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

<h2>Robots, Football, and Education</h2>

<p>Their mission is to bring Free Software into schools
and universities.  Their new task is to gather information about <a
  href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/Education#stakeholders">their
  stakeholders</a>, and <a href="/about/printable/printable.html">create
  targeted leaflets</a>. And I am sure the favourite colour of the
coordinators <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/riepernet/">Thomas
  Jensch</a> and <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido">Guido Arnold</a>
is <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellowship</a> green. That's <a
  href="/activities/education/education.html">our education team</a>.</p>

<p>Can robots help with that? We think they can. Our education team had
<a
  href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2010/12/freedroidz-workshop-with-tarent/">a
  first meeting</a> to get trained in giving programming workshops using
freedroidz robots. We want to teach pupils how to program, show them
that it's good to share and co-operate, and explain Free Software to
their teachers, parents, and
politicians.</p>

<p>And what about football? Regular readers might remember that Guido
Arnold is running a parallel tournament to the football championship in
Europe 2012 where the discipline is Free Software usage in government.
So every time there is a football match, Guido starts a Free Software
match between them, while a huge part is of course the government's
education policy. Read <a
  href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/category/euro2012/">Guido's blog</a>
to find out why Russia is a hot candidate for the European champion, but
why we need more information on Eastern European countries.</p>

<h2>Public institutions - hares or snails?</h2>

<p>Already, 203 public institutions have removed advertisements for
proprietary PDF readers from their websites. Particularly outstanding
were the responses from Croatia, Russia and Slovenia. In Croatia all
except one reported institution deleted the advertisement. Half of those
contacted in Russia and Slovenia fulfilled FSFE's request.  Amongst the
public institutions are ministries, parliaments, law enforcement
agencies, local governments, and other administrations.</p>

<p>With <a href="/activities/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.html">our
  PDFreaders campaign</a> we will continue to follow-up with the <a
  href="/activities/pdfreaders/buglist.html">reported institutions</a>
and you can still encourage friends <a
  href="/activities/pdfreaders/petition.html">to sign the corresponding
  petition</a>.</p>


<h2>Something completely different</h2>

<ul>

  <li>You think your old C64 was slow? Working on the United Nations
  level will change your mind. Karsten Gerloff wrote an article about
  FSFE's UN work: <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=434">"WIPO
    CDIP/6: Moving the glacier"</a>.</li>

  <li>Open Standards in Europe: The European Commission published the
  new version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). We at
  FSFE have been <a href="/activities/os/eifv2.html">working on this
    document</a> for a long time. Read <a
    href="/news/2010/news-20101216-01.html">our press
    release</a> and an <a
    href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2010/12/17/assessing-the-new-european-interoperability-framework/">
    article by Karsten assessing the new EIF</a>. </li>

  <li>Current developments at Nokia, the transformative power of Free
  Software, and the potential dangers posed by the use of Free Software
  by large organisations. Those are the topics of the <a
    href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=198">current
    Fellowship interview with Alexander Kahl</a>, Fedora packager, Lisp,
  JavaScript and
  Perl programmer, and active FSFE volunteer.</li>

  <li>While Torsten Grote <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=698">gave
    a radio interview (German)</a> about risks of cloud computing and
  chances of distributed Free Software, Björn Schiessle <a
    href="http://blog.schiessle.org/2010/12/19/a-new-toy-arrived/">writes
    about how he wants to install</a> distributed software at home.</li>

</ul>

<h2>Get active: Help with Euro 2012 championship</h2>

<p>Help us gathering information about government's Free Software usage.
This information helps us to evaluate the current situation and of
course it will decide who will be the European Free Software champion in
2012. <a
  href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/Free_Software_usage_in_public_administration">Add
  the information on our website</a> before March 25 and it will
influence the next matches, add information continuously and it will
help Free Software activists all over the world.</p>

<p>Happy GNU Year,<br/>
<a href="/about/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/">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 />
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<a href="/contact/community.html">Free Software Discussions</a> </p>
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  <tag key="matthias-kirschner"/>
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