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179 lines
8.4 KiB
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<html newsdate="2015-07-06" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - July 2015</title>
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</head>
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<body microformats="h-entry">
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<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter - July 2015</h1>
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<h2>FSFE pokes the European Commission on its transparency commitment</h2>
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<p>While looking into the Digital Single Market (DSM) package,
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our president Karsten Gerloff noticed that the EU Commissioner Günther
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Oettinger neglected to publish his recent meetings with lobbyists. So Karsten
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reminded the Commission about their transparency commitment. Meanwhile
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Oettinger's Head of Cabinet, Michael Hager, explained that a long-term sickness
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leave in the cabinet has led to a delay in publishing the meetings, and they
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updated the lists of meetings.</p>
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<p>But it turned out <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/06/24/lots-of-attention-for-oettingers-transparency-problem/">Karsten
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was not the only one interested in Oettinger's meetings</a>. A few days after
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Karsten's reminder the Spiegel and other media published news stories about it.
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According to Spiegel Online’s figures, 90% of the Commissioner’s meetings were
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with corporate representatives, business organisations, consultancies and law
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firms. Only 3% of his meetings were with NGOs. Of the top ten organisations
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he’s meeting with, seven are telecoms companies, most of whom are staunchly
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opposed to net neutrality.</p>
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<p>Without the EU's transparency commitment, it would have been almost
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impossible to research this. This shows how important such transparency
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commitments are and it shows how important it is that organisations and
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individuals actually monitor such publications. Furthermore we hope that from
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now on Oettinger better balances his meetings, so he hears different sides of
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an issue, and can make an informed decision.</p>
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<h2>TiSA: intransparent treaty might prevent digital sovereignty</h2>
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<p>Nowadays countries start to demand the source code for software they
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procure. If they sign the currently negotiated Trade in Services Agreement
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(TiSA) they might be forbidden to continue doing so.</p>
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<p>End of May, a draft of TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement) was leaked. TiSA
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is yet another international agreement, like the Trans-Atlantic Trade and
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Investment Partnership (TTIP), or the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). It is apparently negotiated by 51 countries
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including the EU. In the section <a href="https://netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/TISA-Annex-on-Electronic-Commerce.pdf">“Transfer
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or Access to Source Code”</a> the leaked version prevents countries to give
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priority to Free Software:</p>
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<blockquote><ol>
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<li><p>No Party may require the transfer of, or access to, source code of
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software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition of providing
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services related to such software in its territory.</p></li>
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<li><p>For purposes of this Article, software subject to paragraph 1 is limited
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to mass-market software, and does not include software used for critical
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infrastructure.</p></li>
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</ol></blockquote>
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<p>We believe that a trade agreement should not force signatory countries to
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give up control over their IT infrastructure for decades to come. On the
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contrary,
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companies should provide the source code if the public administrations
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demands it, as well as the corresponding rights to use the software for any
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purpose, to share the software with others, as well as to adapt the software
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for their own needs without anyone else's permission.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>Copyright directive: In an important step towards modernising the EU's
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copyright laws, the Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament adopted
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a report on the Copyright Directive by MEP Julia Reda. FSFE, which <a
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href="/news/2015/news-20150605-02.html">provided
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input to the MEPs</a> of the Legal Affairs committee ahead of the vote, <a
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href="/news/2015/news-20150616-01.html">views the adopted report as largely
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positive</a>. The European Parliament is scheduled to hold a plenary vote on 9
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July 2015 on the subject.</li>
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<li>Education: The German state of Saxony-Anhalt is forcing their pupils to use
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a variety of Microsoft services by making it mandatory for every public school.
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The plan was arranged by the Minister of Finance without knowledge of neither
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the data protection officer, nor the ministry of education. Erik Albers <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2015/06/03/sachsen-anhalt-verkauft-seine-schulen-an-microsoft/">wrote
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about that</a> (in German) and afterwards Fellows in Saxony <a
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href="https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/vorvertrag-partnerschaft-des-landes-sachsen-anhalt-und-der-microsoft-deutschland-gmbh-kuendigen">filed
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a petition against this procedure</a>, which everybody – also outside
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Saxony-Anhalt – can sign and promote.</li>
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<li>FSFE Internal: About two years ago, Karsten Gerloff decided that he would
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eventually move on from his role as FSFE’s president. FSFE has been preparing
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the leadership transition ever since. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/06/18/farewell-for-now/">As he wrote
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in his blog post</a> June was the last month for him actively handling
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operations at FSFE. Karsten currently takes two months of parental leave, and
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at FSFE’s General Assembly in September, FSFE's General Assembly will elect his
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successor.</li>
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<li>Events: Our active volunteer Guido Arnold <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2015/06/free-software-in-education-keynote-at-dorscluc/">was
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giving a keynote “Free Software in Education”</a> at the 22nd DORS/CLUC in
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Zagreb, and Franz Gratzer reports from <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2015/06/11/fsfe-fellowship-and-freie-it-at-veganmania-in-vienna-2015/">the
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FSFE's booth at Veganmania</a>. This vegan festival in Vienna lasted for four
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days, with 70 organisations and companies having booths there.</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>In his series <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jens.lechtenboerger/2015/06/09/three-steps-towards-more-privacy-on-the-net/">“Three
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steps towards more privacy on the Net”</a> Jens Lechtenbörger explains <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jens.lechtenboerger/2015/06/09/firefox-with-tororbot-on-android/">how
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to setup Firefox with Tor/Orbot on Android</a>.</li>
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<li>Imagine you want to install GNU/Linux on ~10 old computers, and all you
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have is a slow 10kb/s internet connection. Max Mehl faced this problem and
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wrote <a
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href="http://blog.mehl.mx/2015/splitdl-downloading-huge-files-from-slow-and-unstable-internet-connections/">“splitDL”,
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a small Bash script which splits huge files into several smaller ones and
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downloads them</a>.</li>
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<li>Timo Jyrinki takes a <a
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href="http://losca.blogspot.de/2015/06/quick-look-dell-xps-13-developer.html">look
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at the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition (2015) which is shipped with Ubuntu 14.04
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LTS</a>.</li>
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<li>Daniel Pocock documents how to use Blender for video editing with the included non-linear video editing
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system.</li>
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<li>And Erik Albers writes <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/eal/2015/05/21/how-i-learned-to-love-the-nasa/">how
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he learned to love the NASA</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Tell us about active groups in Europe</h2>
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<p>There are many groups in Europe who do advocacy and lobby work for software
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freedom. Some have done this work for many years, some just started doing it.
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Unfortunately often they do not know from each other's existence, and therefore
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cannot benefit from a knowledge exchange.</p>
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<p>We want to make sure the FSFE does not overlook other Free Software
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activities in Europe, so we can learn from each other and improve our way of
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empowering more users to control their technology. That is why this month we
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ask you <a
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href="https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/GroupsForSoftwareFreedomInEurope">to tell
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us about the active groups working for software freedom in Europe</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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<author id="kirschner" />
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<date>
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<original content="2015-07-06" />
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</date>
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<followup>donate</followup>
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