143 lines
6.7 KiB
HTML
143 lines
6.7 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html newsdate="2010-06-04" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - June 2010</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - June 2010</h1>
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<p>May was quite busy, for the first time we
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participated in a big church event to inform visitors about Free
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Software. We analysed the European Commission's Digital Agenda, and
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there was news about free video formats.</p>
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<p>But why are we working on all those things? Because it is important
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for society. Today software is everywhere, in our desktops, laptops, and
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mobile phones as well as in cars, trains, TVs, fridges - any complex
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device you care to name. Software is not just a tool like a car; it is
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everywhere and will become even more important in future.</p>
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<p>Control over software means power. Whoever controls the software
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decides what you can and what you cannot do with it. In democracies we
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separate and distribute power amongst a lot of different people. The
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control of software as such a powerful tool of our society has to be
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distributed as well. If more and more parts of our life are controlled
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by software, the software needs to be Free Software.</p>
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<p>This month we received the Theodor Heuss medal for exactly this work
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for society. The Theodor Heuss Foundation which awarded the medal is a
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non-partisan foundation which carries the name of Germany's first
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president. The foundation seeks "to bring attention to something, which
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has to be done and shaped in our democracy, without being finished"
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(Carl Friedrich v. Weizsäcker, 1965). The Theodor Heuss prize is given
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annually to persons of high standing and organisations which are
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groundbreaking in this respect.</p>
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<p>This award gives Free Software supporters recognition outside the
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usual software scene. It shows that a well-known political foundation
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agrees that Free Software is good for our society and that FSFE is doing
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a good job. This is a door-opener to reach a broader audience in
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feature, especially politicians. At the ceremony and the day before at
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the workshop Bernhard Reiter, Björn Schießle, Georg Greve, Karsten
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Gerloff, other Fellows and I myself had good discussions with a lot of
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political interested persons with different backgrounds (see <a
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href="/news/2010/news-20100126-01.html">[1]</a> <a
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href="/news/2010/news-20100510-01.html">[2]</a> <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=350">[3]</a>).</p>
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<p><strong>Enlarging the audience</strong> Speaking about a broader
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audience, for the first first time we participated at the ecumenical
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church day in Munich, Germany. While we have given talks at church
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events before to explain the values of Free Software, it was the
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completely new experience for us to participate in an event of this
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size, with 130,000 visitors. Thomas Jensch organised a shared booth with
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KDE e.V. to explain the participants why they as Christians should care
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about Free Software (see <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gladhorn/2010/05/18/going-where-no-gearheads-have-gone-before/">
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[4]</a>).</p>
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<p><strong>Open Standards and politics</strong> Open Standards are
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important to ease the migration path to Free Software. This month the
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European Commission published the Digital Agenda. It is good that the
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Commission plans to give standards a greater role in the public
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procurement of software, and to get dominant software vendors to license
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their interoperability information, opening up the software market for
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Free Software vendors. However the EC avoids all references to Open
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Standards as well as Free Software, although the Member States set those
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goals for the Commission in the Granada and Malmö declarations. Instead,
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the Commission points to the European Interoperability Framework. This
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is a document which is currently being systematically hollowed out, as
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shown by FSFE's analysis <a href="/freesoftware/standards/eifv2.html">[5]</a>. We
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outlined that the EC needs to adopt a strict definition of Open
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Standards, along the lines of the first European Interoperability
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Framework (EIF), and that the Commission needs to focus on Open
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Standards for its public sector IT strategy to enable the full potential
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of Free Software for European innovation (see <a
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href="/news/2010/news-20100519-01.html">[6]</a>).</p>
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<p><strong>Free Video Formats</strong> Good news about open video
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formats. In March both our sister organisation the FSF and our
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associated organisation FFII asked Google to free the video codec vp8
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and use it on YouTube. This month Google announced they will do so. From
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now on users will be able use Free Software to play and encode the new
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WebM format. "WebM is based on the Matroska container format --
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replacing Ogg -- and the VP8 video codec which replaces Theora.
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Crucially, the Vorbis audio codec is part of the new WebM
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specification." (see <a
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href="http://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-statement-on-webm-and-vp8">[7]</a>
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and <a
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href="http://press.ffii.org/Press%20releases/FFII%20welcomes%20Google%27s%20move%20to%20open%20VP8%20video%20format">[8]</a>).</p>
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<p>The other good news, since a few days the German ARD news program
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tagessschau is available in Ogg Theora. After the public radio station
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Dradio is broadcasting its program in OGG vorbis you can now watch the
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tagesschau with Free Software <a
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href="http://www.tagesschau.de/tagesschau24/">[9]</a> and do not have
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to install proprietary software like the Adobe's flash player (see <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=581">[10]</a>).</p>
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<p><strong>Get Active</strong> We depend on the help of many volunteers
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to evaluate current topics. If you want to help Free Software in Europe
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please subscribe to our public mailing lists <a
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href="/contact/community.html">[11]</a> and participate in the
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discussion sharing your knowledge with others. You have dived into a
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topic like free video formats, found an interesting article about Free
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Software, you think we missed an important point in a discussion, or you
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want to give us feedback on the newsletter? Get active and share this
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information with other Free Software supporters on
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discussion@lists.fsfe.org.</p>
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<p>Regards,<br /> <a href="/about/people/kirschner/kirschner.html">Matthias Kirschner</a>- FSFE</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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<tags>
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<tag key="newsletter"/>
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<tag key="european-commission"/>
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<tag key="openstandards">OGG Theora</tag>
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<tag key="eif"/>
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<tag key="openstandards"/>
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<tag key="google"/>
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</tags>
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</html>
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