264 líneas
13 KiB
HTML
264 líneas
13 KiB
HTML
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<html newsdate="2013-12-04" type="newsletter">
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - December 2013</title>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - December 2013</h1>
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<h2>Our cryptocards and straw fires</h2>
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<p>In 2005 we started giving <a href="/fellowship/card.html">crypto cards</a>
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to individuals who donated to us and have become Fellow of FSFE. We believe it
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is important to remind people about Free Software tools to encrypt our
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communications. Besides since FSFE was founded in 2001, we have been explaining
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that those 40 digits on our business cards are about encryption and why this
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is important. 8 years later, the topic encryption hit ithe media, and it is now
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mentioned in every newspaper in Europe. This is good and bad at the same time:
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We currently face the problem that media attention is very high but it does
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not mean we have more resources to deal with it. We would like to work more on
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these issues but we also cannot stop working on other long term topics.</p>
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<h2>Importance of long term work</h2>
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<p>If you take a look at <a href="/about/timeline.html">our new timeline</a>
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you will see that we often had to work on topics which are difficult to explain to a
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larger audience, work intensive, and sometimes unpopular. Companies worked
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against Free Software as they saw it as threat to them earning money but we helped
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them to understand how they can make revenues with Free Software. We had to spend
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8 years of work with the European Commission and the European Court of Justice to
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make sure Free Software companies are allowed to compete with Microsoft's work
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group servers and since then we are <a
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href="/news/2012/news-20120619-01.html">pushing this knowledge also on the
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national</a> and local levels. License compliance was an unpopular topic for a
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long time but developers have to make sure our software can be programmed and used
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without legal risks. When we started working on Open Standards it was a niche
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topic, now it is main stream. Companies opposed our position on software
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patents, now a lot of businesses and politicians realised they are a dangerous
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business risk. Today they use our arguments and ask us for input to get rid of
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them.</p>
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<h2>What we need to master the challenge</h2>
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<p>We believe in a society in which software is in the hands of all of us: as
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individuals, companies and organisations, or governments, instead of a few
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powerful entities. Nobody should be allowed to prevent you from changing
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software, or asking someone else to change it for you, on your mobile phone,
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router, car, or other belongings. The last months have shown us
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that it is important for our society to have computers we can trust. Computers
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we control. Programs that are transparent in what they do with our data and
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which can be changed to fulfil our needs. The only way to achieve this is with
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Free Software.</p>
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<p>Such a challenge cannot be solved in a few months, it takes a long time. It
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takes organisations which continue to work when there is no big media
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attention. An organisation which fights for your freedom in the digital age.
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FSFE has worked on those issues for over 12 years.</p>
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<p>To face this challenge FSFE needs to work continuously towards this goal,
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and for this we need you, to invest in your freedom! At the moment it is a
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good time to intensify our work, as there are many people out there who listen
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differently to the same messages we had before. We would like to expand our
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activities, and therefore we need your donation. Do what others did who value
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software freedom: <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate"><strong>Become a supporting member by joining the Fellowship of
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FSFE!</strong></a></p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="/news/2013/news-20131107-01.html">FSFE published a press release
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about the Rockstar vs. Google case</a>: Rockstar, a consortium of
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companies formed to collect certain patents put on sale in the dissolution
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procedure of Nortel, has sued Google and other companies over seven of those
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patents. FSFE already <a
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href="/activities/swpat/nortel.html">voiced serious
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concerns and warned competition regulators against exactly such a scenario
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in December 2011</a>. Again an example how software patents are a dangerous
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business risk.</li>
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<li>We welcome <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2013/11/welcoming-maurice-to-the-core-team/">our
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new core team member Maurice Verheesen from the Netherlands</a>. He already
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took care of our booth at T-Dose which also becomes <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=984">a meeting point for Fellows
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from the Netherlands and the Rhineland</a>.</li>
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<li>Shall I buy a computer without an operating system and install GNU/Linux
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distribution of my own choice, or buy a laptop with GNU/Linux preinstalled
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which includes non-free software? Participate in the discussion on our
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public English speaking list by <a
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href="https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2013-November/009871.html">reading
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this message </a>, continue with the mentioned blogs articles there,
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comment on the list, and like Paul Boddie wrote: join other volunteers
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to maintain the <a
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href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/Hardware%20for%20Free%20Software">hardware
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vendors page</a>.</li>
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<li>Thanks to Nermin Canik, FSFE had its <a
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href="https://twitter.com/MsLipsum/status/404352087326072832">first booth
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in Turkey</a>, and Michael Stehmann took care of an <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=990">FSFE booth and two talks at
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OpenRheinRuhr</a>.</li>
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<li>FSFE <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/11/22/open-knowledge-festival-meetup/">participated
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at the Open Knowledge Festival</a>. At the "speed geeking", in which Lucile
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Falgueyrac gave the same five minutes talk seven times, she presented FSFE, Open
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Standards and <a href="http://documentfreedom.org">Document Freedom
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Day</a>.</li>
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<li>The Parliament in <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/parliament-spains-andalusia-unanimously-open-source">Spain's
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Andalusia is unanimously urging the region's government to switch to Free
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Software</a>.</li>
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<li>Guido Arnold <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/11/free-software-in-education-news-october/">published
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the FSFE education update from October</a>.</li>
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<li>Jérémie Zimmermann from our friends at La Quadrature Du Net argues in <a
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href="https://www.laquadrature.net/en/snowden-and-the-future-of-our-communication-architecture">
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"Snowden and the Future of our Communication Architecture"</a> that the
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"Snowden revelations give us a vivid illustration that Richard Stallman and
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others have been right for all these years." He writes that we need
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decentralised services, Free Software, and end-to-end encryption.</li>
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<li>The Guardian project wrote about <a
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href="https://guardianproject.info/2013/11/05/setting-up-your-own-app-store-with-f-droid/">how
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to set up your own app store with F-Droid</a>. If you host your own F-Droid
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repository, then people can use F-Droid to install your own apps signed by your own
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signing key.</li>
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<li>Renault apparently has the ability to remotely prevent the battery from
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charging. Karsten Gerloff <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/10/31/renault-will-remotely-lock-down-electric-cars/">wrote
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about the Zoe electric car</a>. </li>
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<li>He also summarised a report by the French website Mediapart. At the
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European Parliament in Strasbourg, a technically skilled person managed to <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/11/21/european-parliament-meps-staffers-have-their-emails-hacked-should-demand-change/">intercept
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14 Members of the European Parliament and their staffers</a> using trivial
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tools.</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>After discussion with a Danish Member of Parliament, Thomas Locke <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/thomaslocke/2013/11/20/a-little-more-privacy-with-tor/">wrote
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what he did to support Tor</a> and is now running a Tor exit node.</li>
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<li>Torsten Grote <a
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href="http://freedom-blog.net/2013/11/dark-mail-as-next-generation-email-to-stop-spying/">summarised
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the presentation</a> about Dark Mail as Next-Generation Email to Stop
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Spying.</li>
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<li>Fellowship representative Nikos Roussos <a
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href="http://www.roussos.cc/2013/11/05/my-linux-history/">wrote about how
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he started with GNU/Linux</a>.</li>
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<li>The Neo900 phone moved beyond the discussion phase and into the
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fundraising phase. Paul Boddie <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=501">gives some
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background</a>.</li>
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<li>Besides he <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=505">takes a look
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at the Free Software Desktop</a>. He argues that "Free Software desktop
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developers have imperilled their own mission with the result that they now
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have to make up lost ground in the struggle to get people to use their
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software."</li>
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<li>In Paris another <a
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href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/groups/Paris/Mutterware">MutterWare
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meeting</a> took place. Nicolas Jean <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/nicoulas/?p=151">wrote a short summary</a>,
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about the email client meeting. Hugo Roy <a
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href="http://hroy.eu/tips/mutt-carddav-lookup/">documents how to do a
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carddav lookup in mutt</a> and Karsten Gerloff <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/11/07/address-lookup-in-mutt-with-mu/">how
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to do address lookup with mu</a>. If you regret not living in Paris,
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Hugo and Nicolas suggest to start MutterWare meetings in your city, too.</li>
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<li>A court in Caen/France <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/10/31/skype-reverse-engineering-court-case/">ruled
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that a French SME did not infringe Skype's copyright by
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reverse-engineering the algorithm used by the company</a> for its VoIP
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services, and attempting to use it commercially.</li>
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<li>Daniel Pocock highlights the applications for the Outreach Program for Women and the
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option for Australian women to get $75,000 to make free software during
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maternity leave. </li>
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<li>Cryptography: Sergey Matveev wrote <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/stargrave/archives/100">about a big
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cryptoparty in Moscow</a>, Lucile Falgueyrac helped at a <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/11/19/cryptoparty-for-journalists/">cryptoparty
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for journalists</a>, and wrote about <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/10/31/accepting-a-security-signature-fedora-19/">the
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problems accepting a security signature in GNU/Linux</a>.</li>
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<li>Anna spent a week with some 5-11 year old children for an <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/anna.morris/2013/11/05/free-software-animation-with-st-oswalds-holiday-club/">plasticine
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animating using Phatch, Linux Stop Motion and Kdenlive</a>.</li>
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<li>And your editor <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/vulnerability-economics-and-free-software/">highlighted
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the part about Free Software</a> from David Wheelers's article
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"Vulnerability bidding wars and vulnerability economics".</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Why does Free Software matter to you?</h2>
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<p>This month Jacob Appelbaum, spokesperson for the Tor Project, and two other
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Tor developers became supporting members of FSFE and Jacob explained why he did
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so:</p>
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<blockquote><p>I believe that actions of support for the FSFE are important for
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encouraging Free Software development and adoption in Europe as well as the
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rest of the world. I'm an FSFE Fellow because financially supporting the cause
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of Free Software brings positive improvements to all societies throughout the
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world.</p></blockquote>
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<p>Quotes like this help others understanding the importance of our work. On
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our english <a href="/fellowship/index.html">Fellowship page</a> some of our Fellows
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already explain why Free Software and FSFE's work is important to them. We
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would also like <strong>you</strong> to <a
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href="mailto:contact@fsfe.org">write us why Free Software and our
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work matters to you</a>. In agreement with you, we would then like to
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publish some of the submissions on our website. Else they just motivate
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FSFE's working teams. </p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>, <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellows</a> and
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<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">corporate 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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