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<html newsdate="2015-04-04" type="newsletter">
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - April 2015</title>
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<body microformats="h-entry">
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<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter - April 2015</h1>
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<h2>Jonas Öberg visiting Boston without a pink backpack</h2>
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<p><a href="/news/2015/news-20150302-02.html">Our new Executive
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Director Jonas Öberg</a> gave a talk at Libreplanet, and visited Boston to meet
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FSF board members and staff. In <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=14">his
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blog posts</a> he wrote about his meetings with Matthew Garret, Benjamin Mako
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Hill, Bradley Kuhn, Henry Poole from FSF's board, FSF's staff as well as FSF's
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Executive Director John Sullivan discussing how to improve cooperation and the
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two main challenges he sees for FSFE:</p>
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<ul><li>analysing Free Software from legal, technical, and social dimensions
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and ensuring that any challenges to Free Software within those areas are
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met,</li> <li>assuring that in a world of free and open everything, Free
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Software is what ties everything together: you can not have open data, open
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ecology, open government or open educational resources without Free
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Software.</li></ul>
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<p>Furthermore he looks back to his first visit, at that time in his capacity
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as GNU webmaster, in December 1999 with a pink backpack.</p>
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<h2>FSFE supporting the Christoph Hellwig GNU GPL enforcement lawsuit</h2>
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<p>FSFE welcomes the <a
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href="http://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">action which
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Christoph Hellwig and the Software Freedom Conservancy are taking</a> to bring
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VMware into compliance with the GNU General Public License.</p>
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<p>Free Software is a public resource, and it is governed by legal rules and
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social norms. Anyone who draws on this resource without respecting those rules
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and norms damages the community at large. The great majority of such problems
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are successfully resolved through dialogue and goodwill. It is only when
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dialogue fails that legal steps become necessary in order to protect this
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resource which we all share.</p>
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<p>While FSFE regrets that this lawsuit has arisen, we believe that
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safeguarding Free Software against those who try to appropriate for themselves
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what belongs to us all is of the utmost importance.</p>
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<h2>Joint statement on the use of Open Standards in the European Commission</h2>
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<p>Open Standards are formats and protocols which everybody can use free of
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charge and restriction and for which no specific software from a particular
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vendor is required. It is important that every EU citizen and company should
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have the right to communicate and interact with its administration using Open
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Standards exclusively, and not be forced to install and use software from any
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specific vendor.</p>
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<p>At Document Freedom Day (DFD), the international day to celebrate and raise
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awareness of Open Standards, April (the French Free Software organisation),
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European Digital Rights (EDRi), Open Forum Europe (OFE), the Open Source
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Business Alliance (OSBA), and FSFE published a joint statement. Besides
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generally highlighting the topic, the statement focuses on the <a
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href="/news/2015/news-20150325-01.html">improper use of
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standards in the context of applying for EU programmes</a>. (A full report
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about the 60 DFD events in 31 countries will be published at the beginning of
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April.)</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>Just how transparent does the European Parliament have to be? In its own
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rules of procedure, the Parliament has set itself the high standard of
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conducting its affairs in “utmost transparency”. Our president <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/03/26/909/">Karsten Gerloff
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reports</a> from an interesting discussion “Ensuring utmost transparency – Free
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Software and Open Standards under the Rules of Procedure of the European
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Parliament”, and what that means in practice.</li>
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<li>The German Ministry of Economics published a first <a
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href="http://www.bmwi.de/BMWi/Redaktion/PDF/P-R/referentenentwurf-gesetz-zur-auswahl-und-zum-anschluss-von-telekommunikationsendgeraeten,property=pdf,bereich=bmwi2012,sprache=de,rwb=true.pdf">draft
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law to ban compulsory routers (German)</a>. Except missing enforcement measures
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FSFE welcomes the draft. We update the <a
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href="/activities/routers/timeline.html">timeline</a> and our
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<a href="/activities/routers/routers.html">overview pages</a> so people
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outside German could reuse our experiences to fight compulsory routers in other
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countries, too.</li>
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<li>At a panel discussion, organised by the European Patent Office, about
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patents, standards, and Free Software <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/unexpected-turn-at-panel-discussion-on-software-patents-and-free-software/">your
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editor experienced an unexpected but positive turn</a>.</li>
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<li>The New Yorker notes the 30th anniversary of the GNU Manifesto and <a
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href="http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-gnu-manifesto-turns-thirty">published
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a longer article about Richard Stallman and the start of
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GNU and copyleft</a>.</li>
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<li>This year the <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-award-winners">Free Software
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Award</a> went to Sébastien Jodogne for his work on Free software Medical
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imaging with his project Orthanc and to Reglue, which gives GNU/Linux computers
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to underprivileged children and their families in Austin, Texas.</li>
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<li>FSFE welcomes Nicolas Dietrich in its General Assembly. He was elected by
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our sustaining members, and thereby holds one of the two <a
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href="/news/2015/news-20150316-01.html">Fellowship GA
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seats</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>Peter Bubestinger explains <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pb/?p=147">how he
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saved the songs of a friend's iPod with Free Software</a>.</li>
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<li>In his new job, former FSFE intern <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/nicoulas/?p=175">Nicolas Jean published EvQueue, a
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job scheduler and queuing engine, as Free Software</a>.</li>
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<li><a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=878">Paul Boddie wrote about the
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BBC Micro Bit</a>, a computing device, which the BBC plan to give to each child
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in the UK starting secondary school.</li>
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<li>Franz Gratzer highlighted some English <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2015/03/01/fosdem-2015-some-interviews/">interviews
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held during FOSDEM</a>, and wrote about the booth presence of freie.it, which
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was founded by some members of FSFE’s Viennese Fellowship group, as a web
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platform to help people who are interested in using Free Software but who do
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not want to administrate their own computers.</li>
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<li>Fellow Karl Beecher explained <a
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href="http://computerfloss.com/2015/03/endocode-proud-to-sponsor-free-software-foundation-europe/">why
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his company Endocode supports FSFE as silver donor</a>, and</li>
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<li>Mirko Böhm, also part of Endocode, <a
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href="http://creative-destruction.me/2015/03/11/fancy-dinners-cgroups-and-namespaces-and-meet-ups/">wrote
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about his activites</a>, including meeting with Jonas Öberg, FSFE’s new Executive
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Director.</li>
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<li>Nico Rikken wrote about <a
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href="http://nicorikken.eu/blog/fairphone-back-to-the-drawing-board/">his
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discussions with the Fairphone producers</a></li>
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<li>Mario Fux wondered <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=283">if Konqi --
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the KDE mascot -- is male or female</a>.</li>
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<li>And Daniel Pocock explains how you can become your own OpenID provider.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Spread the message with Free Software merchandise</h2>
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<p>During the last weeks, many people <a
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href="/contribute/spreadtheword.html#promo-material">ordered our
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“There is no cloud, just other people's computers” stickers</a>. Now Rich
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Folsom wrote <a
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href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-to-other-peoples-co/kkpbkgbkkggjfnkkcfaodijpfldjfkji">a
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Chromium Browser add-in</a>, which converts “the cloud” to “other people's
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computers”.</p>
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<p>Since so many people like the slogan, we now also have the corresponding <a
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href="/order/order.html">“There is no cloud, just other
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people's computers” <strong>bags</strong> in our webshop</a>. Furthermore we
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have a new Open Standard t-shirt with robots in fitted light blue or a
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non-fitted khaki, the “I love Free Software” t-shirt in light blue, or a fitted
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“Hacking for Freedom” t-shirt in grey, as well as the metallic “GNU/Linux
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inside” stickers and a golden GNU pin.</p>
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<p>If you want to spread the Free Software message at work, conferences, or
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when you are shopping, you can <a
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href="/order/order.html">order the equipment on our merchandise
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page</a>.</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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<!--/e-content-->
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</body>
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<sidebar promo="about-fsfe" />
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<author id="kirschner" />
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<date>
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<original content="2015-03-04" />
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</date>
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<followup>donate</followup>
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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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