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232 lines
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HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html newsdate="2014-11-11" type="newsletter">
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - November 2014</title>
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</head>
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<body class="newsletter article" microformats="h-entry" id="nl-201411">
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<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter – November 2014</h1>
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<h2>Munich: facts harder than fiction</h2>
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<p newsteaser="yes">The city of Munich runs Free Software on more than 15.000 workplace
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computers <a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/106341">and has saved over
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11.000.000€ in return</a>. During the migration to Free Software, they
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consolidated their heterogeneous IT in 51 places with 1000 IT employees and 22
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IT departments. Despite these challenges <a
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href="http://www.computerwoche.de/a/wohin-steuert-linux-in-muenchen,3043464,2">most
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users are happy with the migration and say they do not want to switch back</a>
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(in German). And all of this happened in the front-yard of Microsoft's German
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headquarters.</p>
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<p>If you do not like the success of Free Software in Munich, what could you
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do? You could play on emotions and spread rumours that the Munich IT people are
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not taking the demands of regular users nor the executive into account. Of
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course, you have to stay vague, hoping to bring out a few of those voices that
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are always unhappy - but this is an easy way of discrediting the progress
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already made. This is what happened in the last months in Munich with remarks
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by the new mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD, Social Democrats) and his vice Josef
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Schmid (CSU, Christian Democrats). Some commentators have speculated about a
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connection to the fact that Microsoft is now moving its headquarter from
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Unterschleissheim to Munich, and <a
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href="http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-11/reiter-muenchen-spd/komplettansicht">Reiter
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claiming that he helped with this deal</a> (in German). As Microsoft was the <a
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href="http://www.merkur-online.de/lokales/muenchen-lk-nord/unterschleissheim-umzug-nach-muenchen-microsoft-prueft-neue-standorte-2766978.html">biggest
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tax payer in Unterschleissheim</a> (in German), Munich will financially benefit
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by this move.</p>
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<p>But they seem to have underestimated the success of Free Software in Munich.
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<a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/munich-city-council-shields-limux-against-mayor">IT
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experts from their own political parties raised their voice to correct them</a>
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and <a href="/news/2014/news-20141016-01.html">others have uncovered their
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misleading statements</a>. Thus, the comments by the mayors represent only
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individual opinions. Munich's political support for GNU/Linux is strong, and
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the money the city saves and will continue to save by using GNU/Linux,
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LibreOffice/OpenOffice, and the Desktop from KDE counts profoundly. If Free
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Software can even survive a smear campaign by the mayors it shows that it is
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there to stay. Dear Free Software community: <em>be proud and spread the
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word!</em> But do not rest, the next attack will be more subtle.</p>
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<h2>EU wide Open Standards policy</h2>
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<p>But the answer to the inquiry includes another crucial point: the problem
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with document formats. The Munich IT managers noted that, at the beginning of
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their migration, the German federal states and the federal government
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highlighted the importance of Free Software and Open Standards, but afterwards
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never consequently went this path.</p>
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<p>In Germany, the lack of a clear Open Standard Policy is a major blocker for
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public administrations to use Free Software. In recent years, other European
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Countries such as Great Britain, France, Italy, and Sweden have done more to
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promote Free Software and Open Standards.</p>
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<p>On the European level, <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/prasident-des-deutschen-stadtetags-an-europaische-kommission-mehr-fur-freie-software-einsetzen/">the
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former Munich mayor asked the European Commission to implement two measures to
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enable participation with Free Software in EU projects</a>: First to have all
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document templates which are available in Microsoft Office formats, also in
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Open Document Text (ODT) format. Second that all presenter notebooks in the EU
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institutions also have a program installed which can handle Open Document Presentation
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(ODP) files. This was in 2011 and the European bodies have neglected
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implementing Open Standard policies for a long time.</p>
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<h2>Open Standard compliance checks</h2>
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<p>When institutions decide on Open Standards policies, this is just the first
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step. It is important to check this decision and to remind them about it. In
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2010 as a Document Freedom Day activity our Fellows in Cologne and Bonn <a
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href="/news/2010/news-20100803-01.html">checked the German
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federal administrations after a decision that they have to be able to receive,
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edit, and send back ODF</a>. The FSFE found out that only 2 of 87 departments
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are conforming to federal open document regulations. This highlights the
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importance of being persistent and monitoring the implementation of such
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policies. Check out this month's “Get active” item with a specific suggestion
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how you can help with that within a few minutes.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>We are currently looking for interns again, <a
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href="/news/2014/news-20141017-01.html">especially in
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preparation of Document Freedom Day</a> but we also have <a
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href="/contribute/internship.html">general internship
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positions open from early January</a>. When Max Mehl saw the news item
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he published a <a
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href="http://blog.mehl.mx/2014/my-internship-at-fsfe/">summary about his
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internship with FSFE</a>.</li>
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<li><a href="/news/2014/news-20141017-02.html">Together with
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the Italian consumer association ADUC, and the Italian group ILS, we asked</a>
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regulators to take concrete steps to protect Italians from being forced to pay
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for software they do not want or need.</li>
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<li>Local activities: Our Vienna group had their most active and successful
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Autumn ever. Franz documented how they participated in the three big events <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/10/23/three-autumn-events-2014/">Software
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Freedom Day, the biggest German speaking animal rights conference, and the Game
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City fair 2013</a>. Christian Kalkhoff from our Munich group gave a
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presentation about the groups activities at the GNU Hackers Meeting 2014. The
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<a
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href="http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2014/2014-08--kalkhoff--fsfe--ghm.webm">video
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is now online</a>. If you want to help with the organisation of the LibreOffice
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conference 2015, <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/10/22/announcing-the-libreoffice-conference-for-2015-in-aarhus-denmark/">Carsten
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Agger is still looking for assistance, as our Aarhus group will help at the
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event</a>.</li>
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<li>Spoiler alert: The last edition of the education news <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/10/free-software-in-education-news-%E2%80%93-september/">also
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mentions the focus of the upcoming Document Freedom Day 2015</a>.</li>
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<li>Public administrations: The German town of <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/105069">Gummersbach announced that this
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summer it has completed its switch to GNU/Linux PCs</a>, <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/104519">England's Healthwatch switches
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to Free Software CiviCRM</a>, and a Free Software solution developed for the
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government of South Tyrol (Italy) to automatically test government websites and
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services is now <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/tyrol-government-shares-test-tool-industry">also
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being used to probe sites of the region's tourism sector</a>.</li>
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<li>Our sister organisation invites Free Software enthusiasts to the <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/registration-opens-for-libreplanet-2015">libre
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planet conference 2015</a> in the US. Furthermore the <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/news/the-free-software-foundation-opens-nominations-for-the-17th-annual-free-software-awards">nomination
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for the 17th annual Free Software Awards is open</a>, and you can send your
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nominations before Sunday 16 November.</li>
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<li><a href="http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/33455.html">Matthew Garret wrote a
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blog post on why he joined FSF's board</a>. But some of the comments he
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received are really offensive, and your editor hopes that Matthew can just
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ignore them. Related to this, your editor recommends you reading the article <a
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href="http://lwn.net/Articles/615192/">“On the sickness of our community”</a>
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by Jonathan Corbet. As always, if you have comments about it <a
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href="/contact/community.html">send them to our discussion
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lists</a>.</li>
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<li>From the <a href="http://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>:</li>
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<ul>
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<li>Computers are entering the fashion field from multiple directions.
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Current FSFE intern <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/puster/2014/10/14/meshcon-2014/">Michele Marrali
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wrote about MeshCon 2014, a conference that connects fashion designer and
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technology experts</a>.</li>
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<li>André Ockers reports that <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/2014/10/28/dutch-public-broadcaster-moves-away-from-open-standards/">the
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Dutch public broadcaster NOS moves away from open standards</a></li>
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<li>Matija Šuklje <a
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href="http://matija.suklje.name/my-very-first-commit-to-kde">made his first
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commit to KDE and writes about FSFE's Fiduciary Licence Agreement</a></li>
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<li>Daniel Pocock <a
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href="http://danielpocock.com/positive-results-from-opw-2013">reports positive
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results from Outreach Program for Women</a></li>
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<li>Hugo Roy explains how he <a
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href="http://hroy.eu/posts/owncloud-encryption-defpub/">wrote a new defensive
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publication for ownCloud's file syncing encryption</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Fix my document - ODF in EU bodies</h2>
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<p>The EU institutions still have a lot to do to remove barriers for Free
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Software users. Together with Open Forum Europe (OFE) your editor had a meeting
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with the IT responsible of the Commission, the Council, and the Parliament
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about that. We discussed <a
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href="/news/2014/news-20140326-02.html">our letter on video
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format</a> and the campaign “FixMyDocuments.eu”. This campaign was started by
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OFE to help EU institutions to implement <a
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href="http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/informatics/oss_tech/pdf/2011-07-25_ares.pdf">their
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decision to support Open Document Formats</a> FSFE's volunteers already
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translated the website in more languages, but now it is time for all of you to
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act.</p>
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<p>We would like you to <em>find EU institutions who offer non-free
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formats</em> on their website, without also publishing those documents in ODT,
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and then <em><a href="http://fixmydocuments.eu/?page_id=9">submit
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them</a></em>.</p>
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<p>Furthermore OFE encourages and will support anyone who wants to use the
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platform to cover other administrations.</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>, <a href="http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join">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/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="http://www.fsfe.org">FSFE</a></p>
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<!--/e-content-->
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</body>
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<sidebar promo="about-fsfe"><!--
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<h3>FSFE News</h3>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="/news/">Press Releases</a></li>
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<li><a href="/news/newsletter.html">Newsletters Archive</a></li>
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<li><a href="/events/">Upcoming Events</a></li>
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<li><a href="http://planet.fsfe.org/">Planet Blogs</a></li>
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<li><a href="/contact/community.html">Free Software Discussions</a></li>
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</ul>
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--></sidebar>
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<author id="kirschner" />
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<date>
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<original content="2014-11-04" />
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</date>
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<followup>donate</followup>
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<tags>
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<tag>newsletter</tag>
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</tags>
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</html>
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mode: xml ***
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