Maurice Verheesen, the FSFE's country coordinator Netherlands, gave a
keynote about public money, public code at the Open Source event in
Tilburg, the Netherlands.
- Franz Gratzer, one of the FSFE's volunteer designers, was giving a
workshop about GIMP basics [13] at the Linuxwochen Wien 2017. The FSFE
group Vienna was also present with a booth.
- The FSFE-Group Munich, Germany, was present with a booth at the Munich
street festival "Corso Leopold" to inform people about the FSFE and
our work for Free Software.
- Matthias Kirschner gave the keynote at the openSUSE conference [14]
2017 in Nürnberg, Germany, about Limux and what the Free Software
community can learn from it. There is also a video recording available
[15].
- Fellows from Madrid, Spain, have been at the OpenExpo with a booth to
inform people about FSFE and our work for Free Software.
- Polina Malaja gave a presentation about the current status of Radio
'Lockdown' Directive [16] during the Wireless Community Weekend [17]
in Berlin.
- Frank Karlitschek blogs about [18] our ethical responsibility towards
technology and software.
- Matthias Kirschner, Polina Malaja, and Daniel Pocock have been at the
Open Source Conference Albania (OSCAL) to talk about "Empowering
people to control technology", "EU level and software freedom" and
"Free Real-Time Communications with Free Software". The FSFE was also
represented with a booth.
- The FSFE group Vienna was present with a booth at the veganmania [19]
to inform people about FSFE and our work for Free Software.
== Help us to improve our newsletter ==
If you see some news you think that should be included, forward it to
us. If you'd like to share any thoughts, send them to us. As always, the
address is newsletter(a)fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from
you!
Thanks to all the volunteers [20], supporters [21] and donors [22] who
make our work possible.
Your editors,
Erik Albers and Polina Malaja
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <https://fsfe.org>
FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/eif_en
2: https://fsfe.org/activities/os/eif-v3
3: http://ec.europa.eu/isa2/sites/isa/files/eif-public-consultation-factual-su…
4: https://fsfe.org/news/2016/news-20160428-02
5: https://fsfe.org/activities/os/why-frand-is-bad-for-free-software
6: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-06
7: http://blog.jonasoberg.net/automating-the-software-toolchain/
8: https://danielpocock.com/hacking-the-food-chain-in-switzerland
9: https://2017.dorscluc.org/talk/2/
10: https://diem25.org/diem25-returns-to-berlin-to-develop-its-political-roadma…
11: https://theonet.de/2017/05/29/freie-daten-freies-teilen-frei-sein/
12: https://k7r.eu/free-software-at-church-days/
13: https://cfp.linuxwochen.at/de/LWW17/public/events/547
14: https://k7r.eu/recording-for-limux-the-loss-of-a-lightouse/
15: https://media.ccc.de/v/1458-limux-the-loss-of-a-lighthouse
16: https://fsfe.org/activities/radiodirective
17: https://wiki.freifunk.net/Wireless_Community_Weekend_2017/Timetable
18: https://karlitschek.de/2017/06/is-doing-nothing-evil/
19: http://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2017/06/04/booth-at-linuxwochen-and-veg…
20: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
21: http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
22: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
= FSFE Newsletter - May 2017 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201705.ru.html ]
== Daniel Pocock is the new Fellowship representative ==
>From 10 to 24 April 2017 the FSFE ran the ninth annual vote for a
Fellowship representative [1] to represent the FSFE's community and
Fellowship in the FSFE's General Assembly [2]. The General Assembly
consists of members of the FSFE e.V. and is FSFE's legal body. It is
responsible for strategic planning, budgeting, agenda-setting,
exonerating, and the electing and recalling of the Executive Council and
the Financial Officer. And the winner of this year's election is ...
Daniel Pocock! [3]
Daniel Pocock [4] came first from seven candidates who ran for office,
with a self-description inside our wiki page for the Fellowship
Elections 2017 [5] and by participating in public hustings [6].
Unfortunately two different dates were announced for the hustings, but
the log-file is available online for everyone who missed it.
The FSFE would like to thank Nicolas Dietrich, former Fellowship
representative, for his contributions during the last two years and
welcomes Daniel Pocock as a new representative. Please find Daniel's
personal conclusions in his own blog [7].
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Help us grow and make a difference in 2017
https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-05 [8]
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- From 26 to 28 April, the FSFE's annual Free Software Legal and
Licensing workshop (LLW) [9] took place in Barcelona, Spain. This year
we gathered 120 legal experts from all over the world to share their
knowledge and experience with each other in a 3-day event that
encompassed more than 35 presentations on numerous legal issues, from
open data [10] to tooling, software patents and existing challenges
for Free Software licensing [11].
- Armijn Hemel and Shane Coughlan, members of the FSFE Legal Team,
published a guide [12] for startups, small businesses, and engineers
on "Practical GPL compliance" [13]. The guide is designed to demystify
GPL compliance and to facilitate the work of compliance engineers on a
practical level.
- North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populated state, is having
general elections on 14 May 2017. The FSFE joined a "coalition of Free
knowledge" which has developed for the first time a "Digital-o-Mat"
[14]. The "Digital-o-Mat" is a tool to help those voters who are
concerned about digital rights and freedoms, to decide about which
party to vote for during these elections. Eight questions guide users
to choose their own preferences on important topics about digital
society - for example questions about the use of Free Software, Open
Data or Open Educational Resources. After filling them out, users will
see which party matches best with their own preferences and they can
additionally browse detailed explanations on the party's positions
regarding each topic. The interface for North-Rhine Westphalia is in
German, the underlying Software [15] however is Free Software and free
to adopt for other purposes.
- On the FSFE's Planet [16], we had an interesting dialogue popping up
between our executive director Jonas Öberg who argues that sometimes
you can use proprietary software to further free and open source
software [17] although you should be aware about the risk of
backfiring. And Daniel Pocock, our new Fellowship representative,
answered with "the risk of proprietary software" [18] and that "no
deal might be better than a bad deal", meaning that if you cannot
achieve something with Free Software you should consider just doing
without it.
- Paul Hänsch, one of the FSFE's system administrators, organised the
very first physical wiki caretakers meeting [19]. The wiki caretakers
are a team of volunteers [20] who help to organise information inside
the wiki and make it easy for others to contribute.
- Monitoring shows [21] that in the last semester nine Italian Regions
have reduced advertisement of proprietary PDF readers on their
website, and that one Region has increased its support for Free
Software PDF readers [22].
- The FSFE's executive director Jonas Öberg, blogs about "a new
understanding of non-profit management" and uses this new
understanding to analyse the FSFE's characteristics [23] in the uses
of technocracy, hierarchy, innovation and direction-orientation. Jonas
closes his analytics with some thoughts about the way he would like to
see the FSFE evolving.
- The FSFE was present with booths at the Linke Medien Akademie [24] in
Berlin/Germany, at the 16th Augsburger Linux Info Tag in
Augsburg/Germany, FOSS North in Göteborg/Sweden and Linuxtage in
Graz/Austria.
== Help us improve our newsletter ==
If you see some news you think should be included, forward it to us. If
you'd like to share any thoughts, send them to us. The address is as
always newsletter(a)fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks to all the volunteers [25], supporters [26] and donors [27] who
make our work possible.
Your editors, Erik Albers, Polina Malaja FSFE
--
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Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/Election/FellowshipElection_2017
2: http://wiki.fsfe.org/Teams/GA
3: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170425-01
4: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/Election/FellowshipElection_2017#Daniel_Po…
5: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/Election/FellowshipElection_2017
6: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/Election/FellowshipElection_2017#Hustings
7: https://danielpocock.com/fsfe-fellowship-representative-and-upcoming-events
8: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-05
9: https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/legal-conference.en.html
10: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/721540/7831c0949927d665/
11: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/721458/be70cd561648d22f/
12: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/linux-foundation-and-free-software-…
13: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/research/practical-gpl-compliance
14: https://www.digital-o-mat.de/
15: https://github.com/dsstio/digital-o-mat
16: http://planet.fsfe.org/
17: http://blog.jonasoberg.net/using-proprietary-software-for-freedom/
18: https://danielpocock.com/risks-of-using-proprietary-software
19: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Teams/WikiCaretakers/Hackathon2017
20: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Teams/WikiCaretakers
21: https://www.taringamberini.com/en/blog/fsfe/adoption-of-free-software-pdf-r…
22: https://pdfreaders.org/
23: http://blog.jonasoberg.net/towards-a-new-understanding-of-non-profit-manage…
24: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/2017/LiMA
25: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute
26: http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
27: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus
= FSFE Newsletter - April 2017 =
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201704.ru.html ]
== Free Software in the German OGP action plan ==
Last December, Germany joined the Open Government Partnership [1] and
now has until June 2017 to develop and decide on an action plan.
Increased transparency and continuous reporting, governmental
effectiveness and citizen-friendly administration are all part of the
goals of Open Government.
The FSFE has worked together with other organisations and the "working
group OGP" Germany to summarise the topic of Free Software in the Open
Government context and provide concrete action items, along with a short
but illuminating introduction into the topic and a vision for 2030. The
recommendations were submitted to the German government in March.
The proposal was the outcome of a workshop, held by the German
Government in February, with the contribution of numerous civil society
representatives, including the FSFE. By publishing our suggestions [2],
we hope to enable civil society actors worldwide to learn about the OGP
discussion in Germany and use these suggestions in other countries.
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Help us grow and make a difference in 2017 https://fsfe.org/join [3]
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== What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE ==
- In the Dutch elections, Freedomvote.nl [4], initiated by the Dutch
FSFE group, compared party positions on digital freedom and not only
helped voters to make up their minds, but also gave a taste of what to
expect by the newly elected parties' digital policies.
- Last month, we welcomed as an associated organisation, Dyne.org - a
non-profit think/do tank [5] with more than 10 years of expertise in
developing Free Software tools and narratives for community
empowerment.
- On March 7, Matthias Kirschner put the spotlight on LiMux [6] at the
talk he gave at the 58. Netzpolitischer Abend [7] in Berlin, and on
March 28, he shared his views with the audience at the
ISCTE–University Institute of Lisbon in Portugal [8] concerning ways
to empower people to use technology. Matthias also participated in a
longer podcast in German about LiMux [9].
- On March 11-12, the FSFE returned to Chemnitzer Linux-Tage [10],
Germany's biggest Free Software conference, held in the University of
Chemnitz. We arranged an information booth and Max Mehl spoke about
the developments around the EU Radio "Lockdown" Directive [11].
- On March 20, Olga Gkotsopoulou, Polina Malaja and Lusy Vaseva
presented the FSFE's Position Paper for the endorsement of Free
Software and Open Standards in Horizon 2020 and all publicly-funded
research [12] and facilitated a discussion about the role of Free
Software in Open Science at the Open Science Barcamp in Berlin [13].
- The winners of the 2016 Free Software Awards were announced by the
Free Software Foundation [14] during the LibrePlanet 2017 conference.
The Award for Projects of Social Benefit was given to SecureDrop, an
anonymous whistleblowing platform, maintained by Freedom of the Press
Foundation, while the Award for the Advancement of Free Software went
to Alexandre Oliva, an advocate of Free Software and the GNU Project.
- The Vienna FSFE group held an information booth at Veganmania indoor
festival 2017. [15]
- Jonas Öberg wrote about the the need to work more with governments and
local municipalities [16] in order to encourage uptake of Free
Software friendly policies in procurement and development of IT
systems. The FSFE policy team has intensified its efforts in this
direction and asks for everyone's support. [17]
- If you're interested in discussions about Free Software on Android,
you can join FSFE's android mailing list [18], which Matthias
Kirschner highlighted in his introduction to installing Signal without
a Google account or Google Play [19].
- In February, we celebrated the "I Love Free Software day" for the 8th
consecutive year [20]. People all over the world used the occasion to
declare their love and affection not only towards their significant
other, but to the whole Free Software community. This year's
celebrations had everything: a FOSDEM photobooth in Brussels [21],
letters and flowers for the German Parliament [22], light projections
in the streets of Berlin [23] and Frankfurt [24], creative artworks
[25], a bright program of IloveFS events, funny memes [26], songs,
microblogging as well as longer blogposts from individuals,
politicians and supporting organisations.
- Are you currently a student? Is an internship a compulsory part of
your studies curriculum? Are you fluent in German and English and
interested in the politics around Free Software? Then, check our new
intern vacancy announcement [27], for a position in our office in
Berlin, from June till October 2017. And don't forget, that we're
still able to accept additional student interns for 2017. Apply now
[28] and don't miss the opportunity to become part of a great
international and diverse team, based in Berlin!
== Get active ==
Fellowship elections 2017: According to our constitution [29], two seats
in the General Assembly [30] are reserved for elected representatives of
our Fellows. They serve two-year terms and one seat is up for re-
election every year. The electoral process 2017 covers the period from
April 10 till April 24. Eight candidates are running for office in the
FSFE's General Assembly. You can find the list of candidates, along with
their manifestos and background as well as the election schedule and
voting procedure, in our dedicated Fellowship Election 2017 page [31].
All Fellows eligible to vote will automatically receive an email with
all necessary information.
== Help us improve our newsletter ==
If you see some news you think should be included, forward it to us. If
you'd like to share any thoughts, send them to us. The address is as
always newsletter(a)fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks to all volunteers [32], supporters [33] and donors [34] who make
our work possible.
your editors Jonas Öberg, Olga Gkotsopoulou, Lusy Vaseva FSFE
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Help us grow and make a difference in 2017 https://fsfe.org/join [35]
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FSFE News <https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <https://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>
1: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/
2: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170328-01.en.html
3: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-04
4: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170302-01.en.html
5: https://fsfe.org/associates/associates.en.html
6: ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPd5N2Y5nuM
7: https://digitalegesellschaft.de/2017/03/58-npa/
8: https://ansol.org/FSFE-palestra
9: http://www.pietcast.com/folge-0026-limux/
10: https://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2017/en
11: https://fsfe.org/activities/radiodirective/index.html
12: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/oscibar2017_session17
13: https://www.open-science-conference.eu/barcamp/
14: http://www.fsf.org/news/securedrop-and-alexandre-oliva-are-2016-free-softwa…
15: https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2017/03/10/booth-veganmania-indoor-201…
16: http://blog.jonasoberg.net/policy-whys-that
17: https://fsfe.org/fellowship/ams/join.php?ams=join
18: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/android
19: https://k7r.eu/testing-signal-without-google-account/
20: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170315-01.en.html
21: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/whylovefs/gallery.en.html
22: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/graphics/ilovefs-roses.jpg
23: http://bit.ly/2ltZM4H
24: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blixxter/32872437596/
25: http://www.elektrollart.de/?p=4503
26: https://blog.3rik.cc/2017/02/free-software-ergo-sum/
27: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170321-01.de.html
28: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170116-01.html
29: https:///www.fsfe.org/about/legal/constitution.html#id-fellowship-seats
30: https:///www.fsfe.org/about/team#general-assembly
31: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/Election/FellowshipElection_2017
32: https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html
33: http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join/nltr17
34: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html
35: https://fsfe.org/join/nl2017-04
