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								  <title>FSFE Newsletter - July 2014</title>

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									<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter – July 2014</h1>


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


								<p>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="/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="https://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="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellows</a> and

								<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">corporate donors</a> who enable our work,<br/>

								<a href="/about/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/">FSFE</a></p>

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