jeopardises its goals in standardisation with FRAND licensing</h2>
<p>As a part of the Digital Single Market strategy, the European Commission
has <ahref="https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/communication-ict-standardisation-priorities-digital-single-market">published the communication on ICT standardisation
priorities</a> as one of the key factors in the digital economy. FSFE
welcomes the overall approach taken in the communication in favour of
more open standards and a greater inclusion of Free Software communities
into standardisation processes.</p>
<p>However, the document lacks proper understanding of licensing conditions
of standard-essential patents in order to include Free Software into
its charges in regard to Google's businesses practices relating to the
Android operating system</a>. According to the Commission, Google is
abusing its dominant market position by pre-installing and setting Google
Search, Google Play Store and Google Chrome as the default on most Android
devices sold in Europe. These practices close off ways for competitive
search engines to access the market.</p>
<p>FSFE has previously <ahref="https://fsfe.org/activities/policy/eu/20130729.EC.Fairsearch.letter.en.html">raised
its concerns in regard to the claim against the free-of-charge distribution
of Android</a> that had been raised to the European Commission by a
coalition of certain online service providers who claimed that this practice
is harmful to competition. We argued against that claim as it undermines
the whole essence of Free Software licensing, and are pleased to see that
the Commission disregarded that claim in its antitrust case against Google.</p>
<h2id="from-the-community">From the community</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Guido Arnold, our education team coordinator, summarised legal
aspects and possible activities to take, when <ahref="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2016/04/public-schools-making-ms-office-mandatory/">public schools make MS Office mandatory.</a></p></li>
the course by Richard Stallman "On the Road to the Free Digital Society"
in Moodle Backup and IMS Common Cartridge formats</a>, and invites everyone
to give feedback and promote the course through their channels.</p></li>
<li><p>Since Let’s Encrypt has left beta testing, Michal Nazarewicz <ahref="http://mina86.com/p/tls-is-a-yes/">uses and promotes this new certificate
authority which provides free TLS certificates</a>: "If you're running
your own server there's no excuse not to use TLS".</p></li>
<li><p>Björn Schießle <ahref="http://blog.schiessle.org/2016/04/16/installing-wallabag-2-on-a-shared-web-hosting-service/">blogs about a self hostable application for saving web pages, "Wallabag",
and about its maintenance on a shared web hosting service</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Marcus Moeller explains how to <ahref="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mmoeller/2016/04/20/setting-up-a-freedombox-on-bbb-to-host-a-blog/">set up a Freedombox on a Beagle Bone Black in order to self-host a blog
on freely designed hardware and without the need to use proprietary
software</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2id="what-else-have-we-done">What else have we done?</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>We have been running the eighth annual election for a Fellowship
representative who is to represent our community and the FSFE's Fellowship
in <ahref="https://fsfe.org/about/team.en.html#general-assembly">FSFE's
general assembly</a>. Although we only had one candidate, we like to
commitment</a> in line with the guidelines from Transparency International Germany.</p></li>
<li><p>A lot of our initial structure and founding documents have not
been updated ever since the FSFE grew from being a small circle of volunteers
into an organisation with hired staff, with a Fellowship program and a
community of thousands of people. We now begun to <ahref="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=60">revise our "Self Conception"</a>, to better reflect our grown
decision-making process. Jonas Öberg, FSFE's executive director, is sharing
his thoughts on and insights about <ahref="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=50">potential future steps to FSFE's structure and membership</a>on his blog.</p></li>
<li><p><ahref="http://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=65">On the backend of our
work, we have been introducing a ticket system built on OTRS</a>.
Although at first sight not many people seem to be directly affected by
this, our whole communication will profit over time from higher control
of our workflow. Also, it shall be opened to be used by volunteers as well.</p></li>
<li><p>13 - 15 April FSFE's annual legal licensing workshop LLW took place
in Barcelona, Spain. The event is dedicated to gather legal practitioners from all over the world to dicuss the most challenging issues in and around Free Software
licensing. This year it had a record number of participants, showing the
increasing interest and importance of Free Software in software licensing.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2id="take-action">Take Action</h2>
<p>From September 2 – 4, 2016, there will be happening the first summit
of FSFE, an event dedicated to our community. To make it a unique and
appealing experience for everyone, we sent out a <ahref="https://wiki.fsfe.org/Events/Summit2016/CallForParticipation">Call for
Participation</a> last week to all our Fellows and on our mailing lists.
Take your chance and be part of FSFE's main event in 2016 by becoming a
speaker or a volunteer, by hosting a workshop or another event.</p>
<p>Spain's Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations <ahref="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/spain-publishes-file-archive-tool-open-source">published its web-based solution for archiving electronic files under
Free Software license</a>. France is also not lagging behind and recently
<ahref="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/france-unveils-source-code-income-tax-application">published the source code of the fiscal calculator used by the
French fiscal administration to calculate the income taxes of individuals
in France</a> as an outcome of the legal case in Paris' administrative
court that concluded that a source code of a software written by and for
public authorities can be considered as a public information that can be
