Time to give back: Fellowship Raffle 2007!
FSFE announces Fellowship Raffle 2007 at FOSDEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium
"The Free Software community is built on the principle of cooperation
of many very different parts. The Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE) works exclusively for the benefit of the entire community,
including the companies that make use of Free Software," explains
Georg Greve, president of FSFE. "We do this work gladly and with
great enthusiasm and we always remember that to a large extent this
work is made possible by those who work with us and support us, in
particular the many Fellows of FSFE."
Stefano Maffulli, FSFE's Fellowship coordinator explains: "There are
many ways to support FSFE's work, and they are all important, but the
Fellowship is special: It is a community of people who take
responsibility to contribute on a yearly basis to keep the foundation
running and many of them are active in the Fellowship meetings and
other activities."
Maffulli continues: "Companies support FSFE to show that they
appreciate our work, and in turn we like to show that we appreciate
our fellows. This year we're delighted to do that through sharing
gadgets that were provided by companies who support Free Software:
Welcome to the 2007 Fellowship Raffle!"
On 1st of April 2007, FSFE will raffle the following devices and books
among all its Fellows:
- 1 Free Software Greenphone [1] by Trolltech
- 3 Developer Discount codes for N800 Internet Tablets (further information
[2])[3], by Nokia
- 2 Free Software based routers KWGR614 [4] , by NETGEAR
- 1 LinSoft BTP-PC amounting to 500 EUR [5], by linsoft.de
- 4 USB smart card readers SCR-335 [6], compatible with the Fellowship
crypto card on all GNU/Linux distributions, by kernelconcepts.de
- 30 German books (among German speaking Fellows only) [7], by linuxland.de
- 2 Omnikey PCMCIA CardMan 4040 [8], compatible with the Fellowship
crypto card on all GNU/Linux distributions, by xtops.de
"We hope that this raffle will not only provide us with an opportunity
to thank all our Fellows, but will also help to inform more people
about the Fellowship and the work of FSFE," explains Joachim Jakobs,
FSFE's media coordinator. "For this reason we are providing web buttons
for download that link directly to the Fellowship raffle web page."
Stefano Maffulli adds: "This is the third and biggest Fellowship
raffle so far. To reflect FSFE's long-term mission and vision, we will
probably start to introduce special raffles based on how long people
have been part of the Fellowship already."
"The Free Software Foundation Europe thanks all sponsors for their
support and for providing these prizes to our Fellowship community.
We hope that people will have fun with this raffle and the hunt for
buttons, because fighting for freedom should also be fun," says
Georg Greve.
He concludes: "At the same time this is an important job that sometimes
can be serious and difficult. So we hope that many more people will
come and share both the fun and the hard work with us."
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation
in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the
furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study,
modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these
issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving
people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE.
[1] http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia/greenphone/greenphone_pricing
[2] http://maemo.org/maemowiki/N800DeveloperDeviceProgram
[3] http://europe.nokia.com/phones/n800
[4]
http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/GWirelessRouters/KWGR614…
[5] http://www.linsoft.de//engine/productG/workstation/SessionID/
[6] http://www.kernelconcepts.de/products/security.shtml
[7] http://www.linuxland.de/books_cd/
[8] http://fsfe.org/raffle/
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj at office.fsfeurope.org
Media Relations - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Tel: +49 700 - 373387673, Ext.: 404
mobile: +49-179-6919565
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
1. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project
2. Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement
3. Windows Vista released - FSFE recommends switching to GNU/Linux
4. Get Active: Join the Revolution!
1. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project
OpenSwarm is the second project to make use of the fiduciary services
of the FSFE Freedom Task Force. OpenSwarm is planned to be a holistic
set of model-driven software development tools focused on the easy
creation of powerful and business logic enriched applications in the
field of Web- and data-centric solutions. By signing the Fiduicary
License Agreement (FLA) with FSFE, the project allows FSFE to become
its legal guardian.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000165.html
2. Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement
Ciarán O'Riordan has compiled a transcript of a lecture given by
Richard Stallman in Zagreb. This speech is certainly a good source of
information about various Free Software related topics.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html
3. Windows Vista released - FSFE recommends switching to GNU/Linux
FSFE has taken the opportunity of Windows Vista's launch to remind about
the dangers and threats arising from the use of proprietary software. As
many users will have to convert to a new operating system anyway, FSFE
recommends to take the chance to get rid of the chains of proprietary
software and switch to a Free Software solution.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000166.html
4. Get Active: Join the Revolution!
The internship position in FSFE's office in Zürich is becoming vacant in
March, and FSFE is looking for somebody to continue the series of
interested and motivated interns. An internship with FSFE is an
interesting, challenging and exciting experience, and there are few
other opportunities to work with a highly dynamical NGO on an
international level.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/contribute/internship.en.html
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
FSFE releases solution to increase legal strength of Free Software projects
FSFE releasing the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL) and the
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike (CC by-sa) licence.
The Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) is a copyright assignment
carefully crafted for the specific needs of Free Software projects to
bundle their copyright in a single organisation or person. This will
enable projects to ensure their legal maintainability, including
important issues such as preserving the ability to relicense and
certainty to have sufficient rights to enforce licences in court.
The FLA is a truly international copyright assignment working in both
copyright traditions that was written by Dr. Axel Metzger (ifrOSS) and
Georg Greve (FSFE) in consultation with renowned international legal
and technical experts. The latest revision was compiled by Georg Greve
and FSFE's FTF coordinator Shane M Coughlan based on feedback provided
by Dr. Lucie Guibault of the Institute for Information Law in the
Netherlands.
"The FLA has been carefully formulated to meet the legal requirements
of every country and it ensures that assignment or licence granted
has the same scope irrespective of the country in which it is signed,"
says Dr. Lucie Guibault. "This marks a clear step forward in
copyright assignment and offers real benefit to the Free Software
community."
There are two ways the FLA would be used: A project can apply to be
accepted into FSFE's Fiduciary Program, examples for this are
Bacula.org and OpenSwarm. This has the advantage that the work of
handling the legal issues and taking care of licence compliance will
be done by FSFE's Freedom Task Force and its large team of technical
and legal experts. This allows the project to focus on project
management and technical work.
The other usage would be to use the FLA and adapt it to assign the
rights to another organisation set up by the project team itself. This
organisation would then have to take care of the paperwork and licence
compliance work itself, but it would still benefit from the solidity
of the FLA for the gathering of rights and FSFE's Freedom Task Force
will be glad to provide insight and experience to such organisations.
"For us the most important issue is not whether projects assign their
copyright to FSFE or any other organisation. We just want to do our
part so projects do not neglect these issues," explains Georg Greve,
president of the FSFE. "Legal maintainability is a key issue for Free
Software adoption. We started the Freedom Task Force to help ensure
legal maintainability in practice as well as spread knowledge about
these issues. Our idea for a healthy Free Software eco-system is to
have a healthy and heterogenous infrastructure of organisations that
will cooperate with each other to support Free Software in this way."
Shane Coughan, coordinator of the Freedom Task Force adds: "Deciding
which approach is best for a project depends on many different
factors and always boils down to individual circumstances. Ideally,
organisations handling these issues should be non-profit and have
a clear primary focus on Free Software."
"When building such an organisation, it is also important that people
pay attention to the possibility of having to withstand organisational
attacks from the outside as well as legal battles in court. Not all
Free Software projects will want to adopt such hardened structures,
which might contradict their technical and project management
principles and structures," Mr Coughlan continues. "In that case, the
FLA allows FSFE to help safeguard the project in the legal sphere,
while maintaining the project's absolute independence in management
and project decisions."
Whichever way projects prefer, the Free Software Foundation Europe and
its Freedom Task Force will be happy to help projects adopt the
Fiduciary Licence Agreement.
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation
in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the
furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study,
modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these
issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving
people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org
Media Relations - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Tel: +49 700 - 373387673, Ext.: 404
mobile: +49-179-6919565
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)