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<html newsdate="2010-12-04" type="newsletter">
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - December 2010</title>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - December 2010</h1>
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<p>This edition covers the current developments in Open Standards policy, some
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basic information about software patents, an update from FSCONS about
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distributed computing, and how you can support us in the end of the year. </p>
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<p>This month was the first time in FSFE's history that we had a booth at three
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conferences at the same date: the <a href="http://www.blit.org">Brandenburger Linux Infotag (BLIT)</a> in Potsdam/Germany, the <a href="http://www.fscons.org">Free Society Conference and Nordic
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Summit (FSCONS</a> in Göteburg/Sweden, and <a href="http://www.t-dose.org">T-DOSE</a> Eindhoven/The Netherlands. Our <a href="/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.html">PDFreaders</a> campaign is quite
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successful: 31 public administrations already removed advertisements for
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non-free PDF readers from their websites, 8 of them added links to
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pdfreaders.org. FSFE's sysadmins <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/blog/2010/11/26/blogs-upgraded-more-information-on-the-wiki/">updated the Fellowship blog software</a>,
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and we gave several presentations to politicians, parties, the public
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administration, and the Berlin Debating Union. <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=156">This month Fellowship interview
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</a> is with Brian about free
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documentation, emacs org mode, and his understanding of software as a tool. And
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finally we would like to congratulate Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson, Free Software
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developer and community builder from Iceland, who has received the <a href="/news/2010/news-20101108-01.html">Nordic Free
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Software Award.</a></p>
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<h2> Open Standards: India - Europe 1:0 </h2>
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<p>This month <a href="http://egovstandards.gov.in/approved-standards/egscontent.2010-11-12.9124322046/at_download/file">India's government announced its Open Standards policy</a>,
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which is a huge success for the Free Software movement. The advantages for Free
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Software in India were definitely worth the three-year struggle with the
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proprietary software companies. When reading the government's papers you
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will <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=420">recognise several points</a> that were
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included in <a href="/activities/os/def.html">our Open Standards definition</a>, especially the ones already
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covered in the <a href="/news/nl/nl-201010.html">October edition of the newsletter</a>: that patents on standards should
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be available on a royalty-free basis. This policy will foster innovation in
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India's IT market, it will lead to smaller costs for the public administration,
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and will enable programmers to be more innovative.</p>
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<p>The European Commission is also setting out to reform Europe's standardisation
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system. Standardisation in Europe is currently dominated by a small number of
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organisations, mainly big companies. At the same time, much innovation is
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done by small and medium-sized companies. Although numerous, they do
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not really have a voice in standardisation. When having the opportunity to
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participate they often struggle because of a lack of time, money or expertise.
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So while the Indian document <a href="http://fosscomm.in/OpenStandards">improved between revisions</a>, the <a href="/activities/os/eifv2.html">European Interoperability Framework
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(EIF) has only got worse </a>. But with
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your ongoing support we can <a href="/activities/os/os.html">continue to explain the importance of Open
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Standards </a> to the European
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Commission and the member states, so they can provide us the same advantages as
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the Indian government. This month by participating at an joint <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=426">event from the
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European Commission and the European Patent Office</a>.</p>
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<h2> Software patents: Not another monopoly on software </h2>
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<p>Another topic we highlighted at the meeting from the European Commission and
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<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=690">in a radio interview (in German)</a> were
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software patents. </p>
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<p>To begin with, a patent is a monopoly on an idea, whereas copyright is a
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monopoly on a concrete implementation. While Bach's II symphony is covered by
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copyright, a patent would give a monopoly on the idea to combine bowed and wind
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instruments. Software falls under the copyright. This makes sense, with
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software you <a href="http://www.progfree.org/Patents/industry-at-risk.html">have little research costs, but you have to spend a lot of time
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implementing </a> the ideas
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to make sure there are no security problems, and you can easily maintain and
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adapt it in future. The idea to combine bowed and wind instruments is not a big
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challenge, the challenge is how to combine them so it still sounds good in the
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end.</p>
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<p>More and more people understand that <a href="http://en.swpat.org/wiki/All_businesses_are_targets">software patents are a problem for
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everybody </a>, no matter if
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big or small companies, individual software developers, users, non-free or Free
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Software. </p>
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<ul><li>The companies have to spent more money for their legal department, to
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register patents, to negotiate patent crosslicensing, and to defend
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themselves against patent claims. While for some time software patents are a
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nice tool for big companies to prevent newcomers to compete with them, they
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also have to face companies who only sue others on software patents, and
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never do any software development by themselves. Against them, any software
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company can only loose.</li>
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<li>For software developers software patents mean legal uncertainty: whenever you
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start programming you might violate law. You will never be able to find out
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if you violate a patent. Even if you read a software patent you might not
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realise it covers what you are currently implementing. With patents, we have
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to pay money to register them. On the other hand with copyright, everybody of
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us even those who just program as a hobby can write a program, and afterwards
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this falls under copyright without any additional costs. In fact, software
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patents can dispossess us as they can prevent from using the rights we get
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from copyright, e.g. to distribute the program to others. </li>
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<li>Users would have to pay for all those costs. Some people estimate that the
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patent costs for smartphones are about 20% of the actual price payed by the
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customer. </li></ul>
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<p>We will continue to get rid of that problem. In the US our sister organisation
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is working to <a href="http://www.fsf.org/blogs/software-patents-after-bilski">build awareness to the harm caused by software patents</a> and in New Zealand the
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government understood the problem and <a href="http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/new-zealand-govt-against-software-patents/">recommended in April to include computer
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programs amongst inventions that may not be patented</a>. In
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Europe the legislation has decided that software is not patentable. But laws
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are always interpreted by people, and in this case interpretations of the law
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differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by
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declaring them as "computer implemented inventions". We will continue to work
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with our <a href="/about/fsfnetwork.html">sister organisations </a>,
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our <a href="http://www.ffii.org">associated organisation FFII </a>, and others to inform
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people about the dangers of software patents. We will explain the legislative
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that they have to make the laws more precise so that the patent offices have to
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act as intended. </p>
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<h2> Distributed computing at FSCONS </h2>
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<p>We know that distributed computing is not a brand new topic. In fact there is a
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7:21 minutes <a href="http://www.archive.org/download/AllAboutPolymorphics/AllAboutPolymorphics.ogv">commercial from 1959 about it</a>,
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and some of the ideas might still be relevant for the current "cloud computing"
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discussion.</p>
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<p>Our part here was to host a track a this year's FSCONS called <a href="http://www.fscons.org/divide/">Divide and
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Reconquer </a>, which focused on the problem of the
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trend towards centralised non-free Internet services, and possible solutions.
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Thanks to <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=71">Sam's work </a> and our speakers, all
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five talks went well, each generating extensive discussion in the question and
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answer sessions. </p>
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<p>For example <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=156">this month Fellowship interviewee Brian Gough</a> even said to me after
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Michael Christen's demonstration of the peer to peer <a href="http://www.yacy.net">search engine Yacy</a>, that by the end of next year he only wants to use
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distributed search engines for his web searches. Sounds like a good New Year's
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resolution. We will continue to work on this topic and animate more people to
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think about it, discuss it with others and work on solutions. </p>
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<h2> Get Active: Buy presents and donate - our support programs </h2>
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<p>End of the year often means buying presents and donating money. There are some
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ways to combine those two things, for example our
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<a href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/SupportPrograms"> support programs</a>. So if you or some of
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your friends already use Libri or Amazon to buy presents, please inform them
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about the possibility to support us. </p>
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<ul><li>If you buy books from <a href="http://www.bookzilla.de">bookzilla.de</a> we will receive
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around 5% of the sales as a donation.</li>
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<li>If you have installed <a href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/SupportPrograms">our plugin </a>
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around 5% of your sale from amazon is donated to FSFE. </li></ul>
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<p>You can <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/maelle/?p=94">read Maëlle's blog post </a> to find
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out how much was donated through those ways. If you buy your books and other
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presents from other shops, you can of course support FSFE through a <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">one time
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donation </a> or on a regular basis by
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<a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">becoming a Fellow of FSFE </a>. </p>
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<p>Best Regards,<br/>
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<a href="/about/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/">FSFE</a></p>
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<p>-- <br />
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<a href="/index.html">Free Software Foundation Europe</a><br />
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<a href="/news/news.rss">FSFE News</a><br />
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<a href="/events/events.rss">Upcoming FSFE Events</a><br />
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<a href="https://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml">Fellowship Blog Aggregation</a><br />
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<a href="/contact/community.html">Free Software Discussions</a> </p>
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</body>
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<tag key="matthias-kirschner"/>
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</tags>
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