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<html newsdate="2013-07-04" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - July 2013</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - July 2013</h1>
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<h2>In Court: Defending our Freedoms with Copyleft</h2>
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<blockquote><p>"To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying
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you these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have
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certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you
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modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of
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others." (Praemble of the GNU GPL)</p></blockquote>
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<p>Unfortunately sometimes companies forget their responsibility when using
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Free Software in their products. Someone has to make sure that
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companies are reminded from time to time. That's what we do with our compliance work. After
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our volunteers found a GNU GPL violation in a workshop in May 2012, we handed
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all the evidence to Harald Welte from <a
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href="http://gpl-violations.org">gpl-violations.org</a> and his lawyers. They
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processed the case and <a href="/news/2013/news-20130626-01.html">we were now
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informed that we won the case</a>.</p>
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<h2>EU's public bodies wasting 1.1 billion Euro every year</h2>
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<p>This month the European Commission published a Communication titled <a
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href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-602_en.htm?locale=en">
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"Against lock-in"</a> (see <a
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href="/news/2013/news-20130625-02.html">FSFE's
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comments</a>.) The European Commission urges public bodies to break free from
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vendor lock-in in their IT systems by relying on standards rather than brand
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names and proprietary technology. Besides the Communication highlights that
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public bodies unnecessarily spend 1.1 billion Euro every year because they do
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not allow more competition among their suppliers. The Commission cites studies
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saying that 16% of public procurement make reference to brand names. In most
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of the cases those brand names are the names of non-free software
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companies.</p>
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<p>Implementing Open Standard policies is hard work but is necessary to ensure
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that Free Software companies can compete on an equal basis. We <a
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href="/news/2010/news-20101207-01.html">criticised the EC before</a> and will
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continue to remind them that Open Standard policies only have value if they are
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really implemented.</p>
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<h2>NSA: 24 hours video surveillance with Xbox One?</h2>
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<p>Faced with user protests, Microsoft has been forced to make the terms for
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its latest Xbox gaming console look a little less restrictive. However, the
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“new” terms which had caused such outrage were not in fact new at all: they
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were similar to most other proprietary software licences, including those
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covering other Microsoft software products and on-line services. <a
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href="/news/2013/news-20130620-02.html">Anna Morris created a graphic about
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it</a>.</p>
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<p>Also on surveillance: twelve years ago the European Parliament called upon
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the Commission and public bodies across Europe to help citizens and companies
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protect themselves from surveillance. Free Software played a crucial part
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there. Unfortunately <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/06/26/european-parliament-calls-for-action-against-surveillance/">the
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EC did not implement them</a>.</p>
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<p>After the leaks from intelligence services, some of your friends might now
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understand much better what you talked about when you explained them why you do
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not use Skype, Facebook, Xbox One, or others. They might now understand why it
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is important <a
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href="/freesoftware/secure-boot.html">to be in
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control of your device</a> and your data. Erik Albers <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2013/06/18/about-ownership-remote-control-and-privacy/">wrote
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an article about ownership, remote control and privacy</a>, and in connection
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with Xbox One ask how many people would visit a home when there would be a
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sticker saying “This flat is under 24h surveillance by Microsoft and the
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NSA”.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>Together <a href="/news/2013/news-20130620-01.html">with Turkish Free
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Software activists FSFE wrote an Open Letter to Turkish President
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Erdogan</a> about a contract for more than 10 million new tablet
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computers.</li>
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<li>FSFE continue to <a href="/news/2013/news-20130611-01.html">monitor that
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you can file your taxes with Free Software in Slovakia</a>. </li>
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<li>Founder of GNU and the president of the Free Software Foundation, <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/richard-stallman-becomes-a-hall-of-famer">
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Richard Stallman was inducted into the 2013 Internet Hall of Fame!</a> His
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comment: "Now that we have made the Internet work, the next task is to stop it
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from being a platform for massive surveillance, and make it work in a way
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that respects human rights, including privacy." </li>
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<li><a href="/events/events.html">Events</a>: On 8th and 9th of June 2013 the
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Vienna fellowship group of the FSFE organised an information booth at the
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Austrian vegan society’s summer festival with 9000 people visiting the
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festival. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/tobias_platen/2013/06/18/back-from-fuxcon/">Tobias
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Platen</a> and <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/06/fuxcon-bericht-vom-ersten-usergroup-treffen-in-frankfurt/">Guido
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Arnold</a> were at an FSFE booth at Fuxcon in Frankfurt, while next month
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we will be with several activities at <a
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href="/events/2013/rmll-2-2013.html">RMLL in Brussels</a>, <a
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href="http://matija.suklje.name/i-m-going-to-akademy-2013-and-will-talk-about-the-fla">Matija
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Šuklje will talk at aKademy</a> in Bilbao, and Sam Tuke will give a talk at
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the <a href="http://conference.opensuse.org/">OpenSUSE conference</a> in
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Thessaloniki.</li>
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<li>After having three meetings in 2012 now there was the <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2013/06/25/fellowship-meetings-in-aarhus-resumed/">second
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Fellowship meeting this year in Aarhus (Denmark)</a>. From now on they plan
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to have monthly meetings.</li>
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<li><a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2013061516065416">SCO
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scolding again</a>: the case SCO vs IBM will be opened. Judging from the
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past we can expect SCO spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Free
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Software in the coming months again.</li>
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<li>And after the NSA leaks the journalist Glyn Moody asks <a
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href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/06/how-can-any-company-ever-trust-microsoft-again/index.htm">
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how any company can ever trust Microsoft again?</a></li>
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<li>From the <a href="https://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>: </li>
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<ul>
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<li>Our intern Lucile <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/06/26/death-and-resurrection-of-free-software-in-french-schools/">reports</a>
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that on June 25 the French Senate voted the final version of the law on
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education, accepting a governmental amendment weakening the bill's Free
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Software provision. Following April's call for action (FR), she spent a morning calling and writing emails from the FSFE office to members of
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this commission. Beside, she looked at <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/06/18/june-in-france/">what
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other Free Software news we had in France during June</a>.</li>
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<li>Mobile web users already number 1.5 billion, which happens
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to be quite close to the total number of Internet users back in 2009. Read
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Henri Bergius' article<a href="http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/mobile-first-web/">the
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mobile-first web</a>.</li>
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<li>From a conference in Romania Karsten Gerloff <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/06/01/quick-list-problems-for-free-software-in-romania/">created
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a quick list about problems for Free Software in Romania</a> and reports
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about his problems with <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/06/07/friday-folly-ep-requires-proprietary-software-to-register-for-workshop/">registering
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with Free Software for a workshop in the European Parliament</a>.</li>
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<li>Paul Boddie was actively writing last month. He argued that <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=192">standards are used as the
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ultimate excuse for not doing one's work</a> </li>
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<li>He also <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=228">wrote an
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evaluation about Kolab</a> and in a follow-up blog post he wrote about
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the <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=283">resource
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autocompletion in the webmailer roundcube</a>.</li>
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<li>His article <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=104">"Where Now
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for the Free Software Desktop?"</a> takes us on a journey of GNU/Linux on
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the desktop. Paul concludes that "once we have shown that we can work
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together and act on all of [the mentioned challenges] simultaneously and
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continuously as a community, maybe then it will become clear that the year
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of the Linux desktop has at last arrived for good."</li>
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<li>And finally he analyses <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=199">site licences and volume
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licensing</a> and who the real loser of those schemes is.</li>
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<li>How can you avoid the Microsoft tax when buying a new laptop? Kevin
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Keijzer documented some tips and tricks on <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2013/06/12/avoiding-the-microsoft-tax/">how
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to buy a new laptop</a> which is a nice follow-up on last months <a
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href="http://seravo.fi/2013/dell-xps-13-ubuntu-edition-first-impressions">test
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of a preinstalled GNU/Linux laptop from Dell</a>. Help us in <a
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href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/Hardware%20for%20Free%20Software">gathering more
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information on laptops without Microsoft tax in our wiki</a>.</li>
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<li>Daniel Pocock looks into the question if you should I use a 2048 bits or 4096 bits, looked into principles for free communications, vendor lock-in in Australian schools, and wrote about Girls Around Me and the NSA.</li>
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<li>Anna Morris wrote several howtos: e.g. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/anna.morris/2013/06/05/cutting-out-a-photo-and-removing-white-edges-in-gimp/">how
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to cut out a photo and removing the white edges in GIMP</a> or <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/anna.morris/2013/06/06/how-to-stay-in-the-html5-trail-when-you-clear-your-cookies/">how
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to to stay in the Google's HTML5 trial</a> when you clear your
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cookies.</li>
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<li>Sergey Matveev critisised current GNU/Linux distributions and wrote about
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<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/stargrave/archives/93">why he will switch
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back to *BSD</a>. Related to that Hannes Hauswedell is searching for <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2013/06/02/a-kiss-gnulinux-distro/">a
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KISS GNU/Linux distro</a>.</li>
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<li>Beside Hannes is also <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2013/06/17/a-good-way-to-publish-photos-copyleft/">
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looking for a good way to publish Photos copyleft</a>.</li>
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<li>Sam Tuke writes about <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=548">how to compile the Free
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Software audio program Ardour from its source code</a> in this
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tutorial.</li>
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<li>Your editor <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=1040">set the search
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engine duckduckgo as default in his awesome window manager</a>.</li>
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<li>Finally Matija gives some tips for your daily life: he describes <a
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href="http://matija.suklje.name/why-and-how-to-shave-with-shaving-oil-and-de-safety-razors">why
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and how to shave with shaving oil and DE safety razors</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Post us Good Free Software News</h2>
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<p>Often the news we spread contain negative developments, topics where we need
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attention to fix a problem. Fellow Chris "cw" wants to pay more attention to
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the good news about Free Software. The idea is to publish good news on <a
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href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/GoodFreeSoftwareNews">a dedicated wiki page</a>.</p>
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<p>E.g. this month a city in Portugal <a
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href="http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ten-years-open-source-portuguese-town-proves-savings-and-performance">wrote
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about their success with Free Software</a> and Italy's <a
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href="http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/italys-south-tyrol-starts-three-year-libreoffice-migration">South
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Tyrol starts three-year LibreOffice migration</a>.</p>
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<p>You can either publish them there on your own, just subscribe to <a
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href="https://identi.ca/api/statusnet/tags/timeline/goodfsnews.rss">RSS</a>,
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distribute the news with the hashtag #GoodFSNews, or <a
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href="mailto:cw@fsfe.org">send Chris an e-mail with the news</a>, and he will
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act as your proxy.</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellows</a> and
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<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">donors</a> who enable our work,<br/>
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<a href="/about/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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<p>-- <br />
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<a href="/index.html">Free Software Foundation Europe</a><br />
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<a href="/news/news.rss">FSFE News</a><br />
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<a href="/events/events.rss">Upcoming FSFE Events</a><br />
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<a href="https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml">Fellowship Blog Aggregation</a><br />
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<a href="/about/contact.html#community">Free Software Discussions</a> </p>
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</body>
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<tags>
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<tag key="newsletter"/>
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</tags>
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</html>
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