FSFE's activities have been varied over the last month. It's promising to see
the increase of Fellowship activities across Europe. We are looking forward to
seeing more local groups appear and to hearing about their activities on all
levels. One of the most important parts of supporting Free Software is sharing
knowledge in your own community.
To contribute in spreading the word you can visit this page:
http://fsfeurope.org/contribute/contribute
Shane, FSFE Zurich Office
1. Speeches about SELF, Free Software and licensing at FKFT
2. Local Fellowship meetings
3. New interns for FSFE
4. Students' union organizes talk on political aspects of Free Software
5. FTF releases training documentation on the SELF platform
6. Zurich Fellowship meeting - 2008-08-15
7. 'Who Owns Free Software? The Copyright and Patent Debate' speech at OSiM World, Berlin - 2008-08-17
8. Official launch of GPLv3 in The Netherlands - 2008-08-19
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
9. First Fellowship meeting in Stuttgart - 2008-08-22
10. Fellowship's stand at the Braderie de Lille, Lille (France) - 2008-09-06 and 2008-09-07
1. Speeches about SELF, Free Software and licensing at FKFT
FSFE was present at the FKFT conference in Barcelona during July to talk about
the SELF project, Free Software and licensing. FSFE president Georg Greve
delivered a talk on the 16th of July to provide insight on how the SELF project
has helped advance the state of the art, and how the work done in the SELF
consortium will provide lasting benefit to the Free Software community. The
speech was entitled 'How SELF helped building structures for freedom'. This
was followed by a talk entitled 'Licences that support freedom' delivered by
Shane Coughlan, the FTF coordinator of FSFE. The events in Barcelona concluded
with a lunch for Fellows of FSFE and Free Software friends in Barcelona from
14:00 until 16:00 on the 17th of July with FSFE's Georg Greve, Jonas Öberg and
Shane Coughlan.
2. Local Fellowship meetings
Local Fellowship meetings have recently taken place in Dublin, Brussels,
Zurich, and Lille. At these meetings, Fellows have discussed the status and
needs of projects they're involved with, what local political problems need
work, and how to improve the Fellowship itself. In addition, these initial
meetings plus discussions on FSFE's public mailing lists are contributing to
the planning of larger, regular meetings. The UK, Belgium, and Ireland are
likely locations for these to begin in.
3. New interns for FSFE
Stian Rodven Eide and Johannes Tiemer are FSFE's new interns in Göteborg.
Stian's primary task is organising the Free Software part of FSCONS and a
booth to present FS and FSFE at the European Social Forum in Malmö in September.
Johannes studies Economics in Kiel (Germany). His main task consists of
compiling studies and analyses - among others about the Swedish market for
Free Software. Benjamin Morant is working as Georg's assistant at the FSFE
Office in Zürich (Switzerland). He is organising a booth during the Braderie
de Lille (France) in September and is drawing cartoons about the all-day
life within the FSFE.
We also would to thank Irina, who during her internship helped with organising
conferences and many administrative tasks. She was an invaluable contact point
for our activities.
4. Students' union organizes talk on political aspects of Free Software
The students' executive committee (AStA) of the University of Bochum,
Germany, organized a lecture on essential ideas and political issues of
Free Software with Bernhard Reiter. The event took place on the 23rd of
June and formed part of a series of lectures on IT and information
security. Particular attention was paid to the questions whether software
choices constitute political decisions, which benefits arise from the use
of Free Software and why MS Word is not the proper file format to be used
when sending documents to others. The lecture was followed by an inspiring
discussion with the audience (about 20 students). The AStA - being elected
by the students' parliament - represents the entire students' body and
therefore is the ideal board to promote Free Software in the environment
of a University. After all, Free Software complies best with academic
traditions of sharing knowledge. Special thanks go to Moritz Schulte for
organizing this event.
5. FTF releases training documentation on the SELF platform
FSFE's Freedom Task Force has begun to release its current Free Software
training documentation in SCORM elearning format through the SELF Platform:
http://beta.selfplatform.eu/SELF/collectionview/
Select 'Introduction to Free Software and Open Standards' in the left
hand menu and then choose 'The strategic implementation of Free Software
in business' when the option is presented. FSFE will be releasing one
section of the course per week until all of our existing material is
freely available on-line.
6. Zurich Fellowship meeting - 2008-08-15
There was a Fellowship meeting at the FSFE Zurich office from 18:00 until
19:30 on Friday the 15th of August. Some free (as in beer) beer was provided
for the around 10 Fellows and FSFE staff that attended. Ways of spreading the
word about Free Software in Switzerland were discussed, and the evenings host,
Shane Coughlan, told about Akademy '08 and the Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA)
which got quite some attention on that very conference. He even held his promise
of not talking about licenses.
7. 'Who Owns Free Software? The Copyright and Patent Debate' speech at OSiM World, Berlin - 2008-08-17
Shane Coughlan, Freedom Task Force coordinator at FSFE, delivered a speech
entitled 'Free Software licenses and other questions' at OSiM World at Berlin
on the 17th of August. The talk examined the question of ownership, the goal
of owning creative work, benefits to consumers and the community and the
relationship between ownership and Free Software licences.
8. Official launch of GPLv3 in The Netherlands - 2008-08-19
Shane Coughlan, Freedom Task Force coordinator at FSFE, hosted a three hour
workshop entitled 'Licensing questions and Legal issues in the light of GPLv3'
for the launch of the GPLv3 at the Univesity of Tilburg, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands on the 19th of August. This event is sponsored by NLnet.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
9. First Fellowship meeting in Stuttgart - 2008-08-22
There will be a Fellowship meeting at the Unithekle, Allmandring 17, 70596
Stuttgart on Friday the 22th of August at 19:00. This is the first Fellowship
meeting in Stuttgart and all Fellows and Free Software supporters nearby are
invited to attend. It will be a good chance to get to know each other in
person, discuss the possibility of future Fellowship meetings in Stuttgart and
to generally have a good time.
Further information: Bjoern Schiessle (schiessle(a)fsfe.org) or on the web:
http://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipGroup/Stuttgart
10. Fellowship's stand at the Braderie de Lille, Lille (France) - 2008-09-06 and 2008-09-07
The so-called "Braderie de Lille" (Lille's flea market) is a big outside-event
which has taken place every year since the 12th century during the first
week-end of September. chtinux, a Linux User Group which is installed around
there, has proposed to the Fellowship to take part in the Braderie. The FSFE,
and especially the Fellowship's stand, will get much visibility, since
millions of people of numerous nations take a walk on Lille's streets. Come
to discover this beautiful city and to eat some Braderie's culinary
specialities like clams ! And above all, come in order to support the
Fellowship ! Fellowship's stand will be situated on Place du Vieux Marché
aux chevaux. If you want more information about this event please send an
email to Benjamin: morant(a)fsfeurope.org
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
Copyright (C) FSFE. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire
article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
FSFE welcomes KDE's adoption of the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA)
Free Software Foundation Europe welcomes the adoption of the Fiduciary
Licence Agreement by the K Desktop Environment project. The FLA is a
copyright assignment that allows Free Software projects to assign their
copyright to single organisation or person. This enables projects to
ensure their legal maintainability, including important issues such as
preserving the ability to re-license and certainty to have sufficient
rights to enforce licences in court.
"We see the adoption of the FLA by KDE as a positive and important
milestone in the maturity of the Free Software community," says Georg
Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe. "The FLA was
designed to help projects increase the legal maintainability of their
software to ensure long-term protection and reliability. KDE is among
the most important Free Software initiatives and it is playing a central
role in bringing freedom to the desktop. This decision of the KDE
project underlines its dedication to think about how to make that
freedom last."
Adriaan de Groot, Vice President of KDE e.V., the organisation behind
the KDE project, said "KDE e.V. has endorsed the use of a particular FLA
based directly on the FSFE's sample FLA as the preferred way to assign
copyright to the association. We recognise that assignment is an option
that individuals may wish to exercise; it is in no way pushed upon KDE
contributors. There are also other avenues of copyright assignment
available besides the FLA, but we believe this is the easiest way to get
it done, with little fuss. Enthusiasm for the FLA was immediate --
people were asking for printed versions of the form before the week was
out so that they could fill one in."
"The FLA is a versatile document designed to work across different
countries with different perceptions of copyright and authorship,"
says Shane Coughlan, Freedom Task Force coordinator. "As a truly
international project, KDE provides a great example of how the FLA can
provide legal coherency in the mid-to-long term. It's been a pleasure
to help with the adoption process and FSFE's Freedom Task Force is ready
to continuing supporting KDE in the future."
KDE's adoption of the FLA is the result of cooperation between
KDE e.V. and FSFE's Freedom Task Force over the last year and a half,
part of the deepening collaboration between the two associate
organisations.
About the FLA:
The FLA was written by Dr. Axel Metzger (Ifross) and Georg Greve
(FSFE) in consultation with renowned international legal and
technical experts. Parties involved in the evolution of the FLA at
some point or another included RA Dr. Till Jaeger, Carsten Schulz,
Prof. Eben Moglen, RA Thorsten Feldmann, LL.M., Werner Koch,
Alessandro Rubini, Reinhard Muller and others. 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.
About KDE:
KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open
source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE's
products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms,
comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds
of software titles in many categories including Internet and web
applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and
software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60
languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility
principles in mind. KDE4's full-featured applications run natively on
Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X.
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.
The Freedom Task Force can be found at http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf/
The Freedom Task Force can be emailed at ftf at fsfeurope.org
Contact:
You can reach the FSFE switchboard from:
Belgium: +32 2 747 03 57
Germany: +49 700 373 38 76 73
Sweden: +46 31 7802160
Switzerland: +41 43 500 03 66
UK: +44 29 200 08 17 7
Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, FSFE extension: 408
Further information: http://fsfeurope.org