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	<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter - September 2015</h1>

<h2>FSFE supports users' control over their online data</h2>

<p>Nowadays we use online services for everything and 
increasingly provide our data to them. However we also lose the control 
of our own data more than ever. Together with other organisations
<a href="/news/2015/news-20150829-01.html">FSFE supports the 
publication of the User Data Manifesto 2.0</a> which promotes users' 
basic rights to control their data while using online services. According
to the manifesto, users must control the access to their data, they have 
to know if their data is stored by the online services, and they have to 
be able to freely choose a platform without being forced to vendor lock-in. 
The manifesto is a good starting point for the debate about users' rights
online, and FSFE looks forward to other organisations joining the effort
to stand for online services that respect users' fundamental rights.</p>

<h2>Compulsory routers: Another one bites the dust</h2>

<p>The router, although often a device covered with dust in some corner 
at home, is an important part of your local network and phone. A lot of 
users in Germany do not own this device, although it stands in their home
and they pay for its power. At least that is still the case. On August 
12th, the German Federal Ministry of the Economy (BMWi) passed a reworked
<a href="http://www.bmwi.de/BMWi/Redaktion/PDF/Gesetz/gesetzentwurf-der-bundesregierung-zur-auswahl-und-zum-anschluss-von-telekommunikationsendgeraeten,property=pdf,bereich=bmwi2012,sprache=de,rwb=true.pdf">draft
bill</a> that would free users from compulsory router lock-in. The draft ensures 
that internet users in Germany can use whatever routers they want to 
connect to the internet.</p>

<p>The bill now has to be adopted by the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) 
and the Federal Assembly (Bundesrat). So far the comments concerned only
a small formal ambiguity, but we have to make sure this law passes without 
any negative changes and that it is afterwards implemented. We have a 
<a href="/news/2015/news-20150902-01.html">detailed update</a> 
which also describes how you can help us in Germany at the moment! 
Besides that we <a href="/activities/routers/routers.html">summarised 
the issue</a> and we are
<a href="/activities/routers/timeline.html">constantly
updating our timeline</a> so in case this topic comes up in your country,
you can reuse our arguments.</p>

<h2>New German Coordinators and dissolving the German association</h2>

<p><a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/dissolving-our-association/">In his
blog post your editor outlined</a> the process of streamlining the FSFE 
by dissolving the last remaining country chapter, known as the FSFE Chapter 
Germany e.V. This step was decided last year in November with the goal to 
remove some bureaucratic burdens associated with maintaining a legal 
entity. However as you can read in the article, dissolving an organisation 
is not as easy as it may sound; but we hope to complete this process in 
April of next year.</p>

<p>FSFE is happy to announce that Max Mehl and Björn Schießle became the
new coordinators of the German team last month, and from now on will 
hopefully not spend many hours per year dealing with bureaucracy. Both 
have been a part of FSFE for a long time now and have been helping us to
achieve <a href="/about/mission.html">our goal to empower 
people to control technology</a>. Just recently, Björn wrote 
<a href="https://netzpolitik.org/2015/user-data-manifesto-2-0/">an 
article on the German blog Netzpolitik.org about the User Data Manifesto</a> 
(see above in English), and Max just published an update on compulsory 
routers as mentioned above, along with an
<a href="https://netzpolitik.org/2015/der-lange-weg-des-routerzwangs-zur-endgeraetefreiheit/">article 
on Netzpolitik.org about it</a>.</p>

<h2>Something completely different</h2>

<ul>

<li>Paul Boddie started with the Fellowship interviews again: 
<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=683">he talked 
with Neil McGovern</a> who is a Fellow of the FSFE from the United Kingdom 
and the current Debian Project Leader.</li>

<li>Hugo Roy, FSFE's deputy legal coordinator wrote
<a href="http://www.lemondedudroit.fr/le-monde-du-droit-le-quotidien-des-juristes-daffaires/publications/dossiers/207324-decompilation-dun-logiciel-etat-des-lieux.html">an
article</a> (in French) about a copyright case between Skype and a French
software company which decompiled parts of Skype in order to, allegedly,
build a system interoperable with it. Interestingly enough, the court
found that company's disclosure of the source code was illegal, but that
using the code to build a new interoperable program was legal.</li>

<li>FSFE has a new role in the 
<a href="/news/2015/news-20150817-01.en.html">Bacula project</a>. 
Over the coming months, the FSFE will wind down its previous role as a 
fiduciary for Bacula, effectively transferring its copyright to Kern. 
However, the FSFE will continue to work with Kern and contributors to 
ensure that Bacula will remain as Free Software, as per our original 
agreement.</li>

<li>Next month FSFE will have a booth at the &quot;Rotlintstraßenfest&quot; in 
Frankfurt on 19 September and a booth at the &quot;Kieler Open Source 
and Linuxtage&quot; from 18-19 September.</li>

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

<ul>

<li>Nikos Roussos was guided by Open Street Map during his vacations and 
afterwards he spent time to 
<a href="http://www.roussos.cc/2015/08/07/post-vacations-map-editing/">improve 
the Open Street Map</a> with the data he gathered during his trip so 
everybody will benefit from it again.</li>

<li>Daniel Pocock published <a href="http://danielpocock.com/recording-live-events-like-a-pro-part-two-video">the 
second part</a> of his how-to about &quot;recording live events like a 
pro&quot;.</li>

<li>Paul Boddie <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1000">commented 
on the new Fairphone</a> and wrote about his 
<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1070">passion</a> for 
microcomputer systems from the 1980s and his experience with PCB design.</li>

<li>Mario Fux unveils the secret ingredient for the success of the
<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=336">&quot;Randa Meetings&quot;</a> -- 
the KDE meetings in the Swiss Alps -- which took place for the sixth 
time this year.</li>

<li>On a more technical side Peter Bubestinger, FSFE's Austrian 
coordinator and technician at the National Video-Archive, wrote about 
<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pb/?p=158">rescuing videotapes</a>.</li>

<li>Kevin Keitzer wrote about some SSH magic in
<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2015/08/27/web-interface-over-ssh/">&quot;Connecting
to a server’s web interface over SSH&quot;</a>, and about
<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2015/08/31/sdr-on-linux/">how 
to track airplanes and do other interesting things with &quot;software-defined 
radio on GNU/Linux&quot;</a>.</li>

</ul>
</ul>

<h2>Get active: translate and improve translations of our mission statement</h2>

<p>&quot;Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users 
to control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our 
lives. It is important that this technology empowers rather than restricts 
us. Free Software gives everybody the rights...&quot; That is how FSFE's 
recently updated <a href="/about/mission.html">mission
statement starts</a>. We hope that it will help us to get more people to
understand what we are doing. We already have translations into Albanian,
Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and Turkish.</p>

<p>Please help us to <a href="/contribute/translators/translators.html">get 
more translations</a>, and to check the exisiting translations for easy 
readability for everybody.</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="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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