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<html newsdate="2014-07-04" type="newsletter">
<head>
  <title>FSFE Newsletter - July 2014</title>
</head>

<body class="newsletter article" microformats="h-entry" id="nl-201407">
	<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter – July 2014</h1>


<h2>Privacy café: e-mail encryption as the main course!</h2>

<p newsteaser="yes">Imagine you take some friends to a café, but instead of hot and cold
beverages, the menu features information on measures of ensuring digital
privacy. Like "https everywhere" as a starter, "GnuPG e-mail encryption" for
the main course, and "tosdr.org" (information about terms of services) as
dessert. Such cafés already exist in the Netherlands. At the German speaking
FSFE meeting in Essen, Felix Stegerman, our Deputy Coordinator Netherlands,
presented his plans to set up more privacy cafés and why he thinks it is the
right time and a good opportunity for Free Software to do so in other places as
well.</p>

<p>The reason is that most of the people that go to a privacy café are already
aware of issues around privacy and freedom. But it gives local volunteers a
good opportunity to talk about Free Software, and the importance of using Free
Software for privacy issues. For example, by asking the participants &quot;who
controls the software?" Read <a
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/07/01/workshop-on-privacy-and-free-software/">Felix's
blog post for more details about the cafés and future plans</a>.</p>

<h2>E-mail self-defence goes multilingual</h2>

<p>Good information material about encryption and Free Software is crucial for
the privacy cafés just mentioned. Fortunately, our sister organisation, the
FSF, published <a href="https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/">the e-mail
self-defence guide</a> and volunteers translated the guide and the infographic
in 6 other languages: English, German, Brazilian Portuguese, French,
Russian, Turkish, and Japanese. This guide explains the installation of the
necessary programs for e-mail encryption under GNU/Linux, MacOS, and Microsoft
Windows as well as the key generation, the web of trust and the usage of those
programs. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection, an email
account, and about half an hour. For information how you can help to spread
information about e-mail self-defence, see this edition's &quot;get
active&quot; section.</p>

<h2>What to use instead of WhatsApp and Threema?</h2>

<p>"How can I encrypt my e-mail" was one of the most common questions we
received in the last months. Thanks to the e-mail self-defence guide we now
have a good answer. Another questions about encryption and privacy we were
asked frequently was: "is there a secure and free WhatsApp alternative?"</p>

<p>WhatsApp is a messaging program for mobiles that allows you to send
(text) messages free-of-charge. After WhatsApp's recent acquisition by Facebook
and in the face of the NSA revelations, many WhatsApp users are looking
for secure and trustworthy alternatives.</p>

<p>Because this effects so many people, we at the Free Software Foundation
Europe would like to be able to promote an alternative that respects your
freedom and privacy. Therefore we decided to do some research and to hold a
workshop on WhatsApp alternatives during our latest FSFE team meeting in Essen.
Hannes Hauswedell and Torsten Grote <a
href="http://freedom-blog.net/2014/06/what-to-use-instead-of-whatsapp-and-threema/">summarised
the results</a>.</p>

<h2>Something completely different</h2>

<ul>

<li>Local group activities: FSFE had professional outdoor booths at the <a
  href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/06/11/booth-on-the-vegan-summer-festival-in-vienna-2014/">vegan
  summer festival in Vienna</a>, as well as <a
  href="http://www.softmetz.de/2014/06/14/freie-software-offene-standards-und-freie-inhalte-beim-ersten-corso-leopold-2014/">at
  Corso Leopold in Munich</a>. At the Free Software meeting in Athens FSFE's
our local group discussed how to build your own home server. Nikos Roussos
documented <a
href="http://www.roussos.cc/2014/06/23/fedora-beaglebone-black/">how to setup a
home server with Fedora and Beagle Bone Black</a>. Our local group in Frankfurt
<a
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/06/report-from-fellowship-meeting-in-frankfurt-june-4/">focused
on crypto topics</a>, and Hugo Roy, coordinator of local group in Paris, <a
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2014/05/talk-about-the-fsfe-ubuntu-party-2014/">gave
a talk at the local Ubuntu party</a>.</li>

<li>"Free Software needs a strong community. If we fail to attract everyone
willing to work for Free Software, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot." <a
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/06/06/four-social-rules-for-a-no-asshole-zone/">wrote
Karsten Gerloff in his blog post "Four social rules for a 'No Asshole
Zone'"</a>. Our local group coordinators have a similar discussion, and started
<a href="https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/CodeOfConduct">with a code of conduct
for FSFE's discussions</a>. We are interested in your feedback on the pad.</li>

<li>The Free Software community now has 33 supporters in the European
Parliament. All of them <a
href="https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140528-01.html">signed the Free
Software pact for the European elections</a>, and we are sure there will be
times in which we will remind them of the promise they have given, and ask
them to support our cause.</li>

<li>Our president Karsten Gerloff was <a
  href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/06/30/talking-to-the-church-about-free-software/">delivering
a keynote at the European Christian Internet Conference</a>. Afterwards he was
asked by a pastor to <a
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/06/30/free-software-in-the-church-from-principles-to-practice/">comment
on a draft strategy to move the churches in his region towards Free Software,
which Karsten did</a>.</li>

<li>From 7 to 8 June 2014 Fundația Ceata, an associated organisation of FSFE,
organised the second Coliberator conference in Bucharest. At the first edition
FSFE president Karsten Gerloff gave the keynote, and at this edition it was the
Richard Stallman, president of FSF. The first batch of talks are already
published <a href="http://coliberator.ro/">on the conference's
website</a>.</li>

<li>Guido Arnold provides the <a
  href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/06/free-software-in-education-news-may/">news
from Free Software in education - May 2014</a>.</li>

<li>Public administration: Joinup reports that <a
  href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/london-complex-proprietary-licences-encourage-open-source">the
complexity of proprietary software licences is encouraging the uptake of Free
Software in the Greater London Authority</a>, that the <a
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/extremadura-health-care-has-switched-open-source">Extremadura
health care has switched to Free Software</a>, and that the German city of <a
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/leipzig-switching-open-source-office-suites">Leipzig
already migrated 2792 of the city's 4300 workstations to the Free Software
office suites Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice</a>. They expect &quot;that in
the first five years the anticipated savings will be swallowed by the exit
costs associated with the proprietary software used by the city.&quot;</li>

<li>From the <a href="http://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>:</li>

<ul>

<li>More female speakers at the conference and ATMs running GNU/Linux. Torsten
was giving a <a
href="http://blog.grobox.de/2014/liberte-seu-android-at-fisl15/">talk about
Free Your Android at FISL in Brazil</a>.</li>

<li>Under the slogan "your data at the intelligence services" the German
Humanistische Union organised a "blog parade", asking organisations to
  participate with a blog post. Erik Albers wrote a post <a
    href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2014/06/20/verschluesselung-mit-freier-software/">"Protection
    against surveillance through encryption with Free Software" (in
  German)</a>.</li>

<li>The Randa Meetings, a collection of sprints that make KDE software better
needs your help for this year's edition. <a
href="http://www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2014/index.php">Mario Fux
asks everyone to spread the word, help, donate and/or support
them</a>.</li>

<li>Hugo Roy lists some <a href="http://hroy.eu/tips/awesome-tools/">"awesome
  tools" he uses but are little known</a>.</li>

<li>Bdale Garbee wrote about <a
  href="http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/TeleGPS_v1.0.html">TeleGPS, an
easy-to-use tracking-only board providing GPS location</a>.</li>

<li>Photography: Hannes started to <a
  href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2014/07/01/photo-of-the-month-2014-07/">publish
a photo of the month</a>, edited with the Free Software Darktable, and Paul
Boddie explains how he was <a
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=784">tuning digiKam’s picture
previews</a>.</li>

<li>Björn Schießle describes <a
  href="http://blog.schiessle.org/2014/06/10/combine-claws-mail-with-todo-txt/">how
to integrate the todo list software "ToDo.txt" into Claws Mail</a>.</li>

<li>Former FSFE employee Sam Tuke explains <a
  href="http://samtuke.com/2014/06/backup-multiple-email-accounts-automatically-on-linux/">how
to backup multiple e-mail accounts automatically on GNU/Linux</a>.</li>

</ul>
</ul>

<h2>Get active: Spread the e-mail self-defence guide!</h2>

<p><a href="https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/">The FSF's e-mail self-defence
  guide</a> and the corresponding <a
href="https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/infographic.html">infographic</a> is
good material to explain e-mail encryption to wider audience. For some time now
FSFE <a
href="/contribute/spreadtheword.html#promo-material">ships
Free Software information materials to activists</a>. Beside general
information about Free Software, Open Standards, Digital Restrictions
Management, or F-Droid, we would like to distribute the infographic in
future.</p>

<p>Before we print a larger amount and ship it to <a
  href="/about/localteams.html">our local groups</a> and other activists around
Europe, we would like you to test the infographics with friends, family and
colleagues. Try to find out if they have problems understanding some parts and
<a href="/contact/community.html">use our public discussion lists</a>, so that
we--together with our sister organisation--can modify them if necessary.</p>


<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>, <a href="http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join">Fellows</a> and 
<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">corporate donors</a> who enable our work,<br/>
<a href="/about/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="http://www.fsfe.org">FSFE</a></p>
    <!--/e-content-->

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<author id="kirschner" />
<date>
<original content="2014-07-04" />
</date>
<followup>donate</followup>
<tags>
	<tag>newsletter</tag>
	<tag>ayc</tag>
	<tag>DRM</tag>
</tags>

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