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HTML
278 lines
14 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html newsdate="2014-04-04" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - April 2014</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 2014</h1>
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<h2>Document Freedom Day: Open Standards explained for grandpa</h2>
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<p>Although more entrepreneurs and politicians understand the importance of
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Open Standards, people do not see the connection with their daily life. That is
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why on 26 March we again organised <a
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href="http://documentfreedom.org">Document Freedom Day</a> (DFD). This year we
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had a lot of new materials: <a
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href="http://documentfreedom.org/promotion.html">new leaflets in different
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languages explain Open Standards</a>, and <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/comic-and-quotes-why-you-should-use-open-standards/">a
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nice comic shows why you should use Open Standards</a> so you do not have problems
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with your files when you are old.</p>
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<p><a href="http://documentfreedom.org/events/events.html">There were at least 51 events
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in 22 countries</a> organised by a lot of independent groups. FSFE's
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volunteers in the UK presented an <a
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href="http://documentfreedom.org/news/2014/news-20140324-01.html">award to
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The OpenStreetMap Foundation in Birmingham</a>, while FSFE's Werner Koch
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participated in an event <a
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href="http://www.greenmediabox.eu/archive/2014/03/26/greensefa-4th-document-freedom-day/">
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on Open Standards in Cryptography in the Parliament</a>. Our local group in
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Linz <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jzarl/2014/03/29/celebrating-document-freedom-day-in-linz/">organised
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an information booth in the city centre</a>, and in the evening they gave a
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talk about Open Standards at the university. At the booth in Vienna <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/03/28/document-freedom-day-in-vienna-2014/">
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our volunteers had some problems with an artist of a
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monument</a>, but still handed out a huge amount of leaflets and also informed four
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friendly police officers about Free Software and Open Standards. <a
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href="http://documentfreedom.org/contact.html">Our DFD team</a> is still
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gathering information of what happened during the DFD week, and will publish a
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full report during April.</p>
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<h2>EU institution acknowledges captivity to Microsoft</h2>
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<p>In a <a
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href="https://ameliaandersdotter.eu/sites/default/files/andersdotter_annex.pdf">recent
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letter to MEP Amelia Andersdotter</a> (PDF), the EC acknowledges that it is in a
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state of "effective captivity" to Microsoft. As FSFE has pointed out
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repeatedly that this is a persistent problem for the Commission, the Council and
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the Parliament. On Document Freedom Day the <a
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href="/news/2014/news-20140326-02.html">FSFE and Open Forum Europe sent an
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open letter to the European Parliament and the European Commission
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highlighting its vendor lock-in with Microsoft</a>.</p>
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<h2>Using Free Software in the Netherland's education sector</h2>
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<p><a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/03/free-software-in-education-news-collection-february/">The
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Free Software in education news for February</a> are out, including an update
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from <a href="/activities/nledu/">the NLEdu campaign</a>: Kevin
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reports that the commercial director of SchoolMaster, the largest Dutch
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ELO/student administration software supplier, confirmed that they will roll out
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a platform-independent HTML5 version in April, replacing the Silverlight
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version. This would make the NLEdu campaign a success as it will allow Free
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Software users to access the course materials with any standard compliant
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browser. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/03/04/nledu-progressions-and-some-regressions/">Kevin
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Keijzer published detailed information about this matter</a>.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>For the European Parliament elections from 22 May to 25, <a
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href="/news/2014/news-20140304-01.html">FSFE supports the Free Software Pact
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by April, and the WePromise.Eu by EDRi</a>. Our volunteers worked on
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translations, and help <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2014/03/the-free-software-pact-for-the-european-elections/">to promote
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the campaign</a>.</li>
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<li>Karsten Gerloff participated in the <a
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href="/news/2014/news-20140314-01.html">first meeting of the Asian Legal
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Network in Hong Kong</a>. Most of the people there were representatives from
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technology companies in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and Korea. This is a series
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of round tables organised jointly by FSFE, Open Invention Network and Linux
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Foundation. Inspired by the <a href="/activities/ln/ln.html">Legal
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Network which FSFE has been facilitating since 2006</a>, it has the same goal:
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enabling legal experts to share knowledge about Free Software.</li>
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<li>FSFE welcomes its <a href="/news/2014/news-20140303-01.html">new
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Fellowship representative Stefan "Penny" Harmuth</a> in the the <a
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href="/about/team.html#id-general-assembly">General Assembly</a>.</li>
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<li>PDFreaders: <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2014/03/05/pdfreaders-org-removal-of-sumatrapdf-due-to-use-of-non-free-code/">
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Heiki reports why we had to remove SumatraPDF from pdfreaders.org</a>, as it
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includes non-free code.</li>
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<li>Local FSFE Fellowship meetings: <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/03/report-of-latest-fellowship-meeting-in-frankfurt/">Guido
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Arnold reports from the meeting in Frankfurt</a> including the schedule of the
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next events in Wiesbaden, Bad Homburg, and of course Frankfurt.
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Thanks to Simon Wächter our group in Zürich <a
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href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipEvents/Zurich%202014-03-06">resumed their
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monthly Fellowship meetings after some time of inactivity</a>.</li>
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<li>After several years, our education team coordinator <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/03/dieses-jahr-geht-es-endlich-nach-chemnitz/">
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Guido Arnold finally visited the Chemnitzer Linuxtage</a>. As in previous
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years the FSFE had a booth there, distributing <a
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href="/contribute/spreadtheword.html#free-software">our new Free Software
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leaflet for beginners</a> which was written by our Vienna Fellowship
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group for a vegan festival and which is now available printed in English,
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German, French, and to be printed in Finnish. Beside that your editor gave
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a talk about the threat to the general purpose computer.</li>
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<li>We welcome OSB Alliance's publication of <a
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href="http://www.osb-alliance.de/themen-aktuelles/detailansicht/artikel/cebit-kostenloser-praxisratgeber-der-open-source-business-alliance-fuer-beschaffer-der-oeffentliche/">a
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guide how to procure Free Software in the public administration for the
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German public administration</a>.</li>
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<li>During LibrePlanet 2014 <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-award-winners-announced">The
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Free Software Awards went to the GNOME Foundation's Outreach Program for
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Women and Matthew Garrett</a>, for his work to keep <a
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href="/freesoftware/secure-boot.html">"Secure
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Boot"</a> Free Software compatible. Dan Fritzmartin documented <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/how-i-made-a-video-for-libreplanet-using-all-free-software">how
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he made a video for LibrePlanet using all Free Software</a>.</li>
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<li><a href="/activities/android/android.html">Free Your Android</a>: Paul
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Kocialkowski of Replicant <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/replicant-developers-find-and-close-samsung-galaxy-backdoor">found
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a backdoor in the Samsung Galaxy</a>. Basically, these devices have a
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proprietary userspace program which accepts requests from the proprietary
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baseband firmware to modify the filesystem. By replacing that userspace program
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with a free one, this particular back-door can be closed by Replicant -- of
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course the proprietary modem firmware will still have sufficient control over
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the device to do many evil things.</li>
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<li>South Tyrol will increase its use of Free Software, <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/south-tyrol-increase-use-free-software">announced
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their Governor Arno Kompatscher</a>. The European Parliament wants its IT
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department to rehabilitate its GNU/Linux desktop pilot. On Tuesday, the <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/european-parliament-covets-restart-linux-pilot">EP's
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committee on budgetary control accepted a request by MEPs Bart Staes and
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Amelia Andersdotter to restart the GNU/Linux desktop pilot</a>, which had been
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shelved in 2012.</li>
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<li>From the <a href="https://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>: </li>
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<ul>
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<li>Setup a call for papers, select a few talks, publish a schedule, book a
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venue, sell a few tickets - have fun: Essentially all it takes to organise
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a conference, isn't it? In theory maybe - in practice - not so much.
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Fellow Isabel Drost-Fromm <a
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href="http://blog.drost-fromm.de/posts/how-hard-can-it-be-organising-a-conference.html">is
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sharing her experience on event organisation so others can learn from
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it</a>, e.g. how increasing the ticket price relates to your amount of
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sleep. </li>
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<li><a href="http://hroy.eu/posts/im-a-turing-complete-user/">Hugo Roy
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considers himself to be a turing complete user</a>. He points to a
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recommendable <a
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href="http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/">essay
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by Olia Lialina</a>. Related to this, if you have not seen <a
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href="http://revealingerrors.com/">revealing errors by Benjamin Mako
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Hill</a>, it is worth it.</li>
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<li><a
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href="http://sandklef.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/education-nevermid-what-was-it-anyway-pt-i/">Henrik
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Sandklef wrote about what education is</a>, and he <a
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href="http://sandklef.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/wanted-a-strategy-for-teaching-programming-to-newbies/">searches
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for a strategy for teaching programming to newbies</a>.</li>
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<li>Nikos Roussos <a
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href="http://www.roussos.cc/2014/03/12/making-things-distributed-is-hard/">wrote
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that making things distributed is hard</a>, and why centralisation happens.
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But although it takes effort and determination, he argues that we all together can
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build an Internet that is distributed.</li>
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<li>He also documented <a
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href="http://www.roussos.cc/2014/03/21/building-running-popcorn-time/">how
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to build and run Popcorn Time from source</a>.</li>
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<li>Jens Lechtenbörger <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/jens.lechtenboerger/2014/03/23/certificate-pinning-for-gnu-emacs/">describes
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how he pins certificates in GNU Emacs</a>.</li>
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<!-- removed as it seems abandoned
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<li>Karl runs a crowdfunding for his book <a
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href="http://computerfloss.com/2014/03/ideal-gift-computer-illiterate-loved-one/">"The
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ideal gift for your computer-illiterate loved one"</a>.</li>
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-->
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<li>Timo Jyrinki from our Finnish team <a
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href="http://losca.blogspot.de/2014/03/qt-521-in-ubuntu.html">wrote about the
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problems to switch to Qt 5.2.1 in Ubuntu involving roughly 130 source
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packages</a>.</li>
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<li>Franz Grazer wrote an article asking the question: <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/franz.gratzer/2014/03/08/do-we-need-drm/">Do
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we need DRM?</a> arguing that Free Software should not get involved
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with DRM since it is all about locking things down.</li>
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<li>Matija documented <a
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href="http://matija.suklje.name/how-to-write-your-pelican-powered-blog-using-owncloud-and-webdav">How
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to write your Pelican-powered blog using ownCloud and WebDAV</a> and
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reports from <a
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href="http://matija.suklje.name/the-first-results-of-testing-de-razor-blades-for-shaving-with-oil">his
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first results of testing DE razor blades for shaving with oil</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: The right not to pay for non-free software</h2>
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<p>The revelations from Edward Snowden concerning massive surveillance of
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communications demonstrates the need for each person to be able to control
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their computers and phones. Yet computer and telephone manufacturers and
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retailers typically impose on users programs that jeopardise their privacy.</p>
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<p>Each person should therefore have the opportunity to refuse to pay for
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non-free software, and be allowed to choose the programs that run on their
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telephone and computer, in our case a Free Software operating system and other
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Free Software.</p>
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<p>We joined <a href="http://no.more.racketware.info/petition/support">other
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organisations throughout the world</a> in requesting an unfettered choice of
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the operating system on telephones, laptops and other computing devices.</p>
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<p>This month we ask you to <a
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href="http://no.more.racketware.info/petition/click/en">sign the
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international petition</a>, and <a
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href="http://no.more.racketware.info/petition/index">help us promoting
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it</a>!</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>, <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">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/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/">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="https://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="2014-03-04" />
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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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mode: xml ***
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