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	<title>FSFE Newsletter - April 2016</title>
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	<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter - April 2016</h1>


<h2 id="eu-radio-directive-threatens-software-freedom">EU Radio Directive 
threatens software freedom</h2>

<p>We published our position on the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU 
(adopted in May 2014) that demands from device manufacturers to check each 
device software's compliance. At first sight, this may sound reasonable 
but it has highly negative implications on user rights and Free Software, 
fair competition, innovation, environment, and volunteering – mostly 
without large benefits for security. The directive needs to be implemented 
in member states before 13 June 2016. We have <a href="/activities/radiodirective/">formulated several proposals 
to EU institutions and EU member states with concrete steps to solve 
these issues.</a></p>

<h2 id="us-government-demands-publicly-financed-software-to-be-published-as-free-software">US government demands publicly financed software to be published as Free Software</h2>

<p>As one of our main goals for 2016 is to push for the demand of 
all publicly funded software to be published as Free Software in the EU, 
we are positive to see some concrete steps in this direction happening 
across the Atlantic. In particular, in the beginning of March, the US 
Government published a <a href="https://sourcecode.cio.gov/SourceCodePolicy.pdf">draft 
of Source Code Policy</a> for the public to comment upon until 11 April. 
The policy <a href="https://k7r.eu/us-government-commits-to-publish-publicly-financed-software-under-free-software-licenses/">requires every public agency to publish their custom-build 
software as Free Software for other public agencies as well as for the 
general public to use, study, share and improve the software.</a></p>

<p>We would like the EU to follow this example and come up with similar 
policies on the European level. If you have any feedback or comments in 
regard to the US Source Code Policy, please send them to <a href="https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion">our English 
discussion list</a> or directly to Matthias Kirschner. We would like to 
make sure to consider your feedback before talking with European 
politicians about this topic.</p>

<h2 id="from-the-community">From the community</h2>

<ul>
<li><p>Björn Schiessle <a href="http://blog.schiessle.org/2016/03/14/federated-sharing-whats-new-in-owncloud-9-0/">blogged about the new feature of the ownCloud 9.0 the Federation App</a> that 
allows users to exchange their Federated Cloud ID-s and share data 
between their "clouds" more easily.</p></li>

<li><p>Sergey Matveev 
<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/stargrave/archives/158">summarised the GoVPN 
Free Software daemon: why it was born, which tasks it is aimed to solve, 
and its technical overview</a> in his blogpost.</p></li>

<li><p>Guido Arnold <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2016/03/fsfe-meeting-in-frankfurt-with-talk-about-free-software-licenses/">wrote about the Fellowship meeting in Frankfurt which also included 
a talk about Free Software licenses by Michael Stehmann</a>.</p></li>

<li><p>Guido Günther <a href="http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Contatacs__CardDAV__Calypso_and_the_N900.html">posted 
a follow-up to calendar synchronisation with Calypso, syncEvolution and 
the N900 running Maemo</a>.</p></li>
</ul>

<h2 id="what-else-have-we-done">What else have we done?</h2>

<ul>
<li><p>Founding member of FSFE, <a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/library-freedom-project-and-werner-koch-are-2015-free-software-awards-winners">Werner Koch received this year's Free Software award for 
the Advancement of Free Software for his GnuPG project</a>. The Award for 
the Advancement of Free Software is given annually to an individual who has 
made a great contribution to the progress and development of Free Software.</p></li>

<li><p>Our <a href="https://k7r.eu/chemnitzer-linuxtage-misunderstandings-compulsory-routers-and-new-black-nocloud-t-shirts/">president Matthias Kirschner and the German coordinator Max 
Mehl gave talks at Chemnitzer Linuxtage</a>. The event was a success with 
most of our merchandise and promotional material disappearing quickly 
from the booth handled by Reinhard Müller, Katja Müller, Max Mehl and 
Fabian Keil.</p></li>

<li><p>Our volunteers in Berlin participated in the <a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/anti-drm-activists-go-to-w3c-meeting-to-protest-digital-restrictions-management-in-web-standards">FSF campaign against digital restrictions 
proposed by W3C in the web HTML standard</a>. Digital restrictions in Web 
standards would make it easier and more politically acceptable to impose 
restrictions on users.</p></li>

<li><p>FSFE was present with a booth at <a href="https://logancij.com/">CIJ 
Logan Symposium</a>, a conference dedicated to gather leading journalists, 
hacktivists, legal and security experts to discuss freedom of press and 
digital rights. The list of the speakers at the CIJ event included Edward 
Snowden, who also <a href="http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/recapping-day-zero-of-libreplanet-2016">gave 
a keynote at Libreplanet</a>, a Free Software conference organised by FSF.</p></li>
</ul>

<h2 id="take-action">Take Action</h2>

<p>To all awesome translators out there! Help us to expand our outreach 
by updating the <a href="/contribute/spreadtheword.en.html">'Spread 
the Word' page</a> for ordering our promotional material into your 
language. Currently, the page exists in English, German, Dutch and 
Albanian but it would be great to include any other languages into this 
list too.</p>

<h2 id="good-free-software-news">Good Free Software news</h2>

<p><a href="http://sflc.in/press-release-indian-patent-office-says-no-to-software-patents/">Indian Patent Office said no to software patents</a> in its updated 
guidelines that clearly state that any patent claim that lies only in 
software will not be permitted under Indian patent law. Poland's new 
<a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/polish-egovernment-strategy-advocates-open-source">eGovernment strategy recommends that publicly financed software for 
a new system of public registers should be considered to be published 
under a Free Software licence</a>. Sweden has <a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/sweden-updates-list-mandatory-it-standards">updated the list of 'Open IT standards' that can be made mandatory when 
procuring software and related services</a>. To make it to the list IT 
standards must be developed openly and publicly, must not constrain 
reuse of the standard, and standard-essential patents should be made 
freely available.</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,</p>

<p>your editors Polina Malaja and Jonas Öberg, <a href="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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