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  <title>FSFE Newsletter - March 2011</title>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - March 2011</h1>

<h2>Revolution failed: Facebook not available in Egypt</h2>

<p newsteaser="yes">"On 27th January facebook was shut down in Egypt. For the
moment this stopped the protests. Media assumes that this is due to the
influence of Mubarak's granddaughter who is Mark Zuckerberg's girl-friend." Of
course this is not true. But with software which is controlled by one company,
something like this can happen. What if the owner of the social network would
have been an Egypt company? Would this company have been able to resist state
pressure?</p>

<p>For a long time dedicated people have been working on decentralised Free
Software solutions, to make sure there is no vulnerable single point of
control. We as citiziens should be in control of our tools, and as most of
those tools today are comprised of software we do need decentralised software.
That's why FSFE organised a related <a
  href="http://www.fscons.org/divide">track at FSCONS</a>, and our staff as
well as dedicated volunteers like Torsten Grote <a
  href="http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing">gather information</a>, <a
  href="http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing#Video">give talks</a> or <a
  href="http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing#Audio">interviews</a>. </p>

<p>Karsten Gerloff gave a talk on <a
  href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2011/02/05/fosdem-talk-on-power-software-freedom/">
  "Power Software Freedom"</a> (there is a <a
  href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/bjg/2011/02/decentralised-systems-and-the-tendency-to-centralisation/">
  good summary by Brian Gough</a>) at FOSDEM this month, and one of the event's
keynotes <a
  href="http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fosdem/2011/maintracks/political.xvid.avi">"Why
  Political Liberty Depends on Software Freedom More Than Ever"</a> by Eben
Moglen targetted this topic as well, especially the so-called <a
  href="http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing#Freedom_Boxes">"Freedom Box"</a>
which started to receive good media coverage in turn, and will hopefully push
this topic even further.</p>


<h2>Lawyered! - FSFE's legal workshop</h2>

<p>More than 75 lawyers, for 2 days, in 1 room -- and all of this organised by
the FSFE. What is it about? We do this to ensure that the best possible legal
knowledge about Free Software is shared between everyone, no matter whether
individuals, businesses or initiatives.</p>

<p>As part of this, FSFE facilitates an annual event called <a
  href="/activities/ftf/legal-conference.html">European Legal Network
  Conference</a> to allow legal experts to discuss the future of Free Software
law and governance. This has become the world's premier event for debating,
discussing and sharing knowledge around Free Software legal affairs. </p>

<p>This year it will be held at the NH Barbizon Palace, Amsterdam, between the
7th and 8th of April, and will feature speakers like Carlo Piana from FSFE,
Mark Shuttleworth from Canonical, Eben Moglen from SFLC, and Harald Welte from
gpl-violations.org.</p>


<h2>Something completely different</h2> 

<ul>

  <li>Leaked documents highlight Germany's Foreign Office move back to non-free
  software: This move is intransparent, and the more we find out the more
  questions we have. See</li>

  <ul>
    <li><a href="/news/2011/news-20110202-02.html">Foreign Office: Will it switch off the Free Software beacon?</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release-de/2011q1/000182.html">Leaked Documents: Change of strategy in the Foreign Office against recommodations.</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://www.taz.de/1/netz/netzoekonomie/artikel/1/eine-studie-nach-der-anderen/">"One study after the other"</a>. Interview from the German Newspaper TAZ
    with your editor</li>
    <li><a href="http://ondemand-mp3.dradio.de/file/dradio/2011/02/28/drw_201102281034_netzpolitik_des_auswaertigen_amte_334eb749.mp3">Without Free Software in the Foreign Office</a> - Dradio interview with Bernhard Reiter.</li>
  </ul>

  <li>"Love love love": The Beatles sing about it, we wanted to have some for
  Free Software activists at Valentine's Day. As last year we run a <a
    href="/campaigns/valentine/2011/valentine-2011.html">campaign animating
    people to show their love for Free Software</a>. See <a
    href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/maelle/?p=228">Maëlle's blog post for this
    years
    summary</a> and mark February 14th for 2012.</li>

  <li><a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=257">Fellowship
    Interview with Italy's PDFreaders heart</a>: While your editor can inform
  more people about our <a href="/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.html">our
    pdfreaders campaign</a> like in a <a
    href="http://blog.isabel-drost.de/index.php/archives/310/fosdem-saturday">
    FOSDEM talk</a> this campaign would not be such successfull without many
  dedicated volunteers. This month Fellowship interview is with Massimo
  Barbieri, IT manager at the Earth Science Department, of the University of
  Modena and Reggio Emilia, leader of the band The Radiostars, and "Mr
  PDFreader" in Italy.</li>

  <li>What happens with your code "when you’re no longer coding. When your
  uplink is permanently disconnected. When you’re dead." Armijn Hemmel wrote <a
    href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/adridg/?p=1094">an article why the Fiduciary
    Licence Agreement is an important tool]</a>.</li>

  <li>New editions of Matija Suklje's "Free Software and law related links" are
  available for <a
    href="http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/226">29.1.-4.2.2011</a>, <a
    href="http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/228">5.2.-11.2.2011</a>, and <a
    href="http://matija.suklje.name/?q=node/230">12.2.-18.2.2011</a>.</li>

  <li>At <a href="http://www.goopen.no/program/">GoOpen 2011</a> the 22-23rd of
  March in Oslo, Norway, the Swedish FSFE team is helping to organise a special
  <a href="http://www.fscons.org">FSCONS</a> track. The track takes some
  inspiration from previous FSCONS conferences in Sweden and introduces
  speakers on Free Software and Free Society.</li>

</ul>


<h2>Get active - Activities for Document Freedom</h2>

<p><a href="http://www.documentfreedom.org">Document Freedom Day (DFD)</a> is a
global day for document liberation.  March 30th will be a day of grassroots
effort to educate the public about the importance of Free Document Formats and
<a href="/activities/os/os.html">Open Standards</a> in general. This is how you
can help:</p>

<ul>
  <li><a href="http://documentfreedom.org/2011/teams.en.html">Join and help a team!</a></li>
  <li>Blog about it, and link to our campaign!</li>
  <li><a href="http://documentfreedom.org/2011/support.en.html">Donate money to DFD!</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://documentfreedom.org/2011/sponsors.en.html">Sponsor the campaign!</a></li>
  <li>Put a banner on your website with our <a href="http://documentfreedom.org/2011/artwork.en.html">Artwork"</a></li>
  <li>Use !dfd group on Identi.ca and #dfd2011 tag on Identi.ca and Twitter</li>
</ul>

<p>Regards,<br/>
<a href="/about/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="http://www.fsfe.org">FSFE</a></p>

<p>-- <br />
<a href="/index.html">Free Software Foundation Europe</a><br />
<a href="/news/news.rss">FSFE News</a><br />
<a href="/events/events.rss">Upcoming FSFE Events</a><br />
<a href="http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml">Fellowship Blog Aggregation</a><br />
<a href="/contact/community.html">Free Software Discussions</a> </p>

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<tags>
  <tag>newsletter</tag>  
  <tag>Matthias Kirschner</tag>
</tags>

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