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<html newsdate="2015-05-04" type="newsletter">

<head>
	<title>FSFE Newsletter - May 2015</title>
</head>

<body class="newsletter article" microformats="h-entry" id="nl-201505">
	<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter - May 2015</h1>

<h2>A secret Free Software action plan by the European Commission</h2>

<p newsteaser="yes">The European Commission has published a new version of its
strategy for the internal use of Free Software. The FSFE provided input to the
Commission during the update phase and while the strategy is broadly similar to
the previous version, <a href="/news/2015/news-20150401-01.html">there are some
improvements</a>.</p>

<p>Unlike previous versions, this time the strategy is accompanied by an action
plan aimed at putting it into practice. However, the action plan is not public,
so it is not possible to assess the Commission's progress towards its own
goals. We would welcome it, if the Commission would soon publish its action
plan.</p>

<h2>Interpretation of law restricting Free Software in Switzerland</h2>

<p>FSFE's goal is that software which is developed with tax money has to be
released as Free Software. By doing so the public administration would
strengthen and stimulate a fair IT market.</p>

<p>In Switzerland, there is currently uncertainty regarding the development and
release of Free Software by public contractors. The trigger for this was the
development and release of the software “OpenJusticia” by the Swiss Federal
Supreme Court. The federal council now wants to examine whether the publication
of Free Software by the federal administration can be allowed explicitly. <a
href="/news/2015/news-20150306-01.html">The FSFE demands a clarification</a>,
so that publicly-financed software can be legally and unambiguously released as
Free Software.</p>

<h2>Worldwide 63 events about Open Standards</h2>

<p>This year again volunteers around the world, accompanied by international
organisations as well as politicians and public services joined our demand for
document freedom. The global Document Freedom Day had 63 local events in 31
countries on 4 continents. <a
href="http://documentfreedom.org/news/2015/news-20150408-01.html">Read our 2015
report</a> to learn about political activities, new cartoons and illustrations,
and have a look at pictures from the events including tasty DFD cakes.</p>

<h2>Something completely different</h2>

<ul>

<li>We published <a href="/news/2015/news-20150414-01.html">a statement on the
changed relations between the FSFE and Kern Sibbald</a>. If you are a developer
who has contributed to Bacula, we recommend that you look at what Fiduciary
Licence Agreements or copyright assignments you have agreed to, and make sure
that you fully understand how this termination affect you. If you are not sure,
you are welcome to email us and we will do our best to assist you. Please take
a look at <a href="/activities/ftf/faq-bacula.html">our FAQ on this issue
first</a>.</li>

<li>On 6 May 2015 the FSF is organising the International Day Against DRM. You
can still <a href="/contribute/spreadtheword.html#drm-leaflet">print out some
DRM leaflets</a>, distribute them during the day, and talk with your friends
and colleagues about the harm of digital restriction measures. <a
href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/watch-your-freedom-because-apples-not">Previously
the FSF highlighted the problems with the new Apple products</a> concerning
proprietary software and Digital Restrictions Management technologies
distributed with its products and services.</li>

<li><a
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/german-greens-want-increased-support-open-source">The
German Greens want</a> the Government to increase the support for Free
Software. FSFE has helped them with a enquiry in parliament about the move to
non-free software in the German Foreign Office. You can <a
href="/news/2015/news-20150401-02.html">help us to evaluate the Governments
answers</a> (in German).</li>

<li>Guido Arnold gave a talk about FSFE's education team at the Chemnitzer
Linuxtage. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyDi6pkc6l8">video
“Advantages and barriers of Free Software in education” is now online</a> (you
can for example use youtube-dl to download it).</li>

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

<ul>

<li>Paul Boddie wrote a detailed blog post <a
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=908">why Open Hardware and Free
Software is not just for the geeks</a>.</li>

<li>Franz Gratzer published an <a
href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2015/03/28/open-letter-to-everymothercounts-org-apple-advertisement/">open
letter to everymothercounts.org about their Apple advertisement</a>.</li>

<li>Mirko Böhm summarised his experiences about <a
href="http://creative-destruction.me/2015/04/04/parsing-emacs-orgmode-files-eu-patent-debate-and-vacation/">parsing
Emacs OrgMode files, the EU patent debate, and his vacation</a>.</li>

<li><a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/ruphy/2015/04/back-on-the-web/">Riccardo
(ruphy) Iaconelli announced, that he is back blogging</a>, after he has done
research at CERN and launched WikiFM.</li>

<li>And your editor explained <a
href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/sharing-multiple-links-on-android/">how to share
multiple links on Android</a>.</li>

</ul>
</ul>

<h2>Get active: Check the remaining advertisement for non-free software</h2>

<p>We currently wrap-up the PDFreaders campaign, and we need your help to
measure our success.</p>

<p>Started in 2009 FSFE’s goal with the campaign was to get rid of
advertisement for proprietary PDF readers. We focused on the websites of public
administrations, and many people helped us gather contact details for over 2000
public websites which advertised non-free software. Many people helped us to
contact the public administrations, governments were made aware of it and
published guidelines. Until now we know that 772 of the 2110 bugs were fixed,
which is a 36% success rate.</p>

<p>But for most countries we did not check the status for several months now.
That is why we need your help to make one final round. We are looking for
volunteers who can help us by checking websites in their native language, <a
href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/final-pdfreaders-advertisement-squashing/">following
the step-by-step guide at the end of your editor's blog post</a>.</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="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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<author id="kirschner" />
<date>
	<original content="2015-05-04" />
</date>
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<tags>
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