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133 lines
7.1 KiB
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html newsdate="2016-04-01" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - April 2016</title>
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</head>
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<body microformats="h-entry">
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<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter - April 2016</h1>
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<h2 id="eu-radio-directive-threatens-software-freedom">EU Radio Directive
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threatens software freedom</h2>
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<p>We published our position on the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU
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(adopted in May 2014) that demands from device manufacturers to check each
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device software's compliance. At first sight, this may sound reasonable
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but it has highly negative implications on user rights and Free Software,
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fair competition, innovation, environment, and volunteering – mostly
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without large benefits for security. The directive needs to be implemented
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in member states before 13 June 2016. We have <a href="/activities/radiodirective/">formulated several proposals
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to EU institutions and EU member states with concrete steps to solve
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these issues.</a></p>
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<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>
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<p>As one of our main goals for 2016 is to push for the demand of
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all publicly funded software to be published as Free Software in the EU,
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we are positive to see some concrete steps in this direction happening
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across the Atlantic. In particular, in the beginning of March, the US
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Government published a <a href="https://sourcecode.cio.gov/SourceCodePolicy.pdf">draft
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of Source Code Policy</a> for the public to comment upon until 11 April.
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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
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software as Free Software for other public agencies as well as for the
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general public to use, study, share and improve the software.</a></p>
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<p>We would like the EU to follow this example and come up with similar
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policies on the European level. If you have any feedback or comments in
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regard to the US Source Code Policy, please send them to <a href="https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion">our English
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discussion list</a> or directly to Matthias Kirschner. We would like to
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make sure to consider your feedback before talking with European
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politicians about this topic.</p>
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<h2 id="from-the-community">From the community</h2>
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<ul>
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<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
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allows users to exchange their Federated Cloud ID-s and share data
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between their "clouds" more easily.</p></li>
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<li><p>Sergey Matveev
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<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/stargrave/archives/158">summarised the GoVPN
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Free Software daemon: why it was born, which tasks it is aimed to solve,
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and its technical overview</a> in his blogpost.</p></li>
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<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
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a talk about Free Software licenses by Michael Stehmann</a>.</p></li>
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<li><p>Guido Günther <a href="http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Contatacs__CardDAV__Calypso_and_the_N900.html">posted
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a follow-up to calendar synchronisation with Calypso, syncEvolution and
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the N900 running Maemo</a>.</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="what-else-have-we-done">What else have we done?</h2>
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<ul>
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<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
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the Advancement of Free Software for his GnuPG project</a>. The Award for
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the Advancement of Free Software is given annually to an individual who has
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made a great contribution to the progress and development of Free Software.</p></li>
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<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
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Mehl gave talks at Chemnitzer Linuxtage</a>. The event was a success with
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most of our merchandise and promotional material disappearing quickly
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from the booth handled by Reinhard Müller, Katja Müller, Max Mehl and
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Fabian Keil.</p></li>
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<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
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proposed by W3C in the web HTML standard</a>. Digital restrictions in Web
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standards would make it easier and more politically acceptable to impose
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restrictions on users.</p></li>
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<li><p>FSFE was present with a booth at <a href="https://logancij.com/">CIJ
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Logan Symposium</a>, a conference dedicated to gather leading journalists,
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hacktivists, legal and security experts to discuss freedom of press and
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digital rights. The list of the speakers at the CIJ event included Edward
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Snowden, who also <a href="http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/recapping-day-zero-of-libreplanet-2016">gave
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a keynote at Libreplanet</a>, a Free Software conference organised by FSF.</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="take-action">Take Action</h2>
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<p>To all awesome translators out there! Help us to expand our outreach
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by updating the <a href="/contribute/spreadtheword.html">'Spread
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the Word' page</a> for ordering our promotional material into your
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language. Currently, the page exists in English, German, Dutch and
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Albanian but it would be great to include any other languages into this
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list too.</p>
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<h2 id="good-free-software-news">Good Free Software news</h2>
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<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
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guidelines that clearly state that any patent claim that lies only in
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software will not be permitted under Indian patent law. Poland's new
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<a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/polish-egovernment-strategy-advocates-open-source">eGovernment strategy recommends that publicly financed software for
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a new system of public registers should be considered to be published
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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
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procuring software and related services</a>. To make it to the list IT
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standards must be developed openly and publicly, must not constrain
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reuse of the standard, and standard-essential patents should be made
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freely available.</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the
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<a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>
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,
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<a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellows</a>
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and
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<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">corporate donors</a>
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who enable our work,</p>
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<p>your editors Polina Malaja and Jonas Öberg, <a href="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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</body>
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<sidebar promo="about-fsfe"/>
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<date>
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<original content="2016-04-01"/>
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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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